July 16, 2024 • 27 mins
In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, marketers face the challenge of balancing creative intuition with data-driven decision-making. As technology advances and consumer behaviours shift, the art and science of marketing are increasingly intertwined, requiring professionals to master both realms to achieve success.
In this episode, I'm joined by Amy Lewis - a seasoned product marketer from GitHub - who shares valuable insights into navigating this delicate balance in the world of tech marketing. She explores how creativity and data analysis come together to shape effective marketing strategies in the digital age.
We explore the intricacies of managing remote teams while fostering creativity, and discuss how data can inform and enhance creative processes without stifling innovation. Our conversation spans from personalization strategies to the evolution of SEO, all through the lens of balancing art and science in marketing.
Join us for this enlightening discussion that reveals how successful marketers are blending creativity with data to drive impactful campaigns and build meaningful connections with their audiences.
We discuss:
- The intersection of creativity and data in modern marketing strategies
- Using data to inform and enhance creative processes
- Balancing personalization with data privacy concerns
- The role of intuition in data-driven decision making
- Fostering creativity in remote team environments
- The evolution of SEO and content marketing in the data age
- Measuring the impact of creative campaigns with analytics
- Adapting creative approaches for different generations based on data insights
Follow Amy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyhlewis/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ana 2.0 (00:00):
This is Tech Beyond the Hype, the podcast where we talk to experts
and leaders about the latest techand business trends to figure out
what's shaping the future of work.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back toanother brilliant episode of the show.
Our guest today, Amy Lewis, is Directorof Product Marketing for AI at GitHub.
(00:23):
She shares invaluable insightsabout how to build high performing
teams in the remote working world.
and how to lead innovative marketingstrategies that really resonate
with customers and keep them loyal.
Whether you're looking to improvecohesion within your team, or you're
interested in understanding how enhancedanalytics are shaping the future of
(00:44):
marketing, this episode has you covered.
Prepare for a really dynamic interviewcovering everything from the evolving
marketing landscape, to tips andtricks that About how you can use
bitmojis to be more approachable tocolleagues in the digital era of work.
Enjoy the show
Amy (01:02):
My name is amy lewis.
I am a product marketer by trade.
I'm currently working at GitHub and I havehad a long career in tech and across a
number of product stacks and communities.
I'm excited to be here with you todayto have some of those conversations.
Ana 2.0 (01:21):
Awesome.
Thank you.
So when we talked initially, we discussedyour role as a team manager and how you've
managed to shift the culture towards.
a more collaborative andagile way of working.
Could you talk a littlebit more about that?
Amy (01:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
With our current team, we actually do tryto use that agile methodology, because
there's so much work to be done and I wanteverybody to have something that they know
is theirs and something they're proud of.
But I also like to build teams aroundif you're supporting others to make
sure that we don't accidentally getinto that hero / diving catch mentality
(02:02):
that makes us all work in isolation.
So a couple of things that we do asa team; we have a spread board, we
do spread planning every two weeksso that everybody has some exposure
to everybody else's projects.
It's a way to kind of shout out,check each other, check in with each
other, cross support each other.
And if anybody goes on vacationor PTO for any reason, we
(02:24):
can easily cover each other.
Having that regular checkpointin addition to our team meetings
keeps us focused and structured.
And the team meetings, in fact, justyesterday did a team meeting and
it's like, "okay, anybody blockedin a way that somebody else can
get you unblocked on the team?"
And just those littlethings, it builds trust.
It builds a sense of collaboration andit rewards it because I think too often
(02:47):
we've been trained if you can't handleit yourself, you're not doing your job.
And I think in this modern time, likewhen you've got a team of talented
people, unlock all that talent, seehow they can help each other and
really reward that when it happens.
Ana 2.0 (03:02):
Absolutely.
That sounds like you're doing areally good job of bringing together
lots of different people with lotsof different skills and making sure
that you're taking advantage ofeveryone's class, which is great.
What did the team look like before youstarted implementing these different
processes and ways of working?
Amy (03:20):
When you don't have these mechanisms in place, people can feel very isolated.
I've been a remote worker for anawfully long time, but when COVID
hit, all of us kind of had to trainin this work from home mentality.
People have different work styles.
There are people who are more introvertedand who like to go deep and do a bunch
of writing, turn things off, get focused.
(03:40):
And there's other people who thrivein that brainstorming kind of place.
If you don't create space for bothways of working, that can be hard.
So, in first getting the team together,acknowledging that not everybody had a
history of working remotely, like I have,but here's some things that I've picked up
and here's some ways that we can be makingsure that you have a regular team meeting.
(04:01):
I know it sounds so simple, but Ithink it can fall by the wayside
and making sure you're usingthat time to connect as people.
We also have ongoing Slack channels.
So every day it's a way of checkingin, you know, it's kind of a roll
call every morning and not in aabrasive like "tell me what you're
up to," but more of a "Oh, cool."
You know, we'll put a fun thing, you putan emoji to kind of set your mood and
(04:24):
tone for the day, et cetera, which allthat kind of builds that team spirit.
So I would say before we put all thesethings in place, it felt more like a
collection of really talented individuals.
And these are the secrets tomaking it feel like a team.
That it's really seamless.
That one of us can answer forany other of us at any time.
(04:45):
And that's kind of flat.
It shouldn't be me as directorversus the people who report to me.
Everybody should be proud of the teamaccomplishments and able to speak with
pride about what they're doing andwhat anybody else is doing at any time.
Ana 2.0 (04:57):
I love that.
It's like, especially remoteworking, it can be so easy to become
detached from the team becauseyou're working behind the screen.
In my experience, for instance,I work with a full American
team and I live in London.
We can only ever see eachother through meetings.
And it's so important to havethose regular check ins and to
(05:18):
keep some level of personal touch.
