Snowflake CMO Leans Into Generative AI to Forecast Pipelines and Drive ROI – Marketing: Art and Science EP14

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Marketing, art and Science, the podcast where we sit down with B2B, B2C, chief marketing officers, and really get to understand their profile as well as how their and their teams are pulling the levers of art and science and marketing to drive business outcomes. We're talking pipeline revenue and a seamless customer journey.

I'm your host Lisa Martin, and I'm so thrilled to welcome Denise Pearson, the CMO of Snowflake, to this latest episode. Denise, it's so great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us today.

So Great to be here with you, Lisa. Thanks for having me. So let's, oh, It's my pleasure.

Let's go ahead and start with your CMO profile. You have a great background. You've been in marketing for a long time, but tell the audience a little bit about you and how you got to the level where you are today.

I started in marketing in tech in 1996, so it's almost 30 years here, uh, soon. And I think it was a little bit by accident to begin with. I had this passion for marketing, and especially, you know, advertising.

You know, I grew up going, uh, to watch, uh, the commercials when I went to the movies. I grew up in Sweden. We didn't have commercials on tv, so I went to the movies to watch the commercials, uh, watching the, you know, the use of fruit and the Levi's commercials, you know, from, from the us.

Um, kinda dreaming myself away to, uh, to California. Uh, but again, I ended up, uh, in, in tech. Yeah.

So I had a, one of my friend's sister was working for a tech startup in Sweden, and it was a French company. The company was called Genesis, uh, and the product they developed is very similar to what Zoom is today. So they actually develop a first automated conferencing service.

So I ended up joining there, and the company took off and did really, really well. And, um, so I grew with the company. So I started as a marketing coordinator in Sweden, and I was promoted to marketing manager.

And then a few years later, I got the call from the headquarters in Paris asking me, do you want to come down? We had this product manager position open, and the big goal I've set for myself was that I wanna become a product manager before I was 28 years old. I mean, I thought it was gonna be more, again, in the B2C world right?

Than a company like, you know, Proctor and Gamble or something. That was my, my big dream and, and vision I had for myself. And, um, so when I got that question, I said, yes, you know, I'm, I'm coming, um, to Paris, you know, next week.

And, uh, moved to Paris. And then a year later, the, uh, global head of marketing took on another role, and the CEO said to me, Denise, I'm appointing you head of global marketing next week. And by the way, all the executives from around the world are coming in to Paris, and you have to present the marketing plan.

So, um, oh my gosh, definitely scared to death. Yeah. But it was also that a pivotal moment by the, probably the biggest pivotal moment for me in my career where I had to say yes.

You know, I had to, yeah, I mean, uh, and I cannot lived by that. You have to say yes when the opportunities come your way. And I've had that philosophy that the worst thing that can happen is I have to go home and sleep on my mom's couch, that that's the worst thing that can happen.

So I said yes, and then I stayed, uh, with a company for another, you know, six years. You know, we opened up country markets in 30 countries around the world, and, uh, I spent 12 years there and, um, also moved to the us you know, with, um, the US was our largest, you know, market. And, um, I moved to California, uh, the Bay Area in 2000, um, two, but then they sent me to other places.

They sent me to down the river for a year and DC for four years until the company was eventually acquired. But, uh, it was definitely kind of the place where I, where I grew my career, and where I learned a lot in marketing, where I made the greatest mistakes, you know, of my life, you know, as well. And then since then, I've been the c of three other, uh, tech startups and, uh, including on 24 for five years, and then Apigee for almost three years, and now Snowflake for, for nine years.

And I actually had opportunity to take all those four companies, you know, public, so they done, um, uh, quite well, been incredible journeys to, to be on. Amazing. Your Pathway is so fantastic.

It reminds me of mine a little bit when I got plucked from being an a payload scientist at NASA working on the space program to being in sales and tech from a family friend who saw probably like your family friend of talents that you might not not have known that you had. Yeah. But what I also really admire about your background is you have this kind of like, I do this, get comfortably uncomfortable.

