 Hi, this is Donald Klein with CUBE Conversations, coming to you from our Palo Alto studios. We're here doing a special series on CMOs and the challenges of digital marketing. And today we're here with Peter Spales, who's the former chief marketeer at Datos.io. Welcome Peter. Thanks for having me, always fun to be here. Good, good. Well look, so wanted to kind of set aside this time and have a discussion with you because you're somebody who's had a long marketing career. You've been in big companies, you've been in small companies, most recently with Datos, you've been in companies where you've had established brands with proven product stories, and then you've also been in situations where you've got companies that were sort of unknown to the broader world, and you had to find a way to kind of make them known and prove out that value proposition. Put them on the map. Put them on the map. So why don't you talk to us a little bit about kind of how you've approached that challenge when you've been in some of the smaller companies? Sure, sure, happy to do that. Yeah, and my past has been an interesting mix of big companies and small companies present a bunch of unique challenges, but it's super, there's nothing more fun than having the opportunity of having a company that's got some great technology, some great people, and essentially the fun job of any marketeer is to how do you put them on the map? And we've been talking a lot about sort of what are the levers you can pull? What can you do? And one of the challenges with being a small company is you don't have any money. Or I mean you might, but you don't have a ton of money. So that's where social, right off the bat, if I sort of look at the levers you can pull initially when you look at your strategy, okay, I need to put the company on the map so I've got to drive thought leadership, I've got to drive awareness. I've also got to drive demand gen. So what are the levers that I can use? What are the vehicles that I can use to drive that? And I think that's where social has, a lot of people think of social as sort of the new demand gen vehicle. I don't necessarily see it that way. I think social has actually become an ideal complement to all the other traditional levers that you still want to use. There's segmentation that comes into this as well in terms of what organizations you're trying to target. You're going after SMB, you're going after the enterprise, et cetera. And in my case it's primarily been going after the enterprise. So when I look at that from a social standpoint, social media in general sort of is a, the value of it is really as a complement to the other traditional levers that you have in your arsenal, whether that be events, industry events, whether that be traditional demand gen things, outbound type things. Social becomes an ideal complement for promoting those things. And then social also becomes a very important pillar in the sense that removes sort of the barrier to entry in terms of being relevant. If you will, because it's a very cost effective way of creating a drum beat. Of news. And again, we can get into more specifics of the different aspects of that, whether it's traditional social like the Twitters, whether it's videos and that type of things, the different pieces you can use in there. Okay, so now talk a little bit about the role of events. Okay, so you talked about some, one of the challenges with the smaller companies, you don't have the big event budgets, you don't have the big booths, but still now you say, well, digital, you've often hear some companies talk about how we're going to try and go all digital. We're going to, you know, because that's a place where we can play because even if we don't have the money. But, you know, digital is a crowded space, right? So did you strike a balance between events and digital? What was your thinking? That's a great question. And balance is exactly the right word. It's going to vary. There's no sort of, there's no exact science, but you have to be selective. Again, going into an enterprise clientele, you have to be selective about the events that you're going to do. Number one, digital is, digital is a very good instrument, particularly as a small company, and this is a point I didn't make before, the whole notion of inbound versus outbound as well. Where digital can play a very key role from an inbound standpoint is with, you just think simple things like SEL and SEM. Can people find you? Are you relevant, you know, the early adopters are the people that know they have a problem. So they're going to look for something. So you can very cost effectively find, you can make yourself relevant there if they know what they're looking for. And particularly if you're, that's what's fun about creating a segment is if you're doing something nobody else is doing, then you're playing in a potential blue ocean where you're not competing at a very high cost, you're not bidding at very high costs for some of the things you do from say a Google AdWords or that type of stuff. So you've got your ability to be effective from an inbound standpoint is number one. To your point about the events, you absolutely need to do those events. Your core set of whatever segment you're in or whatever business you're in, you've got to be focused on those core events because I still find that to