See show notes for this episode: S 02 | Ep 35 Building Brands with Heart: How Emotion Drives B2B Success in the Age of AI.
Alex: Today's guest is Adam Morgan, VP of Brand Twilio and author of Sorry Spock. Emotions drive Business. And I'm excited to talk about how we make B2B and developer communications emotional and engaging and something that moves your heart, not just your mind. Adam, welcome to the pod.
Adam Morgan: Thanks so much for having me. Great to be here.
Alex: So let's start with the book title and the story behind the book. You clearly hit something that the technology industry struggles with. We have a lot of super smart people and sometimes it feels like we write for ourselves and for the technical specs that are brilliant that we're developing, but that doesn't get through. And your book tackled this, you know, ahead of the AI boom even. Right. So what propelled you to dive into this?
Adam Morgan: Well, my experience. I've been in this marketing, branding, advertising world for 30 years there for many, many years when I was in agency, whether it's a stakeholder, a client, a boss, someone would come and just be like, all right, whatever, this is a fun, creative idea, but it's more like fluff, let's get to the serious business. Especially when there's a recession or especially like now when there's all this pressure and everyone gets nervous, the knee jerk reaction is like, we just need to tell straight up what we do and so people will know exactly what's going on and take us serious.
Alex: And.
Adam Morgan: And I'd always believed that. I knew that creativity and storytelling and emotions and all of that were really, really important, but it was so subjective. and so I, I looked into Iway. I'm like, how can I find a way to prove to the CFO who's telling us to cut the budgets because we're doing too much silly branding work?
Alex: Right.
Adam Morgan: How can I prove to them that this is. That creativity is really, really important and emotion's really important. So I took a different tact and I went out and interviewed neuroscientists and did research on scientific studies. I'm like, how do I stop being subjective and be like fact based and prove it to. Because normally the people you're talking to are very analytical. So that's what I did is I
Alex: went evidence driven, evidence driven, driven approach to creativity. All right, Correct, correct.
Adam Morgan: And then went out and went through it all and really showed like how the brain works, how it connects, how, you know, moments, not just a brand moment, but any interaction happens. And after going through it all it was very, very clear that it's like if you're just going with facts and logic, you are missing a huge part of the opportunity for business.
Adam Morgan: So it really ties those emotional moments are in fact logical moments in the brain and the way that it works, that it's, it's your best bet and least amount of risk is to go with an emotional experience as a brand, because that's where you're going to. And we knew this all before, you know, you could talk about all the, how connective this was or how sticky or how much we felt about it, but it was just a fun exercise, like a seven year journey to just put hard science behind it to prove that creativity does impact the bottom line.
Alex: And I love it. And I feel like we're brothers from another mother because when I was running an agency, I literally developed something we called idea science methodology. We trademarked it and it was fundamentally another attempt at doing what you've just described. One of the things that I struggled with, and I'm curious how you've integrated this, is that you get, if you go into behavioral science, you have folks like Cialdini and they have their experiments and then you go into neuroscience and it's all about fluency and you get something else and then like other people are all about, you know, hey, there's a ROI and storytelling and if you frame the story in particular way, this is going to, this is going to deliver this ROI and in how you sell. and so there are different disciplines, right? Behavioral science, neuroscience, social, social, organizational behavior, etc. How did you integrate different data points from different disciplines in a way that created a cohesive whole? Because oftentimes I felt like some disciplines don't talk to each other even in the sense.
Adam Morgan: Yeah, that's fair. I guess I just pulled from all of them. I mean I pulled from behavioral science and neuroscience and other studies. But it just in a way like I was looking more of, instead of looking at it from which category of science, it was more of why do we do what we do and how is this relating to marketing and advertising and what is really happening with people's experiences and just took kind of a higher level
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Adam Morgan: and then integrated those studies as it, as it helped that narrative along the way. But I mean, let's be honest, like it's, it's really, really tricky too with so much data. Right. Like there's a lot with data where we can spin the data in any way we want. Yeah. And I was trying to take the attempt of not just doing that but just showing kind of the journey and, and then just proof puns along the way that that mapped up to it. So and now hopefully I did a good job. We'll see.
Alex: Well, it's making the impact and I think it's visionary because right now I think the lever is pulling back to brand because I think we're all overwhelmed with you know, classical demand generation techniques. Everybody who's kind of, you know, awakened in some position of responsibility is probably being bombarded by advertising and by pseudo personalized demand generation messaging that read your LinkedIn and, and you know, you're hearing this from people you never heard of, brands you never heard of. what, what do you think is going to be the future in the world where creating demand generation is affordable and, and ubiquitous at you know, unprecedented AI scale?