It's, it's hard, but like, when you had the opportunity in Paris to lead global marketing and you knew the only answer is yes, and I'm gonna make mistakes along the way, but I'm gonna learn from them. I think that is just one of the best attitudes that you can possibly have. Tell us a little bit about Snowflake.

If anyone listening doesn't know, I'd be shocked, but I've been watching this Snowflake trajectory for years now. I've had the chance to interview you before. Talk to us a little bit about that and where marketing fits in.

Mm-hmm. And the overall corporate strategy. Yeah.

I mean, overall, snowflake is a data platform built, you know, for the cloud from the beginning. The company was founded in 2012, and then, um, the, um, product was ready in 2015. So that was a big launch, you know, for, for Snowflake.

And I joined about 10 months, you know, later. Essentially, if you look at, okay, what does Snowflake, you know, do that is different from, from what we had in the past? And Snowflake essentially handle all types of data, and you, and, and you can have that data all in one place, and you can give access to that data to everyone in your organization with the highest level of security, you know, governance, access control, et cetera.

And not just people, but also machines, right? Yeah. We know today that the biggest consumers of data today are, are, you know, AI models, for instance, right?

That use this type of data. But again, the revolutionary thing was that back in the, in the, in the days and still today, right? A lot of data sits in, in basements, you know, locked in.

And the, the only people that can access this data is, you know, the IT folks, right? And that makes of course, very difficult for the people on the business side who wants to use that data to create business value or, or insights or develop, you know, data products for their company and makes it really, really hard. And that's kind of what, what Snowflake has made, you know, possible is, again, to make that data accessible, you know, for, for, um, for anyone.

And that's essential for customers across every industry that, that have to become data companies. If they haven't already, they're behind the curve there. Talk a little bit about the corporate structure.

You roll up to the CEO, but you have really tight alignment with the CRO, which you and I both share, is something that is so incredibly important for marketing. Give us kind of a little high level view of that relationship. Yeah, I mean, I report into the CEO from an org chart, you know, standpoint, but my mentality essentially that I work for the CRO, and I think I've always had that, and maybe it's 'cause I started in marketing in, in the nineties, and back then, I mean, sales was truly king, right?

I mean, in, in B2B, because every deal was run by the sales team. The sales team did education, you know, of the, of the customer from the very early on. But that of course changed, right?

When, when the internet came, right? And everyone could start, you know, self-educate and read up upon products and, and learn by themselves, right? Marketing became more and more influential on the entire, you know, buyer's, you know, journey, but still have that sort of mentality that, that sells is, is, is king, and that sells is my, my, my, my, my customer.

And in B2B marketing, I mean, the most important objective we have in marketing is really to make the selling process as easy as possible. So it's more just that mentality. Again, what can we do to make the, uh, sales process more efficient?

What is it that sales need at any given time? And this really being in lockstep with the sales strategy all the time. I'm not saying that sales is more important than, than marketing, right?

But it's still the mentality of being a service in all of of sales and making sure that we're always in a fully, fully aligned as an organization. Absolutely. That alignment is key.

It's not a trite thing, but yeah. One of the things I admire about you too, Denise, is you said, you know, it's it critical to our success of looking at projects from the outside in. Talk about what that means and how is that critical to your success?

Yeah. And, and we'll talk about who we ultimately work for. I mean, we all ultimately work, you know, for the customer.

I mean, if you look at them, the most successful companies around the world, I mean, those are the companies that are really, really focused on, on the, uh, customer right? At any given time. Yeah.

I think all, I think all companies, of course, have that ambition to put customer at the center on being in a customer centric, but it's hard to execute on that because, uh, as you grow as an organization, you really start thinking more about all the processes, you know, internally, you start thinking more that kind of, you know, inside, you know, out. And I think we need to remind ourselves every day, right? To think outside in, yeah.

