129 | Mastering marketing impact: Creativity, alignment and AI

Jon Busby: Hello and welcome back to the Tech Marketing Podcast. This week we are, we're continuing our conversation with Cat Dutton, VP of Global Marketing at Pegasystems, and Minaz, of course, who's been no stranger to us on the Tech Marketing Podcast, our Executive Client Director. If you didn't catch the first half of this conversation, Go back one episode and make sure to have a listen to part one before you dive into part two.

So we're jumping straight back into it with Cat, looking at how she drives Impact at Pegasystems. Minaz, let's bring us on to driving impact because I think this is something that most of our listeners will be on the edge of their seats about. Like what, what does driving impact mean to you, Minaz?

Especially when it comes to ABM.

Minaz Tejani: When it comes to, yeah, ABM or, Targeted or better marketing or targeted to Mahajan, whatever we're going to call it or growth marketing. Yeah, I think, it's, it again comes back to maybe some of my principles around marketing should always be provable, demonstrable and connected to revenue and within organizations.

Ultimately there are needs to be a strong focus, I think, around those levers that really that can be pulled from marketing to understand how they can impact different stages and different levels of a program. To give an example, what we try to do is really advise clients to. Sit down with sales and understand what are those levers along the way on the journey to revenue.

It's not just, input versus output. It's how can we help you at developing better relationships and increasing the people that you know. Okay. That is a KPI. That's an impact driver, if you like, but it's not the only one. You then have to push it further and say beyond that point, what is it you really need?

I want to find out information that if I walk into a meeting, I know about all the, where there are big investments are coming in, right? So use that and turn that into an impact driver and set a KPI against it and put a mechanism in place and almost continue that. that thinking all the way through right up until the end.

Now, you're not going to be able to support them in every single piece, but the point is you're asking the question. And I do see a fundamental difference between some programs that are maybe happy with the sort of almost like the space that the slightly Mars bar approach to advertising, right?

They run a campaign, they see the amount of Mars bars get increased. They don't really care. They don't really care too much in between what happens. But really interrogating that process and understanding it a bit further and wanting to marketing to support or ABM to support sales in every step of that journey and then selecting the ones that you really can help them with and setting sort of KPIs.

The last thing I'll say on it is actually I did a talk quite recently about it's about designing reporting on the way in, not the way out. And that is such a common thing that people design programs. And then afterwards, even after they've run it sometimes, so what can we measure? And I think if you design reporting on the way in, it would change your view about maybe what that strategy is to make sure that ABM and marketing are constantly being held up.

As a valuable growth driver in a business. Thank you for listening to my Ted talk.

Jon Busby: Cat, what's your view on men as firstly, I think impact especially when you're at that VP and CMO level how does impact manifest itself in Pega? What kind of questions do you have to ask? answer and how do you design, as Minaz mentioned, we're designing reporting on the way in.

Minaz, it feels such an obvious thing to do, right? Of course you were implying it at the beginning. So often we forget about it until we get asked the question. So how does that manifest itself in Pega?

Cat Dutton: Yeah. So Pega, Pega is an awesome company. And we have extremely intelligent, professional technologists within our organization.

And the reason I mention that is because we get a lot of data and a lot of insight through what we do. I think the thing that I sometimes struggle with is saying, do you know what, at a high level, this, I look at things really simply. If we're investing budget and we're investing resource into something in marketing, I'm like, I want to see a return on investment.

And then we work out what is that return on investment we want to see. But there is a lot of data and insight in Pega that then goes into that. So I think to Manaz's point, I think it's really important that before you set off on a too far down a journey or a path, working out what is really important at the end of what you want to be able to show and that impact.

And I think getting that alignment internally is really important as well. We've got examples recently, I think loads of people on this podcast are listening can attest to this. We run a lot of client events through the work that we do. And the team are very good at setting up front, right?

These are the expectations. This is what we're expecting. But for some reason, there is always this massive kind of sorry, massive is probably a bit of a strong word, but there's always this kind of dialogue when an event has happened around, okay, has the follow up been done? And we have a really strong SLA on making sure that all follow up with clients that have attended event is done within 48 hours.

