Sustainable Marketing: Take the time to understand your target audience deeply and your value proposition (episode #104)

Who is your ideal customer? And how does your brand serve them?

Yes, I know you have KPIs to hit this quarter. Leads. Sales. A specific revenue target. And so it can be easy to quickly drill down to targets.

But all marketing beings by asking… who is the ideal customer? And how does our brand serve them?

So I loved a lesson I recently read in a podcast guest application – ‘Take the time to understand your target audience deeply and your value proposition.’

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories from throughout her career, I sat down with Kristen Stevens, Senior Marketing Manager for the US, at the Marine Stewardship Council. (https://www.msc.org/)

The Marine Stewardship Council is a nonprofit organization that was formed by the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever. It reported £32.73 million of total income in its most recent fiscal year ending in March 2023, which equates to roughly $41.3 million – 19% of the world's wild fisheries are engaged in the MSC program.

In 2023, Stevens oversaw 58 co-marketing campaigns for the MSC.

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

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

• Turn critical feedback into your strength / learn to thrive in ambiguity
• The importance of a 'hero' metric that you and team work toward
• Take the time to understand your target audience deeply and your value proposition
• Balance the lending and borrowing of trust and credibility in partnerships
• Present research with clear narrative arcs and actionable takeaways
• Structure feedback requests with specific lenses and pointed questions

Discussed in this episode

AI Quick Win Intensive – Get help building an artificial intelligence strategy that aligns with your brand’s value proposition. Join Flint McGlaughlin and the MeclabsAI team for an AI Quick Win Intensive (https://intensives.meclabsai.com/) from MarketingSherpa’s parent organization.

Data as Marketing Fertilizer: You can have piles and piles of data, but unless you know how to use the data correctly, it won’t get you very far (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/data)

Customer Value: The 4 essential levels of value propositions (https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/levels-of-value-propositions)

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...

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.

Apply to be a guest
If you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application

Transcript

Kristen Stevens: So we have different value propositions, for the consumer versus the fishery versus the, retail or brand partner that we're working with. But the one that I have, the more interesting story to, to share is the difference in how we, the value proposition, of the consumer from the, the between local value proposition material to the consumer versus our local, actually North America, US and Canada approach to engage the consumer.

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 trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz. Real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host. The senior Director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Bernstein, to tell you about today's guest.

Daniel Burstein: Who is your ideal customer and how does your brand serve them? Yes, I know you have KPIs to ahead. Every quarter leads sales, a specific revenue target, funds you need to raise, and so it can be easy to quickly drill down to those targets. But all marketing begins by asking who is the ideal customer and how does our brand serve them?

So I loved a lesson I recently read in a podcast guest application. Take the time to understand your target audience deeply and your value proposition. Here to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories, is Kristin Evans, the senior marketing manager for the US at the Marine Stewardship Council. Thanks for joining us, Kristin.

Kristen Stevens: Of course. Glad to be here.

Daniel Burstein: So let's take a quick look at Kristen's background. So you know who I'm talking to. She started her career as a photographer. She was a photography student intern at Nationwide Insurance, a contributing photographer to Edible Columbus, part of Edible Communities magazines, and a product and editorial commercial photographer at Zulily. Then she joined us in the marketing industry, where she was head of marketing for Kitchen Bowl.

And for the past eight years, she's been at Marine Stewardship Council, where she's now senior marketing manager for the U.S.. The Marine Stewardship Council is a nonprofit organization that was formed by the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever. It reported 32.73 million pounds of total income in its most recent fiscal year ending in March 2023, which equates to roughly $41.3 million.

19% of the world's wild fisheries are engaged in the MSC program. In 2023, Kristin oversaw 58 Co-Marketing campaigns. So, Kristin, give us a sense. What is your day like as Senior Marketing Manager for the US at MSC?

Kristen Stevens: Absolutely. So I am based in Seattle, Washington. So I start my day quite early because so much of our team is on the East Coast, my team on the east, as well as in London where our headquarters is. So early calls, but honestly, that's the way I like. It means I get to end early to and it's beautiful Seattle summers.

It's light until 930. but yeah, I start my day off with tea. I drop my daughter off at daycare in the morning. and then I'm always someone who sits down at my desk and does a quick survey of the day to understand, okay, what are some of the big things I absolutely have to accomplish, as well as what are some of those just quick wins?

that will just honestly make me feel good that, hey, I got something off the To-Do list. and I balance that with what are the calls for the day to try to figure out how to make that happen?

Daniel Burstein: I love the quick wins. Yeah, I want to come, like, there's the bigger project for me if I get this done today, boom. I've got that done. I felt like, okay, I started the day with an accomplishment. Get some momentum going. All right, let's take a look at some of the lessons from the things you've made in your career.

