Think First, Prompt Second 🤖 VP of Brand Shawn Perritt @Acquia | Ep. 365

Jay Schwedelson: Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, podcast presented by Marigold, and I have a super smart dude talking about a topic today we have not really talked about. So who's here? We got Shawn Perritt. Now Shawn is the global vice president of brand strategy at Acquia, and Acquia is a beast. They got over a thousand employees over there. They are running this digital experience platform and all this other stuff that allows companies to create and manage their websites and content and digital experiences. It's awesome. But Shawn, Shawn's super cool because he lives in the b to b world, and yet he loves talking about creative, and he loves talking about human connection, and he loves talking about brand, which is why I'm excited to have him here. Because a lot of times in b to b, everyone thinks it's business to boring, and It doesn't have to be that way, and Shawn's gonna help us to expose it all. So, Shawn, welcome to the podcast.

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Jay Schwedelson: Awesome. So alright. Before we get into why B2B is not boring and why it's all about brand and all that stuff, what is your deal? I read you won, like, 18 different worldwide marketing awards. You've done all this cool stuff. What's your deal? What do you do for a living for real?

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. Well, there are a lot of marketing awards announced, that helps. But, no. I am, as you mentioned, a VP of brand for a b to b tech company called Acquia. We're an open digital experience company that was born out of this content management system called Drupal. We have over 4,200 customers, you know, big brands like Bear and Nestle and KitKat and Mars. And, you know, I run an in house creative team. I was formerly on the agency side, so I tried to bring that model in house and build that inside out. So it's been a lot of fun. But, day in the life, I just look after our brand expression. So all the different touch points from video to events to social media to any other way that we express our brand out in the world.

Jay Schwedelson: So let me before we get into this whole business to human stuff and all that, do you ever get frustrated? Because I feel like you are consumer marketer in a business to business world, or does it excite you to kind of bring that element of b to you know, into the b to b world?

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. Good question. I think it's a little bit of both. I think as you mentioned earlier, b to b does not have to be boring. I look at it as business to human marketing No matter what, whether you're on the b to b or the b to c side, at the end of the day, we all go home and sit on the couch and watch Netflix just like everybody else. Right? So I think remembering that we're all wonderfully human and finding ways to make those emotional connections, I think that still holds true in B2B as well.

Jay Schwedelson: So for a lot of the listeners out there, they'll be like, oh, I'm in healthcare B2B or I'm in a regulated industry. I can't even listen to this episode because I can't do anything creative. We're not really about brand. We're just about this, that or whatever. What do you say to those people? How do you think about brand and creative as it relates to where you're at? You're a B2B company.

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. I mean, think you just have to go back to science. Like the human brain actually ignores average, and it's incapable of making an emotional connection with something that it doesn't remember. So I think if you look at it at that level, it doesn't matter if you're health care or any other industry. You you have to make that emotive, human connection because otherwise, you know, it's boring to be expensive.

Jay Schwedelson: So do you do that by, okay, like in practical terms, we're not going to use templates for our social media posts or we're not going to use generic AI content that's just output. How do you actually put into play this idea of standing out a bit in the b to b world with while still being, you know, on brand, so to speak?

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. I think you you have to sort of treat it like I call it a creative workout plan. You know, we all have our step tracker every day. We all go to the gym. I think you have to create sort of the same approach and plan to creativity. So getting away from Zoom, think is a big deal. I I think that helps championing original thinking. So it just goes back to classic creativity. You know, go stream a show on a Tuesday afternoon. Go for a walk. Go take a trip to somewhere that's not on your bucket list. Pick up a book that's about something you're not interested in because I think that amalgamation of experiences is what makes us all unique. It's kind of like a fingerprint. No two are the same. So when you take that concoction of our experiences and you flood your brain with inputs, you let those marinate for a while and then that's how something interesting and more unique comes out, which helps you stand out, I think, in any industry, particularly with this whole AI thing, which I'm sure we'll talk about.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, let's talk about it right now. So I'm super lazy. And if I'm working on your team and you say, hey, go get this creative ideas together. I'm going right to ChatGPT and say, alright, give me some ideas. Then I'm giving it back to you and I'm probably gonna get fired. Tell me how to utilize AI and bring it into the creative process and developing your B2B brand without being the loser that I just described.

