In Conversation
Proving Brand ROI with Sergio Claudio
by Bill Kenney
Brand isn't just a creative exercise — it’s a product that drives ROI.
Back for his third appearance on the Focus on Brand podcast, Sergio Claudio (ex-Adobe, Marketo, Zuora) joins us to challenge how organizations perceive and measure creativity. Is it just a cost center—or a powerful growth engine?
In this episode, Sergio unpacks how creative work can (and should) drive business outcomes. From C-suite blockers to strategic alignment, we cover how to elevate creative teams from "make it pretty" to make it perform.
What we cover:
- Why creativity is misunderstood in many orgs
- Common executive roadblocks — and how to address them
- How to align creative efforts with real business goals
- Tactical ways to integrate brand moments into the customer journey
Whether you're a brand leader, CMO, or creative looking to make a bigger impact, this episode is packed with clarity, inspiration, and action.
Episode Resources
- Marketo <> Focus Lab Case Study
- The Marketo Debrief with Sergio Claudio & Sarah Kennedy Ellis
- Zuora <> Focus Lab Case Study
- The Zuora Debrief with Sergio Claudio
Full Transcript
[Bill Kenney]
Hey everyone, this is Bill Kenney, CEO and co-founder of Focus Lab, a global B2B brand agency. I'm back with another episode but today we're not talking about a project.
We're talking about the ROI of branding. You know, this conversation that a lot of people say it's a nut you can't crack. Hmm, Sergio begs to differ.
So you know that person in your life, that when they start speaking, they're so smart and so eloquent with their words, you just shut up and listen?
This is that type of episode for you and for me. I got to sit down with Sergio. We've worked with him twice now, previously at Marketo, and then VP of Brand and Creative at Zuora. Two wonderful projects that we got to go through with him. And now we're just pals.
So Sergio and I were chatting one day, we were talking about how ROI is really hard to measure in a branding effort. And he said, I'd like to talk about that actually, because in my experience, there's a lot of ways to think about brand that are easy to measure ROI.
And I said, say less. Wait for the episode so you can say more. So this is that episode.
Thank you, Sergio, for joining the show and sharing all your wisdom. I hope you all enjoy it.
---
All right, Sergio dude, this is your third appearance on the show. We've done this twice through the lens of an actual project partnership, and now we're just gonna speak freely. We're gonna open mic it and talk about creativity and impact, business impact that comes from creativity and brand and ROI and, and this kind of sphere that is, generally hard to kind of nail down and talk about.
I think you're the perfect person for it. Thank you for joining the show again. Uh, yeah, hat trick time. I'm gonna quickly pas s you the mic and just, you know, tell people who you are and what the hell you're doing these days.
[Sergio Claudio]
Yeah. Well, thank you Bill. Always a pleasure to catch up and have these conversations, uh, for those that you know, don’t know me or haven't seen previous episodes my name is Sergio Claudio
I consider myself a global creative and technology executive. I've worked at companies like Marketo, Adobe and Zuora. I spent equally as much time in the agency world as well at Omnicom agencies, large shops, small shops.
And so, you know, I've built this career of B2B brand and technology and B2C brand and technology and, you know, the role that creative plays in connecting businesses with audiences. So today, I spend my time consulting for enterprise companies on everything from connecting creativity to impact, building creative organizations, um, digital transformation, and you know, the hot topics today which is, what role can AI play in helping us grow our business? And so, I’m having a lot of fun, speaking to a lot of businesses. You know, I say, one of the things I do today is I spend the bulk of my time speaking to people I enjoy speaking with, um, like yourself.
[Bill Kenney]
Hey. Ah, look at that. Let's start with this idea that most organizations, and this doesn't make them bad leaders or bad organizations, but they generally look at creativity as more of a cost versus an investment.
It's a one-time cost. It eats away at the dollars, it doesn't then add to the dollars. Um, so this is kind of the general mold of the conversation I want to have today, but would you say that that perception is true? Is it most organizations feel that way? I'm an outsider. You've been an insider in the organization, so what's the reality?
[Sergio Claudio]
Yeah. You know, I think the reality, um, I would say the reality is a lot of organizations, in the profit center versus cost center comparison, creative can be looked at as a cost center. And I believe it tends to do with, um, the level of understanding of what the role of creative is, right?
