Marketing Madhouse: Innovation Inside the World’s Largest Company

In this episode of the Marketing Madhouse, Moira is joined by Torarie Durden, former GM and Head of Marketing at Walmart Business, and executive at leading brands like Russell Athletic, ADP, NASA and McKinsey. Torarie shares how his education in advanced engineering shaped his approach to business and marketing and how to fuel innovation in organizations large and small.

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Episode Transcript

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There's a fine line between genius and insanity, and we're
walking it. It's the marketing madhouse.
Thank you for joining us for another episode of Marketing

(00:44):
Madhouse. And I am very excited today to
have my guest, Tori Durden. And we had an opportunity to
meet a few months back. We both on a panel for the
American Marketing Association and it's not often that I have
someone speaking about Walmart, but speaking about business to
business, which sort of caught my attention.

(01:06):
But I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your time
with us today. Thank you so much for having me.
It was a great opportunity to continue the conversation we
started back there. Exactly.
So I want to talk about about a million things.
I have a lot of things, but at the beginning we talk about
people's backgrounds and how they got into marketing and one

(01:26):
of the things that's really interesting and and when we
prepped, we talked about this a little bit, but you know, you
have a very interesting background.
So you see it's it is you started at Morehouse, then you
got a technical degree at Georgia Tech and then you went
and got a Harvard MBA and, and you're in marketing.

(01:47):
And so it's very interesting when you see people with
technical backgrounds that find their way into marketing.
But let's start back at the very, very beginning.
You're a Morehouse man and I don't think we've ever covered
the five wells. So will you tell us about the
five wells? Oh, I appreciate that question.
I'll start from the beginning. And I was just 1516 year old kid
in South Georgia. I was 16 years old.

(02:08):
And where? In South Georgia.
It's called Adel, GA. If you got right here on I-75,
went three hours S exit 39. They have a lot of gas stations,
a lot of people on their way to Florida.
I was working at a store. Gentleman came in, we struck up
a conversation. He said, hey, you seem to be a
decent young man, I'm going to stay in touch with you.
He stayed in touch with me for two years, and he was a

(02:30):
Morehouse alum. He gave me a book called A
Kennel in the Dark, and I kept that book.
And as I was graduating from high school, he reached out to
me and he said, hey, I want to try to help you get into
college. You seemed like a decent guy.
Maybe we I can pull some stringsand get you up here.
And I kind of laughed because I was an Allstate basketball
player. I was a valedictorian of my high

(02:51):
schools. The government president had a
bunch of had won a bunch of scholarships.
Nothing going. On nothing really going on in
South Georgia and he said, oh, Ididn't know that you still want
to come to Morehouse and I was like, absolutely.
These five wells was developed alittle bit of post my time
there, but it speaks about this notion about being well
balanced, well read, well traveled, well dressed, well

(03:11):
spoken. And I love that because the
individuals I encountered when Istepped foot on that campus were
confident, strong and you want to be like them.
I didn't know what they did right.
So there was, it was the first time I was in a room with
gentlemen who said, I want to goto medical school, I want to
become a judge, I want to run a business.

(03:35):
So it was very structured. It was very leadership focus.
And more importantly, I had a really, really good time.
But they also pushed me in ways I had never known.
Now, what does that mean about Well, Well balanced?
It's kind of the hallmark of my career now.
You can be very disciplined in athing, but you need to have
balance, yes. And so after Morehouse, I

(03:56):
joined, I did a dual degree program at Morehouse and then
Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech is high IT.
Was a dual. Degree.
Yeah, it was high tech stuff, right?
I mean, this is Georgia Tech electrical engineering, you
know, I wanted to know build work for.
I worked in NASA. I wanted to know do spaceships,
space shuttles and telecommunications?
Do anything small? No.
Yeah, we're going to go to the moon.

(04:17):
But I also want to have a good life.
Yeah, right. I want to travel, right.
I like talking, right? I wanted to look nice.
I wanted to like to know what I was telling.
Full life, right? And so the Morehouse part was
around filling the whole story. Georgia Tech was about being
technically sound and extremely proficient and something.

(04:39):
So I love the combination of thetwo.
And then we got Harvard, so wentto throw that in there.
So I have to go at the undergrad.
I decided to go to Graduate School at Georgia Tech.
I was going to get a PhD in Electro engineering and I was
working and my first exposure tomarketing was having the
opportunity to intern at the Coca-Cola Company as a lowly
like office mail opener. You got to.

(05:01):
Get in on the ground floor and do.
Whatever it takes. And when you're a college
student in Atlanta and Georgia Tech, you know, it's a pretty
nice gig. But after that I did, I realized
I didn't want to be a doctorate in electrical engineering.
I just didn't see where that wasnot.
Enough talking, I would say. It was a very cubicle focused,

(05:23):
technically proficient writing lab reports life and if you've
met me for more than 5 minutes that didn't really fit the.
Person, I know a lot of those advanced engineers we were
mentioning I had done a lot of work with Southwire and so that
you don't strike me as some of those guys, right?
But I love the technical competency, the programmatic
thinking, the structured problemsolving.

