Get Off the Treadmill: Make Space for Creativity

05/13/25 • 43 min

This episode features an interview with Alison Lange Engel, CEO of Ceros, a company that provides tools and services that empower companies to create interactive content with unparalleled ease and efficiency, driving customer engagement.

In this episode, Alison discusses the power of interactive content and how to differentiate your brand amidst increasing noise. She and Ian dive into the importance of being unique and how creativity is a competitive advantage.

Key Takeaways:

Creativity is a competitive advantage, even more so as copying assets gets easier with AI. CMOs need to get their teams off the treadmill and make space for creativity, inspiration and ideation.
The sea of sameness is real, especially in B2B, and the world continues to get noisier. You have to disrupt and have conviction behind your big bets; check box marketing won’t cut it anymore.
Originality is as important as ever, but teams have to find ways to do more with less and won’t succeed if they are only trying to differentiate themselves through words, tone, or processes.

Quote:

You're going to miss the opportunity to differentiate and tell a unique story, right, if you have your team on a treadmill constantly. And that's how most people feel. But, as a leader, you've got to create space for it and find inspiration. Encourage your team to bring ideas. We would bring magazine clips in. People would bring in their pets. People brought in old, you know, pictures, family mementos, what matters to them. You've gotta get to the heart and soul of what you're trying to do to kind of unlock your team and have your company, you know, feel fresh, feel modern, and have people take risks, right? Great companies take risks and you have to kind of create that environment to do that. The brands that don't, are in trouble and the brands that do are the ones that win.

Episode Timestamps:

*(05:50) The Trust Tree: Experiences over static content

*(25:36) The ROI of creativity

*(36:29) Advice for CMOs on creativity and boldness

Sponsor:

Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com. Qualified helps you turn your website into a pipeline generation machine with PipelineAI. Engage and convert your most valuable website visitors with live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, intent data, and Piper, your AI SDR. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.

Links:

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
Connect with Alison on LinkedIn
Learn more about Ceros
Learn more about Caspian Studios

Key Takeaways:

Creativity is a competitive advantage, even more so as copying assets gets easier with AI. CMOs need to get their teams off the treadmill and make space for creativity, inspiration and ideation.
The sea of sameness is real, especially in B2B, and the world continues to get noisier. You have to disrupt and have conviction behind your big bets; check box marketing won’t cut it anymore.
Originality is as important as ever, but teams have to find ways to do more with less and won’t succeed if they are only trying to differentiate themselves through words, tone, or processes.

Quote:

You're going to miss the opportunity to differentiate and tell a unique story, right, if you have your team on a treadmill constantly. And that's how most people feel. But, as a leader, you've got to create space for it and find inspiration. Encourage your team to bring ideas. We would bring magazine clips in. People would bring in their pets. People brought in old, you know, pictures, family mementos, what matters to them. You've gotta get to the heart and soul of what you're trying to do to kind of unlock your team and have your company, you know, feel fresh, feel modern, and have people take risks, right? Great companies take risks and you have to kind of create that environment to do that. The brands that don't, are in trouble and the brands that do are the ones that win.

Episode Timestamps:

*(05:50) The Trust Tree: Experiences over static content

*(25:36) The ROI of creativity

*(36:29) Advice for CMOs on creativity and boldness

Sponsor:

Links:

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn
Connect with Alison on LinkedIn
Learn more about Ceros
Learn more about Caspian Studios

Previous Episode

Driving Qualified Pipeline Through Meta

This episode features an interview with Jen Rapp, CMO at Superside, an AI-powered creative service, trusted by 500+ top brands. Jen has over 20 years of experience developing and executing marketing strategies for high-growth companies, with a particular focus on working alongside entrepreneurial leaders to scale.

She discusses selling the vision and how doing good impacts marketing, sharing her lessons from her time at Patagonia and DoorDash. She also discusses winning on meta through quality creative and driving qualified leads through virtual summits.

Key Takeaways:

Don’t sleep on meta ads. If your ICP is on Instagram, those ads can be some of the cleanest and most effective ads to drive pipeline, especially if you have quality creative.
Virtual Summits, or essentially a stack of webinars, are a great way to get emails and drive pipeline if you are truly offering great content.
Sell the vision, not the product. A focus on features, instead of stories, is rarely the way to go.

Quote:

“ I would not have said this a year ago, when I first joined the company - number one is our meta, paid meta spend. I came to this company and I saw how much we were spending on Meta, and I was like, whoa, what the hell are these people doing? They're making mistakes left and right. Nope. We drive a majority, or a lot, I shouldn't say a majority, a lot of our qualified pipeline through our Meta spend. Our Meta spend also acts as our top of funnel awareness driver. When we turn off meta, we basically turn off the ability of our SDRs and our BDRs to convert people to SQLs. It is invaluable. So number one, my marketing team is like rallied around creating incredible creative for Meta.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(03:51) The Trust Tree: Making sure customers have confidence in you

*(12:12) The Playbook: The power of Meta ads

*(33:10) The Dust Up: Standing up to brilliant founders

*(41:01) Quick Hits: Jen’s Quick Hits

Sponsor:

Links:

Next Episode

Not Taking Risks is Risky

This episode features an interview with Armen Najarian, CMO at Sift, an AI-powered fraud platform delivering identity trust for leading global businesses.
Armen has 10 years of experience as a CMO across a variety of fraud prevention, digital identity, and cybersecurity organizations. He discusses how word of mouth and a strong brand has allowed them to become a leader in their space and also gives insight into Sift’s top source for demand generation.

Key Takeaways:

It is riskier not to take risks. Marketers need to be willing to try something unconventional. If it fails, the world goes on.
Giving your customers access to your data, if it answers important questions for them, can be a key driver of demand.
Understand what your customers are curious about and what questions they are asking. If you can find a way to provide answers, the ROI will be significant.

Quote:

”Those that aren't taking risks are the ones taking risks, is the way I would look at this. Like we have to take risks -you know, it's gotten so noisy and some of the tried and true tactics like organic search, right, which is completely flipped on its head right now. Every CMO has a responsibility, anyone in marketing really, has a responsibility to really rethink the logic for what they're doing and take some risks.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(02:29) The Trust Tree: 10 years of CMO experience

*(09:19) The Playbook: Answering your customers biggest questions

*(38:24) The Dust Up: To create a category or not

*(42:32) Quick Hits: Armen’s quick hits

Sponsor:

Links: