Julie Preiss: 0:00

It is an industry of absolute niches. You know, there are niche technologies everywhere. There's point solutions everywhere. A technology that just does one thing really well. You know, that's so, so different from a a platform that does a lot of things. And so yeah, I think you have to build a really strong brand within the category that you're in, within the segment you're trying to serve, and really try to distinguish the value. It's all to me about what the value is you're going to bring to that customer. What is the problem you can solve for them better than anyone else? And I always try to get companies to distill it down to the one thing. It's not the five things, it's the one thing that you do better.Kevin Kerner: 0:41

Hello, everyone. This is Kevin Kerner of Tech Marketing Rewired. This next episode, I talked to Julie Preiss, who is the CMO of Centripetal. Julie is a good friend of mine, having worked with her at three different consecutive companies. And when I was putting this episode together, the topic together, I'd wanted to talk to a CMO that's been through branding several times. And there's no one I can think better of for branding efforts than Julie. Having done it several times with her, we launched the brand for her, but she also worked with branding agencies to do this. Julie really knows the um ins and outs of when to actually launch a new brand, how to use partners to get it done, how to build an internal stakeholder team that can actually support the branding effort. And then finally launching the brand. Julie is just an absolute pro and really great to work with. So I was really excited to talk to her and I was thankful for giving me the time to um to go through your system. So before we get into it though, I wanted to mention that this podcast is sponsored by my company, Mighty Introve. Although we don't do branding, we do help CMOs launch brands and also get any other strategic initiatives off the ground that are revenue-facing. So if you're a CMO that happens to be stuck with a strategy that you just can't get out of a deck and can't get started, we're a company that can help you make that happen. So I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks, Julie, for her time, and let's get to it. This is Tech Marketing Rewired. Okay, Julie, welcome to the podcast.

Julie Preiss: 2:09

Thanks so much, Kevin. I'm excited to be here with you.

Kevin Kerner: 2:12

Yeah, really glad to have you here. I know we're going to talk a lot about brand today. We're talking about on the pre-call. It seems like everyone is talking brand these days. And for you, I wanted to start by talking about the buyers a bit. Like in a technical field like cyber, which you've been in most of your career, at least the since I've known you, why do you think brands become such a critical filter for these technical decision makers? Mike, why does it matter these days?

Julie Preiss: 2:38

Yeah, I honestly think it's because the market is so incredibly crowded and noisy. Every company, essentially, that you come across at these big industry trade shows like RSA and Black Hat, they all sound the same and a lot of times all look the same. So it's very hard for buyers to distinguish what does this company actually do? How can they help me solve a problem? And how are they different from what I currently know? So without a really strong grand narrative, I think you're just lost in the noise.

Kevin Kerner: 3:09

Yeah. I I read somewhere about like the if you're not in the top three, you don't really even get noticed anymore. Do you think that's true?

Julie Preiss: 3:16

I do think it's true to a lot of extent. I think that for um it depends on where kind of the buyer at is at in their maturity, but if they have a really mature cybersecurity program, they tend to be more open to adopting like early technology. So they're looking for innovation. So you may have a chance if you have a really good brand story to get in front of them and to prove your value. Whereas other companies, depending on where they are in their cybersecurity maturity, they just want to go with something that's tried and trusted and is not going to get them fired. So I think it really depends on where the customer's at.

Kevin Kerner: 3:54

Yeah, you know, in cyber, it's probably maybe like this in other tech categories, but definitely in cyber, there's so many different parts of cyber. Like someone that's not in cyber, it's like crazy. You you have before you get to your network, you got while it's not traveling to your network, you got in the like when it arrives, you got all the way through, then you have threat detection, the insider threat. It's just such a complicated, multifaceted industry. It's it's and so individual brands, it seems like you almost need to have a brand inside of each subcategory of cyber. Is that do you think that's true?

Julie Preiss: 4:28

Yeah, I think it's a really good point. It is an industry of absolute niches. You know, there are niche technologies everywhere, there's point solutions everywhere, a technology that just does one thing really well. You know, that's so, so different from a platform that does a lot of things. And so, yeah, I think you have to build a really strong brand within the category that you're in, within the segment you're trying to serve, and really try to distinguish the value. It's all to me about what the value is you're going to bring to that customer. What is the problem you can solve for them better than anyone else? And I always try to get companies to distill it down to the one thing. It's not the five things, it's the one thing that you do better.