As I've said before, like I've never done anything else. I've never been an actuary or something like that or a podiatrist. But I feel like we get to make things. That's an exciting thing we do in marketing that I don't know that all industries get to do. You said your first lesson was turn critical feedback into your strength.

Learn to thrive in ambiguity. So tell us a story. How did you learn this lesson?

Kristen Stevens: So this was actually when I was still working in production or commercial photography. And my, manager at the time gave me the feedback that I didn't do well in ambiguous situations and the feedback was quite ambiguous. I didn't have anything really specific. And so it it stung pretty deep, and I just let it sit and simmer for honestly years, because I didn't quite know what to do with that feedback.

And I thought it was just a, you know, personality flower. Hey, I'm just somebody who needs more structure, somebody who needs more processes in place. fast forward to years later working at the MSI. I had you know, this was mostly in the back of my mind at this point, this feedback. but I was so quickly thrown into, some really big projects with, no roadmap before me.

So just to set some context, when I came to the MSI, I was hired to start their digital marketing program to, consumer marketing program. there was none before. and then very quickly, I was promoted to the lead the entire U.S program, and there was no consumer platform really to date. There were some few tests in the market, but nothing, no, really solid program.

So that me that truly building everything from scratch, from the ground up, using my past knowledge and experience. And, one example that I think is helpful to share is within was a couple months of being at the job. It was so soon into my job, I was currently on vacation. I got a call that said, hey, there's a person, who was leading a trip to Alaska, remote part of Alaska, to do, some filming for our 20th anniversary campaign.

They no longer can go, we would like you to do it. And also, they, you'll need to hire a production crew. you'll need to brief everybody. You'll need to, you know, work closely with our team in London to make sure that we're actually getting the deliverables we need for a successful campaign. and we, based on the fishing season, you're going to need to go there next week.

And so I, you know, last minute scramble to put this together, you know, went back to my, my kind of Rolodex, of contacts to understand who could I talk to because, again, there was no, you know, no, nothing really. no templates for me to go off of. fast forward to the project or the actual, post, campaign, and it was a success.

I was able to pull it together, a fantastic production crew together. Great assets that it was in 2017 that this was, 20. Yeah. 2017 that this was filmed. we still use a lot of these assets today of, of the fishermen of the fishing story. And, I reflected on this feedback that I was given about not being, good at managing ambiguous situations.

And I thought that was one of the most ambiguous situations. And I and I made something of it, and I can feel proud of it. So that's when I started to change my mind about that feedback. And I think maybe that's something I'm good at.

Daniel Burstein: I think it's a great way of taking feedback and trying to action it in a positive way. I mean, working in the marketing industry or probably any industry is like nonstop feedback. But let me ask you about that ambiguous situations. I feel like ambiguity should almost be in the job description of a digital marketer these days. So if you were, you mentioned you were throwing into that new situation how to get started.

I feel like a lot of our listeners are, you know, can get in that situation as well, sometimes with an overall brand, sometimes with a specific campaign. What are like the 2 or 3 things you first did or you would first do if thrown into an ambiguous situation to wrap your hands around things? Because one of the things I've seen change in my career as a marketer, you know, when I started, I started in the days of print and things were easier in the sense that like, okay, there were really only a few channels.

It was like, okay, I'm gonna have a print out and Wall Street Journal, we're going to have, you know, direct mail piece, and we're gonna have some TV and radio ads or something like that. Right. Fast forward to today. I mean, the channels are endless, and they keep exploding. And so that ambiguity of knowing like, okay, you need to start a digital marketing program.

Oh my gosh, it could be a billion different things. I remember interviewing, marketing Leader, I think it was at Optum. And she was one of our award winners at a marketing service summit. And she did this great campaign involving content marketing. And so I interviewed her. I was like, oh, great. Tell me about some of your other content marketing campaigns.

And she told me, actually, I had never done a content marketing campaign before, and she was a pretty experienced market. And I was like, wait a minute, then why did you do a content marketing campaign when you came in new here? And she said, because I looked at the challenges and the opportunities and that was the right thing to do and it was so impressive to me because I had seen so many times, and I might be a victim of this.

When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when you go into a new situation, it's like, okay, what did I do with the last program? So take us back to kind of that ambiguity. Kristen. And and what were the first 2 or 3 things you did or you would do going forward? If you're thrown into a similar situation?

Again?

Kristen Stevens: So two things. One of them was I wanted to understand the audience that we were working with. Who were we trying to connect with, not only what value, what value to them and what we offered them at VMC. but also what, what channels would they be most receptive? So, it's not just about a message, it's going to resonate, but where is it going to resonate?