(05:45):
So through a internship at Coke,I realized I I had a right left
brain challenge. I went to work for McKenzie and
company after Graduate School atGeorgia Tech, which was 100
hours a week. A lot of decks, but it was
definitely thinking about the biggest problem that the company
had. And I realized I tended to lean
toward the customer facing problem, the marketing driven

(06:08):
problem a little more than maybethe technical OPS problem.
And so to round out again the rough edges, I decided to go to
Business School. And I asked them people what are
the best business schools? And they named some and I said,
cool, I'll apply there. And they kind of laughed at me.
They were like, you don't reallyhave the pedigree.
They they and I was like, well, tell me how I need to apply.
I was able to apply. I fell in love with a lot of the

(06:29):
people there. I did not like the cold.
I think it's very important to say Boston is one of the coldest
places on the planet. And for people who love Boston,
I don't understand it, but it was great.
They have pretty old buildings is why I put it right, you know?
But I like the culture. The two year program, I did
that. It was really inspiring to be
there. But also, I do say this, they

(06:53):
took individuals who had achieved a lot, put them
together, and then they take credit for their achievements
for the rest of their lives. What HBS or Harvard taught me
was I belonged and that was important.
It did advance my skill set. Yep.
It also helped me think bigger than I thought right?
And also empowered me with people who would help out if I I

(07:17):
needed. Yeah, I think the power of that
network is is huge. Yeah, I think, I think it's
really cool, but it also lets you think about like swinging
for our fences and, you know, going at the big things and
daring the biggest, like. You said like, show me the
biggest, hairiest problem. Problem.
Can I solve it? Yes.
I'm an engineer. Can we make it better?
Yes, I can. I'll tell you this other thing,

(07:37):
though. It also.
I'm a kid from South Georgia. I grew up cropping tobacco,
picking watermelons, you know, not the world's.
I mean, it's very rural there, right?
I was also very bent on getting all the credentials I could.
So when I walked into the room, individuals felt confident that

(07:59):
I could do what I said I was doing.
I didn't know I I later learned I didn't need those things to
do. Yes.
And my mom was like, there's no more room on the wall for
degrees. You don't need anything else,
you have it. You have it.
And so I do say that journey wasfraught with some insecurities,
right, that I was trying to fillgaps.
But every time I would go to oneof those places, I realized the

(08:21):
gap wasn't as deep as I thought.Yeah.
Well, you know, I think when people are honest, there's a lot
of that in the world. I, I was a college dropout
initially and, and I didn't get my degree until, for 21 years.
So it was the same thing. You know, I would be in a room
and I had a ton of experience because I started in the
workplace when I was 19, but I still do.
I have the pedigree, the credentials, you know what

(08:43):
qualifies me And, and it's, it'shard for people to, I
understand, oh, I have all I need to go tackle this thing.
Yes. And if you want more, it should
be for some added value. Yeah, Right.
But the other thing, it also taught me Morehouse in Georgia
Tech, and it was the power of listening to what people were
saying about me to me and being a human in the conversation.

(09:04):
Because when you're not at the top, you know, you have to,
like, listen and absorb. And that actually is really good
for the marketing discipline, right?
Because you're saying, oh, wow, they just told me.
They told me something if I if I, if I stop and listen.
To it in that. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. And you know, you're talking
about me. I'm the customer, too.
Yeah. Right.
And so you just kind of told me something and you told me.

(09:25):
And when you combine those together, you have an empathy
for the people or the customers in the way that can translate
into just unbelievable marketingor business growth.
Yep, that's that is amazing. So in a minute we're gonna, I
think we're gonna save a lot of the going deep for the second
part, but let's just generally for a minute.

(09:46):
So Walmart business, can you just give us a sense there?
So you talked about I wanna tackle the biggest problems
there are and I would imagine goto the biggest companies where
you find some of the biggest, not just problems opportunities
as well. And so you had an opportunity to
to take on or launch Walmart business.
So can you talk about that? Oh, it was an unbelievable

(10:06):
roller coaster rocket ship ride.No, no pun intended.
Back to the NASA engineering days.
I joined at a time when it was just a strategy.
It was a piece of paper. The individual who had strategy
at Walmart was thinking, can we go after this opportunity?
When you do strategy work like I've done before, you do the
opportunity assessment the strengths and weaknesses.
But we met at a time when I was like, well, how are you going to

(10:27):
go do it? And what fundamental customer
problem were we trying to solve?Because we had all the assets.
It's kind of like, I call it like Thanksgiving dinner.
You have all the ingredients, but no one has actually put the
things together. So I joined very early.
I was employee number two. We had to think about what is
the long range plan, the annual plan, things of that sort.

(10:49):
But we really honed in on what customer problem were we
attempting to solve with Walmartassets and with the problem we
identify us. We had tons of people coming to
Walmart on their way to work andcoming to Walmart when they were
leaving work. They weren't thinking about
using Walmart as a partner when they were at work.

(11:10):
And so OK, awareness challenge with the how did you have an
awareness challenge with the biggest company in the world?
It was a use case. The second thing was and a.
Positioning. Challenge, right and.
We are positioned as a consumer brand and this consumer.
Retail brand. Be a business.
Brand matter of fact, we were positioned as a consumer retail
store brand. So individuals who are making

(11:32):
business decisions or buy decisions in their business or
offer on their phone. Yeah, not going bricks and.
Mortar in front of a laptop? Yeah, on the go.
So could we start expanding the use cases for those individuals
and then it was well, what do they look for?
Well, they wanted the best possible price.
Well, we had a heritage of everyday low price.

(11:53):
They wanted convenience where we're at 4800 zip codes in the
country. They wanted a variety of items.
Well, we had one of the largest assortments in the world, why
not us? What I found was the bigger
challenges people assume B to C versus B to BI said it was B to

(12:14):
C&B to B because Tori was already in the Walmart database.
It was just my Gmail account. You didn't have my my corporate
account. So we form a strategy.
We got to work on building the Y.
We got to work on with the engineers and the product team
to build a technical solution, which is a new website.

(12:34):
We had all the blockages of overthinking it, over analyzing
it 15 different for approvals. Hey this is not on our radar.
Let's. Start testing right?
We got to start trying stuff. Right.
And I said, let's take a step and get some data.
Yeah. And as we took a step, one step,
gave you 22, gave you 4 or gave you 8, then you were moving, You

(12:54):
had data, you had traction, you had ability to respond.
And as the marketer on the team,my role was to just collect the
feedback, drive the strategy to get it into market and then talk
about the incrementality of the revenue we were creating from
existing customers who saw us ina new light, a new light and
then new customers who had neverthought about us.

