North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring, and as a leader, it's your job to deliver. But where do you focus? Where do you direct your time, your team, your budget, and your emotional energy?

We're learning this together on the North Star Leaders Podcast. In this podcast, I talk to purpose-driven leaders about the choices that they make to create audacious economic value while also realizing their distinctive purpose. I'm Lindsay Peterson, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of the North Star Leaders Podcast.

Let's get to it. Today, I am really happy to be joined by Jessica Shapiro. Jessica is CMO at LiveRamp and has been a global marketing exec in both B2B and B2C companies, SAP, Icertis, Starbucks, and Zulily.

Jessica, welcome to the show.

Jessica Shapiro

Lindsay, it's so great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Lindsay Pedersen

Thanks for coming on. Okay, Jessica, our first question is, what is your favorite thing about what you do?

Jessica Shapiro

Oh, I love people. And I think that manifests itself in two ways at work. The first is marketing is all about people and understanding how they think and what motivates them and how to reach them.

And I love figuring out that crisp message, that relevant message, and then orchestrating how to deliver that message in a creative, innovative way that's going to break through about people in that way. And then the second is, I get so much joy from working with people and leading teams and seeing the people that are on my team grow and develop and find their passions and try new things and be supportive and create community. So, I love how marketing gives me so much exposure to people.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love how it's like the people getting inside the head of the customer, getting inside the head of consumer to serve them better, also sort of happens as a leader because you're kind of getting inside the head of the person working for you to like, how can this person be more engaged? How can I develop this? It's like the same faculty in your brain that you're working with.

Jessica Shapiro

Absolutely. And I think that in B2B marketing, it's always the work to make sure that you're thinking about the individuals within a company who you're reaching rather than the company itself. And I am grateful for the years I had doing consumer marketing and being able to really focus on a persona, a specific person, and be able to have an image of what they need and what they think about and then being able to apply that to B2B.

Because at the end of the day, companies might have buying committees, but they are people in those buying committees, individuals.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, they're humans. They're humans. I wanted to ask you about this because you are a rare marketing leader with deep experience in both B2B and B2C marketing.

What is similar and what's different when you think about being a marketing leader for a company serving businesses versus one that's serving consumers?

Jessica Shapiro

The similarities are you have to know your audience really well and understand that key insight that differentiates your brand from other brands. You need to be up-to-date on marketing techniques and approaches. It changes all the time how people are consuming media, how people are responding to advertising and marketing.Those things are always true, that the world is changing, the way we market changes all the time.

I think the biggest difference is in consumer, the sales cycle is so fast. I remember working on promotions at Starbucks and if you're running treat receipt as a promotion, you get to see how many people come in that day on the day you run the promotion and there's this instant thrill and an instant response.

In B2B, I worked with companies where sales cycles can be 6 to 12 months. It's really about getting to know and nurture that relationship and also knowing all the people that influence that relationship with the company. If there are 6 people in the buying committee, how through our marketing can we reach all 6 people and continue to progress that account through the buying journey?

There's a richness in really understanding that account. There's also in B2B much more partnership with the sales team because they're having interactions, marketing's having interactions. There's that collaboration within the company.

Within LiveRamp, we have to coordinate so that we're approaching the company the appropriate way. In consumer, it happens so much faster, but of course, you want customers to come back. You are building a relationship, ideally loyalty programs.

You're trying to get them to come back, but the actual transaction happens so quickly.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, and the feedback from the marketing tactic like the Starbucks treat receipt or whatever the promotion is, you get quick... Well, at least in that, I think there are probably some consumer businesses where it's not as rapid, but just that you have the gratification of learning so quickly what works. I imagine that's also a function of price point.

It's like if you're kind of like, I'm trying to think of a consumer, a B2C thing, like buying a car is probably maybe not a 6 to 12-month cycle, but a lot longer than a $5 latte, more consideration and maybe not 6 people in the buying committee, but to the married couple or whatever. So maybe the kids are influencers.So some of that is the dynamic of selling to a business and some of it is just the nature of what consumers tend to be spending money on, which is smaller dollar amounts.

Jessica Shapiro

Right. How considered is the purchase? How big is that purchase?

How much time did I spend researching, asking my friends about that purchase? That's probably... Nothing's at the extremes.There's a lot in the middle.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah.

Jessica Shapiro

B2B decisions that might go much faster because they're actually small for a large enterprise.

And then buying that car or that luxury item, the new couch, that's going to be much more considered.

Lindsay Pedersen

Right. Yeah. Tell my listeners about LiveRamp since that's not a brand that a lot of people outside of your target audience know.

What is LiveRamp?

Jessica Shapiro

Yeah. LiveRamp versus a company that targets large enterprises and we're in the data collaboration space. So just to explain data collaboration, data collaboration is about combining data that you'd like to have with data that you do have.

