TOP CMO: Shannon Duffy, Asana - 'AI, Events, and Authenticity'

SHANNON DUFFY  00:00

The role of marketing is to help the company itself. And you can look at this beautiful thing that I did well, if the thing is not producing any outcomes, you really didn't do the thing and you really don't get sort of a pat on the back. This is the podcast

‍

Ben Kaplan  00:11

where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies, and most disruptive startups

‍

00:18

haematoxylin.

‍

Ben Kaplan  00:25

This is TOP CMO.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  00:32

Hi, I'm Jackson Carpenter. And in this episode of TOP CMO, I'm speaking with Shannon Duffy CMO of Asana, an AI powered web and mobile application designed to help teams organize, track and manage their work. Shannon has more than 25 years of experience in marketing leadership. She most recently served as executive vice president of cloud and Industry Marketing is Salesforce, the CRM giant. She's also held senior positions at Facebook and jigsaw, a crowdsource business contact data service that was later acquired by Salesforce. So how do you get new clients when everyone already seems to be aware of your brand? What's the key to creating useful successful events that actually add value to customers? And how do you cultivate a harmonious relationship between marketing and sales departments? All this and more with Shannon Duffy? Shannon Duffy, thank you so much for joining us on TOP CMO.

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  01:26

I am so thrilled to be here, Jackson, so it's gonna be fun.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  01:29

It's spectacular to be here with you. Now for those who don't know, Shannon, you are the CMO at Asana. And I would expect that probably most of our listeners have used Asana at some point pretty well known tool. But for those who've been living under a rock, what's your elevator pitch for Asana? What's Asana? Asana

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  01:46

is the number one AI powered work management platform and we connect your work all the work in your organization to your top line goals and make it easier to get things done. And

‍

Jackson Carpenter  01:56

I love that you're bringing in the AI relevance there. That's fantastic. Staying on top of breaking trends. That's excellent. Now tell me a little bit about who you're selling to for like what I think of Asana, I think like almost anybody who does a knowledge worker is a potential Asana customer, but when you think of your customers, how do you how do you segment them? Who are you selling to?

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  02:19

So I think you hit the nail on the head, we are useful. And we are we saw that all knowledge workers, anyone from small companies all the way to large enterprises are using Asana to manage their work. And I would say it works great for small companies, it is even more mission critical when you work in these larger, you know, multi timezone multi country companies that are trying to get work done across a large set of people, time zones, countries, etc.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  02:47

Now, when I imagine what it must be like to mark it for Asana, I imagine and this might just be me, you know, making up a narrative in my head. But I imagine that you face a unique challenge that kind of all the low hanging fruit has been picked. People are aware of Asana, broadly speaking, anyone who is going to be an early adopter to Asana you got, like years ago. So tell me a little bit about how you think about reaching and accessing new audiences and how you go about actually marketing this product today? Yeah,

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  03:21

so I'm gonna answer that from two different lenses. I think one you're right. Most people have heard of Asana. Not everyone is using Asana. And some of the people that even use Asana aren't using Asana to its full potential. And so kind of, I kind of look at it two ways. So one, it's like, yes, people might know it, they might have seen an ad, they might have used it for even like a you know, a personal project, like, you know, planning a wedding or I used it when my children were applying to different schools to keep things on track. I think the opportunity we have, and this is the challenge as a marketer is going from talking about it and how it serves and works for individuals and individual teams, to as I said before, the large companies that are using it across departments wall to law, right, slightly different use cases, still connecting work to goals, but a very, very different use case. So part of our my challenge goal, what I think about every day when I wake up as a marketer is how do we tell that story, and help people understand, it's so much more than just sort of tasks and projects, this can manage multi dimensional, you know, very complex portfolios of work across the across the large companies.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  04:25

Now, the way I hear you talking about this makes me think a lot about you know, I imagine you're probably doing a lot of Account Based Marketing, right? Where you sort of are able to go to a big enterprise and say, Hey, you may not know this, but you've actually got 30 different teams using Asana in this kind of disjointed universe and how can we put together some kind of a unified offering with like instant provisioning? Is that Is that something you do tell us a little bit about that structure? Account

