Larisa Summers 00:00
How do I stay productive in a remote and hybrid world? And how do I keep my culture engaged and my employees engaged given that we're not together all the time.
Ben Kaplan 00:08
This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups.
Ben Kaplan 00:23
This is TOP CMO with me, Ben Kaplan. Today I'm speaking to Larissa Summers, former CMO of Convened a company that helps businesses create dynamic work experiences through premium venues, workplaces and digital meeting technology. Prior to Convene, Larissa was CMO of apertura, a software development company in the retail space. She's also headed up marketing functions, and Zumba Fitness, and Best Buy one of America's biggest retailers. So how do you build a welcoming and service oriented environments to make working at your company desirable? And what effect does having private investors have on companies and their marketing? Let's find out with Larissa Summers. Larissa, first of all, I want to ask you what it's like to be in a space where you have the big well known brand, for better or for worse, famous brand, in some ways, infamous brand. Now I'm talking about we work and you're in a space that's related to we work you compete on certain things, you do things differently, others but what does it like to try to get brand differentiation? When everyone asks, Are you the we work of this? Or are you like we work?
Larisa Summers 01:35
So we're just gonna jump right into the biggest possible topic? The whale in the room? We work? Yeah, I mean, I think that, for us, it's a blessing and a curse. Certainly we work was really innovative and instrumental in really having co working become something that everybody knew about knows about, was interested in going through what they went through, it certainly was challenging for the entire industry, when that f1 unraveled and their IPO unraveled. But I think, you know, on the positive side, everybody, when you say you're the we work of there's a lot of accelerated understanding of of quite a bit of what it means to be in the co working or flex office space, I think for us so that the the question that you asked is the right one, which is how do you differentiate from that? How do you separate from that? How do you actually get lift beyond that, when you are your own brand, and you are making your own promises to customers. So for us, you know, one of the things we say a lot at convenience is show don't tell. So we really encourage people to come into the space coming out of the pandemic, we've done, and hosted a lot of reopening events and brought a lot of people in through our doors to better understand the hospitality. And the premium offering that can be in actually believed in and is the promise that we make. And then we do a lot of a lot of video and photography content to our website, through social media, through all of our own channels to really again, immerse people in the Convene brand, which is this premium, hospitality driven experience that's just very, very different from walking into a convenience than walking into any other co working space.
Ben Kaplan 03:11
And when you talk about branding and brand positioning and storytelling, sometimes you can do it through explaining what you do, or, as you mentioned, showing what you do. But sometimes it's also about asking like a powerful question that gets people thinking in the right frame of mind. And I know one that you've mentioned, they say, Well, what if you ran an office building or an office space, like a boutique hotel? So why is that an important question that is asked sort of internally within the company? And does that translate to an audience or customers? Because you're trying to achieve differentiation through the level of service and the premium experience of that service? And that question helps frame that a little bit differently. And in your audience's minds.
Larisa Summers 03:51
Yeah, that question is the question that Ryan, our founder asked, and that was the whole thesis for the, the genesis of the company was what if you did run an office building like a boutique hotel? What would that look like? What would that feel like? What would that experience be? And it's interesting that 2022 and coming out of the world that we've come out over the last few years, that question is actually more important than ever and more relevant than ever, even all these years later. And what I mean by that is, people come out of the pandemic wanting real meaningful experiences, and they want to connect with people in person through technology, of course, but also, that human connection that we've been lacking, and that we've been, you know, prevented from experiencing is something that people really want to bring back into their lives, on their own terms. And so, when companies think about bringing people back in with purpose with intention, they want those experiences to be great. You know, I think gone are the days when you would be okay sitting at a strategic off site, in the basement of a Hampton Inn with no natural light for three days at a time, right I think if we're gonna go to the trouble of getting on a plane, traveling across the country, leaving our families leaving our past, leaving our children, and getting together with our teams, which we believe is important, we want that experience to be memorable and great. And to inspire us. We don't want to do it in a, you know, in a in a way that we could have just stayed home for that meeting, you know. And so I think the office is a boutique hotel is now more important than ever, which we could never have predicted. But it's exactly what's happening.
