Passing the Torch: A New Era for Marketing Trends with Stephanie Postles

0:00I was actually sitting in a room at Google with a marketer. and they were talking about the world of ads and search right now and what was happening in this space. And I thought, man, if someone could just sit in a room with this marketer for one hour, you would know everything that you need to know about the state of marketing right now. But it was in the weeds. It was nitty gritty. It was scrappy. It was like this person was hustling and they were doing what they could when it came to the world of search. And that's how marketing trends even came about. How can we share stories like that? Yes, I want to hear about the career growth.

0:32I want to hear about the leadership stories, but I'm also going to be asking the questions of like, I want to be in the weeds with you. I want to learn something from my own company. I want every marketer listening to be able to take something and put it into their role and change their whole trajectory of their career, their job, their project.

0:52Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Marketing Trends. It's your host, as always, Jeremy Bergeron. I've done this hundreds of times. I was literally doing the calculation before we pressed record, and I've done this hundreds of times in the studio, in person. It's been incredible. This is a special episode that we'll get into certainly here shortly, but I want to talk about today's guest, one of my all-time favorite human beings of all time, Stephanie Postles. The producers may have to stop me from talking because they said, hey, Jeremy, hype her up for the first part. Well, that's easy. Stephanie Postles, if you've been following Mission for any amount of time, you probably know Stephanie is the founder and CEO of Mission.org.

1:41Mission is the network that has over 30 shows that are listened to all over the world with multiple millions of downloads across all kinds of different shows, business, direct to consumer. We have shows for pet owners. We have shows for people in sci-fi. It's crazy. All of this from a seed that got planted by Stephanie Postles. She is the most experienced host in the company, having interviewed Fortune 100, Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 executives in every category, in every industry. She has probably done this, I don't know, over a thousand times. She's hosted most of our top shows. When she takes the mic, things seem to go up.

2:26So Stephanie Postles, I have to say that when you first offered me this hosting role almost four years ago, I was like, what? And here we are, you're here, and I'm passing the mic to you. Passing the mic. It's a big deal. Thank you for being here. You've done how many episodes at this point of Marketing Trends? It's several hundred at this point. How's it feel to be passing the mic to me? it is it's it's it's it's mostly sweet it's mostly sweet and i say mostly because the the relationships i've built over the past four you know four years like that's something you told me early on you were like one of the most beautiful things about what you're about to step into is like you're going to meet all these amazing people you're going to connect with them you're going to build relationships with them and that's exactly what happened i have personal friend deep friendships with some of these guests that have come on and so that's the part where i'm like i'm going to miss some of that.

3:21And the fact that the vision for the network and the company and like you stepping in makes so much sense. And I'm like, so excited about that. And I've already seen you do some of your prep calls and like, get behind the mic and you've already done, I think, at least one or two episodes. So I'm super excited because I know when people connect with you, what transpires is this authentic, epic opportunity to collaborate. And so I'm excited. I mean, And you're going to, the people that I've been talking to the past few years, now you're going to talk to them with your own style and you're going to bring all the different conversations you've had with all the other executives to those conversations.

3:59It's going to be wild because your spin's different. Like you bring - It's definitely different. Yeah. You bring stuff out. So I'm very excited. Yeah. Very excited. So when I took over hosting this show, it was been almost literally almost four years, right at the four year mark. I tended to take the conversations with these executives more towards leadership, training, development, more inspiring stories. It's kind of where I like to lean and I'm curious about people. Even before I took over the show, you had this idea for marketing trends about what it was going to be. And I think many people don't even know that.

4:36So maybe we pause and you talk about the first seed that you planted out was marketing trends. And why did you start the show? and then what it's kind of become. Yeah. So when marketing trends started, it was really just seeing how influential the marketer was within an organization. And so I remember back when mission first started back in 2017, I was actually sitting in a room at Google with a marketer. And this is when mission was just a side project. It was just, you know, something on the side. Let's see if we can get some executive stories out there. But I was sitting with this marketer and they were talking about the world of ads and search right now and what was happening in this space.

