Think First, Prompt Second 🤖 VP of Brand Shawn Perritt @Acquia | Ep. 365

0:01What up? Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. I'm Jay Schwetelson. Let's dig into some tips and some randomness. We are back for Do This, Not That podcast presented by Marigold. And I have a super smart dude talking about a topic today we have not really talked about. So who's here? We got Sean Parrott. Now, Sean is the global vice president of brand strategy at Acquia. And Acquia is a beast. They got over a thousand employees over there. They are running this digital experience platform and all this other stuff that allows companies to create and manage their websites and content and digital experiences.

0:40It's awesome. But Sean, Sean's super cool because he lives in the B2B world and yet he loves talking about creative and he loves talking about human connection and he loves talking about brand, which is why I'm excited to have him here because a lot of times in B2B, everyone thinks it's business to boring and it doesn't have to be that way. And Sean's going to help us to expose it all. So Sean, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. Awesome. So, all right, before we get into why B2B is not boring and why it's all about brand and all that stuff, what is your deal? I read you won like 18 different worldwide marketing awards.

1:18You've done all this cool stuff. What's your deal? What do you do for a living for real? Yeah, well, there are a lot of marketing awards now, so that helps. But no, I am, as you mentioned, a VP of brand for a B2B tech company called Acquia. We're an open digital experience company that was born out of this content management system called Drupal. We have over 4 ,200 customers, you know, big brands like Bear and Nestle and KitKat and Mars. And, you know, I run an in-house creative team. I was formerly on the agency side, so I tried to bring that model in-house and build that inside out. So it's been a lot of fun.

1:56But yeah, day in the life, I just look after our brand expression. So all the different touch points from video to events to social media to any other way that we express our brand out in the world. So before we get into like this whole business to human stuff and all that, whatever, do you ever get frustrated? Because I feel like you are a consumer marketer in a business to business world. or does it excite you to kind of bring that element of B2B, you know, into the B2B world? Yeah, good question. I think it's a little bit of both. I think, as you mentioned earlier, B2B does not have to be boring.

2:31I look at it as business to human marketing. No matter what, whether you're on the B2B or the B2C side, at the end of the day, we all go home and sit on the couch and watch Netflix just like everybody else, right? So I think remembering that we're all wonderfully human and finding ways to make those emotional connections. I think that still holds true in B2B as well. So for a lot of the listeners out there, they'll be like, oh, I'm in healthcare B2B, or I'm in a regulated industry. I can't even listen to this episode because I can't do anything creative. We're not really about brand. We're just about this, that, or whatever.

3:04What do you say to those people? How do you think about brand and creative as it relates to where you're at? You're a B2B company. Yeah, I mean, I think you just have to go back to science, like the human brain actually ignores average, and it's incapable of making an emotional connection with something that it doesn't remember. So I think if you look at it at that level, it doesn't matter if you're healthcare or any other industry, you have to make that emotive human connection, because otherwise, you know, it's boring to be expensive. So do you do that by, okay, like in practical terms, we're not going to use templates for our social media posts, or we're not going to use generic AI content that's just output.

3:54How do you actually put into play this idea of standing out a bit in the B2B world while still being on brand, so to speak? Yeah, I think you have to sort of treat it like I call it a creative workout plan. You know, we all have our step tracker every day. We all go to the gym. I think you have to create sort of the same approach and plan to creativity. So getting away from Zoom, I think is a big deal. I think that helps championing original thinking. So it just goes back to classic creativity. You know, go stream a show on a Tuesday afternoon, go for a walk, go take a trip to somewhere that's not on your bucket list, pick up a book that's about something you're not interested in.

4:37Because I think that amalgamation of experiences is what makes us all unique. It's kind of like a fingerprint. No two are the same. So when you take that concoction of our experiences and you flood your brain with inputs, you let those marinate for a while. And then that's how something interesting and more unique comes out, which helps you stand out, I think, in any industry, particularly with this whole AI thing, which I'm sure we'll talk about. Well, let's talk about it right now. So I'm super lazy. And if I'm working on your team, you say, hey, go get this creative ideas together. I'm going right to chat GPT and say, all right, give me some ideas.

5:15Then I'm giving it back to you and I'm probably going to get fired. Tell me how to utilize AI and bring it into the creative process and developing your B2B brand without being the loser that I just described? Yeah, well, I think we're all doing that, including myself. I mean, how can we not? It's right there. The carrot is being dangled. We get such quick outputs and we get these dopamine hits and we put them on LinkedIn. And then all of a sudden the trend goes away in three days because there's something else that happens, right? So as I try to tell my team, slow down because even if you don't pick up AI until the last leg in the relay, it's still going to be way faster than it used to be to jump into Photoshop and painstakingly mock something up.

