Armchair Expert: B2B Marketing Lessons on Co-Creating with Your Community with Chief Marketing Officer at Katalon, Derek Weeks

In a world full of polished content, authenticity is what truly cuts through.

That’s the secret behind Armchair Expert, the wildly popular podcast from Dax Shepard that mixes candid conversation with crowd-sourced chaos. In this episode, we unpack the marketing insights behind it with special guest Derek Weeks, Chief Marketing Officer at Katalon.

Together, we explore what B2B marketers can learn from building real connections, inviting community participation, and letting go of perfection to create content people genuinely trust and engage with.

About our guest, Derek Weeks

Derek Weeks is the Chief Marketing Officer at Katalon. He is a driven, results-oriented CMO with a proven ability to achieve multiple successful exits, build and execute bold go-to-market strategies for each stage of business growth, and demonstrate solid returns on marketing investments. Accomplished at building high-performing teams, driving quality marketing-sourced pipeline, developing massive communities, and collaborating with sales teams to meet business targets.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From the Armchair Expert Podcast:

• Vulnerability builds trust and attention. Derek Weeks emphasizes that Armchair Expert’s standout quality is its authentic vulnerability, which creates a powerful emotional connection with listeners. He explains, “It’s really about being human… It builds an emotional connection with your brand.” Derek draws a parallel to B2B marketing, highlighting that it’s crucial to showcase real people behind the brand to forge trust.
• Mix long-form and short-form content strategically. Armchair Expert masterfully balances 90-minute conversations with short, snackable segments like Armchair Anonymous. Derek believes this dual-format approach is essential for B2B marketing: “That kind of mix of long and short is something that you have to play into as a marketer and realize your audience expects different things at different times.” He stresses that marketers must go deep when it matters, but also repurpose content aggressively to cater to varied audience behaviors, especially across platforms like TikTok.
• Empower community-generated content. Derek praises Armchair Expert for its use of community-driven content through Armchair Anonymous, where listeners share personal stories weekly. He says, “They really don’t have to spend time creating content at all… believe in your community and the value that they create.” B2B marketers should harness their user-generated content to scale content creation far beyond the limits of a marketing budget.

Quotes

“ You have to think about what draws people to the next.  What did you do in that moment that got people to say, ‘This is worth following or paying attention to or coming back again?’  Figure out what's going to make people come back, not what makes people appear the first time.  The first time is kind of an easy win. The second time, or third time, or 10th time is the hard part.”

Time Stamps

[00:55]  Meet Derek Weeks, CMO at Katalon

[01:23]  Why Armchair Expert?

[03:01] Vulnerability and Trust in B2B

[08:58]  Don’t Build Campaigns, Build Conversations

[13:37] The Long-Form to Short-Form Pipeline

[19:05] Unfair Mindshare

[21:47] What Armchair Expert Gets Right

[24:01] Practical Ways to Bring Personality into B2B

[27:38] Final Thoughts & Takeaways

Links

Connect with Derek on LinkedIn

Learn more about Katalon

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Head of Production). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

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