Otherwise, I think it's very easyto forget that there's people behind
the work that's being produced
Amy (05:28):
And you bring up such a great point, particularly for me in marketing.
It's such a people activity, if you will.
And so reminding ourselves how wecan connect through these new tools
and ways and means in some ways.
It's a meta analogy for what we need to doin our work, because we can't necessarily
(05:48):
go out and shake hands of everybody.
We're trying to sell to you, right?
It won't scale.
So as we think about these scalemechanisms, think about what works
for ourselves, like what helpsus feel connected to each other,
to our product, to our mission.
And we bring that in our work.
We did some brainstorming this week too.
And again, a little bit of an ad hoc, butthe same spirit you would do if you were
(06:10):
laughing and doing it together in person,like ways of kind of breaking down that
barrier and building that trust is justgoing to get you to higher productivity.
If I'm being very bloodless about itand take the humanity out, like it's
good for work too, because when you havethat trust and you have that camaraderie
together, you're so much more productive.
It's so much more productive to havethe ability to collaborate than it is
(06:34):
to be just an individual hacking away,hoping things get better, checking
your watch, are we off the clock yet?
All of it makes it betterwhenever you feel like you're
in it together with a mission.
And it informs our work as marketersof how we're going to take that
spirit out to the audience.
Ana 2.0 (06:50):
Absolutely.
I was just thinking as you were speaking,there's obviously, there's, there's a
lot We're both from a generation thathas experienced office life and then
gone remote, even though obviouslyyour work, you said you've been working
remotely, there's a whole generationof people who will be working remotely
and that be their only referencepoint of what work looks like.
(07:12):
Do you have any Gen Z people in your teamand if so, how are you helping them to
feel the same level of connection thatother people who previously worked in the
office and who know each other already?
How do you kind of create thatsense of camaraderie for them?
Amy (07:27):
It's such a great question.
We don't have any Gen Z folks on the team.
We do have a couple of interns and I dohave some mentees who I've worked with.
And I love your question because I thinkit's a point that all of us, either
in management or I guess for the elderstates people now who've seen life before
and after, I think we have to teach it.
(07:47):
I think it's a reminder to all of usthat there is a great opportunity in kind
of teaching the craft of collaboration.
We're inheriting a generationbecause my kids are of that younger
generation who did slides in schooland group projects like that was
emphasized in a way that probablyit wasn't as much for us growing up.
So they have some of this baked incollaboration by virtue of their
(08:10):
training and to your point, what theydon't have is what that looks like in
this office or professional settingand how to work in those hybrid models.
So, I think you have to talk it through.
You have to talk very openly about theart of what you're doing, and we do
that on my team now anyway, and I'vedone that on all of my teams of like,
"Hey, here's the structure of the team.
(08:31):
Here's how we work.
Here's how I like to lead.
How do you like to be managed?"
You know, "do you workbetter in person or remotely?
What are some of your experiences?"
So just talking it through, becausethe mentee in particular, I'm thinking
about, we had a real conversationabout how to network there.
These soft skills, I think that youlose by not seeing somebody else do it.
(08:55):
So what might be very natural tous in being able to transfer it
a little bit from our office daysof grabbing a coffee with somebody
or dropping by, you know, asking aquestion, kind of that informal piece.
We have to kind of help them learnabout how do you use Slack as that
informal water cooler, like what'sappropriate, what's not appropriate
(09:15):
and how to build some of that gluebecause it isn't necessarily obvious.
And even though I think that generationhas more training through what they've
done in school, it's still not ahundred percent immediate transfer to
the new remote and distributed office.
Ana 2.0 (09:29):
Right.
Absolutely.
It's a hard one because it's somethingthat all of us in reality, all of us
are tackling for the first time andtrying to figure it out as we go.
So it's quite interestingseeing how different teams are
approaching the connectivity piece.
Amy (09:42):
One thing sort of timely and from my recent experience.
Way back when I had a blog post I didon the approachable t-shirt and I would
go to conferences and I would weara t-shirt that was meant to invite
somebody to sort of comment or befunny or have a laugh or et cetera.
And I did it in sort of likelowering that barrier to entry.
(10:03):
We work in tech.
We can be introverted.
We can be shy.
And so making it easier for somebody tohave that first conversation with you,
I take that into my Slack life now.
So I use a Slack bitmoji.
I'm a football fan, the universalfootball soccer for Americans.
And so I play as well asreally enjoy watching.
(10:24):
So I've got a bitmoji of mekind of juggling a soccer ball.
And it's completely silly.
But at a recent get together,multiple people came up and said,
"I recognize you from your Bitmoji.
Do you play?
Like, I play too."
Really great conversation.
So, just one little tip and trick;think about some part of your
personality that you want to talkto other people about a way you want
(10:47):
to connect, and sort of flash that.
Do what you can to help yourselfbe approachable and give
people a way to engage you.
So, that's one trick that I like to teachpeople of like, you know, can be a line
in your Slack profile, but don't forgetthat piece of you that makes it easier
to have the first conversation so you canlead and have the second conversation.
Ana 2.0 (11:06):
That's a really great tip.
I really like when workcan be a little bit silly.
I think it's always good to kindof take down the mask a little
bit that people wear as well.
So it sounds like you're reallymanaging that, even just with
something simple like an emoji.
Amy (11:20):
A Bitmoji, yep.
So it looks enough like me that I can beidentified, so they let me use it, right?
But it's got this, you know, I'mjuggling a soccer ball and, and
you know, sometimes it builds thatrapport and sometimes you find out you
cheer for different clubs, but thatalone becomes like a conversation.
We've got all sorts of footballtournaments happening right now.
So I'm having thoseconversations internationally.
(11:41):
You bring a little bit of yourselfand then a little bit of what's
happening in the world, and itjust makes a simpler connection.