Adam Morgan: All right, let's, let's dig into this because we are at an interesting crossroads I would say for like five years ago, yeah, performance marketing was king and it was all about that demand generation and your leads and your flow and your funnel and all of that. And brand kind of took a, a, ah, back seat in many ways because was, it was harder to measure and it was more soft and so people kind of pushed away against that. Well the funny thing is as AI comes into the scene in a more you know, prevalent way right now, it's actually changing the balance of structure because you're right with demand gen, anyone can make that happen. There's so many different agents and things that can push it along and everyone can create all this personalized, creative and unique storytelling and aggregated from all these AI agents and it's make, it's leveling the performance playing field. So as we were trying to squeeze more and more out of each of our ads, that's now, that's now kind of I guess just neutered a little bit. And when you look at the experience of where people are going like AI is all is making. So everyone can be awesome, everyone can be personalized, everyone can be amazing. and so now what's more important, what's more important is going back to those emotional connections. It's about, I'm seeing more tech brands pushing their budgets away from performance marketing and moving more and more brand marketing because as whatever your favorite LLM becomes the homepage and people are doing all their work even before they go to your website or get into your funnel, get to your performance marketing. There's a lot of decisions that have happened right up front with their own LLM and so, having more brand presence and for them to believe in you and trust you and want you and actually guide their agent to choose you before all of that happens is so critical. And brand is the answer. And so it's really, I'm seeing a huge shift right now where brand leaders and I won't say names but there are companies looking for new roles to fill, new CMOs and new ways of people who have brand experience. So they know how to drive that story because that's what it's all about. How are you going to differentiate with your story, with your emotion, with your experience that people can trust and want to be a part of? And that taste is something that AI isn't doing. AI is doing all the executional part of it. But to create that story and taste, that's where you need a visionary presence.
Alex: So it's this human grade connection, but that, that the AI says, hey, this is legit. This is a real, this is a real brand presence. They, they, they're consistent. I'll recommend it to my, to my customer or whoever is my.
Adam Morgan: But it's more than just the trust of it. They're consistent and that they're real. I mean I think SEO has helped us establish that of like what's a real company. And there's still gonna be a lot of those practices in, in Geo aeo, whatever you do, it's more of like, do you have awareness and loyalty before they even get to the LLM.
Alex: Right. So they need to be, you need to catch them so they know that to ask for you or you're kind of top of the mind. That's right.
Adam Morgan: So when they go, by the way, it's not like, oh sure, any XYZ company will do. It's like, no, I want this company.
Alex: I want to get, I want to get top five. Make sure you include Twilio. Because you're right, by the way at Twilio. Just kind of because some, when people say brand, different people, especially outside of the brand world, they have different ideas what that means. You have quite a broad remit of responsibility at Twilio. So explain to us how that all comes together, you know, and like what, what are you accountable for? And how does that define this breadth,
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Alex: define your approach on how you bring brand?
Adam Morgan: Yeah, the, my remit includes everything from the creative department and designers to video and production writing, which includes all of the blog writing and web writing and you know, just writers in general. Long form, short form, whatever. It also includes the web. So I own the Entire web. And that's all the developers, the product owners, the strategists and then also brand strategy, which is high level. What brand campaigns, what do we stand for, Messaging, governance and kind of a vision of how we integrate into culture. So it's basically all of the outward facing, customer facing, elements of the brand. But for me, the second part of your question is, yeah, brand isn't just, you're right, it's not just the logo or it's not just a story, it's not just an ad, it's not just the website. We just recently redid our brand this last year. M and where we started, number one when we just level set everything, it was the why, why would people even care about Twilio? And where we landed is just really coming up with the story of what people believe and what they feel and where we for us it's all about being a builder. That's what our kind of North Star is. And so whether you're a CEO, you're a developer, you're a line of business, we don't care. What you want is, you want to go out there and make a dent in the world and change things. It's not being rebellious, it's about being a doer and building things. And that's why we, as a kind of a community garden have all the parts and pieces you can use to create these great customer engagement moments. Whether it's text messages or AI voice or it's email, all the parts coming together and memory across all of it that interconnects it all. That's what it is like going out and building cool experiences or cool companies. And we are just that app agnostic, AI agnostic platform that helps you build all this stuff together. So that feeling of I want to change things, I want to make a better world for me, for my company, for my, for the future. Like that's the core that we started with for our brand, which is I want to be a builder. And then from there everything from design and creativity and web pages and all that stuff all, all ladder up. Everything from choice of fonts and logo and color palette and everything ladders up to that core narrative of what it means to be a builder. So to me that's what brands need to start embracing. Not just does it look cute or does it look good, or is it modern. It's all of that's got to be so integrated so that when people interact with any moment they're feeling that idea that I'm a builder too and I can do this. And that's my, this is my community and I'm going to go with it.