Ben Kaplan 05:28
When you think about curating or cultivating positive experiences, it tends to come a little bit from the b2c side of marketing, right? Where this is thing of like, I think some of our clients even use experience marketing now as the term that they would use it kind of for all of integrated marketing, right? They'll just call it experience marketing, they want to cultivate those experiences. On the b2b side, maybe less common experience is also important. But how do you curate or nurture this experience? If you've got a big client, you have a lot of kind of enterprise sized clients that come in, they're walking in to test an office, do you have some kind of special program, you run where everyone's like, on their best behavior? And there's like, I don't know, they're coming around with like silver trays and revealing that they're like, What do you do to curate that experience of someone's gonna come in person, and you want to give them a sense for, you know, this is like an amazing boutique hotel that you're going to tell all your friends about. But wait, it's an office? Yeah.
Larisa Summers 06:18
Well, I love this question so much. And I think there's a movement. Well, I know there's a movement of a lot of b2b marketers now that have really embraced and understand, you know, what, we're still marketing to people, we're still talking to people and humans on the other side. And just because we're in b2b doesn't mean we can't address people as other humans with emotions and feelings and thoughts and desires and values on the other side of it. So for Convene, what that really looks like is again, this, this, this notion of hospitality through and through and everything we do. And so even our front office staff, you know, they're trained, they've come to us from places like the four seasons in the Ritz Carlton. And when you walk into somebody who has a service minded orientation, you can just feel the difference. It's eye contact, it's warm. But Hello, you know, Ben, nice to see you. You have your event here today, because may I show you around measure you wear your event is May I introduce you to our chef who's going to prepare your lunch? I mean, it's a totally different experience than walking into, you know, kind of a cold, sterile office building. Let's Oh, yeah, there's the Romeo room. Okay, I'm gonna go in there. That's my room, and I'm gonna sit down and wait. So it's really in the it's the whole experience. And it's really about the human connection that we believe in and we foster that we think is the biggest differentiator. That's, that's the special sauce. That's the magic sauce.
Ben Kaplan 07:42
And how do you extend that if you're a service forward company? How do you extend that forward to like, who you market to? And other just business functions where you kind of have to embody that experience? And how do you find people who can do that, I'll give you one example. My mother is Thai, I sometimes go to Thailand, and the best service I experienced in the world is in Thailand. And it's because the culture is so built around supporting others, putting others before yourself that it's like, it's unbelievable. I think I had a deadline and internet went out, someone took me on the back of their scooter, 30 minutes to an internet cafe, just a person at the hotel, just to help me file for my deadline in time. And it's like, unbelievable. So it that's all from the culture that emanates from, from this Thai culture. How do you have a marketing culture, team culture that says it's not just the person that you know who used to work at the Four Seasons, he's at the front desk, but your whole organization team in your interactions has to give up that kind of vibe?
Larisa Summers 08:37
Yeah, well, I think the key word is culture. It's the culture of the whole company, you know, I think it would come across as really inauthentic it and I bet it's an overused word, but it would come across as fake if only the marketing department talks like that. They're only the Marketing Department put out videos that craft this experience, and then you didn't actually feel it or replicate it when you walked in the door. And I think what Ryan's done that's been so instrumental to the success of the company and just surviving COVID. And getting through to the other side is primarily at the time physical meetings and events business is the internal culture is also one driven by hospitality when you first started Convene. One of your first onboarding is hospitality one to one, what does hospitality mean in our company with one another, as well as you know, the clients and the prospects that we walk through our four walls? And so we actually have to talk about like, well, what does a surprise and delight look like in a meeting? When you're talking to your coworkers? How can you surprise and delight someone by saying, remembering their husband or their wives name or their kids or like talking a little bit about their weekend before you just launch into like, your list of tasks for the day and so it's something that we cultivate as an organization internally, culturally, as well as with our clients.