When you have teams who are used to viewing creative as a nice to have. The paint on the car, you know, something that's sort of an accessory to a core product. That's when you can tend to see creative as a cost center, right? It makes our marketing better, but marketing is the core.
It makes our, you know, product, um, seem more appealing, but our product is the core. And I think the mindset shift as a creative leader is to recognize that creative itself is a product, right? It is something that takes investment to produce that is expected to deliver a result.
And starting to put yourself in the mindset, as a creative and brand leader, that the things that you produce are products with outcomes that they drive, is I think, the first shift that helps you to establish creative as a profit center that delivers value to the business, not an expense center that is the cost of doing business.
[Bill Kenney]
Really well said. You see everybody already. You're seeing, what are we five minutes in? This is why this man is here. Creative is a product. I love that line of thinking. Is that a hard sell internally, generally? Is it this world? This is how I painted the world. Some people think that way and some don't, and they're generally just stuck in that position.
Have you found that to be true or are you able to then see people transform to the Oh, I get it, I understand.
[Sergio Claudio]
Um, I think thankfully I've worked with a number of teams who are open to the idea and so, you know, it's upon us to prove it, right? Yes. creative is a product, prove it.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
Yeah. you know, just like a product, you go through the exercises of what are the products that a creative organization produces? Is it design work? Is it UX and UI work for the website? Is it, you know, advertising materials, marketing materials, eBooks, live experiences, videos, keynotes, right? Uh, digital ads, you know. What are all the products that actually come out, the outputs that come out of the team.
And I think that's the first place where you can then create that shared understanding of, Hey, our job as a creative organization and a brand organization is to produce these things for the business.
Right? Those are the products. And then you show, okay, well here are the operations, right? Here's what it takes to produce those products.
[Bill Kenney]
Mm-hmm.
[Sergio Claudio]
Here are the processes, here are the people, here are the SLAs, the turnaround times of these deliverables, um, here can be the costs associated with those deliverables based on yes, time based on external agency costs associated with that time, based on headcount associated with that time.
Then, you know, the next step is, and here are the organizations in the business that these products support. Your demand gen teams, your HR and recruiting teams, your executive thought leadership teams, your product marketing teams.
And the moment that you start to get to, these are the products that we produce, here are the teams that they support, then you are just one step away from, and here are the strategic initiatives of those organizations that these products support. With KPIs, outcomes, revenue, goals associated with those that creative becomes a part of.
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah. So no longer are you five degrees separated from I made an ebook, how do I know that that was worth it? What's the dollar return on that? When you start to bring it more down the chain to a department in an initiative, then there actually are numbers that can be associated.
[Sergio Claudio]
Right. Yeah. And I think that's, um, you know, to your point, that conversation isn't necessarily a hard sell, right? It's just painting the picture.
For those folks that are open-minded, yes. Creative can be a product, creative can have an impact on the business. Prove how it does, right? You know, and so it's, it's sort of, that's one approach, right? Looking at what we produce, who we produce it for, how it's being used, and then the results generated from that usage.
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah. Fantastic. Again, why you're here, sir. It's why you're here. Oh man. Um, okay. You might have touched on it, but I'm gonna ask it anyways. What tends to be the biggest mental blockers for, say a C-Suite, to be on board with a big creative initiative investment, a brand investment. Are those mental blockers, kind of what we just described? Is it as simple as that? They just have a hard time seeing the entire kind of runway of how that is worth it.
[Sergio Claudio]
Yeah. Um, okay. You know, so I'm gonna take a dip back into one of our previous conversations, right? Which is, this is a process about making people believe in the power of it.
[Bill Kenney]
Yep.
[Sergio Claudio]
And so, um, first you have to say, well, what belief system do they have about creative today? And why do they have it? So when you say the C-suite or decision makers, um, or, you know, creative organization peers and if you're walking into a situation where it's hard to know the value that creative has on the business. It's sort of, well, what has, what has made it difficult? You know, what have been those blockers? And a lot of times you find, um, it's sort of organizational disconnects, right? The silos between teams. I think, speaking as a creative, our industry has been guilty of sort of keeping creative too far behind the curtain. Right? And only bringing people in at the time of the reveal, right?
There is a showmanship to creative. You don't want too many cooks in the kitchen. You don't want to show people sort of the process of things sometimes because too many inputs might get us in a place that isn't the best outcome in our opinion.
[Bill Kenney]
Mm-hmm.