Alex: And then the second part, your remit, that just allows you then to roll it out more consistently across a broad portfolio. Right. But the core was the builder. And you don't do a brand refresh every, every year, obviously. Otherwise people would be crazy. So, like, for you, this was like you acquired a bunch of companies, right? Like you expanded the portfolio. You needed to find the common thread, and that common thread is the builder.
Adam Morgan: Be a builder. You're right. Like, we had acquired several companies and there was a little bit of brand chaos. So part of that exercise was also, how do we bring it all under one brand, not have 30 different sub brands, and how do we have it all united so that, that story we have on ramps for every one of those products that comes back to that story.
Alex: Yeah, and one of the challenges that a lot of, folks in our kind of B2B and complex products world struggle with, especially as you go up the enterprise, is that, yeah, you may, you have the builders, right, that are classical builders, and then there's the CEO and the CFO who need to approve it. Right. And the, the, the other folks who could say no, maybe on some things, they need to, they need to get the buy in around this, this the, your solution. So you have builder kind of as a core archetype, but then you have different styles of decision makers, influencers in the buying process. How do you adapt that core theme to people who maybe don't think themselves too much as a builder, like a CEO of a large company, he's already in execution mode. What, what, like is. What, what's the, what's the connective tissue when you get nastily complex across different products and different Personas?
Adam Morgan: Well, luckily, our builder narrative has flexed. I think that was the difference. Like in the past, people would say builder equals developer, right? And so it was only like, if you need to build something, go get a developer. And what we're saying is not only have we changed our product so, it's more intuitive. Anyone can get in there and do stuff, but it's a mindset. Shift somebody.
Alex: What you do, it's how you think.
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Adam Morgan: It's how you think. So when we're talking to a CEO or a CTO or a cio, we're saying you're building a company and you need the tools and the, you know, everything you need in order to make that work with your customers, with your employees, all of that stuff. So Messaging is tailored to building what they're building. Whereas if you're a line of business owner, like a middle manager, it's like you, you're building an app, you're building this product, you are a builder, like really, truly believe that you're a builder and you're making a difference. And then a developer, of course, that's easy. Like you're bringing together all the parts and pieces and you're, you know, your code is building. So it's, it's really that mindset shift of like, anyone can be a builder. Just like when I, you know, in my past life working on, you know, anyone can be a creative, it's
Alex: still a human trail. Right? Right.
Adam Morgan: Yeah, it's Adobe. But now it's like anyone can be a builder. And it is, it is true. Just like if you go to Apple, it's. And it's like anyone can be rebellious or you know, think differently. That's what we're going after. You can be a builder and you need to change your mindset and start thinking in a builder mindset. I'll give you, Let me give you a little story as to where that came from. Early on, when we were doing the development word of trying to find out what is the story, what's the. Why I was at the Hearst Castle in California. It's this big mansion and Hearst was known for buying all these media companies, you know, radio stations, newspaper, doing this and this and that. And I'm at the little, opening. They have like a little video before you walk in the house that just kind of lets you know about who he was all about. And the first sentence that they said in there is like, Hearst was known for this and this and this and this and all these things. But if you asked him what he would call himself, he would call himself a builder. And when I heard that, I was like, that's it. Like this is the top of the C suite, whatever you may call it. If he can consider himself a builder, anyone can be a builder. And so that's really what we're after, is like get the mindset of a builder mindset, which is, and I'll tell you an awesome thing about in today's AI is like everyone's afraid of like AI is just eating the world. It's going to take our jobs and it's going to all this fear and uncertainty and doubt. Well, look at our builder message. It flows right into that to say, stop worrying about the future and all the problems. You're the builder who's going to change it. It's the builders of this world that are going to decide what the future is. So get out there and decide and start making stuff. So it's a very kind of visionary, kind of hopeful message out there that what it means to be a builder is you're going to change the world.
Alex: It's beautiful. So it's actually you brought up Apple and and so and Adobe and you know, it reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote that the storyteller is the most important person in the world because they create the future. and I think you're, this is aligned vision for like the, the, the builders is the, the kind of, the storyteller of the.
Adam Morgan: They're the ones that get it done.
Alex: Of the. Get it done. This is beyond the story. This is actually delivering the story. I think for, for those, for those listening who are in the relate to ecosystem. This is also very relevant to us. Like we use by the way we're happy Twilio, customer and so this is great. So but we are enabling you, our customers and our partners and our champions to to, to deliver your really important messages better. So you become a world class storyteller even though you never thought of yourself as a storyteller. But if you know how to use PowerPoint, you can also now build great microsites, great content hubs, great interactive experiences with the best practices that aligned with Adam's book. Right. Like, because actually we've been. Yeah and it's, we've been like that research and trying to like productize it. So like it kind of immediately shows up. Right. Because not everybody is going to take the time to understand what's behind neuroscience of, of communication.