Shawn Perritt: Yeah, well, think we're all doing that, including myself. I mean, how can we not? It's right there, the carrot is being dangled. We get such quick outputs and we get these dopamine hits and we put them on LinkedIn and then all of a sudden the trend goes away in three days because there's something else that happens, right? So as I try to tell my team, slow down because even if you don't pick up AI until the last leg in the relay, it's still gonna be way faster than it used to be to jump into Photoshop and painstakingly mock something up. 10 prompts minimum, You know, think first, prompt second. Again, I think it goes back to that original thinking and the experiences and the amalgamation of sort of inputs that turn into outputs. I think if you can apply a layer of original thinking on top of AI, because AI will democratize the craft and it already is, there's no doubt about it. But the original thinking layer is what's going to make your the output of your prompts unique. And it's what's going to make you stand out. It's the difference between posting a three d action figure toy on LinkedIn and posting a piece of packaging that's empty that says go outside, right? It's just taking that trend and turning it on its ear and trying something original.

Jay Schwedelson: I saw that on your feed, which I thought was really, smart. And to that point, I like the fact that you're not saying, No, we shouldn't be using AI for some, enhancements to our ideas. But I also love the fact you're talking about, what would you say, think first, prompt second. Is that what you said?

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. That the move? The move. I think on one hand, we're in this innovation era with AI. But when it comes to brand expression, we have to be really careful that it doesn't become the imitation era. We have this whole narrative for the last decade around breaking out of a sea of sameness and cutting through the noise. I think that will continue over the next decade, but it's going to be about breaking out of a more polished, high def looking sea of sameness. So I think brands and companies have to be really careful not to cheapen their brand expression to the point where capturing someone's attention ends up being more expensive in the end. So there's gonna be a real interesting delta there between reducing headcount and then the increased cost of acquiring someone's attention with this as AI is flooding our feeds.

Jay Schwedelson: And you know, you kind of have this cool purview of being able to see kinda where things are going and what's happening. And you see all the big social platforms, leveraging AI now to help with creation of of designs, of of creative, and all the different things that are out there. Are we heading towards a place where there's going to be even more sameness from brands, B2B brands, because they're leveraging all the same tools and that maybe there's a greater ability to stand out by, you know, you being a human? Or is it all going to meld together and we're just not going to have a clue what's what and it's going to be impossible to stand out?

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. Great question. I think it's a moving target by the minute. But but I think there's a nuance in the strategic approach for companies that will help the good ones win the day, which is thinking about your human stack first. So you know, find your best starting five that are original thinkers and have unique skill sets and get them in place. And then that human stack is powered by AI, not the other way around, even in terms of how we converse about it. So if you treat your humans first and the AI comes up underneath, rather than just using AI as a cost cutting measure, I think brands that are confident enough to do that and go human stack first will outgun the rest in the end.

Jay Schwedelson: I want to ask you a very, a selfish question because I want your perspective because you came from the agency world. I happen to have an agency, so I think about it all the time. In your crystal ball, in Shawn's crystal ball, you fast forward five, ten years from now, do you think the advertising agency model is massively disrupted because of AI? Like, is the need for media planning, media buying, making briefs, is all that just nonexistent anymore?

Shawn Perritt: I think it depends on, you know, for better and worse, what the attribution says, which we'll also get into. I think there's gonna be full funnel approaches like Facebook is coming out with and everyone's gonna feed it their demand gen and and let them do the creative and all that stuff. But the question is, is it going to work? And if the cost of retaining someone's attention becomes more expensive, all of a sudden, the ad agencies can run an end around and come back and just learn these tools better, because they have the original thinking. Then all of a sudden, they're even more powerful than ever. Like that could happen, or we could end up getting in a place where we're accepting mediocrity and everything does look the same and brands that make these little quarter turns are standing out. So I I think it's anybody's guess, but I think agencies could have a little bit of a renaissance later on, but it really depends upon what happens when the when the smoke clears out of this first wave.

Jay Schwedelson: You know, it's so true. I I I was thinking about, like, prompt engineering. If you're rewind about two years ago or maybe less, the hottest job in the planet was to be a prompt engineer, to be the person that knows how to write the prompts, get the most out of AI. Now any fool could write a prompt. And there's no such thing as really a prompt engineer anymore. Just it's moving, you know, so fast, to your point. But let let's dig into you touched on attribution for a second. And I think in the world of B2B, and I wanna know your take on this, attribution is a joke. Right? The B2B market will send out an email for a webinar, people register for the webinar, they'll go into pipeline, they'll be like, oh, the email is the reason we got these customers, we got these sales, we got these things, This last touch attribution thing. And I think in the world of B2B, that's more the norm than not. Is that the right way to be measuring attribution or is that just completely ridiculous?