[Sergio Claudio]
Um, but what it creates at the same time is sort of a throw something over the wall, get something in return. If that thing isn’t aligned, if that thing doesn’t meet what someone has considered the business goals or the business objectives, you have a lot of friction, right? That’s when you start to get these narratives of: we don’t know if creative understands the business. And you start to get these separations. We are the business and this is creative.
[Bill Kenney]
Ah, yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
And the business needs these things, but creative needs these things. And sometimes those needs are uncertain, right? Sometimes those needs are perceptions that creative just wants to win awards or creative just wants to make something cool without having a tie to the outcome.
[Bill Kenney]
Mm-hmm.
[Sergio Claudio]
And so that is where I see the first blocker, right? Is a divide between teams who are involved in the creative process and not a lot of transparency coming from both. You know, and what are some things I think that contribute to that? The brief process.
A brief process, and as it's done by many teams, has to do with a team, you know, in the business: marketing product, um, you know, events, writing what creative has said they need, which is a detailed brief of what the problem is, what the approach is that you wanna take and, you know, live dates and insights and all those things to then hand over to creative. And when creative receives that, creative will process it, come back with questions, come back with concerns, um, come back with an expected timeline and deliver you a result.
Now, and for many creative teams, that's what good process feels like. In my experience, that's where the rift starts, right? So, what I often tell people is that by the time someone writes a brief and submits it to a creative team, they’ve already started to think of a solution to a problem, they're bringing creative in at the time of a solution.
So, all creative is doing is executing against a solution that someone's come up with.
[Bill Kenney]
Yep. Sure.
[Sergio Claudio]
And if that solution was fully baked or not has an impact on the creative quality and the output, and you start to have this back and forth. So the shift that I've tried to encourage people toward is, bring creative in at the time of the problem
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah.
[Sergio Claudio]
Bring a creative leader in. Help them understand what is the problem of the business, what is the outcome that we're trying to solve? What's the pain from the customers? How did we perform last year versus this year? And what's the gap that we're trying to fill? Because creatives outside of their technical skills, their strength is, how do they take information and apply a perspective in a way that other people might not see.
[Bill Kenney]
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[Sergio Claudio]
So that's the first place, right? Is like starting to build this bridge between two different teams, putting creative closer to the needs of the business, right? That's where you start to build that alignment. At that alignment, that’s when you start to build a belief that, hey, creative is seeing the problem with me. They're working towards the same problem that we're working towards and the outcome that we achieve is going to be a shared outcome.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. You know, the throwing things back and forth over the fence part of most processes is all too real, right? I mean, it's, there's, you've experienced it with us. It is a natural part of the process that happens for better and for worse. You know, we've, we've even seen more recently how adding more workshops in more of these, let's come together at the front end of the problem in workshop ideas, solutions, um, instead of, again, the more of the process you're saying, which is like, we're waiting on you now.
Now you're waiting on us, now we're waiting on you, now you're waiting on us. It's, uh, it's something we've tried to also kind of blur the lines in the middle.
Uh, so it totally makes sense. It can either be amplified or disappear given on the client personality and perspectives too. For some projects, that back and forth is the perfect flow for them. The over the fence friction doesn't really show up and you don't get the rub in there, for whatever reason.
Some projects, it shows up immediately and it feels like a rub, and they're even saying it feels like we're throwing things back and forth over the fence. Okay. For me now, that's like workshops. We're gonna start doing a lot of things together. We're gonna basically rip down the fence.
[Sergio Claudio]
I agree. Right. I think that's one of Focus Lab's superpowers. And I’ll tell you, back to that product mindset, think of most product decks. A product deck typically stars with, what’s the problem statement, right?
And when you’re bringing these teams together, the number one question for anyone that’s worked with me, and they’ll hear it over and over again, is what’s the problem that we’re trying to solve, right? And I'll ask that of our teams in the very beginning of a conversation. I'll ask that midway through our creative process.
I'll ask that all the way through the end of a polished, creative output is what problem is this trying to solve? Right? Because if that changes at any point, or you have two different teams answer, you know, answering with different answers, that’s when you start the friction, right?
[Bill Kenney]
Sometimes you just gotta get in the room, and I think the more we do it every time we do it. We always, I think I've started to, I have started to say this statement and I'm like, there's never been a single workshop that we've left and go like, that was a waste of time. Or like, we shouldn't have done that.
There's always some revelation in there, big, small, good, bad. There's something that will give you direction.
