Customer Success Playbook S3 E44 - Cairo Marsh - Building Cross-Cultural Customer Connections That Stick

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In this midweek edition of the Customer Success Playbook, Cairo Marsh returns to the mic to explore the layered world of empathetic marketing across cultures. From the Bronx to Tokyo, Cairo's lived experience adds a global lens to his practical insights on designing connection-first marketing strategies. He unpacks how empathy drives retention, not just acquisition, and reveals a three-tiered framework for building brand relationships based on product, brand identity, and social capital.

Detailed Analysis: Cairo Marsh is back for part two, and the conversation dives even deeper. What begins as a lighthearted exchange about food adventures in Tokyo quickly transforms into a tactical discussion on what it means to build marketing strategies that resonate across diverse cultural contexts.

The heart of this episode lies in Cairo’s model of connection:

• Functional (product value)
• Emotional (brand resonance)
• Social (status or identity alignment)

By structuring messaging and experiences around these layers, brands can meet customers where they are—geographically and emotionally. Cairo shares how this model works globally, with examples from his own bi-continental agency experience.

But Cairo doesn’t stop at strategy. He addresses the million-dollar question: how do you measure the impact of empathy? His answer is both practical and powerful: combine transactional data with perceptual insights to understand not just what customers do, but why they do it. That "why," he argues, is the leading indicator of business success.

Crucially, the episode draws a bridge between marketing and customer success. Cairo emphasizes that empathy shouldn’t end at conversion. It's the glue that holds the entire post-sale journey together—retention, loyalty, and advocacy all benefit when brands treat customers like humans, not just metrics.

This conversation is a masterclass in global customer connection and a blueprint for embedding empathy across every phase of the customer journey. It’s also a prelude to the next episode, where Cairo returns to unpack how AI fits into the empathy equation.

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Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Customer success.
Hello and welcome back to theCustomer Success Playbook
podcast.
I'm Kevin Metzger here with myco-host Roman Reba.
This is our Wednesday show andwe're talking again with Cairo
Marsh from Relative Roman.
Excited to get going onWednesday's show.
Cairo's back, and we're gonnatackle our one big question

(00:27):
here, Kenneth, but before we do,we got a couple, uh, questions
for Cairo.
Really, really interesting guy.
He's been all over the place.
Cairo, our audience may notknow, but you, you're from the
Bronx, you lived in Tokyo.
What brought you all the wayfrom the Bronx to Tokyo?
How does that happen?
Uh, the food, the food in Tokyois much better.

(00:47):
Nah, I, I look, I think, I thinkI've always been.
Fortunate enough to be, youknow, growing up in New York,
you get exposed to all differenttypes of cultures and things
like that.
That's the beauty of New York,right there is, you know, you,
you can, you can be in aneighborhood, but you're still
in the, the mosaic of the citywhere you're interacting with
everybody.
So I've always had a differentcuriosity for travel and, and

(01:08):
things like that, and I wasfortunate enough to spin.
First, like three months inPeru.
And then that really made mewanna live overseas.
And then I followed thatimmediately with a trip to Japan
for a friend's wedding.
Um, and I just found Japan sofascinating.
So at that point I was geared upto live somewhere
internationally.
I went over to Japan.

(01:28):
And Japan is again, it's not,um.
It's not even, I, I alwaysdescribe it.
I didn't like it.
I didn't go there and go, I loveit.
It's so easy.
It was like, I went over there,I'm like, what's going on?
Like, what did I just, it was,it was a riddle I needed to
figure out, do you know what Imean?
Because it's so, it's so nuancedand different than, than, than
it is here in the us And thatwas just something that sort of

(01:50):
stuck with me.
And then a couple years later, Ihad the opportunity to make a
move and, and got a job at anagency out in, uh, in Tokyo, and
then eventually started my own.
But you split time livingbetween Japan and, and New York
these days, right?
Yeah, just recently.
The last, the last year and ahalf.
I go back and forth between theUS and, uh, and Tokyo.

