Advancing Marketing Strategies with Christopher Rubin of BrandMultiplier

In this episode of Evolving the Enterprise, host Dayle Hall sits down with Christopher Rubin — brand and creative marketing leader, and founder of BrandMultiplier. Together, they explore how creativity, empathy, and integration drive real innovation in the enterprise.

Christopher shares his journey from agency copywriter to strategic brand leader, revealing why storytelling is a critical connector between technology, people, and business outcomes. They discuss how AI and data can enhance creativity, how to bridge silos with story, and why the future of marketing is about narrative intelligence — not noise.

Transcript

Dayle Hall:

Hi, and welcome to the latest episode of our podcast, Evolving the Enterprise. I'm your host, Dayle Hall, CMO at SnapLogic. Today, we're exploring how innovation actually happens within organizations, not just through big ideas or certain technologies, but how to be smarter, more creative, in all aspects of integration, not just the technology. That's the important part.

This one's a slightly different one, but actually it's very close to my heart because we're going to actually talk about marketing. My guest today is Christopher Rubin. He's a brand and creative marketing leader, great track record helping organizations to bridge that gap between creativity and business outcomes. He's led multiple teams around the intersection of brand, product strategy, as well as where to go with technology and innovation. Today, he's going to share how integration, not just that innovation piece, but people, platforms, and processes, can unlock new innovation and new opportunities for the enterprise.

Chris, welcome to the show. 

Christopher Rubin:

Thank you, Dayle. I'm so happy to be here. 

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, it's going to be a good one. I'm very excited to talk about marketing. Again, a lot of these have been very much technology focused with a little bit of marketing involved. But I know we're going to get deep, and I have a lot of other marketing contexts that I’m going to be excited to hear what you've got to say. Okay, so let's kick off.

First off, Chris, what I'd love you to do is to give me a little bit of a background, how you got to this position, brand multiplier, AI, what it does. Just give some context for the audience.

Christopher Rubin:

Sure, happy to. I got my career started as a copywriter at an agency and just luck of time and place. The first two accounts I worked on were Disney and Hard Rock Cafe.

Dayle Hall:

Two big ones. 

Christopher Rubin:

Yeah. And just again, just luck. But what it did spark was a love for this thing called brand, this idea that can create love and loyalty that spans generations. And so I pursued for decades trying to study and figure out how do you build something like that and how do you sustain it over time, brands, like the ones that I mentioned.

I have to say that, coming into this conversation, Dayle, I've been thinking a lot about integration, especially with what you're doing at SnapLogic. It parallels what we are discovering on the creative side. For me, it seems like the most exciting thing happening right now isn't innovation for innovation's sake. It's really integration that unlocks innovation.

I've been fascinated with a piece of research that Stanford did around stories, showing that stories are 22 times more memorable than facts alone. And it seems like companies treat narrative as separate from their technical capabilities. So what we're finding is when you integrate storytelling with business operations, that's when you really see the exponential growth. That intersection is really where I've spent my whole career, and I feel like it's more critical now than ever. 

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, it's a really interesting point about storytelling. I think as marketers, if you're involved in this kind of area around the brand, you always want to tell a good story. But it's so interesting these days that some of the leaders that I've talked to on this podcast, they could use help with storytelling, not just with what they're trying to achieve in their projects, but even around how AI is going to impact their technology initiatives. If they could tell a better story solving the use cases, I'm sure they could get more funding, they get more buy-in. So that's a really interesting take.

Christopher Rubin:

That's it. Yeah. Thanks so much. Ultimately, that's what we're all about, is story-led growth and trying to move past the vanity metrics that have tainted our industry for a long time and focus on the metrics that matter to the founders and the leaders of the business, reducing the CAC, shortening the sales cycle, increasing the long-term value, those kinds of things.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, all the things that most executives, most leadership teams really, that's what they care about, right? If you can get through storytelling, as long as you can show the value to the use case, I think it's interesting.

So let's kick off this idea around the creative process. In your mind, when you hear the term innovation, innovation as a tech company, we're thinking of technology and how you implement it more, but in terms of innovation, is that used often in creative circles? Is it a buzzword? And how do you frame it for the teams that you talk to? How should they think about what innovation means?

Christopher Rubin:

Yeah. Such a great question. I think it's definitely become a buzzword. And I feel like it's because we've conflated activity with progress. I love that Gartner study, I don't know if I love it, but it found that 85% of big data projects fail. And it's not because the technology doesn't work. It's because they don't create human connection, in my opinion.