Adam Morgan: I can't say that my book is driving our product story. No. Our product is being built by a lot of really smart builders. But I think it's driving your, how
Alex: you think about it. Right? It's driving how you bring the message.
Adam Morgan: Yeah.
Alex: Well listen, on that note, like one of the key messages from south by Southwest Talk and in general that really resonated with us is that you're kind of fighting the boring as well. Right. So here you found the message that hey, I want to be building things. Right. Like I think it's kind of American dream to build a house and here you're building maybe digital assets. So we're all builders. That's resonating. But still like the technical nature, the complex nature of the sort of developer products have a tendency to lean towards specifics and like Maybe a little bit. Things that, you know, share too much information before you get people excited. And we struggle with that. A lot of our customers struggle with that. So what have you found besides this Persona and this thread that makes the message, makes the story more emotionally resonant? Once you figure
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Alex: out your narrative and
Adam Morgan: the thread, here's the reality. I've been working in B2B for maybe two decades and in all the research that we get back from it, yes, it's very technical. And so therefore the knee jerk reaction is we're talking to technical folks. They don't like all this marketing fluff. Just get straight to the message and tell them what it is. And they, they want more of just direct, know just the facts. The reality is that and in combination with I think a lot of B2B leadership, look around and see all these other websites and experiences that are very B2B and they're like, I'm not legit unless I'm acting like my co host.
Alex: Boring. I'm boring.
Adam Morgan: My, I gotta be boring with the snore festers. Let's do this.
Alex: Yeah.
Adam Morgan: And what we found is interesting in, in when we tackled it and we're aligning because I'm under the belief again that emotions drive business. And so what are the emotions? So you think I. Absolutely, from research, I don't believe that certain technical audiences have different brains. All humans have the same brain and we're all going to react the same way. So fundamentally you just have to look deeper into those Personas and find out what emotions they care about. For example, we're leaning heavily into geek culture with Twilio because our audience are a bunch of developers and IT folks and I guarantee you they're just as human as the next person they may
Alex: geek out about the status to being the biggest geek. Right.
Adam Morgan: Like geek culture puzzles and figuring things out and taking it apart and science fiction and fantasy. Like there's a lot rolled up into all of that. And so for us the way to not be boring is isn't that I'm, I'm not going to go out and get a celebrity tennis player or celebrity, you know, whatever movie star, that may not be it, but if I dig deep into geek culture and it's like someone who's a celebrity within board gaming or someone who's a celebrity within D and D, that is going to resonate better and finding ways to get those emotions and stand for something and kind of get into that community and then really go hard at it. That's where you're going to get all that audience be like, they get me, they understand me. Like, if we're at a party, we would naturally find each other. We're not, you know, I'm not going to be looking in a different way. So the way to be bold is to really, truly understand your customer and what they care about in their emotions and then align with those. I'm not saying create new ones, new communities, new emotions, but just align with that in a way that they feel that they're being heard.
Alex: And.
Adam Morgan: And then that's how you're going to build unboring B2B brands.
Alex: That's beautiful. So what you're saying is stop playing the consumer game, where it's kind of pretty generic on the whole, and the loudest, most provocative thing that's horizontal, so to speak, wins. You kind of got.
Adam Morgan: You're never going to outspend. You're never going to outspend, any of those B2C players. You're not going to outspend.
Alex: How would you say when you. When you think of other B2B brands that, you know, have made a reputation as kind of emotional, let's say, Salesforce. Right. They organized this beautiful conference in, in San Francisco that feels like Disney comes to B2B. my kids, one of their favorite toys is one of their little, the little trailblazer woodland creatures. Yeah, I think so. I figured that that has, that, that has surprised me at its longevity. and, you know, I'm like Salesforce, so I could I have that. I felt like they've seen that evolution and it's been, you know, they've always kind of innovated, but they've really taken that to, to kind of a new level. Who else are you seeing besides, you know, what you're doing at Twilio, doing interesting things and that kind of really inspire you and make you say, here's a B2B company that's doing something interesting. Not just a consumer company whose ideas I could steal, which is sort of historically the way I thought this worked. But what have you seen?
Adam Morgan: So beyond Twilio doing an amazing job at.
Alex: At least we're trying given.
Adam Morgan: Just wait. There's more to come. There's so much more to come. another good example is ServiceNow. So Colin Fleming, their CE CMO, we had him come over to one of our leadership chats. In fact, he's going to be at our Twilio, office in next month with a panel. He has really done a great job of understanding this World where brand is coming to the forefront and how do you make cool, not boring, but very bold moments? He said something that was really, really awesome for me is like when we do our user conference, it's more of a family reunion. It's more of like understanding our audience and creating moments where they feel safe and connected and a part of something bigger. They are doing great things. Even with their advertising, they've been a little more bold as well. So that's a good example of MHM1B 2B company that's stepping
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Adam Morgan: out.