(02:10):
We also have an office here inthe US that I'm trying to grow.
We have an office in Tokyo.
We also have one in, uh, uh,Taipei that we just launched
recently.
So I, I, I don't, I don't sleepvery well.
I'm usually jet lagged, but it'sall good.
Awesome.
And so if we were visitingTokyo, you, you moved there for
the food.
What, what do you recommend?
What do we have to try?
Well, it depends how adventurousyou are, my friend.

(02:33):
Um, it depends how adventurousyou are.
Like I, honestly, I think allthe food, the food quality's
incredible, but I, you know,I've been out there and I've had
just a whole meal whereeverything was raw beef, right?
It's things you wouldn't really,you know, normally eat here and
not just like one dish.
I mean, every dish, like after awhile you're like, are they
gonna cook anything?
Like, no, they're not.

(02:54):
It's just, it's what it's.
Um, and, and it was delicious.
Amazing.
I've had, you know, you can eat,it's the only place in the world
I would ever eat raw chicken.
I've eaten raw chicken outthere.
You would never eat raw chickenin, in the US because Yeah.
You know, whatever.
But, um, but yeah, the foodquality is just amazing.
Honestly, you can't go wrong ifyou're, if you're less
adventurous, you know, the, the,the.

(03:15):
The, the staples of liketeppanyaki or, or yakitori,
which are basically grilledfoods and you can get whatever
you want.
Sometimes it'll be vegetables,sometimes it'll be seafood.
It's in a teki setting.
It's absolutely amazing.
But you really can't go wrong.
You really can't go wrong.
I.
I love it.
I Okay.
We, we have another foodquestion, but it's too close to
dinner.
Kyra, I gotta get outta thesefood questions.

(03:35):
You're from New York.
You, you a Nick's fan?
Yankees fan Giants fan.
You got a team?
Who's your New York team here?
Uh, you, you're putting me onthe spot.
New Yorkers will hate me forthis.
So, so, and I'm gonna blame mydad, right?
So my dad.
My dad didn't follow sports, sohe did not teach me New York
cultural sports values.
So I had to discover on my ownand I discovered random things.

(03:57):
So I'm a, I'm a Yankee fan.
That's my one New York team,'cause they're from the Bronx,
but I'm a Philadelphia 76 ERsfan and a Dallas Cowboys fan.
So, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'mnot the best New York fan.
A glutton for punishment onthose other teams, but at least
you got Yankee.
Yankee win some.
So this.
Yeah, definitely.

(04:18):
So, Cairo, here's a bigquestion.
Yeah.
How can brands use empathy andvalue as a driver to design
marketing strategies that trulyresonate with the audiences
across diverse regions andcultures?
Yeah.
There's like four questions inthere.
I feel like I could decon, I candeconstruct those.
Exactly.
But, but like, like, to start, Ithink, I think the way that you

(04:40):
use empathy to drive sort ofrelationships and, and business
outcomes, one of the things thatwe focus on is sort of
connection, right?
So a lot of times I think we,we, we may think about what's
the, what's the salesproposition or what's our key
message, whatever.
What we try to design strategiesaround is what will both.
What will the brand and theconsumer connect around?

(05:02):
Will they see that sort of eyeto eye and that that's the point
of, of relationship building.
Like, oh, we have that incommon.
You know, where you, where youhave that point of, of, of
empathy.
Um, and those connectionopportunities start we think, at
three different levels, likeonce basically about the
product.
So what are you gonna connect onaround the product?
What are we offering you thatyou actually need at a very
functional level?

(05:23):
And that's the starting point.
The next part is around thebrand, or why do we do it in a
way that actually appeals to youso that you feel like a
connection with us and our wayof working overall.
And the third level is really ata social level that says, why
this being affiliated with us asa brand?
Add social capital, socialcurrency to what you do.
So you have a sense of pride inbeing part of a, of being a

(05:45):
customer of ours.
So.
When we think about how do youstructure communications to
build relationships, it's reallythrough those three connection
points that create that, thatwhat we believe is a, a, a, a
real, um, differentiator.
How the consumer starts to feelabout a brand or a product.
I.
Hey, Kyro, how do you, if acompany starts to shift towards

(06:06):
this and they, they're trying tobe more empathetic, empathetic
and, and drive, you know, reallyfocused on the value to the end,
end customers, how do youmeasure any of this?
Like, how do you know if it'sworking?
How do you know if if whatyou're doing is actually
delivering value?
It's actually empathetic.
Like, I always am curious, I'mnot a marketing guy, so I'm
always curious Yeah.
How marketers, uh, measure thisstuff.