Another interesting data point, organizations have 900 applications on average, but only around 30% are integrated. I feel like that's not innovation. That's expensive fragmentation. To your question, for creatives, I feel like we need to reframe innovation completely. I love this example. It's called the Significant Objects Experiment. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it.

Dayle Hall:

No, I’m not.

Christopher Rubin:

It's an experiment literally where they took $129 worth of thrift store junk, basically, and resold it for over $3,600. So it was a 2,700% increase in the value of those same items. How? Just by adding stories to each item. I just love how that illustrates the idea that story really can increase value. And it's proven in other contexts as well. It's not about technology there. It wasn't AI. It wasn't a platform. That was just narrative. And I feel like that's innovation.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. I like that. I like the way of thinking about it. Like I said, I think as marketers, we do think about storytelling, we know it's important. I'm fascinated with the psychology of marketing and buyer behavior anyway. I think a lot of us are interested in that.

But again, I think as the listeners to this podcast, whether you're a creative or not, whether you're a data scientist trying to get the funding for a project that you want to work on that could really help the business, I love the concept of saying, build a better story, and you'll actually get more support and buy-in for that.

If you're a creative leader out there, let's say, what would you advise them to kind of reclaim what innovation means in their role? Because, again, I think a lot of us feel as, oh, it's a tech change. How can a creative leader be an integral part of this storytelling across the enterprise?

Christopher Rubin:

Sure. It feels to me like there's a myth of late that creatives need to become coders to stay relevant. I feel like that's a little bit backwards. What I would say is what we need are translators, people who can turn technical capabilities into human experiences that resonate emotionally.

We already know that creative marketing delivers 2 to 11 times greater ROI than purely technical approaches. And another interesting stat, 92% of consumers prefer ads that feel like stories. The market wants this. And so I would argue that the skill isn't coding. It's about understanding constraints and possibilities and then translating those into emotional value. I like the Spotify Wrapped example. They took user data analytics and transformed that into personal stories, and they generated 60 million shares, something like that. I feel like that's creative translation at scale.

And to your question asking to offer maybe some tips or something, I think I might focus on three things to sort of bridge this divide. First, I'll speak for ourselves. What we do first is we look to learn enough technical language in the context of our clients to understand what's possible. And then second, we prototype experiences that technical teams can build towards, like an aspirational horizon. And then third, we create shared metrics that value both emotional impact and technical performance. Typically, what we see is that those projects led that way increased customer lifetime value without writing any new code. And so I might land the plane here and say that the bridge isn't built with code. It's built with collaborative understanding.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, I like that. I know for a fact from talking to some of our prospects and customers, some of them have a technical problem they're trying to solve. Some of them have a use case for the business they're trying to solve. So it's less about the technology. They're looking for guidance on how to solve it. But both sets of prospects or customers, whether they're coming at it from a different approach, they appreciate that the right story, the right explanation and narrative, they're going to be happier to engage with you because they'll feel like you at least understand their problem enough to be able to create that story.

And I think this translates to if you're a salesperson and you're talking to a prospect, you don't want to sit in that room and say, okay, so it goes this fast. It takes this many documents. It can run AI and you can get an answer in like 12 seconds versus 2 minutes. That only gets you so far. ook, I think as a customer or prospect, actually as a human, you said it yourself, which is, we retain, we get more involved in that story piece. I think I love the Spotify example around the data that they got from their users and then created a whole engagement model with it. I think that's a brilliant example.

Christopher Rubin:

Thanks so much. Peloton's another great one, right? They've got this sort of myth around achievement and personal success maybe, if you will. But your data that you're generating, riding your Peloton bike is creating to your own personal verse in their poetic kind of story of accomplishment and achievement.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. No, I love that. So we redefined what we think innovation is and how it can apply to creative people and that process of storytelling and how it could apply to technologists and people that are trying to get buy-in for these bigger initiatives. Talk to me a little bit about- when I use the term integration at SnapLogic, obviously, it means very much around the applications, the data together. And now it's very much dependent on those things being connected to really get the value around AI. But I'm interested in your perspective around a broader integration, so not just the technical side. When you hear the word integration, how do you think about it?

Christopher Rubin:

I guess I think through the lens of the roles that I've been in most often, which is really creative leadership. Working with some of the best in the business in the agency world as a younger person, I feel like this old model of creative leadership, the visionary genius from the mountaintop, directing the execution of all the team members, I feel like that's fully dead. It's been dying for a while. Modern creative leaders are more like conductors, not commanders. You're orchestrating collaboration, right? It's not this dictation model anymore.

