Brave Marketing in the Age of AI

How can we use this as a vehicle of being true to our purpose of putting the customer at the center? I think that’s really important. Now more than ever, especially B2B, I think we should be in the business of human connection. That’s really what this is trying to do. It’s trying to connect with you in a level that if I can get a laugh out of you, even a giggle, even, like, your eyes twist a little bit. Oh my god. This is amazing. This is revenue makers, the podcast by Six Cents investigating successful revenue strategies that pushed companies ahead. Hey, everybody. So I’ve spent some time recently doomscrolling on LinkedIn, and there’s been a lot of messaging about, you know, that we’re going into twenty twenty six pretty rapidly and how are marketers going to stand out. You know, since AI is helping to push campaigns faster, you can throw something up very, very quickly. And what’s gonna help folks differentiate? And there’s a lot of conversations certainly about creative and the ways that you’re messaging and how you’re re breaking through the noise and reaching your customers and prospects. So I am super excited for you to hear today’s conversation with Bruno Bertini, who’s the CMO of eight by eight. And we delve into a very specific campaign that they launched just a couple of months ago called Power of You. And I’m gonna put the notes or link rather in the show notes. You can go check it out because there is some video that is remarkable as part of this campaign, which is very much about bringing their customers to the center, and they literally do it in these videos. This conversation is about the power of brand, how to be creative, and how AI at the end of the day is helping to drive new levels of creativity, which in some cases you would think, well, is AI becoming this cookie cutter pushing out so much content that just looks like everything else? You’re gonna hear the exact opposite. I love the conversation. I think you’re gonna hear some really great ideas and actionable tips on how to think differently and really push the envelope to stand out in the market. So let’s jump in. Bruno, thanks so much for joining us today. I am really super excited to talk to you about this because you guys are doing something really interesting, pretty remarkable over at eight by eight. And we’ll get to that in a second, but we have to sort of set things up a little bit. So a lot of people know who eight by eight is, but you’re in an incredibly crowded space, I guess, would probably be First of all, thanks for having me. Yeah. Yeah. I’d love to be here. I’ve been evolving as as a CMO how how we talk about that. Is it commoditized? Is it it’s is it crowded? I think it’s a very mature space that I think it’s a very maturing, and this speed of change in this space because of the number of players. You get crushed with the number of players. You get crushed by the amount of technological change. Those are the two big ones. And then the third one, you get crushed by customers in the reality of the real world changing expectations. So that triangle makes this space very interesting. Is it ultimately now being it’s customer experience. I know it’s unified communications. It’s contact centers. There’s sort of so many different names for it. But is is CX sort of the the world that this is kind of in now category wise? Yeah. So kind of the be all in all, I think. It’s a good question. And without going into a messaging exercise, I think we’re in the like, which business are we in? We’re a business communication company. The more that companies realize that internal communications, external communications, all tie back to customer experience growth and a lot of different KPIs. That’s kind of the evolution that this space is on. The more you go higher end in terms of super enterprise, they already realize that. They already have areas that are dedicated to that. As you go further down market, that’s what’s shaping and how it’s going right now. So I think if you say CX, that’s fine. I like usually to say we’re a business communications SaaS company that, you know, helps customers with customer experience. The CX can be web, can be you know, it’s such a vast space as well. Yeah. That experience is more important than ever, especially since we’re in this world of automating AI, which we’re about to get into, but AI in a very different impactful way. Yes. So there’s my little t. So 8×8 launched a campaign, The Power of You. And I guess it’s just been a couple of months now. Two months. Two months. It’s a brand campaign putting your customers at the center of it, which makes sense, customer experience. But could you talk a little bit about what sort of drove you to point of, like, we need to do a brand level splash type of program or campaign, and then we’ll get into the really interesting stuff that that came from it. So let’s rewind back as a marketer, but also as the CMO. One of the things that I’m very proud and one of the reasons why I took this job is is there was an opportunity to use marketing, to realign marketing, not only as a communications and demand engine, but also as an organization that would build differentiation beyond product. So if you think about usually, SaaS, you build differentiation through product ninety nine percent. Of course, there’s awareness regard to a brand. But most of the time, the job of marketing is just target, push, identify, bring, etcetera. Some advocacy, etcetera. So so when we went back into the core strategy, because we are in a mature space, we saw that the tech is evolving so much, and there’s such a level of parity between technology. And, again, I love