Corporate Communication and Marketing Innovation: The dangerous delusion of safety – playing it safe can hurt you more than you know (episode #41)
“Don’t be afraid of long copy; be afraid of insufficient clarity,” Flint McGlaughlin taught in Website Wireframes: 8 psychological elements that impact marketing conversion rates (https://meclabs.com/course/sessions/website-wireframes/).
I thought of that quote when my latest guest talked about how often being afraid drives marketing and business leaders, and so they resort to focus groups and consultants to cover for themselves in case something goes wrong. But she called this the dangerous delusion of safety, that playing it safe can hurt you more than you know. And she shared a story from her career illustrating that lesson.
You can hear that lesson, and many more lesson-filled stories, from Jasmin Guthmann, Head of Corporate Communication, Contentstack (https://www.contentstack.com/), on this episode of the How I Made It In Marketing podcast.
Guthmann manages a global team of eight people that she has built from scratch over the past six months, along with a $1 million budget (her part of the organization’s overall marketing budget). Contentstack has raised $89 million in funding over three rounds.
Guthmann is also Vice President of MACH Alliance (https://machalliance.org/). MACH stands for Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless. The not-for-profit industry body has 70 member companies, ranging in size from startups to Google.
Listen to my conversation with Guthmann using this embedded player or click through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it.
Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing
Some lessons from Guthmann that emerged in our discussion:
- Be the person who doesn’t give up when things get complicated. Be the one to simplify them. Then, your creative teams can do phenomenal things.
- The Dangerous Delusion Of Safety: Playing it safe can hurt you more than you know.
- There’s no way you can think your way into predicting what your customers need. Seriously. Stop trying.
- “If you want it, don’t be afraid to ask for it.”
- “Large meetings are not for decisions” and “Be the calm in the storm.”
- “Don’t be afraid to ask for better from your people. But make sure you walk the talk!”
Related content mentioned in this episode
Customer-First Marketing: A conversation with Wharton, MarketingSherpa, and MECLABS Institute (https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/consumer-marketing/wharton-interview-customer-first-marketing/)
Using the Science of Habit Formation in Customer-First Marketing (interview with Charles Duhigg) (https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/marketing/charles-duhigg-interview-part-two/)
About this podcast
This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages (https://meclabs.com/course/) free digital marketing course.
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