We know that when leaders use storytelling, you're achieving neural engagement. This happens on a biological, neurological, psychological level. And it's not just about telling better stories. It's about creating a narrative framework that your teams can innovate within. It brings to mind for me jazz versus symphony. You're setting the key in the tempo, but you're letting your talented people improvise. And so I feel like that's just really essential for creative leaders. And I think it ties to integration because really, we're talking about trying to integrate a team that has disparate talents and skills, but ultimately you all have a shared objective in mind.

Dayle Hall:

Now when you talk to your clients or when you've talked to other enterprises around this, is that generally understood? Are they so focused on achieving a certain kind of project or a goal that they're like, yeah, okay, I understand what you're saying, orchestrating jazz, but we are just trying to solve this problem? How do you show them that actually just shifting their thinking could actually have a much more holistic, collaborative approach? How do you really show them that example and say, yes, I'm an expert, so you can trust me just because I say it? But how do they buy into that? How do you actually grab them by the scruff of the neck and say, no, look, it's got to work? How do you do that?

Christopher Rubin:

It's typically that. I grab the collar really tightly. No, I mean, it's a great question. It changes. It's a case-by-case basis because the leaders are always different. Ultimately, what comes to mind is leading by example. I just show how it's done. It starts with a workshop, we call it rumble, at the beginning of the discovery process. And through design thinking-based exercises, we're leading them through this process where I'm preaching, walking the talk, I guess, if you will. Then we lean on data.

We’re in a fortunate position now where we have one way of framing our offering called Storyline. You could find yourstoryline.com. It features a lot of those data points from research organizations and institutions that underpin all of this story stuff with real data around, not just studies and experiments, but if you just look back at human history, for millennia, this is the way that we as humans have retained information and passed it on. It's the way that information made it across the plains and the prairies and the mountains, and even to cavemen, paintings on the cave walls. Those are the original stories. So there's plenty of evidence. Ultimately, I think it comes back to just demonstrating it.

I don't know if that's a great answer to your question, but that's certainly what comes to mind, Dayle.

Dayle Hall:

No, look, I think there's a little bit of having the strength to try something new, having some faith that if we do try something new, it could have a compounding positive effect.

I think my question here is, if you're in more of a creative role, you're in a marketing role, even sometimes from a sales perspective, you are also positioning or selling the art of the possible. I try and think about this now as, if you're in the belly of IT or you're in a tech function, or maybe you're in a line of business where the storytelling, the art of the possible, maybe you're trying to solve something for finance, like account reconciliation, which is very detailed, but I feel like those roles could really benefit from this kind of thinking and this kind of approach.

I think that's what I'm trying to get at, like how could we, as people that understand this in the creative side, how could we show them the value of actually thinking about it differently? I wouldn't pretend just because I can use AI now to code. I would still go to the engineering team to help me get started on that kind of thing. And I feel like it's the same the other way, but I would just wonder if there's an unlock there. All those teams that don't think of it this way, how could we really get them excited?

Christopher Rubin:

Yeah. So now where I'd go is the customer, right? Ultimately, everyone's working in service of the customer. And so start with the customer stories. First, gather them and then maybe use AI to look at those datasets, because often they're large, and look for patterns. Sure, of course, pains, needs, desires, but ultimately transformation.

I would argue that every successful story, certainly in the business context and marketing context, is about offering a transformation of some kind to the customer. The way that we describe Storyline is, first, the thing we talked about, that ultimately stories are the things that matter most when it comes to communicating value, and then the storyline is that unbroken connection between the offering that you have that has value and the people that stand to benefit the most from that offering. And so when that storyline is straight and strong and true, and it's consistent and coherent across all the touchpoints, that's what good execution looks like, and that's what drives the growth.

Dayle Hall:

I like that. And again, if you're listening to this, if you're in IT or you're in finance, remember that as a company, you're trying to serve your external customer. But if you're in finance, your customer is the rest of the business. It's the marketing team. It's the sales team. If you are trying to solve a problem that will help the customer, meaning the rest of the organization, you can still approach it exactly the way you said, but the customer just happens to be internal rather than external. I think that's a good way of looking at it.

As a marketer, again, sometimes we get pigeonholed into certain areas of expertise. I think what I've seen over the last few years is we, marketing leaders, marketing organizations, are at least at the forefront of being willing and open to try to be innovative and try new technology. I think AI was a good example of that. I know there's a ton more use cases now in what you can do with generative AI and certainly with agents, but I feel like markets is one of the first creative groups of people to jump on, this is an opportunity.