Kevin Kerner: 5:12

Yeah, and it's we'll get into that a little bit in a sec. We want to talk about messaging and how you what your secret sauce is because you've done it so well in so many different places. But first I want to ask about the I'm curious because I haven't been client-side in this role, but what tells you, like, are there specific signals that tell you that, okay, I've either arrived at a company and now I'm there. It's really easy to see the brand needs a refresh, or you're at a company and you're like, okay, it's time. Now's the time we should think about brand. Like, what are the signals that tell you that?

Julie Preiss: 5:45

Yeah, great question. I think it does depend to your point about like where the company's at when you enter it. So I feel like in the early stage startup world, they almost always need to look at brand for a variety of reasons. They probably did whatever branding they have, they had uh in place currently very quickly, probably inexpensively, right? They don't have a whole lot of money. So they're just trying to get something valid out there, a website, something that says basically what they do. But once, you know, they they bring on a marketing leader, they're maturing, obviously, or that's why they're bringing you on to help them mature. So it's probably a really good time to say, let's take a look at our narrative. Is it what we need it to be, want it to be, intended it to be? And there's probably a really good chance that the answer is yes, we need to relook at it. If a company's been around for a while, they're mid to late stage startups. It's also good to take a look at it to say, have we out the positioning that has served us well? And is it because of product innovations? Or maybe we're segmenting the market differently now, we're going after a different segment or a more refined segment or a vertical that that is emerging as something that we really need to pay attention to. So does that trigger us to look at it? And you know, for well-established companies that have been around for a very long time, you know, that I think they have to look at it from the standpoint of is the brand still relevant? Just because you've been around a really long time and you have maybe a well-known brand, how is it aging over time? It may need some refresh. And that doesn't mean like a full-scale refresh all the time, but it may need some refreshing. Um, I was you and I were chatting earlier, and I mentioned a technology company I'd worked for uh a while back, very large brand that needed a brand refresh. And the main reason they needed it was because a lot of young, hungry competitors were entering the market looking at and sounding very different, and all of a sudden they look stale. And so that's the last thing you want.

Kevin Kerner: 7:46

That's right. Yeah, because the market, especially cyber, moves so fast.

Julie Preiss: 7:50

It does. It is lightning speed all the time. It it's incredible how quickly things turn over. You know, it's constantly refreshing itself and innovating. And as a company, you've just got to stay on top of that yourself. You cannot let it get past you.

Kevin Kerner: 8:06

Yeah, it is such a technical thing. You know, I hadn't thought of this before, but it's not only just cyber, but now you have the AI component of cyber. And all these little companies are entering with feature, you know, some micro feature that's just so it could there could be some very small companies that are company killers for some of the big guys if you don't like react really quickly.

Julie Preiss: 8:26

Absolutely. It's all about knowing what's going on around you and being able to react because yeah, somebody can get laser focused on one aspect and um and you know, really blow it out and make it very successful. And that's great. But it also creates a lot of the noise we were talking about earlier, which is all of a sudden now you've got the buzzword of the year. It used to be cloud and then it was zero trust, and now it's it's AI, AI, everything. AI, agentic AI, it's everywhere. So, okay, great. Tell me what's real about what you do with AI versus what the 5,000 other people are saying they do with it. I mean, you have to be able to distinguish the truth of it.

Kevin Kerner: 9:03

Yeah, especially for developers or network engineers.

Julie Preiss: 9:06

Yeah.

Kevin Kerner: 9:06

I mean, they will cut through that, they'll cut through the BS like no, like no tomorrow. It's just it's just like they can they can see it. So rebranding is can be expensive, it's distracting, real excuse me, even hard to measure in some cases. How how and so you let's say you do decide as a CMO that I do need to rebrand, like this will help move the company forward. How have you been able to convince a CFO or a CEO that brand can be a a revenue driver, let's say, not just like a pretty colors and all that stuff?

Julie Preiss: 9:38

Yeah, what a great question. Because I think every marketer faces that at some point in their career. They they know that they have to advocate for a rebrand, brand refresh, whatever you'd like to call it. And the critical factor is getting the leadership team on board and getting it funded, because it absolutely is most of the time viewed as, you know, money out the door, not that it's generating money back in. And so I think building a business case with actual data and metrics is your best friend here. It can't just be, oh, we need to do it because we need to, you know, stay current. That doesn't have weight to it. But if you use metrics with, you know, just like the everyday metrics you track as a marketing leader, you know, your website traffic and engagement, the volume of your inbound leads, the sales cycle duration, how leads are converting, when these key indicators start to shift in any significant way, it could very well be a signal that there is an issue with your brand getting seen and heard. And so if you can put together data that demonstrates where it is that you are now underperforming, that can help make the case for you.

