Creative Still Needs Humans - Carly Crittenden

0:00Carly Crittenden:Hey, welcome to the CMO Whisper Show. I'm your host, Steve Olenski. Part marketing practitioner, part ad agency veteran, part journalist, I was a writer for Forbes for 10 years. I've had so many insightful conversations over the years with business leaders, to athletes, to celebrities, to of course, CMOs. The only difference now is instead of sharing those insights through written form, I'm doing it this way. My guest today is Carly Crittenden, Chief Revenue Officer at VidBot, where she leads the company's global revenue organization and go-to-market strategy, helping brands and agencies drive stronger business outcomes through AI-powered creative data.

0:41Carly Crittenden:With nearly two decades of experience across advertising technology and SaaS, Carly has held senior leadership roles at Black Crow AI, Oracle, Moat, and Google, building and scaling high-performing sales organizations and leading global go-to-market initiatives. She's known for combining strategic vision with a people-first leadership style and is passionate about helping organizations grow, building diverse teams, and advancing the role of AI in marketing. Carly, welcome to the CMO Whisperer Show. Thanks so much for having me. It is my pleasure. All right, let's just jump in. And I know we share the Oracle background, which we'll have to swap stories off air.

1:21Carly Crittenden:But you've been at Google, Oracle, Black Crow, and now VidMob. Start us at the beginning. How did you get into ad tech? And what has kept you in an industry that never stops changing? Yeah, it's a common question that I'm asked. I stumbled into ad tech, candidly. Out of school, I got the opportunity to work at Google, which was a very different company in 2006 than it is today. And, you know, got some great advice. Your 20s are for breadth, your 30s are for depth. And so I used Google as basically the best learning education platform I could. I worked across six offices in my seven years there, kind of ran around and moved to South America, sort of did all the fun things.

2:00And when I reached sort of the end of that journey and realized I sort of had tapped out my learning potential, I wanted to build. And I wanted to, quite frankly, own a P &L and know what it was like to really run a business. And so since then, I've been at lots of several different startups, gone through from Moat through to an acquisition at Oracle, which was its own brand of experience. and for the last couple runs, I've been at scale-up startups, everything from zero to 10 million in ARR to 150 million plus in ARR. And I've just, I find myself gravitating towards landing in spots where there's some product market fit.

2:40You can feel the pull from the market and the need is sort of operational execution and bringing a team along in a shared vision. So building those teams, building that infrastructure and scaling the business, that's what I do.

2:53Carly Crittenden:Yeah, obviously, Captain Obvious, Steve-O here, it's never boring in ad tech, especially now. I'm going to just give me the last three to five, seven years, like, or even the last three to five, seven minutes. Because, you know, in the time we started this to the end of it, stuff's going to change. Great. But did you see what just happened 30 seconds ago? Yeah. Like, how do you possibly keep up? Yeah. I mean, candidly, I tried to leave ad tech a couple times. I'm so passionate about the building and the scaling and the pace of innovation. And I looked other places and to sell to a different buyer, to work in a different environment, nothing moved quite as fast as this space does.

3:35Also, nowhere else is filled with quite as much jargon as this space. But I find it just sort of turning over a leaf. There's never a dull moment. Like you said, it's always evolving. And one of the fun and, you know, fortunate things about having lived this industry now for over 20 years is you start to see the pattern recognition. And so it's fun to build in a fast moving place. It's fun to apply experience from trends you've seen in the past. Like, you know, we all remember when programmatic took off and you went from selling an ad, calling the Wall Street Journal saying, hey, I want to place my ad with you.

4:06How do I do that? When programmatic took off, the whole, everything changed. You could get inventory at scale cheaper instantaneously, and everything sort of turned on its head. What we learned in that, though, was just because it was available and cheap didn't mean it was good inventory, right? So then comes verification, viewability, brand safety. We realized we were wasting a bunch of media dollars. In the space that I'm operating now, it's a very similar trend where folks generate a ton of creative. They have these scale partners, they have DCO providers, and they're just producing now a mass amount of assets.

4:40But they have no idea why any of those assets work. And so I think we're going to have a similar reckoning. My prediction is, and we'll talk in a year, Steve, and we'll see if I was right. My prediction is we're going to see a similar backlash on just mass production of assets to the need to be really focused on quality. And that's sort of what VidMob's here to do is make sure that all the assets you produce are going to perform in whatever environments you run them in.