If you're in that type of role, maybe you don't really have as much opportunity to be innovative, how would you advise people in our kind of function, in our role, what do they need to do to- I don't want to say be at the innovation table, but you had a good point earlier, which was creatives don't need to be coders. Can you elaborate a bit on that? If I'm not going to learn code, how do I make sure that people still see me as someone that's going to drive innovation across the enterprise?

Christopher Rubin:

Yeah. Interesting. First, I'd be remiss without just mentioning vibe coding off the top. What is vibe coding? You can build things made of code without being a coder. Hallelujah. Like finally, we can all access that kind of building. But what is that? That's really just facility and articulation with language. You just have to clearly communicate perhaps a story, if you will. Again, back to story. And so if you're asking for maybe actionable takeaways here, I think maybe I've got three things that anyone could do tomorrow.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. I'm going to write these down just for my own edification. But let's tell the audience. Give it to them.

Christopher Rubin:

Nice. Let's do it. First, map your narrative gaps. The storyline is the thing that connects directly and strongly. Inevitably, most people have gaps in their narrative, so that storyline is not strong and true. Document every story your customer hears across their entire journey, from the first ad to the customer service call. And I guarantee you're going to find some disconnects.

Another example is, what is sales saying versus what is marketing saying versus what is customer service saying? There's going to be gaps there or inconsistencies. Next, fix the biggest one first. You found the gaps, fix the biggest one. Companies that do this typically see 20% improvement in conversion in like 90 days. That's the first one.

Second is, create a story bank but with data. Collect customer transformation stories. Go through those customer stories, find the ones that speak to that transformation I described earlier, and find the ones that have metrics attached. And then in your next meeting, share one of those. The teams that do this achieve better alignment as long as you do it consistently, because, again, stories create that emotional investment that's not going to come through in a spreadsheet.

And then the third one is, audit your touchpoint variations. Count, literally count, how many different messages does your customer encounter along the journey, and then cut that number in half. And what we've seen happen when you do that is your NPS goes up by like 30%. Maybe the last thing is I'll just leave you with a couple of questions that I feel like are good sort of integration sparkers.

First question is, what story would our best customer tell about this? I find that this kind of forces alignment around value. Next one is, if we had no departments, what would be built? And so this is sort of one of those old techniques around removing artificial constraints. And then the last one, how does our offering create emotional, not just functional, value? And that shifts the focus from features to feelings. As we know, even in the B2B space, all those bees are still full of humans. And just like us, they're all driven by emotion. And that's what we're ultimately trying to get whenever we're talking about story and marketing, in my opinion.

Dayle Hall:

I think more I hear- I love the three, particularly about what you said is emotional value versus functional value. I think there's some other trends going on around the industry. You're probably reading about it, too, right? SEO is under threat because of AI and LLM searches. And then I read, it's going to be just as important around brand and storytelling to create that connection as how people bought for the last 10 years and how they found you, that is dramatically changing. I’m not saying it should be a company objective, but I see this on the technical side in terms of what we see with SEO. It's starting to fall off a little bit. We're seeing other tools compete, but we get more attention now from media mentions, and media mentions are exactly that. It's about telling the story.

I think as a marketer out there, I'm sure we're all looking at the data of what's happening with my website, why is SEO kind of falling down? I think it's about less functional, more emotional connection. Does that resonate with people when you talk to them? Do they see it as, we have an opportunity here?

Absolutely, across the board. We work in all different industries, industry agnostic, because, again, the story is the thing. You don't have to be an expert in an industry to tell a great story about it. Yes, it resonates. I think on the SEO thing, GEO I think is the term. Everybody's jockeying for the term. I think generative engine optimization is probably where it's going to shake out. But ultimately, what does that mean?

The big shift is, I'm a little opinionated on this, but Google has owned this whole thing, right? We've all just been dancing to Google's tune for 20-plus years in the SEO space, and it's all been about keywords. Everything was keyword driven. And now with the shift with LLMs and AI, the key shift, in my opinion, is shifting from keywords to answering questions. Structuring content in that way, almost like with an FAQ, is the original sort of framework that you think through in terms of, this is strictly to be clear, just creating content in order to show up in searches, dancing a similar dance to a slightly different tune.

To your prompt there, I think what I'm really fascinated with is the thing that we are now helping our clients build. And I've been writing about it recently. I'm calling it a narrative operating system, a narrative OS. And the idea is that story becomes the intelligence layer between strategy and execution. And I feel like it’s really about integrating storytelling into your operations so deeply that it eventually becomes how the business thinks, not just how it communicates.