6:00So 10 prompts minimum, you know, think first prompt second. Again, I think it goes back to that original thinking and the experiences and the amalgamation of sort of inputs that turn into outputs. I think if you can apply a layer of original thinking on top of AI, because AI will democratize the craft there, and it already is, there's no doubt about it, but the original thinking layer is what's going to make the output of your prompts unique. And it's what's going to make you stand out. It's the difference between posting a 3D action figure toy on LinkedIn and posting a piece of packaging that's empty that says go outside, right?

6:36It's just taking that trend and turning it on its ear and trying something original. I saw that on your feed, which I thought was really smart. And to that point, I like the the fact that you're not like saying, no, we shouldn't be using AI for, you know, some enhancements to our ideas. But I also love the fact you're talking about, what would you say? Think first, prompt second. Is that what you said? Yeah, exactly. That's the move. And I think on one hand, we're in this innovation era with AI, but when it comes to brand expression, we have to be really careful that it doesn't become the imitation era.

7:14We have this whole narrative for the last decade around breaking out of a sea of sameness and cutting through the noise. I think that will continue over the next decade, but it's going to be about breaking out of a more polished, high def looking sea of sameness. So I think brands and companies have to be really careful not to cheapen their brand expression to the point where capturing someone's attention ends up being more expensive in the end. So there's going to be a real interesting delta are there between reducing headcount and then the increased cost of acquiring someone's attention with this as AI is flooding our feeds.

7:49And, you know, you kind of have this cool purview of being able to see kind of where things are going and what's happening. And you see all the big social platforms leveraging AI now to help with creation of designs, of creative and all the different things that are out there. are we heading towards a place where there's going to be even more sameness from brands, B2B brands, because they're leveraging all the same tools and that maybe there's a greater ability to stand out by you being a human? Or is it all going to meld together and we're just not going to have a clue what's what and it's going to be impossible to stand out?

8:29Yeah, great question. I think it's a moving target by the minute. But I think there's a nuance in the strategic approach for companies that will help the good ones win the day, which is thinking about your human stack first. So, you know, find your best starting five that are original thinkers and, you know, have unique skill sets and get them in place. And then that human stack is powered by AI, not the other way around, even in terms of how we converse about it. So if you treat your humans first and then the AI comes up underneath, rather than just using AI as a cost cutting measure, I think brands that are confident enough to do that and go human stack first will outgun the rest in the end.

9:12I want to ask you a very selfish question because I want your perspective because you came from the agency world. I happen to have an agency, so I think about it all the time. In your crystal ball, in Tron's crystal ball, you fast forward five, ten years from now. Do you think the advertising agency model is massively disrupted because of AI? Like is the need for media planning, media buying, making briefs, is all that just non-existent anymore? I think it depends on, you know, for better and worse, what the attribution says, which we'll also get into. I think there's going to be full funnel approaches like Facebook is coming out with and everyone's going to feed it their demand gen and let them do the creative and all that stuff.

9:59But the question is, is it going to work? And if the cost of retaining someone's attention becomes more expensive, all of a sudden the ad agencies can run an end around and come back and just learn these tools better because they have the original thinking. And then all of a sudden they're even more powerful than ever. Like that could happen or we could end up getting in a place where we're accepting mediocrity and everything does look the same and brands that make these little quarter turns are standing out. So I think it's anybody's guess, but I think agencies could have a little bit of a renaissance later on, but it really depends upon what happens when the smoke clears out of this first wave.

10:39You know, it's so true. I was thinking about prompt engineering. If you rewind about two years ago or maybe less, the hottest job on the planet was to be a prompt engineer, to be the person that knows how to write the prompts, get the most out of AI. Now, any fool could write a prompt. And there's no such thing as really a prompt engineer anymore. It's moving so fast. To your point, but let's dig into, you touched on attribution for a second. and I think in the world of B2B, and I want to know your take on this, um, attribution is a joke, right? A B2B market will send out an email for a webinar.

11:17People register for the webinar. They'll go into pipeline. They're like, Oh, the email is the reason we got these customers. We got these sales. We got these things, uh, this last touch attribution thing. And I think in the world of B2B, that's more the norm than not. Is, Is that the right way to be measuring attribution or is that just completely ridiculous? Yeah, this is a really tough one. And I think we share the same passion here. I think I'll say I like attribution in certain situations, like a very small slice of the pie. I think you need those go-to-market plays in demand gen. Because I think if we go back to the 95-5 rule, if only 5 % of our buying committee is ready to buy at this moment, yeah, get surgical with that.