our technology. I think there’s a lot of common and unique features. But add AI coding to this, two years down the road, everyone can build anything overnight. Right? So there’s no differentiation in software. So the thesis there was how can we reposition marketing to build differentiation through brand, through awareness, through experience? That was the beginning of our thesis in the rebranch that we did last November that for us, it was not just our software. It was actually our software as a vehicle for customer success. And all companies say that, but they still lead with the tech. That’s when we started to do something different. We’re like, it’s not only that’s the core thesis, but we gotta be authentic to that in everything we do. I like to say we reframe the way we do marketing through those lenses. So as we did the rebranch, we we were basically trying to tackle awareness because we like, how can we get more awareness? But also more than that, how can we get more regard? Meaning, people look at our brand and interact with our brand and have an emotional reaction. Good or bad, both are awesome. I’ll take both. But from there, we’re like, how can we then keep building activations, campaigns, and and sorts of things that touch back to the score thesis? The other element which I think is very important, we would say internally, we wanna make our customers heroes. We wanna make our customers heroes. But you gotta sometimes find the right way to do that. And the power of you internally was our way to reframing this movement of saying we’re gonna put the customers at the center, but it’s not just us giving them an author. It’s us, like, recognizing the role that they play. If you think about it and it’s interesting because you guys are in the business of software as well. Right? When any person buys software, to the software company, the moment that the purchase order is signed, let’s 6AI, I bought eight by eight, the software company is at the peak of their excitement, and the customer is at the peak of their anxiety. So if you think about it, like, take a step back and let’s go to the human angle of purchasing. Right? So they are the ones betting their careers. They’re the ones that go there and do it. Like, they have to digest that anxiety, and our job is to recognize the ones that do it, the ones that are betting everything. And that was the beginning of the thesis of the Power of You. Now the other angle of that was the Power of You needed to be, because we’re not a huge brand and we’re not a big advertiser, how can we do something that we can activate from multiple angles? Meaning, the power of you serves a customer. It’s the power of Chris. It’s the power of Janelle, their customers. But it can also serve an employee. It’s the power of Bruno. It’s the power of any employee. It can serve a partner. It’s the power of our partner. It can even serve a shareholder if we wanna use that in like, it can flex as a vehicle, meaning that it’s easier for me to activate and then over time build something at that center. Right? I’m giving you a lot of thought because we spent, like, a long time getting to just the the concept and the thesis of it, and then we’ll get into how we decided to activate. I mean, again, the fact that the thoughtfulness that went into it. Again, because there’s so many times, and I’ve been involved in conversations at various companies, like, we have to do something with the brand or we have to rebrand or we have to you know, and it’s very much of, oh, maybe we have to send a new message. But you sort of the reframe that you mentioned, that that’s pretty powerful to think about just and I think I may have to rip you off on the conversation about the peak of anxiety and the peak of excitement because that is huge in terms of really understanding what’s going on in buying. I come from a background. I’ve been in sales, but I’ve been a consultant of kind of customer experience and deep behavioral science, neurolinguistics. So that’s why I’m kind of a little bit of a maniac in a good way of understanding the customer. But when I say understanding, it’s, like, it’s not the ICP ten layers. Like, what are the emotions? When? How? Why? Because I think once you spend some time on it, there’s a lot of opportunity there. And I think where we are headed, that’s where the future differentiation lies, I think. Now I agree with you a thousand percent. So let’s talk about the campaign itself because where you went with this is not something I think anybody or at least how you executed it is something anybody would expect. So you picked a number of customers, and your goal was to make them the center. It was the power of you, power of them. Can you talk a little bit about what the execution was for that? So when we built the thesis of the concept, at that time, I have to give credit where credit’s due. I’m a big Fernando Machado fan in terms of the Beach and Sea worlds, like the Burger King, Moldy Whopper. So I take a lot of inspiration on, you know, this more Beach and Sea campaigns. So I would go to the team and say, first is don’t approach this as if we had crazy money. Like, we’re very scrappy. But because we are in a position that, like, we are very open, we can take risks and be innovative on areas that others may say, I don’t think this is ready for its prime time. And that was the beginning of, like, what could we do to be extremely creative while gaining economies of scale in production and building a workflow of creativity in production that would allow us to still reframe? So the most important thing is whatever we would do, we would have to say, can we put the customer at the center? But the