Episode 206 / John Solomon / Therabody / Chief Marketing Officer
How to Be a Great Marketer in Great Chaos
According to Therabody’s Chief Marketing Officer, John Solomon, it’s easy to be good in marketing when things go well. But, it’s when you operate in a challenging environment that you get the chance to become a great marketer. This is why his Shiny New Object is getting to great work in amongst global chaos.
Never before have we experienced so much change at such a fast pace, in advertising and marketing and in technology as well. We all jump from one new trend to the next, while many competing forces shape the commercial landscape where brands are competing for consumers’ attention. This is what John perceives as “great global chaos” - but also, an opportunity to turn challenges into sources for growth and development.
So, what constitutes the great chaos of modern marketing? For John, there are three competing forces that demonstrate how much has changed and is still changing in our world today. Firstly, there are “mega consumer trends” linked to our lifestyle changes overall - from the fact that a larger number of people are working as a distributed workforce, to changes in our places of interaction socially and professionally. Added to this we have some other interesting trends that impact the likes of Therabody - for example, behaviours around personal health are evolving and people are increasingly taking control of their own health (with a particular growth in the consumer category of 65+ year-olds).
Secondly, John feels that the industry is exposed to business headwinds: the threats of recession, the way marketing is being increasingly scrutinised in budget discussions, mass layoffs, and a continued pressure to show profitability of any initiative. And, thirdly, there is the continuous change from constantly evolving technology trends - shiny new objects that can distract marketers and strategy leaders, and add to the complexity of our industry.
Overall, how can marketers then create “great work in the face of global chaos”? According to John, each of the three pressures above has its own opportunity:
A more distributed workforce becomes an opportunity for better consumer insights and more varied inputs - brands need to leverage the fact that their people are spread around the world, learn from the different markets, and come back together and create better outputs;
In the face of competing business headwinds, marketers need to focus on strengthening cross-functional relationships within their company, from the CEO or CFO to sales teams - the key being that everyone should be aligned with what the company as a whole is trying to accomplish, despite the call of new and exciting distractions;
Finally, teams are generally trying to achieve too much and are too distracted with new trends; instead of doing this, John’s advice is to stay focused, without overestimating what you can achieve.
“Focus on a few key things, maybe take a few bets, maybe do a few experiments. Read the environment right now,” is John’s final advice in amongst great chaos.
Listen to John’s top marketing tip, find out what his best purchase was for work, and hear more about how to keep a steady focus in your marketing strategy, on the latest episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
John Solomon 0:00
Repetition is reputation: it is so easy to want to go on to the next message, the next campaign, the next thing, but I think that brands and especially I think right now, in an increasingly fragmented space and so many messages going to consumer, that repetition of your brand, your branding, your brand elements, your key message is really, really important.
Tom Ollerton 0:27
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative and this is a weekly podcast about the future of the marketing and advertising industries. And every week, I'm joined by one of its leaders to help us dig deeper into the future that they think is almost certainly going to happen. So this week is no different. I'm on a call with John Solomon, who is the CMO of Therabody, John, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do. Could you give us a bit of background?
John Solomon 1:55
Sure. Thanks, Tom. I really appreciate you having me on the podcast. Big fan, big fan of the podcast. Yeah, and, you know, my my background, born and raised in California. But in kind of amongst the Silicon Valley booms and busts, really love technology. But ultimately found my way kind of fast forward, but found my way ultimately into marketing, after college, and I started agency side, worked at AKQA and then eventually went on to always wanted to go on the brand side, I had an awesome clients of Anheuser Busch at the time, and I said, I kind of want to be like them, I want to be on this side and making some of these decisions, making some of these calls. So that took me to ultimately to Beats by Dre. And then two weeks after starting Apple acquired Beats by Dre, I stayed on beats for about four and a half years, they kind of left us alone, especially on the marketing side. And then ultimately Apple, the Apple side of things came calling and I had an opportunity to go on the Apple side, and work within Marcomm there and did that for a number of years. And then kind of Therabody reached out, I was super passionate about the product they created, I'm a huge cyclist. And you know, got to talk to them. And I really loved the time I had a Beats I love that size of company where it's a bit chaotic. And they're trying to figure out how to scale and go international. And so I really wanted to get back into a company kind of that size and in a similar state. So I decided to leave Apple after almost eight years and jump back into a little bit more of the entrepreneurial startup space. And I've been cmo and leading a marketing organization for just over a year and a half.
