Turning “Boring” Into Exciting in Marketing with Tom Orbach, Director of Growth Marketing at Wiz | Ep. 352

0:01Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray. And join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. We are back with another episode of the Marketing Millennials. I'm here with Tom, the director of growth marketing at Wiz. You might think Wiz is in a boring industry, but somehow Tom and his team has made this boring industry actually fun. Actually, it looks better than most fun industries, actually, with the marketing he's doing.

0:48But I'll let him introduce himself and we'll go into the topic of the day. Sure. Thank you so much for having me. So, yeah, I'm Tom Orbach. I lead growth marketing at Wiz, which is a cloud security company. But we managed to stand out in this serious and very, I don't know, I'd say corporate-like market. And I'm also the author of MarketingIdeas.com, which is a newsletter about cool and buzz-generating marketing ideas for every company out there. We'll just get right into this. I mean, what is your framework for like generating buzz in a boring industry? I mean, first of all, I think a lot of people think you can't do your playbook because they're in a boring industry.

1:35Like they can't be, and I'll let you talk about it, but I just think what you've done was, and I think so many people could do this is very inspiring. So like, let's go into the framework of how to generate buzz. Yeah. Yeah. And before the framework, I think you hit exactly the point because most people will see their competitors and think, OK, I should act like them. They probably know something that they don't. So I should like follow their steps in branding and marketing and etc. But I say the opposite. Do exactly what like the opposite of what everyone else does, because being different is what makes you known usually.

2:14So if you're in an industry like cybersecurity or finance or something that is very boring, some may say, I suggest being very out there and vibrant and weird and funny even because it really helps. So I think that my framework, it all boils down to three key things that we do at Wiz. I've been here for three years already and every single thing we do across the entire marketing organization. um is leveraging those three aspects or three elements and these three elements are humor participation and status so i can just dive right into each one of them if that's fine by you yeah let's let's go down um humor first because i obviously i love humor but um most people will say like oh I'm in a corporate space I can't do humor or I'm in um I'm in a boring industry there's no way I could do humor so like let's break down humor for people and why they should do it.

3:20Sure so first of all remember that even if you're in a boring industry there is a person on the other side like there's always a person so this this person probably loves humor and there are countless behavioral science research papers about it that show that the more we make people laugh, the more they will like us and the more they will buy our products. Now, humor is not necessarily about being funny. My method or my framework for humor in corporate marketing is to take one insight that everyone secretly agrees on and make it public. So if you can find something that all of your audience probably think, like something that is common for all of them, but no one actually talks about online and then you make it public, you will go viral for sure.

4:14Like we see it again and again with everything we do. So I can give you an example. When I first started, it was two and a half years ago. We actually launched a toy store for CISOs. CISOs is a chief information security officer. This is like the highest ranking cybersecurity guy. or girl in most companies. And we launched a toy store just for them. So it's actually a website that you can log into right now, sisotopia.com, and you'll see countless toys that we've come up with, and all of these toys are doing exactly what I just said. They take one insight that these sisos probably think and probably agrees on secretly, and we make this insight public using those toys.

5:02So I can give some examples. For example, one of those toys is a blindfold for your legal team. So whenever you have an incident, like a cybersecurity incident in your company, and you are, of course, responsible as a CISO, then the toy is like a blindfold, which is a custom-made blindfold with text printed on it that you should give to your legal team so they will not see the incident that just happened. It sounds silly, but people just love it, even though we're in a serious market. I can give more toys. Dark mode glasses. We found out that most cloud security engineers and security people in general, they really love working in dark mode.

5:46Right. Every time they log into our platform, they immediately turn on the toggle to make everything darker. so we created allegedly and dark mode glasses which is basically just sunglasses that makes the world around you dark mode so again it's like an insight that everyone secretly agrees on which is that security people love working in dark mode and making it public oh you want dark mode here's dark mode for your life which is just sunglasses so it's even funnier and the last example of Sisotopia is that we created a pack of juggling balls. You know those packs of three balls that you can get in any toy store?

6:29So we actually made a pack of eight juggling balls and each of those balls is actually a responsibility of the sisal. So we printed on these balls things like strategy and managing the budget and training employees and etc. And like the joke here or the insight that we're trying to tell the world about is that CISOs have so much responsibility and so many different balls that they need to juggle. So we actually created those balls. So that's about humor in a nutshell. You just take one insight that everyone secretly agrees on and you make it public. One thing I want to ask just about that, because I think I totally agree.