5:16And I thought, man, if someone could just sit in a room with this marketer for one hour, you would know everything that you need to know about the state of marketing right now. But it was in the weeds. It was nitty gritty. It was scrappy. It was like this person was hustling and they were doing what they could when it came to the world of search. And that's how marketing trends even like came about. It was like, how can we share stories like that? And then over the years, you know, depending on who the host was, it kind of shifted depending on what was interesting to them. And I mean, like you said, you really love leadership and executive leaders talking about their stories and, you know, career growth and things like that, which I love.

5:52And obviously that's what the audience has also loved. But where it originally started was actually scrappy. And like, it's not even about always just trends. It's like, it's time to get back to work. What are the things that people need to know right now to actually influence our work? What are the techniques, the tools, where is the world headed? How can I listen to just one interview and take a nugget and have it influence my entire marketing team? How can I try one tool or one idea? And so I think when I'm coming in now, it's going to be a mix of, yes, I want to hear the inspiring stories.

6:24I want to hear about the career growth. I want to hear about the leadership stories, but I'm also going to be asking the questions of like, I want to be in the weeds with you. I want to learn something from my own company. I want every marketer listening to be able to take something and put it into their role and change their whole trajectory of their career, their job, their project. I think it's going to be getting a little bit back into the weeds of where it started. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think with the way the speed and the acceleration of technology and innovation, and now having spoken to all these brands, one idea can change a strategy, one sentence, one tool, one piece of their tech stack or whatever can literally change everything.

7:05So I'm excited because I know you love to dig into that stuff too. And yeah, I'm just grateful. I'm just reflecting on some of my favorite conversations and some of these people have left an indelible mark on me. And I see how the spirit of these marketers to your point, like how much impact they have inside an organization. The other really interesting thing that I think uniquely positions you for hosting this show is you're in conversations all the time with CMOs. I don't think a lot of people know that. A lot of times, many of the CMOs that end up partnering with Mission and working with us start off by being a guest on the show.

7:41And then I end up passing them to you. And then you end up connecting and having way more conversations actually than I ever had with them. So let's touch on that. Yeah, I mean, every single day, the people that I'm talking to are the CMOs, whether they've come on our show or not. I mean, that is who I'm working with every day, working with our teams on building out like strategic media strategies, working with the product marketers, I mean, working with their entire marketing team and their go-to-market team and their sales team. And so this is my life every single day. And so that's why when you would be having your interviews, I'd be like, oh, here's sprinkling in some ideas.

8:12Here's something I just heard. Here's something that this person, you know, has been talking about and something they want help with right now. So like bring that into your interviews. And so it does feel like a nice convergence of what I'm doing every day at Mission, what I'm doing every day at Relevant.com, and then now coming in and actually be able to bring those insights and bring those conversations from the real world into these. I mean, just that you got to put it in perspective, people. So Stephanie has hosted many shows on the network, but you think about one, when I first met her, she was hosting a show called Up Next in Commerce, which was one of our top shows sponsored by Salesforce for many years, multiple millions of downloads and listens.

8:52And on that show, you were talking to a ton of like fast growth, direct to consumer, everybody from like your liquid death to your Walmarts, right? Like all of these retail badass brands. So you spent how many years doing that? Maybe like two years doing that 400 or so plus episodes. Okay. Hosting that show, right? Then meanwhile, you have my show marketing trends going on. You have it visionaries going on. We're interviewing all these fortune, you know, 1000 CTOs and it leaders. Then you also, also now you host mission daily, which if my audience and marketing trends audience doesn't know about that show because we don't talk about that much.

9:28If you don't know, go check it out. But on that show, you're talking to founders, you're talking to venture capitalists, you're talking to alien hunters, you're talking to, you know, it's epic, the range. But the reason why I bring all that up is because like you actually have your, you know, tentacles in all of these different channels. And so you have a lot of insight and a lot of perspective across all these different roles and titles and industries that I don't think a lot of people have. I don't. I'm talking to CMOs all the time. I'm not talking to all these different leaders and all these different functions.

10:02So I think this really puts you in a cool place. We've really set the stage for how marketing trends came to be. Let's talk about 2025. Yeah. So some of the areas that I'm excited to dig in on for 2025, I mean, one, you already have done a lot of this, but when it comes to the world of AI, it's impacting every single department. And I know I've been saying this for a couple years around the importance of like a cross-functional company. And I mean, I think two years ago, I was like, we should launch a podcast around like cross-functional leaders coming together and all showing like the importance of that.