Alex: One word that I almost heard you say is like experiences, right? Like you didn't quite use that word, but you were kind of implying the event family. That's kind of an experience that you remember that kind of breaks through the noise. so there's in person experiences and then there are digital experiences. What's your take on making the digital experiences feel fresh? You know, breaks for the noise. Is that possible?
Adam Morgan: Oh, 100%.
Alex: Well, in that absolutely.
Adam Morgan: Like any experience should be. and I guess the answer to making it stand out today more than ever, it's not going to be polished production, it's not going to be polished performance marketing. It's going to be emotional brand experiences where you feel something. And what does that mean? Like, there's so many emotions. Like I think sometimes people say, oh, when you do an emotional thing, that means it's going to be sad. No. Or emotional is just going to be funny. There could be inspiration, there could be, wonder, there could be, intrigue. There's so many great human emotions. And then when you go back and look at things that Disney and Apple and others like, they're just selling stories and emotions. So do that. That's how you're going to do it. It could be in a video. You can have a really emotional. Like we just did a video called what Will I Build? Okay, today. So if they go, if you go to our website and just watch that video, it's like this deep introspective moment of builders of thinking about kind of that, that internal turmoil of how am I going to make a difference in this world? That's an awesome experience. That's just a video that you can watch on a web page. Right. It doesn't have to be a physical event. So how do we use everything from a web banner ad to a video to an, interactive website to do more storytelling and to get to emotions so that you have those experiences totally possible and should be done.
Alex: Have you seen this work in Information dense Environments. Well, this is one of the challenges that you know, a lot of our customers face. And I would kind of describe it this way. On the one hand we need to build trust, by looking and actually having done our homework. The business the best, one of the best ways to build trust on that side is to obviously have like detailed action ready documentation as an example. Right. And we know that it's sort of like it's crest substance, it has SEO heft if you get it out, et cetera, et cetera. But of course the challenge is that, you know, to, to get to that trusted resource, you kind of need to get people interested, you know, and they don't want to consume all of it. They just maybe need to consume a very relevant component of this. So in, you know, classical example is like a big report. Can you help people navigate through that report to the parts that they care about and on those parts they may have that video embedded or some other things that kind of creates an emotional connection. It doesn't feel like a wall of text that kind of overloads even the most motivated minds. But the kind of this duality between hey, I need the resource. People do want to, don't like nobody wants to fluff after a certain level of discovery. They want the depth, but then they can't cope with the depth as well in all of its deepness. And that's one way of our customers are describing the tension. How are you seeing this, you know, tackled within Twilio and was in other organizations that, that you know, you've been a part of.
Adam Morgan: I'm going to answer it with the throwback to the book. So it's a neuroscience perspective. Many of you have heard of like the two systems of thought. If you ever read Daniel Kahneman, Daniel Fast system in the Slow system. and what it says is that even though deep down we think that logic is super fast, like solving math problems or doing whatever, but the reality is the fast system in our brains are emotional and the logical systems are the slow systems. They come second. So there's this hierarchy of when you're engaging people, the emotional system is going to kick in first long before because
Alex: it's your survival system, it's your.
Adam Morgan: So what I ended up creating is what I call a hierarchy of message. that has really played a part in this because if you just look at everything as a straight up one to one, you're going to be like, oh, there's lots of information we got to get across. There's not space for this emotion block, like, how do you balance it all? And what I did is you look at, as you're starting from scratch as your fast system, your emotional system is kicking in. And then over time,
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Adam Morgan: it's going to trade off to your logical system, which is your slow system. Okay, so you're going faster than slow. And then we map that to all these different moments. So when you're looking at a brand ad on social, right, there's also social, like, sorry, a hierarchy, a pyramid of engagement from, really fast content to really slow content. Like you're going to behave very differently on a social platform than you are if you're reading a white paper. So we mapped all of that out and then start to assign certain things of like, when does the fast system kick in? When does the slow system kick in?
Alex: Right?
Adam Morgan: So if you're on a web page, that homepage better be damn emotional, right? Because that's the first experience.
Alex: That's your landing page. That's your first impression.