Kevin Kerner: 10:45

Yeah. Yeah. Do you get because I've never been in those conversations, are you getting questions from the, let's say, CFO about actual ROI? Like if we do this, what do you expect that we would see? And have you and how do you defend those numbers so early on?

Julie Preiss: 11:00

Yeah. You do get those questions a lot is oh, well, if we spend XYZ on branding, when can we see the dollars back? How quickly. Yeah, how quickly, right? It's all about, you know, immediate payback. And I I think my my conversation track goes along the lines of that the brand drives everything else we do in marketing. Every marketing strategy tactic starts with the brand. You cannot create good content without knowing what your brand narrative is. You can't create a good campaign without having all of those elements put together. You can't show up at a trade show without having a really strong brand narrative. And so, you know, my um kind of advice to them is all of these indicators are things that you can absolutely track over time and see if what we've done has uplifted them. So let's set out the expectation for when we think those things can happen. Because the the other side of that story is there is no magic switch. Just because you're doing a rebrand, you're gonna roll it out a week from then doesn't mean all of a sudden you've got rainbows and unicorns, right? It has to follow the process, it has to follow its natural sales cycle to you understand what the value is. So setting expectations and setting some shared metrics for what looks like success after your brand has been in market long enough to make an impact, I think is what's important.

Kevin Kerner: 12:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a very good plan. Um, and I want to talk a little bit about metrics towards the end here. So I've seen you do this a few times, as I mentioned. I'd like to just really get tactical and get in your head and walk through the high-level steps of your branding process, like from the moment you get the budget to the moment you maybe lock in messaging. Like what are those critical milestones in your mind from the beginning of the process to the end?

Julie Preiss: 12:49

Yeah, I think the beginning of the process is to bring the key stakeholders on board. And who whoever that is in your company, it's going to be people on the leadership team, but it's also going to be people that are influential in other areas of this of the business. They may not sit on the leadership team, but maybe they're the top salesperson or the strongest sales engineer you have or your star customer service rep, people who are actively engaged with prospects and customers and should have a say in the process. Figure out who your cadre is and make sure that you're communicating to them and that they're part of the process. Everyone really genuinely wants to contribute. So you have to give them a venue for doing that. Um, so you know, bring bring the people on board internally, and then I think lay out a really strong workflow of this is what how long the process is going to take, you know, say it's one to four months. Great. Months one, two, three, and four look like this. At the end of it, you're going to have milestones and deliverables and communicate out what those are. Otherwise, the process looks like it's in a black hole and nobody understands what's going on. And then all of a sudden they've got this new brand. They kind of need to know what the stocks are along the way. So communicating that out to the stakeholders. And then obviously, you know you're you're typically going to do this with a creative partner, which I highly recommend. Internal brand projects are usually not effective, right? So your external partner and introducing them to the stakeholders. It's important that they know who these people are and that they're experts. And then lining up kind of the the traditional steps you take to get to the brand, which is internal stakeholder meetings, meetings with your existing customers, third-party research with potential prospects who've probably never heard of you, a look at your competitive set, who are your competitors. All of those pieces are part of getting at least to the hypothesis statement of this is who we think our brand is. So all of those steps really just get you to, okay, now we have a hypothesis. Let's pressure test that. How does this sound? And building out your traditional positioning framework and messaging pillars. So that's kind of the in a nutshell, I mean, condensing it greatly here, but those are like the key and critical steps that have to happen to get you to, you know, wow, we have a new brand to launch.

Kevin Kerner: 15:06

Yes, that's very helpful for me, at least. What is the um you mentioned the the part the internal stakeholders? Yeah. Who is the who are the one or two people or are maybe functions that you have to include that some people may not think like these are make sure these people are in the room. Ask these people who are they?

Julie Preiss: 15:23

Yeah, definitely the CFO, because they're they're um interesting. Yeah, they're paying for it.

Kevin Kerner: 15:29

Yeah.