Tom Ollerton 3:47
Well, John, that's quite the CV. I'm very envious. I'm sure many people will be. But I'm curious to know that kind of throughout that career, particularly with some very, very big names, if not the biggest, what is the most useful thing that you've bought for work with your own money?
John Solomon 4:06
Most useful thing... So this is going to, I'll caveat this, this is going to sound a little bit corny and a little bit self serving. But before I started at Therabody, I actually during the pandemic bought a Theragun. And it was, you know, having a lot of sitting at the computer, having a lot of stress, having a lot of knots while I'm working. Being a new father having to pick up a baby. Getting a bit older now, just dealing with aches and pains. And I say that because yes, it is a bit self serving, because that is the product that I sell amongst other products. But ultimately, I really believe that you have to be... you have to market what you're passionate about and you have to market products that you love. So ultimately that was a product that I had bought and it really had an impact on my life. I've really changed how I've moved. And when that company came calling, I was really, really drawn to it. And I think that that's really, really important in today's marketing. So I want to make the turn to make it a little bit, you know, not just purely self serving, but also to... as a tip out there, because, you know, I was also a massive Apple fanboy back in the day, as I said, growing up in the bay area. So I really think that being super passionate about your products, and loving them, and knowing everything about them is absolutely key to a marketer. So that has helped me both in my personal life. And I believe it's also helped me to find the role I'm at right now.
Tom Ollerton 5:47
Wow, that was the thing that really stood out to me, that was the being a young father thing. I am a young father, I should say, I'm not too young, but my, my daughter's very young. And the thought of having a Theragun to help through some of those more painful carrying moments, retrospectivly, seems like a very good idea. So thanks for sharing that story. So you've given a great plug to the company, but a great personal recommendation. So congrats on that. So now, what we're gonna do now is move over to specifically to marketing advice. So what is that marketing tip that you give your team or your friends or your followers most often that stood you in good stead?
John Solomon 6:26
Yeah. So my tip is from a great friend and former colleague of mine by the name of Cheryl Caligari, who ran Beats Europe when we were working together. And I'll always remember, she would say, repetition is reputation. And if there's one thing in marketing that I always go back and tell people is repetition is reputation. It is so easy to want to want to go on to the next message. The next campaign. The next thing as a marketer, we always want to create new things. It's a very creative function. But I think that brands and especially I think right now, increasingly fragmented space and so many messages going to consumer, that repetition of your brand or branding, their brand elements, your key message is really really important. This came up specifically when we were developing the campaign, some people may remember called Straight Outta and it was to support Dr Dre's obviously, momentous historical biopic, Straight outta Compton. And we were developing a campaign in support of that, given he was a founder of Beats and Beats had a big role. And so with that we created basically "straight out of blank." And it was all about where you're... repping where you're from. And people took that and did all sorts of fun things with it, because we created a meme generator and everything. But the key thing we did it was we had that iconic lockup, it was the same thing. No matter if you saw Serena Williams post it, LeBron James, or if you saw a consumer doing it through our own generator, it was a thing that everyone saw around the world, I still walk down the street, and I still see straight out of memes, sweatshirts. And it's the exact same iconic look and feel that was created, you know, eight, nine years ago. And I just think that that really, really taught me and then obviously going to Apple where everything is about repeating and consistency over and over over again, from the YouTube thumbnail all the way to the packaging to the ad and every touch point that we can we sweat. And I think that's something I always go back to over and over and over again. And it's funny, I actually, my wife, who's in marketing, works at SoundCloud. She was asking what you're going to say, and I had said it to her and she's like, Wow, I've never actually heard you say that, that I'm going to start using that. So I think it's a great thing. I think we forget it a lot. But that's something I just I just go back to over and over again.