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. It's this is a really tough one. I think we share the same passion here. I think I'll say I like attribution in certain situations, like a very small slice, of the pie. I think you need those go to market plays in demand gen. Because I think if we go back to the ninety five five rule, if only 5% of our buying committee is ready to buy at this moment, yeah, get surgical with that. Put an investment in that, run these go to marketplace, get your attribution. But the other 95%, they're the pipeline of tomorrow. And we can't just ignore them, this idea of the brand function in a company only getting 5% of the budget or less, and then having the same conversation year in year out. Well, you know, people don't know our brand as much, and how do we build our awareness? You have to treat the 95%, I think, as table stakes. And if attribution is so important, why not add up all the website traffic not related to your go to marketplace, tack on all of your social media engagement, and then add on all the pipeline coming out of your events, create some amalgamation there, and that becomes your brand awareness attribution. And you lay that up against the performance marketing and and track it that way. Is I mean, is that a fair way to think about it?

Jay Schwedelson: I would love everybody to copy exactly what you just said because it makes a hell of a lot more sense to me. And so if you're going to fight that internal battle back, listen, I listened this guy, Shawn, he sounded really smart and I think we should be measuring attribution this way, blah, blah, blah. What should that budget look like? I mean, how do you carve out a portion of budget that you can't necessarily quantify immediately or at least not as easily? Like, is it a fifty fifty thing versus your go to market for people in in market right now? Like, how do you do that?

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. Great question. I think, if you look at brand as the pipeline of tomorrow, and you look at investing in the long term brand function as the cost of doing business, I think that's the first battle you have to fight. Get everybody on board with that rationale. I've even read articles around the brand function needing to get up to 40% of the budget. And I'm not saying you have to swing that high, particularly in B2B, because you might lose that battle and then not have any credibility. But I think ramping up past three to 5% to start is a is a really good idea. Because what ends up happening is if you live quarter to quarter, all these companies are sort of just biding their time. It's like a boat circling the harbor, and they're winning or they're doing just enough each quarter and they're doing this, but they're never going out to sea. You better believe the boat's going to run out of gas eventually, right? Some point during one of these quarters, you have to rally the team together and say, Let's go out there. We can always come back, but let's give it a shot for a couple of quarters because again, you can't afford to be boring either because this flat messaging that's sort of demand related, that might not yield any attribution anyway.

Jay Schwedelson: So if you say, okay. Great. Now we got some more budget to do this brand thing, and we're not just gonna push people to, register for this webinar or sign up for a demo or download a case study, cause that's pretty far down the funnel type stuff. How do you, get more brand awareness? Is it just having a newsletter or like, how do you actually do that?

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. I mean, I think events is one thing. I think especially with AI and, you know, post pandemic virtual workflows, are craving in person time. But I think you have to look at it as revenue in the room. But when you think about your pipeline and your measurement, it's like, let's get the biggest, best customers together. And it doesn't have to be this massive blowout event, but wraparound dinner, showing up at a third party event and doing some kind of stunt. I mean, just get people together and get the revenue in the room and and let your and turn your sales team loose because I I I really believe events are gonna get even more popular than they are now.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, I could agree with you more. I mean, getting people to actually communicate, to connect, to talk to each other, and I love that line, get the revenue in the room. It doesn't mean that it even has to be your existing customers. It's get the potential revenue, you know, in the room. I think that's awesome, and it's so true. All right. So before we wrap up here, any parting pearls of wisdom here about B2B marketers out there thinking about brand that they need to put in their brain?

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. I I I would just maybe reiterate a couple of points from earlier, just, like, really watch the brand trust. Study AI, jump on AI, use it every day, but just be really careful how much of that you put out into the world externally. Because I don't know about you, Jay, but now every image I look at, I'm like, is that AI? Is that really Peyton Manning sitting next to a kid? Like, I don't So it creates this natural barrier between the human and its ability to dive into that photograph and and kinda swim around in it. Like, we're all questioning everything that we look at now. And even Coca Cola, like, they're killing it on AI generated creativity. But every time I look at one of their spots, I'm like, I know that's AI. Like, does that matter? Is that naturally affecting my perception? So I yeah. Again, I I I still go back to think first and prompt second. Like, just like the old days of art direction, like, not jump into Photoshop until the last minute. You have to have that stellar idea that becomes faster to execute, and AI will help us get there even faster.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, I know one thing that's not AI. Shawn is not AI. So if you want to follow him and connect with him, you got to do that. He's a great follow on LinkedIn. And it's Shawn, s h a w n, Perritt, p e r r I t t. We're gonna put it all in the show notes. Shawn, where else should people follow you, find you, whatever, or is LinkedIn your jam?

Shawn Perritt: LinkedIn's my jam for now.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. Alright. Good. We're gonna put it all in there. Incredible to have you here. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Shawn Perritt: Yeah. You got it, Jay. Thank you.

Jay Schwedelson: You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time. Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100% free, visit guruevents.com so you could hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart, and me.Guruevents.com. Check it out.