And I can say, I find myself guilty all the time for that too. And then it does have to kind of remind us of, you know, what, we need to look at this from the customer perspective. Whatever decision we make, is that the right decision for the customer?

And also at Snowflake, I think what's been unique is that many times we made decisions that have had short term impact on our business, you know, our revenue, whether it's, uh, making our product much, much more efficient, so cost will go down for our customer, right? I mean, short term, that of course impacts snowflake negatively, if you will. Yeah.

But long term is the right thing to do for, for a company. 'cause customers, you know, will trust us even more, right? I mean, uh, become a much more important and, and valued in a business partner to our customers.

So there's so many aspects of that thinking outside in. And every year we do a very comprehensive survey, uh, where we really tracking every part of that customer journey, right? Everything from how they start learning about Snowflake to, to the sales process, contract process, to to building process, to product experience, everything.

So we can really look at, okay, is anything falling in the red, essentially? Is there anything we need to address from a customer perspective? Customer value, it's everything, right?

For every company and every industry. Let's segue Denise into our second subject. And that's really kind of looking at snowflake's, MarTech stack in action.

I know that you really focus on a team of artists and scientists. Talk to us a little bit about that, where you as the CMO are really the conductor of the orchestra, But I think this is why we have so much fun in marketing. I mean, it's all about bringing these two skill sets together, right?

Bringing the creativity together with, you know, analytics, right? I mean, it's a creative part that makes in our marketing engaging it, what helps in our, you know, capture attention. But the analytical side, right?

Is all about making sure, right? Is it all working? And then are we targeting, you know, the right, you know, people and is the right, are we putting the right message in front of the right people as well?

So I think this is why I'm having so much fun in marketing. I think this is why I, I'm in marketing is to, to kinda bring these two sites together. And it was, say, at Snowflake, we actually do personality testing.

So we, we, we, you know, we're using the insights discovering program, looking at the kid who is blue, you know, who is yellow, who is red, who is green, right? And that's what you find all those analytical folks, you know, on the blue side, right? On the spectrum.

And you have the more creative people, you know, they're more on the yellow and on the, on the, on the green side, right? And as the head of marketing, your job is really to have both of those skill sets. You cannot just have analytical people.

I mean, your market is gonna be really, really boring. You just cannot just have those people with, you know, tons of creativity, you know, either. So, uh, it's that balance of bringing them both, uh, together.

And this is of course where, you know, technology comes in. I mean, uh, and on Nalytics side, there's so much we can do now with them, with technology as well. I love how marketing has become so scientific.

I think that's because I was a scientist in a former life. Talk a little bit about the marketing technology stack that you've put together and where that science piece comes in to really help course correct in as near realtime as possible to really deliver that customer journey that's seamless. So the value to the customer is really there.

Yeah. And we use, of course, several different, you know, platforms on the, on the sales side, of course, we use, you know, Salesforce, so that's one of our big, you know, platforms across marketing as well. We use, you know, Marketo, you know, and, and Adobe, you know, for, for a website.

And those are the platforms we use in terms of engaging and activating our programs. We use, uh, a company called Bombora to get intent data, right? That's intent data we use from the analytical side, making sure that, um, again, right, you know, how how is the messaging, you know, working in front of different audiences.

We use, you know, work Workato a platform to really automate kind of the workflow of all our different campaigns across our organization. And then we use, um, you know, role works and, you know, Google and, you know, LinkedIn advertising as, you know, our digital ad platforms, obviously. But then also is Snowflake is a big component of, of our stack as well, with all this data, right?

Goes into one place. And that's really how we can get this 360 view, you know, of our, of our customer. That's a great point.

The 360 view, we hear that a lot from, I mean, pretty much everyone I talked to, but from, from your point earlier, the execution piece is challenging to do. How do you achieve that? And where does the science cumins to really build a foundation to give you that 360 view of the customer?

