CMO Evolution: From Marketing Officer to Voice of the Market

INTRO:

You're listening to CX Confessions, brought to you by Khoros. In each episode, we’ll share the customer experience stories and insights you need — straight from the sharpest minds in CX — to better connect with your customers and create customers for life. Let's start the show.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Hello everybody! Welcome back to CX Confessions. We have another great episode for you today. I am Katherine Calvert, Chief Marketing Officer for Khoros, joined as always by my most amazing co-host, Mr. Spike Jones. How you doing, Spike?

SPIKE JONES:

I am doing fantastic for a Monday. I'm doing not bad, not bad! So happy to be here. Happy about this, very excited about this particular podcast as well this is going to be a great one.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

It's going to be a great one. Spike, as you know, is the GM of Khoros’s Strategic Services business. He's a person who knows what great marketing looks like, and so why is he so excited about our special show today? We have a super star. It is my privilege to welcome Acquia’s Chief Marketing Officer, and a dear friend, Lynne Capozzi. She’s not just a friend, we actually, she coined the term Vista Sisters. We are both owned by the same private Equity Company, Vista. Lynne oversees all of the global marketing functions for Acquia.

This is a huge company. You might know them as one of the post-cursors of Drupal. Her responsibilities include all of a full stack of marketing vertical strategy, annals relations, digital marketing, demand gen ops, regional field — the whole kit and kaboodle. She actually, Spike, was at Acquia as CMO, left around 2009, had other interesting experiences. Actually went into the nonprofit sector, came back to Acquia in 2016 to help them get to the next phase of growth.

She's been in tech for a long time. She was the CMO at Jack B, she was at Cistinet, Lotus Development, if you cast your mind back, acquired by IBM. Yeah. So she's also super involved in her community. She's on the board of directors of the Boston Children's Hospital Trust. She runs a nonprofit through the hospital. This lady does it all.

Welcome to the show, Lynne.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Thank you, Katherine, great to be here, and great to see you as always.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

It's so nice to see you. How is it — a quick thing about Acquia — tell me: how is it to come back in chapter two of Acquia? It’s been through, it's been through huge growth and transformation.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Yeah, it's quite awesome, actually. So it's nice to be in kind of the next phase of growth, which is great. And not often, you know, when you leave a role, do you get to come back again and do a do-over. So, it's great. Some days I feel like I never left, and other days it feels like a different company, so. But it's been, it's been really great, really great to just watch our growth and ride the wave, as they say.

SPIKE JONES:

Yeah leave and come back. Are you gonna do that again? Like it's like, okay, I got you to a good place. I'm out and I'll see you in a couple of years? Just kidding. Just kidding. But that's super cool.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

I could tell my people that all the time.

SPIKE JONES:

Just kidding. I mean, what a feather in your cap, though, for them to say, door’s open, and it truly, it truly was.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Yeah, and you know, it was a great experience.

SPIKE JONES:

Very cool. And y’all do a lot of amazing things and so with a lot of amazing customers as well. So I'm going to go ahead and jump right in. One of the questions I love to ask life-long marketers is: B2B, B2C, is there a difference? Do you market to people differently? So just right off the bat, jumping right in, and what do you think?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Yeah, so I'm a big believer in: there's not much difference, especially now. So you know our whole — everybody's full experience around having a great customer experience with a brand has been raised since the pandemic and we all want the Netflix experience. We all want the wonderful, great customer experience from brands that know us and love us and learn from us, and I don't think that's any different.

So I think you know the only difference is, I think, in B2B we're talking about, you know, a buying committee. So it's multiple people. Whereas with B2C you’re one-to-one, right. But in the B2B world it tends to be a group of people. But I don't think there's much difference anymore.