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  04:51

Based Marketing is key and you I got you like you know a lot about Asana, because traditionally was what how our business grew right, like people would use it. You know, someone in the marketing team might be using it someone in the legal team might be using a similar the product, he might be using it, but they weren't using it together. And so now there's a couple of things we do one, like you said, go to them and be like, Hey, let us show you the true power when you connect all of this work together. And then second, one of our, one of our most important marketing sort of strategies or tactics that we've really built out over the past year and a half has been this concept of our work innovation score. So because all these companies are using Asana, we could see how they're collaborating. And we can pull out insights to help tell them, hey, if you use Asana together across these departments more effectively, your collaboration, your productivity could increase so much. And so for a marketing perspective, it's a really great story. It's a great story for us to tell sort of at our events, and in third party, but also for our sales team to pick up the phone. So instead of like, hey, we see you're using Asana, do you want to buy Morris on it? That's not the best sort of sales or marketing pitch. But what is compelling is, hey, we actually have data on how you're using Asana today. And did you realize that you could add more users if you, you know, you, you set up these workflows, or these use cases that we see are proven across many different companies, your industry, that's where you'll unlock greater productivity. So that's sort of when you think of like a marketing campaign. That's been a huge focus for us over the last year.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  06:10

So talk tactics to mission and when you have these big Account Based Marketing pushes, and maybe even more broadly, through your marketing kind of stack, what channels have you emphasized as a CMO? What has worked? And then is there anything that you tried that maybe you thought was going to work that really didn't any initiatives that really fell flat on their face? So I think

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  06:32

all marketers have done things where we've fallen on our face, we don't want to talk about them. But let's normalize failures, right? Because that's how we learn. I would say a couple of things, I think, for us, tight alignment with the sales team has been key. So definitely, you know, paid media, social events, both our own and in third party, what I will say, after the pandemic, like first party, like your own events are back like, prior to me joining us on it didn't have sort of an Asana event series. So we've created one, it has probably been our most successful in terms of how do we reach the, you know, higher level executives at these top accounts that we've done to date. So that's one if you your marketer out there, and you don't sort of have an event that is about you, that you can wrap is sort of a thought leadership, Robert continued to do it. I would say from a failure perspective, like I'll speak sort of high level to begin with, but Asana is making a transition where we're like, okay, are we sort of, you know, plg, lead or we SOG. Lead, we're kind of in the middle. But what we found is when we try to message to both, we feel if we try to be everything to everyone, and it's kind of making the hard decisions to be like, This is who we want to go after, this is how we're positioning the company. When we have clarity of that vision and clarity of the message, the results are always much higher than when we try to like make everyone happy, and sort of talk at a sort of more, we're still saying something, we're still saying there's something important, but it's not really resonating with a certain group of people, which is essentially what we're trying to do.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  07:56

I'm curious if you agree or disagree with what I'm about to say, I think that oftentimes the the kind of decision to go after a particular audience isn't often necessarily a question of like, right and wrong. If you have five options, it may not be that option B that you pick is so much better than all the other options. But just the act of choosing allows you to focus and specialize in such a way that you're able to really resonate. That doesn't mean that any of the other options aren't potentially equally worthy, or even better. But making the choice is really the difference maker 100%. And

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  08:31

I think you said it correctly, like and I always will tell my team like there's no wrong decisions, like we might do something and it might not work. That wasn't necessarily the wrong decision. Because like you said, Well, maybe we were focusing here, we need to focus there. But at least having clarity helps you determine what is working and what's not when it comes down to it.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  08:48

Now, you talked about events earlier. And I've marketed for large organizations that I've marketed for small startups. And I'm curious what advice you have for someone who's maybe working at a smaller organization for whom it's like a big reach to host a big multi day conference, for example, how do you think of like kind of the minimum viable product for event based marketing and for owned events? What's the kind of the table stakes to get get into that game?