Julie Preiss: 15:29

So most definitely the CFO. Certainly the chief revenue officer, the head of sales, even though a lot of times they're like, you know, you just go go kind of do what you do and then just tell us what the end result is, they really do need to be in the room. They need to be part of the process. Um I think that is critical. Uh whoever um is the CEO, COO, kind of the day-to-day leader is is an obvious one. But then I would also say um if you do have someone who's in charge of your customer service, customer support, and I think it's really critical for them to be in the room. And then lastly, whoever owns product or product innovation, they need to be represented because what they are creating is the backbone of the brand's story. We don't want to say it in technical terms, but it helps fuel what we're going to say externally. So we have to have their input.

Kevin Kerner: 16:20

Yeah, super helpful. Um, the uh you also mentioned the uh outside research being part of the process and um competitive research, which is probably desk research, but actually asking customers, partners, other people, how do you do that? Like who does that for you? Like how do you get that done in a way that's just manageable? It doesn't draw drag the process out to be.

Julie Preiss: 16:43

Exactly, because that's such a great point. It could be such a time suck, and it can really, it can really drag your process out. I think you have to have a really succinct view of um who can we talk to that we already know? So to your point, partners, customers are a great source of information. If you have if you are tracking data in your CRM about what customers are saying throughout the sales process, and if they you do customer surveys, great. That's an automatic source of information for you to go to. Some companies aren't doing that right out of the bat, and that that's fine. Go create a short survey for them and send them to do it, give them a very short time frame. I genuinely think most people want to be helpful and want to give you their opinion. So you can typically get some information pretty quickly, but it has to be very time-bound. Um even offer them a, you know, a gift certificate for, you know, $50 gift certificate to something to get them to, yeah, I'll take the five minutes to do this. So that that's that's kind of getting the lower hanging fruit research. Now, the third-party research is where it can really get expensive and become an elongated time frame. So you have to set a really clear, you know, five to six week research window. There's plenty of companies out there who do a really good job at fielding, because they are they do a lot of these surveys, fielding the research survey out there for you and getting the results back and you know, getting you some results within a six-week time frame. If you don't even have time or money for that, there are online versions of that now that you could even execute yourself. There's there's a number of different market research type platforms where you can spend just a few thousand dollars to at least get a significant and relevant number of responses from prospects, your potential prospects, people in your target market, and you're not spending weeks or thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.

Kevin Kerner: 18:37

Do you ever get uh have you ever run across a situation where you're you got information where the internal team is like, I don't think that's right, or that doesn't sound like us, but you're in the back of your CMO mind, you're going, yeah, that's pretty, that's true. You deserve disunity. How do you reconcile? Because especially with a founder, I would think with a founder, they're like, well, that's not us. We, you know, we are the leader in this or whatever. How do you get past the uh the biases of or maybe ego of being in a company where they aren't what they say they think they are?

Julie Preiss: 19:09

Yeah, that's the trickiest thing because uh especially in in startups or or companies that are have a really strong like founder-led culture or engineering-led culture, they truly, truly believe that their technology is the best thing ever. It it might be, but nobody cares about that yet. They really care about the value, right? So I I fully agree with you that, and I've gotten this a lot of stunned reactions of what that can't be, or you know, uh questioning. Well, what I always say is data literally does not lie. So you can either choose to believe the data or go the other path, which is probably gonna get you no further than where you are now. And the whole reason for this process is to elevate your gain, mature your brand, evolve it. And so that's the to me, the crux of how important data is in this process, which otherwise feels like more. Of a creative process, and it is, but data is what's going to help you get it funded. It's what's going to help you get internal stakeholders to maybe pivot from what their current perspective is, because they have hard data in front of them. And at the end of the game, the metrics that you're gathering along the way are going to help prove whether this was a successful venture or not.

Kevin Kerner: 20:18

Yeah. I guess too, if you do bring in a partner, an outside partner or partners, research partner, brand agency partner, they can help you deliver that message as well. And hopefully they they in some ways they get listened to outside consultants and those type of things sometimes get more credibility than anyone internal.

Julie Preiss: 20:36

I agree. And that's why no, it's so true. And I think that's also why I really advocate for if you know, you really can't do this effectively internally. I mean, I've definitely been in situations where I've heard people internally say, Well, how could an external agency do this for us? They don't know what we do, they don't know us well enough. They can't possibly suss out what is so unique about us. That's exactly why they can, because they're external and they don't need to be experts in what we do. They need to be experts in branding. So you kind of leave the expertise where it lies. You could we, you know, internally, let's be experts at what we do and the product or service that we deliver. The brand people are there to extract the narrative out of that. And so for the, you know, the reason that you get rid of that bias and they tend to then listen to that third party more because they are an expert. And so if you're gonna spend money to bring in a vendor, certainly you should be trusting that what they say has some weight to it. And those are really good reasons for bringing on an external part.