other thing is, how can I scale production of doing something that has that cool factor? The other angle there, to be very transparent, I had a choice to make. Do we spend money on paid media later to push something that’s okay, or do we spend more money on building something that cuts through the noise? It’s creative. It’s different. Right? I’ve always done the latter when I was never the CMO, and I’m always like, the day I become a CMO, we’re gonna do the opposite because I think there’s something in that. And that was the decision to be more creative with it. One day, my head of creative, Vascon, came to me and said, hey. You know, I was talking to some of our partners, and they’re they’re doing something that’s kinda not ready, but there’s something that I think could be fun into this. And because we’re so AI internally, we’re like, let’s hear about it. That was the first, that we heard about it. Now we spent couple months I think we spent a quarter on it, and they’ve done a pilot. The first video, which was with me, was horrible. Meaning, the AI quality was not there. Meaning, you could see my face would wobble. It was not like, I was, like, not on camera perfectly. So the tech was not ready. Our production was not ready. But that’s where it all started. Ultimately, the output of this was literally putting the customer at the center and putting your customers into almost heroic situations or powerful situations. Right? So, like, one of them was conducting an orchestra or somebody else scuba diving. Right? So just a lot of how you were testing yourself in trying to, I guess, put yourself into those types of scenarios. Correct. We spent a lot of time on the concept. Right? What does it mean from a creative perspective to put you in a position of power? Is it that you’re a hero? But, for example, internally, we didn’t like the idea of that video game Final Fantasy Hero, so we avoided that creative direction. But, also, to do that refrain, how could we get the honor of putting them in a position of power? One thing. But, also, while telling their stories. Because if you look at what we did, it’s not just, oh, they are the hero. No. It’s like let’s go to Chris’ video. It starts with him as Indiana Jones excavating insides, and he’s like the archeologist. And then he’s balancing the, you know, the anxiety of dealing with technology. And then he is driving a monster truck, crushing old technology. So getting to all of those decisions is not just a vehicle of, like, oh, it’s fun, but it’s also how can we do that while touching some of the themes that tie back to us, that tie back to their stories. What did the conversation sound like when you went to these customers and said, hey. We’ve got this idea. They’re like, you guys are crazy. Get get out of here. Walk away. And I’m being polite not to say what I would say usually, but we are lucky. And and I will I will say this on record. I am very grateful for our customers for being brave and trusting us with something so cutting edge legally, digitally, creatively. Like, that was one of my biggest fears saying, we’re building this spaceship. Are we gonna get people signing up to go on this journey with us? And the exciting part is that it was so different, and the cool factor was so high that it was a complete opposite. Once we had the two pilots ready, they were coming to us saying, oh my god. When is this going live? Oh my god. I’ve seen the final. It’s unbelievable. So I think the timing and the concept were so good that they were invested in the concept with us. Now you mentioned earlier about the decision to spend more on production and creating, something that was gonna cut through the noise. Given that it was so AI powered, was it lower cost to do it? A hundred percent. Let’s think about one of those videos. You shoot a customer from a canning. You get them with a polar bear. You shoot them on a dive. You know, with statues, it’s probably a Maldives dive or something like that. So if I wanted to do something from a creative angle, even a fraction of that, we’re talking triple digits. Right? So from a production cost, yeah, it’s still, like, there’s still a human VO. There’s still editing. There’s still but it’s all AI content. It does add up, but it’s a fraction of the cost. So economies of scale for us were very important, one, but also the creative liberty of doing something fun, I think, was the second. Right. But it’s also not like somebody that posts on LinkedIn. I spent two hundred and thirteen dollars produce all these videos. It’s a little more than that, probably. No. It’s more than that. It’s actually more than that. Like, just think about a a good VO, a good editing. There’s a lot that also, we were very thoughtful on how we write the scripts. We spent a lot of time. That’s why they they flow so nicely because we spend time, money, and energy getting them to a level that the story is good. So, yes, they are not they’re not their two hundred bucks, but they’re not your one hundred thousand, fifty thousand type of videos. The other interesting angle is because we own the AI workflow, there’s an element that the more we do them, the more scenes we have rendered. The so over time, they will become way cheaper. Also, as the technology evolves, the token cost and editing, all those things, eventually, when Google launches v o four, you’re gonna go there and say, hey. This is my production. Mirror this, you know, a thousand bucks. Yeah. And if you’re listening, go watch these videos. Again, we’ll put links into the the show notes. So you sort of hit pay dirt with the production. You’ve got your customers. They’re fired up. And what happened next in terms