SPIKE JONES:

Yeah, I think you're right, and I was talking with someone the other day even about, I mean, we had a guest, a keynote, that spoke at Engage a couple weeks back — was it a couple weeks? It was like a month now — that was talking about different buyers and demographics. You know just the age groups too, and I personally believe that that's kind of melded closer together as well. Any thoughts around that, Lynne?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

I think, in terms of age group, well here is what we're saying: I think you know, obviously we're going to see more and more millennials, more and more Gen Zs and Xs in those buying committees and there's a couple — I do think there are a couple things that are different: those generations, just from the research that we have, shows us that they do a lot more peer researching. They do a lot more like, let me let me see what my peers think. Let me see what my friends are doing. Let me see, like, they do a lot more research or they do a lot more investigation than what we’d ever done in the past, I think. And so I think that's one of the big differences is that people research on their own a lot before they even come to a vendor to seek any information. And then they're doing it on their own. They don't want the call. Don't call me, right.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Hahaha. And now no one's at their desks anyway, and it is so annoying when they call me, when they get my cell phone, which apparently it's very easy to get these days. But I think that's a really interesting nuance. It's that we are we're still selling to people, but it's a group decision-making, especially when you're talking about the kind of enterprise sales that Acquia is doing.

One of the things I was excited to talk to you about is Acquia’s roots, and it's one of the leading digital experience platforms, right. But its roots were with Drupal and open source and that notion of community, which we talk a lot about on this show, is so ingrained in the identity of your solutions, in your customer base, in the history of the company. How does Acquia talk about community? Think about community and that legacy of open source and where you are today?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

So, you know, we are part of the Drupal community. So the founder of our company is also the founder of the Open Source Drupal project. So there's a lot of overlap there. But we are just members of the community. We tend to, I mean Acquia is the biggest co-contributor to the Drupal community. We contribute more code than any other corporation. We’re big supporters of the Drupal Association. This week a Drupal European conference is going on and we’re the largest supporter of that.

So you know it's nice, because the community is about 1.4 million people globally. It’s huge. And so it's just great to be part of a thriving — I think it is the largest open source community in the world — and so it's just wonderful to be a part of that community and for me, what I always say is that the community to me means better innovation, because there's so many more people that are working on the product you’re just going to get the best in innovation and the best in communication. And we're each, we're all learning from each other. So we're a part of that Drupal community. You know we provide products that work on top of Drupal, make Drupal easier and more seamless and puts the hands of the power of Drupal into the hands of marketers.

But it's just wonderful to be, as I said, to be part of that, you know, great, thriving community.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Do they ever, does that ever inform any of your marketing strategies? Like how do you think about connecting with those users? Are they part of your target audience, or is that really a different piece of your world?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

No, they're definitely a part of our target audience. So a lot of them tend to be, you know, developers. Some of them tend to be marketers as well, or management, but a lot of them tend to be developers. So we’ll go out and we'll seek input all the time and we'll do that, you know, quite a bit on everything from kind of features and functions to what should we call this? What should we do about this? Actually I just before we got on, literally, I just sent a tweet out, and LinkedIn, so hopefully it got out, asking the Drupal community to help us with renaming a certification program that we have for Drupal.

So we have an Acquia-Drupal certification program that people can get. It's the highest level of, you know, completion in terms of certification around Drupal, and we needed to rename it, and so I sent a note out to the community and said help us rename. What do you got? You probably have some great ideas. Better than what we probably can come up with within our walls.

So just put that out as an example. So little things like that around naming feature sets. You know other, I think, examples all the time.

SPIKE JONES:

It's a remarkable, I mean I was just thinking about like the long road that we have come as marketers where it used to be like, no, I don't want to ask them. Why would I want to ask them what I want to name this thing? They're going to yell at me. And for a company such as yours to solicit that just on a regular basis, but also that mentality of like, like hey we're just one of y'all, we're just here to hang out and to share ideas and ask questions too instead of back in the early days of community when it was like, you know, we don't want the, we don't want the big marketing overlord, the organization to come in and talk to us. We want to do our own thing. That's really remarkable. Very, very cool.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Well, we learned that through lessons, right. So early on at Acquia I'm sure I made my share of mistakes with the community and learned to be more inclusive and learned that we, you know, we're all kind of in this together. So I have a few marketing scars to show for that.

