On every episode of the Rebel Instinct, our team sits down with rebels from across the marketing landscape to share stories about bold moves they’ve taken as marketers. Subscribe for more.
Galen Ettlin:
You are listening to the Rebel Instinct Podcast by Act-On Software for all the marketing innovators living outside the box. What’s good everybody? Thank you so much for breaking the mold with us. I’m Galen Ettlin with Act-On Software, joined by my VP of Marketing, Casey Munck and our guest today, Cody Putman, experiential marketing manager at Afresh and Cody’s in Bend, Oregon marketing professional there who thrives on making products, ideas, and teams move.
Casey Munck:
Hey, Cody.
Cody Putman:
Hey, thanks for having me.
Casey Munck:
Oh, it’s so good to see you. Even though I see you around town here in Ben, it’s always good to see you in a professional setting as well.
Cody Putman:
Always great to get to catch up.
Casey Munck:
I love it. You’re one of my favorite people in the whole world, and this is the truth like many people have, Cody’s their favorite, but yeah, we forgot to mention talented pastry chef. I’m still thinking about that. Fruity Pebbles ice cream you made for me that one time. Do you have any fall flavors?
Cody Putman:
I do. Fall is my absolute favorite season, so maybe expect a fall treat at some point coming your way. I have to test those out on all my friends.
Casey Munck:
I cannot wait to get that doorbell ringing with ice cream.
Galen Ettlin:
We’re going to have dessert delivered to the Portland office when you visit us, Casey?
Casey Munck:
Possibly. We’ll work on it. We’ll work on. But Cody, experiential marketing, it’s a relatively newly coined term in the marketing space. What exactly is it? I know we’ve spent time together when you had field marketing manager positions and this is your new role. Tell us about what it exactly is.
Cody Putman:
Yeah, it’s interesting. It actually was pretty new for myself too when I first learned about it. Essentially at its core, experiential marketing is really helping brands create that relationship with their customers. Building that bridge from top of funnel and creating that relationship all the way through. You have the opportunity to really create positive brand experiences with folks that you’re trying to get to become customers, and there’s great ways to get to that online, offline channels, so through trade shows, events, direct mail, virtual experiences, even ABM, there’s just so many tools in the toolbox that you get to use and you get to be creative while doing it. I think it’s pretty easy to go and just show up and have a presence, but it’s really wrapping bigger ideas around that presence and making sure that folks are walking away with a really, really positive experience because they’re going to associate that positive experience throughout their entire journey with the company. So the better you can start off the bat, the more successful that customer is going to be in the future as well.
Casey Munck:
Interesting. It’s very holistic and you’re really thinking about every single encounter that a customer might have with the brand.
Cody Putman:
Yeah, there’s so many. There’s so many, and every single touch point is critical, and I think all too often those smaller interactions tend to go underlooked. So the more you can spend some time focusing on making those extremely positives the better.
Casey Munck:
I love that for you. I can’t wait to see what you’re cooking up over there. At your new role.
Galen Ettlin:
You’re mentioning you’re really using all of the tools at your disposal and it kind of seems like your field would utilize some gorilla marketing tactics, if you will. What are some of the weirdly wonderful campaigns that you’ve seen deployed successfully?
Cody Putman:
One of my favorite ones I actually I wasn’t involved in at all as an totally other area. I’m a really big fan of travel and tourism and being from Oregon myself, I really appreciate some of the work that the people like Travel Oregon get to do. I don’t know if any of you remember this since you’re based in Portland, or at least in Oregon as well, but Travel Oregon put out this incredible campaign called The Seven Wonders of Oregon.
What they did is they just took some of these incredible sites that we have and turned it into a campaign that got people super interested in visiting us, but not only did it encourage folks from outside of the state to come in, but it also really encouraged people who were living in Oregon to go and visit some of those places as well, because it wasn’t just an online ad or a commercial that you saw on tv, but it was in print, it was in magazines on airplanes, it was in stores, like a checklist of sorts. I mean, you literally saw it everywhere and having a ton of family and friends that grew up here. I think every single person that I knew was really considering have I visited all seven of these? How do I get there making plans either that summer or throughout the year to go and visit that. And I just thought it was incredible to see the reaction that people had to some of these places that maybe went a little under the radar, but they made such a big splash in the travel and tourism industry that some of these places were seeing traffic numbers that they had never seen before. So truly it was just incredible to kind of see people rally around a campaign like that and to get excited about either coming to visit us or even just checking a little bit more about your own state. It was phenomenal.