5:03Carly Crittenden:So when you said, you just said some of those, you said they don't know why something works or obviously why something doesn't work. And my head went right away to measurement. What does that mean? Yeah, right. Elaborate on that. Yeah. Yeah, so look, there's a ton of research out and the latest trend is sort of really focused on the space that we're in, which is the creative intelligence space. And the research varies, but depending on who puts it out, between 50 and 70%, the performance of a campaign is based on the actual creative. But we've spent all of our time on the other 30%. Placement optimization, audience optimization, contextual optimization.

5:38We sort of run out of levers and room to make that better. And so we have, with the advent of AI and all these models, we've been able to sort of detect not just what creative performs, but why that creative performs and the thousands and hundreds of thousands of elements of that ad that are and are not going to work. Initially, and we sort of, our background in VidMob is we sort of were a marketplace where someone could bring us their 30-second TV ad. They said, hey, I want this to work on Meta. We cut it down for them. We give it back to them. We take a penny. We've evolved and realized that the actual value of our solution and what we deliver to the market is the intelligence behind why that asset worked.

6:15And that's what we've built ourselves into a business today. We were a measurement company for a long time and we're now sort of on the precipice of turning VidMob inside out and becoming a data first company where you can take this data asset that you've built with VidMob and put it everywhere you're making decisions, whether it's how you're buying media, pre-bid, post-bid, asset creation, production, et cetera.

6:37Carly Crittenden:I want to spend a few minutes about your leadership and how you got to where you are today because you've been at so many different places, like you said, big, small, in between. Are there, when you think about it now, are there experiences or even specific people that kind of shaped the leader you are today? Yeah, I love this question. My very first boss, my very first boss, my very first boss when I had a full-time job, her name was Kara Shortsleeve. She is a phenomenal leader. She was my manager at Google. And there were several moments in those first couple years out of school where I just sat back and watched her lead.

7:12And the way she led with humble confidence, the way she handled us when Google actually went through its first round of layoffs in 2008 in the financial crisis. I believe Eric Schmidt is quoted to have said it was a mistake, but we certainly felt it. They're very scared. And, you know, how she brought us in a room and told us there was space to like process going through that. She was such a human first leader, but Harvard Business School trained, one of the most brilliant women I know. and she could hang with the guys. This is a male-dominated industry. And I always just really admired and respected her leadership and have met many people like her along the way.

7:49She was one of the most formidable ones, but tried to emulate what I see working and candidly avoid the things that I see not working.

7:56Carly Crittenden:Yeah, I mean, I'm so glad you said that because whenever I'm talking to, like say, college students or younger marketers and things, I very much subscribe to you can learn what to do and what not to do from people you've worked for in leadership styles. Yeah, that's right. And look, like this is not a hot take, but there was a point in my career where I realized I don't have to work with crummy people anymore or for crummy people anymore. I remember standing outside of a big conference room about to go in and meet with the exec team and like do my five-minute meeting and pitch my idea. And I was so nervous.

8:30I'm this junior kid. And as I'm standing there waiting for my slot, But all I can hear are these male voices screaming back and forth, like screaming at each other. And I think that they had arrived at the conclusion the only way to effectively communicate was to yell. And I remember in that moment being like, when I'm in charge, this is not how we're going to run things. And so I try to lead human first, very empathetic. But you got to set a high bar as well and bring people along to that vision. So that's how I try to lead my teams.

9:00Carly Crittenden:Listen, I would be remiss if I didn't bring up, you know, what we're building with CMO Whisperer. we have a couple of internal mantras and right at the top of the list is no assholes allowed. Yeah, that's right. I'm on board with that. Yeah. I just, we got to the point, I'm not going to belabor it, but it's like, Nope. Okay. So you've really gone through a lot of shifts in tech and as a leader, this is unlike anything else though. Right. We kind of touched on earlier about, about leading people when the market is changing really faster than an organization can like comfortably absorb. Like that's, that to me is exhilarating.

9:35Carly Crittenden:By the way, we said earlier, my name, you're like Tom Cruise and Top Gun. You have the need for speed and you just thrive under that. But this, there's speed and then there's AI speed. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I think there's a few elements that contribute to the success. First of all, you have to have a very willing and able leadership team. I think one of the best things about our CEO, Mark Menino and Alex Colmer, our founder, is they give me enough oxygen to go in to do. I take up a lot of oxygen. So they give me a lot of room to run the business the way I believe it should be run effectively.