Kevin Kerner: 21:39

Yeah, you brought in so you brought in some really good brand agencies that I've seen do good work. And uh, you know, the cool thing about a brand agency is they usually have some positioning framework where they really understand, like they're trying to get to the unique perspective. It's almost unfair because they're an outside party. They don't have any skin in the game except they're getting paid for this stuff. It's so easy for them to come in and see things that an internal stakeholder can't see. I mean, it's just the blind spots when you're internal are so big, but when you're external, you just see them, they're all laid out perfectly.

Julie Preiss: 22:11

It becomes really obvious, right? It's like the the it's the quintessential, you know, like armchair quarterback scenario. I I love college football, right? I watch it all the time, and it's so easy for me to, you know, get all fired up from my sofa and yell, how did you not see that pass coming at you? You know, as opposed to being on the field. Yeah, it's a very, very similar analogy.

Kevin Kerner: 22:29

Yeah. So um part of these things is um, I would imagine, is now sign-off. Let's say you have visual, no, let's say the brand uh sort of essence and all those things figured out. Position message, the words, and now you have visual brand. How do you manage things such that you don't kill the rebrand at the very end? Like you've got a lot of sign-offs. Like, what's who who really needs to sign off? How do you keep that manageable?

Julie Preiss: 22:55

Yeah, it is kind of a tricky process. I think the way that I've seen it be successful is to make sure you have at least two rounds of revision that are available. So initially, the the agency is going to come back with recommendations for both positioning messaging, and if you're doing a visual identity project as well, they'll come up with their first round. I think it's healthy to share that with your very small team of stakeholders that are involved in this project with you to get their feedback. Because, you know, it's inevitable. Things probably will be tweaked here and there. Great. Then they go away and they come back, and they should have on the second round a really strong leading contender that that becomes crystal clear that this is the obvious choice. So I think as the marketing leader, you really have to manage back to the team is you're never gonna get perfect and you're never gonna get something that everyone agrees on. But we're not here to feed our own egos about this. This is based on all this great work and research we've done about what our customers and our potential customers want. So kind of take your own wants, thoughts, you know, needs out of the equation. You don't like that color, great. You don't have to, you know. So um just kind of set those expectations for people that you're trying to get as quickly as you can in a reasonable manner to something that is going to be received well externally. It's always about that. I I've used this um story a few times with different founders and CEOs and leaders, is this great story about the Nike logo, which you've probably you know heard before, but you know, quickly, you know, Phil Knight, when he started Nike, didn't have a whole lot of money and he paid a grad student $35 an hour to create a logo. She came up with a Nike swoosh. He didn't like it. She explained why she thought it was a good choice. You know, Nike, the goddess, you know, um, that the company is named after, of of um, of competition and victory. And he's like, Yeah, I don't love it, but I get what you're saying. I see how it works. So it's probably the most recognizable recognizable logo in the world now, right? So he didn't have to love it, he just had to understand how it fit, and he did. And so he signed off on it. So you kind of have to, even if it takes you telling that story, which I've done before, to get approval for a logo, it tends to like make the light bubble go off. And oh yeah, I get I get it. Okay, yeah.

Kevin Kerner: 25:10

So well, some of these people that you're having to sell to, they they might only go through one rebrand their whole life. It's so I mean they're it might be the f a CEO, might be the first professional rebrand they've ever done. And so it's like but they're not experts.

Julie Preiss: 25:23

They're not. And it's a foreign process. Yeah, degree.

Kevin Kerner: 25:26

Yeah, it's completely foreign. And it's uh it's data led and it's it can be emotional, but it does it's not all emotional, you know? Yeah, very true. I'm curious, because I've always wondered this on the visual brand. When you present a visual brand in the first round and second round, are there specific types of executions that you want to use that you know are gonna sell better than other types of executions?

Julie Preiss: 25:50

Yeah. For a visual rebrand, because I think the visual rebrand even gets more into emotion, even than the words, because you know, it's just like you see it and you react to it. Um, I love to always present the options in real-world executions of it. This is how it would look on a trade show booth, this is how it would look in a LinkedIn post, this is how it would look in an ad. And then also do a comparison of what competitors are doing so that you can quickly see visually, oh, you know, this would really help us, you know, stand out in this market. And this is how it would actually look in real in the real world, not just on a sheet of paper where I see some, you know, pretty images. So I always try to do that and get it in a visual manner that I can understand how it would be executed. I think that that is super important.