Adam Morgan: Yeah, right, first impression. But as you get deeper into the experience, less of the emotion and a lot more logic. So if we're looking at a web page or website, if you're getting deep into product information, it's not going to be all emotional and funny and sarcasm and all that stuff. It's going to be more facts, right? But maybe on that page, the opening thing will be maybe a level three where it's a little conversational and then we just get into all this stuff. But if you go to like marketing homepages or big, huge marketing pages, landing pages, they're going to be a lot more emotion leading down to a call to action that's a little more direct and informational. So for me, that's how I was always. I've always balanced it. When I get into argument, someone's like, well, we got all these facts and things. I'm m like, okay, let's slow it down and just what's the front door to the back door? Where are we at in this experience? Fast or slow systems? And then it marks out equally like it's a balanced approach. So it's like if I'm deep into a docs page, it's all facts, but if I'm higher up on a page or higher up in an experience, it's going to be more emotional. And also it's in your funnel. Top of funnel stuff's gonna be more emotional than bottom of funnel stuff. So it's a balance of when you put in the right amount of emotion and the Right amount of logic in each instance. And once I explain that to people, they're like, oh, we get it. And that fights go away and no one's arguing about it. It's like, all right, where do we put the logic and where do we put the emotion? And then let's figure that out together, and it's less of the overwhelm. So when your customers come in and say, like, yeah, what experience are we having right now? How high up the funnel, how deep? Then let's decide if it's going to be funny, or emotional, or if it's going to be logical and more facts. That's all it is. And it helps immensely when you break it apart like that.
Alex: Yes. And one additional flavor that we found is even when it's deep, and people are motivated, I think one of the ways that builds trust is to ask them a question or to have it almost start as a question base, like, what are you trying to accomplish? And then get them to that in depth section, so that they're appreciating that you're kind of reading their minds, not wasting their time.
Adam Morgan: Yeah. What you're using is. It's a headline. There's so many different headline formulas. One of them is, you know, a rhetorical question or a double question or whatever it is. And all you're doing is trying to get them to have more engagement and, yeah. More emotion around it in the thinking.
Alex: So how does all this now adapt to the crazy AI world that we live in, which sometimes I think blurs that, like, you know, we talked about, like, okay, we know we want Twilio in. I have Twilio in. But now AI is kind of regurgitating some of this information. Right. Like, maybe it's taking away your headlines in some cases and simplifying them. What, what do we have, as content leaders, as brand leaders? What can we do to, to increase our chances in not being marginalized in that world where, we could be?
Adam Morgan: Well, we're in a great place. If you think about what AI is doing, it's just speeding up a lot of the processes in the middle of the work. What it's not doing is changing the vision. It's like I talked about in the beginning.
Alex: Yeah.
Adam Morgan: AI is not going to come up with what you stand for as a brand. It's not going to create taste. It's going to create whatever you tell it to do. And in fact, creative people are better at creating good prompts that get faster to what you need. So you got to tap into your creativity for that. But I would say what we're dealing with is really all about the upfront. What do we believe in, the nuance, the taste, the flavor, the vision. So your job is going to change from executing along the funnel to being inputs. So sure, at the very, very top, what type of ads, where do we want to go? And then once you've established that vision and that the inputs and what they should look like, yeah AI is going to replicate it a thousand different ways to Sunday, no problem. That'll all just speed that up and make that personalization happen faster and get all of your leads moving along better. But you still have to come up with the story and the vision and the positioning. Like what you want and what you're doing. You need to be the architect. So I would say as brand people get better at being an architect.
Alex: So as you know, going back to kind of the genesis of your book, right, The. Let's, let's play devil's advocate and let's say we are in this now with AI right after the book. we are in the world where you say hey, emotional ideas, you know, they get people excited, they move people, they drive action, they ultimately move the bottom line. But then the average company is still kind of in the world where emotions don't exist and the senior decision makers are kind of heard, hey, let's say I thing is there like why do we need all this other things? So they will kind of use it as an excuse not to justify this. Right. Like so that's kind of the counter realistic things. So let's say you know, you're advising a brand new cmo. You know, we know that job is very dangerous. It gets, there's a lot of brand new CMOs that last for about a year and a half to two years, right. Like, and, and they have a very limited impact. time to, to prove what they're capable of doing. In a technical organization there's a lot of skepticism and there's kind of the answer is like don't do anything. AI is going to do everything for us. Or like maybe like do geo, right? Like that's sort of that's the skeptical audience. Let's kind of have an answer for them that will provide. Move them, move them towards the alternative view that, that you're advocating for, for our, for our audience.
Adam Morgan: Well, first of all, this is a question I've been asked for like the last 15 years. How do I prove to a senior manager or a CMO or CEO that is like screw creativity. Let's just get AI to do it all and get it all done and stop messing around. Right?
Alex: Yeah.