SPIKE JONES:

Don't we all.

Speaking of which, speaking of doing this for a while, what is a commonly held belief or an industry practice that you just don't agree with? That you just think, man, that's not right. I'm not in that camp.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Well, we already talked about the you know the “any differences between B2B, B2C.” That probably was my first one.

But I'd say my second one is you know this whole myth and misconception around the CMO role is going away, I think, couldn't be further from the truth. So you know a couple years ago we heard some stories of some brands where they were limiting a CMO role. Like I remember McDonald's actually was one of them. There are a couple of other CPG companies where they totally eliminated the CMO role. Well guess what? In the past couple of years, they brought that CMO role back.

So I think what we're seeing is you know the old CMO role of the past, of just being the branding expert, that's probably gone. You still need to be the branding expert, but I think the other thing now is that you know we are Chief Growth Officers and we’re — Katherine you and I were in a forum recently where we were talking with other CMOs about being the Chief Market Officer, not just the Chief Marketing Officer. So you got to have your pulse and your hand on what's happening in the market. What are we doing? How do we have growth? We got to be the branding expert and the data expert kind of all at the same time. So I'd say that's one of the things, the biggest miss about when I hear that, I laugh about when I hear the about the CMO role going away.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Amen. We have talked about that a lot as friends and colleagues and it's been such an evolution of a role where there's a lot of things, as you said, all the things in the marketing bucket, the most successful CMOs we know are the ones that are, really do have their finger on, are able to be the voice of the market to the business. Now that does require a lot of information and being in touch with what's happening both inside your four walls and outside. We are all living in a data avalanche and just trying to keep to the important stuff.

So a question we also like to ask our guests is: how do you think about data? What's the data that you really click into that's most important to you about, and most closely correlated to, the success of your business?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Well, I think all kinds of data. I'd say probably you know, first and foremost, it's you know having clean data, which is probably one of the biggest challenges that we all have as marketers, right. So you know having clean data. Having deduped data about our customers is really important. Having insight into what are their buying patterns.

For our customers it's for me knowing about you know what technologies are they most interested in? What challenges are those customers facing within their particular industry at this point in time?

So the more we kind of know about the challenges and opportunities that they face, I think the better, because we know we know a lot more. So you know it's knowing, it's getting to know our customers more, getting to know their, as I said, their purchasing patterns and their behaviors and what they know and like and what industries they're in and how large they are. And so I think it's, I think it's a lot of data, but you know, most important for me, is to make sure that I think that I'm starting with clean data.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

That is the holy grail and if you have any tips on that it is a constant effort to keep — especially at the scale that we're talking about — to keep that data clean and accurate.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

But I think that I mean the data is like so key that you know one brand that I kind of, that I love to use as an example of like gathering great customer data is Peleton right, because I mean, imagine all of the data that they're capturing, right. This is all kind of first party data that they're capturing and honestly I think they're really good at it and they do such a great job at it. So never before have I been willing to give my personal weight or age, or you know, riding history to a company, but I did it immediately because I knew I was going to have some value from that, right. I want to be in my group. I want to make sure that I'm competing with the right people, and so anyway, I just think they do — I think they're a great example of a brand doing a super job capturing data.

SPIKE JONES:

I wish their customer base was more passionate, though. I mean they could really just really use some more — because no one ever tells you that they're a Peloton rider, right, I mean people just don't —

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I mean I think that is so true, and so — I think your comment about your own personal information, it's really because you trust them, because you're getting value back from it in a really tangible, meaningful way. They’re a customer of ours too and they're just, it's so extraordinary how, and as marketers we always think about this: I'm asking you for something, what are you going to get from me in return? What am I going to give you to make it interesting to give you my information? And they have done an amazing job. Still doesn't make me get on it every day, but once it can carry me onto the bike, I will be the super user I was meant to be.