Casey Munck:
Yeah, I remember you telling me about that when I first moved and I was like, I’ve got to visit all these places and I find myself introducing this list of other Oregonians and it creates such a sense of pride of all these amazing places that we have and what special day trips that you can have to just experience these amazing places. So I love that campaign too.
Cody Putman:
It was fantastic.
Casey Munck:
Well, Cody, your job connects the offline and the online world marketing experiences. So how can marketers connect these things in a way that can feel holistic and actually connected? Because a lot of times the demand gen folks will be over here running things a certain way, field marketing sales. So in your role to kind of connect these things, what tactics do you do to create that experience that’s consistent regardless if you’re interacting on the website at an event, getting a piece of direct mail? What sort of philosophies or strategies are you doing to do that?
Cody Putman:
I think intent data is super helpful and not only understanding what people are doing online, so are they engaging with certain eBooks or case studies, what specific type of content really resonates with them? Is there a topic that’s more interesting to them? But really combining that with a lot of that offline channel as well. So getting some qualitative data when you’re on site at a trade show, you really should be understanding more about what those folks are talking about, what’s resonating at that show, what’s interesting to them when they come to visit you at your booth, are you taking notes on that? Are you making sure that you understand what is actually going to be relevant to ’em as you start to follow up? And then another piece of it too is really not stopping at the MQL or SQL or sort of whatever metric you’re looking at in terms of conversion and passing it off to sales.
Experiential marketing is really encompassing all of it. So you’re really focusing in on ensuring that you have the right data across the entirety of the funnel because that helps your sellers as well sort of get the right message out to ’em at the right time too. If you’re just passing it up to sales and they don’t really have that indication of, alright, here’s what we were talking about with them, then that’s where that communication and that storyline starts to break down. So keeping that story consistent across the board is always really critical. And then I would say too, just having that connection with sales, it’s so critical. Sometimes marketing and sales teams tend to work in different spheres, but ensuring that they are fully involved and aware of where your campaign is headed, what type of messaging you’re putting out there, and providing them something more actionable in terms of follow-up is really important.
They can then combine that intent data, other assets that you’ve created and the plan you have for follow-up and start to build something out on their own to ensure that there’s that personalization in there. There’s nothing more frustrating than showing up on a trade show, talking to someone, and then you have someone else reach out to that has a completely different story or it really isn’t even hitting on some of those things that you talked about previously. It’s kind of like, are they listening to me make sure they feel like they’re being listened to and understood, and there’s so many great tools that you can leverage now to be able to do that, whether it’s intent, data, automation, what have you, it’s pretty incredible what you can accomplish now.
Casey Munck:
That’s so true, and I think in seeing you in action, I think those relationships that you have to build with stakeholders that may not be under your direct management. So I mean other than providing baked goods, how have you been able to get people to come in line with what needs to happen to create that holistic experience? What sort of things have been successful for you in your career?
Cody Putman:
I find involving every stakeholder from the get-go is really critical, even if it’s just a brainstorm session at the beginning, understanding their ideas, what they’re interested in, what they’re hearing on the grounds and incorporating that into a campaign plan is really critical. But then it’s also ensuring that everyone is in lockstep as you go throughout that entire process and the plan. I tend to find that as teams sort of feel that better or at least with the campaign and they understand where it’s heading and they start to get excited about it. And I think so much around creating a positive experience is really building that momentum and creating a lot of energy for folks if they feel that energy. If your teams are feeling it, the folks that you’re trying to work with on the show floor, they’re going to feel it too.
Casey Munck:
Yeah, you got to keep those vibrations high.
Cody Putman:
Yes.
Casey Munck:
So I’m curious, what’s the most rebellious thing that you’ve tried with your experiential marketing?