of putting out there and then amplifying? And maybe we talk a little about some of the results you’re seeing. It’s still early. Right? It’s only been a couple months. First, the response has been overwhelming. And I say this in a very humble way. We, of course, love it. It’s our baby, and and we love it even more that it’s the stories, you know, of our customers. But I did not expect that it would get such a such a high level of pickup, like triple digit impressions in our media, like, without us architecting something crazy. Right? Of course, we did plan and we had a strategy, but I didn’t expect that it would kinda go like wildfire. If you think about results, there’s two that I think are very important. One which is more strategic. Even if nothing else happened, but my base of customers got excited to jump on this wagon, I would consider it a win. I now have customers emailing my customer advocacy and marketing team saying, can I get a Power View video? I wanna do this with you guys. Can I do this with my CX counterpart and IT? Can we do both? Can we do a partner? So so just that engagement with the base, I think, is already worth it. But if you think about how the campaign is performing out there, Ad Age, you know, Yahoo tech. There’s a lot of earned media that is, like, super exciting for us. The two stats that I was gonna talk about beyond impressions, which I’m very grateful, and beyond our customers, which to us is the most important thing. When you look at organic engagement, we are two and a half X benchmark on organic engagement, meaning people engage because they like the content. They like the stories. It evokes Going back to our purpose, it evokes an emotion that generates awareness in regard back to the brand. Last but not least, there is a stat, like, on average, people watch thirty percent of a video. The kind of the through rate is thirty two, the benchmark or something like that. When you look at our view through, we are at ninety seven percent. So ninety seven percent of the people that started watching this ad, which at the end of the day, it’s it’s a very thoughtful way, but it’s still an ad, finish it. In any media form that we use it, if you go, like, if this is YouTube, this is organic social, like, anywhere, even in our own website for the people that go organically there, ninety seven percent. So I think it talks back to the power using stealing our own concept of the content. It’s the purpose behind it that just shines through what we’re trying to do. In terms of next steps Yeah. I was gonna say it’s out there now. Where are we going? What’s next? Yeah. So we started with Chu. The pilot was we’re gonna do, you know, Chris and Janelle, our two, you know, original heroes that are doing the moon landing. We’re now gonna expand it, and I wanna try to get to a pace where we do, you know, one a month, three a quarter more or less on the ads, which is the shorter thirty twenty seven, thirty second version. We are also doing the longer stories, like your traditional b two b customer reference story. In a similar format, they’re usually two minutes. So we’re expanding to more, producing a few a quarter, expanding the engine. The interesting part now is, can we keep this exciting and fresh? Internally, we go to the team and say, okay. So monster truck, suiting people from a channel, polar bear. What is the next one? So there’s an element internally to the team that’s a lot of fun to say, you know, what are we gonna do next on the next one? And then when you see the ideas popping, like, we had someone on a bull and, like, there’s a lot of crazy ideas, and the quality is spectacular. So I’m excited to see the stories evolving beyond the creative angle. Internally, this is also touching the culture very deeply of the company. So you get employees really excited to say, oh my god. This feels so much like us. It’s funny, but it’s respectful. It’s how we like to think about our customers. So it’s also expanding internally to the power of you with the employees. What does it mean to them? And one of my goals this quarter, we wanna do the partner one and kinda how how would we do it? How do we tell the story of a partner, which is also a big responsibility? Right? So those are kinda the big next steps for us. I was reading some post today about going into twenty twenty six. What does marketing and demand gen look like? And, like, brand and creative are the things that have to stand out because AI is producing campaign after campaign after campaign. But here’s the distinctive brand and creative coming from AI, which I think is just shows that AI can drive creativity, not just cookie cutter. If you think about the brief, for our brief in this case internally was, can we be cutting it? And, again, we’re the first ones to do it with a real customer in AI. Everyone was like, oh, this is the IKEA bedroom in AI. Great. And they’re all amazing pieces of creativity. For us, it was almost like, how can we use this as a vehicle of being true to our purpose of putting center? I think that’s really important. The other thing that we should all ask ourselves, and I ask myself this question a lot, going back to which business are we in, how marketing supports the business that we’re in, now more how marketing supports the business that we’re in, now more than ever, especially b two b, I think we should be in the business of human connection. That’s really what this is trying to do. It’s trying to connect with you in a level that if I can get a laugh out of you, even a giggle, even like that your eyes twist a little bit. Oh my god. This is amazing. Well, that actually is the perfect sort of segue into the last bit. I