(13:17):
But we're willing to give us a try.
So two years later, we were north of 250 million.
We launched in 18 months. We had we launched a website, an
app, a brand, a customer serviceorganization and a sales group.
And so I'm out of breath now. Yeah, that's OK.
Well, you can take a breath. We're going to take a break for

(13:37):
a minute. We're going to come back and
we're going to dig a little moreinto this.
I appreciate the high level viewthough, because I think it gives
some real perspective. You've been all over in all of
these wonderful places, in thesereally big places.
I think sometimes. And one of the things we're
going to be talking about in a little bit is some people see
big world problems or big business problems and small

(13:59):
business and think they're not the same.
I think that that both sides canlearn from each other, you know,
and. They need to talk to each other.
Exactly. And so I think it's we're going
to we're going to go down the rabbit hole a little on how you
execute and how you can become systematic and and some of this
executional thinking that you bring to what you do.
So we will be back with Tori Durden on Marketing Madhouse.

(14:25):
A little bit of madness goes a long way.
Now more of the marketing madhouse.
We are back on marketing Madhouse with Tori Durden and
we're going to cover so many topics.
I think your, your background isso interesting and, and you
know, we've talked about ideas like innovation and how you

(14:46):
innovate in large companies. We've talked about the
challenges of scale of retainingthat kind of entrepreneurial,
you know, gene or energy and also this kind of big and small,
right, The challenge of scale. Let's start with systematic and
programmatic because a lot of the things that we've talked
about are, you know, how do you,how do you think, how do you

(15:11):
bring that sort of executional mindset to what you're doing?
So you know, let's, maybe let's use the example of Walmart
business, right? So you said you're #2 right, you
are not at scale when there's two of you.
You had an idea. So how'd you get from an idea on
a piece of paper too? We are going to programmatically
and systematically scale this thing.
Yeah, I think I went back to a little bit of my engineering

(15:32):
problem solving approach. Not the technical merits of
physics and engineering, but thenotion of a hypothesis, a
testing model. Yep, quick response to the data,
make the tweaks, try it again, scale and grow.
There had to be a confidence to telling operators of an

(15:52):
established company, you're going to test something, right,
Because they normally think binary.
Is it good or bad, right. I had to think, what did I
learn? Yeah.
Can I improve and can I improve it in a way that fits their
strengths? And that was really important,
right the first. Even before that, though, I had
to have a real conversation around what are we good at and

(16:13):
where are their opportunities. Right, because insight and
information that you're not going to be able to act on or
won't help contribute to the skills kind of.
Really makes people not want to talk to you again.
If you bring them a problem and you bring a solution and it's
not in their capacity to do thatsolution, it makes them feel
unempowered. So learning really early on
where our strengths were. So everything I talked about

(16:34):
lean back into a strength and when it didn't lean back into a
what I call an opportunity area,we're not going to use the word
weakness for right now. It was what can we get there and
is it on the road map? And So what I found was that to
innovate, we really pulled things forward that were already
on the road map or deprioritize the individuals really wanted to

(16:54):
do. But we pulled them forward into
this new project, gave them a new life.
And then suddenly the wheel started turning.
So we tested existing customers,this notion of would you
consider us for a business purchase?
And there were many reasons why they would.
They actually assumed we were already doing it right, Right.
They were like, what do you meanwe already I already buy my

(17:15):
goods from Walmart. What are you talking about?
They were like, oh, so we didn'thave to tell them about buying.
We had to maybe give them a new experience.
And then that new experience, what we were looking for, and
they started telling us about features that they had seen in
other places. Well, could we replicate that?
We absolutely could. Then they started talking about
things they wanted and those things we matched.

(17:35):
Those are things we were alreadylooking to build.
So we said. Which goes into prioritizing,
right? It's like, and as a marketer or
AGM, you had to go to the engineers and the product team
and the finance team to get themto prioritize your idea, right?
The best way to do that is to say, well, the customer told me
they wanted it, right? There's a purchase opportunity,
right? You already have it on your road

(17:56):
map. We need to bring it forward.
And now we can de risk it because we have customers, we
have interest, we have these things and guess what, we can
probably mitigate some of the cost of building.
Right. Because like this one's six
months and we already built it versus this one six months and
$6 million and a whole bunch of other people's.
So sometimes marketer's job is to meet the customer needs.
Sometimes it's to be the voice of the customer in a big company

(18:18):
and say this customer is saying I want us in this lane, would
you like to? The other thing with a place
like Walmart is it's driven by operators, store operators, the
logistics operators. So we had to go and listen about
what problems they were facing. And many of them had problems
that they wouldn't call it B to B.
They just had a bunch of businesses that came in and

(18:39):
cleared out their shelves every Tuesday and then the next day
they didn't have enough items for the consumers to come.
But they didn't call it AB to B problem.
They just had. They just knew the people.
And so my language was, well, you want inventory management,
you want to be able to deliver alarge amount of product,
products to the local store, like to a local business in one
pack. You wanted to be A yes, you

(19:01):
wanted to be. You wanted them not coming into
the store and clearing the shelves.
You want them placing an order, maybe online.
Right. So you already had redundant
inventory and you could both, yeah.
But it's not the language that we're using, but we had to
listen to them. So when you go toward
innovation, it is having a voiceof the customer, it is thinking
about the prioritization, but it's also listening to the

(19:22):
operators that you're having to work with and figuring out ways
of my new thing helping their old problem.
Yeah, You know, that's to me. You had talked about, I don't
think you use the word synthesize, but you know, a lot
of the things that you talk about are about synthesizing
these things you're hearing. And I feel that in my experience
with B to B, it is so often thatwe keep calling it this, the

(19:45):
customer sees it this way, callsit this.
And that's where a lot of that positioning and messaging work
is so critical because we're already doing it.
We're just not talking to them in a way that they.
Can they haven't given it a wrapper?
Yeah, yeah, there's this My. I have young children, right?
You know, you ever give them a toy that they wanted?
But then if you give them that same toy, put it in a black bag,

