We recently caught up with Paul Molinari, Director of Brand Marketing at Immuta and asked a few questions to capture his POV on creativity, authenticity, and marketing modern software. Earlier in 2022 we worked with Paul and his team to produce a suite of videos and bumpers supporting Immuta’s “Make it So” campaign. Below are some notes from our wide-ranging conversation.
Isovera
You are a brand, content, and marketing pro leading a team that markets a very sophisticated SaaS. Can you just give us a brief overview of the relationship between development and marketing? What’s the creative hinge between those two disciplines?
Paul Molinari
Well, both disciplines are certainly rooted in creativity. Development is trying to create innovative products, while marketing is trying to create innovative ways to promote those products. So, there’s definitely a kinship between the two. Our product marketing team is plugged into product development to ensure we’re informing them what the market needs are, which features to consider, and how we remain ahead of the competition.
Isovera
Software development is iterative—it may in fact be thought of as a continuum. How do you keep the marketing creative momentum going throughout the cycles? How do you keep your team jazzed?
Paul Molinari
Working in marketing is a lot like working at the post office. The mail never stops— well, neither does content creation! It just keeps on moving. For us, there’s always a better, more impactful way to deliver good stories to an audience. It’s our job to keep the content quality up, and the brand fresh. We’re always talking, ideating, and saying “well, what if?”
Isovera
For marketing to be effective, it must emerge as an authentic expression of an organization’s brand identity and promise. How do you prepare your team to fulfill that mandate while baking the branding into every aspect of a strategic marketing campaign?
Paul Molinari
You can’t overemphasize how important it is to have a messaging matrix or framework that can serve not just the marketing team, but the whole company. Everyone must be on the same page when it comes to brand messaging. Your framework needs to not only state your brand promises, but also include proof-points for each promise pillar. And, you should include your user personas, too, and include descriptors for what capabilities each persona is looking for from a use case perspective, how they engage with your brand, and how your brand helps them succeed.
Isovera
We worked with you on a campaign that included a series of very cool videos and social media bumpers. We loved the process and the results. What insights do you have when it comes with working with partners like Isovera? How do you stoke creativity while ensuring that the work results in high-value collateral that is on brand and cuts through the digital noise?
Paul Molinari
It was a lot of fun working with you guys. The campaign has been extremely successful! When you’re working with an agency, the first thing you have to come to grips with is that they’re not going to understand everything there is to know about your brand and value proposition. The discovery step is critical to the process. So, taking the time to explain details can’t be underestimated because educating your agency will pay dividends with the final deliverables. Once you start to go deep on brand value, you can start to see the wheels turning in their heads. The team starts asking questions like, “well, what if?”
Isovera
Immuta is solving very urgent problems and has the potential to create enormous value for users. To get people to understand this value, you have to engage in very high-level storytelling. Can you share insights about just what it takes to tell a complex story in terms that are simple enough for your prospects to understand?
Paul Molinari
Our CMO at Immuta, Michele Chambers, gave the team a book a few months ago that really resonated with me, called, “Winning the Story Wars” by Jonah Sachs published by The Harvard Business Review. There are amazing insights in there that frame how you place your prospect as the hero of your brand’s story. Your brand merely activates your hero’s journey and places them on a path toward overcoming their challenges. I highly recommend every brand marketer read this book. Lot’s of “ah ha!” storytelling moments—and remarkably human.
Isovera
Any best practices you can share around how you decide which collateral format—video, website, audio, print—is best for expressing targeted messages?
Paul Molinari
Work with your sales and client services team to best determine the collateral format your customer or prospect will most appreciate. If that isn’t an option, go with streaming video, as it’s almost always the most desired format. And don’t forget those closed captions so the message’s value is there even with the sound off.
Isovera
What makes video so desirable?
Paul Molinari
Long-form writing is almost always best because that format allows for the expression of deep and nuanced thought. But people have to read writing before they can access the ideas it offers–and reading takes effort. With video you can open people up to an idea very quickly if you have a good story to tell. Production values don’t even need to be high if the story is compelling. Sometimes raw is even better. I know I’m going back a few years, but Star Wars, for example, didn’t rocket into movie franchise history because its special effects were mindblowing. It keeps topping the charts because its story is archetypal and really grips people and leaves them wanting more.
Isovera
We live and work in a fast-moving world. What are the new trends emerging around brand and marketing? Do any excite you or offer new opportunities? Are any vapid and transitory?
Paul Molinari
Personally, I’m really excited about “gifting” strategies. Brand merch or swag can be really potent stuff if your campaigns are orchestrated with care. With more people working from home, cutting through with “surprise and delight” brand swag can be a real win for securing demos or just saying ‘thank you.’ The key is designing a program that ties the chosen gift swag back to the brand value and keeps the recipient engaged and wanting more from you.
Isovera
Let’s talk about music. You’re a guitarist. Does your experience playing music influence your work at Immuta? If so, how?
Paul Molinari
Music is an incredibly creative outlet for me. Improvising and creating harmonies really takes me to a place where I can lose myself. As marketers, our job is to be creative, to find new, fresh angles. Improvising on the guitar lets me use a different vocabulary to explore in a creative place with few boundaries. It gets you thinking outside of a box.
Isovera
What else has been on your mind lately?
Paul Molinari
I’ve been thinking about whether the distinctions between B2B and B2C businesses are still relevant, or whether those boundaries have completely eroded. Buyer behavior now seems remarkably the same in both cases–searches start online and through a very similar vetting process lead to point of purchase. B2C businesses seek validation through positive reviews while B2B businesses call them customer testimonials. And whether they’re buying a pair of jeans or subscribing to a new SaaS, everyone wants to feel good about their decisions. So maybe we’ve reached a point where we don’t need B2B or B2C specialists.
Along those lines, I’ve been thinking that being called a “generalist” is just about the greatest compliment you could ever give to a marketer. We do need specialists, but generalists bring a particular way of looking at all the variables and assimilating information in really useful, creative ways.
Read more about Immuta and Paul Molinari.