And I think that's something whenI talked to Gen Z folks, they're so
good that they've got digital nativein a way that I can only aspire to.
But reminding them of how do youbreak that first barrier, right?
Like oftentimes people in theirchat threads and their whatever,
(12:02):
they actually met in real life andthen kind of form these groups.
But when you're doing it truly remotely,how do you get some of that rapport?
And they know these tricks in someways, they know them better than I do,
but they don't always think about crossapplying them to their professional life.
Ana 2.0 (12:18):
That's brilliant.
I love that.
I guess it kind of it leads back into whatwe were saying about trying to personalize
and humanize the person behind the screen.
I have to step away a little bit fromour conversation and focus on marketing,
which is kind of your main focus area.
How do you translate thatinto the world of marketing?
Because you were saying earlierabout marketing strategies needing
(12:40):
to be more personalized and
how, how are you doing that?
Amy (12:47):
I think that it starts with good listening.
I often find so many marketers secretlyare introverts, which is funny when you
think about, you know, we kind of blastthe earth with our content and messaging,
but I think it starts with good listening.
There's something about that propercombination of tapping into these
(13:10):
mainstream ideas, tapping into thesetruths that will make it feel like
someone's like, "Oh my gosh, you hear me.
You see me, this is also my problem, mychallenge, my issue, the opportunity."
For me and what I do, I'mreally a method actor.
So find ways to listen into sales calls,find ways where your community that you're
(13:33):
targeting, where are their watering holes,go listen and lurk, really get into the
language of it, get into the rhythm of it.
And you'll quickly see what the patternsare and then start to tailor your
messaging, your positioning and whatyou're doing around those needs and
see where you can map your languageright back to what you're saying.
(13:56):
Echoing works.
We like to see ourselves in what we'reviewing, that alone feels personalized.
Ana 2.0 (14:04):
How much of that personalization and the listening comes from data?
Because the way that you said it makesme think of kind of going to conferences
or being in person at a watering hole,listening in, but how much of that
listening comes from data and analytics?
Amy (14:20):
I think you have to have a balance of both.
Perhaps a controversial opinion,but I think marketing is
equal parts art and science.
The amount of analytics and metrics wecan get today to sort of map is amazing.
But the breakthrough, the new thing, thatspark; that's going to be the art, right?
(14:42):
We could look at the MonaLisa and, and sort of break
it down and people do, right?
There's fascinating kind of data-backed- "this is why you react the way you do,"
but in some ways it's a retro-analysis andfitting to something that we feel when we
see a particular piece of art, etcetera.
So I always recommend that people useall the tools at hand where modern tools
(15:04):
allow us to deliver more customizedmessaging through more channels.
But don't let the art ofwhat you're doing escape you.
So if you see something, becauseyou have done this listening,
you're in your community, you'rethinking about your community,
you're focused on your community.
Look at the data.
Does it back you up?
If it doesn't, is it because you've foundsomething new and you're on the edge of
(15:29):
something different that you can approach?
Is it because you're a victim of yourown interest or last in first out?
So it's a great way to balanceyour art with your science.
It's a great question.
I think to ignore either is toeliminate the power of both.
Ana 2.0 (15:45):
Right.
Love that.
I was thinking, as you were talking about,I don't know if you've seen Apple's latest
commercial that got cancelled recently.
It's called iCrush.
Amy (15:57):
Ooh, I have not seen that one.
Ana 2.0 (16:00):
So in a nutshell, it's the ad for their new iPad.
And from what I understand, the coremessage of the whole advert is it starts
with like a piano and it's all thesekind of quote unquote retro things that
start becoming crushed by the iPad.
(16:22):
So the message is kind of, "youcan achieve all of this stuff.
You can achieve great music, greatart, great everything, through
technology," and it massively backfired.
You had the whole creative communitybeing like, "you're saying that
technology is going to replace a wholebunch of things that aren't really
(16:48):
important for the creative industries."
And I guess it echoes what you weresaying about it's a combination of both.
You have to be able to leverage thetechnology to an extent, but it's also
about having the creativity and the magicthat happens outside of the technology.
Amy (17:05):
I love that too, because it does speak to the know your audience
and balance the, you know, when youdo have a disaster, sometimes it's
because you haven't listened to bothsides of the data and the customer.
Surveys and, you know, theart and the good sense in
advertising or product launches.
One of the famous ones is always the newCoke when it got launched way back when.
(17:28):
Mathematically, everything seemed likethis would just be the perfect thing.
And people didn't take intoaccount perhaps enough the deep
emotional connection people hadwith Coke as it was, again, one
of the classic kind of launches,crashes and rollbacks in history.
And it warns all of us in this form of artand science, listen to both sides, because
(17:52):
if you don't, this can be the outcome.
All the data can indicate, go, go, go.
But you just needed somebody to say,"but I like Coke the way it is," right?
And to your point, iPad has such afollowing in the creative audience.
We always joke about thepower of superlative.
Sometimes people don'twant it to be better-er.
Ana 2.0 (18:12):
It's, um, it's an interesting balance that you have to strike and
Especially, I guess, when you havethese moments of having to take back
something because it's backfired comesa lot down to human emotion, which
is something that's so difficult toquantify from a data point of view.
Amy (18:33):
I often joke that if we change the name of marketing, product
marketing became mind control.
We'd either be kicked out of every companyor be the most sought after set of jobs,
but in some ways it is what it is, right?
And, back to your point about how do wepersonalize in this modern time, there's
also a fine line between making surea message speaks, because people don't
(18:54):
want to feel like they're just one ofthe crowd, they want it to speak to them.
But we've all had that counterpoint offeeling like our phone is listening to us.
Like, I just thought abouteating oatmeal for breakfast.
I didn't want all these oatmealads delivered to me immediately.
Did I even say the word oatmealout loud kind of feeling?