So what media channels are they consuming? What headspace are they in when they're consuming the, consuming that content? And so one of the new things about the MSC, like the big goal, is raising awareness of the MSC Blue Fish label on seafood packaging. So that means, yes, while it can be valuable to and it is valuable to reach people in times of leisure, you know their scrolling on their lunch break or something through social media.

We also have to make sure that impact folks when they are closest to making a decision. So by the time they go to the grocery store, they remember to look for this sustainability label. and so I really understanding your audience deeply is what I did. I dove into all the available research that we had. and then also said, what else can we do?

Can we run some tests to understand them better? even just small, low budget tasks to get a sense of what, what's resonating and the feedback we get. and then the other big thing is what is this testing approach, which is, you know, you come into, a nonprofit, organization, like the MSC, there was, things just move at a slower pace.

And I had previously in my job came from a startup where, you know, you think of an idea on Monday, and by Friday you can launch it into into the world and see how it's performing and get this very real, very immediate feedback on what you're doing in this kind of learn, learn fast, fail fast mentality. and at the MSC, there just so many processes in place, that it often made it challenging to do that.

So, one of my tasks when I first came in is like, how can I encourage and work with our team and leadership to be more, open to just quick tests, just to get a sense of, how how the campaign might perform, to help us feel more confident when the big campaign launch comes. So, yeah, those are some of the things I take a look at now.

Daniel Burstein: It's great when you do. I like that when you don't know where to start. Start with the customer. And so if we're going to learn from the customer, like you said, I like you said not just a channel but the head space there. And that's something we forget sometimes. I was, coaching someone who does a real estate marketing.

They have emails for that they're sending out to realtors, and I was trying to get me there. I had these kind of complex email and complex setup, and I was trying to get them in the head space. It's like, wait a minute, where are the realtors reading these emails like me and you in her office right now looking at our computer, they're probably sitting in front of a house with their engine running, looking at their phone, waiting for their next customer to show up to our house.

They're flipping through. You got a few seconds of their time. They're not like reading this in outlook on a desktop and really thinking it through. but to get to those answers, I think about, you know, what do our customers want to get to answers regarding testing? A lot of times it means looking at some data, looking at some metrics.

Right. And you said, you talked about the importance of a hero metric that you and your team work toward. So how did you learn this idea of a hero metric?

Kristen Stevens: So in my my previous role, when I was leading marketing at a small startup, we were focusing on developing food and recipe apps that helped make cooking with the family and cooking at home easier. So lower barriers to, healthy eating and, family meals. And so we were constantly launching products, testing, trying. And that was when 1 in 1 way really great.

but we looked at we had so many metrics that we were tracking, and we were so eager to make product decisions when there wasn't really enough data to do so with confidence and with statistical significance. And so it was also just a challenging to when you start seeing conflicting, data as well, where it's telling you, you know, one thing or another.

and you don't quite know what is your absolute North star, what does success look like? What is, you know, wild success look like? And so at the MSC, it was clear that we were trying to raise awareness in a growth market, like a lot of opportunity but very little awareness. We had a, sentiment study that we run every two years, and we saw awareness is quite low compared to European markets.

but we also heard this echoed by our partners too, of, hey, we really need the MSC to educate customers alongside us. We can't do this ourselves. you know, growing awareness of the label and the impact that label has. And so, it became clear from, from that qualitative feedback and the quantitative feedback that this there was really this awareness, was the ultimate metric.

But then my job in digital marketing was, okay, but how do we make that tangible meaning? Growing awareness. So what does that mean for evaluating a marketing campaign? And so beyond sentiment, we looked at things like okay aware and how long does it take to digest the messages message. So we started looking at things like, okay, if we need to make sure all of our, key messages are went within X amount of seconds, and then we can start judging video completion rates, you know, cost per, cost review in its entirety as, as that are all, again, like laddering up to that hero metric of, of of awareness.

so that has really helped drive, drive our efforts and keep us, kind of deprioritized things that can be easily be distractions.

Daniel Burstein: y like you talk about a hero metric helping with priorities. That's important. And also saying it's important to know what does wild success look like. Let me ask you when we're talking about metrics, so that's a great example of understanding what success is and setting your priorities. But what about can you give us an example of where you use data to help learn about the customer and better serve that customer?

so, for example, I interviewed, Ram Anthony, head of Fire Marketing for North America at Alibaba.com, on how I made it a marketing. And one of his lessons was dig into human behavior to create people first messaging. And he told a great example about communicating safety while he was a Volvo. so for you, Chris, I know you mentioned earlier when I asked you about ambiguity.