And for one reason or another, we never quite hit that SLA. And I think, I find it frustrating from a marketing perspective, because we're like, we've put all this effort in and all this resource, and we've done a great job on making this event happen. But then that follow up doesn't always happen straight away.

And for, there's lots of great reasons for that around how our systems measure it, or, a salesperson has followed up in a different way to what's captured in our system. So they've actually done the follow up, but it doesn't flow through. I think having that alignment and expectation setting, but making sure that flows all the way through a campaign or a program, and afterwards, and keeping on track of that is, is really important.

Minaz Tejani: Yeah, definitely. And I'd say, rest assured, you're not the only organization that suffers that. We hear that every sort of week and we're trying to help clients on their journey. Do you think that's also because We ran an

Jon Busby: event last week, I think we got the same problem.

Minaz Tejani: Yeah. Don't worry. Okay, that's a dig from John to me.

No, it's a dig for me as well, don't worry. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that's also partially, I think there's a slight mindset issue in the industry around seeing the events at the end of the journey when they should be the beginning

Cat Dutton: and

Minaz Tejani: that all the, an event is what happens is I guess people get so tied up into the sort of resource intensiveness, if you like, of, They see that as the buildup and that's the crescendo and actually you just see it as another channel like you would running a demand gen program, or as I see it as a channel of input.

And then that's where the that's where the journey actually begins. And

Cat Dutton: it's a catalyst for change. It should be seen as an opportunity to open doors. That's how I've always seen events that are part of a program or part of a campaign. They are not the end point. So I think, we've made, and don't get me wrong, I think we've made massive progress in Pegra just in the last 18 months around being more considered, and more intentional around the events that we're running, when we run them, how we run them what we want the outcomes to be, how we then do that follow up we've just not cracked it quite yet on making sure that every client has a consistent approach in terms of how we follow up.

Minaz Tejani: Yeah. That's where you're going to learn as well.

Like when you're running 10 events and you can look at the data. Do you find that. Because we all know that salespeople love events, account teams love events. It's FaceTime, obviously. Do you ever find a sort of battle with having to temper the enthusiasm and the demand from, Account teams with we want to run an event.

We want an event, but you know that needs to be every day.

Cat Dutton: It's not just account teams, it's the whole organization, but I think you find that in every organization and, I take it all always as well as, do you know what is a positive because a people see value in what we're delivering and they want more of it.

But secondly, they do see events as an opportunity to get face to face with their clients, which I've, I am in full support of. I think, it's almost like marketers, I think sometimes always almost feel oh we've got to say no again, and that's hard trying to get that balance, but we can't say yes to everything because there's a finite amount of resources budget and actually we want to see the outcomes.

And if we were running the types of events that we were asked to do every single, we just wouldn't see it. So I think it's getting that balance, but we've made a conscious effort this year. We've already started our planning on client events for next year. We run our annual Pega world which happens every year.

So that's always done way in advance, but all of the kind of things that we might do from a cross regional perspective or industry perspective or trade shows or specific events. We are planning for that now for next year, so we've got a more intentional calendar behind being able to communicate that with our account teams, sales teams, and across our go to market teams but also giving us enough runway to have the impact that we want to have with them.

Minaz Tejani: Yeah, definitely. And we wouldn't be able to talk about events without having a shameless plug for PegaFest as well.

Cat Dutton: PegaFest, which are on now. We ran them on yesterday. Yeah, they're great. Check them out if you've not seen them. Brilliant. Yeah,

Jon Busby: definitely. I want to come back to a point you mentioned a moment ago where you talked about, and we talked about this in the prep call a little bit as well, like how the, Pega is very much a tech and product led company, which as a technologist myself, of course, I get terribly excited about but you know that the founders are still very much involved.

So you've got these technical leaders who, as you mentioned, like favor insight and data and probably and structure. Like, how do you blend creativity into that, into your marketing across, across the leadership team that is so tech focused?

Cat Dutton: Yeah it's an interesting balance. I'd also say our founder is also our CEO, which is brilliant.