SPIKE JONES:

Lynne, you mentioned the marketing scars. Let's revisit that, if you will. It is called CX Confessions, so we ask this of all of our illustrious guests. What is a hard lesson that you have learned on your journey? I know from my personal failures, or opportunities, I am able to learn from them and build on them the next time. So what is something that you've maybe learned the hard way along this journey of yours?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

I think I have, I think a couple of lessons along the way, I'd say. You know, years ago, early on, I learned that: don't go to market with a code name until you know what that code name means in all other languages. That was my —

SPIKE JONES:

Oh no!

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Oh yeah, uh huh. I did that. On stage. Yes, I did.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

That's a whole other show: the code name problem in our world because it just, they come from all little nooks and crannies of an organization, the team, your partner, you know your engineering team might fall in love with it and all of a sudden, oh, it was never meant to be the name but everybody's, using it. Very hard to unstick.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

That was a while ago. I haven't — the good news is I haven't done that for a bit. But probably you know most recently, I think, probably best lesson learned for me on the journey with customers is potentially around like, personalization, and how to help our customers do — personalization is one of the tools that we offer — and I just think it's really important.

I think you know like, initially, I think I thought you know we were trying to teach people to boil the ocean, and you know you just really need a solid foundation with your customer data and a little bit of personalization to start with. Small wins really matter, and then you can kind of build up to more success around personalization and really they do add up as the technology grows with you as you grow with the tap.

But I think that lesson of not trying to personalize everything all at once, all at the same time and not even knowing what your KPIS are. I think we all kind of fell in that you know that, in the you know, whatever some number of years ago around personalization, but I think, I think it's better now. I think I've kind of learned that lesson of you know help people with the small wins. Then they add up over time.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Do you have any advice for that? Where have you, where have you seen it? What do you think of as a good place to start?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

I think website personalization is a really easy place to start even around things like you know what industry — you know you’re personalizing a message around industry, or geography, or mobile device, or I mean those are typically the kind of the areas like low-hanging fruit, I would say, that I suggest that people start with.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

That's great advice. I think it becomes this monolithic, overwhelming thing where it doesn't — personalization doesn't always mean one to one. It can be — there's a lot of ways to slice it that will deliver more relevant content to the audience based on whatever little bit you know.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

That's right. And who, I mean who doesn't want to do personalization, right, so as marketers, we all wanted to do that. So I think it's just a matter of, as I said, you know doing, you know the little wins and they add up over time, as opposed to trying to do a humongous, major project that you know that doesn't have measurable outcomes.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

So many good nuggets in this conversation. That's not just because you referenced McDonald's earlier, but a great insight and scoop and advice for our audience. Thank you, Lynne.

Speaking of personalization, all of our guests, we like to get to know a little bit about you as a person and leader. So for the last few minutes we will do our quick-fire confessions. Five questions to let us get a glimpse of the real Lynne Capozzi. Number one: what was your first concert?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

My first concert was one that I snuck out of the house for, and that was [inaudible].

SPIKE JONES:

Wow.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Yeah. I won't tell you the number of years ago, but yeah. It was one of my best concert experiences ever.

SPIKE JONES:

Nice. And not just because you're snuck out of the house?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Yeah, that's right. That adds to it, though.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Did you get caught?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

I did not.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Ooh!

SPIKE JONES:

That's a true confession right there.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Don't send this to my dad.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Sorry, Dad!

SPIKE JONES:

How about your first job?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Professional job or a job job?

SPIKE JONES:

Let's go job job first.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Job job — I worked in a greenhouse for a summer and yes, I sweated like crazy.

SPIKE JONES:

Do you have a green thumb because of it?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Not really, no.

