With AI’s ability to augment in-house creative teams, how does that change the way organizations should approach both their creative strategies and how they evaluate the value of creative as a business function?
Today, we’re joined by Jen Rapp, Chief Marketing Officer at Superside. Jen has had key roles at iconic brands like Patagonia, Arc’teryx, DoorDash, Owlet Baby, and Klaviyo. Now, she’s leading Superside’s rebrand with a focus on AI-powered creative services that augment in-house teams.
Resources
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Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom:
With AI’s ability to augment in-house creative teams, how does that change the way organizations should approach both their creative strategies and how they evaluate the value of creative as a business function? Today, we’re joined by Jen Rapp, Chief Marketing Officer at SuperSide. Jen has had key roles at iconic brands like Patagonia, Arcteryx, DoorDash, Owlet Baby, and Clavio. Now she’s leading SuperSide’s rebrand with a focus on AI-powered creative services that augment in-house teams. Jen, welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Definitely, definitely a topic top of mind for a lot of people. Before we dive in, why don’t we get started with you telling us a little bit more about your background and your current role at Superside?
Jen Rapp: Absolutely. So I kind of have an unconventional background for the traditional tech CMO these days. And I started my career as a rock climber back 20 years ago and got a job as a copywriter for a rock climbing company called Black Diamond Equipment. And I kind of worked my way through college as a copywriter, which was really like a real person’s job in college.
Jen Rapp: Then I ended up after that going to Patagonia, which was founded by the same man, Yvon Chouinard, that founded Black Diamond Equipment. I spent a decade at Patagonia. That’s pretty unusual for someone with their first real job to spend 10 years somewhere. But there was a reason I stayed for a decade, and that’s because I learned so much about storytelling and brand building and communications and how to take stories that maybe the public isn’t necessarily ready for. Like back then at Patagonia, it was about environmentalism and using business as a force for good. That was all super new back then. That was not like the common place as it is today. But I spent 10 years there learning how to tell stories in a way that reflected the founder’s vision, but maybe the market wasn’t ready for, and learning how to make them more commercial, and learning how to tell those stories in a way that would appeal to our audience. And after Patagonia, I went to Tom’s Shoes, learned a little bit about speed there and scale that Patagonia didn’t have, worked for Arc’teryx, a really well-known outdoor apparel company very similar to Patagonia, and then I reached a juncture in my career where I was like, okay, I’ve got all these tech recruiters calling me for some reason, but I’m not tech. Like my parents were tech. I’m from Silicon Valley. They were like, my dad was a NASA engineer. Mom was an engineer. And I was like, tech is not cool. Like Patagonia is cool. So I had all these tech recruiters calling me or I could have gone on to like become the CMO of North Face or a brand that like really like was in my lane and decided to make the jump to technology. And my first big job in technology was VP of marketing for DoorDash at a time when DoorDash was not known like it is today. This is pre-pandemic stuff. And that really taught me a ton about performance and performance marketing and data and analytics. And I was introduced to this whole new world of building a brand, but under the microscope of today’s marketing demands. And I’ve stayed in technology and technology marketing because I love it. And because I love that it combines like left brain with right brain and decided to take a role at Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a marketing automation company. A lot of people compared us to like MailChimp when I joined, but got to take the company public. Like that is a marketer’s dream and a communication person’s dream is to like live that IPO and live that moment. Again, really got to use a lot of the left brain in terms of analytics and marketing as we built that brand and IPO’d. And now I’m here at Superside. And I’m here at Superside. We are, for those that don’t know, Superside is a company that is basically built to be your creative team’s creative team. Every creative team faces massive bandwidth challenges today. Anyone that’s, any of your listeners that runs a brand team probably manages a creative team as well. And they know that that creative team is always deeply underwater and they can be the blocker. They can be the bottleneck and Supersight eliminates all of that. So our biggest customers are like the Googles, Metas, Intuits of the world, that like technology companies that need to solve creative bandwidth issues. And so here in CMO, I’m very lucky to be and get to work with an incredible team of people that are helping to solve this like very real marketing problem.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, wonderful. So yeah, I think you might be the first CMO I’ve interviewed that started out as a rock climber. So I think that’s a dubious distinction here. So yeah, let’s dive in here. And as I mentioned at the top of the show, you’re leading Superside through a rebranding and with AI at the center. Can you talk a little bit about the strategy behind the shift and how you’re seeing AI augmenting that creative process?
