Ben Ard (00:27)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Christine. Christine, welcome to the show.
Christine Jennings (00:32)
Great to be here.
Ben Ard (00:33)
Christine, I'm excited. This is going to be fun. And it was funny. We were talking before we went and recorded. We have actually been trying to record this episode for months. It's been four or five months and there has been something that has come up in both of our lives. Every single time we reschedule, the latest one was an AWS outage and the system wouldn't work. And, but I'm excited. This has been a long time coming. I'm so excited to have this conversation.
But before we dive into that conversation, Christine, tell the audience a little bit about yourself, work history and background.
Christine Jennings (01:08)
Sure, happy to. And Ben, it's been a long time coming. I agree, but we're here and looking forward to a really lively discussion. At the end of the day, I'm a product marketer at heart, and I've been doing that for quite some time. I enjoy three things and have in my career been lucky enough to be doing storytelling in the age of technology that's not only happening now with the AI trajectory, but also in my past lives got to see the takeoff of SaaS.
and cloud computing and mobile apps and how that's really changed our lives, definitely on the enterprise side, but also I think personally, the way we live our lives digitally, love being part of that most days. And the outtakes of influencers and content these days and so much to consume, I do think we like a curated experience and my experience at large brands and startups alike.
⁓ It's still human to human conversations that make impact. And most recently, I thought for a long time after being in product marketing, wanted to be a CMO. That was my next trajectory in my career path. And what I've learned is you can be in a lot of different roles in marketing and not have to be a CMO these days with all the pressure.
So I've taken a step back from that. I'm working with a really great ⁓ company that's been around a long time, almost 30 or 40 years, but they are...
a SaaS business, is my go-to and what I get passionate about, company called DTN. And we feed, fuel, and protect the world. That's our new tagline. So that's where I've landed. I'm leading a team, growing a team, and really determining right now how can product marketing play a role with AI and keep humans in the loop, let it be a partner in our content planning and execution, quite frankly.
Ben Ard (02:50)
I love that.
That's so cool. And like the mission of the company right there already is intriguing. That's so cool when you can work on something you're passionate about. I also really do resonate with the idea of like, you know what, sometimes it's not bad to have that little buffer of a boss CMO above you and let them take the heat on everything. And you can have fun doing marketing and actually get to do marketing. There's some fun with that. And I've been in that role and been very grateful to not have the. ⁓
the pressure sometimes that would come with it. But, uh, Christine, I'm excited. You talked about AI and the experience in product marketing. So what we're going to focus on today is storytelling and product marketing in the age of AI. So in your experience with product marketing and storytelling, what has changed since AI has been introduced to the scene in your opinion?
Christine Jennings (03:41)
I see two key things that are changing. One is you can't be a novice with AI anymore. You just need to dive in as a marketer or even a product marketer. It doesn't matter who you are on the team. Dive in, experiment, and engage with it. You can't be doing any of it in a wrong way. The technology is moving so quickly. There's so many learning tools out there, influencers and experts who want all of us to be successful. We're on this road together.
and so that's the first point. The second point is how to utilize it for yourself and your team in a, in a standardized way. That's going to make sense for workflows to tell authentic storytelling in the business that I'm in. ⁓ at DTN, we work with meteorologists and farmers and large energy producers where these are bedrock businesses that at the end of the day,
Stories can be told from a farmer's point of view. Stories can be told from a sports events manager or a concert manager who needs to track weather for an outdoor event. There's deep seated great stories to be told there. So how do you balance that with letting technology be a partner in that and experimenting with, there are so many tools out there, but my go-tos to this date are still chat GPT, perplexity,
I could get the list out, but it's become super short and I keep my team really invigorated around experiment, but let's, let's still.
create this creative thinking and critical thinking that I think can be a partner with any AI technology that we as marketers want to use. We've all been on LinkedIn seeing a lot of the same sound, look, and feel of the way people are posting content. Even their articles and their blogs now sound very similar because you can tell, did they put critical thought into that or did they take the starter version and just use it as the real thing?