10:12The second is I think building a very strong team. It's about having a high bar on the human element and a high bar on the competency element, not being willing to compromise on that bar, but then empowering everyone to take full ownership. If I'm accused of anything at work, it's being an underleader, not an overleader. But I hire smart people and I expect them to go to the work. So I think the team, the bringing together of the right group, I believe in diversity from day one. So you can't hire, you know, 20 white men and then bring in one diversity hire and expect to build a diverse organization.

10:44It starts from the beginning. These are all things that are very important to me. But then once you have the team, you need a vision. Where are you going? What are we trying to do together? And then what are the tools and resources that allow you to do that effectively? I think that's a good segue to sort of the topic of AI, where, you know, I'm a little candidly fatigued of talking about AI because it's all anyone wants to talk about. But I find that the reason we want to talk about is we're still trying to figure it out. So it's a topic until we feel like we can get our arms around it. And you can't really get your arms around AI.

11:16That's like saying getting your arms around technology. Like it's just another implementation of technology or iteration of technology. I think what I find the most useful when I think about AI, the two things that matter the most are the application and the inputs. That's really what matters. how we use it and how it's utilized by the human decision makers in the process, how it enables the humans to be more effective. And then what is going into the AI? What's actually fueling the AI and making it work well and work smart? I mean, that's VidMob's whole premise is we want to be and aspire to be the data layer for all creative intelligence decisioning.

11:52And so if you have good data in, you can get good stuff out.

11:55Carly Crittenden:All right, I'm going to give you a virtual spreadsheet. There's two columns and it's about AI. Okay, column one is give us a couple ideas. What's meaningfully changing in advertising right now with AI? And then the other column, what's mostly noise? What's meaningfully changing in advertising? What's AI doing well right now when it comes to AI or ad tech? And then what's mostly noise as it sits right now? Yeah, it's a good question. I think workflows are meaningfully changing, whether that's really small stuff, like how you prep for a one-on-one with your manager, which is happening across my team, all the way to how you implement and execute a marketing campaign.

12:32There are so many ways to improve the way you work quickly. I think the fallacy is that it's universally helpful because everyone has to lean into it for it to actually fix the workflow. In the world we work in, we're touching media teams, brand teams, creative teams, production teams. All of those people need to get on board with the new process and operations, a new set of data to make decisions. So I think what's working is improving processes really effectively. And it is providing access to scale when you think about creating ads. The ability to produce more ads more cheaply, that's very real.

13:09Kind of back to my like trend example earlier, you can produce way more assets way more quickly. The risk is that you deteriorate the quality when you do that. And so I think the noise is that that in and of itself as a standalone is going to be effective and impactful to drive the results. Like trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets, right? A brand equity is one of the most critical things to a marketer that's one of the hardest to measure and takes the longest to build. And so if you shortchange yourself by just getting scale and you don't look at the underlying quality, you're putting your business in significant long-term jeopardy, I think.

13:47So that's how I think about it in the context of the space that I spend my day-to-day.

13:52Carly Crittenden:Do you sense there's a disconnect, say, between senior leadership, how they talk about AI and what the teams are actually prepared to implement? Absolutely. I think we're on the natural learning curve that every new wave of technology goes through. I think senior leadership knows efficiency and bottom line impact is important. And they know that they want their team to continue to innovate and think outside the box. And it is true that leveraging AI tools will give you the ability to find savings, cut costs, and experiment more. But creativity is not what lives in the AI. The AI enables more access for creative work to more people.

14:31So I think that is what the belief is at the top. And so there's a quote unquote leaning in there, but no knowledge of how to like scale and make that really effective in the learning phase of the journey. At the bottom, I think folks are looking for ways to get their work done more quickly, get promoted, spend more time with their kids, like the same basic needs that have always existed for some of our very important like hands on keyboard folks. I think they're also increasingly afraid for their jobs and they're afraid of being displaced. And so the theme that I'm sensing is there's a lot of fear at the top and at the bottom.

15:07And the work I try to do is to help break down that fear, whether that's internally at VidMob or other organizations or with our customers to say, this isn't scary. This is actually exciting. Let's just be smart about how we lean in and embrace it. But I think we're on the learning journey and we'll find the middle. But I don't know if that'll be in six months or two years or we'll see.

