 Let's get into the big topic of open source, something that we actually have in front of us. This is so awesome. We are an open culture that makes that process that a developer or let's say... As the Kubernetes ecosystem really brings... Welcome to In the Clouds. I am your host, Stu Miniman, and as we look at the cloud ecosystem, of course, it has had a dramatic impact on all types of industries and all sorts of the business. We're going to have a discussion today about how it's impacted marketing. And to help us do that, I'm thrilled to welcome to the program her first time on In the Clouds with someone I've actually had the chance to interview in the past, welcoming Lee Day, who is recently named the Chief Marketing Officer of Red Hat. Lee, great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us on In the Clouds. Thanks, Stu. I'm really happy to be here. So, Lee, we talk about when you joined Red Hat, it wasn't a conversation of cloud at all. No. So, you've had a chance to watch some of these transformations that we're talking about. Maybe to start with, just give us, if you would, a little bit some of the highlights of Red Hat and the journey that it took you to become RCML. Great. I'd love to. So, yes, I joined Red Hat in 1999. So, I'm very much dating myself. But I joined only a couple of days after our initial public offering. I was employing 139. And at that point, we were a box product company. So, we sold boxes on the shelves of Fry's and CompUSA. And we were not yet in the enterprise. And so, I had the privilege of working to help Red Hat get in the enterprise and actually worked on the product marketing team that first launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux. And then, from there, we were able to get traction in the financial services industry, in healthcare, and in government. And then, in 2008, we broadened our portfolio to JBoss. And that helped us become, it was our first step in becoming a multi-product company. And then, from there, you know, I've been in several different roles in marketing. Communication is my first love. But also, product marketing, as I mentioned, partner marketing. When I first came to Red Hat, I was actually. And, you know, since then, we have established our internal creative agency, The Open Studio. And we have had a tremendous focus on digital experience as well. So, 20 plus acquisitions later, we're a completely different company than a company. That's for sure. Yeah, Lee, you know, hard to believe, you know, you joined around the time that those of us in the industry, we were thinking about Y2K. Most people, you know, if you talk to them today, they might not even know, you know, that challenge that we had. The era of cloud, you know, as I said, I've talked to CMOs and many of them, it's, you know, managing a SaaS portfolio. It's understanding, you know, how we interact with the cloud. Maybe if you could give us a little bit about, you know, what does cloud mean to someone in your role? Well, cloud is definitely a multifaceted word and term. And our main goal marketing is to help customers navigate and learn more about cloud and the opportunities of a hybrid cloud environment. You know, especially we're working very closely on our brand campaign. And during that, we talk a lot about neutrality and how Red Hat helps clouds connect. So we really want to help your customers with that journey, help them understand what the possibilities are and how Red Hat can be a partner to them. But definitely as we're looking at SaaS, different SaaS models, we're looking at working with different hyperscalers. We have people coming in, consuming different types of cloud experiences. And we just need to meet them where they are and help again help them along their journey. Yeah. And I love that, of course, you focused right in on the customer. One of the great things about Red Hat is, you know, we're part of a community. Our customers are one of the best ways to learn about all the products that we have is by talking to your peers out there. What does the customer experience look like in today's era? That's a really great question because it's changing dramatically by the day. And I think at the end you'll see one of the links that has inspired me has been a recent Harvard Business Review article about modern buyers journey and customers and meeting them where they are. And that's exactly where we have to go. Marketing traditionally has been talking a lot about the funnel and GARP vernacular needs to change to being more about buyers journeys because they're not linear. They're all different. And it's up to Red Hat and to marketing and sales and other people at Red Hat to get to know customers, who they are, what their challenges are, where they are in their buyer journey and how Red Hat can be helpful in their transformation. Yeah, Lee, I'm so glad you brought that up. We put the link in the chat for that article that you mentioned there. You're right. The way, you know, most people we think of, you know, boy, think back 10, 15 years ago, we talked about the consumerization of IT. And now it is, it's that consumerization of the experience. Those of us that have been sitting at home for the last two years, so much of what we deal is, you know, just buy over the internet and products, you know, come to us. So that self-service aspect of things, the relationship that we have with our suppliers, you know, has changed. And that has, you know, found its way into the enterprise very much with the cloud and SaaS models that you talk about. I also love you. You talked about, you know, the traditional funnel has changed. One of the initiatives, one of the terms I've heard you talk about to our team internally is precision marketing. Can you maybe explain what that is and how is that helping us