And you mentioned something earlier that's really interesting about internal customers versus external customers. The story has to start from within and then radiate outward. And there's all kinds of mouths, if you will. They're going to be repeating and iterating the story, but all of them, that all starts internally. And so then it's up to the leader to make sure that the story stays true and coherent and consistent all the way through the touchpoints.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, it's interesting. You said you started as a copywriter. I think some of the initial concern or worry with things like artificial intelligence is that, do you need journalists, copywriting, that kind of thing anymore? I think it's going to be more important. And I don't think that's necessarily because you're going to do the same things, but you pointed this out. Now, we've stopped gaming the system. Well, there's another way that we have to look at it. Instead of saying, okay, it's about I’ve got to get the right answer keyword to make sure people come to my side. Now it's understanding, what are the questions people are asking?

If I understand the question better rather than just say, this is the answer, that should at least put you in when you do get to capture someone through whatever way they find out about, then I think at least you'll probably show it more relevant if you come from that perspective.

And one of the scariest things I heard recently, and I see it, organizations now are building content with auto-generated AI, building content from a bot, just to talk to a bot that gets scraped, just to show up higher on some kind of search. And I feel like that's almost like the opposite of what we're talking about here. It's the opposite of telling the right story, of thinking about the customer. It's just a way of trying to gain the system to say, well, I'm going to use this automation, this intelligence tool, to just create a bunch of content because I know a bot's going to pick up on it and that's going to be beneficial. That can't help the customer. That can't be the answer.

Christopher Rubin:

No chance. I certainly hope not, Dayle. I honestly get a little sick to my stomach when I think about it. There's a dead internet theory that sort of touches on this. Somebody else coined the term, inshitification. It's all interlinked. But I think you're onto something interesting there.

So answering the questions, it's almost like you start with that core need or perhaps the transformation that you're offering aims to enable for your ideal customer. And then you look to reverse engineer that a little bit. What are the questions that would lead someone toward discovering this particular solution to that desire, need, problem, pain, et cetera? I think that's really fascinating to explore. Not as a final answer, of course.

And then one more thing I just have to really be emphatic about is human in the loop. That's another point that you're raising there, right?

Dayle Hall:

Yeah.

Christopher Rubin:

I hope that I'm right. For a really long time, I don't know how long it's going to be, but machines cannot resonate emotionally with humans. Not yet, because they don't have lived experience. They don't know pain or loss or grief or sadness or love or any of those really rich, textured aspects of being human.

I boil all this down to, what does the human bring that the machines can't duplicate? I've distilled it down into something- I'm just calling it taste and touch. And I feel like the taste has some layers to it, what we mean there, and then touch as well. But human in the loop- sure, use the machines to be radically efficient. Use the machines for pattern recognition and massive sets of data, right? But then leverage that to augment our own human capabilities. AI, for me, is augmented intelligence, and it augments our own intelligence. I feel like that's the key.

Dayle Hall:

Okay. It's interesting you say the word augmented intelligence, because, okay, it's going to sound random. I've heard that term four times in the last week, and I hadn't actually heard it before that. Now that doesn’t mean I'm not reading the right things. But the human in the loop, it is that element of augmented intelligence for everyone out there. It just means it's still using artificial intelligence, but it's in partnership with the human that's doing it.

And I feel like we're doing that, but I think that should be getting just as much attention, because I think all of us are trying to be more efficient in our role, no matter what your role is. If you're an engineer or a developer out there, of course, you're going to use some of these tools. But you don't just have it build the code and just throw it out live or as an upgrade. You have to be involved in that. And I think that can apply to multiple areas.

So I think that augmented intelligence, you've said it, I've heard it four times this week now, so I'm going to make a prediction that's going to become just as important. Where we're talking about all the aspects of agents and generative AI, I think we're going to start talking about that. You and I are connecting in six months’ time, Chris, after this, and we'll probably do a whole podcast just around augmented intelligence.

Christopher Rubin:

I love it. Great.

Dayle Hall:

I want to talk a little bit about the organizations. We've covered a bunch of areas around how to use the opportunities where creatives need to play, how you can take advantage of it internally or externally. In terms of the organization setup, in terms of how some of these larger enterprises are very complex, some often political. There's multiple organizations’ functions. Some of them are trying to solve the same problem, just in different ways, even though they're in the same company. So basically, we know there's silos. And this is across every enterprise.

How would you advise someone, particularly with the concepts that we've talked about, how can they use this creative, think about integration beyond technology, how would you advise someone to really break down some of these silos that, again, I think we all see when we talk to these large companies?

Christopher Rubin:

Yeah, see a lot, right? I don't think the biggest barriers are technical. They're human, and they come back to emotions, in this case, fear. There's a fear of sharing data, fear of losing control, that's a big one, fear of being blamed if something fails. You can have perfect systems, but it’s almost a psychological safety maybe and shared purpose. That's huge. That's a key to integration, I would say.