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  09:20

So you have to start small, right? I mean, like, I'll give you an example from from Asana. So Asana had never done events that were about Asana, so we started small in New York last year, I was like, if we get 100 people in the room, I will be thrilled. Well guess what? We got 200 people in the room. And next month, this year, we're going to do 1000 Right. And so it was like walk before you run. What's even more important, though, sort of scoping the size is you have to have something to say like most people aren't like, Hey, I can't wait to sit in a room for with Asana for six hours and hear people talk about us on it. You have to have something else and that's for us for this concept of work innovation, right? We have our work Innovation Summit. We have our work innovation score, we have our work Innovation Center are really focused on T In our customers, how to innovate the way that they are working their workflows, their processes, the way they set up goals, right? That's our focus. And yes, it happens to be a great coincidence that Asana is able to help them with that. But we're talking up here, not down here. And that's what gets people 100 people, 200 people, 1000 people to spend the day in a room of you,

‍

The Detective  10:19

the podcast that dives into the minds of visionary leaders.

‍

10:24

So Putin decides to attack Ukraine, the day we decided to go public, those lenders

‍

Bill Wise  10:27

and investors are pretty upset group, I didn't even want to get out of my car to come into work, I'm not going to be able to run this anymore. We just weren't able to keep up, they literally kicked me out of meetings.

‍

The Detective  10:38

And I was miserable. podcast that tells the story behind the story of those who have faced the fire and come out the other side, introducing, TOP CEO, the podcast that dives into the minds of visionary leaders.

‍

Bill Wise  10:53

I had this vision 15 years

‍

10:55

ago, my business partner and I looked at those scenarios and said, can figure it

‍

Bill Wise  10:59

out? Let's load up an inventory. I think something's coming, have a plan, stay as focused, as you can I quote, call the founders and said, you're sitting on a billion dollar idea, and I'm the guy who's gonna get you their TOP CEO,

‍

The Detective  11:11

a masterclass in leadership and innovation available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  11:18

So you've got to be providing real value to people so that they're excited to show up over and over again. Now, the kind of chicken and egg question I have there is, you know, it sounds like you're doing a lot of framework development and a lot of kind of high level thinking about the future of work, I assume that needs to start sort of long before you're inviting people into the room, people have sort of got to be familiar with the fact that you've got something interesting to say, before you send them an invitation and say, Hey, come listen to me talk for six hours.

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  11:49

Exactly, exactly. And going back to this concept of work innovation, we have our work Innovation Lab, which develops customized research, right. So it's research on how knowledge workers are thinking about work, the challenges that they have the things that they want to see, which again, is really helpful. If you're, if we're talking to senior executives, that company, every single person is trying to get more out of their workforce, they're trying to engage their workforce, they're trying to motivate their workforce, they're trying to make sure people aren't wasting time on busy work, right. And we have the data that we can share, which again, helps talk about Asana, but also helps talk about where they think they're structuring their teams, etc. The way they call people around getting the most potential out of their work, work organization.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  12:29

Got it. So tactically for our audience here, the research, the idea development, the content marketing precedes the event marketing, and you kind of got to build one before the other is useful. You

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  12:40

have to have something to say. And I will say, because I, you know, a lot of people are like, well, we don't have like, we're if you're a smoker, you're like, Well, I don't have a work innovation lab, you can tell her that with analyst, right. Like Gartner, Forrester, there's not a lot of even smaller firms that can do some customized research for you or can reskin research that they're already doing. And that again, that's meant that that's information. That's thought leadership, that's stuff that is kind of product agnostic, but helps explain why a product like whatever you're selling is so important. I

‍

Jackson Carpenter  13:09

also think one of the things that you're touching on here is the importance of having really done, you know, some deep thinking about your industry. And that requires a level of involvement at a very senior level in your organization with thinking about what the company wants to say, and I don't know about you, but as a marketer, occasionally, I've worked with executive teams that are kind of like, you know, what, communicating with the public, that's your stick, you know, you think about that marketing guy. And they're not thinking about kind of what their proactive vision for their industry is, or what messages that they want to convey. So long as kind of the sales numbers go up. And what I'm hearing from you is, it's probably like pretty important to get folks at the highest level of the organization, thinking about the future of the industry and discussing it in a way that some of those ideas and points of view can develop early