to kind of meet that new buyer where they are? Yes, I love that word precision. And that's going to be the main tenant in our marketing strategy going forward. So the idea is that we need to move away from mass marketing. Traditional activities like paid media and events still have their place. But moreover, we need to learn more about our customers specifically and their specific needs. And we are an experienced company at the end of the day. Customers do have a choice of who they work with. So we really need to make sure that every single interaction customers have with us is of high value. So knowing more about them so that we can deliver the right assets for where they are in their buyer journey, making sure that they're hearing from peers. We have an amazing reference program at Red Hat. We have the benefit of many brands lending their name and voice to talking about the success they've had with Red Hat. Being very authentic with our customers and recognizing that they have challenges they need to meet and it's not just about Red Hat selling product or renewing. It's about really solving customer issues. And we're only going to be able to do that if we know more about them. And we have more data at our fingertips than ever. So on the marketing side, we have dashboards so that we can see the actions customers have taken with us. We can see what they consumed, what they didn't consume. So we can actually optimize and fine tune our marketing motions to be more highly valuable and relevant to our customers. So that's how we're getting more precise. Yeah, Lee, and I'm glad you brought up the data point because absolutely we have more tools and way more data today than we did, you know, let's say five years ago. As you said, it's constantly evolving how we look at that. How does Red Hat think about that data because that is one of the discussions that we have in the industry as a whole is, oh my gosh, do the big corporations have too much information? You know, are they just targeting ads at me? What's our thoughts about, you know, customers data, you know, how we leverage data from a marketing standpoint too? Well, again, we're lessing our addiction on paid media. So hopefully customers aren't feeling like they're getting too much superfluous content from us that they didn't want. We're looking to engage customers when they land on our site system so that we're seeing that they're coming in, we're seeing what actually they've taken with us. So what we do not want to be intrusive in the customer experience, we want to enable the customer experience. We want to show them immediately their way to an eval or to an asset about security if that's an important topic to them. We just want to, we want to make sure that, again, every interaction is high value. So Lee, when you talked about your initial journey with Red Hat is it was a box company. You know, boy, so many Red Hatters. I look at when you do meetings with them, they've got, you know, a shrink wrap box sitting behind them of, you know, whatever version of Linux they first used and everybody's proud of that. Today Red Hat is a very different company. If you can talk a little bit about the brand, you know, how do customers think of us today? How are we trying to, you know, modernize how they think about what we're doing? Because obviously 2022 the Red Hat portfolio where we sit in the ecosystem is very different than it was, you know, five, 10 or 20 years ago. Yes, that is very true. I don't think though that our brand promise has changed. I think that Red Hat has always been very open and transparent and authentic. And authenticity is the key to building a great brand in my opinion. As I mentioned, customer references are what we lead with many times. It's not just the rhetoric Red Hat wants to get out there, it's actually listening to what customers are doing and responding with appropriate content. In peer perspectives, a lot of times that are relevant is making sure that, you know, we have relevance with analysts and with press and that we are earning the trust of external parties and not just expecting or demanding it. You know, I talked a little bit about our brand campaign. And the brand campaign is all about clouds connecting and invokes a spirit of collaboration. And it implies community spirit. And that's what we've always been about. We want to show customers that we want to work with other vendors and other partners. And even sometimes when it's competitive, we will do what we need to to make customers ultimately successful. Yeah, Lee, I love that answer that authenticity is so important. And if your customers are out there speaking for you, that is going to be such a more authentic voice. I know something we haven't touched on too much. What about open source? You know, in many ways, you know, open source is a de facto out in the industry. You know, we would not have the clouds of today if there was not Linux, if there were not all the open source projects. So how important is open sourced to Red Hat and our customers today? And where does that fit in the overall picture? I think it's still incredibly important. And I think that we do have others talking about open source. I think Red Hat really lives into open source. We have a statement that open unlocks the world's potential. And I fully believe in that. If you look at some of the use cases, things we're working on like self driving cars, AI, you know, facial recognition, Mars Rover. I mean, these are really interesting aspirational projects. But also on the other side, there's a very human aspect to Red Hat and to open unlocking the world's potential. The work we've done with Boston Children's Hospital to help do hundreds of brain scans per day. The work that we've done with UNICEF on clean water projects, the list goes