Kevin Kerner: 26:39

Yeah, because people people don't know how to put it into context and showing it in a situ is that makes it make so much sense. It's uh so much more sense. I've even seen like in-situ web pages or landing pages or emails or those type of things.

Julie Preiss: 26:54

I've done I've done all of those, and I think they're really, really helpful to get you to understand how it would be used. And that's critical to the process. I also like to do this is show how that now looks, this new proposed visual identity versus what you're currently doing. I I do a before and after. You know, this is what we're using now, and we're proposing moving to this, and you contrast them next to each other, and usually it's really eye-opening. And what you're currently using tends to, you know, look very much less mature or evolved versus what you're proposing. It's a great juxtaposition.

Kevin Kerner: 27:31

Oh, that's a great idea. Even though you do, even though they already know the new brain. They know it. Put it up against the it's like the old pair of shoes and the new pair of shoes. Exactly. And it just looks like one you're gonna go with here. So if that's how you can get it to this point where you're like, okay, we got this done. Now you need to roll it out. There's an internal and external, I'm sure, in your mind. From an internal perspective, what have you seen work?

Julie Preiss: 27:53

Yeah, internal rollout is so important. It's it's kind of tricky, right? Because you're like just pulling people out of their everyday firefighting jobs. You're saying, pay attention to this. And um, you know, so I think you have to really engage all employees. We we naturally know we have to engage sales because they're the ultimate people on the front lines the most with this story, as is customer service, anybody forward-facing sales engineers. But that doesn't mean that everyone else in the organization is immune to having to understand how to, you know, exemplify the brand themselves. So getting the entire employee base educated on it, however you choose to roll it out, in-person, virtual meetings, whatever makes sense for your company, is really getting them excited about it and getting them understanding how to use the tools and having everything available on day one. Like there's it's kind of a like a womp womp. If you roll out a brand and then the tools for them to use aren't available for a while, because guess what? They forget about it, just like everybody. So if you're going to do the brand rollout on day one, have as much of your assets rebranded as possible. Have it available on your company intranet site, if that's where you store things, or on whatever drive, you know, G drive, whatever the company uses, so that there's a really clear path to them being able to get their hands on. Here's your new Zoom backgrounds, here's your new LinkedIn headers, you know, have it available because once people start using it, then it becomes real. With sales, I think it's even going much deeper to doing role-playing on the new messaging. I've even worked with sales leaders to certify people, uh, you know, salespeople, can they deliver the new pitch and they do it in a group setting? They critique each other, you know, just to make sure that it starts to become part of something that naturally comes out of their mouth when they're talking about the company and its solutions.

Kevin Kerner: 29:42

Yeah, yeah. What do you think if you had to have like the top two, two or three internal assets tools, what would they be? Like the things that you would we would say you got to do these things.

Julie Preiss: 29:53

Yeah, I would say you've got to do company-wide enablement, and then you've got to do yeah PowerPoint. Exactly. You're delivering the message, you're showing them how to use it in practice, and then you're making these tools available. And then I think quickly behind that is you are giving sales as much as you can in terms of how to make this pitch real in your everyday talking. I even hate to use the word pitch, but everybody understands what that means, right? But how to use this narrative when you're talking to customers, how to make this come alive. And it's not just the words, it's like talking about what the experience is. When you're doing, when people are doing business with us, they're experiencing us as people. What do we want that experience to be? So, you know, it's it's beyond just like the words and the visuals. It's we want to embody this so that people experience XYZ feeling when they're doing business with us. Having those things available is really important.

Kevin Kerner: 30:48

Yeah, it's a sustained like drum beat of that too. But I I've been at I've been at brand launches at companies where you get the you get the one day thing, and then they say more things are coming, and it just takes the air out of the room when you're waiting for the PowerPoint, and then you don't have the the pitch information, and you got the the website's kind of halfway done. It's just kind of not, it's not yeah, it's hard to wait, I think. When you have a new brand, it's like, oh, we gotta get this out there. But it's worth waiting until you have the package because it people remember it better. There's more.