(06:26):
Uh, you know, half the time Iwonder what.
How people measure a lot ofthings.
So I think it's a good question.
I think it's a good question.
No, I, I think, I think on acouple those, look at the end of
the day, it's, it's veryinteresting right?
And I, and I say this all thetime, like, I don't expect
clients to us who believeeverything that we believe.
If you're, if you're a clientand you got quarterly sales to
make, you got quarterly sales tomake, right?

(06:48):
So what you need to believe inis whether you hit your targets,
whether you're getting, youknow, return on, on your
investment.
You know, like that's thefundamental KPIs.
It has to work at a businesslevel, not necessarily a, a, a
performance level.
Now, what we found.
Is that by building strongerrelationships, you, it tends to
win hats, overall businessperformance.
Now, the reason that does it is'cause it, it, it bakes in sort

(07:11):
of loyalty.
It lowers your cost to actuallybring people back once they
connect with you.
The way that we measure that iswe, we look at it a couple of
different ways.
You have transactional data,sales available data that we try
to couple them with survey datathat allows us to understand why
are people actually connectingyou with you?
What audiences are connectingwith you?
How are you changing thedifference in connection for

(07:33):
your audience versus how youraudience perceives your
competitors?
And we start to see Deltas risein how people perceive you and
your competitors.
That tends to be a lending nale, a leading indicator of of,
of sales and businessperformance.
So Kyra, we, you know, ourpodcast title, right?
Customer Success Playbook, andwe're talk about customer
success and a lot of times it'skind of post, it's post-sales,

(07:56):
right?
Uh, sure.
Support of the customer.
Do you see a play in betweenempathy processes, the
post-sales and reten customerretention?
And you mentioned, you mentionedthe lower end cost.
Do you see ways of that playingin together?
I, I think, how do you saycustomer retention?

(08:17):
Like, so my, my career startedin, in, in customer retention.
The, uh, I told you guyspreviously that I had worked at
a, um, a small marketing companyin New Jersey where I got my
start.
That was a purely retentionbased marketing company.
So a lot of my philosophies inour approach take into account
retention and the importance ofthat.
I think that.

(08:39):
When you sell people, right, andI think you can easily sell
people in a transactional way,and sometimes it may feel more
efficient.
You do that by discounting.
You do that by whatever methodto get a selling.
What that doesn't do is lead tosort of that ongoing
relationship and retain behaviorthat you actually want.
I think when you work throughthe lens of.

(09:00):
Empathy or relationships.
What that does is that creates adifference in how people want to
continue to engage with you andwhy they continue to engage you.
And that should play out though,that should play out in your
post sales communications aswell.
Like we look at this not from aa, like one of the things that
we try to define ourselves asis, is.
Being focused on customerexperience as a whole, not just

(09:21):
on the upfront acquisition or onthe retention, but how do you
really look at that sort ofholistically now when you work
at every different touchpoint?
At, at the, at the call center,when I go check out things
online, at the website, and thathelps fuel a sense of, wow,
these people actually care aboutme.
They get me.
They, they're trying tounderstand and align it that
makes all the difference in theworld.

(09:43):
Kyro, you're coming back onFriday, right?
So we got you for two shows.
You're coming back for thethird.
To wrap this up, Friday is our,uh, AI Friday, where we talk
about the artificialintelligence plays.
So we're gonna, we're gonna talkabout how AI impacts this whole
conversation, right?
In sentiment analysis andautomated interactions actually
make marketing more empathetic.

(10:03):
Is there a risk of lo losingthat human touch?
Kyra, I'm, I'm excited to divein and see what you think about
AI and what the impact that'sgonna have.
So am I.
Our audience makes sure yousubscribe like the show.
Uh, we really appreciate youlistening.
You'll get the notification sowhen the AI show comes out
Friday, you're, you'll get alittle notification on your
phone.
Listen to it, share it with yourfriends and colleagues.

(10:24):
We really appreciate it.
And as always, Kevin, keep onplaying.