So I think that's the other kind ofvery interesting challenge of our age
(19:14):
of how do we personalize without makingit so personal that it feels creepy.
Ana 2.0 (19:20):
I totally get that.
I imagine it's a reallyhard line to, to draw.
How do you go about even tryingto find that middle ground?
Amy (19:27):
When we do a launch, I love to do a planned out series of touch
points where you measure the impact.
And that way you can get someof these, are you on track?
Are you accomplishing whatyou want to accomplish?
Or do you need to tweak for anything toour point of like, is it too personalized?
Is it not personal enough?
Is it correctly messaged and positioned?
(19:50):
So in a recent launch, we again, and thisis sort of a standard operating procedure;
I like measure the day of measure thenext day, then two weeks, one month.
Everybody loves that first rush ofa big launch and it's super amazing.
And you get all these hits in thatimmediate energy, but make sure
that you've made a plan and thatyou use the same document, right?
(20:12):
A ubiquitous link, that you justkeep pointing people back to, so
you can see the trends over time.
And it's such a good discipline to not gethooked on that energy of just launch new.
But think about what it lookslike long tail and market.
How long does your launch energy last?
Is it continuing to resonate?
Like, what else can you do to support?
So that's a way of baking in that conceptof listen early and often to the folks
(20:38):
that you're impacting your stakeholders,your customers, everybody around you
so that you can adjust as needed andyou don't get caught by surprise if
something that seemed very good on theoutset, kind of tapers off or turns
in a way that you hadn't expected.
And I think such a big partof marketing is that kind of
listening either in a statisticdata way, but also in a closed way.
(21:05):
And if you do it mindfully andpurposefully, then you can scale.
Ana 2.0 (21:08):
And when you say listening in a closed way, like what does that look like?
Amy (21:14):
Meaning I think that you have to find where those watering holes are and you
have to build those trust relationships.
So in the tech industry broadly, it canlook like watching on LinkedIn, it can
look like a series of keywords, it canbe through your sales team letting you
know, a customer is happy or unhappy.
I think there's a lot of waysto make sure that you're kind of
(21:35):
getting a voice and then listeningto see if that's multiple voices.
Is this a single instance of somebody'shappy or unhappy test, right?
It starts to give youthings to listen for.
Keywords bubble up.
This is the power of using our scaleand our modern technology to see
like, are there certain words that arepopping in response to what you've done?
(21:56):
Back to our original conversationof what does it look like even
within teams to be distributed now?
Let's spread this out and thinkabout organizations, right?
If you're in product marketing,you don't necessarily sit
with a sales enablement team.
You don't necessarily sit with yourdemand gen team or with your web team,
so you need to make sure that you havemechanisms to listen across all those
(22:18):
different surface areas, because you asone individual certainly can't do all this
listening both high and low on your own.
So you need to make sure that youunderstand where are either the pools
of data that you can access in yourcompany or the people that can help
you unpack it and be working together.
So it's taking kind of all these skillswe're talking about of collaboration,
(22:39):
and then pulling them outside your teamand practicing across the organization
so that you can listen to both thenumbers and the individuals as needed
to get the, the best work delivered.
Ana 2.0 (22:50):
Awesome.
How do you think that theapproach to marketing is changing?
Because you mentioned a couple oftimes about keywords, for instance,
and I know that Google is kind ofeliminating the whole SEO element.
How are you approaching that?
Amy (23:03):
It's such a great question.
I think a modern marketeris never done learning.
It's reminding ourselves that peopleare the same and that we have to
really put ourselves in the shoesif we want to be a customer first
and a customer obsessed company.
That people like what they like, listen,and I often joke in an enterprise
setting, we sometimes expect peopleto want less than we would demand for
(23:27):
ourselves in a commercial setting.
And I always say, stop andremind yourself; if you are the
customer, what would you think ifyou heard that message delivered?
So, in some ways, like, know yourbasics and don't forget the classics.
Simultaneously, find ways to stayinvolved with how things are changing.
Listen to podcasts, right?
(23:47):
Engage with a broader marketingcommunity, hire for diversity.
And that includes all the ways,including, you know, voices
that are trained differently.
So generational voices are important.
Diversity matters so much because it'sgoing to help you cover those blind spots
and biases and open your mind differently.
So if you're in the sound of my voice andyou have the ability to hire, think about
(24:11):
that when you're hiring to make sure thatyou are bringing in a perspective that's
different than yours to challenge that.
I think marketing will continueto get harder in some ways,
but we'll have more tools.
I look back at the dayswhen it used to be...
you'd buy a billboard and you barely hadto explain to someone why that had ROI.
(24:31):
And then when the web came, I thinkall marketeers got held far more
accountable to numbers rather thanthe art of what they delivered.
And I think that as we go forward,especially with that rise of AI,
that we're just going to be speedingup in terms of what the demands are
(24:52):
for marketers to kind of prove ROI.
I think the only way to stay on topof that is again, stay connected to
the community of marketing at large.
Stay on top of what themodern tools are and test.
Get a sandbox, experiment, try things on.
So whether you learn by reading ordoing or by learning from others,
keep all those channels open.
(25:14):
But remember the basics in theend, we're trying to convince
somebody to do something.
So what does that look like for you?
And what are the moderntools to get there?
Ana 2.0 (25:24):
Fantastic.
What a great way to end the show.
I feel like we're leaving on avery positive and motivating note.
So thank you so much.
Before we go, is there anywhere thataudience members can go to follow
you or connect with you anywhere.
Amy (25:42):
I would love to connect on LinkedIn.
I'm spending more of my time there today.
Amy Lewis, I'm sorry to all my fellowAmy Louises, as I like to joke.
We seem to be plentiful, but I willcertainly leave a link with you, Ana, so
that people can reach out and connect.
I would love to talk shop.
Ana 2.0 (26:00):
Fab, yeah, we will add your link.
to the bottom of the show notes.
