 Welcome to this special CUBE Conversation here at theCUBE Studio in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and co-host of theCUBE for our special CMO signal series we're launching. Really talking to the top thought leaders in marketing, in the industry, really pushing the envelope on a lot of experimentation. And Robinson Greavy, chief marketing officer at New Relic is here, welcome to this CUBE Conversation. Thank you, excited to be with you. So New Relic is a very progressive company. You have a founder who's very dynamic, writes code, takes the radicals, creates product. He's a musician, he's prolific. That kind of sets the tone for your company and you guys are also state-of-the-art DevOps company. Yes. So pressure's on to be a progressive marketer. You guys are doing that. Yeah, I think there's some of the great things about that DevOps culture are process-wise, it allows us to experiment with different ways of working and I think that's, we've obviously talked a little bit about Agile and the way, a different way of thinking about how you actually do the work can change the way you output, the kind of things you're willing to make, the way the teams work together, and the degree to which you can integrate marketing and sales really around shorter time frames, faster cycle times. And so we have a great culture around that. We also have a really great culture around experimentation. I think that's one of the biggest things that Lou talks a lot about is, let's try things, let's look for experiments, let's see where we can find something that unexpected that could be a big success and let's not be afraid for something to go wrong. And if you can do that, then you have way, way higher odds of finding the sort of 10X. You guys are also in the analytics, you're also looking at the signals, so you're very data driven, I'll give you a prop for that, give you a plug, NewRug is a very data driven company. But today we're seeing a sea change of revolution in the tech industry, signals like cryptocurrency, blockchain, everyone's going crazy for the seed disruption in that. You've got AI and a bunch of other things. And you get the cloud computing revolution, so all this is causing a lot of horizontally scalable change, which is breaking down the silos of existing systems. But you can't just throw systems away, you have systems in marketing. So how are you dealing with that dynamic? Because we're seeing people going, hey, I just can't throw away my systems, but I got to really be innovative and agile to the real time nature of the internet now while having all those analytics available. How do you tackle that issue? Yeah, we think of it, there's a couple of ways to think about analytics. Number one is, what do you need to know in real time to make sure things are working and that your systems are up and running and operating effectively? And that runs for everything from up front in web experiences and trial experiences, that kind of thing through to how our leads and customers progressing through a funnel as they get passed around the various parts of a company. But then the second approach we take the data is, after all that's happened, how can we look backwards on it and what patterns emerge when you look at it over the scale of a longer period of time? And so that's kind of the approach to data, but you're right, you can't just take everything and throw it out and start over again because some startups stop by with a really cool idea. But you have to be aggressive about experimentation. I think that's the back to that big idea that we talk about experimentation. We are trying out a lot of different things all the time, looking for things that could be really successful for us. Intercom is one that we started to experiment with a little bit for in-product communications and we've expanded over time as we found it more and more useful. And so that's not, we haven't taken and just ripped something else out and put, made some giant bat on something brand new. We've tried it, we've gotten to know it and then we found really ways to apply that and we're doing that with a number of different technologies right now. Yeah, I mean, you're in a very powerful position, Chief Marketing Officer, which has to look over a lot of things now. Certainly with IT and cloud, you're essentially in the middle of the fabric of the organization. Plus, people are knocking on your door to sell you stuff. So what is, Okay, it happens all the time. He's got a big budget. What are they saying to you? Well, who's knocking on your door right now? Who's peppering you? Who's trying to get on your calendar? Who's bombarding you? Where are you saying, Hey, I'm done with that or hey, I'm looking for more of that. How do you deal with that tension? Because I'm sure it must be heavy. Yeah, you know, I think there is definitely a lot of, there's a lot of optionality in the market for sure. And I think there's been, there's a sort of a new wave of Mar-Tech vendors, many of whom are sitting kind of, right in between sales ops and marketing ops. And that's a layer we're really interested in. Systems that can help us better understand the behavior of sales reps and how they're using things that we're making and then systems that can better understand the indications of prospect intent. So funnel and pipeline or those kinds of things. Yeah, we think about it more from the context of authentic engagement. And so we don't want to apply too much of a structure to it. A sales structure to it. We want to try to follow the customer's intent through the process, because the best prospect is someone who is authentically engaged in trying to find a solution to their problem. And so if we can avail ourselves to people in a thoughtful and creative and authentic way, when they need us, when they're trying to solve that problem, then I think they can become much more successful prospects. So I love your angle on agile marketing. I think that's table stakes. Now I think you got to behave that way. And I'd love to get your thoughts later on the management style and how you make that happen. But you mentioned engagement. This is now the new Holy Grail. There's a lot of data behind it. And it could be hidden data. It could be data decentralized all over the place. This is the hottest topic. How do you view engagement as a CMO and the impact of the organization? What are you looking for? What's the key premise for your thesis of getting engagement? It's really the number one, two, and three topic we're talking about right now. And we think about it from on the content side. How do we get ourselves really producing a constant stream of content that has value to people? That either helps them solve a problem right now or helps them think about an architectural issue in a different way. We're trying to invest more and more technical resources in people who can produce things that are relevant to all the different kind of users that we have. DevOps