Julie Preiss: 31:20

I agree. It is worth waiting. That'd be like buying a new car, but you have to keep it locked in your garage for a month. Nobody's gonna want to do that, right? They want to use it right away. So sing with the brand. I also think like we could do some fun things with it. One recent uh launch I did, we did just some really um easy gamification. You know, there's a there's an app I could do an online, you know, digital Jeopardy game, and wound up making a Jeopardy game that was helping educate them about what the new brand messaging, positioning, and visuals were, and we and you know, you could easily play it online, and people got really excited about it, and we gave away prizes and just things that help it stick. So it's not just kind of like a boring presentation.

Kevin Kerner: 32:00

Yeah, you've always been great at that, like the creative side of things. You've also been creative on the external launch. So now you're now let's say it's time to go live to market. Where do you place your bets? It's especially in cyber. Everyone does the RSA launch thing. So I would imagine events would be big, but how do you prioritize channels as you're thinking about launching?

Julie Preiss: 32:21

Yeah, you're right. For for cybersecurity, there's some really natural anchor points if you want to make this big splash publicly. RSA and Black Hat are just great examples of that. Any of those really big shows, they are a natural showcase for a new brand. It makes it really easy, also because you're doing a lot of things before and after the events. So it's not like a one-time thing. You're building up to RSA. You've got the on-site stuff and then the post-follow-up. So you have a lot of touch points to incorporate the new brand. It's really easy. Some companies don't go to RSA or invest in those large events, so they have to think of other things. I think definitely bringing your channel partners into the mix is helpful. Get them just as enabled as sales, get them excited about it. You can do some really fun and casual, either virtual hospitality or in-person hospitality where, you know, it's about sharing this new information out with them because you want them as excited as your internal people. So that's one channel that you can use. Certainly anything that is, whatever social media channels you use, is a great place to showcase it, incorporating video as much as possible, you know, doing a short sizzle video that shows that your brand's changing and why, but then also having employees talk about it, but in a way that communicates, again, experience, like not them talking about, oh, we've got a new logo. But you know, this is kind of the experience of doing business with us and have employees give genuine stories and examples of where they've displayed that particular brand treat. I think that you can do those things with less expense than going to RSA, but still try to push your message out in a very noisy and crowded space.

Kevin Kerner: 34:00

Brand launches are really funny because it's like they're almost like having a having a kid, a baby. Like you really plan, you don't you plan for the pregnancy and then you have the baby and you're like, oh no, now I have a kid, I've got to actually do the thing for that's like what I didn't plan for all the stuff after I had the baby. Yeah. But it's kind of like that, it can be kind of like that with brand launches. And I'm wondering how long realistically do you do you plan the brand launch out? Is it a three-month thing in your mind? Is it a six-month? Is it always on for a certain period of time? Like, how do you think about it?

Julie Preiss: 34:32

Yeah, I think about the initial phase of it is like a three-month phase. Like, how much can we kind of get out and visible in the first three months? Because that's, you know, like it's that old strike where the iron's hot. Oh, it's out, it's fresh, it's new, let's do it. Then once you move into kind of the sustain mode, is now what can we do to keep the brand fresh, to keep our employees interested and engaged? And you know, that's probably a six to 12 month window. And then as quickly as things change in this market, like after you know, a year and a half, two years, you you're almost thinking again, like, okay, let's let's reevaluate where we with with the brand. And and it doesn't mean a full rebrand, but are we still on target with our positioning? Does our messaging still sound fresh and like what we're experiencing now? Like those things to me are always evolving. Like it's never just a one and done. It's always got to be evolving, just like the web, your website's always evolving. You can't just build it and leave it there forever. You're constantly evolving it. So I feel like the brand is is part of that as well. Like always assess and is it is it feeding your other marketing strategies and tactics well? Meaning, is your brand narrative being pulled through the entirety of what you're doing in marketing? And if not, that's a good opportunity to either jettison stuff or rebalance what you're doing and make sure that it's all feeding back into the brand narrative.

Kevin Kerner: 35:55

Yeah, that brand, that thread of the brand positioning and messaging, it needs to carry through in all the demand gen work long term. But I often see that that handoff is missed. Like there's a big brand launch, and then there's the handoff to let's say another team or organization that has the demand side of things, keeping that thread of that brand through everything, even though it's not like brand is is the overall positioning and messaging, but then you get downstream and sometimes that gets it neat, yeah, sometimes that gets lost. Let's say.