You said, you know, start with the customer, forget their channel, their mindset, all these things like start with, you know, talking to the customer. Can you give us an example how use metrics or data to to learn something about the customer and then how you use that to better serve that customer?

Kristen Stevens: Yeah. so one example from recent work is we so the US is as it's not surprising to anyone, very, meat centric, country where red meat, yeah. Not even just red meat, but pork. Chicken that is center of the plate. And that's what people think of when they think of, a hearty animal protein. And we were running a campaign in October because it's National Seafood Month, which I recognize, we all recognize.

Nobody knows what National Seafood Month is, but it was a time for seafood industry. They were running a lot. It was historically a low time of sales. And so then as a reaction, a lot of seafood industry and retailers would create, campaigns around this time to help, move seafood. And so when we started or when I started at the MSC, one of the, what we said, okay, we're going to leverage that time of year when our partners are active and say, let's change the narrative of not just buy, buy, buy seafood, but change to sustainable.

When you buy sustainable seafood. And so all that to say, as you know, October in the US is a time for, you know, people are starting to think about what am I going to make for the holidays? Okay, what are we going to make for Thanksgiving? Almost always turkey. Maybe it's chicken, you know, and then going into the, other winter holidays like Christmas, you're going to look at things like beef or center of plate.

and it was a really hard and challenging time of year for us to say, okay, let's why don't you make the switch from one protein that you love to another, which is fish, which is very different type of protein. Of course, you can't just, you know, one for one, make that kind of substitution. And so we did two things.

One is we evaluated what other times of year could we be successful, a time when seafood was more top of mind, a time when environmental messages were more top of mind. And so we ended up making a big shift to Earth Month April, as the time when we could message seafood, and seafood sustainability. I'll say. The second thing is that we like, learned from our data as well is how, that consumer is making the switch.

Making a swap is a really hard thing to do from something that, another meat that you love, but asking them to add seafood for to an already plant rich plate is a much easier lift for folks to say they're already eating. You know, quite a lot of vegetarian, but they're open to fish and saying, why don't you add sustainable seafood to your plate?

It's a great way to have a healthful meal. and, and incorporate more protein. so that's just the way we, we an insight we found. And we have better positioning how we talk about sustainable seafood. So American consumers have an easier way of, of being able to enjoy it.

Daniel Burstein: And so that's a great insight. I mean for any brand who's you're talking about seafood. There's a lot of brands who are trying to, you know, there's a major incumbent in their industry and they're trying to do things in a new way. And they're of trying to like, you know, fit that in. So understanding that customer behavior, I think it applies to a lot of things.

But help me understand, like how did you learn that? I know you talked about the lessons. It was it were you serving customers? You talked about AB testing, like like where did you find that data to ultimately make that hypothesis of making some of those changes in messaging?

Kristen Stevens: Oh gosh. Yeah, that's a good point. It's so many things. So we do a lot of testing. So running running advertisements and do the a b testing of what messaging resonates just based on click through. but further we also, do some focus groups. we work with an organization called Watch Me Think, which has been basically a more cost effective way to do focus group research, which has been really helpful for us.

So we can actually validate some of the things we're seeing, either in survey work or in some of our AB testing, with actually hearing directly from the consumer. and then the other piece of kind of data that we're ingesting or I'm ingesting is from our partners too, who are, because we don't, you know, we are that one step removed.

We are, you know, selling a sustainable choice. We are messaging. We're helping consumers make a sample choice. At the end of the day, it's a partner, a retailer brand who is selling the seafood. And so we get so much of our insights from them as well as to what works, what doesn't, and how their customers are reacting.

So that specific insight was like an amalgamation of all these different sources telling us, hey, we really got to rethink our messaging. Seafood.

Daniel Burstein: Oh, it's great. I mean, and there's usually not one just single golden piece of data that tells you everything. And we would call it building a customer theory. Over time, you're building that customer theory and tightly refining it. and you mentioned a major lesson this ties into that you're talking about take time to understand your target audience deeply, and your value proposition.

And that's what it takes time and deep understanding. So give us a sense that you've you've talked you've been talking through this. And I can clearly see a focus on the customer here. How did you first learn this. Can you take us back to a story that, like what really, helped focus you on the customer in your career?

Kristen Stevens: Yeah. and we well, before joining the MSI, the company that I worked at as the startup, we had a program we worked with, students, and they helped us do very informal, sessions where we would understand and watch how someone interacted with our products. And, we would, you know, provide them like a Starbucks gift card for sitting down with us and just, you know, letting us watch and having them talk out loud about how they're navigating this product, project.

Just a very, low budge way of understanding, how folks are interacting with a product that you're offering. and that really set up a great, sort of testing and learning mentality of, okay, not only are we going to get that qualitative insight directly from the customer, but we're also going to then do either survey insights and also analyze like how they're interacting on the back end from the metrics we have.

and I found that so valuable because it when you actually hear directly from someone, it's bringing so much color to very black and white, seemingly black and white data that you might have, when you're looking at a dashboard of metrics, so that that really started things off for me, to help. I hope that that answers the question.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. And then you were mentioning, I think, how are you using it now? you mentioned, I think that, in different regions of the country, you're messaging differently. I think maybe New England was a little different. And so I want to ask you, you know, you mentioned value proposition. You know, we love the way we talk about value proposition all the time.

It's a major topic we talk about. And one of the things I've written about what a value proposition is at different levels. And so I wonder if you can give us an example of how you might, you know, your one organization, but how you might communicate different value propositions to different customers. Because, for example, when I've written about value proposition, how we talk about it, you know, there's there's four levels of value proposition.

And a lot of people focus on that primary value proposition, which is important that overall value proposition for the company. Right. We have to mention, especially with, a bigger organization, there's probably different customer level value propositions, right? There's different product level value propositions. If it's a if it's a company organization has more than one product, they're difficult.

Different process level value propositions for the different things you have to ask people to do with, you know, purchase versus, you know, clicking on an email or subscribing to an email. And while all of those things tie into the primary value proposition of the the main organization, and they all need their own distinct value propositions as well, which might be different.

And so for you, I wonder, like, do you have any examples of how you've had to message different value propositions to different groups, for example?

Kristen Stevens: Definitely. So we have different value propositions, for the, for the consumer versus the fishery versus the retail or brand partner that we're working with. But the one that I think has a more interesting story to, to share is the difference is how we, the value proposition, of the consumer from the did the difference between, our global value proposition, if you will, to the consumer versus our local US and actually North America, US and Canada approach to engaging and messaging the consumer?

and so when I first, you know, joined the NSC and we or, and I worked closely with my Canadian counterpart and understanding our unique markets, and how they different from our European market. And one of those things was the consumer value proposition, in Europe was very much focused on trust, that it's seafood that you can trust when it has this label.

You can trust that it comes from a sustainable choice and not salable sauce. And not that that doesn't matter to the US consumer, but we were seeing in a lot of the research that we had access to that consumers were really concerned with their health, and that was a large part of the reason why they were choosing seafood as they were choosing it, because they believed it to be a healthy protein item.

So, like, there's something here. What can we do to, offer authentically, you know, the MSC message to someone in a way that resonates. And this is where we, started to unpack this health message a little bit more and understand, and one of the tests we did is we we talked to some consumers at a little focus group, and we asked them about their shopping experience.

And they said one of their challenges in buying sustainable seafood or seafood in general is they're trying so hard to find something that is cost effective, that is healthy for them, something their family is going to eat. And they also don't want to do harm to the planet, but they're constantly feeling like they have to compromise that every time they go to the grocery store.

Like there's something that just has to be knocked off the list because, they're going to need to make sure it's healthy and affordable. And then, well, now, it might not be environmentally sustainable. And now I feel that, you know, and these folks would talk about, the guilt that they felt of like, okay, I'm just trying to do the right thing, but I cannot meet, meet all the marks, of what's on my list of what I, what I value and what I care about when I'm shopping for food.

And so one of the. And that just, like, sparked kind of in a half for us of like, okay, when you choose MSC certified sustainable seafood, it's seafood that's not only good for you, but it's good for the ocean too. You can have that win win and feel good, about the ocean, but also know you're making a good decision, for your well-being and your health as well.

And so, yeah. And that was definitely a very different way, of positioning the MSC than in our other markets, for sure.

Daniel Burstein: That's a great example. and so we just talked about some of the lessons that Kristin's learned from some of the things she's made. And just a moment, we're going to talk about some of the lessons that Chris has learned from some of the people she's made it with. That's a great thing we get to do as marketers.

We get to make things. We get to make them with other people, too. but first I should mention that the how I Made It in Marketing podcast is underwritten by Mech Labs. I the parent organization of marketing Sherpa. Right now, you can get a free three month full scholarship to the AI Guild and the free quickstart AI productivity Kit at Joint Mech Labs ai.com to help you navigate the artificial intelligence marketing revolution that's joining Mech Labs ai.com.

All right, Kristin, so let's talk about some lessons you learned from some of the people you work with. So you mentioned, Richard Stobart the head of marketing of MSK global, the global organization. You said you learned from Richard to balance the lending and borrowing of trust and credibility and partnerships. How did you learn that from Richard?