(20:08):
put a bow on it, they're like, Oh my God, this is great.
You just give it to them. They're like, thanks.
It's kind of that mindset. Now.
Would B to B, what many in the industry said, well, we're
different than B to CI was like,OK, tell me how some of the
transactions. Were exactly the same, the same
person doing it, but in the B toC world they were making the

(20:29):
decision themselves. In the B to B environment they
may have had four other approvers they had APO they
wanted to use versus a credit card.
So the the transaction approach.Layered.
Layered more layers to it. So one of the things we had to
do is not only synthesize, but we had to make it super simple
for them because they may have to go tell their boss while

(20:51):
they're doing this, they had to repeat the value proposition.
So I believe in keeping things as simple and low friction as
possible, but making that a partof our process.
And when we did that, we came upwith this ingenious approach,
which was we went to Walmart business to save you time, money
and hassle. And if you've ever seen a office

(21:14):
manager try to order for the break room good for their
office, they don't want the hassle.
Yeah. Or they wanted to save their
time because they didn't want touse their lunch break.
They didn't want to have to go on that lunch break to get the
items that we needed to stock our break room or our office.
Yeah, they wanted their time back.
I think that is one of the things that the the best of the

(21:37):
best of the B2B companies that we've supported over the years.
It is quantifying those things, right.
It's not just the price of the items or the price of the
service or solution. It's what's the value of your
time, what's the value of the hassle, You know, what's the
cost of the hassle, What are themissed opportunities you have
because you don't have somethinglike this?
I mean, that is, that's where the emotion lives.

(21:59):
That's where the emotion lives. And as marketers, we had to do
all that practical kind of blocking and tackling.
And then we had to go be creative and say we had to put
our other hat on and be like, OK, now marketers like what is
the story? If you shop with Walmart
business, I can give you a lunchbreak back.
If you shop with us, you can save this amount.
If you shop with us, we're goingto reduce all those deliveries

(22:21):
down when we start speaking in the mind in the language of the
buyers around that day. It took off at first, I
admittedly we stumbled because we're big and we think we knew
and we just had to deliver something.
But they started giving us rich feedback along the way.
It was my job. Then translate that into
messages and customer value propositions and.

(22:44):
Well, that's why it's important to start too, so you can start
getting that feedback. Like too many people get
paralyzed about. But what if it's this and that?
Let's put it in their hands and let's.
Start getting so many people wanted to be perfect, and I
think perfect can be the enemy of progress sometimes. 80%.
Let's get out there. Let's figure it out.
Let's tell people we're going tokeep getting better.

(23:05):
Let's bring them on the ride with us.
And for individuals who already have built brands who already
have loyalty or big infrastructures, that's kind of
scary because they don't want todisappoint a customer.
But if we tell them we're takingthem on a journey of progress
with us systematically and give them updates along the way and
say we heard you, they tend to it tends to build loyalty and

(23:26):
engagement. And I think that's part of the
the opportunity space when you're going after innovation
and scale. So I have a curveball for you on
that front and that is, and thisgoes back to the scale of the
difference between the number one company in the world and all
the other businesses that are coming up, right?
Whether they are a small business in a storefront or you

(23:48):
know, a mid market company that's scaling.
You're talking about reducing friction.
But also we talked about repeat and recurring transactions
because that is where the rubbermeets the red, right?
That is where scale happens. What are some things from your
experience at all the companies you've worked with that smaller
organizations could do to reducefriction and to get repeat

(24:10):
business, you know? I think that sometimes smaller
companies or upstarts are innovative ones, wants to change
customer behavior, and my view is integrate within the customer
behavior. You want me to go do something
different? I gotta tell someone.
When I'm hungry, I look for a flashing light.
I know they have food. I'm going there.

(24:30):
If you tell me to pass that, turn right, turn left, go down
three steps or another, I'm justnot going to do it.
I'm hungry right now. So as businesses, it's
particularly those upstarts, those innovative ones get into
the flow of how customers are normally doing it and make it
super easy to insert yourself there.
I think the second one is that Iworked a lot in e-commerce,
whether it was at Russell Athletic, whether it was in at

(24:52):
Health Grades, which is a digital media company about
doctor marketing. Individuals aren't looking
online to just see ads they willread, but they're trying to read
for a purpose. So put.
Your education. That's great, right?
And guess what? Now everybody uses words like
content. I want content.
I want content. Well, I don't know many people

(25:13):
who just want to read content. They're reading for a purpose.
Yeah. So can you integrate content?
But give them a call to action. It's super easy for them to go
and do. Yeah.
You know, I think it's a good point because you do.
It's a super good point because I think often we end up we, we
being, whether it's the agency or the customer themselves,

(25:34):
everybody wants to know what's the thing that that creates the
sale and they want to focus on engagement around the sale.
But where marketing, you know, really lifts is where it's the
engagement in advance of that upper funnel, right?
It's it's. You know, it's making sure that
the the and then the third thingI would say is like, you know,
people fall in love with marketing tactics and I'm a

(25:54):
human being. Like it normally takes 5 or 6
touch points. So are they seamless?
Are they integrated together? They look the same.
Do you have a different social media strategy than a display
media strategy than a billboard strategy?
You know? Which is one reason you
shouldn't use six different companies to do it, because it
it contributes to that. So you spend all your time
trying to correlate the dashboard back and I tell

(26:17):
someone like, look, I need my job is not to be the dashboard
builder. My job is to look at the
dashboard and make decisions. But I want to talk about this
one other thing that I think is super important even for small
businesses, which is words like price and revenue and operating
margin. All that come up, the term value
I think is undersold. And value could be the price I

(26:39):
pay plus the time I save, plus the ease of operation.
And those softer value statements often get lost.
And because they get lost, you may get the sale, but you don't
get the repeat sale because I can't go back and do it easy
again. It should get progressively
easier as I move through more transactions.