be, that's where a lot of enterprises don't, they still use events as one of the key places they go to learn to educate themselves to find out what's happening in the marketplace. The key is how do you maximize your presence at those events? How do you leverage social to promote the fact that you're going to be there? You know, what do you do at the event? What can you do? And again, this is where we can come back and talk about things specifically like theCUBE. You know, where you can use vehicles like theCUBE very effectively because one, I can drive a lot of influence in show, but then as well I can create a much longer tail. I can maximize my presence. I can maximize the IP that I bring to that show by capturing that in digital medium, like video, and then being able to use it post, you know, sort of simply put, you go to a show these days, you know, if you're not on theCUBE, then you're missing the boat. I mean, it's just sort of like a regular pillar of all the core industry shows. You know, and so that's great for driving influence, not only to customers, but within the industry, but then it also is a great way for creating assets that I can then use for longer tail for thought leadership or for demand gen or whatever I may want to use. Okay, understood, understood. So let's talk a little bit about this notion of compliment. So what you're saying is that, so you want to go to the events, that's where the belly-to-belly interaction is, that's where things are happening, right? And then you're using social to leverage up your presence at those events. Correct. Okay. We'll promote the fact that you're going to be there, drive interest in people showing when you do a contest or there's, you know, there's creative things you can do, but yeah, you're using social to basically drive awareness to the fact that you're going to be there. You're using social to promote your intersection, you're on theCUBE or whatever it is you might be doing. You're hosting an event that evening, you know, an offsite event at that. Use that as a way to compliment the fact that you're at the event doing your belly-to-belly great term, just doing your traditional belly-to-belly get together. Okay, I understand, because we've heard people talk about the say that, look, you know, social's great, digital's great, but it's also very crowded out there. And where you've got people's attention, where you've got people's mind share, is in and around events. Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. And it's, you know, social is a great way of it removes the barriers to entry, but the flip side of that for good or for bad is that it also creates a lot of noise. So how do you separate the noise? How do you rise above the noise? And that really is leveraging social, leveraging digital overall in the appropriate high credibility, high integrity ways to drive influence within the industry, to drive relevance of what you're doing, and then also use that as a vehicle for helping on the demand-gen side. So it's sort of, it's the new normal, you know, kind of thing. It's not the ideal platform, it's not the social, per se, it's not the ideal demand-gen platform, but it is a complimentary piece, but it also, to your point, creates a tremendous amount of noise so then the challenge becomes, yeah, how do you basically stand above the noise? And that comes down to influence, and that comes down to credibility. You know, are you telling a credible narrative? Are you talking to credible people? Are you in the appropriate forums? That type of thing. Okay, and so let's talk about video and how that kind of fits into that and how fits into that digital strategy, right? Because that's kind of the new realm in terms of everybody wanting to kind of create digital content in video form. What's been your experience in terms of like the challenges of creating that content and then getting it out in digestible forms? Well, there's the, it's getting, it's a couple different aspects to that. The creation of content is getting, depends on what you're trying to accomplish. The creation of video contents getting easier if you will in the sense of the cost of, you know, you can put a studio in a small business together reasonably and expensively, but then you're sort of, then you're operating, what content are you creating there? Well, the content I'm creating there is essentially I'm going to, you know, I'm going to promote what we're doing as a company, you know, we're going to go, we're going to create some short little blurb about the recent launch or something, or we're going to potentially have a customer, although typically you'd have a customer, you'd go visit the customer and do it there. But that's the, that's the, that's the stuff where you're sort of the self promotional stuff. You know, the, where I find the events in particular what you guys are doing with theCUBE and Silicon Island, what I like about that is that the content that I'm creating is, it's not sort of a pre, it's by no means sort of a pre-canned, you know, sort of has a black and white beginning and end. It's very topical, it's very sound-bitish in a good way, not a bad way if you will. And it's also very topical, very topical. And which is key because again, back to the whole influence, it's not just about hammering away at the customer. Hey, look at me, look