And oh, here's one I love. Listen to how your teams talk. If you hear them saying “they” about other departments instead of “we”, you have silos. It's really that simple. Language reveals mindset, and mindset determines whether integration succeeds or whether you can really be truly united across the organizational barriers.

We have a practice that we use with our clients to try to break down some of these barriers. It starts with that workshop where there's no hierarchy, and we've got people from all different levels and roles and areas of expertise. But then once we're sort of moving through the engagement, we have periodic story circles. We bring cross-functional teams together, and we're sharing customer narratives instead of reports.

One example, the CFO of one organization heard how a budget decision that they made affected an actual customer's journey and experience. There's other cases like a developer can see how a choice they made in their code created delight or frustration. It feels like this kind of greases the rails of integration maybe a bit more naturally. And then if you can do that periodically, maybe every week, every few weeks, have a little integration spread where two departments get together and share an insight, just consistent collaboration across those departmental lines, it's really about culture, right? If you start with culture, then structure follows. And if you just start with structure, then we probably just got sophisticated silos.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. I like what you said about language reveals mindset. Again, if you think about organizations and the we versus us or them, and you think about everyone's got their own objectives, yes, they may layer up to like a company mission and vision, but generally there are still silos that get created.

Is it a fair statement to say that the one great way to break down those silos is to get aligned on, I don't want to call them customer journeys, but on customer stories, customer journeys? Because no matter where you are in your organization, the ultimate goal of an organization is to sell more to their target audience, grow, and that means every function is happy. Is the customer story getting aligned on that, understanding it, appreciating it?

You use two examples, a finance and developer story that impacted the customer directly. They didn't see it, but it probably brought everyone together. So is the customer story, the customer journey, is that the linchpin by which silos get broken down by which people get aligned?

Christopher Rubin:

I would say so. If you set all the financial metrics aside, ultimately, what are you all there to do? It's to serve that customer that, again, stands to benefit the most from what you have to offer. And so when that connection is made, stories happen. I come back to that word transformation. Sometimes it feels like an overstatement, but I feel like in every situation, when you're looking at that valued offering being delivered to the person who's really benefited from that, there's some kind of transformation, micro or macro, that's happening for that person. That creates a really compelling story.

To your question, absolutely, collect those stories, gather them, put them up on the wall. What better North Star is there for an organization than delivering value to humans who derived real substantial benefit from that thing that everybody's worked so hard to produce and deliver.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. When I was at a company years ago, it was a community software, social media software, one of the most inspirational things that we did was when you walked into the headquarters in San Francisco, we had customers on the wall, but not the logos. The company had done a specific initiative with their customers to send a professional photographer to take a photograph of their champions in their customer organization. This massive wall was full of the logo sheet. The picture's like the size of a sheet of paper. The logo was down here, and it was probably about 4 to 6inches.

The main thing was the customer, the person. The CEO at the time and our CMO back in the day did it because they wanted the entire company to walk in and look at the faces of the people that they were impacting on every day. So you come in and you see John that works at AstraZeneca, we are here to help John achieve his goals. That in itself, Chris, that's a story. That's a narrative that the CEO and the CMO explained to the company and got us bought in. You just proved your point. 

Christopher Rubin:

Absolutely. What a beautiful example. Yes, literally illustrates the point. I love it. Focus on the faces, right? It's the people that matter.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. What about, as leaders in the organization- depending on what kind of company you are. If you're a sales-led company, it's the sales leadership. If you're a product-led company, it's the product engineering, product management, and so on. Those are kind of the heroes. Again, there's benefits. I'm not saying any of those are wrong, but in terms of being a leader, if you're in our type of role and you're trying to show either the storytelling or trying to integrate some of this for the benefit of the company, so not just the product team, for example, how can we be leaders? What are the things that we can do in our remit to make sure people understand that we do have the best interests at heart, but we may not be front and center because we're not a product-led company? How would you advise someone to go about that?

Christopher Rubin:

That's a great question. I think I'm maybe just too biased here. Again, it's about language, right? That's how we connect and communicate. And then if you formulate the language in a story and then rooted in the customer, the sort of- I think about I have kids and I'm trying to help them understand that when you contribute to something that is outside of yourself, you get this special kind of benefit when it's not of self-directed, charity, whatnot, helping somebody, whatever it is.