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  13:59

on. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's important for your sales team, right? I say all the time, when you're talking about like channels, your sales team is one of the most powerful marketing channels you have, right? What are they saying? Are they consistent? How do they show up with a curiosity for the challenges that our customers and how do they map what the product is back to those specific challenges specific customer, not just do a generic first call deck pitch that you gave them? And also for the product team? Right? So your product team is like there is a point of view that marketing has, there's the real conversations that sales was having regarding sort of that point of view and how it maps back to real customer pains. And then there's the product or that actually has to look in the future and build this and right, that's sort of like the I don't know what shape with this is that I made but that's sort of like the three legs of the stool around making this flywheel work. So every year, you can put on a first party event and have conversations that are a follow up from last year. And here's the product innovation that we built from the products from last year. Like that's how this momentum stays sustainable. Now,

‍

Jackson Carpenter  14:56

you touched a bit on the importance of the sale His team is a D, sort of invaluable marketing tool. And in a lot of organizations, I think there's actually a lot of tension between marketing and sales. You know, there's sort of this like dysfunctional cycle of blame where, you know, marketing says sales never closes any of our leads and sales says marketing gives us garbage leads, and you know, everyone's sort of pointing at each other. And how do you turn that into a harmonious relationship where, you know, marketing is really addressing the needs of the sales team and helping them to be effective? Another way of wording This is, what do you think marketers most often fail to understand about their their sales teams that would help them to have a better relationship?

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  15:41

Yeah, I think that I love this question. I get asked this question a lot. I have I have experienced both I have right now I have a great relationship with our CRO and I've had great relationships. And I haven't I've had sales leaders that asked me why why was I even sitting in front of them? What value was I providing them? A fair a couple of things, I do think the role of marketing is to help the company sell, whether it's indirectly whether it's through direct sales force. And so kind of having that philosophy, I think helps like, you know, a lot of people gotten into marketing, because we're creative. And you can say, Look at this beautiful thing that I did, well, if the thing is not producing any outcomes, you really didn't do the thing, and you really don't get sort of a pat on the back or a cookie. So I think sort of having that philosophy to begin with. Now, that doesn't mean we're order takers. And that doesn't mean like a CMO should just go into the office of the CRO and just write things down and do their thing. That's not what I'm saying at all. But it's understanding that like, if you're doing something, and your sales leader is looking you in the eye and say this isn't working, you have to be self awareness enough, or have thick skin enough to be like, let's go back and do it again. Similarly, like, I think sales job was a really hard job, you know, people like you know, memes about salespeople, or sales or things like their job is really hard. And the other thing for us, like, I will not put a first call deck out or a pitch deck in market unless I myself has sat in front of a customer and delivered it. Because it's really easy to sit in a room and whiteboard it and you move the images around the slide, and is it do we say? Do we say easy? Or do we say straightforward and you're like, you know, you debate this down. And then when you're actually sitting in front of a customer, they look at you and they're like, I don't get it, or I didn't I don't what what like, that's gives you one a lot of empathy for what your sales team has, but also gives you the feedback that you need to take and make yourself a better marketer. And really make sure you're speaking the language of your customer.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  17:20

Shannon, I can't tell you how much I love to hear that I've been a sales guy, I've been a marketer, and kind of hearing that you're actually sitting down and delivering the DAX is incredible. I think that you know, oftentimes you're, you're handed something by your marketing team and tell them go deliver this. Yeah, like, this is embarrassing. I would never in a million years actually wanted to, you know, and as a marketer to actually get into that role. I think that's fantastic. And probably a good piece of advice for the marketers listening to this podcast is actually go out and use the sales assets you're developing and see how they flow. Yeah,

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  17:54

or you're right along. Like if you don't if you don't feel like you want to, like you're right on, sit in the meeting, sit on a zoom call. And listen, the questions the customer asked listens to the feedback they had, like, it's super valuable.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  18:06

Now, we mentioned this a bit earlier, but you came to us on a following great career at Salesforce. You were there for over a decade, I think, tell us and we've talked to other kinds of Salesforce alum on the podcast, it seems like Salesforce cranks out some great marketers. So tell us a bit about your experience there and how it has informed your career as you've moved on to Asana.