Adam Morgan: Having that conversation is challenging. You have to. Because every single leader is going to have a different nuance of what they care about. The way I tackle that is you as a marketer need to think of that as an audience of one. What are their core beliefs? What do they think? Because there may, you may be halfway there. You might be super far away. You don't know. But you need to like really start with. And it's not during the big brand campaign that you're proposing because that's when there's heat and there's fire. M. You need to start that conversation long before when you're creating that relationship with that CMO and being like M. Do you believe in this? Do you believe in that? Like how much? Let's have a philosophical discussion. Because if they're so locked in, that's why I wrote the book. It's like to go and get data, to go back to someone who's very skeptical to prove to them why the value of creativity or vision or emotions. Because a lot of them are. Yeah, there. I've had so many of those people in my lives that are just. It's all about sales. Telefax, we're done. Like, I'm moving on this. And it's a hard, it's a hard thing to tackle. And it starts with things like, what's the strategy of your business? Are you a, consumer stent trick? Or are you more of like an operational business strategy where it's just about, you know, cutting little margins out and doing whatever. Like the type of business matters, the type of person matters, the type of environment, the competitors matter. Like if I'm talking to the competitors, let them say that, Let them go and be like, fire our whole marketing team, our branding team, and let's just start using AI. What a hellhole they're going to create. And I'll be, it'll be easy for me to, you know, stand out from that. So you have to just realize that there's, there's a lot of elements and proving to them that storytelling and creativity truly make a moat around your company so that you make more money. Like that's the story that you have to communicate and there's a lot of ways to do it. My book is one way. I've got a ton of other studies that I've saved. Like, you got to do your research and understand that human being and then convince them in the best way possible. So there's not a blanket answer.
Alex: So there's no blanket answer. It's a deeply personalized business and the person. And maybe where you are right now. Right. And what you're, what you're. And, and. But ultimately, like for the skeptics, I feel like there's two types of skeptics in tech. There's the money skeptic and then there's like a visionary, visionary leaders, like typically, sometimes some product people. And then they're like, the easiest path to them is made. This is what our customers want. Like the story that you told about builders, that may persuade somebody more because they're like, oh yeah, like I, I think our customers think of themselves as builders and they will kind of like, I'll be proud that my company is the builder company. And so that, that can, may. May go to the ego of that founder and then to their passion for their customers. Right. Not necessarily for the brand, but for the customers. Is that.
Adam Morgan: And
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Adam Morgan: And every.
Alex: Yeah, it does.
Adam Morgan: And the thing about that is there's a lot of ways to get through that. And it's like you could, you could have them read books, you can show studies, you can show how people, other companies have done it. You could go out and do some social media tests that quickly throw out to your actual customers, like do the scientific method. And it's a cheap, easy, fast way of saying, like, let's do a logical one and let's do an emotional one and we'll see which one gets more interactivity and more connection. And it's an easy way of doing a test. You could do tests, you can do surveys. I went out and interviewed a ton of customers when we were doing the builder brand. So. And just get a lot of data. I went into, we did a study with Interbrand, like one of the biggest brands, you know, gurus of the world. And they got us good answers when we did a, lot of surveys and stuff of like what we really stood for and how our customers are reacting to it. So you need to get all the data, all the studies, whatever it is, to get to that person, those skeptics and prove to them, get them willing. Like I went and personally gave a book to the CEO and said, read this and then I'm going to call you in a month and we're going to talk about it. And it's all that stuff that helps persuade them because they may just have a certain worldview. So you can do it so many ways. And get the data to prove it out. Again, it just depends on what your, your circumstances are.
Alex: Do you you know in the product companies like ah, like ours. Like one of the DNAs of a lot of product companies is go do the demo. Right? I'm like, like. But you're not, it's not you doing the demo. It's like for example with us, you, the CEO or whoever has a cmo has the report. They just published this deck. They just worked on, on six months tuning up and they got it to where they got it and then they put it in, for example our product. And then it, it's gotten instantly, you know, 3x better in terms of reach and engagement and you know, being on brand. And so that moment they aha of like. Because they know what was the input, they see the output and they like something clicks. We like that's kind of a moment of truth for us. I think that. But that's easy. That's a product, right? Like we're selling, you know, a demo or we're like they're, they're you know, using the product, getting value from it. like I was always curious how do you find an equivalent in marketing? Right. So you mentioned the test campaign, right? Like so we put, you know, did a mini test, put like a small budget here, this is what we got. What do you think? Or is that like do you show some prototypes of videos and that kind of gets the creative juices flowing and maybe creates an illusion of choice for that executive. Right. What have you found on the experiential side that it helps get buy in around new brand or kind of or broadly like a core strategy?
Adam Morgan: all of that, all of that. I mean the simplest and easiest and it costs nothing is I'll write a manifesto, I'll write a story.
Adam Morgan: And before I present any of the thing, I'll just say, let me just tell you this, let me just read this for you and I'll read it. And as long as it's a story that has a lot of emotion and facts and data and all that in there, once they hear the manifesto they're like, I get it. That's what we did for our brand. We went to the board of directors and read a manifesto and they were like holy crap. Yes, yes. So it cost you nothing. You could do a video. I've done that in the past too.
Alex: So video could be video manufacturer, right?