Tom Ollerton 9:17
It's so nice and short, isn't it? Repetition is reputation. But the thing I've sketched down here, the push back on you slightly, wouldn't you say repetition is recognition, because reputation is what other people say about you.
John Solomon 9:28
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 9:29
Whereas you know, you go oh, you know, this iPhones great. It's so cool. Whereas, whereas if you just have the same iPhone picture poster in the same place in Old Street, year after year after year, which seems to be their strategy for outdoor, that's recognition, right? Yeah. Or have I missed the point?
John Solomon 9:47
Yeah, I think I think you're... look, 100% I think it's kind of bad but it's also going back to what are the values to you behind that bigger standing for right, and I think that, while it might, for example, "Shot on iPhone" was is a campaign that's run for many many years, right. And the core essence of it is the fact that it's the ultimate platform to celebrate what people have done, taken with their, with their iPhones, right, that is the overall arching idea that never wavers from that. But it can be people that are shooting animals, it could be people that are shooting musicians on tour, it could be people, you know, you were able to take that and go in so many different directions with it. But at the at the, at the same time. It that's what it was known for. And I think that and ultimately over time it was known for, hey, you know, you know, speeds and feeds aside, this is known as a product that can take amazing pictures for anybody. And I think that's where it did not waver from it. So yes, not the same thing, not exactly the same thing over time. But I do think that's how you build up an important reputation as a brand. Is, is that repetition. And this, the bigger point is, is sticking with things and sticking with things and you can especially when you have a strong platform for your brand, there's all sorts of ways different ways you can go on to dimensionalize it for years and years and years to come.
Tom Ollerton 11:39
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Tom Ollerton 12:16
So we're at the point we're going to talk about your shiny new object. And when you told me this, I thought, Yes, I really want to know the answer to this, your shiny new object is getting to great work in amongst global chaos, which is, in my estimation, that is probably the same problem for every CMO has got. But I'm curious to know why you've chosen that as your shiny new object. And what is it specifically to you?
John Solomon 12:42
Sure, I, you know, as we started to think about this, and I was listening to some of your recent podcasts, I said, Man, you know, and I think I said this to you earlier, I you know, coming later in the series, right, like people have given away a lot of the, a lot of the modern I think tricks and books and theory, right. I mean, I, how many people have talked about, you know, Byron Sharp and how brands grow? How many people talk about Benet and Field, and I think that the hardest part right now for a marketer is? How would you take this, I think, amazing theory, evidence backed marketing that we all are, I think are starting to gravitate towards? And how do you actually execute on it, amongst some massive, massive changes going on in the world? And I think as all of us marketers and consumers, I don't think we've realized how much things have changed. But I think it you know, kind of break this into kind of three, three key areas. One is just mega consumer trends, right? If we look at the fact that people are remote work, and and where people are starting their places of work and their interaction, we look at the challenge around inflation. We look even at people and especially in my category, changing behaviors around personal health, people are starting to take control of their own health. I was just looking at a study that physical activity is growing most amongst 65 plus year olds. Right. So we're talking about big, big changes with our, with our consumers. Right.