on. I mean, we really do believe that open unlocks the world's potential and I think we stand by that. And we make sure that whether it's a ministry of transportation that's helping improve individual lives or whether it's a Verizon that's helping advance edge, we're there. And open source is just right there in the center always of unlocking the world's potential. Yeah. Well, Lee, I have to admit, you know, I knew quite a bit about Red Hat. I'd worked with Red Hat for about 20 years before I joined a little over a year ago. That why is if people aren't familiar, you know, Simon Sinek says it's not the what or the how. It's the why that drives businesses can drive what you're doing in that open unlocks the world potential is the why of Red Hat. It is something that is inspiring for those of us in the company. I want to talk a bit about the world from that standpoint. You know, Lee, Red Hat as a company, we're over double the size that we were four years ago. We are a global company. Our customers are global. Can you speak a little bit to that kind of how Red Hat acts as a, you know, is a global company, both our employees and our customer base? Sure. We're a global company. We're very big now, especially in comparison to, as you mentioned, four years ago or even greater. But I still feel like Red Hat is very much a family. Like we this week, we're celebrating our sales kickoff around the globe. And I've seen so many really great videos about the partnerships between sales architects and marketing people and support and people that are focused on customer success. We really do lean on each other to make sure that we're delivering the right outcomes for customers. And we really don't have borders when it comes to that. So it doesn't matter if someone in India needs help and the skills in the U.S. We're really open and helpful and very much a family of very smart people that are that exist to help our customers succeed. Yeah, I wonder just from a communication standpoint, you know, I look at from a live stream standpoint. You know, yes, we have many live streams that started in the U.S., but we have, you know, some in Europe, we're looking at some in Asia Pacific. When you look at the podcast we're doing, the outreach we're doing, how do we make sure that we're localizing things, you know, appropriately for that global audience? And I do love we're getting some of the global flags popping up in the comments. Yeah, I see that. And yes, we're definitely looking at always being more global and more inclusive. Inclusivity is also a main pillar of our brand promise. So for instance, we have our podcast, our first podcast that we introduced to the market was Command Line Heroes. And that definitely has seen, for instance, a very broad global listening community. And due to the demand, we created Command Line Heroes in Espanol. So that is that is now taken off, but we're always looking at where demand is and making sure that we're fulfilling that demand and making sure that our digital properties are accessible globally as much as possible. And that we're always looking at ways to expand that accessibility and global reach. So Lee, we've talked a bit about community and, you know, before the last two years, one of the best ways to engage with the community was in person. You know, not only Red Hat Summit, but, you know, meetups around the globe, you know, industry events and the like. How are we making sure that we keep our connections with that community, with that global audience, you know, during the times that we're in? Well, we're being really creative and we do understand that not one size fits all. And I think, you know, we were all used to going to in-person events and regardless of who you were in the organization. That was always, you know, a time and a place where people could get together and find a common bond. So now we're more focused on finding the challenges that specific customer groups are interested in and building custom experiences around that with custom content. So for instance, we have a program called Innovators on the Line. And these are references that have been willing to talk to other customers about their successes and their challenges. And so we have a new webinar series, I think the next one is in March, where Peter will talk to another group of IT decision makers about a set of challenges they're facing. But being more focused in content so that people can go and have their expectations met. Also, obviously condensing content that used to be multiple days long to just a couple hours long. We have an executive briefing center that really looks at tailoring agendas very much focused on customers and where they are. And we follow up with those sessions with custom whiteboards so that customers can recall what was discussed and how they're going to move forward. But yes, when we do go back in person, it's going to be smaller. We're going to be doing more roundtables that are either focused on industry or a specific challenge that customers are facing. So it's again, moving from that mass market approach to very much precision and precision in our event experiences as well. Yeah, well, Lee, you know, we've definitely had, you know, the whole world has had challenges dealing with the repercussions of what's happened with the pandemic. But sounds like we've we've also learned some things, understand our audience better, you know, being able to focus and have, you know, pointed contact for the appropriate audience. So sounds like we've learned some things that we'll be using even, you know, hopefully things start to open up in the near future. Absolutely. And that's one thing on the event side that has been, I guess, it's definitely a do a lot of short people miss being in touch with you with each other. However, the virtual