So, for example, if you are Kroger and you have so much information on what your shoppers are doing, because people have a Kroger card, they buy things online, we understand when they go into the store, what their buying patterns are. But if you are Kraft, you don't have all that data because you're not selling directly to your customers most of the time. And so there's a lot of incentive for Kraft and Kroger to share their data so Kraft can learn what's moving on the Kroger shelves, what's not moving, what are other products that Kroger is selling that are really hot?

Is it ready-made meals that we should be investing more in? Is it single serve? Is it family large boxes?

So Kraft really benefits from Kroger to have that data about what's going on on their shelves. And then Kraft can benefit Kroger by advertising within their media network, within their online store, in their end caps. And to be able to do that in an efficient way, they need to be able to safely and securely exchange data to find those customers.

When the data is exchanged, it's pseudonymous, meaning that an ID has been attached to the person. None of their personally identifiable information is passing. It's all secure.

And both brands, both Kroger and Kraft, are able to learn more to deliver better experiences to drive higher return on their ad spend because they're being more efficient with their advertising without compromising the privacy of their customers.

Lindsay Pedersen

So their incentives are aligned and they both benefit when the data is shared across the organizations. So for LiveRamp, what do you consider to be the North Star or the differentiated brand idea for LiveRamp?

Jessica Shapiro

Yeah, LiveRamp's North Star is that we build brand and business value by helping companies use their data to deliver relevant advertising experiences. And we talked a lot about this North Star when I came in to the company about two and a half years ago. We needed a new North Star.

And one thing that's really important about our North Star is that it's about the business value. So the return on the ad spend, but also the brand value. Companies are expected to know who they're interacting with.

And you want relevant ads. So if you are shopping for a family, you want ads that are related to your family. Or if you are shopping for the holidays and you just bought that sweater, you do not want to see an ad for that sweater again.

Or maybe you want to see the skirt that goes with the sweater. And when brands can give you those relevant experiences, they can show you that thing that you hadn't thought about, but really would work well with the other things you're doing in your life because they know you. That builds a tremendous amount of loyalty between you and a brand.And that helps company build lifetime value with their customers.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, it is like as a consumer in the audience, when you see, yeah, you're served up an ad for something that you just purchased, there's something really off-putting about it. Like, well, first of all, there's a little bit of a, ooh, how do they know I just bought that? But there's also, I just bought that.

Like, do you not know me? Right. Do you not know me?

And so that which would erode trust and affinity for that brand. I can totally see how it's mutually beneficial for the consumer and for the company to avoid that kind of, ‘’Oh, by the way, that company just spent money reaching out to me for something that I've bought’’, which is obviously not good for their marketing ROI.

Jessica Shapiro

Absolutely. And even things like certain brands have huge followings. Like I'm a huge Nordstrom fan and Nordstrom doesn't need to spend a lot of money marketing to me because I'm going to go to Nordstrom and they know based on my purchasing behavior that I'm a loyalist.

So they can save a lot of money by not advertising to me and advertising to the people who may be switchers. They might go to a different store and Nordstrom really wants to pull them in. So the power of the data to identify who they should be going after and being able to test different segments and to get that strong return on the ad spend, but then also build those loyal patterns is so important.

And, you know, you talked about like, ‘’Oh, it's kind of creepy sometimes when they know that I bought that skirt’’. And I think that's part of the art of marketing, testing things out. I listened to someone say, I was logged into my account and they were on a site.

It was a financial site. And in the search bar, this person's name was also Jessica. It started typing ‘’hello, Jessica’’.

And she said, it was just creepy. It was like one step too far. And I think that the art of marketing is figuring out how do you personalize so people are delighted and people are finding and discovering what they want, but not so creepy that they feel that they don't have the autonomy they want when they go online or when they go out into the world and experience marketing.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. There's like a dance there.

And it's also, I imagine it's pretty individual. I mean, maybe somebody else would be flattered that a company is aware of the type of sweater that I just bought. I don't know.

But I imagine that there are some people who have a different line where it's like, okay, that's like overly familiar to me. And that kind of creeps me out. And then some people might actually have a warm, fuzzy feeling about that.

Jessica Shapiro

Absolutely. And also the data, the power of the data. You know, if you have an iPad and your child uses your iPad and you use your iPad and maybe your partner uses the iPad, the technology of LiveRamp can segment that so that I'm not getting ads for soccer balls and my son is not getting ads for nail polish.

So it's gotten more complex. We share devices, we share experiences, but we don't really want to be treated like the lowest common denominator for the entire family.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Oh, my God. That's for sure. I don't. Wow. Okay.

So you've led marketing for a number of really meaningful brands. When you're looking at a company, how do you know that it's going to be a company where you can successfully build and expand and enliven the brand? Like, what are the things that are going to make it a really fruitful brand building experience?

Jessica Shapiro

It's such a good question. And I think it's one that all marketing leaders should be asking when they're interviewing and talking to different companies. I think it starts with the CEO.