And he is very hands on with clients. He's out with clients every week. So I'd also say, we are as a company, we're very client focused, but we do tend to leave with our tech. Yeah, I think it's tough. I'm not going to lie, John. I genuinely think it's tough. I think what I try to do is make sure that.

The team, which I lead has an environment in which they can be creative. And to your point, one of the. ideas that the team had last year was to run these events called PegaFests, which are aimed at our apps development community. And they are run in very different venues.

So the ones that we ran last year were formed through our Asia Pacific and Japan marketing team. And we ran them in a few different cities out in that region. And they were running nightclubs, right? Not in the evening. Nobody gets to enjoy the day because it gave a very different feel to, we want to attract the development community.

So we want to run them in venues. going to attract them. And because they were so successful, we've now this year, we've we're in the process at the moment, we're running them across our North American cities. And getting brilliant results through and great feedback and just even the energy and the branding and the creative that's gone into it.

It's very different to what we've done elsewhere. And, there's been a lot of debate internally around is that the right thing to do? Or, I'm not sure, but actually we've got to try these things and I'm all up for, let's give things a go. Let's push the boundaries on where we are with creative and let's see what the impact is.

But I do think it's important to give, give my team working within a framework, but give them autonomy to try new ideas.

Jon Busby: Yeah as a technologist, that's how we live by. We live by that, the whole kind of agile manifesto of moving fast and breaking things. And, I could quote many technologists that have said similar type stuff.

So bringing that to marketing, I think no one will ever argue. If you were to summarize your three principles you live by when running those teams. What, how would you summarize it, Cat from your side? What would the tips be for our listeners?

Cat Dutton: I think definitely autonomy that we've talked about.

But given the leaders that work for me, a bit of autonomy they might disagree with that, John. I don't know. Let's see if they listen. But I like to try and give them that ability to have a bit of freedom on, on creative, but working within a framework. I think the second thing is, I'm really keen on best practice sharing across our teams.

So because, I've got I've got a number of people within the team who are, they're all based in different locations. I live in Manchester, right in the UK. Our headquarters is in Boston. It's, we've got people all over the world, different time zones. It doesn't always quite work, but we run every two weeks, we have a session that's set up for an hour called an ABM showcase, where we get a different marketer to come on and not do it as a formal presentation, but just share an account that they're working with a plan that they've done, maybe some creative or some new campaigns that they've done to share that with other people around the world.

And it's working. We've been running it now for about two years and it works in terms of just having those marketers understand and appreciate how it might work in a different country. And there's loads of ideas that have come out of that where, we've got economies of scale because people are sharing and then we've built templates behind it.

I'm right. That's a great idea. Let's roll that out in different places. And then I think the third thing is. I really try to do this, although my calendar is a bit of a nightmare sometimes. It's just make time for everybody in the team and provide that open opportunity to come and have a chat.

I'm very, I think you probably guessed this from this conversation. I'm very upfront. I'm quite open as a person. I don't really, don't really think of myself as a hierarchical person. I think if come and talk to me, I want to hear the ideas. I want to hear the things that don't work.

So just making that time for every employee where you can and your team is, for me, it's really important on that communication,

Jon Busby: Which I think when running a global team can be a challenge, right? I don't know, but it can and

Cat Dutton: time zones are bonkers, but I'm someone that because of my lifestyle as well.

I do more of a flexible working, so I work five days in four, I do work my evenings, which helps if I'm doing calls with people out in Australia, we either speak really early my morning, late their evening, or reverse, and with the US it helps because if I do calls in the evening, it's their afternoon. So I think you've just got to be a bit flexible on making sure that you make time for people.

Jon Busby: Yeah, I completely agree. Like you mentioned before, talking about the global side of things, you started in EMEA and then end up, always end up falling into a global role. How have you found what would you say, I'm trying to think of the right way of phrasing this, Cat. What's a special skill that makes you more suitable for global roles as opposed to just in region?

Is there something that, that makes, I don't know

Cat Dutton: my team would have to comment on that, Jon.

Minaz Tejani: I think, do a survey monkey afterwards. We're always so humble.

Cat Dutton: I think I have a lot of respect for different cultures and different approaches. I think that helps. I think the fact that I am flexible and I've never been someone that says, apart from if it's on a Friday no to things.