You might uncover a different root issue and you're like, oh, okay. We actually found the problem actually is not, can we land on the right words? It's a misalignment within kind of like these two teams.
Okay. How can, how can we solve that problem now so that creative can get back into its job? Um, communication. Communication, communication, communication, communication. Uh, I would just say that, in the projects that we worked with you on, you were such a linchpin, keystone communicator. You were basically sitting on the fence or ripping the fence down. You sat right in the middle.
[Sergio Claudio]
Well thank you for that. And you know, and I'll, I'll put some accountability on us as creatives, right? Because just as we're expecting partners to pull us in at the time of the problem. We have to pull partners in during the production as well, right?
[Bill Kenney]
Yes. Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
If we wanna create better advocates for creative and creative's role in the business and the impact on the business, people have to be involved in the process, right? They'll keep the process accountable.
You know, it doesn't have to be every step of the way, right? People need their time to go and design and go and write and riff, but you know, instead of waiting for a finished product, get to the first iteration. Whatever that milestone is, wire frames, sketches, you know, raw ideas written down on slides, and bring a key partner in. That demand person that you know, acquisition marketer, the customer marketer, your executive CEO, if they wanna be that close to it. And expect things to be wrong, right?
Like, expect feedback. You want to go into those conversations, you wanna say, hey, are we aligned? Does this seem like an appropriate approach to this problem?
[Bill Kenney]
Mm-hmm.
[Sergio Claudio]
Um, does it seem like this can be tied to a measurable result, right? You're gonna get great feedback in those sessions. They're also gonna start to see, okay, this team is working, right? They're committed to solving the problem that we're solving.
They're thinking about the business goals. They're thinking about our revenue targets.They're thinking about how to get us closer to sales executives and decision makers in this program, right?
[Bill Kenney]
Yep.
[Sergio Claudio]
So if you do that, you know, five meetings before your final meeting, you start to build the belief that this team is invested in our business, invested in achieving a measurable outcome.
[Bill Kenney]
Not a separate party, like you said earlier, right? Not two disconnected parties.
[Sergio Claudio]
Exactly.
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah, so why don't we talk about that then, this idea of disconnection. Um, you've made some great points lately. I was reviewing a deck you put together, I know you've been doing more speaking and such. Congrats on that.
Um, let's talk about this idea of how these things all weave together, and that's where the magic is.
[Sergio Claudio]
Yeah. Yeah. So let me, let's, uh, give a concrete example,
So, um, we've talked about some high level concepts, people bringing you in at a problem, creative, bringing people in during the process. Um, you know, I would say, um, you know, we'll use a Focus Lab project here.
We’ll talk about, um, we'll talk about Zuora.
[Bill Kenney]
Mm-hmm.
[Sergio Claudio]
And we'll say, Hey, you know, there was a challenge that people were trying to face, which was, we need to come up with a new strategic positioning. So rather than there being solely a brief from all of these different people that said, Hey, here's, you know, the insights that we have and what we want to accomplish. We did video interviews, right?
And we spent time with people one-on-one, and then we had a kickoff meeting where we talked about the insights from all of those interviews, and then we established a problem statement. Here's the problem that we're trying to solve, right?
I'll give another example. Um, Adobe.
When we were looking at the B2B side of Adobe, Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe, experience platform, right? We're looking at a house of brands, right? A lot of different applications that didn't necessarily come across to customers as a unified platform.
And a lot of questions around, how do we think about this in terms of all of these different creative products? Well, what did we do then? We sat down together and we said, okay, let everyone hear the feedback from customers.
Let everyone observe some of the challenges that are being experienced across the digital experiences, and with the variation in different brands. And now, let's arrive at a unified problem statement. How do we give people a clear destination for B2B experiences, B2B needs, B2B technologies, right?
And that was a shared brief across a creative team, a digital product team, MarTech teams, marketing teams, right? Everyone defined that problem together. So that's an example of, instead of waiting for a brief, right? Everyone coming together, looking at the different insights, crafting a problem statement, that then drives everyone's work.
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah. Fantastic. It's, it's really, it's, it's going back to, I said communication, communication, communication. Really what that is driving towards is alignment, alignment, alignment, alignment. Yeah.
[Sergio Claudio]
And so then we get into some of the creative work, right? So now you're in the creative work, you're in the strategy work. Um, once you've started to look at that problem statement. One of the things that I think is a key unlock is defining your journey, right? What is your journey or your path to success for solving that problem? So, um, you know, as a creative team partnering with a marketing team or a brand team partnering with a demand team.