Ben Ard (05:33)
Yeah. And I have seen and felt that over and over and over again, but there is this efficiency with AI. Like I see the enticement. I see the idea of, okay, well I could write one sentence in a prompt and get all sorts of words and publish that where I think it's still a novelty to a lot of people who are used to writing long form stories, contents, articles. So when it comes to that balance.
Christine Jennings (05:40)
Yes.
Ben Ard (05:57)
How do you know when like storytelling should be authentic and original and when you should focus on maybe the slower form of writing and content versus really cashing in on some of the benefits of artificial intelligence and the speed that it produces.
Christine Jennings (06:12)
Yeah, I'll look at that in two ways. One, how is the technology and the AI serving you? You we've got Gong recordings and sales calls that we hear conversations going on, real-time conversations, whether we're there in person or we listen back on, you know, a sales conversation. Is our message resonating?
human to human, where do they find out that information? Like really leaning in to how are we talking in market and then how are human to humans talking? And we've been researching a lot of that. Like if we're gonna talk to a target persona, how do we step back from that? If we've used some prompting and some messaging development, where can we come in and actually validate that?
with real time sales calls, real time marketing metrics, like what might be working on a website or a webinar or real in-person event. We're also leaning more into, believe it or not, in-person events and in real life to complement.
the storytelling that we're pulling together with AI plus the human side of storytelling. So there's that. And then I think we're still navigating the comfort that our team members have for what's real and what isn't. When we're enabling the team, we've got a lot of new innovations and technologies coming out. So we're partnering with our sales organization to make sure they understand what the new offerings are. We're still doing
Engagement as well as enablement, but then where does the technology come in and actually serve us while on the other side to reinforce how to talk to a customer in the market about our ⁓ offerings? Because we've got...
Innovations and technology that continue to come out. Why should they care? So really determining that sweet spot of why they should care and curate the right type of content. We're leaning way into video and visual storytelling right now because as we all know, you and I have talked about this, is we've got content coming at us at all times. We love bite-sized video.
snippets and snackables. That's worked really well for me in the past with a couple of startups and larger companies. So taking that playbook and reworking how it can really emphasize and tell a great story here for DTN.
Ben Ard (08:14)
I love that. So with the theme of the podcast of product marketing and storytelling in the age of AI, I want to double click on the video creation because I do think it's still an area a lot of companies are hesitant to invest into. Are you finding it a little bit easier or better in the age of AI to actually produce content in the story of video or the medium of video? Are you using any cool tools or is it still?
pretty un-AI-ish in what you're doing there.
Christine Jennings (08:45)
Great question. We're early on at DTN. We have video content that's been out there. We're looking at how to refresh it in a more, take it down from like a two to three minute video. And how do we tell?
a story that's bite-sizable that is going to gain interest to do the next best thing. To answer your question, we don't have a Silver Bullet AI tool that we're using right now. We're leveraging our in-house creative team and a trusted vendor.
for the pure fact that that has worked in the past and we're relying on that relationship and the fact that they know our brand and our brand voice and how we want to take that to market. So coming soon, we're experimenting with a few form factors in the next 60, 90 days. So you'll probably see more coming from us. We're not going straight to TikTok. We're not doing anything like that. We're leveraging the handful of platforms that serve our customers and where they are and meet them where they are. You know, believe it or not.
DTN owns a, know, it's a print publication that's turning digital. How do we actually talk to farmers in a digital ways when they're, you know, wanting, you know, two different form factors to reach information about the business that they're in? You know, the digital transformation has happened. I don't really like that term, but.
It's happened in a lot of industries, but not as quickly as we all think. so really ⁓ meeting our customers where they are and how they want to consume the story that we're going to tell video is definitely to me still an experimentation because I do think, unfortunately, and fortunately with AI, there's a lot of great content out there that's video and juicy and driven. And you want, you want to lean in and hear more. then there's.
as others that are embarrassingly awful.