Amy, once again, thank youso much for joining me.
It's been so much fun having youon and I hope we can stay in touch.
Amy (26:10):
Thank you for the opportunity.
Ana 2.0 (26:11):
And so that's a wrap for today's episode.
A huge thanks again to Amy Lewis forbeing such a fantastic guest and a
big thank you to you for listening.
If you've enjoyed this episode and want tohear more about how emerging technologies
and the latest business trends are shapingthe future of work, please do make sure
to like, rate and subscribe to TechBeyond the Hype wherever you get podcasts.
(26:36):
Tech Beyond the Hype is aTechTarget original production.
This is Tech Beyond the Hype, the podcast where we talk to experts
and leaders about the latest techand business trends to figure out
what's shaping the future of work.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back toanother brilliant episode of the show.
Our guest today, Amy Lewis, is Directorof Product Marketing for AI at GitHub.
(00:23):
She shares invaluable insightsabout how to build high performing
teams in the remote working world.
and how to lead innovative marketingstrategies that really resonate
with customers and keep them loyal.
Whether you're looking to improvecohesion within your team, or you're
interested in understanding how enhancedanalytics are shaping the future of
(00:44):
marketing, this episode has you covered.
Prepare for a really dynamic interviewcovering everything from the evolving
marketing landscape, to tips andtricks that About how you can use
bitmojis to be more approachable tocolleagues in the digital era of work.
Enjoy the show
Amy (01:02):
My name is amy lewis.
I am a product marketer by trade.
I'm currently working at GitHub and I havehad a long career in tech and across a
number of product stacks and communities.
I'm excited to be here with you todayto have some of those conversations.
Ana 2.0 (01:21):
Awesome.
Thank you.
So when we talked initially, we discussedyour role as a team manager and how you've
managed to shift the culture towards.
a more collaborative andagile way of working.
Could you talk a littlebit more about that?
Amy (01:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
With our current team, we actually do tryto use that agile methodology, because
there's so much work to be done and I wanteverybody to have something that they know
is theirs and something they're proud of.
But I also like to build teams aroundif you're supporting others to make
sure that we don't accidentally getinto that hero / diving catch mentality
(02:02):
that makes us all work in isolation.
So a couple of things that we do asa team; we have a spread board, we
do spread planning every two weeksso that everybody has some exposure
to everybody else's projects.
It's a way to kind of shout out,check each other, check in with each
other, cross support each other.
And if anybody goes on vacationor PTO for any reason, we
(02:24):
can easily cover each other.
Having that regular checkpointin addition to our team meetings
keeps us focused and structured.
And the team meetings, in fact, justyesterday did a team meeting and
it's like, "okay, anybody blockedin a way that somebody else can
get you unblocked on the team?"
And just those littlethings, it builds trust.
It builds a sense of collaboration andit rewards it because I think too often
(02:47):
we've been trained if you can't handleit yourself, you're not doing your job.
And I think in this modern time, likewhen you've got a team of talented
people, unlock all that talent, seehow they can help each other and
really reward that when it happens.
Ana 2.0 (03:02):
Absolutely.
That sounds like you're doing areally good job of bringing together
lots of different people with lotsof different skills and making sure
that you're taking advantage ofeveryone's class, which is great.
What did the team look like before youstarted implementing these different
processes and ways of working?
Amy (03:20):
When you don't have these mechanisms in place, people can feel very isolated.
I've been a remote worker for anawfully long time, but when COVID
hit, all of us kind of had to trainin this work from home mentality.
People have different work styles.
There are people who are more introvertedand who like to go deep and do a bunch
of writing, turn things off, get focused.
(03:40):
And there's other people who thrivein that brainstorming kind of place.
If you don't create space for bothways of working, that can be hard.
So, in first getting the team together,acknowledging that not everybody had a
history of working remotely, like I have,but here's some things that I've picked up
and here's some ways that we can be makingsure that you have a regular team meeting.
(04:01):
I know it sounds so simple, but Ithink it can fall by the wayside
and making sure you're usingthat time to connect as people.
We also have ongoing Slack channels.
So every day it's a way of checkingin, you know, it's kind of a roll
call every morning and not in aabrasive like "tell me what you're
up to," but more of a "Oh, cool."
You know, we'll put a fun thing, you putan emoji to kind of set your mood and
(04:24):
tone for the day, et cetera, which allthat kind of builds that team spirit.
So I would say before we put all thesethings in place, it felt more like a
collection of really talented individuals.
And these are the secrets tomaking it feel like a team.
That it's really seamless.
That one of us can answer forany other of us at any time.
(04:45):
And that's kind of flat.
It shouldn't be me as directorversus the people who report to me.
Everybody should be proud of the teamaccomplishments and able to speak with
pride about what they're doing andwhat anybody else is doing at any time.
Ana 2.0 (04:57):
I love that.
It's like, especially remoteworking, it can be so easy to become
detached from the team becauseyou're working behind the screen.
In my experience, for instance,I work with a full American
team and I live in London.
We can only ever see eachother through meetings.
And it's so important to havethose regular check ins and to
(05:18):
keep some level of personal touch.
Otherwise, I think it's very easyto forget that there's people behind
the work that's being produced
Amy (05:28):
And you bring up such a great point, particularly for me in marketing.
It's such a people activity, if you will.
And so reminding ourselves how wecan connect through these new tools
and ways and means in some ways.
It's a meta analogy for what we need to doin our work, because we can't necessarily
(05:48):
go out and shake hands of everybody.
We're trying to sell to you, right?
It won't scale.
So as we think about these scalemechanisms, think about what works
for ourselves, like what helpsus feel connected to each other,
to our product, to our mission.
And we bring that in our work.
We did some brainstorming this week too.