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  18:28

I love this question because I say with full confidence like Salesforce made me the marketer that I am today. What's interesting about my story is it's very, like I was acquired by Salesforce like I never set out to be like, oh, I want to work for Salesforce. I worked for a company back in 2010. It was called Jigsaw that Salesforce bought. And at the time, we were the first we were sort of the largest people acquisition Salesforce had ever done. Of course, they've gone on to do slack and Tableau and mule soft and these like huge companies, but at the time, like they were kind of beginning ish in their m&a strategy. And the company I worked for was one of the first ones and when I first when we were first acquired, I was like, nope, not for me. This is not where I'm going to say I want to work at a big company. And then I realized I'm like, wait, Salesforce does probably some of the mass best b2b marketing SAS marketing in the industry in the world, like I really want to learn. And so that was kind of the the beginner's mind that I took. And sort of that was the start of my journey at Salesforce. Salesforce is an incredibly strong, like, sales and marketing is a very respected craft a sense course, which, I mean, I'm gonna be honest with you, like I've worked other places where marketing is not as respected. Now, that's slightly a double edged sword because we're respected so much, but also when like, numbers aren't good, that marketing is in there trying to help find a solution, but I would much rather prefer that than being that marketing as an afterthought. Oh, you know, go on you with your colors and your logo and your events. So marketing is really well respected and I think Marc Benioff, as the leader and the CEO of Salesforce is a amazing marketing himself. So is it really great person to sort of learn, how do you connect your customers? How do you tell a compelling narrative? How do you make sure you're really focused and sort of my customer focus this comes from a time where it was like, if you're gonna put your message in market did you test it with customers, like, if you haven't done that you haven't done your job as a marketer. So it's definitely known as a CMO factory. Brett Taylor, who worked at Salesforce for a long time used to call Salesforce a finishing school for SAS executives, which I thought was pretty funny, but you definitely work with very smart people and learn how to do marketing in a really, really compelling way.

‍

The Detective  20:35

Okay, so here's what I'm thinking. It's a Western. But with a sci fi twist. But there's also a film noir plot running in the background. And dinosaurs, because why not? Right? Take the dinosaurs down a little bit. Okay, no dinosaurs. But a little bit of romance is always welcome.

‍

The Detective  21:10

And zombies? Yeah. Zombies in there. Your vision, our craft? topthoughtleader.com? I don't know. Can I listen to the first draft again, back to the show.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  21:25

Now, you've touched a few times on this idea. And I'm going to paraphrase you So correct me if I'm getting the meaning kind of twisted here. But marketing is often treated at certain companies as kind of like the kids table, right? That the big decisions happen. And then the instructions are handed down to marketing, who goes out and executes. And what I hear you saying is that marketers need to really kind of interrogate their thinking, interrogate their assumptions, and be really clear, not just creating sort of pretty creative, but having programs with a purpose that affect the bottom line, if you were talking to a up and coming marketer, and you were trying to instruct them on what they can start doing today, to hone in their thinking and really develop that that kind of serious mindset that lets them graduate from the kids table, what advice would you have for them, understand

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  22:25

data and understand, especially if you're b2b, or understand the metrics around pipe Gen, funnel conversion, etc. Because what I have found it like I always say, this isn't a new thing, like marketing is a spectrum. And most of us, it's somewhere along the spectrum, a lot of us kind of tend to be more in the art, right, or like the people that like kind of got into marketing from day one, it's because we like to be creative. And this is kind of where I live, I'm not full over here. But I'm definitely over here. And to have credibility around that C suite table, you have to have data, and you have to have to understand data. And you have to speak to the data, right. And so again, it's like, not just oh, we did these number of leads, it's like these leads, generated this much pipeline, that conversion to this much ACV or Arr, or whatever your measurement is. And if you're able to speak to that, I think it gives you a lot of credibility. And similarly, like, again, going back to kind of said, like, I think there is respect, and there is a power in admitting vulnerability. We did spend this money, we did do this campaign. And it didn't work how we anticipated. But this is what we learned. And to be able to use that and use data to do that, I think is really, really powerful for marketers.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  23:33

How do you learn data, right? If I'm a up and coming creative director, and I want to take that next leap in my career, and data has been foreign to me, you know, for the last 10 years since I left college, right? How at that point in your career, do you dive in and really gain an understanding?