7:10I mean, I do that with the marketing space and I think I don't go as deep in making a toy store, which is really smart but i want to know like for people who don't know how to find these insights like what did you do to like figure out like okay um sisos um like like i mean the dark mode was kind of you did it with your product but even how did they figure out that they like to do dark mode like was it talking to customers like how did you figure out the insights that's a great question so So it is we really obsess with our customers, but also with the community and with the industry in general.

7:50So our team, our marketing team, we are spending all day long on Reddit and specifically the cybersecurity subreddits. And we see how they behave, the CISOs, and what they talk about and what are their pain points. And you'll be surprised how many of those insights are hiding in there. like you can see repetitiveness with some of those um insights that they just casually mention but then when you like you see a pattern you see that so many scissors are talking about the same thing you realize okay there is an insight i should make it public and my audience is going to love it so it's exactly what happened to us with the scissor juggling balls there are so many threads and posts about managing to juggle between all of these responsibilities.

8:37And that's when we noticed, okay, like they actually acknowledge the fact that they have so much responsibility and we can do something funny about it and use humor to grab their attention. So I think just hanging around in forums and communities that they're a part of is the key to finding those insights. yeah just going to places where they are sitting like events hidden spaces where they just could talk freely i think they're not going to talk as freely like people always say like do surveys and stuff like that but they don't talk as freely as they talk to with their peers so you have to go and just listen where they are instead of um trying to just only rely on surveys or conversations with people.

9:24I know the second one, first is humor, second participation, I think. So what does what does participation mean to you? And what are some examples of that? Sure. So every company is starting with zero, obviously, right? Like you have no audience, no one talks about you, no one knows you. And I think, let's say you made something funny, you made like you created something with humor, but what do you do about it when no one knows you? So participation is the key to getting started and getting the snowball rolling, at least in my playbook. The first thing about participation is the participation of employees.

10:01Sometimes it's called employee advocacy or storytelling of employees. It's basically making all of the employees share and talk about our things online all the time. How do we do it? It's pretty simple. we run internal contests all the time to make them share more. And we have a secret club for the top engaged employees and that we reward them for their efforts. And we also help some of them actually write their posts. So that's easy and everyone knows it. And just, I think, don't give up on activating your employees. But secondly, with participation, it's the participation of customers. So the classic way to do it is to just make a case study video with them and they will share it afterwards.

10:49And like, because they participated and they will engage with you on social media. That's the easy way. If you can find a smarter or more creative ways to make customer customers want to participate in your things, it will generate even more buzz. So for example, we just launched a twist and the CISOs making cocktails series. We actually, it's a video series, like a few episodes that we invited CISOs customers to a secret bar in New York and we filmed them making cocktails. And of course, while we did it, we talked with them about cloud security and like their experiences. And it's like a very unique way to share their story.

11:35So again, participation of customers, but the key is to be very creative and unique and not just like the old boring, you know, case study on a couch. Another participation and maybe the most important one is the participation of the wider community. So we are in the cybersecurity or cloud security space. So we think about ways that we can increase the participation of the community because we know that once they will participate more in our content, the more likely it will be that they will share our things. So I can talk through a few examples here. The first is that we created the world's first cloud security job board.

12:20let's say you are a cloud security engineer and you're looking for a new job and you go to linkedin but it's not really like optimized for your experience because maybe you know um like your expertise is kubernetes or i don't know some service in aws you can't really search for those roles on linkedin or filter them out so we created a job board for all of the cloud security jobs in the world that we actually filter by the things that matter. And we invited the community to share more jobs or to share their stories about how they found the job. And now we have a full website for careers, which is the job board.

13:02And another way we increase the participation of the wider community is through games and challenges. And there's the thing in cyber called capture the flag challenges, which is like a hacking challenge, basically. So we create loads of those. Like you twist every, I think, two or three months, we release a new Capture the Flag challenge. And we make the community participate. And we tell them, okay, solve this. You'll get a spot on the leaderboards and you'll get a prize. And of course, they will share it afterwards. So participation and making employees, customers and the wider community participate in what you do will make them share and engage.

13:43That's the secret. Yeah. And I mean, it's funny because I think like a lot of the things you're talking about is like taking insights you already have on your customer, like what they like to do. And then taking things that exist in the real world, but just customizing and making it better for people. for people. So like, for example, like the job board, like if you can help someone like get a job, they'll be like indebted to you for the real debt. Or if you can help someone hire someone great, they'll be indebted to you. Exactly. Exactly that. If we help companies hire, like if we help them fulfill the, the, the open positions that were open forever and they couldn't find the right talent.