Cody Putman:
Oh gosh. It’s always fun to get to try some new tactics, and sometimes you can do it in big campaigns and make a big splash, but I like to sort of find some of those more micro moments at different either events or virtually as well. I think one of my favorite things that I ever did, it was almost by accident, but in a way it was also quite intentional. We were at the show down in San Diego, and I usually try to wrap some sort of theme around our messaging when we’re at a show and sometimes it’s based off of the theme of the conference or maybe it’s just themed off of the location we’re in. So in this instance, we had a session there, we were leveraging this leaky bucket analogy and it was down in San Diego, so I was like, all right, well let’s run with a beach nautical theme with this and just try to take it all the way there.
So in the audience of anyone who joined that session, they got this little sort of pale, like a beach bucket with a shovel in it, and we had them participate in the session itself working with water and leaky buckets. But then afterwards they had these buckets and I rolled out this pool of mini gummy sharks and everyone after the session went over filled their pails with gummy sharks and these pails had our logo on it, and I just kind of wanted it to be a nice tree at the end. So we had all these leftovers, I take ’em back to the booth, and during the next session, everyone who wasn’t a part of our original session was so intrigued by these pales of gummy sharks that we had a line at our booth of folks waiting to fill up pales with gummy sharks and around this conference, it was incredible.
We had people everywhere with pales, and I was a little nervous at first because I was like, oh, maybe the compass organizers are going to be upset passing out food and candy and stuff like that. But people were so thrilled. In fact, we had some of the organizers were coming up trying to get gummy sharks as well until we ran out, but it was like we got to meet everyone and they came and we created that positive experience for ’em. And I’ll tell you what, they walked away probably back the hotel room with a pale of gummy sharks and they probably didn’t forget it. So that was probably one of my most favorite things that we did partially by accident, but it was just incredible to see sort of how that ended up flourishing, even though I didn’t expect it
Casey Munck:
All the way to gummy candy. I remember that Cody, that’s talk about being able to bridge the gap between a content topic of leaky buckets, hotel technology in San Diego. I mean, only someone with your brilliance can have that. That was a great story.
Galen Ettlin:
That story comes back to that energy you talked about really bringing it up and inspiring people to feel excited about a moment. So along those lines, what advice do you have to give other marketers about being more rebellious in their jobs,
Cody Putman:
Getting exposure to all the different areas of marketing? So I started as an intern in marketing quite a while ago, and during that time I got to experience literally every single piece of marketing that the company I was at did. So I think my advice would be for marketers is get familiar with your teams If you haven’t had the chance already, spend some time. If you’re a creative person, spend some time working in digital, spend some time in automation, wherever it might be, wherever you feel that skill gap because I think overall, not only does it make you a better marketer, but when you’re starting to think through some of these more rebellious plays or creative campaigns, it gives you the opportunity to think through how that’s going to work across the board. And not only are you going to create a campaign that flows really nicely, but you’re also going to get your team to really buy into that idea as well because you’re going to have a better understanding of some of the work that we all have to do to get that done. You think of ABM, it’s not just one person running a b m, it’s a team play and everyone has to be involved in it. So if you each can sort of understand where each other is coming from, maybe strengths and weaknesses in all areas, you’re just going to be that much more successful in building out what your dreams look like.
Casey Munck:
Really good advice. Cody, I loved running ABM plays with you. That was so much fun. And we won a lot of business, didn’t we? Yes,
Cody Putman:
We did. Yeah, it was incredible. We had a lot of fun getting to do that as well.
Casey Munck:
For sure. Well, I’d like to know your take on this. How do you make a rebellious move at work not knowing the outcome or the consequences?
Cody Putman:
Yeah, I mean I feel like it can always be so daunting, not really knowing where something’s going to go, but it’s so much of it is about taking those calculated risks. I could sit there and string along quotes all day of like, you learn from your failures or you must try first, whatever it might be. There’s so many of those, but I think that’s truly the case, is really learning from what you do. And sometimes you’re learning from a big flop, sometimes you’re learning from something you could have improved upon and iterating it, but within those lines, it’s also baking in some tactics that you just know work. You don’t have to always go out completely on a full ledge and throw everything off a cliff and just hope it lands. You can always sort of some of those safety nets or at least ways to see how it’s going as you’re continuing along the campaign. So if you see one area is maybe not going as well as you thought it was, great, have a backup, move something else in there, swap it out, have something else for those folks. Move into if something’s not sticking, there’s always other options to get people interested.