(27:00):
And value can be just making life on the committee easier,
too. Well, I was about to go there so
I asked the person if you reallyput yourself into the heart of
the buyer and I'm going to use an office manager buying for 100
person office and it's AB to B buy.
That person had more tasks to dothat day than just buy stuff.

(27:21):
They had to go tell their boss what they bought.
They may have had to go check with finance on payment.
They may have had to talk to theprocurement lead.
They may have had to talk to theinternal office spates who are
going to use it. Visibility reporting, spin
tracker analysis up during drop ship bill in the package let you

(27:42):
know when you arrive. Those things create value, and
they could be discernible differences that make you get a
repeat customer because you've made their life easier.
And making sure they know how you made their life easier.
I told someone like tell somebody the value like don't be
afraid to say by working with meyou're going to save 15%.

(28:05):
Right. Yeah, well, it's like, you know,
going to Publix and looking at the bottom of the receipt or
Kroger or who, wherever you shopand you see we you saved 1589.
Today, yeah, I do. I feel good every time I.
Say that yeah, I told someone like it, everyone can't do math
quickly in their head, so you don't know if it's really 15 or
this, but also giving that's quantitative value.

(28:25):
And then there's qualitative value that you can speak about
that because quantitative plus qualitative value builds brand.
And, and it's back to the point about it's not all price because
I used a price example, but we had a client this year that,
that very complex offering, it'san engineered product, power
quality. And the funnel there was 4 1/2

(28:47):
months for one of the offerings in the funnel and we were able
to get that to 1 1/2 months, right.
Makes a difference. Three months out of a funnel is
that's money. And that's value.
And so our job as leaders and businesses who take a look at a
little bit more of the whole value equation, put some numbers
against it where we can, sometimes we can't, but you can

(29:09):
express the value qualitatively that resonates with the person
and that gets them. So I think all things need to go
into, but by doing this business, Walmart business, we
face also a problem that I like to talk about, which is whether
you're a new brand or big brand,there's probably somebody

(29:29):
already there doing what you were trying to do.
So just saying I'm coming with the same mousetrap as what
already exists. Right.
You got to improve on what's there, yeah.
And that's hard because you likewhat somebody's already doing it
and people are comfortable with it.
So the switching costs have to be reduced, right?
You have to think about why am Igoing to get on to that sheet.

(29:52):
And I really enjoyed this work experience I have.
I like to tell the story about when I was at health grades, I
was leading strategy and we wereselling digital media on Madison
Ave. and we were selling againstreally big incumbents, right?
And a sales director would go and I would go and I look
completely different than just trust me, you can't see me in
the podcast, but I look very, I look very different than the

(30:15):
normal person walking in. And at some point my college
experience and work experience, I said, well, you got to roll
with that difference. And they knew when I was there.
And I was like, hey, I'm here. But on top of that, when we were
offering new solutions, having had a little bit of actually on
the ground sales experience myself, it helped me as a

(30:37):
marketer because I was like, we can't say the same thing that
the people who just left an hourago said we have to say we can
match that capability and we canadd something new.
Or we have to and we have to know that we can match the
capability because that isn't that is another fumble, I think.
You can't oversell yourself. And when they say, well, you
can't do these three things, sayconfidently, no, we're not.

(31:00):
We can't, but we can't do this. And do you want that?
Yeah, Right. No, I am not this company that
you've been working with for 15 years.
And but I am this and having that confidence to do that.
And that's why I think sales andmarketing need to work together
because marketers are all the confident ones to say, you know

(31:21):
what, this is a story I can tell.
Yeah. Well, and I think marketers are
always the one saying you have to begin the discussion whether,
you know, again, back to the perfection.
We may not be at perfection and we don't have 50 case studies,
but we got to start with what wedo know and know we can do.
And do you want to? Do you want to?
I have this belief that most in the most companies are afraid to
grow. They're afraid to grow not

(31:43):
because they don't want growth, everybody does, but they're
afraid to step out of their comfort.
And it's our job to de risk it to give them confidence to move
them forward so that they're notscared of the growth, they're
just scared to grow. And I think that a little bit of
fear is healthy, yeah. But our job is to mitigate that
fear and have them walk, walk down the path.

(32:04):
And that's why I've been really excited about doing.
Well, that's amazing. We're going to do a little
change of pace and end out this section with a really fun one,
which is the insanity of marketing.
And you had some very crazy stories and have several of
them, I think. But, but because it is the
marketing madhouse, we talk about some of the madness and
some of the crazy things that people have experienced over

(32:25):
their career. So what are some of yours?
Well, I always love is like every, everybody in the company
actually knows a little bit about marketing.
So they all feel like you can kind of do your job.
And then you're like, well, sure, that's a great tagline,
but doesn't really the copy doesn't work or but one of the
ones I thought about was when I was in athletic apparel and I
loved it because it's about fandom.
People will show up at 8:00 in the morning, sit in the rain and

(32:48):
watch a football game. That's true love, right?
But occasionally we would do things like marketing
activations where we brought like a celebrity and to do like
some type of activation at the game.
And I was, I made a fairly rookie mistake of hiring the
celebrity and I'm not going to say his name.
And it was a great activation ina really fun city.
And I then after the activation,I let the car service, I told

(33:12):
the car service take the celebrity where he wants to go.
And then I didn't see the celebrity again for two days.
Yes. And we were looking for the
celebrity and his entourage for a couple of days.
And it's a very fun city we werein.
And I became really worried and I found myself like, scared.
I hope I didn't kill this. I hope I didn't kill him.

(33:34):
I hope he's not all. But I just kept waiting for the
news to come on because. It also attaches to your brand,
right? Right.
Because he was just at the thingwith my brand on Visible.
And it wasn't until I got on theplane coming home and he was
sitting there and he was like, Ihad just the best time ever.
And I was like. Where you been?
I didn't. Even ask where you been.

