120: Sins of startup marketing, kudos for Mattel, quoted in the New York Times, interview with Jia Hyun...
Hey, sometimes, you just gotta be a unicorn.
I take emcee responsibilities quite seriously, especially when an event like the TogetherDigital National Conference calls for a moment of unicorn.
Oh the things you can buy on Amazon.
In this edition of The World's Best Newsletter:
1. The 7 Deadly Sins of Startup Marketing (my talk from INBOUND)
2. Mattel's new gender-neutral dolls: Yes!
3. Chief Marketer Magazine: Why Brands Should Take a Stand
4. Quoted in the NYTimes: About Men's Underwear?
5. Watch my interview with LinkedIn's Jia Hyun
6. Q&A with Brooke Bartos for Marketo (an Adobe Company)
7. Quote of the week: The drumbeat to move forward (Arlan Hamilton)
Let's do it.
1. New: The 7 Deadly Sins of Startup Marketing (my talk from INBOUND)
Video, captions, slides, and a full article are all now available, totally free. I detail the most common misconceptions and mistakes I've seen (AND MADE MYSELF) in marketing a startup.
1. Poor expectations
2. Trying to do it all
3. Imaginary market, imaginary problem
4. Competitive delusion
5. Underestimating the real competition
6. Vague on value
7. Hiring the wrong people
Read the article here, watch the video + access the slides here.
2. Mattel's new gender-neutral dolls: Yes!
Mattel announced gender-neutral dolls this week. As I said on LinkedIn, I'm all for it. I applaud the company and what this means for GenApha and GenZ (and all of us) to color outside the lines a little.
However, as some of the comments to my post indicate, we have progress to be made.
LinkedIn is hardly the platform to debate this topic, but I am frustrated when some seek to invalidate the REAL AND LIVED experiences of people with the same rights to gender expression as them.
This is where the line is blurred - brand moves like this can stir cultural debate but are always in reaction to the groundswell happening among consumers. They're trying to tap into where consumers are - and are going - after all.
With nearly 8,000 views as of this morning, my post is gaining traction in the GenZ hashtag on the platform and stirring conversation. Feel free to weigh in.
3. Chief Marketer Magazine: Why Brands Should Take a Stand
Speaking of brands taking a stand, I weighed in on that topic for Chief Marketer Magazine this week in a new article from Beth Negus Viveiros.
“Thanks to the prevalence of marketing—we see thousands of marketing messages a day—businesses play a massive role in modern society as culture-makers and opinion-drivers,”
The article also features POV from Lindsey Christensen of Thoughtbot, Hannah Budreski of Constant Contact, Rahim Rajpar of John Hancock Insurance, and Kelly Esten of Toast, who all joined me yesterday on a "Future of Marketing" panel at Chief Marketer's event in Boston.
The consensus is clear: mission and business go hand in hand, and courage is required to create progress.
4. Quoted in the NYTimes: About Men's Underwear?
Yes. LOL.
Tiffany Hsu, reporter for the New York Times, asked me to weigh in for her article, Underwear Ads Lose the Macho: How Marketing Has Embraced Real Men, in which she covers a new men's underwear commercial from Hanes and explores its impact on the changing notion of body standards.
"Advertising has been so mired in stereotypes and tropes about men and women that anything that looks like reality is celebrated right now.”
So grateful for this kind of platform to continue to support progressive brands and discuss the cultural impact of advertising. Big thank you to Tiffany.
5. Watch my interview with LinkedIn's Jia Hyun
In the lastest episode of Learning from Leaders, I had a chance to meet Jia Hyun, the head of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions for North America.
Watch our conversation, in which we discuss:
What more people should understand about B2B sales
How LinkedIn has grown to 600M members
How brands can best engage with buyers on this platform
Key pieces of advice from her extensive career in both marketing and sales.
(In partnership with Microsoft.)
PS: LinkedIn's NYC HQ is beautiful.
6. Q&A with Brooke Bartos for Marketo (an Adobe Company)
OK, so, this week's newsletter is like a sizzle reel of my life the past two weeks. #sorrynotsorry
One perk of being an Adobe Insider is getting to sit down with marketers like Brooke Bartos for Marketo, an Adobe Company.
Three takeaways from our live-streamed conversation (on-demand here.)
Continue learning, seeking each other out in the #MKTGNation -- even when you are faced with "no's"
Bake Sales into the MOPS process - they are your best source of campaign and content insights and your most important partner in the lead process.
Don't be creepy. (Enough said.)
7. Quote of the week
If you don't know Arlan Hamilton, inspiring rabble rouser of the VC community, she is the CEO of Backstage Capital; a venture-capital fund that invests in female, LGBTQ, and minority entrepreneurs (who currently receive less than 10% of all VC deals.)
In this interview, she responds to the question "What behavior or personality trait do you most attribute to your success?" with pure FIRE:
The ability to turn the sound of adversity -- the beat of it, the pulse of it -- into song and lyric so that hardships and disappointment, that come every single day, can be repurposed into the drumbeat to move me forward. I think what that really means is that I have stamina and perseverance that is off the charts.
Keep going, Arlan.
Have a great weekend, and thank you as always for reading.
Katie
>> Share The World's Best Newsletter on Twitter, or LinkedIn <<
The MarketingProfs B2B Forum is October 16-18 just outside of Washington DC. Check out the great lineup here and save $100 with code B2BFriend19.
Rising Stars 2019 is for women sales leaders (and future leaders). Join 100+ of your peers for a day of networking, connection, and learning. October 23 in Waltham, MA. I'm thrilled to be emceeing this important event!
West Coast! I'll be back in December for the Growth Marketing Conference, December 10-11 in San Francisco.
Book me to emcee or speak here -- yes, there is always a chance of unicorns. Email me for a sense of topics and session ideas.