And again, a little bit of an ad hoc, butthe same spirit you would do if you were
(06:10):
laughing and doing it together in person,like ways of kind of breaking down that
barrier and building that trust is justgoing to get you to higher productivity.
If I'm being very bloodless about itand take the humanity out, like it's
good for work too, because when you havethat trust and you have that camaraderie
together, you're so much more productive.
It's so much more productive to havethe ability to collaborate than it is
(06:34):
to be just an individual hacking away,hoping things get better, checking
your watch, are we off the clock yet?
All of it makes it betterwhenever you feel like you're
in it together with a mission.
And it informs our work as marketersof how we're going to take that
spirit out to the audience.
Ana 2.0 (06:50):
Absolutely.
I was just thinking as you were speaking,there's obviously, there's, there's a
lot We're both from a generation thathas experienced office life and then
gone remote, even though obviouslyyour work, you said you've been working
remotely, there's a whole generationof people who will be working remotely
and that be their only referencepoint of what work looks like.
(07:12):
Do you have any Gen Z people in your teamand if so, how are you helping them to
feel the same level of connection thatother people who previously worked in the
office and who know each other already?
How do you kind of create thatsense of camaraderie for them?
Amy (07:27):
It's such a great question.
We don't have any Gen Z folks on the team.
We do have a couple of interns and I dohave some mentees who I've worked with.
And I love your question because I thinkit's a point that all of us, either
in management or I guess for the elderstates people now who've seen life before
and after, I think we have to teach it.
(07:47):
I think it's a reminder to all of usthat there is a great opportunity in kind
of teaching the craft of collaboration.
We're inheriting a generationbecause my kids are of that younger
generation who did slides in schooland group projects like that was
emphasized in a way that probablyit wasn't as much for us growing up.
So they have some of this baked incollaboration by virtue of their
(08:10):
training and to your point, what theydon't have is what that looks like in
this office or professional settingand how to work in those hybrid models.
So, I think you have to talk it through.
You have to talk very openly about theart of what you're doing, and we do
that on my team now anyway, and I'vedone that on all of my teams of like,
"Hey, here's the structure of the team.
(08:31):
Here's how we work.
Here's how I like to lead.
How do you like to be managed?"
You know, "do you workbetter in person or remotely?
What are some of your experiences?"
So just talking it through, becausethe mentee in particular, I'm thinking
about, we had a real conversationabout how to network there.
These soft skills, I think that youlose by not seeing somebody else do it.
(08:55):
So what might be very natural tous in being able to transfer it
a little bit from our office daysof grabbing a coffee with somebody
or dropping by, you know, asking aquestion, kind of that informal piece.
We have to kind of help them learnabout how do you use Slack as that
informal water cooler, like what'sappropriate, what's not appropriate
(09:15):
and how to build some of that gluebecause it isn't necessarily obvious.
And even though I think that generationhas more training through what they've
done in school, it's still not ahundred percent immediate transfer to
the new remote and distributed office.
Ana 2.0 (09:29):
Right.
Absolutely.
It's a hard one because it's somethingthat all of us in reality, all of us
are tackling for the first time andtrying to figure it out as we go.
So it's quite interestingseeing how different teams are
approaching the connectivity piece.
Amy (09:42):
One thing sort of timely and from my recent experience.
Way back when I had a blog post I didon the approachable t-shirt and I would
go to conferences and I would weara t-shirt that was meant to invite
somebody to sort of comment or befunny or have a laugh or et cetera.
And I did it in sort of likelowering that barrier to entry.
(10:03):
We work in tech.
We can be introverted.
We can be shy.
And so making it easier for somebody tohave that first conversation with you,
I take that into my Slack life now.
So I use a Slack bitmoji.
I'm a football fan, the universalfootball soccer for Americans.
And so I play as well asreally enjoy watching.
(10:24):
So I've got a bitmoji of mekind of juggling a soccer ball.
And it's completely silly.
But at a recent get together,multiple people came up and said,
"I recognize you from your Bitmoji.
Do you play?
Like, I play too."
Really great conversation.
So, just one little tip and trick;think about some part of your
personality that you want to talkto other people about a way you want
(10:47):
to connect, and sort of flash that.
Do what you can to help yourselfbe approachable and give
people a way to engage you.
So, that's one trick that I like to teachpeople of like, you know, can be a line
in your Slack profile, but don't forgetthat piece of you that makes it easier
to have the first conversation so you canlead and have the second conversation.
Ana 2.0 (11:06):
That's a really great tip.
I really like when workcan be a little bit silly.
I think it's always good to kindof take down the mask a little
bit that people wear as well.
So it sounds like you're reallymanaging that, even just with
something simple like an emoji.
Amy (11:20):
A Bitmoji, yep.
So it looks enough like me that I can beidentified, so they let me use it, right?
But it's got this, you know, I'mjuggling a soccer ball and, and
you know, sometimes it builds thatrapport and sometimes you find out you
cheer for different clubs, but thatalone becomes like a conversation.
We've got all sorts of footballtournaments happening right now.
So I'm having thoseconversations internationally.
(11:41):
You bring a little bit of yourselfand then a little bit of what's
happening in the world, and itjust makes a simpler connection.
And I think that's something whenI talked to Gen Z folks, they're so
good that they've got digital nativein a way that I can only aspire to.
But reminding them of how do youbreak that first barrier, right?
Like oftentimes people in theirchat threads and their whatever,
(12:02):
they actually met in real life andthen kind of form these groups.
But when you're doing it truly remotely,how do you get some of that rapport?
And they know these tricks in someways, they know them better than I do,
but they don't always think about crossapplying them to their professional life.
Ana 2.0 (12:18):
That's brilliant.
I love that.
I guess it kind of it leads back into whatwe were saying about trying to personalize
and humanize the person behind the screen.
I have to step away a little bit fromour conversation and focus on marketing,
which is kind of your main focus area.