(33:54):
I was like, I'm glad you're hereI have no police reports I'm
going to go sit in the back. He was like, hey, you want to
talk? I'm like, no, no, let's.
Not, let's not. And so that was that was this
notion of where you needed marketing agencies to kind of do
that. Handholding.
The other one I tell also kind of fits into that We took a
group out for a little bit of socializing and celebration

(34:16):
after a big and a dear sales leader of mine decided to take a
group of people to a concert in New York City.
And it was with Justin Timberlake.
And I personally like Justin Timberlake.
I like it a lot and did not realize that some of the more
junior people on the, not our team but on the client team had

(34:37):
maybe been a tad bit over servedin the hospitality suite.
And then at some point in the night, I was tapped because,
well, they they knew I was. You're responsible too, they
said. Hey, can you help us find her in
the Madison Square Garden? And I was like, do what?
And it was, and I was like, well, can you give me a

(35:00):
description of her? And this was the funniest
moment. It was like, she's like late 20s
blonde between like 5-3 and fiveeight.
Can you help us find her? And I was like at a Justin
Timberlake concert in Madison Square Garden, You want me to
find a late 20s five three, the 58 blonde woman.
They're like, yes. And I was like, so I think part

(35:21):
of the funny of my stories is I keep losing people and marketing
activations and I need to be more more proficient with my
security and then using the tagging system to make sure I
know where people are. Exactly right.
That is the part about executingFlorida State is not losing
people. And everyone who saw the
marketing team wanted to go to the activations and they thought
it was all fun. And I was like, hey, listen,

(35:43):
we're still working. So they're like, no, no, no,
we're going. And I was like, listen, you were
still working and something may happen where your phone may ring
at 2:00 in the morning. You're still at work.
So those are my funny moments. But we found both people.
So I'm 2 for two on finding them.
So you. Can talk about it as a funny
story today because you found. Them no criminal reports, no no
issues, things of that sort. Well, thank you for sharing

(36:04):
that. That is a little crazy.
Yes. I think we were talking about,
you know, events and event management and entertainment and
and you know, in influence, anytime you leave the city,
right, you go to some other place right there, it's people.
People change, right? All kinds of.
Things and the marketers and themarketers tend to remember that
our brand is still on display. Yes, right.

(36:26):
So we may be at a trade show, wemay be at a media event, but
we're still. Representing the brand.
The brand and so your personal behavior may does not need to
take away from now at the same time, humans are humans and
people are people. And so I told my team like you
still have to have some fun at what you're doing and be able to
laugh at yourself. And I laugh at myself as much as

(36:48):
anybody, but I just don't want to keep losing.
People, yeah, no, no, no more losing people.
But like you said, have a, have a well, have a complete,
well-rounded life. And yeah.
Exactly. Well balanced.
We'll be back in a minute with Tori Durden and just finishing
up on some of these great stories of big business, small
business and interested to hear what you're going to be doing.

(37:09):
So we will be back with Tori Durden on Marketing Madhouse.
Don't worry, we're all a little mad.
You're locked into the marketingmadhouse.
We are back with marketing Madhouse and Tori, when we were

(37:30):
talking about, you know, your experience coming in at #2 at at
Walmart, within that business group, you know, there's,
there's a lot of organizational change, right, Innovation,
right? This these intersections of
changes happening, organizationsare innovating.

(37:51):
And those are a lot of the themes even going back to the
AMA event that we were a part of, right?
That that's where your brain goes, right?
What is the hypothesis? Where, what are we trying to,
you know, accomplish? Where are the opportunities talk
about that, about, you know, just some best practices of
organizations in change in your experience.

(38:12):
Yeah, I had the great benefit ofbeing at small companies, mid
sized companies and in big companies.
And in the big companies I was often the entrepreneur.
And so when you think of a big company, you think of massive
scale and you know, like plenty of resources.
Well, I joined Walmart and I wasportion #2 and we didn't have a
budget. Here's your $6.
Yes, yes, go and don't do these things.

(38:33):
Don't mess up anything and don'tget any somebody's way.
So I had this great notion of how do you combine what you
learn from small businesses and mid sized businesses in a big
company being an entrepreneur. And then what do you learn from
a big company that can be reapplied in mid sized and kind
of growth stage companies? Because we want that one.
It's kind of the grass is technically greener on the other

(38:55):
side. So one of the things that I'd
love to do was say, OK, I did have a blank sheet of paper and
it was all my own money. What would I do?
OK, it's not my money, but I would pick things that I felt
good about, felt confident aboutthat I could measure effectively
and get to the efficiency. So get a number on the board and

(39:17):
then. Yep, we're fine from there.
We're fine from there because it's my money and I want to get
better because everybody wants to save more of their own money.
The second thing I think about is, well, who do I know who's
doing something like what I'm doing and cannot talk to them?
And you'd be shocked at how manypeople don't talk to other
people. I think there needs to be more
forums where people are talking about these things, like

(39:39):
something you said, widening thenet a little bit, like who else
has this problem? And you having the confidence to
say I have this opportunity, I don't know how to do it.
Anybody in the room seen this, done this before?
Oh, my goodness, show me, tell me.
Or I think in that regard, there's a kindredness and a
camaraderie. And I was very blessed all in my
career, whether it's in college,whatever.

(39:59):
Like I don't know what they're talking about so I got to ask
them. So I'm going to say, what are
you talking about? Yes.
So tell me more. Oh wow, Can I reapply that?
I had spent some time at Procterand Gamble really early in my
career as an intern and he had this notion about rinse and
repeat, which was take somethingthat's work, rinse it off and
repeat it for your space. So I kind of stay with that.
The third thing is, you know, know that the other people's why

(40:22):
and then why not? My team used to joke with me.
They say, you know, I have 15 reasons why not to do things,
but you keep waiting for that one reason to say why do it.
And when I got that one reason, I kind of leaned and but
listening to the why not was notreally telling me no, It was
manage these risks. Don't get me in trouble, don't
lose a person. Right, right.