11:59Put an investment in that. Run these go-to-market plays. Get your attribution. But the other 95%, they're the pipeline of tomorrow. And we can't just ignore them. This idea of the brand function in a company only getting 5 % of the budget or less, and then having the same conversation year in, year out, well, you know, people don't know our brand as much. And how do we build our awareness? You have to treat the 95%, I think, as table stakes. and if attribution is so important, why not add up all the website traffic, not related to your go-to-marketplace, tack on all of your social media engagement, and then add on all the pipeline coming out of your events, create some amalgamation there, and that becomes your brand awareness attribution.

12:41And you lay that up against the performance marketing and track it that way. I mean, is that a fair way to think about it? I would love everybody to copy exactly what you just said, because it makes a hell of a lot more sense to me. And so if you're going to fight that internal battle, like, listen, I listen to this guy, Sean, he sounded really smart. And I think we should be measuring attribution this way, blah, blah, blah. What should that budget look like? I mean, how do you carve out a portion of budget that you can't necessarily quantify immediately, or at least not as easily? Like, is it a 50-50 thing versus your go-to-market for people in market right now?

13:20How do you do that? Yeah, great question. I think if you look at brand as the pipeline of tomorrow, and you look at investing in the long-term brand function as the cost of doing business, I think that's the first battle you have to fight. Get everybody on board with that rationale. I've read articles around the brand function needing to get up to 40 % of the budget. And I'm not saying you have to swing that high, particularly in B2B, because you might lose that battle and then not have any credibility, but I think ramping up past three to 5 % to start is a really good idea. Because what ends up happening is if you live quarter to quarter, all these companies are sort of just biding their time.

14:00It's like a boat circling the harbor and they're winning or they're doing just enough each quarter and they're doing this, but they're never going out to sea. And you better believe the boat's going to run out of gas eventually, right? So at some point during one of these quarters, you know, you have to rally the team together and say, let's go out there. We can always come back. But like, let's give it a shot for a couple of quarters. Because, you know, again, you can't afford to be boring either. Because, you know, this flat messaging that's sort of demand related, like, that might not yield any attribution anyway.

14:32So if you say, okay, great, now we got some more budget, do this brand thing. And we're not just going to push people to register for this webinar, sign up for a demo or download a case study, because that's pretty far down the funnel type stuff. How do you get more brand awareness? Is it just having a newsletter or like, how do you actually do that? Yeah, I mean, I think events is one thing. I think especially with AI and post-pandemic virtual workflows, people are craving in-person time. But I think you have to look at it as revenue in the room. when you think about your pipeline and your measurement.

15:15It's like, let's get the biggest, best customers together. And it doesn't have to be this massive blowout event, but wraparound dinner, showing up at a third party event and doing some kind of stunt. I mean, just get people together and get the revenue in the room and turn your sales team loose. Because I really believe events are going to get even more popular than they are now. Well, I could agree with you more. I mean, getting people to actually communicate, to connect, to talk to each other. And I love that line, get the revenue in the room. It doesn't mean that it even has to be your existing customers.

15:47It's get the potential revenue in the room. I think that's awesome. And it's so true. All right. So before we wrap up here, any parting pearls of wisdom here about B2B marketers out there thinking about brand that they need to put in their brain? Yeah, I would just maybe reiterate a couple of points from earlier, just like really watch the brand trust. Study AI, jump on AI, use it every day, but just be really careful how much of that you put out into the world externally. Because I don't know about you, Jay, but now every image I look at, I'm like, is that AI? Is that really Peyton Manning sitting next to a kid?

16:31Like, I don't know. So it creates this natural barrier between the human and its ability to dive into that photograph and kind of swim around in it. Like we're all questioning everything that we look at now. And even Coca-Cola, like they're killing it on AI generated creativity. But every time I look at one of their spots, I'm like, I know that's AI. Like, does that matter? Is that naturally affecting my perception? So, yeah, again, I still go back to think first and prompt second. Like just like the old days of art direction, like do not jump into Photoshop until the last minute. that you have to have that stellar idea that becomes faster to execute.

17:04And AI will help us get there even faster. Well, I know one thing that's not AI, Sean is not AI. So if you wanna follow him and connect with him, you gotta do that. He's a great follow on LinkedIn. And it's Sean, S-H-A-W-N, Parrot, P-E-R-R-I-T-T. We're gonna put it all in the show notes. Sean, where else should people follow you, find you, whatever, or is LinkedIn your jam? LinkedIn's my jam for now. Yeah. All right. Good. All right. We're going to put it all in there. Incredible to have you here. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Yeah, you got it, Jay. Thank you. You did it. You made it to the end.

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