Ben Kaplan 09:53
What would be your advice for anyone that wants to have their CMOs listening that want to have a More like customer centric or customer oriented team, and to do that shift, and let's say, you know, they work at a tech forward company, right? It's like heavy engineering, that's the focus is that it's not this, do you have a piece of advice on what you can do if there's a single thing you can do to try to bring that out, even if that's not your company's historic orientation, you
Larisa Summers 10:19
have to prove that having that human element and that human connection is actually a strategic advantage. And I think there are so many different types of CEOs, there's like the tech CEO that was more came up the CTO technology track, there's the product CEO that came up to the product track, there's the mark sales and marketing CEO that came up through the sales and marketing track. And I think understanding what your CEO and your executive suite values is important, because you need to align the value in the human connection with the strategic imperatives of the company. And there are ways to do that, you know, I think it's part art and part science. And I think you have to both have like KPIs that can measure and prove the impact. And then you can also show the, the sentiments that people are having by interacting with certain types of content. And then I think, thirdly, is showing other successful companies that you may want to emulate as kind of an avatar for success, who have transcended product features and functionality into actual emotional connections with their clients with Apple is such a famous example. But you know, there are other companies that you can point to say, that's the level of success we're aspiring to, as a growth company, we have really big dreams, we want to shoot for the moon and land among the stars, like, let's do it. All right, including the personal touch, even if we're b2b. And that's strategic alignment, even though we're features or functionality Focus, the
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Ben Kaplan 12:48
If I was going to summarize the sort of the differentiated position of Convene, it would be what you said hospitality and sense of service, that it's a premium experience, you can have very great hospitality, but it's just not at a high end version, this is a higher end version. And also that it's a one stop shop, meaning you're controlling the experience with internal team, you're not parceling this out to third parties or something like that. So how do you if those are indeed your points of differentiation? How do you do that? If people haven't set foot in Convene, what are the ways that you try to take that into with the content, you produce digital footprint, other things that you do that might be different than others in the space, aka, we work to communicate that?
Larisa Summers 13:29
Well, I think a lot of it is the visuals, I mean, the aesthetic of when you walk into a Convene, it should feel different. And it should feel, you know, I can't 100% replicate, like the warmth of the human touch through video, but I can walk you through an experience and kind of show you what it would be like to walk in. So we do a lot of video, we do a lot of, you know, PR and storytelling, we do a lot of social media, we do a lot of events. I mean, physical is back, you know, in a lot of ways, and people really are hungry again for that human connection. And so we have been doing a lot of events, and a lot of people are showing up to those and more people are actually attending than used to in the past. So if you look at like the RSVP to attendance, it's actually higher now than it had been in past. So I think people are just hungry to, to get back together. So for us, you know, we've moved away from pure 100% demand gen ROI, you know, certainly like last click attribution type marketing initiatives to telling a full service story through all the different ways we can engage including physical, so more of that PR, storytelling, social approach. I would say though, the other thing is like it's not just about visuals or telling a great story necessarily, although it's a big part of it. It's about like, what problem are we solving for you? And keeping it really simple. The problem that people have today, the strategic problem that people have today CEOs of companies is how do I stay productive in a remote and hybrid world? And how do I keep my culture engaged? Each of my employees engaged, given that we're not together all the time, and how do I hit my numbers? Like, that's what they care about. Those are the top three things. We know this for a fact. And so everything we do, shows them how we solve those three things for them by coming into a convenience. And that's actually the problem that we are ultimately solving on their behalf. So that should resonate through all the different touchpoints that we're, that we're spreading our message through. And only those types of channels allow us to do that beyond just traditional, you know, like Google search or something like that. How
Ben Kaplan 15:35
are you thinking about event marketing now. And it's added importance to you because you're really demonstrating a capability while you're having the event? Right? So it's a little bit of a higher bar than the typical, either physical or hybrid event? What types of events you're doing now? How are you thinking about that? What's the strategy and maybe what can others take that aren't such prolific event producers, like you guys certainly are, it's really about
Larisa Summers 15:57
bringing it to life and having people experiencing it for themselves. And so for us, right now, it's funny, because it's, you know, September, it's the fall, we're going to fall, if they're not, we're post labor. And so we're actually putting on holiday showcases so we're gonna have, you know, the holidays in September, October. And we're inviting, you know, hundreds of people to come in two locations in London and Chicago, New York, to experience what a holiday event could look like to Convene. And so we're doing that now. Because planning is now. And although the events won't be happening until December, at least, now, while they're in the planning phase, we can actually bring this to life for them and have them consider us as one of their destinations for such an important event like that of bringing their teams back together for the season. So it's really about understanding where are they at in their planning process? And then working backwards and kind of backwards engineering? Like, when do we need to immerse you in understanding the solution we bring to you? That would be now
Ben Kaplan 16:54
I see. So you're actually trying to think about the business cycle? And are these potential customers just for the holiday party? Like they're just going to come in through a holiday party? And that's it? Or is this also a foray into have your office with us? This has only one elements are everything else? Or do you do that in sequence?