(40:44):
Don't don't be below this returnon investment threshold.
Don't. So if we listen to that, it's
really empowering because they're telling us where the
guide rails are and in between where we are and that guide
rails is a lot of room to switchand adjust.
I think the last thing that's super important is speak with

(41:04):
the confidence and boldness thatyou know, that you know what you
know, I was really surprised at it.
I don't know if it was for Mackenzie or well.
So I was surprised the number ofpeople who would get into the
room with a senior executive andassume that that person knew the

(41:28):
details of my plan, right. And when they would raise a
question, everyone would switched their head and look at
the executive and and I was like, and I had this phenomenal
boss. So I think the other thing I
would say is work with really good people, work with great
leaders. And this woman was exceptional

(41:49):
because she would ask questions with confidence.
She would probe. Everybody would turn to her and
then go scurry away and try to get the work done.
And one day she said to me, you know, I don't know the answer.
So why is everyone, you're the only one that's like not
deferring to my comment. You had a healthy like, well, we

(42:10):
could do it this way, But here'sthe way I've seen it before.
So she was asking questions to move us forward.
Other people thought she was asking questions for her
questions just to be answered. So I would tell anyone, if you
want to innovate, if you want togrow, if you want to lead
change, you know, have the conversation with the senior
person about where the risks are.
They're very confident about that.

(42:30):
They have priorities around whatthey want to get done.
It's important to keep that in mind.
They know where they want to go.Super important, but don't get
stuck into just answering their questions.
A million percent I the way I talk about it with with people
in our organization is having more what if conversations than
what conversations because people go.

(42:50):
If you were in there with an order pad like you're a short
order cook and and you want it what and you want it how and it
needs to be this and that they were.
But how about why did you want it right?
What? What if you had it totally
different I? Remember, they're human beings.
There was this great experience I had when I was in this mid
sized private equity backed company that sold media.
And we, as I told you, we were in New York going to these

(43:11):
agencies and one day I asked them, I said, why would you pick
us as a partner versus someone else?
And they were like we did. We had the cost efficiency
analysis. We had the the right color
thing. We had all the stuff they said,
well, if I go with them, I won'tget in trouble.
If I go with you and you mess up, I could lose my job.
I was like, oh wow, oh, aha. Here's an insight.

(43:33):
The incumbent, you, there's no reason to switch from the
incumbent because you don't wantto lose your job.
And then I was like, well, I gota question.
What if you did something with us and you got promoted?
Do like what I said. So you're you will stay
worrying. About keeping your job.
But what if we could get you a? Permit.
What if I could get you promoted?
I was like, well, I'm not sayingI can, I'm just saying like,

(43:55):
what do you mean? I was like, what if our program
delivered at such a better number against the key thing
that you cared about that now you personally could use that as
a sign to get promoted? Look, it may sound self-serving,
but that person is a human being.
We were trying to sell something.
We were trying to get them on board.
If you don't know their why or their why not, you just kind of

(44:16):
throw things against the wall. Now, immediately when you're
doing that at scale with a larger customer base, it's a
little harder to do, but keepingthat kind of mindset is.
That goes back to the value story.
What is the? What is the bigger value?
What is the unspoken value? Right what?
What are all the ways we can quantify?

(44:37):
And I think it, it's a part of who we are, but we don't want to
let that come out. So last thing I'll say I think
is I would give this feedback. I got very comfortable with who
I am in the last 10 years. I know how I look.
I know where I went to school. I know even though the people in
my hometown, I'd say I have an electrical engineering degree
and they think I'm an electrician, you know, I just

(44:57):
got to roll with that. So being comfortable that you
know what you know, being comfortable that you can learn
what you don't know, being comfortable that there's really
nothing new under the sun, just maybe a new application has
really helped me figure out where I can add value.
And I love growing businesses. I love being an entrepreneur.

(45:19):
I love it when executives or companies have a bevy of assets
that need to be reapplied to a new problem or a new customer
audience. Yep.
And I have the willingness and capacity to go after that with
them, but do so in a way that wecan still spell out the risk and
talk about how we're going to derisk that growth.
Yeah, well, you, you're going tobe everybody's favorite person
these days talking about de risking things because there's a

(45:40):
lot. I mean, there's a, they're high
expectations right now everywhere in business and
there's a push for a lot of innovation, but everybody also
wants to de risk it. I think marketers are have the
inside advantage on being the chief growth officers or the
growth leads. Now they may be retitling us at
some point, but I said if you looked in the room which

(46:03):
functioned has the best opportunity to lead growth be
the Chief Growth Officer. Has the eye on the price
because. With all the uncertainty in the
world, everybody doesn't want tomess up, right?
Everybody wants to get fired. But companies still need to
grow, and they're afraid to grow.
But then they may be afraid to grow, but they don't want to

(46:25):
lose out on the growth. So marketers have this unfair
superpower advantage that we need to lean into because we're
the ones listening to the customers, thinking of simple
messages, looking at the assets,reapplying them and trying to
open up new doors. Well, you put all those words
together, that's called growth. Totally.
Completely well, we just have a couple of minutes left and I

(46:50):
usually round out and and we cankeep it sort of on the short
side. But you know, one of the things
that we always closeout with is what are the companies that do
the best job really broadly. And I think I know what you're
gonna say, but, you know, it's one thing to be a great, you
know, product brand or to have abrand associated with your
products and delivery. It's another thing for your

(47:11):
employees to love you. It's another thing to be a
corporate citizen. And, you know, with a company
the size of a of a Walmart, you are a part of the fabric of
communities. But can you just talk a little
bit about, you know, if it is Walmart, what, what it is that
you think? I give them a shameless plug,
right? As I, as I think about next

(47:32):
steps in my career, stuff I liketo look back on where I've been
and what I learned from it. I'll save it that way, right?
So if you can survive retail chaos for four to five decades,
you have, you must be doing something.
You have something. I think companies that I really
value are the ones that are willingness to change it up.
Now, I don't mean 180° change, but I mean good 510% change per

