CMO-CPO Collaboration: Bridge Marketing and Product for collaborative growth (podcast episode #95)

04/18/24 • 64 min

One of my favorite career analogies is the music video for No Rain, by Blind Melon.

There’s a girl in a honeybee costume, dancing around, and she’s so sad because no one seems to care or understand.
And then one day, she comes across this field filled with people in honeybee costumes hopping and leaping around. A look of elation crosses her face, and she joins them to dance her best dance.

Are marketing careers really that different? As my next guest puts it – ‘find the place where you thrive.’

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Tifenn Dano Kwan, CMO, Amplitude (https://amplitude.com/).

Amplitude is a public company traded on Nasdaq. Its annual recurring revenue in 2023 was $281 million, up 10% year-over-year. Dano Kwan manages a team of 60 and a budget of $30 million.

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Here are some lessons from Dano Kwan that emerged in our discussion.

Lead with empathy
Find the place where you thrive
Become a natural collaborator
Branding shapes success for companies and leaders
Empowerment and accountability cultivate leadership at every level
Bridge Marketing and Product for collaborative growth

Discussed in this episode

Empathy Marketing: 3 examples of empathetic marketing in action (with results) https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/empathy-marketing)

How the Pandemic Inspired Brands to Rethink their Marketing Strategy: 3 quick case studies (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/pandemic-brands-rethink-marketing-strategy-case-studies)

Spontaneous Combustible Collaboration: Most important things in any company are people, people, people, market, and product (Podcast Episode #9) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/people-podcast)

Personal Development in Career: Step out of your comfort zone (podcast episode #73) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/personal-development)

Marketing: It’s not about you, and when you make it about you, you are never going to succeed (podcast episode #53) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/marketing-not-about-you)

This article is distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters). Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes like this one.

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One of my favorite career analogies is the music video for No Rain, by Blind Melon.

Are marketing careers really that different? As my next guest puts it – ‘find the place where you thrive.’

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Tifenn Dano Kwan, CMO, Amplitude (https://amplitude.com/).

Amplitude is a public company traded on Nasdaq. Its annual recurring revenue in 2023 was $281 million, up 10% year-over-year. Dano Kwan manages a team of 60 and a budget of $30 million.

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Here are some lessons from Dano Kwan that emerged in our discussion.

Lead with empathy
Find the place where you thrive
Become a natural collaborator
Branding shapes success for companies and leaders
Empowerment and accountability cultivate leadership at every level
Bridge Marketing and Product for collaborative growth

Discussed in this episode

Empathy Marketing: 3 examples of empathetic marketing in action (with results) https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/empathy-marketing)

How the Pandemic Inspired Brands to Rethink their Marketing Strategy: 3 quick case studies (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/pandemic-brands-rethink-marketing-strategy-case-studies)

Personal Development in Career: Step out of your comfort zone (podcast episode #73) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/personal-development)

Marketing: It’s not about you, and when you make it about you, you are never going to succeed (podcast episode #53) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/marketing-not-about-you)

This article is distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters). Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes like this one.

Previous Episode

Entrepreneur’s Resilience: From zero to 112,000 YouTube subscribers (episode #94)

Whatever it is you’re working on and struggling with, don’t pivot too soon. Make sure you give it enough time to work.

For as this episode’s guest explains – resilience pays out.

Frank Spitzer, CEO, Pelecanus, shares the story of how he grew his company’s YouTube channel from zero to 100,000 subscribes, along with many more lesson-filled stories.

Pelecanus has $250,000 in annual revenue. Spitzer manages a team of four employees, along with four freelancers and interns.

Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketing

Here are some lessons from Spitzer that emerged in our discussion.

Taking responsibility leads to rewards
Resilience Pays Out: From zero to 112,000 subscribers
Embracing honesty can lead to deeper connections, personal growth, and inner peace
Dedication shapes an entrepreneurial journey
To Achieve Success: Hard work trumps natural talent
A good leader stands up for their team

Discussed in this episode

Get even more ideas from this episode by using the Analysts – Video Transcript expert assistant in MECLABS AI (https://meclabsai.com/). It’s totally FREE to use (for now). (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).
Female Entrepreneurship and Marketing: Having built a big community doesn't mean you will be able to monetize it (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/entrepreneurship)

PR, Writing, and Marketing Agency Corporate Culture: Think big (podcast episode #49) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/PR)

Marketing Leadership: Aligning the entire team around the unifying vision is an integral part of project management (https://marketingexperiments.com/leadership/aligning-team-around-unifying-vision)

Dive deeper into the minds of marketing mavens with more episodes of 'How I Made It In Marketing.' (https://marketingsherpa.com/podcast) Your next big idea awaits.

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This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages (https://meclabs.com/course/) free digital marketing course.

Next Episode

Strategic Delegation: Time is your most precious asset (episode #96)

Wherever you are in your career today, you are not necessarily stuck there. I’ve heard time again from guests on How I Made It In Marketing about how they’ve been able to make dramatic, perhaps unlikely career shifts.

On the flip side, if you are a hiring manager, do not pigeonhole potential recruits based only on their current experience.

For as my latest guest puts it, ‘look past the CV.’ Hear the story behind how he learned that lesson in his career, along with many more lesson-filled stories, from Tomer Zuker, VP of Marketing, D-ID (https://www.d-id.com/).

D-ID has raised $47 million overall, including $25 million in a Series B round of funding led by Macquarie Capital two years ago. Zuker manages a team of 10 marketers, in addition to freelancers and agencies.

Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketing

Here are some lessons from Zuker that emerged in our discussion.

Look past the CV
Delegate
Understand the rules of the game and set your own boundaries according to your values
Time is your most precious asset
Without clear and identifiable goals, you don’t know if you are effective, improving, or contributing
Networking is a talent and skill

Discussed in this episode

Copywriting for Marketing Leaders: Why you should never delegate the marketing message (and how to get it right) (https://marketingexperiments.com/copywriting-2/copywriting-for-marketing-leaders-dont-delegate-the-message)

Marketing Career: How to become an indispensable asset to your company (even in a bad economy) (https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/marketing-career)

Marketing Research Chart: What are your peers' top email marketing goals? (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/seo-campaigns-in-house)
Get even more ideas from this episode by using the Analysts – Video Transcript expert assistant in MeclabsAI (https://meclabsai.com/). It’s totally FREE to use, for now. (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).

Get more episodes

This article is distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters). Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes like this one.

For more insights, check out...

How I Made it in Marketing - CMO-CPO Collaboration: Bridge Marketing and Product for collaborative growth (podcast episode #95)

Transcript

Tiffen Dano Kwan: And you'd be surprised how effective this can be when you take action immediately and solve the problem with the customer and become a trooper. So I love to do that. I love to go and see customers on a regular basis, to seek their input and and do everything I can to continue to deliver value.

Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing from Marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just tr