Kristen Stevens: You know, he has many valuable lessons over the years. he came from Fair Trade America, or rather, Fair Trade International, before he was at the NSC. And so, so much of kind of the wisdom he shared was from two very different yet adjacent organizations, both certifications, both trying to, you know, do good for people and planet.

and so one of the things he talked about is this lending, and borrowing trust and credibility, and oftentimes in exchange for reach and impact and how you have to really balance the type of partnerships, you have to make sure that you're upholding, the trust that you have with consumers and customers. And so a good example of this lending and borrowing trust is recently we had the opportunity to work with Ben and Jerry's, Ben and Jerry's ice cream, for an April Fool's campaign to raise awareness of certified sustainable seafood.

and the joke is that we were going to certify, MSC certified sustainable fish food with their fish food ice cream. And this was a really fun collaboration. and this is one where we were able to borrow this really, engaged, highly engaged audience from them. They have an audience of followers online and, and those they reached through a variety of channels.

that care so deeply about helping, helping the planet, helping people, and choosing products that make a positive impact on, on the world, whether it's the environment, people, etc.. And so, and then Ben and Jerry's was looking for a way to kind of broaden the scope of what they talked about to support other causes outside of their kind of traditional remit of, of an ice cream brand.

And so we, you know, lent the credibility and trust of this global, organization focus on ocean health. MSC has been around for over 25 years. so we like a lot of credibility to this ocean health message on their channels. and we gained quite a lot of reach and impact through this, really engaged customer base that they had already.

So that was, a good win win, type of partnership for us. and had a little fun as well while we were running an important campaign.

Daniel Burstein: So what have you learned? Maybe a few lessons you can give us on managing a successful partnership? Because I know when I've worked in partnerships, you know, it's hard enough to, frankly, get anything done within an organization with, you know, programing and developers and media and all these things. It's hard to get stuff done in organizations. Then you throw on top of it, okay, there's an other organization external to us, and they've got their own needs and goals and wants and fears, all these things, teams and all these things.

And so we need to find a way to work towards to a goal. Now that's with one partnership. You mentioned 58 partnerships in a year. That's like one a week or more. So you're you must have some sort of repeatable process that you've figured out. Well, I assume you have to tailor it specifically to each organization because they're all different.

You must have learned a few key things like, okay, here are some things to do and not to do to have a successful partnership.

Kristen Stevens: Definitely. For sure. And we one of the things that I focus on in my work with partner marketing is trying to lower barriers for partners to join existing campaigns, because that's when we have the most success is when we can, have, you know, assets and messaging. that is valuable enough for our partners that they can pretty easily incorporate it into their calendars and make some amendments so that it feels true to them and their customers.

So it's sometimes it's as simple as adding their logo. Other times it's as simple as, you know, adding like a key message that is important to them as well. and so I one of the big things with partner marketing, it's I try to balance, you know, quantity and quality, meaning, you know, kind of the what a really easy low barrier entry ways of partners, joining a campaign that's important.

having this kind of groundswell of support from our partners. So that means, like, really simple, customizable assets, giving them the tools to do it or our team to be able to kind of bang it out quickly if there's a really solid template that we have in place. but then strategically picking a few partners that we, we can go deep on, there's some opportunity there to have a more, you know, multi-channel 360 campaign.

and so like you just I spoke to one of the things that I look for is shared and I'm always have my ears open for this of shared goals and opportunities. and kind of balancing like being opportunistic with, our organization's different goals. And so an example of this is just recently we worked with chicken of the sea to educate the Los Angeles public through some transit media, on healthy, sustainable seafood options, one of which is a new product, that they, that they're offering.

And so we were able to with this inside of they were you know, they were trying to educate these know on the go introduce these this pouch seafood product. and this product is sustainable. It carries the MSC blue fish label. And so when I got this opportunity, we had we get a lot of discounted media space as a nonprofit.

So when I got this, opportunity through one of our media partners, I thought, okay, what are the partners that we have at the MSC that are interested in educating in the LA area that, have told me recently about new, you know, new products or new opportunities. and I can kind of marry these, opportunities together.

And so. Yeah. So that was a it was a really great opportunity to co educate, the public.

Daniel Burstein: Yes. Got it. Always keep your ears open for those, those opportunities I like it. and I think one way two of your partnerships, you talked about the research you get from them, right? The data you get from them. And it sounds like you're also getting your own data that you share with them from time to time.

when you when it comes to research, you said one of your key lessons is present research with clear narrative arcs and actionable takeaways. And you learn this from Nicole Condon, the program director of MSCs. How do you learn this from Nicole?