(47:55):
year because you keep yourself adaptable.
You keep yourself relevant, right?
You don't. You don't try to swing from one
side to the other. You keep modulating 5, seven,
10% change. Well, and I think Harvard calls
that big eye innovations insteada little eye, right?
Yeah. Because you didn't need it,
because you think that to change, you got to go do
something drastically different.But sometimes it's a

(48:16):
modification of A use case, right?
All my business. So I give Walmart credit for
that, right? But I think there are other
exciting brands that are nimble enough to feel like they really
are serving you, but they're really built on a really strong
base. They do the same thing, right?
And so here in Atlanta, I told someone that just by force of

(48:40):
having two kids, I think Chick-fil-A like gets me like
every time I'm looking for the new lemonade flavor.
And I think they do something special with that Chick-fil-A
sauce and cookies and stuff. I think that brands like iconic
brands like Coke, who people maysay were in trouble, but they
had the ability to flex and add different the types of ready to

(49:01):
drink options into their space because they have massive
distribution, they have masters,massive vendor relationships.
And they also have that they trythings and they that is a core
to who they are. They fail fast.
Innovation. Yes, they fail fast.
Yeah. I think a lot of the startups

(49:21):
I've encountered or growth companies, they may get feedback
and they say, I'm going to stay the course, you know?
And I'm like, no, just hear the feedback and modify a little
bit. Yeah.
And I think that as more of those brands learn the lessons
of the big companies and the bigcompanies hear innovation from
the small, things get better. Yeah.

(49:43):
And I like being in there. So I spent a lot of time talking
to small businesses, engaging with mid size because I'm like a
sponge. I'm like, oh, that look cool, I
want to try that right? And then a couple of times I've
been lucky enough to reapply those inside of big companies
and. Now, well, that entrepreneur gig
is a really great one. Like there are a lot of large
companies that have that internal, you know, emerging

(50:04):
enterprise Oregon, you know, do an acquisition and you know,
working on how do we keep this spirit of entrepreneurship or
you know, bring inside integrate.
You were talking about integrate.
How do we integrate entrepreneurship by continuing?
Different, yeah. And I think the company things
that I really love are the ones who create entrepreneur wills
that keep going. If something fails, you don't
stop trying. Fail fast.

(50:26):
What did I learn? How can I reapply?
I like to say this, when I joined Walmart, there was no
Walmart business, but there wereeight to 10 projects that had
tried to get into the business space.
Yes, I read those reports, right.
Yes, I read those documents. I thought about what worked.
I thought about what didn't work.

(50:46):
When I brought out our proposal without my leader, it included
some of those good ideas. It talked about how we need to
do things a little differently. So don't be afraid to read what
somebody else did and reapply. I think it's a, it's a, a good
note to sort of call out, you know, again, thinking back to
your technical background, because the people that I know

(51:08):
that are technically proficient or have gotten degrees maybe in
a complex area and then they, they're working in an adjacent
area. You know, from a role
standpoint, there is a lot of preparation that goes in.
I mean, there's, you know, it's not just show up and go, hey,
have we tried whatever you startby doing?
Homework. You start with an equation.

(51:29):
I joke that I'd intern in NASA and I realized that there wasn't
really a new one in the sun. All the NASA projects were big,
complex, forming like equations that were merged together.
It also made me a little bit fearless because one day
somebody asked me about AI. It's going to take over the
world. And I was like, hey, look, I, I
remember when we put space shuttles, I started off my life

(51:52):
putting space shuttles in the sky.
I was around when we put cell phones and started putting
pictures and videos and cell phones.
I remember when this funny thingcalled the Internet was going to
like, like destroy our world. Like, let's not be afraid.
Like let's figure out how we canapply it.
And I think that I want to say fearlessness.
I want to say a controlled appreciation of fear of the

(52:14):
unknown allows us to look at something new and figure out how
we're going to apply it, figure out how we're going to
commercialize it, and then be ready for the next thing.
And the companies that's doing that are the ones I like to be
around. Well, that's amazing.
Well, I think, you know, you're,you're going to continue doing
great things because you have that right mindset, you have
that positivity, right? The the excitement of what is to

(52:36):
come and the, as you say, the cautiousness and the seriousness
about consequence, but you know,continuing to push forward.
Yeah, I'd also like to have, I suggest to anybody like have a
bit of your personality into it,right?
Have some fun. I remember when my teens, they
were sitting around one day in like a brainstorming session and
I asked them like, you know, what's your favorite super hero?

(52:56):
What's your favorite movie character?
Like? Pretend like in that moment of
darkness of your day when the things aren't going well, you're
that person. Somebody told me there was 1
character and I was like, my favorite move of all time is The
Lion King. And I tell someone like, but I'm
not simple. I like Mufasa, right?
I, they were like, why? I was like, well, my voice
sounds like a little bit. I like the regalness of it.

(53:19):
And I like his playful attitude with his kids.
Like, so when I'm like feeling my best, you know, I'm like,
what would Mufasa do? Right.
And if you don't have your avatar, and if you don't have
your persona or your hero in your bag that you're pulling out
in the midst of building marketing strategy, then you
need one. Yeah, you need it to recover.
That's that's very true. Everybody needs it.

(53:39):
Well, if anybody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way
to get you find you? I was actually super easy to
find. I hopefully I'm probably the
only spelling of Tori, that's TORARIE Durden.
So easy to find on LinkedIn. Personal e-mail is first name,
last name at Gmail. And yeah, I'm always open to
talk or chat or actually help brands where I can.

(54:00):
That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for
coming on and for sharing your amazing journey and story with
us. Join us next time.
And if you've got a guest that you think we should have on
here, we would love to have them.
Remember, there's a fine line between genius and insanity, and
we're walking it. I'm Moira.
Better join me next time on the Marketing Net House.

(54:24):
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