Yeah, and again, uh, as I said, we, we run a lot of that in on, on Snowflake, uh, today, and we're using all the difference, you know, signals that are coming in, you know, from our, from our customers. And what's unique in the B2B space is that you're not targeting one individual, right? You're looking at the whole company with different personas and different roles, and that, that's a challenge we have in, in, in, uh, B2B marketing.

It's much more complex, right? Than B2C, you know, marketing. So it's really about utilizing all these signals coming in from, uh, from the, the business side of your customers.

It also, of course, on the, on the technical side, you know, we are also targeting, you know, developers, you know, when in customer base is really bringing all these signals together to get that 360 view on really where is this prospect or customer on the buyer's journey, you know, with Snowflake, and what is the next, you know, program that we need to put in place to drive this company forward. And where does the artistry come into place too? You, you've got all the signals there, you've got that customer at 360, the data is there.

It sounds like a great snowflake on Snowflake story. If you guys don't already have one, you should. But where does the artistry come in to go, okay, we're understanding all of these technical signals that, you know, B2B customer A is giving us, how do you pull the levers of art to really engage them, to make them captivated and want to learn more and, and progress through that buyer's journey?

Yeah, and the biggest part here is really around the customization of content and personalization. I think a big theme here during the past couple years has been about hyper personalization. And that's of course huge in the BGC space.

We are all as consumers seeing that every day, how we are being, you know, hyper personalized, right? With, uh, with content, you we're just out searching for something, and then of course, a second later, right? You're getting an ad, you know, served up, you know, for you.

And this is of course, you know, happening now in the B2B world as well. And for, and it's really about, you know, customizing content from an industry perspective. And marketing in the end of the day becomes, it's all about, you know, relevance and the timing of, of that.

So it's about timing and being relevant and really, you know, again, making sure that you put yourselves in the customer's world, then try to put, pull them into your world. And this is really where all these signals help us to do is really to identify, okay, what content should we put in front of this customer at the time they're in now on their buyer's, you know, journey. That timing and that relevance that you bring up are absolutely critical.

They're, they're no longer nice to have. So we have this expectation, I think, in our B2C lives as consumers that we're gonna get ads served up to us that are highly contextual, highly relevant at the right time, not in a creepy way. And that has come over into the B2B side where that expectation from a buyer is, is now there, but how are you using tools like generative ai, for example, to really drive that hyper-personalization, that customization of the experience per buyer to push them through that journey and get them to sales?

Yeah. And I have to say that, I mean, there's no better time to be both a marketer and consumer, I think, at this time. Yeah.

But also the consumer, what AI, et cetera, helps with is also relevant content for you. I think so for us, right? We're being bombarded with message are irrelevant to us.

Yes. The fact is, if I was actually just out searching for something and then I get a highly relevant, you know, offer, it kind of helps me save time as well. So think it goes both ways.

It's actually really to the advantage you of the consumer, you know, as well. And in terms of definitely, you know, generative ai, you know, and, and, and ai, I mean, of course there's so much we can do now to be even more personalized and customized at scale. We of course, see a lot on the content side.

I mean, we're doing a lot of experimenting. We have our, uh, our account based, you know, marketing program, right? We wanna be able done customize content and messages, you know, at scale.

And we've been able to do a lot with that, with, with degenerative, you know, um, ai also on our SDR side, we have 300 SDRs that are following up on all the different incoming, you know, leads, you know, coming in. And many of them are, are young, right? They're in their early twenties.

It's super hard for them to come up, you know, with irrelevant and, and everything. So that generative AI has also helped them to really be much more, you know, relevant, you know, to the, uh, prospects that they're talking to as well. But I think also the, the big thing with AI that, that has brought us is the ability to forecast, you know, the future.

And for us in B2B, uh, the biggest part of B2B marketing is really driving our sales pipeline, right? Right. That's what we're really responsible for.