Adam Morgan: Videos are very emotional. Videos are very emotional. That same one that I told you about, the. What Will I build today? Early in the process we made that, which is kind of like a manifesto. And when it was playing at an event, our CEO saw someone like wipe away a tear and he's like, holy crap. Like that deeply connected with someone. Like that was good proof to him that it's like, okay, this, right, right.
Alex: So, and this. Will you wrap up on this? One of our other guests, Christopher Lockhead, talks a lot about cost category design. And so he's kind of pushing the envelope. Like, hey, don't just leave it in brand and cmo, right? Like you need to design a whole category and then you be a leader in that category. And then to do the category, you do need to do your marketing, right? You need to, you know, serve that unique caster. But like, it's a little bit beyond classical marketing. It's a bit beyond brand. It's sort of a real business architecture. And his view is that to do that you do need to present to the board, which sounds like you're doing that, you do need the CEO involvement. Right. It's not no longer a marketing thing trying to get buy in from the business. It's a business design process for the entire category and then for how your business leads that category. Have you seen that level of push? It's like, hey, this is more than just a campaign. This is how
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Alex: we define the competitive space in which we're in 100% throughout my whole career.
Adam Morgan: And to be honest, this isn't like a new idea. This is Trout and Reese, the original 20 positioning, right? As a positioning, if you're not the leader, create a new category and put yourself at the top. Totally awesome. And I would say that's not for every brand, that's not for every company. It's a good strategy. That's one strategy. Are we doing it? Absolutely. Like we're in multiple categories. And so it's like trying to create a new category, create a meta category. But it's damn hard, especially in technology because if, you know, you don't get Gartner or any of the other analysts to agree with you, that category dies. Or they start creating their own new categories. And you may or may not position in those or not. So it's, it's very complicated. For like 10 years at Adobe, we were trying to create a new category in B2B and it's just very, very hard depending on your category. So it's a viable strategy. It's something you should absolutely look into. But it's not a golden ticket to
Alex: solve it doesn't work all the time and not like. And often if you're not at that level, right. Let's say you're just, just building a, a brand for product. Right. Like it's a little harder to, to have because you're dealing with.
Adam Morgan: It is the mindset of the customer. But today that's. It's the mindset of the whole ecosystem. Right, that you're trying to change. it's totally possible and I think in new category or, sorry, in new products and new areas it's a lot easier, but in established ones it's a little more challenging because everyone keeps trying to put you back in the old one. but again, totally viable. I wouldn't say that's the perfect answer for everything though.
Alex: Last kind of, last question. When you think about the content of the future, so we talked about, like, use more videos, use manifestos, you've written a book, you know what's gonna break through, but have the trust and the depth. Right. Like, as we're, you know, as are we gonna shift to less white papers, more hubs where you find, you know, one pagers that kind of address the need, but you're not overwhelmed with the specific thing. Are we gonna be stuck with this chat interface? Are we gonna move on to more exciting interfaces? Like how do we think about content innovation? You know, especially as you see the, the history of B2B and is it going to change B2B going to change that fast, that much? Right. Like historically.
Adam Morgan: I wish, I wish I've been trying for a lot of those things you've said instead of more white papers and even like getting rid of that word and more articles and stories.
Alex: Yeah.
Adam Morgan: I think the real answer is it's going to be a combination of very personalized experiences. So if you're into white papers, you're going to get a lot more of them. And if you want more videos, you're going to get a lot more videos. And it's going to be, you know, AI is going to help accentuate that, but it's also going to be like where I see a lot of growth, which is really interesting. Is AI proof content, meaning stuff that couldn't be created through AI Very human, very unique. Like where I see a lot of brands going now is how do I create something so it's not just, you know, you and I talking here on a zoom call. Why aren't we in a pub in the middle of some town in a very something that AI can't recreate? That is a very bespoke experience. That's going to be the golden, the holy grail. So how do you get to that? How do you create content that AI can't replicate? That's where people are going to see this brand is doing something and they're going to stand out.
Alex: So, wait, are you saying, Adam, that I've been talking to an AI avatar of you all this time?
Adam Morgan: Yes. So sorry.
Alex: Well, you've heard it. This is Adam and his avatar being trained. Amazing, amazing conversation, Adam. Where can people find more about you? Get access to your book, your podcast? Where can people find.
Adam Morgan: Probably the easiest thing is on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, there's links out to websites about my book or about my speaking stuff and other articles. I have a Medium magazine called the Creative Machine with a lot of articles on that, but. And then Twilio, Twilio.com, like, you can go learn more about what we're doing there and see the builder story and build their video. Figure out for yourself. Yeah, go watch that video.
Alex: Brilliant. Love it. Adam, thank you so much. Making B2B way less boring and way more exciting. And that's, you know, God's work. Thank you. Thank you, sir.
Adam Morgan: Thank you.
Alex: All right, take care.