14:37And suddenly because of who is, we help those companies hire someone, this is, this is amazing and it happens all the time for us. So it's really cool. And participation is the key here. Yeah. Okay. So we went humor, participation. What's the third pillar to this framework? The third pillar, and I think it's the most important one, is a status or praise. So with humor and participation, our like North Star, like the Holy Grail of everything that we do is to actually praise those people. For example, with all of those games and challenges that I just mentioned, if you complete it, you're not only getting into the leaderboards, but you also get a custom made certificate with your name in big and like it says cloud security excellence.

15:27And it's a certificate for your skills. And people share them by the thousands. Why? Because we praise them. We praise them and we give this little stamp of whiz that says, OK, you are an expert. And we know they are experts because they managed to solve our very difficult challenge. So if we can find a way to mix participation with humor while also praising our audience, we win. Another way to praise is the classic way of publishing lists of top, I don't know, experts in your field and just tag them on social media to tell them they were chosen for this list of top whatever. It always works. And we also try to acknowledge anyone we can whenever we can.

16:17And this is the best way to leverage our audience. Because we built an audience of about almost half a million people already. And if we talk about someone and praise them in front of this audience, this someone is very flattered. And they will share our stuff and they will be loyal to us forever. So the third secret is status or praise. Like if you can increase someone's status and praise them in front of your big audience, they will love you forever. Yeah, people always love sharing when they're recognized or all these things. if you if you boil it down to like simplest forms i mean like all of them have like a in like a feeling attached to it that you need to like pull out of where like humor you like make someone like laugh or you make someone entertain uh part participation you make feel people feel belong like they belong in a community you make people feel like they they have people with them And then the last one is like, you make people feel better about themselves.

17:30Yeah. Like keeping up with like, they're like better than their peers. They want to show that they're better than their peers. So like makes them feel like there's like a state, like, and nobody else is probably praising them at work, especially that audience. Like CISOs are probably not getting praised internally for like setting, making the company. They're probably the ones like, why did you add extra layers of security for us? They're probably the ones getting annoyed at. So if they can get praise from the community and companies that they work for, they could share it internally. They could share it to their peers.

18:09It's a good stamp of approval for them. Exactly. And I must say that even for other audiences that are more socially praised, even like i don't know marketers or hr leaders even when you praise those people they will love you forever so it's not like only for and those those roles that are not usually praised like people love getting praised and that's yeah it's everybody it works yeah yeah most i mean most yeah everybody loves bring praise because one says just gives them like a stamp that they're doing a good job with like external validation instead of like internal validation it also like makes them more valuable like seem more valuable in their company so like all these things are like making them seem like they're doing something better for the company and helping them get better at their job or seen better in the community or like helping them progress in their career um because they're getting stamps of approval all the time by like you as the company but you're doing it also the key is like to do it in like a fun non-boring like entertaining way with um but i want to i want to go so like people are going to say to this like okay um tom this is like all cool like you're doing these things but like what are some results are you seeing from it like it's like people are going to ask like okay cool but what what's like what's gonna like what is the end results that you see from at least like humor or participation like what has actually happened in the back end yeah great question i think with anything that's related to brand awareness or or buzz in general it's so hard to measure and attribute to but we do have direct links that we see because when like when we create all of these little stunts in the masses like we have a list of quick wins that we've done and we see that the CISOs, specific CISOs actually talk about them online.

20:13Like there are so many LinkedIn posts of leaders in our industry that just shared our thing. And we can see also that a month later, they became a customer. So of course, the sales machine and the revenue machine is much larger than what we're doing in brand marketing or brand awareness campaigns. but still it's it's like it's a no-brainer that there's a there's a like an aspect of attribution here and also i must say that the bigger we are like the bigger we are externally the more followers we have on social media that we build exactly like using these methods the bigger we are the easier it is to sell because we have like social proof and people can see oh they're big they're they're the big player in the industry and like the easier it is when i joined whiz no one barely knew us like our sales people had to first explain what is whiz and only then approach someone now no nobody needs to explain what is whiz because of this huge brand that we build and all of the followers that we collected and i think like it's part of a bigger machine and it just works i i love that because i think for first of all like people a lot of people think vanity metrics but like followers followers on like a linkedin page is social proof you have over 300k like like why would it be if you you could have been whizzed with 10k followers and people like oh this is a small like security company like why would i also i think like people underestimate and this was a problem with a lot of sas companies i've worked with the process like air cover for sales like um like you need to be able to like you saw in the regions that didn't have like brand recognitions like the sales reps were not performing versus like where you were known and it's like a common thing so if you can provide air cover in the space that people know who you are like it's not going to directly attribute to like a channel or a thing that you did but you know that if they could if the call the sales rep doesn't have to take time to explain who they are they could do their job and sell and um educate the people why they need it not have to educate on the brand and why the brand exists and all and most people will take calls with people that they know too so it's like this air cover this effect um people talking a line um it actually works um more it's hard to attribute but the playbook has been done before by others too it works so i think um yeah i really like that how how you think about that and you would think that like for growth marketing you would be like most growth marketers will be like okay like how could i do product hacks or like um like run paid campaigns that are like but they're not thinking about how can I do these crazy viral stunts or entertaining stuff.