It's not just about, you know, bringing in the leads. It's about how these leads, you know, converting into pipeline out in the field. And what we've been able to do now with more predictive, um, AI is really forecast what is our pipeline looking at in, at a spec in a specific tour territory, you know, six months from now.

'cause often in B2B, you're in a quarter you realize like, wow, okay, the West coast doesn't have enough pipeline this quarter. How are we gonna make it? And from a market standpoint, it is really hard to go in and try to fix something and, and build pipeline, you know, in quarter.

'cause the work we do is really about building pipeline, right? You know, six months from now in a territory. So that ability to really forecast based on all the actions you're taking right now, what is that gonna result to in six months from now?

So you can then go in and fix issues before it's too late. And marketing is also very much about, you don't wanna overinvest, there's no reason to overinvest in demand gen in a territory. If you have 20 reps in a, in a territory, you wanna make sure they all have enough, you know, leads and the ability to build pipeline.

You don't need to generate demand for four people if you only have 20. Right? But you also wanna make sure you don't under vests, right?

You don't want tell 10 sellers sitting somewhere and there's not enough demand coming in for them. So that ability to do predictive, you know, forecasting, I think that has been a huge, you know, game changer for us, um, in B2B. Well, that visibility is absolutely critical.

To your point, you've Got three achieve of 300 SDRs who are overwhelmed. They're early in their careers. They, they need assistance from marketing and from tools like generative AI to be able to craft those messages that are relevant, contextually relevant, send them at the right time, and be able to have the data that can inform when they should pull different levers and marketing as well.

So it sounds like what you have is, this, is is not just that 360 view, but the visibility into, from a death perspective, customers, what they're doing, what should we serve them, how should we do it? What's the right channel? How do we give them that omnichannel experience and let them know we understand them and we want to help them understand us.

No, exactly. I think marketing, sales, you know, the SDRs is very much like an assembly, assembly production in a line, right? Yeah, yeah.

And you need to make sure that everyone has, are doing, you know, the right work at the, at the right, you know, time, and that you're again, you know, generating enough, you know, demand and not, you know, too much. And, uh, as you're investing, you know, the right amount and it in the territory. So I think data is really what enables us to adapt to at scale to this thing.

So, uh, I just looking back, you know, 30 years ago in marketing, I mean, I started in marketing when leads came in from the fax machine, right? Where I had to, oh my gosh, yes. Had to enter them manually into an Excel spreadsheet, download to a flock per disc, and go over right on the sell side with that flock per disc.

And after that, you handed a dis over, you had no idea what was going on with those leads hit anymore. No. So, uh, where we are today, it's a hole.

It's incredible. And just kind of thinking about now, next, what's gonna happen next with AI is, is that is super exciting. And also from a marketing standpoint, I hear a lot of people that are there is exciting, you know, about this as well, right?

I mean, what is the future gonna look like? What's gonna happen to our jobs, et cetera. Yeah.

What we have done there that I think, uh, is quite impactful. We have formed an AI council across the marketing team with individuals from each different function, and these are the individuals who really are super curious, right? They like to lean, they like to kind of really test new things.

And so they're really leading kind of these efforts, testing new use cases, and also looking at, okay, what do we need to educate the rest of the team on? 'cause we cannot just have everyone leaning and do testing every day, right? Right.

But Have that sort of black belt group on your team who goes out to tests different things and wanna share those findings with the rest of the team, I think seems to be working really, really well. Are you finding that the hand raisers on your AI council are a mix of both the artistry folks and the science folks as well? Or is it more the scientist folks?

And you imagine that I think of curiosity is a, is a great creative outlet. No, no, definitely. And I mean, on the creative side, they understand that they need to do more with less as well.

Yes. We have a lot, often the people sitting on the creative side in a company, they're often at the last, the last, right. Uh, at the end of the assembly line, right.

There's a, there's planning happening and sometimes they, they're informed very late, right? They often will have visibility into everything that is happening. And, you know, someone develops a programs and then they give the creative team, okay, I need this in a week, right?