Once you've identified, Hey, we've got a problem with our digital experience and we're not engaging people the way that we should be. You know, in an old world, creative might come back and say, well, we just need a more creative and engaging design, right?
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
We need to up-level our design.
[Bill Kenney]
It’s falling flat.
[Sergio Claudio]
Yeah, look at our competitors and say, you know, these people are blowing us outta the market from a design standpoint. We need to come back with a more vibrant color scheme, you know, better high quality imagery, more authenticity. And yes, that can be true holistically, right? But how do you prove the value of that?
[Bill Kenney]
Yes, yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
Right? And so, you know what I find to be the next sort of belief maker, you know? The thing that starts to bring together different expertise and discipline to understanding creative's impact on outcomes is the customer journey, right?
Looking at the user journey and being able to say, we wanna deliver value for our customers. We wanna connect customers for the business to make a sale, to create a qualified lead, to turn that lead into a closed opportunity. What is the path to them getting there? Oh, okay. We start with discovery.
How do they make their way to the site? How do they make their way to this registration? How do they make their way to that first meeting? Oh, they've seen ads in social media. They received an email. They attended an event, right? These are the points of discovery. Um, okay, so that's discovery and that's awareness.
And that's where a lot of brand teams tend to play.
We’re trying to raise brand awareness. We're trying to raise, you know, brand recognition. And again, that's true. That's a valuable part, but there are several stages on that journey.
So when you think of that, that journey, and some people might call it their funnel. You know, you’ve got awareness, you've got consideration, you've got conversion. And especially for B2B companies, it goes beyond that to adoption, advocacy, uh, and renewal.
[Bill Kenney]
Hmm. Yes. Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
And so now you're looking, when you, when you spread that user journey from just awareness where no money lives in awareness, right? It's only money spent.
[Bill Kenney]
Okay.
[Sergio Claudio]
Not necessarily money gained.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes. Mm-hmm.
[Sergio Claudio]
And you move to consideration, conversion, adoption, renewal, you know, now you’re playing in the money. You’re playing in the revenue, right? It’s not just sales at your conversion, there’s usage and adoption, there’s the renewal, there's the retention, right? And all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute. We don't just do design and creative work that helps bring awareness.
We help drive consideration for our product and increase sales. We actually help, you know, with closing sales, removing the friction, getting people the content that they need to help them make a decision, creating those experiences that actually help close business.
Oh, and we created features and we created articles, and we created videos that went into driving adoption and usage. And helping keep happy customers. And, oh by the way, we did this event, or we helped introduce this new feature that helped create more signups or more add-ons to the services aka, revenue.
[Bill Kenney]
Yep.
[Sergio Claudio]
So that's the second phase is, as a creative team, as a digital team, as any team being able to sit down and walk through, how does a customer discover who we are? How do we make our first dollar from the customer and how do we make lifetime dollars from the customer?
You know, that is a healthy conversation that starts to build that alignment on what are the things that contribute to delivering revenue and growth for the business.
[Bill Kenney]
So would you say almost, creative, let's bucket all things in there, marketing, et cetera. Is really a weapon and a component of sales, really? It's probably fair to say that sales can't do its job well without that creative output, content output, aligned marketing, making sure that they're speaking to the right problems, blah, blah, blah.
Like sales is just flat without creative. So if, if that is true then, if you can tie those two worlds together. It does seem to be that belief system that we keep talking about, which I think is a great word, that turning someone to a believer, then now you're talking dollars in.
You can compute, even if you literally can't say that one ad because it was flashy in color or animated, created a million dollars in like, retained customer, like I don't know that you would ever know that, but maybe you could correct me. Maybe there is some way to know that, but if you can, yeah, if you could tell yourself the creative story is the sales story, then that doesn't really maybe matter as much.
[Sergio Claudio]
So, so to the point that you made about being able to tie your creative effort to X amount of millions of dollars in retained customers, right? Or renewals. Well, if you are as a creative team, investing time in push notification creative, in how to and tutorial videos to help users get more value out of the application or the experience and content that's directly related to a new feature service promotion that incentivizes signups or renewals. You're tied to the dollars associated with that, right?
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah.
[Sergio Claudio]
Otherwise, how do they know that those offers are available?