John Solomon 14:15
Then we talk about business headwinds, right. And we all know we all look at the headlines. We all know that there's, you know, threats of recession. We know there's massive layoffs that we're all reading about. And more importantly than ever, I think marketing budgets are getting scrutinized, and people are saying people are having to answer for things that they probably potentially haven't had to answer for before. So I think there's massive headwinds from a business and you need to show profitability, you need to talk more about margins need to talk about really, really is being scrutinized. And I think on top of it, and I didn't want to be the person that comes in and says my shiny new object is AI because I think that's probably what a lot of people would say right now, but the reality is we have a lot of quickly changing Tech Trends. AI is definitely something you know that is going to have massive impacts for us down the road. We had last year was blockchain and web three, we've had rise of things like, you know, TikTok, platform changes. So I just look at this. And I say, this is a lot of change very quickly. And I don't believe in my career I've seen really, things change this quickly. On the flip side of that, I think it's what I tell my team is, it's a massive opportunity. Because when things are going well, it's easy to be a marketer when things are going up to the right. Money is flowing freely, consumers are just buying, sitting at home during COVID. But now things, this is really where I think people are going to learn a lot and become great marketers, because of it, and how I think about how I've thought about approaching it, and I don't quite have the answer. Because I think it's a massive topic. But there are kind of three ways I am thinking about dealing with each of those items. One is, I think that the fact that we have at least for me, a more distributed workforce is a huge opportunity for us to get a more diverse set of consumer insights, I now have a team that is not just sitting in LA, where our headquarters are and potentially being in a bit of a bubble. I have people in Sacramento and Portland, New York, Boston, Spain, Italy, China, we have the ability, I think, to get a lot of great insights that are sometimes out of our, our own filter bubble. I personally spend a lot of time now up in Montana, my wife, and I love it up there. And when I go into WalMart, when I go into Costco and I go to Best Buy, it's a very, very different world than if you were to do that in LA. So I think we have a huge ability to get the leverage the fact that people are more remote and around the world or potentially around the country to get better insights, and then come back together and learn from that. So that's one way I'm kind of thinking about it more, how you start thinking about these day, these macro trends and staying on top of it. I think for the second thing is we're talking about the business headwinds. I think it's one big key thing, and I think people talk about this before is building relationships with your sales team, CFO, CEO, to ensure alignment on strategy and in measurement. I think that's something that you have to work hand in hand have to work closely together on that, to really understand what are we trying to accomplish? Because as the third point as there's so many new shiny objects, and as I always say too, there are no small projects. So I think it's always a willingness to want to try and go after and do all these things, especially for our business, our sellers, it is very, very challenging to lose focus. I think as we're looking at, you know, having to justify more, potentially having to do more with less. I think usually teams are trying to do too much. And they overestimate what a team can accomplish in a year. So I think that we need to be careful about all the shiny objects, be careful about chasing those, a lot of these things, focus on a few key things, maybe take a few bets, maybe do a few experiments. But I think focus is really, really important. And that's one thing I've been really talking about with the team, because when we look at our year long calendar, I think everyone's like, Yeah, I think we can do this. And now we're already into March. And we're like, okay, like, if things maybe take a little bit longer, things are a little bit harder, we have to get more, wait to get some more insights. We hire a distributed team, again, some of the things are challenges we need to use as opportunities. But I really think that that this third thing is bogus, and what can we actually accomplish in a given year? And so I'm really focused on scaling back. So that was a lot. I'm sure you have some kind of questions, but I do think it is a just read the environment right now. And I think sometimes we don't even stop to assess it and what the impacts are to both teams and how we should be marketing.
Tom Ollerton 19:08
I'm curious to know a little bit more about your... think it was your third point, you didn't label them specifically. So I might be getting this wrong. You talked about AI and the quickly changing tech trends and last year was blockchain and web three, and Tik Tok. And now everyone's got bored of that, and everyone's talking about ChatGPT. So I'm curious to know what do you think the opportunity is with AI? And how are you going to approach it?