Does the CEO believe in the power of brand? Does the CEO believe that hearts and minds must be one for a company to succeed? Does a CEO believe that it's more than the immediate transaction, that they're building the company for the long run?

Does the CEO believe that you have to constantly be listening to customers and that things change and that you need to adapt? Now, you want to join a leadership team, a culture where there's a strong value placed on brand. But I do think that there's an intimate connection that happens between the CEO and the CMO.

And if the CEO isn't on board, it's just really hard to convince that CEO that brand is important.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. It's almost like coming from a starting place of like a shared value and desire for long-term durable, not merely performance in the near term, but like what's this going to look like in 10, 15 years?

Jessica Shapiro

Absolutely. I also think that asking the hard questions because I think that there are CEOs who buy into the idea of brand, but may not have the fortitude to stick by it in tough times. And so I look for leaders who can tell me examples of decisions they've made based on the brand or brands they really respect.

Do they think in a paradigm of brand or do they just think in a paradigm of revenue and stock price, making sure that it's not just in good times, but also in the hard times that brand is important?

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, I love that. And of course, the funny irony is that brand does help revenue and brand does help stock price. It might not help either of those two things today the way that another marketing activity might.

But if it doesn't generate revenue, if it doesn't help the valuation for the business or the stock price, then it probably isn't a good marketing activity, period, whether it's brand building or to drive performance today. So they're actually not in conflict.

Jessica Shapiro

Absolutely. I tell my team all the time marketing is a revenue generator and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And we need, as ambassadors of marketing to the rest of the company, explain that and explain how we are driving the business forward.

We're not executing on someone else's strategy. We are core to the strategy and we are core to bringing money into the company.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yes. Hear, hear. Do you think that in a B2B company that that's a more foreign idea than in a B2C company?

Like even just what you said, like of course we're a revenue driver. Is that an easier sell when it's a consumer business than B2B?

Jessica Shapiro

I don't think so because in B2B you tend to have salespeople, a sales force that has deep relationships with their customers. And so even if you can map out the entire journey, the entire life cycle of the first touch to making a purchase and even renewing, you see all the marketing touches and you see the salespeople touches. And we have data to show that more marketing interactions leads to larger deal sizes, leads to shorter deal cycles.

But I think emotionally it's hard for those sellers to get past thinking that there's anything that's happening that is beyond their very hard work. The times that they get on the plane, the late night calls, the really hard work that I respect so much. It's hard for them to sometimes see that marketing is helping them progress.

And I think one of the biggest roles of marketing in a B2B company is to have that tight relationship with sales. We're really in it together. We're really moving that motion along together.

That is success. When we feel we have shared the win, we have been stagged over the loss together, and getting that motion working is so critical in B2B.

Lindsay Pedersen

And it makes me think of what you started off by saying, your interest in people and in team building, it also is in that collegiality amongst the other functions, but especially sales and marketing that we're sort of like attached at the hip because we have the same goal and we can help each other. We uniquely can help one another.

Jessica Shapiro

Yes. And I think I love that you brought it back to the relationships because I do think it is building those deep relationships and the deeper they are, everyone wins.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yes. It also just makes work more fun. It just makes it more enjoyable when you're doing that together.

I'm at the end of my time for questions with you, but I have a few rapid fire questions if you are game for it. I

Jessica Shapiro

I'm game.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. What is the best brand of ice cream?

Jessica Shapiro

Chocolate chip mint.

Lindsay Pedersen

Would you rather have invisibility powers or the power to fly?

Jessica Shapiro

Invisibility.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. What is the most recent song that you've listened to?

Jessica Shapiro

Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. I did a Peloton 30-minute arms with Rebecca Kennedy, and she had a Fleetwood Mac episode. I highly recommend it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. The whole 30 minutes was Fleetwood Mac.

Jessica Shapiro

The whole 30 minutes is Fleetwood Mac. It was awesome. A good way to start the day.

Lindsay Pedersen

I'm on it. Okay. What time do you wake up in the morning?

Jessica Shapiro

6.30.

Lindsay Pedersen

And how do you take your coffee?

Jessica Shapiro

Black. Oh, I did not know this about you, Jessica. Awesome. Thank you for all of this. This has been such a fun conversation to have with you.

How can folks learn more about you and about LiveRamp?

Jessica Shapiro

To learn more about LiveRamp, go to LiveRamp.com. And to reach me, the best way is LinkedIn, and I'd love to engage.

Lindsay Pedersen

Awesome. I'll put Jessica's LinkedIn link profile in the show notes. Thanks so much for being on the show, Jessica.

Jessica Shapiro

Lindsay, it's such a pleasure.

Lindsay Pedersen

Thanks for listening to this episode of North Star Leaders. Make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

If you know of a North Star Leader whose insights would be valuable for this community, please message me on ironcladbrandstrategy.com. Also on that website are show notes, transcripts, and a way to sign up for our monthly newsletter. I hope you join us again for another episode of North Star Leaders.