23:28So it's cool that you as a growth marketer are also thinking about brand as well, which I think a lot of growth marketers separate brand and growth at the same time. Yeah, totally. And I want to leave the audience with one more tool or framework they can work with. we've done a lot of stunts that are practically the same so i talked about the toy store for but we've also done a meditation app for scissors with like specific meditation tracks for when you have an incident or when there's a board meeting you should answer to or something like that things to get you more calm and relaxed and we've also done a musical for a scissors and like the The hidden pattern here is that we're always trying to create the world's first something for our audience.

24:23And you can do it in any industry. So think about like common things that you have on your day to day. So I talked about toy store, meditation, musical or theater, but you can talk about fitness apps or reality TV shows or restaurants or I don't know, amusement parks or books. And if you can create those specific things for your audience, it's so weird that it works. For example, if you're selling something to a content, let's say you have a SaaS about finance, then create the first dating app for a content. Like no one ever done it before. And when you talk about such a thing online, it's just, it's just catching fire because it's like, it's so weird.

25:11why should someone make a dating app just for accountants or for CFOs? But it sounds funny, but it works. So I think if your listeners are looking for something to start with, I would just look into that. Creating the world's first something for your audience. I always talk about this framework in my newsletter, marketingadies.com, and people just love it and they keep showing me examples of stuff that they did. and it's always fun to see yeah i mean taking things inspiration from other things that haven't been done even with like content like like you can mix like two pieces of content like like a reality tv series for accountants of like survivor or something like that and just like connecting two pieces and making it fun for them like like having um excel an excel competition or something or like there's like so many things that you can do that are funny and fun but also like bring in your your audience and i like also what you do where you you have a dedicated like landing page and like um url for it like um domain name for it because that also i could show like hey this is how many hits we're getting to the site um this is how many people are interested there's so many people clicking links like um it shows like a dedicated thing for them so you it actually looks like something real as well so i think that's a fun thing to do too is like think about like all the pieces of the puzzle when doing it and you can go check out what they did with uh seesotopia and the broadway um yeah things yeah see some musical like things that are funny like that where um people catch on and it catches fire yeah and to your point about domain names we are like we are obsessed with getting funny domain names for our little projects especially because um we don't want it to look like it's a whiz thing you know what i mean we want it to look like a standalone thing that people people can just enjoy if it was whizio slash Sysotopia, it would have never worked.

27:35But now that it is Sysotopia.com or Sysomusical.com or Sysoasis.com, which is the meditation app, suddenly it's like a bit of a disconnect from our brand. But of course, inside the website, we connect it back to Wiz. So yeah, we're very bullish on their own domain names. Because you piqued their interest if you did like whiz.com black slash like seesotopia like they're obviously going to be like oh this day this is just a brand trying to get me to the website and get me to a landing page but if you do something dedicated it's like you if you're going to do a bit like go all in on the bit like um make sure that you get like the name the the fun like we like the marketing millennials we doing like marketing land and like my whole vision was coachella and disneyland together and we call it a marketing fest called it a marketing festival because nobody's calling everybody is a it is a conference but we call it a festival we have a dj there we had a live band like there's like things that you could do just spark up your thing um and make it more fun so So it's like things like that just make it more fun.

28:51Yeah, totally. Lastly, where can people find you and what you're doing and get more ideas from you? Where could that happen? Sure. So I share about almost all of our projects and the metrics and success on LinkedIn, Tom Orbach. but also for the deeper dives and the new marketing ideas that you can leverage i highly suggest following me on my newsletter marketingideas.com over 45 000 followers there and subscribers and it's been going great for the last few years 45 000 is no joke congrats on that and thank you i love what you're doing at whiz i think i think a lot of people there's so many beta i get this all the time like i'm in b2b and i have a boring product like could i how do i make it more fun and like you're proving the playbook that any industry could be fun or or entertaining or stand out like you don't have to be like funny for example but you could make it 10 percent weirder or 10 percent like funnier or be more distinctive than your competition by just adding a little flair to it.

30:01Exactly. I couldn't agree more. So thank you so much for having me. Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five-star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.