Jen Rapp: Yeah, well, we as a business, much like every creative in the world today, realized there was a juncture between like embracing AI and using it for efficiency purposes, for innovation purposes. And we kind of as a company had to choose like, are we embracing this or are we not? Are we staying on our path that’s sort of AI free? And we decided to go all in, like all in on AI. to bring the efficiencies and the speed and the creative wonderment that can come when you truly embrace AI as a marketing team. And so we decided to up-level and train all of our 500 creatives globally on AI. so that they knew how to use the latest and greatest tools and programs. We decided as a brand, we were going to commit to offering those efficiencies to our customers. Our rebrand very much celebrates the use of AI, shows people how they can use AI, And it really puts AI at the forefront of everything that we’re doing. And so it was really a, it was a moment of the company’s history where it was like, all right, we can either like get on board or we can potentially be left behind. And I think a lot of marketing teams are feeling that same stress and pressure. And our hope is like, we can be everybody’s creative team’s shortcut to AI. We can, in a flash, bring your marketing team into the AI age because we’ve done all the hard work. It’s a lot of effort to upscale your marketing team and your designers and your web UX people on how to use the latest and greatest AI tools, but we kind of did that legwork for you so that it can be an immediate transition for you.
Greg Kihlstrom: So from a market perception standpoint, certainly, you know, I talk with a lot of people, I’ve talked with a lot of creatives that love the promise of AI and, you know, wow, all of a sudden I get to do what I really want to do, which is be super creative, but not do kind of the repetitive stuff and all that. There’s certainly others that feel differently and maybe I’m an optimist when it comes to this stuff, so I try to look on the positive part of this. Others don’t see it quite so positively, let’s be honest, right now. How do you see that perception overall of AI-powered creative services evolving over the next few years?
Jen Rapp: Yeah, we see that the same. We see the same thing. We see some of our biggest customers are a little AI hesitant. And frankly, we built it into our product so that you can literally click a button that says AI enabled or not.
Jen Rapp: And so that customers that may not be ready to embrace it have the easy opt-out. And that’s because of that market perception. And it’s not just a perception, it’s a legal issue. And there are companies that are very much concerned about future legal implications, like of using imagery that’s not copyrighted or using marketing assets that just simply cannot be copyrighted because you can’t copyright AI. And so, What we’re seeing is a blend of marketers that some of them are still way over here, kind of hindered back by their legal teams or regulations or regulatory concerns. And then there’s others that are just like, you know what, the market is going to figure this out. Let’s get on board and not be left behind. And it was really interesting. I was at a dinner of CMOs and creative leaders in London about a month and a half ago. And our whole conversation was, We brought us all together to talk about AI and marketing and creative, and it immediately veered into that legal concern, regulatory concern, and it was so cool. I think it was one of the big CMOs at the table basically spoke up and was like, hey guys, I get that we’re on this regulation topic, and you know what, we could spend three hours worrying about it and getting nowhere, why don’t we stop talking about that? And let’s start talking about the opportunity that AI brings to all of us as creative leaders. And that was such a cool moment to see like, hey, we get this, we get there’s concerns, but let’s focus on the positive, like you said, and let’s focus on the creative doors this opens and the efficiency gains that it can bring to all of our teams. And I think that’s what we’re seeing in the market like everywhere right now.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. I mean, I think, you know, those things need to get solved, but they’re I believe they’re getting solved and stuff. But yeah, it’s it’s really there’s I think the gap between the leaders and the laggards is only going to widen over the next few years as far as being able to adopt this stuff. And, you know, sometimes you kind of just have to trust the process of the the regulatory, it’s like with the whole cookie apocalypse and third party and first party. At the end of the day, some of that didn’t shake out exactly like the worst case scenarios, but I think it helped everyone to think about how they treated consumer data with respect and as good stewards of the data. So no downsides, in other words, in doing this, but solely focusing on the downside doesn’t actually help anyone.