I think, if I just work around what, what needs to be done. And the reason I say no to Fridays is apart from that he's now started school. It's my day with my little boy, but he's started school recently. So it's a slightly different dynamic. Yeah I think being open. But I also think just respecting and appreciating others opinions and viewpoints.

And being able to make decisions. I think I'm pretty strong on, something needs to change or we need to implement. I'm pretty strong on giving my voice and making a decision on it. But yeah, you'd have to ask my team, Josh. It's something that's

Jon Busby: been really intriguing me recently. Every business goes through waves of giving regions more responsibility and then centralizing and going back and forth.

And I think we've definitely seen more of a trend recently towards that kind of localized type marketing, especially when you're talking about ABM, right? It becomes so important to be respectful of those other cultures.

Cat Dutton: Yeah.

Jon Busby: So I think that's where my mind was going. It's what makes global marketing so important?

What are the skill sets you need when running global marketing teams? And just as you mentioned, it's about being approachable and accessible, but also respectful of their own autonomy. I think, and getting that balance is there isn't, there is not one single best practice answer to say, this is how you organize your team.

Cat Dutton: I think as well, I think as well to your point, John, it's understanding how organizations work.

Jon Busby: Yeah,

Cat Dutton: I think it definitely comes back to that. I. Because I spend quite a lot of my time as well with our kind of central marketing team and our product marketers. And they have very different views of looking at things, right?

So I think it's appreciating how does that dynamic work, but also appreciating how does the dynamic work in go to market teams that we have as well. And it's not just sales and accounts, but how do the consultant teams work? How do all the people that really get involved in our solutions? How do they operate with clients?

How do our customer success teams work and bringing them together? I do think ABMers are also really strong on being that kind of pivotable person within that account team and bringing people together. I think we just have that natural ability. So yeah I think it's having that understanding and appreciation.

Minaz Tejani: Yeah. And do you find that also in that sort of, that, with that global outlook as well? There's Absolutely. I agree with you from what I observe. Obviously you're very good at it, but there's also, there's definitely a sort of pedigree of people that have got the ability to be able to unify the different teams and almost distill that on a slightly more need to know for their team because ultimately you don't want all of your team always being exposed to all of that kind of politics and exposure and there's a level of shielding is how much is too much shielding before you're suffocating them versus otherwise.

Actually letting them in to bring on the journey with you. And I think that, I've observed different people doing that at different balances with what works with their teams. But yeah, it's just a comment more than anything. Did you ever find that, or is that just something that comes naturally of you just go with your instincts?

Cat Dutton: No, I do. I'm quite Yeah, I'm a bit of a protector. I think, I know that in myself. Yeah, I do think there's a lot of things that get discussed at corporate level that quite frankly you don't necessarily need to know if you're in the field until a decision has been made on it because otherwise you just instill that kind of uncertainty in people which is not productive for anybody.

So yeah, I do agree with that.

Jon Busby: Talking about uncertainty for a moment and of course, we've made it 41 minutes into this podcast and we've not mentioned the two magic letters that have created a huge amount of uncertainty in our world, which is AI. Let's look at the future for a moment. Let's just cast our eye out to, to, to where this is heading.

Like Cat, what's your view on the rapid rise of AI and automation? And do you think, are you worried, especially in ABM where things, I mentioned earlier, like values and understanding people's tone of voice and all this kind of stuff is the human touch is so important. Like, how are you seeing it get integrated?

And is there anything you're worried about?

Cat Dutton: Yeah, I'm not I think initially I probably was actually a little bit concerned. I think some of it is educating yourself. Um, I think there's something in that around if you educate yourself and you build your knowledge in something.

It's if you go into a presentation, you've completely don't know the content, that's going to make you more apprehensive, right? Before you go in. So I think it's doing your homework around it and understanding actually how that can apply within the world that you work in. I think for me, AI is always, as I've learned more about it and, It's what we offer as an organization as well.

I genuinely think it's there as a technology to enable people. I went to a conference a couple of years ago and someone was describing it as almost like your own assistant, which I thought was a brilliant way to think about it. So it should be there to enable you in your job and make you successful.