Casey Munck:
Really smart. Yeah, you’ve got to inspect what you’re expecting, right? And being able to be agile and not like this was the plan. Being able to make it work and swap things out I think is really important for marketers to learn how to be more agile.
Galen Ettlin:
So Cody, I’m curious, what rebel in our culture do you think needs to be celebrated and why?
Cody Putman:
It’s funny, we were talking about ice cream earlier because a lot of what I do is based off of a lot of the work from Christina Tosi who’s over at Milk Bar.
I have always grown up baking, creating treats. I learned a lot from my mom, from my grandma, and a lot of what we did were always a lot more of those traditional type of treats, which is fantastic. But I had seen the documentary that Christina Tosi was in and I was just in awe of her ability to take so much of the flavors, the styles of treats that we know, desserts, cakes, what have you, and put an entirely different spin on it.
So anywhere from having ice cream that’s made out of cereal, milk to pie that has corn meal in it to I think recently there’s an apple cider donut cake. It’s amazing to sort of see that creative flexibility that they have to make something new out of something really traditional. And I feel like as marketers, we have the same opportunity to take some of those traditional tactics and really start to transform them by putting a different spin on it, trying something a little bit different. And so I don’t know, she’s always not only just a great inspiration for me in terms of the baking world, I love working out of her cookbook all about cake, whether it’s following a recipe exactly or trying something different, but it’s feeling that empowerment to take convention and not necessarily throw it out the window, but put a fresh spin on it.
Galen Ettlin:
Basically a Chopped champion it sounds like.
Cody Putman:
Exactly.
Casey Munck:
Yeah. I love what she does with nostalgia in new ways. So many things that are like, give us those memories when we were kid or what our grandma made, but she turned it on its head in a way. It’s still so comforting and familiar.
Cody Putman:
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, sign me up. I wish there was one in Oregon. So if she hears this, Christina, please, we need a milk bar in Oregon.
Casey Munck:
Come our way please. We’ll help find this operation.
Okay, Cody. So now it’s time for our ‘honey, I don’t think so’ segment. You’re going to have 60 seconds to state your case for what needs to stop now in marketing or in MarTech. And Galen is going to be holding you very firm to the time and we’ll be counting you down. So Cody, are you ready for your ‘honey, I don’t think so.’
Cody Putman:
I’m ready. Let’s do this.
Casey Munck:
Cody, go ahead. Give us your ‘honey, I don’t think so.’
Cody Putman:
Alright, so what I think we need to stop doing is having useless swag. Swag is one of those things that we see at all trade shows, events, and I think it can be really helpful, but I get really, really, really tired of seeing swag that ends up sitting on tables. People pick it up, they put it in their bags and then they throw it away on their way out. It makes me so sad because I think there’s such great opportunity to build out really creative swag programs and in things that people actually want to use and leverage. Seeing it in the garbage is always a bummer because not only is it just kind of a waste of money, but it wastes the resources and the environmental impact is never great from that as well. So I think if we could all start to think through ways that we can take that swag and turn it into something that’s a bit more useful. Some of the things that I love seeing are grow kits, growing your own plants, having reusable cups or mugs, even books or donations to charities. I think there’s great ways that you can engage your audience and have them walk away with something positive from your booth without making it wasteful.
Casey Munck:
We did it, y’all. Cody, I’m with you. Congratulations.
Cody Putman:
Listen, thank you.
Casey Munck:
It is so great talking to you. I think you’ve gave and marketers so much good advice and we’ll be watching out for what you’re up to next.
Cody Putman:
It was great catching up and thank you for having me.
Galen Ettlin:
Thanks everyone for listening to the Rebel Instinct Podcast. Be sure to follow Act-On Software for updates in upcoming episodes and remember to always act on your rebel instinct. Until next time.
Check out the next episode of the Rebel Instinct Podcast with Sara Gelenberg-Field, former VP and head of marketing for Nestle for US Coffee, a former marketing director for Starbucks and current chief marketing officer of Mommy’s Bliss.