people, SREs, our sort of traditional developer customers, we want to go deep and be super relevant at a content level for them. But then once they start to spend time with us, we want to then have a progressive way to pull them deeper and deeper into our community. And so the things we can do, some things in digital for that, but then we, often times we pop offline and we do a lot of workshops, a lot of education, face to face, where we're in communities of, we look at a map at the start of the year and say, where do we have big user communities? And then we drop events into those places where we take our educators and our product experts and get customers to share with each other. And that becomes a really great platform to put them together and have them help each other as well as learn more about what our product does. So it sounds like you're blending digital with face to face. That's a key part of your strategy. Yeah, absolutely, it's a key part is to make sure that we're getting time and attention from the people who are making decisions and what technologies they're going to buy, but also that we're really investing time in the people who are using it in their everyday, everyday lives to do their job better. That's a really critical thing. Here's some examples of outcomes that you've seen successful from that forum. So that's a really unique, well, unique, it's pretty obvious if you think about it, but some people think digital is the holy grail, let's go digital, it's lower cost, but face to face can be expensive, but you're blending it, what's the formula and what are some of the successes that you've seen as a result? Yeah, we tend to try to create events that are good for a really specific audience. So if you think about a targeting formula that you would use in digital that will make digital really efficient, that same kind of idea works really well for an event. So if you've got a user community that's really good at doing one thing with your product and you feel like that if they knew a few more things that they could get better, then we help them really advance the next level. And so we run certification programs where we'll pull together a group of confident users and help them get to the next level. And things like that allow us to make a really targeted event that allows us to reach out to a group and move them to a higher level of competency. To have a competency focus is a big deal. Can we help you get better at your job? And then community is the other big one. Can we help you connect with people who are doing the same things, solving the same kinds of problems and are interested in the same kind of topic? So it sounds like the discovery path of the user that journey your potential. Yeah, it's important to us for sure. And content sounds like it's important too, that's your engagement. How you deal with the content? Is that all on your properties? How about off-property measurement? How do you get engagement for off-property? Yeah, you know, we're experimenting a lot in that area in off-property. I think we've had tons of success inside our own, you know, our website and our blogs and those kinds of... You do pop a lot of content, so it's content rich. Yes, we definitely have a lot of... You know, our attitude is we want to turn our company inside out, so we want to take all of our experts... Explain that, that's an important topic. So you guys are opening up what? We've got customer support people, we have technical sales and technical and support engineers. We've got marketing people who are thought leaders in cloud and other architecture topics. We really want to take all the expertise that they've got and we want to share it with our community. How do you do that? Through forums, through their Twitter handles, through their own... All of the above really, through their Twitter handles, through content that they write and produce, through videos, through a podcast series that we run. We're really trying to... And then we're trying to expand as much as possible, but then inside our user help community, we want to take any... Anytime somebody solves a problem for one customer, we want to add it to that. So we can... Sounds like open source, software. From a knowledge perspective, that's really, I think it's an important idea for us. Yeah, that's awesome. You worry about the risk. I mean, I like the idea of just opening it up. Creating building blocks of knowledge, like code. It's almost like an open source software, but it's an open knowledge. We think if we can help people get really successful at the work they're trying to do, that it's going to do great things for us as a brand. What's the rules of the road? Because obviously you might have some haymakers out there, some employee goes rogue, or you guys just trusting everyone, just go out and just do it? You know, it's a constant effort to distribute publishing rights and allow people to take more and more ownership of it, and to maintain some editorial controls, because I think quality is a big thing. It's probably a bigger concern for us than somebody going rogue. At some level, if that happens to you, you can't stop it. Is this a new initiative, or is it just a progression? It's something that's been ongoing for a while. It's progression of an effort. We started probably 18 months ago, and it's a wonderful way for an engineering team and a product management team and a marketing team to get together around a really unified mission as well. So our content project is one of those things that I think really pulls us together inside the company in a really fun way as well. It's interesting. You're seeing more and more with social peers want to talk to each other, not the marketing guy, and say, hey, just get the Kool-Aid. I like the product. I want to talk to someone and solve my problem. They want to have a real conversation about it, and I think that's our job is to not think of it as marketing, but to think of it as just facilitating a real conversation about how a product works Okay, let's talk about leadership as the chief marketer for New Relic in the culture you're in, which is very cool to be on the front end, in the front lines doing cool things. What do you do? How do you manage yourself? How do you manage your time? What do you do? How do you organize the troops? How do you motivate them? What's your management style for this marketing in the modern era? I think number one, I think we're trying to create a really organization that's full of opportunities for people. So it's something we've done, I've been there for about two and a half years and we've really looked hard for people who have tons of potential and find them great things to work on, find new projects, and then let them try out ideas that they've got. So if they can own an idea, give it a shot, and even if it doesn't work, they'll learn a bunch from the process of trying. What are the craziest ideas you've heard from some of your staff? Oh boy. You