Julie Preiss: 36:37

So the consistency of it is what keeps it thriving and alive. And so the minute you start deviating from that, and people have, you know, uh, oh, this is going to be my specific messaging for this, and it doesn't tie back, you've you're already started to put little holes in it. So yeah, you don't want that for sure.

Kevin Kerner: 36:53

I'm a big advocate of flexible brand where the black the brand can flex downstream, but it's you have to keep the core tenets of the brand.

Julie Preiss: 37:00

That's right.

Kevin Kerner: 37:01

Having a very rigid brand is is really difficult for as a demand gen marketer or more on the work more on the launch of the brand side of things. It's good to have something that's more flexible. You can use position and message, you can use color, you can use kind of similar imagery, but you don't want to be completely locked in every time. And I don't know how you feel about that as a CMO, but I agree.

Julie Preiss: 37:23

I think it feels inauthentic if you're really rigid because everything's fluid. People are fluid, right? So you know, if your butt brand is super rigid, then it starts to feel you know very stodgy and institutional and not authentic. And so I think that's a great point. It does have to flex. Just because you're flexing doesn't mean you're not holding true to what the tenets of it are.

Kevin Kerner: 37:43

Yeah. Well, Julia, this has been great. I want I'm running on time here. I told you it only takes so long. I could use so much more of your time. I have one more question to ask, and it's an AI-generated question. I do this thing called AI roulette. And so I'm gonna hit ascend on perplexity here, and uh it's gonna give me a question that I don't know what it's gonna ask. So I'll apologize in advance here, but uh uh it's usually the best question you'll be asked all day. So let me do that real quick. Sure. I'm nervous. Okay, here we go. In 2027. Some breaches, some breaches expose billions of records, including a single incident in China with over four billion users' records leaked. As a CMO selling cybersecurity in that environment, how do you talk about trust and protection without sounding delusional to buyers who assume they've already been breached multiple times? Interesting.

Julie Preiss: 38:38

Oh, that's yeah, that's interesting. I I I think about yeah, it's uh it's interesting, right? Because I think people um accept the fact that their data is out there and at some point it's it's going to be I think you know, in a manner that they didn't intend. I think it's all about accountability for it. So if if there is something that happens, being accountable and getting ahead of the story is really what matters most. So yes, this horrible breach happened and records were impacted, but the the sooner you communicate about it and what the potential impacts are, people can start to kind of process it. So I think it's all about um, you know, accountability, transparent. Nobody's ever gonna want to hear from you that their data's been breached, but for sure give them timelines, impact, and resolution as part of, you know, here's how we're responding to this. I think that that's what's most important.

Kevin Kerner: 39:31

Um to the Well, I think this it also this question is also a reason to hire a have a CMO at the helm, really, because if the if your target ICP is already like none of this stuff is gonna work, the right company can talk about trust and protection in the right way. And it doesn't sound illusional, right? You're like able to explain it and show proof and all the things. So it's kind of a it's kind of a uh a reason to have a CMO versus a company that just generally talks about trust and protection without any. Credibility, let's say.

Julie Preiss: 40:01

Yeah, you need to have credibility. You need to put weight behind the arrow, as they say. You know, you can't just be out there saying things casually that, you know, that sound, you know, like they're very lightweight. Like it has to have some weight behind it. And yeah, I think getting getting that as part of your narrative too, is as a brand. How do we respond to things like this? If something like this happens, how do we respond? Building trust through authenticity, all of these things are so important. And also, I think equally as important is not trying to make it sound like you can solve everything for that. Nobody will believe you. It starts to become unbelievable. So just be really certain about, again, the one thing that you know that you can do better than anyone and use that to help ground yourself, your messaging, and what you say.

Kevin Kerner: 40:44

Yeah, sounds good. Well, Julie, this would be great. I really appreciate your time. Um, I know you're super busy, but there was there wasn't anyone I'd I could think of that I could call that would get the brand thing as well as you. So I do I do really appreciate it. Um, if people want to get a hold of you after this, how should they reach out to you?

Julie Preiss: 41:00

I would love to connect with anybody on LinkedIn. Feel free to send me a message. Um, I'll respond. I love to network and connect with people, especially I know how hard it is in this world that we live in and marketing. So always happy to share war stories and ideas with people.

Kevin Kerner: 41:15

Well, Julie, thanks so much. And I hope we catch up soon.

Julie Preiss: 41:18

Thank you. It's been great. I appreciate it.

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