environment has provided more inclusivity and accessibility than ever before. We're able to have much, much greater reach with that. And, and yes, I mean, we're definitely in touch with our customers where, you know, if a customer is in the retail business and they're concerned about supply chain, then Red Hat will work to make sure that we build content to make sure that they understand how open source is helping with their supply chain issues and address them where they are with their challenges. So it really has changed us to help be even more empathetic to customer needs. We've had customers have had to move from brick and mortar environments to cloud and and really helping them quickly and swiftly make those moves has been key. Yeah, I'm curious. One of the things we always talked about, we would joke about missing the events is there's not the opportunity as much to brand things. So, you know, I'm going to so many events and the Red Hat hats, you know, are ubiquitous. I did get to go to a couple of shows last year and we'd have a line at KubeCon or Amazon reinvent of people doing that. You know, how are you making sure we still get, you know, get the swag out, get people branded information, you know, pieces of material when they want it. Well, people I don't think virtual or live. I think people still love this way. So we're seeing a lot of demand for that. And we have we definitely are have record sales still continue to the Red Hat swag and we're really generous about giving it away. So we want to make sure people stay branded that they still have that connection to Red Hat and that it's tangible. But yes, you're right. We miss that immersive experience seeing red hats everywhere. That's for sure. All right. So, Lee, we've talked so much about the changes that have happened in the industry. What one of the challenges always is you get known for a thing. So, you know, Red Hat is, you know, luckily in most corners of the world is known. It is known as a Linux company primarily. What are some of the things that you wish people knew about Red Hat that they might not if they don't know this is deeply as many of our customers do. I think one thing that that customers or listeners should know is that we have worked for the better part of 15 years building a hyper cloud portfolio. This isn't just a trendy thing that's happened over the last five years. It's been a long time in the works with with several acquisitions to help us grow that way and then several internal moves help us grow organically into that space. So we have been very intentional about the building of our hyper cloud portfolio. And I think over time it is really matured into the leading model. Of course, I'm partial, but this is this is what we talk about. And I think our value proposition is very unique and again, very neutral and supportive of other partners in the ecosystem. They're very, very central to customer success. All right. Well, Lee, your team and you, of course, have been quite busy the last two years. We've talked about some of the challenges we've been faced. Well, one of her I could talk about, you know, on the home front for yourself. So you don't have to travel as much. There's mostly not commuting. Have you picked up any hobbies? Are there any activities that you've either re-engaged with or picked up over the last two years? Yes, that's been interesting. Not being not having to travel all the time is definitely a big change in my life for sure. So I guess I cook a lot more. I cook almost every day. I love to cook all different cuisines. I also exercise more. So you have to balance the cooking and the eating with the exercising. But I do think that that has actually provided a much healthier balance in my life to be able to have those things happen every single day and not just sporadically when I'm not traveling. Yeah. Any favorite cuisine or favorite dish that you've especially had as a go-to? Oh, geez. So my son loves my sesame chicken. But I also like to do some Italian dishes like chicken Milanese or chicken Marsala, those types of things. But and we also love some enchiladas. So we're all over the place. Everything. And as you said, balancing out. So the exercise, like, you know, I've mentioned on the program, actually, when I joined Red Hat, I picked up a Peloton because since I'm not traveling, I'm not leaving the house. It was something I got on. I love there's actually a Red Hat hashtag on Peloton. There's a few friends that I have throughout the company that, you know, we track each other and, you know, watch what's going on. Yeah. That's, you know, I don't have a Peloton, but I've been wanting one. So you're now starting to convince me that I need to have one. Yeah. The good news is, is now they are readily available as, you know, as opposed to when I got them, there was a bit of a wait. This has been a great conversation. Let you leave you with the final word here. What do you want people to have as a final takeaway of Red Hat 2022 in the clouds? Well, Red Hat's evolving. We're different. We're going into new spaces like cloud services. We're working more closely with the likes of AWS and Azure, and we're making sure that, again, that we know about customers enough to make them successful. And to help them with their challenges. And we're using data for good in that sense. But it's an exciting time for marketing. We are more technical than ever. We're builders. And it is just, I can't wait to see what's next for us. All right. Well, Lee Day, thank you so much for joining us. Definitely looking forward to lots of good activities going on in 2022. Your team, of course, helping us, you know, reach the markets and what we're doing there. So thank you for joining us on your journey in the cloud. I'm Stu Miniman, and we will see you next time.