10:37You can't be in silos anymore. But I think this is the year that that's going to be more important than ever because of AI. AI pushed marketing teams out of silos because now you've got the CTO who's more important than ever, who's getting all these tools being sent to them from these marketing leaders. And now they have to talk more than they ever have. And so I think this is now the year where the teams are going to come together more than they ever have. And the CMO is going to have to learn how to talk to the CTO. They're going to have to learn how to converse with the CFO. All these C-suite leaders are going to come together in a way that hasn't truly been done in the past because it wasn't necessary.

11:13And so AI was the one thing that came in and it's making everyone have to talk more. And so that's gonna be an area of conversation that I'm gonna bring up a lot. And I know even on my second interview, that was already an area of attention that I was focusing on because the CMO was talking about, I need to figure out how to talk to my CFO to get a budget approved. Most marketers don't know how to speak that lingo and they've just submit their budget and they hope all goes well. And so that's an area that it's going to be a big focus for me of like how to have these cross-functional leaders and teams come together in a way that makes the entire company's revenue grow.

11:49That's one area. And I know that you've already talked a lot about AI. So that was a perfect segue into 2025 of like where this is going to converge at. I love it. Collaboration is huge. AI, certainly, if you've listened to the last handful of episodes that I hosted, AI got brought up inevitably quite a bit. And one thing that's been interesting, and I will say, you know, a benefit about hosting this show was, there's been many, but one thing it did was it put me kind of on the cutting edge of like what's happening in tech, right? So like when AI first started, the whispers of AI first started, like I was already testing chat GPT back in 2022.

12:26I was already like deep down the rabbit hole, and then still interviewing a lot of these marketing leaders and executives. And there was really only a handful of them that were doubling down into AI and leveraging it quite a bit and their teams were leveraging it. I mean, really some surprising brands, I'm like, for sure, they've got teams devoted to AI and they hadn't, right? And then some surprising brands that I was like, well, they're probably pretty slow who are leading the way and all their exec teams using AI. So I think you're going to find some interesting conversations with some of these execs and bringing them together.

12:59That's the other thing that mission has a unique voice on is we have all these conversations with these executive leaders. Now bringing them really together, which is something you do all the time, and the impact that'll have when you bring a CFO and a CMO into the same conversation, or the CEO or the COO, and what can happen when you start to really see and understand what the other executive leaders are talking about when you're sharing goals, and you're going to bat for each other, and you're being authentic and vulnerable and like driving industries forward. So I think you're also going to be nudging a lot of these things forward by bringing these conversations together.

13:35Another thing I'm excited to dive into in the coming year is this idea around like B2B and B2C converging. I think that especially, I mean, throughout all the shows in our network, they've always kind of remained separate of like, okay, I mean, at least when I was interviewing these commerce executives, B2B would be here and they'd be focused on one thing, B2C would be over here. But I think these worlds are coming together. And so I'm really excited to kind of blend the questions together, regardless of if you're B2B, if you're B2C, I don't care because how a consumer is expecting to interact with one thing, if they're going online and buying something a certain way, they're not going to want to go to work and have to operate in a different way.

14:12And so I think because the worlds are coming together, I'm excited to bring the different ideas from these different thought leaders together and not allow these spaces to stay separate and especially encouraging the world of B2B to like stay on top of what B2C is doing. What are the CPG companies doing? What are the direct-to-consumer companies doing? And how can you take those insights and apply them to your enterprise software purchase? And so that's something I'm gonna be focusing on is like, how do I bring these together? How are my questions the same? And how do I push these leaders to think differently when it comes to the industries that they're in?

14:45And because I'm in so many different industries and I'm talking to so many different leaders all the time, I think I'm gonna be able to weave threads in ways that maybe they might not be thinking about. I totally agree. I think we also talked briefly about some other strong opinions you have regarding the future of marketing and sales. Yeah, I mean, another idea that I have that, you know, some might not agree with me on, but I think that influencer marketing is out. That's lame. Like, trust has been lost in that space because now everyone is questioning, like, do you actually like that thing?