15:26Carly Crittenden:Exactly. That's the beauty of it, right? No one knows. That's right. That's right. So the flip side, if you will, and you just used the word basic, which is a great word because my brain went to, okay, basic in this context is a synonym for things like judgment and trust and relationships that we all humans have that to me are so much more important now than ever. Right? Agreed? Yeah, 100%. I think, you know, selling is a very human experience. People will continue to buy from people. People will continue to be inspired by people. My dad was an oil and gas salesman, so he kind of preached this a lot in our home.

16:07You know, I believe that the human in the loop never goes away at the core, most fundamental value drivers. And so, for example, one of the things that I've done is I've made a really conscious decision not to hire a VP of sales and continue to operate that function by leveraging and building an operating system for my team. If I was just to say, hey, go use this tool, it'll tell you all the things to do. I guarantee you I would not get better product. I would not get better output. But by using it as a way to speed up getting to the conclusion of like what the right next action is for a customer or for a deal or for a strategy, it short circuits my cognitive download of all the context on the deal and the customer and the situation.

16:50And it allows us to move together much more quickly. And I'm getting two to three X the performance from my sellers that are at the same caliber as the rest of my team for the ones who lean into this app we've built with this partner called Baku. And it's changed and transformed the way I'm able to effectively lead as a sales leader.

17:07Carly Crittenden:I know there's a growing concern. I think I saw some research among consumers, which, by the way, marketers never give consumers enough credit. They're smarter than they just don't. There's a concern about AI making everything look the same. And, you know, I get asked, how do marketers take advantage of AI and technology without creating that sea of sameness, if you will? Yeah. I mean, first of all, it's funny that marketers don't give consumers enough credit because marketers are consumers. So sometimes we forget which we put on the wrong hat. We need to go back and put on the other hat. Amen.

17:40And sometimes I may be over index on my consumer brain and not enough in the marketer brain. But I think I think that's a very legit fear. And I think that, again, that happens with on like that happens with the lack of intentionality in the work that you do. There's obviously room for creative experimentation. You should still swing for the fences and do that radical campaign that you have to see if it lands and sticks. But if you have better data to inform it, which is what VidMob provides, and better tooling to scale and execute it, which is a lot of what's coming with other AI tech stack, then you can measure it, you can know why it's working, and you can be more performative.

18:20If you just turn the machine on and coin operate it, of course you're going to get a lot of the same. And so I think, you know, there's a lot of ways to slice it. But I think really strong brands that know what their brand identity is, know who their consumer is, know what they care about, can experiment within that knowledge base. But then execute and implement in a much more effective and efficient way.

18:42Carly Crittenden:So we're kind of getting at the line, right? There's a line between using data to inform creativity, right, and allowing data to really dictate it. 100%. Like, it's called creative for a reason. I think the pendulum swung so far that there was zero data informing it. And so many of the creatives that I've spoken to, many of the producers of content that I've spoken to have said, well, I had this gut. I had this feeling. I gave it a shot and it worked. But rarely are they getting performance metrics back as to why it worked, what worked. And so for the first time ever, we actually have a shared language that we can bring all of those groups together and say, here's what worked.

19:24Here's how it performed. Here's why it performed. Now let's think about our briefs and optimizing our briefs in a different way. Because it's not what works for marketing. It's what works for a certain brand that has a certain set of consumers in a certain industry. Like we will provide benchmarks on like what works best when you advertise on Google. How are you adhering to the ABCDs, for example? And that's awesome. That's a great starting point for brands to say, OK, my creatives are not meeting the best practice guidelines for the platform that I'm spending millions of dollars on. Maybe I should rethink that.

19:55But as soon as they start doing that, they realize, oh, well, I'm a pharma company, not a CPG brand. I should probably do things differently. And so I think it's layering down in the data and getting sophisticated with what type of intelligence is actually relevant for your business and your customers. How do you apply that in a way? But ultimately, the creative decision should lie with the creator. And so it's just giving you something more sound on which to make judgment.

20:21Carly Crittenden:I thank you for saying what I've been preaching forever. There was no such thing as one size fits all, which drives me crazy when I see like research and studies and brands go, whoa, look what this. You got to go deeper. It's not. Yeah. That's not, if it doesn't fit your brand, ignore it, basically. A hundred percent. And, you know, we just launched an MCP, which is just a fancy way of saying an API, right, that extracts all of our data out. You can now plug that into any tool or any platform you use as additional signal. So, again, talk about scale and impact that comes from technology and AI.