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  23:54

I think that's a great question. And I would say, look, there's someone at any oil companies that care about data and matters. And the first I'd be like, what, when you're sitting in your company's all hands, what are the first when they're talking about how the quarter when or after their earnings and target? What are the first three numbers they show you? Right? Start there. And then underneath those, there's probably two or three that you need to learn. Find out who who owns those metrics, find out who reports on those metrics, and just ask, but I will say this, again, I have not, I've had to teach myself that discipline around understanding data. And using data to craft a narrative like that. That's not my happy place. That is a skill that I specifically sought out to learn. If I can learn it, anyone can learn it. And so look at people to help teach you similarly don't try to know everything. If you're a creative director, you don't need to know all that pipe coverage by region by segment like that's too much. You just need to be here. And then as you are comfortable there, you can go down and down, down, down. But if you try to do every metric that a company has, like you sit down with your head of finance, your head might explode. So start small start with the key metrics that the company cares about, learn about how marketing impacts some of those and go from there.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  24:55

Shifting gears a little here, Shannon, one of the things that struck me When I asked you for the elevator pitch for Asana, the first word out of your mouth, I think was was AI. And AI is a topic that is, obviously on everyone's minds right now, tell me how you think AI is transforming marketing today,

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  25:18

I think the potential for AI to transfer marketing is more so or equal to any other function that's out there right now. And I think it's really easy to be nervous, scared, I think having used it as much as I have. And we've really embraced it at Asana in our product. And the way we kind of use our products or product for everything, which is great about working there. What I've seen more and more is it is a great unlock for creativity is a great unlock for productivity, it is a great unlock for empowerment, versus it's taking away what we are known to do. And so that's kind of my message for marketers, if you're if you're nervous, or scared or whatever, or I don't think you'll have time to completely flip your mindset because I believe that marketers who embrace this to unlock the potential in themselves are the ones that are going to be the next CMOS of the next 510 15 years. brass

‍

Jackson Carpenter  26:11

tacks, how were you using AI in your day to day,

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  26:15

so I use AI? Constantly, I use AI, I have created a bot that writes like me. So I've talked to it, I've given it writing samples of things that I really like. And now it writes in my tone of voice. Fun fact, I have a huge Britney Spears fan. So I like to include Britney Spears quotes. So now automatically, it will add a Britney sometimes sometimes I've already source quotes or a little that's why you need like the human sort of guide rails. But sometimes it says things like, I don't think that's appropriate for work bought. But thank you, thank you for that. I use it to summarize things like for example, I was out on PTO for a week and a half and it came back and I'm like what is happening? And I was able to summarize what I missed. I use it to help with sort of workflows, like what we're doing at Asana is having AI kind of do some of the more busy work for, for us, for me, for our customers. So we don't have to do it I II, we sign a contract for something that the web team automatically gets an update, there's no need for be like, hey, what do you we just signed this contract? Can you please update the dates on the website to this? Right, things like that. So a lot of a lot of things that like make me more productive, because they take away some of the busy work that I would be doing?

‍

Jackson Carpenter  27:23

That's fantastic. Yeah, that's very helpful. I think that's one of the things that, you know, when I'm having conversations, either in work, or my personal life, I'm always trying to underscore to people is that like, AI is so big and diverse. There's so many tools that, you know, you can just kind of offload, like a few menial tasks here and there. And before you know it, you're freeing up like hours of time, that go back into creativity, and just take the administrative burden off of you. And I think that's, I think that's fantastic. And really kind of an immediate lift. I also think you mentioned ideation, I'm all about, you know, going to eat chatty beauty and say, saying, Give me 10 ideas related to this thing and just start the brainstorming process and ideate with with, you know, come LLM I think is fantastic. I'm curious kind of what advice you have for up and coming marketers who want to have your job one day, besides, you know, start playing with AI and learning AI,