SPIKE JONES:

And so how about professional job?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

My first professional job out of college was: I was a trainer training on computer systems at a bank.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Ooh, that's a good sort of communications story. So, in that vein, Lynne, if you couldn't do what you do, what you're doing now, what's a profession other than your own, that you would attempt?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

I would say, probably one of two things. So I would love to be an executive director of a nonprofit, a bigger nonprofit, some day, or that was kind of one of my goals. And I’d love to be a tennis pro. But that didn't really happen because my skill set didn't match up there, but it was a dream.

SPIKE JONES:

We all got to have dreams.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Do you still play tennis, though?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

I mostly switched to golf, but some tennis, but now I'm loving golf. Totally addicted.

SPIKE JONES:

I'm terrible at both those things, yeah, good! It's good! How about your favorite app on your phone right now?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Well, I'd say — does my camera qualify?

SPIKE JONES:

Sure!

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Because it's an app?

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Yes, yes.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

I'd say it's a combo of my camera, so I can keep in touch with my kids in college, and the Calm app.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Oh, Calm app. And when do you use the Calm app?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Sometimes at night, if I'm having trouble shutting off and you know tuning out and thinking about things and getting my mind stopping, but lately I've been using that and I like it a lot.

SPIKE JONES:

Well I’ll check it out.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I have it. I think I might even be paying for a subscription, so I need to —

SPIKE JONES:

I'm using it right now, as a matter of fact. Just kidding. No, and the camera counts, it counts because that's basically, now with the iphone, basically, that's the only thing they upgrade. They make it faster and make a better camera. One day is just going to be all lens on the back. So that's good.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I think you're the first person to call it out, though, and that's very true. It is definitely, I hadn't thought about it that way, but it's the one I use the most. Absolutely. And I have the piece, that bit where it surfaces my memories of the day or whatever, which I love.

Okay, last question. Speaking of indulgences and time spent: what is Lynne Capozzi’s biggest indulgence?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Oh, has to be chocolate.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Ooh. In what form?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Without a doubt, on that one. Yes, yes.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

How do you like your chocolate?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Dark.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

Dark chocolate. Okay.

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

So I was very excited when we got Godiva as a customer. Can I just, can I tell you, I was like, I know, I know, well if they need a sponsor, I'm right there.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

I feel that way about some of our brands, too. First to raise my hand. All right, Lynne. This has been so much fun. If people want to learn more about you or Acquia where should they go?

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

They can come to Acquia.com, check us out. You could come see me on LinkedIn, Lynne Capozzi, and you can always drop me an email. I’m always happy to, you know, take emails: Lynne dot Capozzi at Acquia dot com. A - C - Q - U - I - A, which is always the biggest question, is, how do you spell it?

KATHERINE CALVERT:

A - C - Q - U - I - A and Lynne is a great person to follow on Linkedin. She always has really interesting content to share, so. Thank you for being with us!

LYNNE CAPOZZI:

Thank you for having me, it’s been fun with both of you.

SPIKE JONES:

Absolutely. Pleasure to meet you.

KATHERINE CALVERT:

A good time. Thanks everybody for joining us out there. Tune and next time. We can't wait to continue the conversation.

KHOROS:

Your customers expect to be understood — their likes and dislikes, their history with your brand, and their communication preferences. But so many companies struggle to connect the dots of the interaction across their own teams and channels and its creating customer experience challenges and disasters. That's where Khoros can help. Khoros is the award-winning customer engagement platform built to turn those siloed interactions with your customer into enterprise value. Khoros works with more than 2,000 of the world's leading brands and powers more than 500 million digital interactions every day. Khoros is the award-winning platform for digital-first customer engagement. Ready to create human connection across the digital customer experience to create customers for life? Learn more at Khoros.com.

Thanks for listening to CX Confessions, brought to you by Khoros. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure the hit subscribe in your favorite podcast player and give us a rating. See you next time.