John Solomon 19:38
It's a great question. I don't know if... there's some fascinating reading that Ben Thompson's done, I was listening to last night about his interactions with Siri and Bing and I would encourage everyone to go back and look at that. He had a two hour conversation with the with the AI And just I mean, it's like we're living in the movie Her, which I would also encourage people to go back and rewatch, I think it's I think even more than blockchain and web three it's going to be, is there going to be bigger, bigger implications, I think it's going to have huge implications to marketing. You're even seeing, you know, some of the things Facebook's trying to do to get around their challenges they have with tracking, and they're starting to have it a lot more AI based, and you have to turn over your creatives. So it can actually, you know, edit on your behalf to optimize, I think it's going to, I think it's going to be a great tool for us to automate certain things. And I think there's certain tasks that we will not have to do, and I think it'll become more of an assistant. And it will really help us in a lot of ways. But I, so I'm excited about that. I think, but I think that it's not necessarily going to take the place of marketing. I mean, I think that, or at least I guess, I hope not for all of us. But I think it's, I think it'll be a great companion tool, I think it'll be there's stuff that we can do. There's stuff that it's going to help us do with its computing power on certain tasks. And I think there's things that will just change the nature of work. But it's really, really early, it's very early days, if you start to see how people have been able to poke at it, people have been able to, you know, even now Microsoft has gone and clamped down on what the AI will do. You're seeing or you're gonna see all sorts of copycats, I, I would go to say, I'll tell my team, you know, this is going to, I think it's going to be some fundamental change but let's not get too distracted with it right away. Like, let's wait and see how this is going to play out. Because I think this is something that's going to take a while for us to figure out. I think we should all be aware, I think we should all educate ourselves. But it's very, very early days. And I think as we saw what the excitement around web three and NFTs and everyone raced into that. You know, and I think that again, these are, it's easy to get distracted, especially when we need to really focus. So I'm watching it, I'm learning it, I love it intellectually to understand it. But I don't think us as a team are going to go out and start dramatically chasing after it this year, I think it'll be a bit of a wait and see.
Tom Ollerton 22:34
My view is that, it comes back to Cheryl's quote from before, repetition is reputation or recognition. Does this new technology allow that to happen better, faster, quicker or cheaper?
John Solomon 22:49
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 22:50
And across all of your trends, you know, whether it's the kind of mega consumer trends, is it remote work? Okay, well, how does that improve? Repetition is reputation. And I think everything you've said, you've kind of given us the kind of list of worries of a CMO. And it's been fascinating to hear all of those things sort of laid out in such detail. And I really appreciate you sharing your view of the world as you see it, and how we can all try to do great work in what you've rightly pointed out is great chaos. So, John, if someone wanted to get in touch with you to discuss any of this stuff. I know your LinkedIn box is very full, as you discussed before the show, but where is the right place to reach out to you? And what makes the perfect outreach message to John?
John Solomon 23:39
Yeah, I think, great, great question. Again, I enjoy the conversation. I'm always happy, I'd love to try and make time for people to chat more about any of these topics. I say LinkedIn is probably the best thing right now. I do feel like there's so many different platforms and from work being, you know, Slack to email to social networks, and everything is so I would say, LinkedIn, I look at I think, I think be very tangible with your request, I get a lot of, hey, I'd love to, I'd love to chat or Hey, I'd love to just, you know, pick your brain. You know, the time is a precious commodity for all of us. So I think if it's, Hey, you know, I would love 15 minutes, I'd love to discuss this topic, here are four or five times that I'm available. Whatever you can do to get someone to respond quick to say yes, this works, make it easy. Because there's always a lot going on. And as I talked about, you know, there's so many different distractions these days, and so many different communication channels. So and then the other thing I would say is, I will go back to is the you know, squeaky wheel right? Don't Don't be if at some point you got to if they're not getting a response, but a lot of times you know people are well intentioned, they'd love to respond. So maybe you know, a few follow ups, a few nudges, don't take it personally, if you don't hear back right away, or if they follow up and then disappear. But at some point, you know, it might not work out and for them at that moment, so I would, I would kind of stay at it, as well.
Tom Ollerton 25:16
John, thank you so much for your time.
John Solomon 25:18
I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much as well.
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