How do you translate thatinto the world of marketing?
Because you were saying earlierabout marketing strategies needing
(12:40):
to be more personalized and
how, how are you doing that?
Amy (12:47):
I think that it starts with good listening.
I often find so many marketers secretlyare introverts, which is funny when you
think about, you know, we kind of blastthe earth with our content and messaging,
but I think it starts with good listening.
There's something about that propercombination of tapping into these
(13:10):
mainstream ideas, tapping into thesetruths that will make it feel like
someone's like, "Oh my gosh, you hear me.
You see me, this is also my problem, mychallenge, my issue, the opportunity."
For me and what I do, I'mreally a method actor.
So find ways to listen into sales calls,find ways where your community that you're
(13:33):
targeting, where are their watering holes,go listen and lurk, really get into the
language of it, get into the rhythm of it.
And you'll quickly see what the patternsare and then start to tailor your
messaging, your positioning and whatyou're doing around those needs and
see where you can map your languageright back to what you're saying.
(13:56):
Echoing works.
We like to see ourselves in what we'reviewing, that alone feels personalized.
Ana 2.0 (14:04):
How much of that personalization and the listening comes from data?
Because the way that you said it makesme think of kind of going to conferences
or being in person at a watering hole,listening in, but how much of that
listening comes from data and analytics?
Amy (14:20):
I think you have to have a balance of both.
Perhaps a controversial opinion,but I think marketing is
equal parts art and science.
The amount of analytics and metrics wecan get today to sort of map is amazing.
But the breakthrough, the new thing, thatspark; that's going to be the art, right?
(14:42):
We could look at the MonaLisa and, and sort of break
it down and people do, right?
There's fascinating kind of data-backed- "this is why you react the way you do,"
but in some ways it's a retro-analysis andfitting to something that we feel when we
see a particular piece of art, etcetera.
So I always recommend that people useall the tools at hand where modern tools
(15:04):
allow us to deliver more customizedmessaging through more channels.
But don't let the art ofwhat you're doing escape you.
So if you see something, becauseyou have done this listening,
you're in your community, you'rethinking about your community,
you're focused on your community.
Look at the data.
Does it back you up?
If it doesn't, is it because you've foundsomething new and you're on the edge of
(15:29):
something different that you can approach?
Is it because you're a victim of yourown interest or last in first out?
So it's a great way to balanceyour art with your science.
It's a great question.
I think to ignore either is toeliminate the power of both.
Ana 2.0 (15:45):
Right.
Love that.
I was thinking, as you were talking about,I don't know if you've seen Apple's latest
commercial that got cancelled recently.
It's called iCrush.
Amy (15:57):
Ooh, I have not seen that one.
Ana 2.0 (16:00):
So in a nutshell, it's the ad for their new iPad.
And from what I understand, the coremessage of the whole advert is it starts
with like a piano and it's all thesekind of quote unquote retro things that
start becoming crushed by the iPad.
(16:22):
So the message is kind of, "youcan achieve all of this stuff.
You can achieve great music, greatart, great everything, through
technology," and it massively backfired.
You had the whole creative communitybeing like, "you're saying that
technology is going to replace a wholebunch of things that aren't really
(16:48):
important for the creative industries."
And I guess it echoes what you weresaying about it's a combination of both.
You have to be able to leverage thetechnology to an extent, but it's also
about having the creativity and the magicthat happens outside of the technology.
Amy (17:05):
I love that too, because it does speak to the know your audience
and balance the, you know, when youdo have a disaster, sometimes it's
because you haven't listened to bothsides of the data and the customer.
Surveys and, you know, theart and the good sense in
advertising or product launches.
One of the famous ones is always the newCoke when it got launched way back when.
(17:28):
Mathematically, everything seemed likethis would just be the perfect thing.
And people didn't take intoaccount perhaps enough the deep
emotional connection people hadwith Coke as it was, again, one
of the classic kind of launches,crashes and rollbacks in history.
And it warns all of us in this form of artand science, listen to both sides, because
(17:52):
if you don't, this can be the outcome.
All the data can indicate, go, go, go.
But you just needed somebody to say,"but I like Coke the way it is," right?
And to your point, iPad has such afollowing in the creative audience.
We always joke about thepower of superlative.
Sometimes people don'twant it to be better-er.
Ana 2.0 (18:12):
It's, um, it's an interesting balance that you have to strike and
Especially, I guess, when you havethese moments of having to take back
something because it's backfired comesa lot down to human emotion, which
is something that's so difficult toquantify from a data point of view.
Amy (18:33):
I often joke that if we change the name of marketing, product
marketing became mind control.
We'd either be kicked out of every companyor be the most sought after set of jobs,
but in some ways it is what it is, right?
And, back to your point about how do wepersonalize in this modern time, there's
also a fine line between making surea message speaks, because people don't
(18:54):
want to feel like they're just one ofthe crowd, they want it to speak to them.
But we've all had that counterpoint offeeling like our phone is listening to us.
Like, I just thought abouteating oatmeal for breakfast.
I didn't want all these oatmealads delivered to me immediately.
Did I even say the word oatmealout loud kind of feeling?
So I think that's the other kind ofvery interesting challenge of our age
(19:14):
of how do we personalize without makingit so personal that it feels creepy.
Ana 2.0 (19:20):
I totally get that.
I imagine it's a reallyhard line to, to draw.
How do you go about even tryingto find that middle ground?
Amy (19:27):
When we do a launch, I love to do a planned out series of touch
points where you measure the impact.
And that way you can get someof these, are you on track?
Are you accomplishing whatyou want to accomplish?
Or do you need to tweak for anything toour point of like, is it too personalized?
Is it not personal enough?
Is it correctly messaged and positioned?
(19:50):
So in a recent launch, we again, and thisis sort of a standard operating procedure;
I like measure the day of measure thenext day, then two weeks, one month.