Ben Ard (10:28)
That is true. That is very true. One, it's cool because I like that you're highlighting this point. No, and I think there's a universal truth here where storytelling is not going away. And even if you have AI tools, you're using a Sora to do some AI generated video of yourself. If the video is not compelling, educational, entertaining,
Christine Jennings (10:31)
In my humble opinion.
Ben Ard (10:53)
backed off of something that connects and resonates with humans. It doesn't matter what technology you have. It's not going to change people's opinions, you know, just because it looks cool or it's novel. If it's not a good story, people don't care and won't engage. And I think it's so cool, like working with the tried and true storytellers and that agency, your in-house creatives.
think that's a big message for a lot of people that you don't need to abandon what is working just
something else may say, Hey, we have AI and all of the sudden we can speed it up and do all this stuff. If you have a way of telling the right story, I think you stick with it and see how AI and other technologies can augment. I think that's, that's such a cool message there. Christine, we're almost out of time. So I got one final question. I want you to look into your crystal ball.
And I want you to look forward into the future, six to 12 months. Where do you think content marketing, product marketing are going to go in the next six to 12 months? I mean, it's so hard to kind of guess that we've gotten here so quickly where we're at, but any predictions or things that you feel like marketers should prepare for as they're looking forward to the next six to 12 months.
Christine Jennings (12:06)
Yes, I think, you know, if I were to look into the future and I think the future is already here, I got to be a moderator of a panel of CMOs of a handful of startups and public companies last week and, you know, content, product marketing, and the stories we need to tell. We need to pick the top three ways we're going to do that and lean way into those.
I don't know if you know, ⁓ Hika Young, had the benefit of, working with her. She's an amazing content marketer. ⁓ she was on her own and then was at Salesforce for a while. I say follow her on LinkedIn. She does fantastic short form video, short form blogging, short form stories about how we show up as marketers. And I think we need to study the top three things you want to lean into and go out and try those and.
If you go from three to two and the two are working really well, stick with those two and also have your mind on what's coming next. Because the biggest thing I did here last week at the CMO conference was a lot of people that are leaning into like gaming, playing on your phone, utilizing short form video and short form content, but studying what that authenticity is from a personal brand, from the brands that are doing it well. And there's nothing wrong with mirroring that.
because there's also some lag time on the B2B side where we tend to still want to talk in this very linguistic B2B speak that no one understands. Let's talk to human to human in the most effective way possible and you will dare I say blow through the clutter.
Ben Ard (13:40)
which is an ever present problem, right? I mean, with AI more than ever, sticking out is going to be important. I love that. I love that message right there. That's so cool. Chris, yeah, I want to hear it. Let's hear it.
Christine Jennings (13:41)
and the chaos.
I also have one more prediction. do think there's a lot of in
real life. I do think there's this propensity for in real life interactions that happen on the fly that could also be documented. I was part of a very small, like I said, conference last week here in San Francisco, and we didn't have name tags. We didn't have social pre-event. We didn't have video at our event. had 75 or 80, you know,
folks in a room and we were trying some unconventional things and other than your phone and interpersonal conversations and four panels, the content was still juicy enough and content and storytelling still rang true in an in-person environment.
Ben Ard (14:33)
Hmm. Do you feel like in-person events are going to pick up more and more as time goes on?
Christine Jennings (14:37)
I do.
Yeah. I, I like the smaller niche ones more than like the large, San Francisco tends to be that kind of town where it's like, okay, HubSpots for this week, Salesforce is the following week, you know, Google's the following week. So I'm a little biased, but I do think in-person events and community driven events. That's the other part. I just want to make sure I emphasize is community, can play communities and partners can play a strong role in extending your storytelling as well.
Ben Ard (15:04)
I love it. Very cool. Well, Christine, we have run out of time. Thank you so much for your insights today. This has been amazing. For anyone listening who wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Christine Jennings (15:16)
sure they can find me at west of marketing.com or find me on LinkedIn.
Ben Ard (15:21)
and we will link to both of those in the show notes for anyone looking. Christine, thank you so much for the insights. This is amazing. I really do appreciate your time today.
Christine Jennings (15:29)
Thank you.
Ben Ard (15:32)
Yeah.