Kristen Stevens: So she was previously, before being US program director for the US, she was on the commercial that partnerships team, at the NSC and in previous roles as well. And so she knew exactly she was in the room for those conversations with partners. So retailers brands understood the questions they had in their mind and what information they needed to take back to their organizations, their leadership that would actually be impactful and make a difference.

And especially when I first started presenting this consumer research that we had, I was really guilty of being like, oh, I want to be so generous with this. I just want to share everything and, share, you know, the kind of un, without my color commentary so that people could take it in themselves. But in doing so, I was really hitting folks over the head with just too much data and too much information.

And it's so much so that it was hard for them to come away with a clear actions and opportunities from this information. And so, so I've now worked with, with Nicole, with her guidance over the years of making it more of a narrative and even putting that very like up front of, hey, here are the three key things.

If you walk away with nothing else, these three things are the standout insights from this research. And then circling back around at the end to say, okay, and here's what we can do with that together, partner. industry and MSC, to help make a difference in action. This data. And then in between making it making a clear arc and taking people on a journey both like the journey of the research where we've come but also, helping, you know, make it, make it a story.

And in a lot of cases, bringing in some of that qualitative data that we have as well and literally saying, okay, let's hear from the customer, let's hear directly from the consumer, and, and hear how this insight can come to life.

Daniel Burstein: So that's a great example of data story telling. And you know, you know, not just throwing data out there. Data has become a commodity. They say data is new oil. But with that it can also be a commodity. There's so much of that telling people make sure they understand why it's important and most importantly, what we can do.

How can we action this, right? It's not just numbers, but it also gets me thinking of what do we want to be communicating to our customers. I have is a great example, but we want to communicate to our partners. I think with a certification, transparent marketing seems so important. So I wonder how you use transparency in your marketing because, for example, for a certification, of course people want to know it's a valuable certification only if I know what does it take to get certified right.

But this is true for any brand. We do value proposition workshops. I talk to brands. Sometimes it's funny. I'll see their landing page, their homepage or ads and I'll think a certain thing of it. And then we talk at lunch, you know, and I find out how they did something and I'm like, wait a minute, you're doing that as part of your product or as part of your development of your product?

Like, why are you not telling the customer, I didn't understand this at all about your product. Like, you got to tell it like, there's so much hidden value within our companies and we need to bring some transparency to with our marketing. It's not just like a shiny brand and you know these right buzzwords. It's like, let's bring transparency and show the value we're creating.

So as I mentioned, because I think our certification that is especially important. So how do you use transparency in your marketing.

Kristen Stevens: Absolutely. That's a really good question. So there there's kind of two ways about it. One is we are always wanting to tell the story behind the MSC Blue Fish label. You know, we know especially now after the past few years of heavy misinformation that folks are taking in, they want evidence and truth. They don't just they want dust.

you know, making a big, bold marketing claim they actually want to see, and take a peek behind the curtain. And so we do a lot of storytelling where we say, okay, so here is, you know, I am an inside here is an impactful message. But let's go see. Let me show you what a fishery looks like.

Let me show you what the supply chain looks like and what it means to fish sustainably. And then the other piece is encouraging our partners to do the same, because there's only so much that the MSC can share. But at the end of the day, it's all the people behind that label that make it possible that are opening their doors to their processes.

And so it's making sure, you know, there's this, lot of green hashing. I don't know if you've heard that term right now. We're heard that.

Daniel Burstein: Greenwashing. I've heard of like greenwashing. What's green hushing?

Kristen Stevens: Well, because folks are afraid and don't want to be perceived as greenwashing, then the opposite happened to where these companies, to your point, you know, they can be doing these great things. But there's so red a resident resident to share. Reticent. There we go. Reticent to share because it's, because for fear that there's going to be some scrutiny if they're okay, well, they're doing a good job, but not good enough, or they're doing a fantastic job in seafood sustainability, but they're still working on this other aspect or something like that.

And so there's a lot of greenwashing happening where folks are afraid to tell their stories, even when it's a really positive and impactful one.

Daniel Burstein: Now that transfer, I like what you said about going to a fishery and actually getting to see like, okay, here's what it means to be sustainable versus not because I want to reiterate, this is not just about a green product or not just about a certification product. I was doing some group coaching in the Eye Guild just yesterday.

I think it was. And it was a it was a car company, some sort of company that did something to cars. And I was mentioning like, people are going to understand the value of this if you can show them somewhat like take us behind the scenes and don't just show us the finished product. Like how do you do this to the car and why does that matter?