15:18Are you getting paid for that thing? I mean, same thing with, you know, a lot of AI videos and stuff. The world has lost trust at this point. And so I was at a recent conference where they're like, influencer marketing is in. This is a thing. And I'm like, lame. This is so out. No one's trusting that anymore. And so instead, what I think people should be focusing on is authentic thought leadership content, real content from real people who aren't getting paid. They actually believe the future of this space is X. I believe this thing is actually valuable. My team is really using this. Like that is what the future is going to have for us is people trust people and people who are not getting paid to do that thing.

15:55Like they actually genuinely like that, or they actually believe the future of cloud computing is this, and this is the world that is coming to us. And so I think going forward, influencer marketing is something that I'm like, why would people spend money on that? Because the world has lost so much trust at this point. And instead, how can you find true thought leaders? How can you partner with true thought leaders to get content and content that they actually believe in. So people know that any brand or any person that you're associating yourself with, it's because they actually believe in the things that they're saying.

16:24You're definitely going to ruffle some feathers. I'm excited about it because I think of many, many CMOs who have influencer marketing in their budgets and can talk about that and their niche audiences. And so I love that's going to open up some awesome cans of worms that we all get to hear about. And I also think you're right. I think there's an element of authenticity that consumers are starving for. And, and I think that if you do influencer marketing elegantly, and you incentivize influencers to speak passionately about something that they truly enjoy, will that is there still a seat at the marketing table for those people, right?

16:58Because so many of them, like you said, like, it's just kind of like, Hi, I have a million followers, and I eat this candy bar. And it's awesome. And like, you can tell us like, okay, you got paid, you'll make some sales, but it's the authentic, yeah, connection, which I think people are starving for and, and probably will be more and more with AI being so pervasive, right? Where it's like, was that an AI ad or was that a human ad? Are you really trying to get to know me? Or you just, you know, people are going to be, I think, even more alert. They already are. Was that AI or not? It's authenticity wins, essentially, is what I'm saying across all products.

17:26I agree. So who are you excited about bringing on? Yeah, I mean, I'm looking for the CMOs who are thinking differently, who are pushing the boundaries, who are just doing things different. And so, for example, coming up. I'm really excited to talk to some like fast growth SaaS companies like the CMOs at those companies who are having to do scrappy marketing tactics. They don't have huge budgets and they're just thinking differently. And so I've got the former CEO and founder of Sixth Sense coming up. And I mean, how she built Sixth Sense was wild. The stories that she has are crazy. Now she has another company.

18:00But learning from someone like that, who they just built a company that ended up being a behemoth in the industry and now moving on and rebuilding a company again in a scrappy way and using marketing tactics that I haven't even heard of. So people like that, but also talking to Fortune 100 CMOs, but the ones who are, like I said, pushing the limits and trying things in a different way. Because the one thing that we know right now about marketing is that the world is changing and all these marketing leaders are asked right now to do more with less, all of them. And so I want to talk to the people who are doing that and see what they're doing to really make their marketing world-class?

18:34Well, I'm very, very excited about where this show, one, has gone from the early days of 2018 to now seeing just where this show gets to go. I'm incredibly grateful for being able to speak to so many marketing leaders and their teams. I mean, it's truly, it's been such a who's who. I've talked to so many brands so many just epic humans so thank you to you and the whole mission squad on really supporting me in my dream of hosting a top show which I've always wanted to do so very excited about 2025 I myself for those who are interested if you want to stay on my trail and see what I'm up to I'm going to be joining a recent guest of Steph's show actually Lior Weinstein was a recent guest on Mission Daily a couple episodes back Go back and watch that because I'll be working full time with him in his portfolio of amazing businesses and nonprofits and awesome stuff that he's up to as his chief of staff.

19:35So I'm jumping in to all the things regarding business and growth and entrepreneurship. So that's where I'll be. Yeah, very excited. So thank you. And I want to say thank you for such an epic job, hundreds of episodes. I mean, you really brought your heart and your soul into every single interview. and that is the one thing that we heard from every single guest was yeah just how loving and supportive and easy it was to be in these interviews with you with that on to your next adventure c 'est la vie au revoir goodbye