Larisa Summers 17:10
It's really a sequence. I mean, you we can't You know, I think people can't absorb a lot of messages at one time.
Ben Kaplan 17:16
You can't say like, calm, have an amazing holiday party. Plus, bring your whole team here and yeah, yes.
Larisa Summers 17:23
Yeah, I wish I wish it were that easy. But I think our brains can only handle so much information at one time. So, you know, hopefully, they experienced that. And they get curious and they ask questions. And there's definitely a sequencing that happens where over a period of time we introduce them to all the different things that they can partner with a fun inConvene and that's gonna be a little bit of a process,
Ben Kaplan 17:44
a slightly untraditional, amusing example, from something we had to do. We had to time shift events, because that's what you're doing now you're like, Okay, it's September, let's give the feel of Christmas holidays. We've done a lot of work in the pet food space, one of our longtime clients is Milkbone. You know, like the dog treats. So the issue was, you know, we wanted two people to like, treat their dog on Valentine's Day, your true furry soulmate, right with a milk bum. Problem is, if you missed that on Valentine's Day, it's too late, right? No one can go out and buy a treat and tie, you can't do it. So we actually created doggy date nights in early February, which is the night to have a date with your dog and posted on social media. Just to remind you that this is your true soulmate, the unconditional love non judgmental, always excited to see you. This is the time to do it. And we did that in early February. So you still had time to buy your Valentine's treats for the 14th.
Larisa Summers 18:36
I like that. I know there's a podcast, I would show you my two dogs right now that I'm hoping don't bark out. They didn't hear you say that? Because they're going to be demanding their treats in early February.
Ben Kaplan 18:48
Yes, there you go. Yes, we're gonna start a new wave. And how else do you think about with your events, this idea of we call it calendar based marketing, but this notion of typically typical marketing, right? You're like, who's my target? What's the message I want to send to them? And maybe the last consideration is like, when are we going to time it calendar based marketing to us is, let's leave with the time there's certain timing that's really, really important then from that we can roll out our audiences or a messages. So how do you think about the calendar and use it to your advantage in marketing?
Larisa Summers 19:16
Oh, my gosh, well, I came out of retail and ecommerce for many, many, many years where you are you like live and die by the calendar. You know? I mean, you just know, it's like, okay, it's New Years, and then it's Valentine's Day. And then you know, you just like go through the seasons. And so taking that to be to be to be you know, I mean, there's still seasonality and the holidays have an impact. But we just think about the buying cycle. And we think about well, if you're going to have summer trainings in June, you're obviously planning those in January and February earlier in the year and so we just reverse engineer everything and we try to understand, you know, if you're a financial services company and your summer interns come and they all need to be trained up in all your new hires in the summer, then we know we need to target you probably three to six Once in advance of that, with respect to you know, getting you compelled to think about Convene as a possible destination for that. And so you know, you we do we do that we just reverse engineer all the different people and when they need to buy stuff, and then we we act accordingly we have a whole calendar that we we kind of take an approach where we start at the highest level of like, okay, q1, January, February, March, what's on people's mind, and then we go down at the very highest level, we just keep ticking it down, down, down, down, down until we get into like, you know, a specific campaign that we want to run at any given week. We kind of also think about it holistically to make sure that we're never overburdening a population with too many messages by accident, so that it all kind of works holistically together to make sure that yeah, we're just we're doing the right thing at the right time and not, you know, overburdening anybody.
Ben Kaplan 20:47
I also think about I think in our sign for our clients, where global marketing agency, we think about being cyclical, and then also counter cyclical. So the idea is that you can reinforce the drive period, or it's the decision making that's on a certain calendar. But sometimes you want to do the opposite of that. Right? Why? Cuz it's like, it's a crowded time. It's a busy time others are doing as well. And so we often think in like in retail, like the fact that Amazon Prime Day is in July, no, not probably not an accident, right? If you could do one thing to take Christmas, probably their biggest, you know, holiday season and actually make Christmas in July. It's probably Amazon Prime Day. So I think it's interesting to think about what's the cycle? And and how can you break the patterns of the cycle in interesting ways to maybe do something unexpected, or do something else that to our earlier conversation, you can differentiate yourself with competitors. Yeah,
Larisa Summers 21:38
I love that. Did you call it counter cycle?