at me, look how great I am. It's basically, you have to build a community. You have to build an ecosystem. You have to build a community of people that know you, that trust you. And we talked earlier about the whole earned versus, you know, earned media versus paid media. You build that credibility, you build that influence. Like, hey, you know, saw you on theCUBE. You know, get an email from, you know, Fortune or Forbes. Like, oh yeah, I saw you on theCUBE. You know, we'd be interested in doing this that and the other thing. And it all comes down to building that arsenal if you will, or that library of high credibility, high integrity, high influence content. Which is all video based, because I mean, video is just the way people consume information. So I think we'd agree with you, right? You know, having, you know, content which is based on authentic interactions, you know, between a vendor and his customers, between vendors and partners, between vendors and analysts, right? That's really the key to making good, engaging content. Now, what about in terms of how, how do you find in terms of getting that content out to individuals in a way that is kind of consistent with way people are consuming content now in social media? I think we're seeing, you know, there's a whole debate out there versus long form versus short form content, clips, et cetera. Well, what's been in your experience? I don't know the number, but I'm quite certain that the average attention span of people in general is dramatically down. I don't know exactly what the, there'd be an interesting metric on that. So the world leans absolutely heavily towards, as I said earlier, sort of more soundbite oriented, but not soundbite in a bad way. It's just sort of the world is, I mean, look at the, just look at the landscape we live in now. It's like, you know, until recently we lived in a 140 character world kind of thing. And you can convey a lot more through spoken word than you can just, you know, typing and, but people consume things in very short bursts of information. That's, so one, you want to take advantage of that. Two, the other thing I would say to this is that I like, one of the things I like about short form video is again, because you've, I'm a big metadata guy. And so like in one, five minutes, just in the conversation we're having now, we've covered like eight different topics. So to me as a marketer, I'm like, okay, great. That's eight different things. That's eight different clips. You know, kind of thing. Great. And I can use that for any number of different things that I want to use. One of those pieces that maybe was the part about, so what are you doing now? Maybe the plug part could be, oh, we can promote that. That could actually be a demand gen thing. Or, you know, if you're talking about a segment where you were just like, you know, how are you guys uniquely differentiated? Well, you could use that in consideration. You know, there's all different ways, but the notion of sort of highly granular video content has huge value. Interesting. Okay. It creates a lot of leverage. So if we're just going to kind of, you know, this has kind of been a blocking and tackling for marketeers kind of conversation. So if we're just going to kind of sum up your main points here. So one, you were saying, use social to compliment your presence at events and other types of- And all you're not just events. I mean, use it as a way of supporting demand gen. Use it as a way to being staying relevant, you know, join all the appropriate communities and be joining them. You have to stay relevant. You have to stay, you have to stay within the noise. Yes. Sort of as the table stakes. Yes. And then beyond that, then you got to figure out, okay, how do you rise above the noise? How do you use it strategically to actually rise above the noise of everybody else just banging away on social as well? Okay, all right. Agree with that. Second point then, you know, use authentic content, right? Absolutely. Try to mix in the, you know, relevant- People can, people can very quickly. People are tired of just talking hats. People are tired of just, I don't need to see another video on how great you are, you know, or whatever. So back to your point. That's my interpretation of authentic content. Like do what you do. Yes. Share what you do. Yes. Put it in context and smart people will figure out, you know, and then obviously sharing the appropriate community so that people can find it. But they very naturally gravitate. I think there's a very low appetite now for BS because there's so much noise. Okay. People are so hungry for just getting to the relevance of the information they want. Which again is also where the sound bite level stuff and the more you can index and be intelligent about that data the faster you can help people find information they're looking for. Okay. Excellent. All right. Well, we're going to have to kind of wrap it up on that point. That was exactly right. Well, I think we're seeing that in some of the customers that we work with as well. So leverage the social, focus on authentic content, get it out there in forms that people are willing to digest. Yes. Absolutely correct. All right. Well, thank you everyone. This has been Donald Klein here with Peter Schmael's former chief marketeer at Datos.io with CUBE Conversations.