Jen Rapp: No, no. And frankly, it’s probably not gonna be the creative leaders that are solving that problem. That’s gonna happen probably at the government and state regulation level, and they’re gonna go fight it. Let Elon fight that. And Sam Altman. Let’s let them fight that battle, and let’s focus on how we can further our craft with AI, rather than worrying about the legal side. As marketers, we’re not good at the legal and regulations. We’re good at creativity.
Greg Kihlstrom: That’s why there’s lawyers, right? So yeah, I’d like to switch gears a little bit here and talk, you know, we talked a little bit about your diverse experience and wanted to talk about another aspect of that, which is, you know, selling products versus selling services. And, you know, you’ve worked with brands like Patagonia, as we mentioned, also working with a service-based company like Superside. How, in your experience, have the marketing approaches differed and, you know, how do you look at the differences there?
Jen Rapp: It’s funny, this might not be the answer that you or listeners would want to hear, but they’re very similar. And trying to take a different approach would actually be a mistake. Products, like whether it’s a service or a concrete product, they exist to solve a problem. They exist to solve a customer’s problem. So like a coat at Patagonia is solving the problem of keeping someone warm and dry. DoorDash is solving the problem of getting food on someone’s table. Superside, we solve the problem of creative bandwidth. And the way to sell a problem is through emotion. And I think B2B marketing and service marketing is really catching up to this and realizing, look, we’re selling a solution to a problem. And even if we’re selling B2B, much like we are today, the end consumer is still a person. and they are still living with real life stresses and we are selling something that solves that problem. I’ve always found whether it’s Klaviyo or DoorDash or SuperSide where you’re not selling a tangible product that’s in your hand, tapping into the emotion of your end consumer always wins. Same thing, it’s a reason that Patagonia and Arc’teryx and outdoor brands and Nike, they sell an aspiration. It’s aspirational marketing. We might be marketing a jacket and showing you a picture of a guy on the side of Everest and you’re like, that’s really cool. But it’s the guy that’s living in New York City that’s actually gonna buy that jacket. He’s not climbing Everest, he’s walking down the street. And it’s very much the same thing. No matter who you’re speaking to, aspirational and emotional marketing always wins.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. And I guess that that’s another aspect too, is that you’ve done, you know, B2C and you’ve done B2B in addition to product and service. And, you know, so I guess you touch on the, the aspirational piece. I think a big part of that can also be the storytelling component. And obviously storytelling looks different if you’re talking about Patagonia versus Klaviyo, but how do you look at storytelling and, you know, in a, in marketing a service like Superside?
Jen Rapp: The beauty of Superside is we can still tell very visual and evocative stories through video, through case studies, through really showing the problems that we’re solving for some of the world’s best brands. So we might create a product video at Patagonia that shows a really cool sponsored climber going and doing something rad. Well, I’m going to, at Superside, tell the story of one of the world’s best marketers at Google who was drowning because they couldn’t get all their performance marketing assets made and how we helped them solve that problem. It’s still aspirational marketing. It’s still telling a story. It’s still telling like a story of solving someone’s problem. And again, I think like there’s ways to do that across B2B and across services that still really resonates with the human being. You’re still selling to that human being.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So I want to talk about one last topic here, and that’s creative as a business function. And this is something that you’ve talked about before. And I, having been, you know, I’ve managed creative teams, I’ve done that, like I’ve seen kind of the, kind of it being misunderstood in business. And I think I’d love for you to talk a little bit about, you know, why is why is creative kind of treated differently in some cases? Or maybe why are some people not thinking of it as as the business function that it is?
Jen Rapp: I think because in the past it was almost like an afterthought and we were so focused on the strategy and the targeting and these new tools that were so incredibly helpful to marketers like Facebook, like LinkedIn, like new, like CTV linear and all these new tools. We got so focused on the how we kind of lost focused on the what, like the what you were putting in front of people. And Now all of those tools are sort of table stakes. Everyone has access to Facebook. Everyone has access to all of the, like, how we’re doing it. And we’ve been talking a lot with, like, CMOs across the world, and they’re all saying, look, creative is the new targeting. It used to be, like, the optimizing of the targeting, like, the only way we really can sell a differentiated story today is through our creative. And holy cow, we’re late to the game. and we got to get the creative director a seat at the leadership table. And we’re starting to see it shifting. And one like concrete example of this that maybe your listeners would appreciate is like over the last two weeks, my team really saw like a dip in pipeline generation. We saw like lower leads coming in and we were all like, what is going on? So we dug in to every channel, to every issue, every targeting, every campaign. And one of our team members said, you guys, you know, we’ve been really busy with this rebrand. And we actually like haven’t put out fresh creative on our paid channels in a while. Whereas normally we just have like this incredible hamster wheel of creative going out the door. You’ve probably seen our ads. They’re hilarious. They’re great. But we kind of put the brakes on that. And he was like, I think we’re blowing it without a fresh creative. What’d we do? Created new ads. Within one day we saw the performance coming back up.