It's not for me a replacement.

Jon Busby: Yep.

Cat Dutton: But I do think there's a certain level as we, I think as we go into the future, I think we need to adapt. And we need to be open to adapting and how we work and what we actually deliver and use AI to support us.

Jon Busby: Yeah there's a great I actually saw a talk, and this was before the rise of open AI that we saw today, and it was by Garry Kasparov, who was, if anyone remembers, and if you've seen he has a whole mantra around calling it augmented intelligence instead of artificial intelligence, and, but the term I'm using at the moment is accelerated.

It's about accelerating our people. But it's not about replacing them. So I'm complete completely with you, which is when you use it. It can help you to analyze things faster to get to the your end result faster, but it I think as marketeers, we're a little bit, I'm seeing it in some ways get overused and be tempted to using ways to write our nurture tracks for us, which may sound brilliant, but all we're really doing is getting machines, writing stuff, talking to machines who are then going to summarize stuff.

And if you, There's so many levels that's wrong, but, even if we look at from a sustainability standpoint, we're just burning a whole load of energy for no outcome. But, I think if we're, if we can use it responsibly, it can be a power for good.

Minaz Tejani: I think also there's something recently, I think it's Rory Southerland was talking about the idea of like crap dissertations.

And he was saying that essentially writing a really crappy dissertation. is not about the mark that you get. It's about the learning you, you go on through that process to discover the information to write early dissertation, whether it's good or bad is largely irrelevant. It's about that journey of knowledge and the thirst for understanding and AI will write you that dissertation, but it's not going to teach you to become a better person and have that knowledge along the way.

So it's quite short lived. In that sense, and I don't think that's means that avoid ai but I think as with all things it's and abm and demand gen and marketing in general. I think it's going to It's already showing itself to be a super awesome, valuable tool in that journey to get where you need to get to.

And you'll get there quicker, but it's still a human that needs to get there.

Jon Busby: Completely agree. Completely agree. It makes me feel better about my dissertation now as well, Minaz. Yeah! Let's be honest, who enjoyed writing theirs? I didn't enjoy writing mine. Yeah, no.

Minaz Tejani: It's the journey though, John. It's not the destination.

That's what I always

Jon Busby: say. I went to university to study chemistry. Nothing to do with marketing. But really I went into university to go and learn how to wash my clothes properly and cook food and learn how to learn. And to drink of course, but yeah, I think that's a great point, but as, like, how, as you're looking to the future cat, like what, where are you excited about using some of these new technologies?

Cat Dutton: Oh, that's an interesting question. I think for me, it's being able to do more. We've talked a lot internally and we're doing some things at the moment to. Really think about how we replicate and how we build templates to how we operate and how do we just really replicate and be more consistent?

So I think for me the future is really about that. How do we become more productive and how do we become more insightful in what we're executing? I

Jon Busby: really like that. So we need to bring ourselves to a close here because I know we could carry on talking I think for days. There's a lot of.

Conversation currently in the B2B space about brand and demand coming together. I think it's been in discussion now for at least the last 18 months is, final thought from your side, is this something that you're looking to embrace currently or potentially down the road? What's your view on how these two mold together?

Cat Dutton: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I don't I don't understand why we do look at things in silos, actually. I think brand has a massive impact across everything that you do. For me brand is absolutely pivotal to demand generation. It brings that awareness around who your organization is, what you stand for, what you deliver.

So it makes demand generation easier if you've got a strong positioning out there. So yeah. Yeah, definitely need to be together.

Jon Busby: Yeah. I think that's the final thought is if you're not doing brand what are you doing? Cat, it's been a real pleasure to have you on today's podcast. We hope to have you back again in the future.

And it's been incredible to get, to go through your journey, just, your career from Fujitsu to Atos, to, to Pega and how you've really built that wonderful global team across ABM as well as just the Discussing some of your views on demand and brand there. So thank you very much for joining us and Minaz as well.

Minaz Tejani: Absolutely. Pleasure. And yeah, thanks again. Cheers everyone.

Cat Dutton: Thank you.