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  28:22

your authentic self. And if you feel like you can't be authentic, where you are, go somewhere else. Be fearless. And I would say treat every interaction, like a job interview. Because especially when I worked at a very large company for a very long time. But I think this is true for just the industry in general. Like it's a small group of humans. And people get new jobs, they get promoted, they go to new companies, and usually they're building teams, and they think to themselves, who could do this job. And they go through their mental Rolodex. And I say Rolodex to people who don't know what that is anymore. But like, back in the day, kids, there was a thing called Rolodex, but they go through their mental model of names they know and if they've had a positive interaction with someone who's shown up as positive, collaborative, so starting problem solving, those are the phone calls at almost every job I've gotten, when granted I was at testosterone can was from a referral. It wasn't from a post, like sending a resume. And it was from someone who I'd worked with works for who recommended me or called me for a job that they thought I'd be interested in. That's

‍

Jackson Carpenter  29:26

a great point. I think, you know, right now, you hear or see posts on Reddit, for example of people talking about being in a rough job market right now for marketers, and I think that you know, the the idea that just kind of maintaining those human relationships and kind of regular positive interactions with people in your field can pay off not even in a transactional way, like there's a human benefit to it. Also, you might get a job that's helpful for networking, I think is is useful to remember. Do you have a favorite marketing campaign you've worked on?

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  30:01

Do I have a favorite marketing campaign I've worked on. I mean, there's been so many, I think, I will say maybe one of my favorites is when I ran platform marketing for Salesforce, and we did a lot of work on, sort of it was called the inside stories. And we basically went around to all the departments at Salesforce. And we got these really cool examples of apps that people were building with this with Salesforce and how they're making their jobs easier. And we created kind of this like digital magazine around it, and it was really interactive, and you could click and you could learn, it was kind of like a choose your own adventure. It was really cool. And it was compelling. And it helped take something like the platform, which was kind of hard to explain hard for people to understand, and made it really personable and real and sort of use case driven. And that actually drove a lot of pipeline, too. So it was one of those things. It wasn't just cool. It was it was pretty it actually worked really well for our sales team.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  30:54

That's fantastic. Shannon, how do you feel about a lightning round?

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  30:58

I love a lightning round foreign for a lightning round. All

‍

Jackson Carpenter  31:01

right, let's jump into it. What is the most important trait a CMO needs to have? Curiosity? If you could market any brand other than Asana, which would it be Sephora? What's your favorite marketing book?

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  31:12

Oh, multiply. It's not a marketing book. It's a leadership book. But multipliers

‍

Jackson Carpenter  31:17

were outside of marketing. Do you look for inspiration? Oh,

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  31:21

I love social media. I love Tiktok and Instagram.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  31:25

Do you have a favorite Tik Tok?

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  31:27

No, I follow a lot of I'm really big on the beauty talk. Hence the Sephora reference. So

‍

Jackson Carpenter  31:31

right on. What is your favorite marketing campaign of all time?

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  31:36

Apple back in the day, did Fillion marketing

‍

Jackson Carpenter  31:38

besides Britney Spears? Who's your favorite musical artist?

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  31:42

Oh, I like Taylor Swift too. I love that pretty basic over here.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  31:45

Speak of a brilliant marketer, by the way. I mean, Taylor Swift really has done a fantastic with her brand. By no means I do the lightning round, but I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  31:56

call it out. You gotta call it out. Yeah, she's

‍

Jackson Carpenter  31:59

an incredible marketer. Is there anything we didn't discuss? We should have today Shimon.

‍

SHANNON DUFFY  32:03

I think we talked about a lot of great stuff. I love marketing. All I've ever done is all I've ever wanted to do. And I hope out there there's people listening to this that feel the same way.

‍

Jackson Carpenter  32:12

And if people want more of what you have to say, is there any way they can catch up with you? Okay, yeah, right on Shannon Duffy, with Asana. Thanks so much for coming on TOP CMO.

‍

32:24

Thanks for having me.

‍

The Detective  32:29

This was brought to you by TOP Thought Leader. Find out more at topthoughtleader.com

‍