So I think when you route and organize everything around the customer, it brings that other kind of intangible sort of sense of purpose. And then if you communicate it consistently in a way that's resonating in some form or some kind of story, I just feel like that is the best way to drive and energize and organize a big group of people where, ultimately, they do all have a shared purpose, and maybe they just need to be reminded of it as consistently as possible from the ones at the top.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, it's a great point. I do the same with my kids, which is help them to understand that life isn't just about you get to live in a nice area and you get to play on soccer teams and you have the opportunity to drive a car. When you're able to, there's a lot of other things that you can be doing to give beyond what you get for yourself, which I think is interesting.

If we try and identify who the people are that could really resonate with this, that will take that message forward, is there a trait in people? Is there a type of personality? Is it funk? Is it role-based? What should we be looking for? Because what I've seen- I'll give you an example.

We have a development center, which is out in the Far East. There was one of the guys that was running the team, very technical, writing code, building products. But whenever they did a recruiting event at one of the local universities, he was creating posters and logos and all these kind- so creative. And when he came over here, we actually had a really good discussion. What I realized is he actually could be one of the storytelling cultural leaders within the organization.

He's not here in HQ, he's not part of my marketing leadership team, but he's what we need in a far-flung part of the world to inspire a bunch of developers that will probably never even make it to San Mateo, California. I think I was probably lucky to find that person. But is there a trait to look for? Is there a way to try and identify people in parts of the organization that can help?

Christopher Rubin:

Fascinating question. I wish I had a magical sort of unlock to that puzzle. How valuable that would be. But I guess what comes to mind is champions, right? You mentioned, is it role-based? I feel like, ideally, you've got at least one champion in each department, the torch bearer, if you will. Those are the people who deeply understand the story that you're telling as an organization, which ties to purpose and the customer as we've talked about, and then the ones who more importantly are living that every day. The way that they show up just communicates already, without them even opening their mouth, that they are carrying that torch. They're emblematic of what your organization stands for and what you want to deliver and communicate to your audience and your ICP.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, just giving me a thought now. I think one of the things is, when the pressure's on and you're trying to hit targets and, potentially, you’re a couple of headcounts down because people have left, you start to see potential cracks in the organization, your team. People are overworked or whatever. It's interesting because I don't think anyone sits down in the morning and thinks, I'm just going to do the bare minimum in their job. But I think what's missing sometimes is what you just described, is the champion, the story, the person that really has taken the story of the organization and what they're trying to do to heart. And I think there are people who are pushing themselves, who look at multiple ways that they could improve, or maybe it's not an area that they own, but they've identified something that could be fixed.

You can agree to disagree on this one, but rather than be a, you guys have to work harder, or why aren't you checking on these things, why don't you care enough, maybe the opposite way is to actually make them the champions of the story, get them more engaged in why we're doing these. And maybe the other piece of it will come, maybe the digging in deeper or looking for other ways to help. If they were really bought into that story, maybe you wouldn't have to tell them, why did you miss that, and why aren't you asking that question? Is that feasible?

Christopher Rubin:

I think so. Certainly, if you run through the process that we orchestrate, you come out with a piece of media that can take different forms. But the North Star, that is the story, the core strategic narrative, if you will. But we call it a storyline. But it's the thing that everybody- it's a rallying cry. We talked about the internal and external audiences. Internally, it's a rallying cry. It's like, yeah, this is why we get up in the morning and come here. And for the customers, it's, give me some of that. It plays to both groups. It sounds a little different for the different audiences.

I'm also brought to mind of hiring in the workshop that we lead. One of the elements that we dig into is a core truth, right? We get a bunch of them up on the board, but what's one thing that no matter what is always true about your organization, your brand as an entity, as a living, breathing thing, and that core truth is something that you would also want to be true about anyone who joins the organization. And so it's something that's really interesting to include as a filter in the hiring process. That's what we've seen anyway.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah. No, I like that. What's the thing that's true no matter what. I like that. I'm going to think about that even just, again, top of mind for my own team right now.

Okay. So look, I have a feeling we're going to have more conversations around this stuff, but I like where we are right now. If we start to close, if you're a marketer, maybe you're listening to this and you're bought in. You're like, I understand the concept. Yes, I agree, I do want to do the storytelling. I am trying to think about customers at the heart of these things. But if you're in a meeting, maybe it's a marketing meeting, maybe it's with other parts of the organization, are there things that you would advise these people to say, look, these are some questions to ask?

The core truth actually is a good one. You have a workshop for that, but what is our core truth as an organization, as a function with our customers? If you're in these types of meetings as a marketer, what could you be asking to spur, to create this active dialogue to help people get to being innovative and really thinking about integrating all these pieces?