Ben Kaplan 21:40
Yes. Or counter cyclical?
Larisa Summers 21:41
Yes. counter cyclical? I like that.
Ben Kaplan 21:43
We've talked about the event side, and it sounds like you're embracing physical events, you have these events? Are you doing anything hybrid with that? Is there anything like virtual because I know, that's part of the offering, when you think about your kind of event marketing strategy, we're doing a
Larisa Summers 21:57
ton of hybrid, I mean, easily half of all meetings are hybrid now. So it's very different than it was pre pandemic, I mean, you know, so we're completely hybrid enabled. And we offer that as part of the onboarding process. Whenever you have any meeting and event, you know, we talk to you about your hybrid needs, and things like that. But there's a huge demand for that. And I don't think that's going to be going away, possibly ever. At this point, I think people are just so used to being able to make a educated decision about whether they need to attend a physical meeting or not, and not 100% of people are always going to say yes, anymore. And so that's definitely something that's changed significantly, and we've had to change with the times and really upgrade our technology and our staff and, and train properly in order to be able to handle that, which is what we've done. So yeah, that's a that's a big change.
Ben Kaplan 22:41
But what is the implication of that, because you had this always sense, like, you know, it's not, you know, now we're calling them hybrid events, but you had places where, you know, you could go to conferences, you could buy like the, you know, whatever the virtual package, you're gonna get some like recordings and stuff like that, that has existed, but you kind of always had the sense that you were like, a second class citizen, right? Like, if you're at this conference, they're having all the fun parties, and you're just like, on a screen watching a few webinar type things. So there's that. But then, the flip side of that is something I think you alluded to about sort of the cost benefit analysis of attending, because then it also affects the in person events, because now you're saying, Well, is it worth it for me to go? What do I get by going, that somehow is worth the time investment and everything else? So so how do you think what do you think the future of events is like in those two dimensions as used by marketers, sort of the hybrid not being a second class citizen, but then the physical being actually worth it, what we're seeing, I can tell you what we're
Larisa Summers 23:36
seeing, and you know, we can maybe make that fun, and then come back and you know, 2023, and see how accurate we will have been a year from now. But what we're seeing is a flight, a flight to quality and a flight to experience number one. And so people who are planning the events, want to give people a reason to come, they want the experience to be good. Once you get there and be a driver for attendance. Realistically, they realize not everyone's gonna be able to make it for various reasons. And so I think there's actually a lot of exciting innovation, that's probably going to happen in the next six to 12 months around virtual attendee experience. So it'll be interesting to see for us, you know, we've enabled that and we've actually done work to create production quality, like TV level, movie level production quality event experiences when you're remote, so that it is not just like nothing's wrong with Zoom Zoom has an amazing use case, but maybe not for like a really important townhall with all your most important employees, when you want to have, you know, a celebrity superstar address the team in some of them are virtual, like you want them to have a great experience and have a really high quality production events in that in that capacity as compared to just like a one on one or a team meeting. So, you know, I think we've done some innovation there, but I think it'll be interesting to see like a lot of the other innovations that come through to give those Original attendees a better experience.
Tom Cain 25:04
Okay, so here's what I'm thinking. It's a Western with a sci fi twist. But there's also a film noir plot running in the background. Dinosaurs because why not right? Take the dinosaurs down a little bit. Okay, no dinosaurs. But a little bit of romance is always welcome.
Tom Cain 25:40
Zombies. Yeah, we've just heard from zombies in there. Your vision, our craft, talk thought leader.com. I don't know. Can I listen to the first draft again, back to the show.