[Bill Kenney]
Yes. Good point. Good point.
[Sergio Claudio]
Anyone in product can come back and say, yes, this feature contributes to higher usage. Which contributes to higher propensity to that percentage that people are more likely to renew, a nd the dollars that are associated with that is associated to the creative work that's done to some degree.
[Bill Kenney]
Yep.
[Sergio Claudio]
And I think it is critical for creative leaders today and in the future to be able to tell those stories, right? You’ve got to be able to answer the questions that people aren't asking you.
And I'll come back now to your question around sales because when you are a creative that works in an organization that has a sales organization, I think you're better positioned for success.
And I'll tell you why. A lot of creatives, you'll step into your first three months in the job you know, the things that you're being asked for is unlock the magic of our brand, right?
[Bill Kenney]
Mm-hmm.
[Sergio Claudio]
Um, up level, our talent, um, speed up the process to deliver creative and remove the friction between the teams. And those are all great things that great creative leaders can do, but when someone is making cuts in the future, layoffs, deciding cost center versus profit center, those things are not as tied to profit, right?
Those are tied to operational costs and efficiency. Um, you know, magic of the brand is a perception thing from internal stakeholders.
[Bill Kenney]
Yep.
[Sergio Claudio]
And those are all things that we pride ourselves on delivering, but when people are making these tough business decisions, especially driven by a CFO, right? They're looking at how much money are we making?
How much money does it cost for us to make that?
[Bill Kenney]
Mm-hmm.
[Sergio Claudio]
And what are the things that are contributing us to making the money?
[Bill Kenney]
Yep.
[Sergio Claudio]
And while the friction is a pain point between teams, you know, if people have to make a tough decision, they're gonna make a decision there. Sales, I find, will say, we need creative to help us build a brand that gets inbound attention, right?
[Bill Kenney]
Yep.
[Sergio Claudio]
We need a brand that helps us win, you know, the deal before we ever walk into the door.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes, Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
And so those relationships, even when you're doing events, right? We need events that give us access to power, decision makers, helps us progress deals. You know, we don't need an event at the beginning of the year.
We need an event in Q3 because it's gonna help us close deals or progress pipeline that we have before the end of the year.
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah. Yeah.
[Sergio Claudio]
Great inputs.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
Because now it's like, okay, why am I working? I'm working on this event because 70% of the business that we have to close for the half of the year is, you know, is intended to attend this event.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
We're gonna fill the pipeline, we're gonna put more fish in a barrel, we're gonna put more access to power in these events for our sales team. And when they go and they meet with those accounts who are captured, you know who we have their data and we have their registrations, and those turn into deals, bam.
[Bill Kenney]
Now you can tie it.
[Sergio Claudio]
That creative effort delivered that value, delivered that revenue.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes, sir. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Maybe the ICP I should be connecting with on LinkedIn is not the CMO, it's actually sales team members. Ah. Just throwing that out there. I love you. Love you CMOs. Love you CMOs.
All right. I know we're getting a little bit close on time here.
What I would like to do here is, let's go a little bit kind of like rapid fire on ROI questions and close out that way.
What do you think are the easiest ROI metrics for organizations to measure as it relates to creative? What are the low hanging fruits?
[Sergio Claudio]
Well, I, I think we've gotta start with what are the three easiest metrics to think about as it relates to growth and revenue? Um, a lot of people tend to think about sales, right? Oh, this team's only focused on sales. They don't understand the value of creative and brand building, right? Sales isn't the only way to make revenue.
You know, three layers of growth for a company are acquisition, sales, new user growth, um, anything associated to a new customer, right? That's an acquisition. Retention, right? Now that's related to the renewals and, you know, you brought customers to the door, but how many times do you keep them coming back?
Even in a retail size, you know, it's how do you get from your first purchase to repeat purchases, you know, AKA loyalty programs and all those things. Those are all about retention. That's revenue.
The third is called, uh, a lot of companies will call it A.R.P.U., but its average revenue per user, or average revenue per customer, average revenue per subscriber. This is now that you've got that first sale, now that you've got them renewing, how do you increase their average dollar amount? Average order value, average customer value, right?
The whole goal is long-term value. And so if you think about a brand like say Disney Plus. Um, Disney plus, you know, that user signup, that's acquisition. Anything that you're doing that's about, you know, new content and come in and complete that series and more recommendations for you. That's about retention, right? Getting value so that they renew. The bundle to, you know, other services or the, hey, we're gonna do an early release of this movie, pay $20 on our platform.
