All Together Now: Brand and Demand Generation

Modern Marketing Engine podcast hosted by Bernie Borges

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In a global marketing campaign, is it possible to focus on Brand Messaging and Demand Generation at the same time? The team at Nutanix has pulled it off incredibly well in their 2018 “Freedom” campaign and now in their new 2019/2020 “All Together Now” campaign, which launche in October 2019. The Nutanix brand focuses on bringing siloed technologies such as computing, storage, virtualization, and networking into an integrated single software stack that can operate on just about any hardware. Their goal is to bring siloed technologies and siloed teams together.

This episode features Julie O’Brien, Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing for Nutanix. Bernie and Julie discuss the road from the Freedom Campaign into the All Together Now Campaign with an eye toward unpacking how the demand generation side of the equation is integrated into the campaign in a way that stays true to the brand’s promise in clear and concise ways. You’ll hear how the campaign was intentionally created to be outside the creative norm for their industry, about the marketing assets they are using to create the campaign's public messaging, and how they've trained their team around 3 specific sales plays which have set them up to reap the rewards of all their hard work. Listen now!

“All Together Now” Is Outside The Creative Norm In Its Marketing Approach

In conceiving the new campaign for 2019 and 2020 the Nutanix team desired to focus on the core of their brand promise - simplicity, choice, and delight - but to also tell the brand story in a differentiated and fun way that communicates their technology solutions. This meant they would focus their team on three key sales plays and roll them out to their sales organization in a way that stays consistent with their brand promise.

The, “All Together Now” campaign is aimed at communicating the desire to break down silos so that teams within companies can truly work together. The Nutanix creative team decided to communicate that message using people to personify the tech and apps in the cloud that are part of their solution. This makes their messaging fun, human, and relatable. They also used eye-popping colors which are very different from typical enterprise marketing and advertising campaigns. To wrap it all up nicely, they created an “anthem” for the campaign from the old song by The Turtles, “Happy Together.”

As you can tell, the All Together Now campaign was masterfully thought out and put into action methodically and carefully. Listen to hear more of the details from Julie and to consider how you can approach your next campaign with similar creativity.

A Global Campaign Comprised Of Many Facets to Generate Sales Pipeline

Julie explains how this campaign has hefty sales pipeline goals and how her team is attributing contribution to pipeline. The campaign tells the story of the three-stage journey the Nutanix team sees their customers going on in their journey with Nutanix. First, they build a private cloud as the core foundation. Second, they run their own apps on that foundation. Third, they build an environment where the best of the technology from their private cloud is merged with the public technology cloud where and if it makes sense. To communicate that journey in an effective marketing campaign, the team used many assets and resources.

• Digital paid media
• Retargeting
• Takeovers in key publications/sites where their customers go
• Surgical out of home placements
• Opportunities where buyers are, but the company is not (like trade shows - Julie calls these “guerilla marketing takeovers”)
• ABM micro-targeting where their top 50 customers are located
• And broad demand generation such as webinars, direct mailers, and other “meeting makers”

How To Be Brand-Centric And Demand Generation Centric At The Same Time

Julie says that the Nutanix global marketing organization has grown into the stage it is in now - able to execute a far-reaching global campaign that has measurable impact on sales pipeline. But it hasn’t always been integrated in a way where global demand generation activities were synchronized globally. The learning curve the team has been on has enabled them to learn what works and what doesn’t - and to modify their approach on the fly when necessary.

Three different sales plays were organized, resourced, and rolled out to both inside and outside sales teams long before the campaign launched. Everything from customer-facing presentations, call scripts, channel enablement, and the overall marketing blitz (direct mail, digital, webinar series) had to be aligned with both the brand’s identity and the demand generation needs of the organization.

What Kind Of Team Does It Take To Do Such An Effective Campaign?

The Nutanix global marketing team responsible for planning and executing this impressive campaign is in the range of 200 people, under Julie’s leadership. They are able to pull in sales, customer support, and marketing professionals from their entire global workforce to advise about various aspects of their customer’s needs. They also engaged agencies for help with many aspects of the campaign.

Are there ways you can take a similar approach with a smaller team and fewer assets? Absolutely. Julie says…

“The best ideas often come from inside the company… you probably have the creativity within your own walls now. Who are the people you can bring into a meeting room, close the door, and riff on a whiteboard what your demand generation goals are, what your brand value proposition is, and how you can bring that together and be smart about the resources you have. That might be bringing someone in from inside sales, bringing in someone from product marketing, and bringing in someone from your customer support team who is talking with customers every day.”

Julie's advice goes on to include budgetary constraints and more. Be sure you listen to this in-depth conversation to learn more about the Nutanix All Together Now global campaign!

Featured on This Episode

• Nutanix - where Julie serves as SVP of Corporate Marketing
• Julie on LinkedIn
• Julie on Twitter: @JulieAObrien
• The Nutanix All Together Now video: https://youtu.be/WUMmCb4dgn0
• Nutanix on LinkedIn

Outline of This Episode

• [1:06] Introduction to Julie O’Brien, SVP of Nutanix and her company’s vision
• [3:03] What is a hyper-converged infrastructure?
• [4:59] The current “All Together” campaign Nutanix is running: What is it about?
• [6:52] What goes into a Nutanix global campaign?
• [9:20] Blending branding and demand generation to great effect - how Nutanix does it
• [12:10] How the sales team was brought onboard for the campaign
• [18:02] The marketing team behind these great campaigns
• [20:00] Does the campaign change over time as it is running?
• [22:06] Advice for listeners with smaller marketing teams
• [28:35] Why it’s important to be as relatable as possible in spite of the technology

Resources & People Mentioned

• “Happy Together” by the Turtles
• The Register
• TechTarget
• TechCrunch
• Grizzly Creative Agency
• 2 Rivers Video and Audio Production
• Oracle Open World
• Microsoft SQL Server
• The State of Digital Selling 2019 Report
• The Selling With Social Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr

Connect With Bernie and Modern Marketing Engine

• https://www.Facebook.com/modernmarketingengine/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernieborges/
• https://twitter.com/bernieborges
• https://instagram.com/bernieborges
• https://Twitter.com/MMEnginePodcast

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