Ben Kaplan 25:56
In for differentiation, and to mention, we work again, because there's this notion of, you know, we work was in a movie, you know, founding story featured, I guess, on on Hulu, there was a sense of sort of like the cult of we work where we're a culture brand, and we're a lifestyle brand. And there was all of that, how do you differentiate that win culture and sort of experience is part of your offering, you're doing it, but there's a sort of this other sense of like, oh, wow, that was kind of all hype that was done to sell something that didn't really live up to it. And it's all using, like the same jargon and keywords, yet, you're trying to say we sort of have substance? And maybe the perception was that didn't have much substance in it? Yeah,
Larisa Summers 26:36
that's such an interesting question. I think that let me ask you something. Do you think that Adam Newman was genuine? When he had that ambition? Do you think that he meant it? Or do you think it was kind of just a marketing spin on a business? That was really capital intensive?
Ben Kaplan 26:54
Yes. And yes, I think probably you start out, right. And you're, we have a lot of no a lot of founders and clients and you get excited about something. And no one gets excited to do something that everyone else has done very likely, like, Let's do exactly what Regis has done before. And let's do it exactly the same. So now there's probably a sense of like, a vision of what this could be. And clearly, I mean, it seems like from the pandemic, even accelerated our viewpoint of like, what does it mean to be together? And finally, so probably I take it at face value? I don't know Adam Newman, but it seems like he probably got excited. And then probably, it's a whole lot of marketing spin, because you need something to justify what is a high price per square foot at the same time? Yeah. Right. So it's probably yes to both?
Larisa Summers 27:37
Well, I mean, I think there's a marketing part of the story. And then like the business unit economics part of the story. And I think, from the marketing side of the story, the whole thesis, again, that Ryan of like, what if you rent an office building like a hotel, that is where we come from, that's where we were born into, from the start. And I think now, we were growing like crazy in 2019, before the pandemic hit, and things had to change suddenly. So that was resonating even before the pandemic. And now coming out, when people are getting back together. Again, I'll be it again, on their own terms, the demand for meetings and events, although it's changed, and there's a lot more hybrid happening, it's still happening, and it's continuing to grow into the into the second half of this year. So I think that togetherness, and what if you have the service minded orientation around work, and creating products and productivity for the economy, and for the country, and for the world, there's a lot of value there. And I think people did value it. And they do value it more now than ever, because it's almost become, it's not a given anymore, like you want to do it, you want to do it with intention, you want to do it when it feels right, and you want to have a great experience. So that's like the marketing side of it. I think it's still, like we're still hitting the mark. And actually, that Mark has become more important, I think, on the unit economics side, though, is our business model is very different than we worked and we are not, you know, buying or you know, leasing all of our footprint. I mean, we actually partner with landlords and are creating amenity floors in their commercial buildings as a draw for them to get more tenants in their building. And so when there's when you add a convenience to a building, you're creating a more attractive building for people to want to lease into to our our event, meaning an event or work in our membership opportunities like the high end cuisine that you can get, you know, at a private club type experience. And so I think both on marketing and unit and unit economics of how we partner with landlords and are not always putting our own capital into build out. It's just a more attractive business overall.
Ben Kaplan 29:43
I think the recent news from Convene is one you're now owned by HSBC you're owned by private equity that includes the owner famous Lee of Saks Fifth Avenue. There's other I think just from what I've read things in the works with like using former like Lordan tailors stores and converting them into spaces that you might reimagine as, as Convene offices and all that. So what has been the effect on marketing and the shift in marketing, when you have another stakeholder at the table, presumably private equity, one that's going to be pretty bottom line driven about what we're generating here? How have you evolved your marketing coming out of the pandemic, new owners, all of that, in your approach, we
Larisa Summers 30:23
have a strategy that's easy to tell. And we have an approach that, again, is art and science. And so, you know, we have a lot of metrics and data around how things are performing, why they're performing like that the experience where the experiments were running, how those are performing in order to inform future investments and marketing. And so I think we have a really solid handle on our marketing economics, which obviously gives them a lot of comfort and a lot of insight into what we're doing, why we're doing it, now it's performing. There's also a lot of interesting analysis that is being done and that we're seeing around how people are coming back to work post pandemic compared to like, pre pandemic and 2019. So being a data drip, I would say we're as data driven a marketing organization as you can get, who also value tremendously and believe in with all of our hearts, the power of brand, and storytelling, and some of those, those types of moments that you can't always measure 100%, and certainly not in a short timeframe, but over the long term, they pay greater dividends. And so I think we've done a nice job setting up what we do, why we do it, how we do it, how we're holding ourselves accountable, to be trusted in that in that journey. And I think to look, yes, you know, private equity and NHBC came in as our majority, strategic shareholder who share our vision for the future of you know, how real estate can be transformed into, you know, these interesting kind of co working and office models. But the whole world, I mean, the whole economy has shifted to valuing profitability and sustainability over pure growth at growth at all costs. So I think whether you have a private equity firm in your board or not, all of your including, you know, venture capital right now is really tightening the belts and saying you need to show a path of profitability in a realistic time period, or else you're gonna have some issues. So I think our whole on things the whole market has moved to that.