Everybody loves that first rush ofa big launch and it's super amazing.
And you get all these hits in thatimmediate energy, but make sure
that you've made a plan and thatyou use the same document, right?
(20:12):
A ubiquitous link, that you justkeep pointing people back to, so
you can see the trends over time.
And it's such a good discipline to not gethooked on that energy of just launch new.
But think about what it lookslike long tail and market.
How long does your launch energy last?
Is it continuing to resonate?
Like, what else can you do to support?
So that's a way of baking in that conceptof listen early and often to the folks
(20:38):
that you're impacting your stakeholders,your customers, everybody around you
so that you can adjust as needed andyou don't get caught by surprise if
something that seemed very good on theoutset, kind of tapers off or turns
in a way that you hadn't expected.
And I think such a big partof marketing is that kind of
listening either in a statisticdata way, but also in a closed way.
(21:05):
And if you do it mindfully andpurposefully, then you can scale.
Ana 2.0 (21:08):
And when you say listening in a closed way, like what does that look like?
Amy (21:14):
Meaning I think that you have to find where those watering holes are and you
have to build those trust relationships.
So in the tech industry broadly, it canlook like watching on LinkedIn, it can
look like a series of keywords, it canbe through your sales team letting you
know, a customer is happy or unhappy.
I think there's a lot of waysto make sure that you're kind of
(21:35):
getting a voice and then listeningto see if that's multiple voices.
Is this a single instance of somebody'shappy or unhappy test, right?
It starts to give youthings to listen for.
Keywords bubble up.
This is the power of using our scaleand our modern technology to see
like, are there certain words that arepopping in response to what you've done?
(21:56):
Back to our original conversationof what does it look like even
within teams to be distributed now?
Let's spread this out and thinkabout organizations, right?
If you're in product marketing,you don't necessarily sit
with a sales enablement team.
You don't necessarily sit with yourdemand gen team or with your web team,
so you need to make sure that you havemechanisms to listen across all those
(22:18):
different surface areas, because you asone individual certainly can't do all this
listening both high and low on your own.
So you need to make sure that youunderstand where are either the pools
of data that you can access in yourcompany or the people that can help
you unpack it and be working together.
So it's taking kind of all these skillswe're talking about of collaboration,
(22:39):
and then pulling them outside your teamand practicing across the organization
so that you can listen to both thenumbers and the individuals as needed
to get the, the best work delivered.
Ana 2.0 (22:50):
Awesome.
How do you think that theapproach to marketing is changing?
Because you mentioned a couple oftimes about keywords, for instance,
and I know that Google is kind ofeliminating the whole SEO element.
How are you approaching that?
Amy (23:03):
It's such a great question.
I think a modern marketeris never done learning.
It's reminding ourselves that peopleare the same and that we have to
really put ourselves in the shoesif we want to be a customer first
and a customer obsessed company.
That people like what they like, listen,and I often joke in an enterprise
setting, we sometimes expect peopleto want less than we would demand for
(23:27):
ourselves in a commercial setting.
And I always say, stop andremind yourself; if you are the
customer, what would you think ifyou heard that message delivered?
So, in some ways, like, know yourbasics and don't forget the classics.
Simultaneously, find ways to stayinvolved with how things are changing.
Listen to podcasts, right?
(23:47):
Engage with a broader marketingcommunity, hire for diversity.
And that includes all the ways,including, you know, voices
that are trained differently.
So generational voices are important.
Diversity matters so much because it'sgoing to help you cover those blind spots
and biases and open your mind differently.
So if you're in the sound of my voice andyou have the ability to hire, think about
(24:11):
that when you're hiring to make sure thatyou are bringing in a perspective that's
different than yours to challenge that.
I think marketing will continueto get harder in some ways,
but we'll have more tools.
I look back at the dayswhen it used to be...
you'd buy a billboard and you barely hadto explain to someone why that had ROI.
(24:31):
And then when the web came, I thinkall marketeers got held far more
accountable to numbers rather thanthe art of what they delivered.
And I think that as we go forward,especially with that rise of AI,
that we're just going to be speedingup in terms of what the demands are
(24:52):
for marketers to kind of prove ROI.
I think the only way to stay on topof that is again, stay connected to
the community of marketing at large.
Stay on top of what themodern tools are and test.
Get a sandbox, experiment, try things on.
So whether you learn by reading ordoing or by learning from others,
keep all those channels open.
(25:14):
But remember the basics in theend, we're trying to convince
somebody to do something.
So what does that look like for you?
And what are the moderntools to get there?
Ana 2.0 (25:24):
Fantastic.
What a great way to end the show.
I feel like we're leaving on avery positive and motivating note.
So thank you so much.
Before we go, is there anywhere thataudience members can go to follow
you or connect with you anywhere.
Amy (25:42):
I would love to connect on LinkedIn.
I'm spending more of my time there today.
Amy Lewis, I'm sorry to all my fellowAmy Louises, as I like to joke.
We seem to be plentiful, but I willcertainly leave a link with you, Ana, so
that people can reach out and connect.
I would love to talk shop.
Ana 2.0 (26:00):
Fab, yeah, we will add your link.
to the bottom of the show notes.
Amy, once again, thank youso much for joining me.
It's been so much fun having youon and I hope we can stay in touch.
Amy (26:10):
Thank you for the opportunity.
Ana 2.0 (26:11):
And so that's a wrap for today's episode.
A huge thanks again to Amy Lewis forbeing such a fantastic guest and a
big thank you to you for listening.
If you've enjoyed this episode and want tohear more about how emerging technologies
and the latest business trends are shapingthe future of work, please do make sure
to like, rate and subscribe to TechBeyond the Hype wherever you get podcasts.
(26:36):
Tech Beyond the Hype is aTechTarget original production.
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