Marketing, at the end of the day, is a lot of storytelling and just tearing that that fourth wall back and showing them the value we're creating. here's a final lesson, and I think it really takes us full circle. you said you learned this from Joseph Ingram, principal strategist, advisor and coach at Joseph Ingram and Company. the lesson is structure, feedback, request with specific lenses and pointed questions.

I love specificity. If you can see this whole podcast is built on specificity. Tell us those stories. Don't just give us opinions. But I say this is full circle because yeah, first lesson was about ambiguity. And so you've taken it from ambiguity to specificity. So tell us how did you learn this lesson about structuring feedback requests from Joseph?

Kristen Stevens: Definitely. So, so much of my work and I'm sure this is relatable for folks, is dependent on so many, other people for its success. Other teams, most folks who aren't in marketing, who aren't living and breathing the marketing campaigns and, and work that we do in the same way. And so, I often would ask for feedback on certain aspects, and I would just get kind of everything under the sun, very broad feedback, because folks were trying so hard to be generous and helpful.

But in doing so, I wasn't pointed enough with what? With what I was asking. That I got feedback that really took so much setting for me to make it actionable and insightful for myself. And so one of the things that I was I learned and worked on with Joseph is how I could be more pointed in focus and give folks a lens, you know, pretend you are ex, pretend you are in this situation.

And oftentimes I'm asking people to pretend they are a partner or collaborator. So are they pretend they're a sustainable sensibility manager at a grocery retailer? Sometimes I'll give them a specific location or a specific, scenario that they're going to think through while they're evaluating this. And then I make sure they know the goals of the feedback so I can tell them, okay, we want this is going to be a presentation to their, this group of people.

What is the one big thing we want them to be able to walk away with, to share with their leadership or something like that, like this hero question I can ask when I'm asking for feedback, so that folks can have that in mind when they're providing insights, and that they can think of things from a certain perspective, versus, you know, times you get feedback on that's really valuable, but it's too late or it is another team that's working on this aspect.

So it's really it's takes a lot to untangle. and so yeah, I think both kind of thinking hat is one another way to call it or lenses has been really helpful.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. By the way, that works really great with I too. When you give it a specific okay, you're here's a specific scenario and they need some great way to brainstorm with it. this I can't help but thinking when you're talking about feedback, how do you handle feedback from your partners? Because that is one of the most difficult things in a partnership, right?

You have to manage well. Our brand stands for a certain thing and it will only do certain things. But then, you know, you've got your partners too and you want to make them happy. I remember I interviewed a marketer who used to work at, I think it was CollegeHumor. It was like, I think it was a college website.

And so they did their own, I guess, humorous shows to the audience. But then they also did brand work, and they were doing brand work for some major, like iced tea brand or something. I forgot what it was. And then iced tea brand kept trying to change what the ad was or commercial or content marketing they were doing.

They just had to keep pushing back and saying like, hey, this is our voice. We need to own this voice. We need to protect our voice to our audience. And so this either works for you or it doesn't with this voice. And if it doesn't, that's unfortunate. Want to as a client, but it's not worth sacrificing our relationship with our audience.

So for you, Kristen, like how do you manage that relationship with feedback from your partners where I know you want to protect your brand, but of course, in any partnership, you want to make the other party happy?

Kristen Stevens: Definitely. Yeah. Honestly, it's about sticking to the specifics. and it's been really and specifically sticking to, the campaign or messaging or insight at hand. and then also bringing it back to the purpose and the customer that's ultimately, impacted here. And so that's a lot of the way I deliver feedback, but also a lot of the way when I, kind of funnel feedback, if you will.

I try to hear it in a way that I can then action that into a good way to move forward or a helpful way to move forward.

Daniel Burstein: All right. Well, we talked about so many different lessons from your career, from the people you worked with. If you had to break it down, what are the key qualities of an effective marketer?

Kristen Stevens: Yeah, that's that's a tough question. I just just three are just a few qualities, but a big one is listening and taking in insights from it as many places as you can. And that means listening to your partners and that means listening to the customer. but it also means making a case for doing research to whether that is survey work, whether that is, setting up really thoughtful dashboards so that you can evaluate all the metrics you're getting from campaigns more effectively.

that it's so key to listen and learn, and be willing be willing to be challenged, and, and find kind of the, I don't know, be thoughtful about how you're bringing this data to life and, and listening to what, what the data is telling you.

Daniel Burstein: Well, thanks for letting our audience listen to you today. I know I learned a lot, and I hope I did as well. Thank you very much, Kristen.

Kristen Stevens: Of course, really glad to be here. This was a great, great chat. And I hope, yeah, I hope I provided some valuable insights for folks listening.

Daniel Burstein: Absolutely. And thanks to all of you for listening.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Burstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing rpa.com and.