Ben Kaplan 32:25
You mentioned data, and your use of it and sort of telling the story to stakeholders or to the board, do you use data as part of your PR storytelling as well, we have love using data as a storytelling tool. Sometimes you can have like the same type of report that goes internally, that's a private audience that might be sort of sanitized and made publicly available, or there's another riff on it or some other thing, how do you use data as part of your PR program specifically for external audiences,
Larisa Summers 32:54
we actually just released some numbers recently, because we, it's funny, of course, you've done this, but like, we just had that happen, literally what you just said, we just went through where we were looking at numbers internally to understand behavior. And we saw something really compelling about the greater demand for, you know, meetings and events in our time period compared to to you, doesn't it and we thought leading to tell people about this, this is compelling information, we got to get this out there. And so we did pitch it to a few reporters who picked it up. So that was kind of a fortuitous not only for this conversation, but for, you know, for our business. So I think data is incredibly important. I think data is incredibly compelling. I would say like, my biggest two secrets of success, that I've learned, just through experience in the last five years is, number one be a strategic solution for your clients and for your CEO. But number two is tell the story through data. And when you have data that only you have, and nobody else has, because it's it's unique to your business. People value that and they should value that because that's interesting information that they didn't have before. And that tends to get picked up quite a bit.
Ben Kaplan 33:58
Another way of saying is that if you have valuable data, then you're valuable by extension. So it has that effect that imparts on you. So final question. And just sort of summarizing all of this and thinking about this, we often talk about how you can get a lot of things wrong, if you get a few things, right. And if you get the right things, right, it makes sort of all the difference in the world. So what are the things that you think for Convene are the things you absolutely have to get right moving forward. And if you screw up some other stuff on the way, that's okay, because you get the most important things done. I
Larisa Summers 34:32
think the most important thing is we're living through a time when people are redefining their relationship to work in the workplace. And anyone who tells you they have it all figured out is probably lying to you. And anyone who tells you, they know exactly what's going to happen in 12 to 24 to 36 months with respect To return to office work, togetherness, just probably doesn't really know. I mean, so I think the most important thing for us to get right as a marketer is to strike a balance between creating solutions that are compelling, and hitting the mark with what people really want. Because we're in the process of creating that together as like, as a as a world. And so we have to be really careful not to get ahead of ourselves and our audience, but then also to lead them in some ways. So that's a, that's a tricky balance, but one that's it's exciting to solve such an important and relevant problem. So I think that's probably the biggest thing that we have to get right. But not that's not a marketing thing. That's really a company thing. Ultimately,
Ben Kaplan 35:43
to achieve the kind of success you want the kind of growth you want. It sounds like you take everything that came before you we work included. And then you try to take all of those lessons and learnings and storytelling and apply it to what is like very real, immediate, timely problems that make your business incredibly relevant right now. And that's exciting to see. And that sounds like you're doing everything from what is the experience like of someone walking in to our events? And what are they getting to, you know, how do we use data to tell stories for people that never set foot in ArcSight, but we get an insight that would somehow lead us towards what we're doing. So well done, and congratulations on all the success thus far and continue to success.
Larisa Summers 36:28
Thank you so much for inviting me and having me tell our Convene story and how we're thinking about things. This has been really fun and we just appreciate being here with you. So thank you as
Ben Kaplan 36:38
someone who has a hospitality mindset, I appreciate the fact but no, the pleasure was all mine, Larissa Summers, CMO Convene thank you so much. Thanks, Ben.
Tom Cain 36:52
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