think you and I talked previously. You talked about being brave, which this is a brave move, certainly. What would you say, you know, to marketing teams that are out there right now that are you know, they’re thinking, we’re trying to cut through the noise. We need to do something. And they probably have some great ideas, but maybe they’re either there’s some hesitation or they’re just not sure. And what’s your advice to the team that wants to go out there sort of break the mold? And do you make that human connection that you talked about? Like, how do you get over that fear is the word maybe or hesitation? I have a lot of invisible mentors in the b to c space. Space. They don’t know they mentor me, but they do. It’s very easy to just say, yeah, this is the framework. We’re doing what we need to do. I’m hitting these people with the impressions over their awareness or unawareness cycle and, hey, I’m doing my job. I think there’s an element of, like, you don’t need to be brave for a crazy amount of time. Like, just be brave for a few seconds to explore it, and make sure you give your team the right energy to say, I am really excited about exploring this. Because if you do that well, you know, it’s a flywheel effect that they will get excited, and they will go explore with some I would say, hey. What’s our multi whopper idea, guys? What are we doing? Like, what is our reframe? Like, show me. And I think you also have to have the understanding going back to marketing strategy. Right? If your CEO and your executives are aligned that our role is to drive human connection, drive differentiation for the business beyond technology, Everything that you do differently that’s associated with your core brand identity will pay fruits back to what you’re trying to do. So I think that’s also a way to give your teams, from an OKR perspective, creative liberty to express ourselves in a different way. I also think it’s a little bit about personality. I like to take risks. Of course, I’m very mindful about the business, but I get energized by it because I’m like, oh my god. We’re trying and it may blow up back into my face and say, guys, and it happened. It happens all the time. Again, this was a shot that fired, and, 6AI. It’s amazing. But there’s a lot of mistakes that we never push through because they failed. So I think taking the hits when you have to take the hits, but also celebrating when you do get one that is, like, amazing. In b two b, everyone says that, but no one likes to lose a little bit. I think there’s an element of, like, there’s so much science in b two b, so much, like, precision, so much insights that people have forgotten that sometimes art is taking a risk. And it’s okay if you blow up the, you know, the art at the first time. The next one will be better. You gotta teach an organization to dance a little bit. You’ve been at the beginning, it’s kinda, oh my god. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. But, hopefully, over time, it becomes a little bit of more of a science in the culture. Right? So be brave. Have some fun with it. I think as long as it’s connected back to the right OKRs and the right culture and, like, go explore. Be brave. Our space needs it. B b two b needs it. Like, every b two b company you open, you’re gonna see, oh, our platform. Our platform. Our platform. You say, why us? Because of our platform. I’m like, oh my god. Yes. Very templated, unfortunately. But we have a question that we’ve asked guests every time on this show that I wanted to poise point to you. What is the most ridiculous thing that you’ve ever been asked to do in your career? And it could be ridiculous good or bad. And we’ve gotten examples of I was able to work with NASA on a marketing campaign to something that ended with, I think, the statute of limitations is out on that one now. Something that I think transformed me that was very unusual, especially where I was coming from earlier in my life. I was a cast member working for Disney when I was in, at college in the international college program. And, no, I was not goofy or meeky. I didn’t have the privilege of being a character. But I think the element of connecting with people and understanding the power of experiences and how they make something so memorable and then tie that back to a business rationale, that was transformative for me. But there were so many very odd moments of being on character. So I think that’s something very unusual for me. I’m very proud of that experience because I learned so much, but it gave me a lot of, like, a lot of funny funny stories of costume and, you know, stuff at Disney. Well, I mean, you can hear in this conversation. It just it clearly has had that much of an impact even when you’re talking about this today. So that’s a great one. So thank you, Bruno, so much. This was great. Again, we will put the campaign links in the show notes. Check them out. You will be as much impressed as I was and as the apparently, much of the market was. So, Bruno, thank thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. I’m glad you liked it. I hope you all enjoy it. And, if you have feedback, let me know. Connect me with on LinkedIn. I appreciate the opportunity, Adam. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for listening to this episode of revenue makers. If you’re looking for more info on how to stay on top of the latest marketing trends, check out our resources in the show notes and subscribe to the secret sauce monthly newsletter. You can do it at the bottom of every page at six cents dot com. It’s packed with practical tips and insights that can help you level up your marketing strategy. See you next week.