know, a lot of them involve video, sort of, you know, there's always a great idea for a video that's risky. So the Burger King one with that neutrality going around the web is the funniest video I've seen all week. Could be risky, could be also a double-edged sword, right? Yeah, video is one of those places where you have to sort of check yourself a little bit because it could be a great idea and so sometimes you have to actually make it and look at it and say, would we publish this or not? So that's definitely the place for you. So common sense is kind of like your, kind of your... You start with, yeah, I mean you start with common sense for sure. I think we want to be a part of being culturally responsible. I think in Silicon Valley right now is really making sure that we're attentive to making sure that we're putting together the right kind of workplace environment for people. And so our, you know, our content and the way that we go to market has to reflect that as well. So, you know, there's a bunch of filters that you put on it, but you have to take risks, you know, to, and try to make things. And if they work great and if they don't, then, you know, the cost of that is less than the cost of failure is so low and some of these things, you just have to try. Well, you know, we're into video here at theCUBE. I have to ask you, do you see video more and more in the marketing mix? And if so, how? And how does that compare to the old methods? I mean, we've seen, you know, the media business change in journalism, certainly on the analyst community. Who reads white papers? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Or, you know, how do they engage? What content formula do you see as, you know, state of the art engagement? Is it video? Is it a mix? How do you view that? I think video is really powerful. And it can be great to treat topics in a short form in a really powerful way. I think we can stretch it out a little bit and in terms of how to and teaching and education also. But there are times when, oh, and other things like, you know, like a white paper are still relevant. Yeah. I think they're gonna do their homework and get ready for the big test. Yes. You know, how to install. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, big surprises for you in the industry. If you can look back and talk to yourself a few years ago and say, wow, I didn't think that was going to happen or I kind of knew this was going to be a trend we'd be on. You know, where's the tailwinds? Where's the headwinds in the industry as a marketer to be innovative, be on the cutting edge, to deliver the value you need to do for your customers and for the company? Yeah. I think there's a bunch of great tailwinds organizationally and in the approach to work. And as you talked about, about agile. I think that's, it's been a great thing to see people jump in and try to work in a different way. That's created tons of scale for a department like ours where we were trying to go to more countries and more places constantly. Having a better way to work where we waste less effort, where we find problems and fix things way faster has given us a chance to build leverage. And I think that's just that integration of engineering attitudes with marketing processes has been a, you know, is an awesome thing. Everybody in our marketing department or at least a lot of people have read the DevOps handbook and we have got a lot of sort of devotees of that thought process that don't sit in engineering jobs. DevOps ethos I think is going to be looked at as one of those things that's moment in history that has changed so much. I was just at Sundance Film Festival and the DevOps ethos is going to filmmaking and artistry with the craft and how that waterfall for the elite studios is opening up an amateur market in the Indies. So there are agile filmmakers and artists now doing cool stuff. So it's going to happen. So, and of course we love infrastructure as code. We'll talk about that all day long. We love DevOps. So I got to ask you the marketing question. It'll be a theme of my program of the CMO is if I say infrastructure, marketing as code, infrastructure as code enabled a lot of automation, some abstracted away, horizontally scalable and new opportunities created a lot of leverage, a lot of value. Infrastructure as code created the cloud. Is there a marketing as code ethos? And what would that look like if I could say apply DevOps to marketing? If you could look at that and you had, you could say magic wand, give me some DevOps marketing, marketing as code. What would you have automated away? What would be available to you? What would the APIs look like? What's your vision? What would the APIs look like? I don't think it exists yet but we're fantasizing about it. Yeah, I mean I think the things that tend to slow marketing departments down really are sort of old school things like approvals. And how hard it is to get humans to agree on things that should be really, really easy. So if the first thing- Provisioning an order. The first thing you could do is just automate that system of agreeing that something's ready to go and send it out that I think you'd create so much efficiency inside marketing departments all over the world. And that involves having a really great, an API is a great thought in that because the expectations have to get matched up of what's being communicated on both sides so that we can, you know, we have a channel with which to agree on something. And you know, that to me is- And analytics are probably huge too. You want to have, you know, instant analytics, I don't care which database it came from. Yeah, yes, exactly, yeah. Well then in that sort of sense of DevOps and convenience point, but then you got some feedback on did it work? Was it the right thing to do? Should we do more of it? Should we fix it in some specific way? Yeah, I think that's- And I think that's an interesting angle and then the face-to-face thing that you might find really interesting because what you're doing is creating that face-to-face resource, that value, is so intimate. And it's really good, it's the best engagement day you can get is face-to-face. Yeah, you know, and I think it also allows us to build relationships to the point where we are getting invited into Slack channels to help companies in real time sometimes. I think there's a really- So humanizing the company and the employees is critical. You can't just be just digital. Yes, it's a big deal. Awesome, yeah. Professor, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, this special CMO series. Is there a DevOps? Is, can we automate a way? What's going to automate? What is the value going to be? Marking super exciting. Again, Martek, some are saying it's changing rapidly with the cloud AI and all these awesome new technologies. What's going to change? That's what we're going to be exploring here on the CMO-Cube conversation. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.