Christopher Rubin:

That's a good one. I think I might go back to some of the questions I introduced earlier. I really like the one about if we had no departments, what would we build? Just thinking more expansively, another one that comes up in the workshop is uncomfortable truth. So we got a core truth, we got an uncomfortable truth. What are the things that are inherently true about our brand, about our organization, that we wish they weren't? It's a little uncomfortable to admit, but they are definitely true.

Often, you really uncover some things there around hidden assumptions. I'm fascinated with that idea that we, as humans, carry around these hidden assumptions we're not even aware of. But when you're forced to sort of look at them, you realize, oh gosh, actually that's not something I want to carry around in my mindset day-to-day. Those are the ones that come to mind in the moment.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, no, I like those. Very positive discussion, very proactive discussion. My second to last question is, there must be examples where this hasn't gone right, where you've seen organizations, teams, either struggle- I don't want to say completely fail because it just feels like it's probably more of an iterative process, but other pitfalls to avoid. Again, I like map your narrative gaps, create a storybook with data, all those things we talked about. I get those. But in terms of watching for the fails, is there something that hasn't worked that you've seen you can just say, look, this is what's really to look for, make sure that you're prepared for this outside of the points you've already raised?

Christopher Rubin:

For me, it just comes back to language. Are all of the mouths that I mentioned earlier that represent the organization, they're telling the story, are they all telling the same story? That's back to the gaps. If you don't have any success metrics that overlap across departments, again, I think that's pointing back to silos that are inherently not great, the they versus we, I think that's a big one that's easy to spot once you're tuned into it. It's a habit that organizations easily fall into. And B, one that as soon as you're aware of it, you realize, oh gosh, that's an indicator of something that we probably want to look at more closely.

Maybe one more, just a really telling sign that maybe there's something that needs a little more work and exploration. When no one can tell you the complete customer story from awareness to advocacy, that story from when they first discover you to when they become a raving fan, if nobody can tell you exactly how that happens, how that unfolds, that's something that you should probably take a closer look at.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, I like those. Okay. Last question. Something I ask, depending on- doesn't vary by person I talk to. I've had people from nonprofits, from education, high tech, someone like yourself that's one of the creative marketing leaders. With all the technology that we see right now, obviously, generative AI and using LLMs has taken off, we're now talking about autonomous agents making decisions for themselves, is there something that you look at right now, could be a year, could be three years out, something that you're excited for maybe to see something come to fruition or there are of the possible with some of this technology? Because I feel like we've talked around the people, the process, the organization, is there something that you're excited that AI is going to do to really help move a lot of this along, and what are you excited for in the future?

Christopher Rubin:

Yeah, sure. I think there's so many things. I come back to this idea of a narrative OS, this intelligence layer between your core brand truth and the way that's expressed in the market. It's about, how do you maintain authenticity while achieving scale? Again, augmented intelligence, use the tools and the machines, if you will, to augment our own intelligence, to make us more capable, more powerful, more efficient, things like that. Zero click funnel, right? That's the thing where people are finding you without clicking on any blue links anymore.

Your brand's getting defined by AI before customers ever reach you. So you've got to have this narrative OS that is operating in real time. It makes sure that the story stays coherent across every AI interpretation and customer touchpoint. Without it, market forces and algorithms are going to write your story for you, and it's probably not going to be the story you want told.

Dayle Hall:

It's definitely not going to be what you want to tell them, for sure. I love that, Chris. I think that's a great way to end the podcast. Thanks for your time today.

Christopher Rubin:

Oh, thanks so much, Dayle. It was a real pleasure. I hope we get to do it again at some point.

Dayle Hall:

Yeah, me too. If people want to reach out to you, connect, what's the best way for them to make that connection?

Christopher Rubin:

Sure. I'm not a huge social media person, but I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Check me out there. I've written recently about the narrative OS, if you want to learn more about it. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

Dayle Hall:

Great. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. These are the kind of podcasts that I think just excite me as a host. We've talked about technology. We talked about activating different parts of the organization. We talked about storytelling. As a marketer, these are important.

But I think what I want everyone out there to remember, too, is you don't have to be a marketer, you don't have to be deep in creative thought, to use some of this. Really take on board what Chris has said. Really think about, how can I use that in my day-to-day role, whether you're a data scientist, a developer, whether you're in finance or legal, you're in the weeds of the organization on a daily basis. I think there's some great advice. Chris, thanks again.

Christopher Rubin:

Thank you. What a great closing. Thanks so much, Dayle. 

Dayle Hall:

Thanks, everyone. Appreciate you joining us today, and we'll see you on the next one.