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
Jen Rapp: with just fresh creative, with a renewed CTA. Ad fatigue is real and really strong creative is also very real. And I would just encourage your whole audience to place an emphasis on creative. You know, just yesterday, me and the founder of SuperSight were talking. He was like, Jen, we’re going to win this game on creative, not on our targeting strategies. Remember that in everything that you do. And it was like such a good reminder that creative needs that seat at the table.
Greg Kihlstrom: So yeah, I mean, given that and given, you know, everybody’s continually being asked to do more with less and marketing leaders are certainly not strangers to those requests either. What role can marketing leaders play in ensuring that creativity is seen as, you know, as important as you’re saying it is?
Jen Rapp: I think bring that narrative to the leadership team and actually show them. Like I think it’s a show not tell exercise at times on behalf of the CMO, like to come to, you know, whether it’s the QBR or the weekly business review, like show the creative that is performing really well and show the creative that doesn’t. Like I think interjecting creative into the conversations is something that just hasn’t happened It will help the CMO’s budget. It will help their ability to get more great creative made. But it’s kind of on us to raise that topic and show that as another almost like growth channel, creative as a growth channel, rather than just like Facebook as a growth channel.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. So what about You know, with AI being part of the equation now with creative, how do you see that influencing how creative output is evaluated, optimized? What does that look like?
Jen Rapp: Yeah, I think AI is a shortcut and like equivalent of efficiency. And every CMO, every marketer is being asked right now to be more efficient. And I think really emphasizing that, to your finance team, to all of your stakeholders, that AI is our shortcut to efficiency. It allows us to do more with less. It’s free or it’s cheap. It allows us to iterate faster. And the modern CMO, about 20% of their budget is dedicated to innovation. And AI is another way to focus on innovation and use some of that budget to upskill your team or bring in a partner like SuperSide so that you don’t have to upskill your own team. Like, that is a really great way to push forward your efficiency narrative. Yeah.
Greg Kihlstrom: And in addition to that, I mean, are there, do you see AI enabling other things as well, like, you know, enabling new kinds of creative work? I mean, you know, new I don’t know, new channels, new opportunities there. Where do you see some of the AI-powered creative services that a company like SuperSight offers heading in the next few years?
Jen Rapp: It’s a good question. Right now, we’re really seeing AI being used at the briefing and the ideation phase. And that, I’m seeing that even more than like new channels. I’m seeing that AI basically like compounds on human creativity and it allows your team to be more creative so that what is you’re putting into the market performs better. And so our team is able to today like take small ideas that would have taken forever to storyboard or to craft scripts for, and AI does it for you in a flash. Like, you can literally prompt AI to create storyboards for you so that my team can bring six ideas for a video and put them in front of me. And as a marketing leader, I can look and say like, yes, no, yes, no, like way faster. And your team just ultimately becomes so much more efficient and thus creative with the use of AI. I also think it’s going to do exactly what we all predict it can do, and that’s allow for faster iterating, more renditions of high-performing creative, just allowing you to go so much deeper into your testing and your iteration without the need to tap into human capital. AI can do that for you.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, love it. Well, Jen, thanks so much for joining today. It’s been great talking with you. I’ve got one last question before we wrap up here. I’d like to ask this to everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Jen Rapp: Good question. I’m a mom of five. I have four dogs. I have a horse. The way I stay agile in my career is by getting outside and taking care of myself. Taking care, like feeding myself in a way that like keeps me healthy and allows me to continue to be creative. As a marketer, we manage people. It’s our job to keep them motivated. to keep your team motivated, you have to stay motivated. So I very much like invest in myself and I do that in the outdoors.