So they're often quite, you know, overwhelmed, right? As a scale to a company of the size we're at right now. They're at the, they're often the last and they feel like they, they, they don't have full control over that situation.

Yeah. So for them, they're really looking at ways, okay, how can we get more out of everything we do? They're, they, they're looking at really, again, how can generative AI help us just do more with less as well?

But again, you know, creativity, right from, from a human mind standpoint will of course never go away. And we also need, of course, to have that, um, uh, check checks and balances of things too. So I don't think anyone is worried about their jobs here.

It's more about, um, again, how can we amplify everything we're doing? And that, that curiosity in, in terms of how can technology help And help us scale. To your point, I think one of the things too that's always interesting to me is from a generative AI perspective, from an AI perspective, there's so much coming at us so quickly, we saw this catalyst about what, 20, was it 2022, end of 2022, uh, or was it 23 when chat GPT was born?

I forget, it's, I feel like I haven't worked without it in so long. It's hard to remember a time without it. But from, from that, um, ROI perspective, it's hard to measure ROI from, from tools like generative ai.

Are I, I hear a lot of productivity improvements, but are there ways where you're really seeing ROI at Snowflake in marketing, because you're leaning into emerging technologies? I think the ROI we're seeing is, again, I talked about before about the ability to forecast. You know, outcasts and marketing has always been around again, of course, finding out what is working and what is not.

And often we don't find out until it's too late. Right? Back in the days when we had very limited data, it could take, we might have the data three months after a program was over, right?

And that, that then is too late. Right? Too late.

Yeah. But yeah, day, the ability to make real time, you know, changes is huge, right? You need, you need to make, on the digital side, for instance, digital advertising is a huge spend, right?

For, for most marketing departments, both in B2B and B2C. And that has become so incredibly sophisticated in terms of how you can now change programs on the fly, right? Yeah.

In the mid campaign. And also it's becoming also fully automated, you know, as well, right? You don't even need to do something there really.

There, there tools kind of, uh, making the changes, you know, for you. So, uh, that optimization is really where the ROI come from and that we can easily cannot calculate. And that we, we have able to calculate every year now where we got sort of real time data.

How are those digital programs performing from an ROI standpoint down building pipeline close business to compared to what did they do six months ago? So I think that's where you can immediate see incredible return on the, on investments. That's Outstanding.

That's, that's a message. And for all of the CMOs and the prospective CMOs that are watching, 'cause we hear often it's hard to measure, but to your point, from a forecasting perspective, you can see those trends, you can see the data, it's right there telling you what it needs to tell you, and you can react proactively to that. To your point, in terms of course correcting campaigns and things like that, that before you wouldn't have data on performance for a while and it was almost campaigns done.

Well, how do we create the next one? Because they're all continuous. What are some of the emerging technology that you're eyeing next, um, with the AI council and within marketing and within your executive leadership team that's really gonna help improve that customer journey and deliver that value just beautifully even more?

Yeah, no, it, well, it comes back to again, you know, hyper, you know, customization, I would say. I think that's a key thing. And again, the timing, uh, content creation is huge, uh, in terms of how do we, you know, personalize content down to, you know, one persona with an enterprise, and not just from an industry standpoint, which we've done before.

So that, that's a huge thing. And, and again, we could have on the a BM side, we could have 5,000 campaigns running simultaneously, right? And the ability to go in and again, customize even further at the much more granular level, that's where we're gonna get our eye from.

So that's really where we are putting most of our, our, um, efforts on, on testing. Um, that, and, uh, uh, again, also comes back to that SDR side. We've done a lockdown of testing in terms of the helping them customize messages.

How do we roll that this out now to the entire, you know, team, you know, globally Is sales kind of chopping at the bit to get the, the rest of the sales organization since you have that great alignment, I imagine they are. And probably there's a lot of curiosity on the sales side as well. Yeah.

On their side, what they're seeing is of course, much, much more high quality demand, you know, coming in. Right? Perfect.

Yeah. Again, when they're, when they're at that meeting, they're, they're in front of a much, much more qualified audience right. Than they were before.

Yeah. They have much more information on the person that they're talking to than they had to in, in the past. And that really enables them to have a much more effective conversation, you know, as well from the beginning.

Well, it sounds like It's beyond alignment, Denise, that you've built with your CRO at Snowflake. It's really a symbiotic partnership, and that's really when you can execute on that, it's brilliant. And when the customers feel that they're understood as well as the sales folks understanding the customer, it's a recipe for success.

But I want to kinda wrap things up here. You talked a great deal about your history, time and marketing going from floppy disk facts days to now having AI to help you really forecast territory by territory. But I imagine there's been some kind of ebbs and flows along the way, and we love to end this podcast with what we call the fail to fab segment.

And that is, could be a business initiative, marketing initiative that wasn't going according to plan where you came in and made changes and saw results after that. Share with us a story, if you will, that you think is inspiring to the next generation of CMOs. And I think, again, failing is clearly a part of, of learning.

Sounds super, you know, cliche, but again, uh, every time you fail again, right? There's sort of failures, of course you can't, you can't do, but, uh, you have to look at them as, as, uh, learning moments. And I think one particular one comes back to more like creative, you know, development and also marketing, right?

Is about not being tone deaf, right? And I think so often we see, you know, uh, a video or something fun coming from a company and you realize it wasn't really fun, right? They were, it was more fun for those people creating it than, than it was for the people watching it.

And we had several moments, you know, like that. But I remember specifically in the early days, we made this big investment in, in a video, and we had actually been quite successful with the series of really fun, engaging, you know, comic videos. And we thought, okay, let's take this to the whole net new level now.

And we did this product, big production, and it has this west side story, um, uh, theme to it where basically, you know, it was with the cloud and the on-prem kind of, you know, competing in with each other. Oh, we got it. Yeah.

And we, yes, and we've hired these actors in, in LA and it was this big production. And for us, back in the days, the investment, it was such a fairly big investment for us in the, in the early days. And when we saw the results, it was just, it was, it was pretty, it was pretty terrible.

Only two people within our company have ever seen that, that video. And, uh Oh, wow. But it's one of those moments where like, okay, we have, we have to pull the plug on this.

Maybe we can show this at an internal meeting one day. We've still not having showed it yet, it's maybe time to do that soon. But again, it was at moments where like, this is not, this is not fun.

Yeah. This is not, this is not, this is not customer centric. This is not because there's no entertainment value.

It, it didn't turn out the way, uh, we expected. And therefore, again, you have to, to, okay, you have to pull the plug on things as well, right. When they're, when they're not, um, working.

Right. And then, and move forward and take the lessons learned. To your point, I always say failure is not a bad F word because there's so much that we can learn from it.

And, and if we all are honest and look in the mirror, we, we've all failed a lot. But you can course correct. You can understand and learn from these experiences, what didn't go well, what did we not do that we should have done?

And then make the next one even better. Denise, thank you so much for sharing that West side story analogy. I, I love that movie.

So I, I thought that's gotta be a huge success. But you realized it wasn't, you made the decision of the executive level moved forward, and maybe more than two people will get to see it one day and understand, hey, marketing did a great job of using the data that they have, the artistry to understand when it was time to move forward. I can't thank you enough for being on the program today, sharing your history of almost 30 years in marketing, going from fax machines to marketing data clouds.

It's, it's an amazing progression and we appreciate you also sharing what you're doing from a MarTech stack perspective, how you're leaning into AI and generative AI and other emerging technologies to deliver that customer value through the sales organization and marketing. We just really appreciate all of your insights. Thank you so much for having me, Lisa.

My pleasure. We wanna thank you for watching and remind you to tune in next time for the next episode of Marketing, art, and Science. For my guest, Denise Pearson, I'm Lisa Martin, and we'll see you next time.