That's average revenue per user.
[Bill Kenney]
Mm-hmm. Yep.
[Sergio Claudio]
So a creative team can look at is, is what we're doing designed to help us attract new customers? Is what we're doing designed to help us engage customers or help them use our platform or product or come into our stores? Or is the creative product designed to help people add more? You know, oh, we saw that you like this, you know, most people buy these three things along with it.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes. Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
That’s average order value, or average revenue per customer. If any of the things that you're doing are designed to win new people, keep people engaged and renew or introduce them to new products that they can add to what they're already doing.
You're delivering revenue, right? You're delivering against one of those three things.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Okay. Fantastic. I love how you broke that down. Um, I think that is true even for many of the people listening, I suspect because of, I. Of the world that you've lived in for so long, B2B is, it still needs those tracks. Um, it's not just like big business. Yeah.
[Sergio Claudio]
And the same for B2C as well, right? B2C subscription businesses, retail businesses, you know, the revenue models can change, but if you look at most businesses, they're aligned by those three levers. And if creatives can start to think about and recognize the work that's associated with those, they have a better chance of advocating for their value.
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah, sure. Have those numbers been going up? And what piece of that can be attributed to the efforts that we're doing? Uh, what would you say to people that might suggest, well, we're a technical B2B product, and really people just care about the product. They care about the product working. They don't necessarily care about, uh, let's just say the brand, um, what it looks like externally.
They just need a solution to their problem and we have that. What do you say to those people?
[Sergio Claudio]
You know, the first thing is what is your definition of brand? Right? Um, I think the definition for brand is becoming very muddy. People are associating brand with creative. They're also associating brand with sports, sponsorships and, you know, F1 car wraps,
Also associating brand with, your digital experience or your, your content and, and narratives that you're putting out into the market and your PR.
And so, you know, for that person who's talking about people solely care about product. It's upon you as the creative leader, the advocate of creative, to be able to say, well, what is the impact that creative has on this product? Imagine your product without creative, right?
You've got wire frames, you've got, you know, fonts jumping all over the place, and you have a poor user experience, right? Poor user experience is a deterrent to not only people using your product retention, right? So the cost of missing out. You hurt your retention. No one keeps using your product.
Also, they leave you terrible reviews, right? There's negative advocacy as well, negative word of mouth, which means it hurts your acquisition.
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah. Yep.
[Sergio Claudio]
So you know when you wanna frame, okay, well people don't care about brand, they care more about the product. One, you highlight where brand plays a role in the product itself and the experience. And then two, you play out the storyline of the cost of missing out on investing in it, right?
[Bill Kenney]
Yep.
[Sergio Claudio]
The cost of believing that you don't need brand and the cost of sacrificing brand and what that's gonna lead to, you know, that's your decision to make now.
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Put the cards on the table.
Okay. All right. Final question.
You've got people that invest a substantial amount of money in a rebrand. We go through that process and I know that there must be a hunger on their side for like, I wanna see the impact. I wanna know when this is working, but look, we're always telling them it's a long game. It's a long game. It's a long game.
Now, when you and I were chatting earlier, you were starting to present a mindset that I thought was great on this topic, which is, some components of what makes the long game work versus no matter how long you have, it won't work. Talk to us about that.
[Sergio Claudio]
I think, what I've seen through several rebrands, from the inside and from the outside is that, you know, a lot of teams can, I think, think about a brand transformation process as being independent from sort of the rest of the business, right? Uh, well we're going through a brand transformation right now, and as you're doing that people become hesitant on what they can use and when they can get things out the door.
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah. Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
You have sort of this mindset of, okay, well we're gonna do all this work behind the scenes, and then there's gonna be this big curtain pull reveal, right? Where everything is going to be flipped at once. And then, you know, not only do we need the budget to actually work towards doing our new logo and our new narrative and some of our new materials, then we need a budget to market by doing our new brand campaign, right?
A new brand only effort.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
And the brand only narratives, I think are very dangerous. They're very limiting. Um, the brand only narrative. What that means is that everyone else is focusing on these things related to driving a business priority. And yes, we said that we're making brand priority, but it makes it so that it's not like other priorities.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
You might find that the secret is often finding a way to integrate the brand priorities into the strategic initiatives and timeline of efforts across the entire company,
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
And so, you know, what does that mean? You get through a branding effort. You've got your new logo, you've got your new materials, your new pitch decks.
Everyone's really excited, ready to take it to market. And people are like, okay, well now what do we do with it, right? Some people will come back and say, okay, well we need $300K to now do a brand video spot. And to create more brand awareness and to go do all these things and awareness for our new brand.
And that's this pitfall, right? The awareness is always for the company, and the awareness is always for the product and our new features, our new efforts, and the value that we're delivering for customers. And so you're already doing that as a company, right?
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
You've got events that are coming up on the calendar. You've got product releases that are happening within the next, you know, three to six months. You've got new specials and deals that you're running seasonally and the successful approach, in my opinion, is the brand team sitting down with those different leaders and saying, now how do we turn these dates on the calendar into brand moments.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
How do we take your budget of $60,000, $200,000, whatever it might be for that effort you already have planned. And how do we squeeze as much brand value out of that moment. That trade show that you've got six figures invested in, let that be the showroom for the new logo and the new message and the new tagline. And let's use the speaking engagement for our new messaging in that keynote.
Um, let's take those product road shows that we're doing and make sure that they're in the new brand. And let's take a video team and record all of that.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes, sir.
[Sergio Claudio]
So that we're building B-roll material for that spot that yes, we may do down the road, right? But you're integrating the brand into all of these things, right?
And this is where you start to get the long term vision of brand transformation, with near term results, right? We started to introduce the brand periodically over roadshows, keynotes, website transformations, right? New, you know, customer testimonial videos, and now you're building this brand, right? That's the process of building it.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
If you decide to invest maybe a tenth, a fifth, of that budget at the end of it all to showcase the work as a brand effort. That’s where you get that sort of mystical brand reveal where people think that this thing changed overnight, but you've been changing it progressively.
[Bill Kenney]
Yeah.
[Sergio Claudio]
You know, I'll give you a great example of that. We talked about The Adobe B2B brand, the Adobe Experience Cloud. Progressively over time that started with, um, you know, aligning the look and feel of many of the products. Which, you know, we worked on the Marketo brand together. Marketo got bought by Adobe. The Marketo brand was our baby.
And then we had to learn how to kill that brand baby, right?
The design, the purple, the look and feel. And you know, we were kicking and screaming for a while, but eventually, you know, it was for the greater good.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
And then we started to align all of our narratives and then we started to align all of our digital experiences.
And then we said, our vision is that we wanna create a destination for businesses business: business.adobe.com.
Well, at the same time we laid that vision, we said, you know, down the road we're gonna end up somewhere where this is gonna say Adobe for Business, right? There's gonna be Adobe for consumers, which is a lot of the creative cloud applications, um, you know, for individuals.
And then there's going to be Adobe for business. But to get there, we had to deliver on integrated design, integrated content, integrated digital experiences, integrated communities, experience makers, um, and the last thing that was the cherry on top, which is what you see today, is an Adobe for Business logo on the screen.
You know, so that's sort of the long term of, you know, being able to have a vision for where you wanna go and weave brand moments into so many strategic initiatives that you eventually build the brand that you've been envisioning building.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes.
[Sergio Claudio]
It’s not a separate budget for commercials and for brand only things. It's weaving brand into all the important things to come.
[Bill Kenney]
Dude, let me just, I'll sitting standing clap for you. Super tactical points you gave. I think that's gonna be a highlight reel that I'm gonna play over and over again because of what you're saying, which is like, it's not just about one big splash and then get on with your day. It's all of the ways that you can continue to make those brand moments and weaving it into the business and the things that are already happening.
I think that's a big conundrum that our clients run into, quite honestly, which is like, what do I do now? You just answered that in a lot of very clear, actionable, I would say even easy to pull off quite honestly, ways. It was great chatting with you again.
Thanks for all the wisdom. Thanks for what you do in the creative community. And uh, yeah, we'll spin up another episode. Sorry everybody. We did not get to AI. We'll spin up another episode.
[Sergio Claudio]
Yeah. Well I appreciate you having me back. You know, this is the third, sounds like we got a fourth coming.
[Bill Kenney]
Yes, sir.
[Sergio Claudio]
Um, as always, Bill, it's a pleasure. And before I forget, go Birds.
[Bill Kenney]
Go Birds. I'll give it to you. Go Birds. Congrats. Congrats. All right, sir. Until next time.
