On this episode of Marketing Art and Science, join Host and CMO Advisor Lisa Martin of The Futurum Group as she welcomes Jennifer Johnson, (JJ) CMO of CrowdStrike. In this engaging conversation, JJ discusses her unique journey to the CMO role, the evolution of CrowdStrike’s data-driven marketing strategy, the collaborative relationship between marketing and sales, and how CrowdStrike is really leaning into Generative AI to convert prospects faster and enhance employee productivity.
Their discussion covers:
- JJ shares her inspiring journey from helping to lead a family business to CMO of CrowdStrike, discussing the importance of work-life integration in a dynamic role.
- How CrowdStrike transformed its MarTech strategy, deeply integrating data science and artistry to truly become a data-driven marketing organization.
- The strategy JJ leverages to tightly integrate sales and marketing and drive collaboration, create individual pipelines per rep, and enable lead gen scalability at CrowdStrike.
- The impressive results of CrowdStrike leaning into generative AI to transform its website, drive an increase in conversions, and dramatically enhance employee productivity.
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Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this webcast. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this webcast.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Transcript:
Lisa Martin: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this newest episode of our webcast and podcast, Marketing Art and Science. I’m CMO Advisor and Host, Lisa Martin, and I’m so thrilled to share with you my next guest, Jennifer Johnson, or JJ, the CMO of CrowdStrike. JJ, it’s so great to have you on the program. I know the audience is going to learn a ton from you today.
Jennifer Johnson: It’s so good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Lisa Martin: Sure. This is the webcast where we really kind of dissect the artistry and the fusion of science within modern marketing. And we’ll talk about things like JJ’s background, we’ll talk about MarTech in action at CrowdStrike. We’ll then talk about AI and gen AI and some of the amazing really results driven things that they’re doing. And then JJ’s going to leave us with some advice for aspiring CMOs. So JJ, you have such an interesting backstory. Share it with the audience a little bit about the family business. And what inspired you to get into marketing?
Jennifer Johnson: Yeah. So I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So for those of you in the Midwest, I am a fellow midwesterner at heart. My background is family business, so my grandfather 80 years ago started a level and tool manufacturing company called Johnson Level and Tool. So levels, if you don’t know, are those things that have the bubbles in them that you use to make sure things are straight. And started that in Milwaukee, again, 80 years ago. Was an immigrant from Sweden, started the company, built the company up, my dad and my uncle. They ran the company just up until about five years ago. We ironically sold the company to a Swedish company.
So my grandfather came over from Sweden, we wound up selling it to a Swedish company, so fun, full circle story. But it was the earlier years of my life and so a lot of my early memories were actually in the plant, in the factory. And so a couple things that it did, it really taught me a good work ethic because work was so ingrained. And people from Milwaukee, in the Midwest in general, I always say they’re salt of the earth. And having a good roll up your sleeves, work ethic is part of the DNA of the Midwest and especially more the blue collar industrial cities, like Milwaukee. And so kind of really learned that having a really good work ethic and grit from a very young age. And then the other thing that it really ingrained, probably not even realizing it at the time, is that family and business were intertwined. And so there wasn’t really a separation. It was just all part of one and the same.
And nowadays we talk about things like work-life balance and I’m definitely not here to say that work-life balance is not a thing because I think for many people work-life balance is a very important thing. So I think for me it’s more about integrating your work and your life together instead of compartmentalizing them separately. Because the way I grew up, they were so intertwined. And look, I think there’s positives to that. I think there’s probably some challenges to that, too, but I think the positives are more that you really think about work is not something that you just go and do and come home and forget about it. It’s really something that you bring into your life and you make it as part of your life. And I very much am passionate about what I do and I can’t do it unless I’m really all in and mentally and physically and everything. So for me, when I go into a job, it’s all in because that’s really all I know.
Lisa Martin: You make such a great point, that it’s really the integration. We’re going to be talking about the integration of art and science, but the integration of the work and the life because these days we have … How many screens do I have in front of me right now? Probably you as well. We’re just connected all the time and we have that expectation that we are going to be connected. We can collaborate, we can have these conversations, we can move things forward. Talk a little bit about how you got to be the CMO of CrowdStrike. Obviously I just saw that you guys just hit the S&P 500 recently. Huge, huge accomplishment there. Congratulations, but give us kind of that backstory of how you landed at CrowdStrike.
Jennifer Johnson: So I’ve been in enterprise software marketing for 20 plus years. Started in product marketing, so my formative years were definitely spent in more of the technical sides of marketing. Became a CMO, so expanded out. Became a CMO, been a CMO for about 10 plus years now. Not all in cyber, but at some point I pivoted over into cyber. And so most of my CMO career has been spent in cybersecurity companies. And I think along the way, I mean obviously being in cybersecurity, CrowdStrike. Actually, I’ve worked with or one degree of separation from a lot of the people who have been at CrowdStrike since the beginning and close to the beginning. So it kind of felt like a first cousin, if you will. There was a lot of familiarity there already. Yeah, and I think when we’re all going through our careers, we stop and we think about what do we want to do? Is this for me?
Do I want to do something outside of being a CMO? Do I want to work outside of cybersecurity? And I think where I’ve ultimately landed at a point was I like being a CMO. I like the function of marketing and I want to be a CMO and I really love cybersecurity because it’s very mission-driven and purpose-driven and it really is about doing something that’s kind of for the greater good, if you will. And so I said I want to be a CMO in cybersecurity. That’s what I want to do for the rest of my career. I don’t think I could have picked a better company. I couldn’t have picked a better company to do that, knowing that that was my personal mission and goal. So when I had the opportunity to come in and work for CrowdStrike, I lept at the chance to be able to work with this company and with the people and with our great technology and our amazing customers.
Lisa Martin: Yeah, amazing customers. I met you at Falcon last year, which if you’re not familiar, that’s CrowdStrike’s user conference, and we had some great customer conversations. I think there’s so much value in the voice of the customer really articulating the brand proposition of the company. But cybersecurity is such an interesting topic because it affects everybody. That threat landscape is so amorphous. It’s evolving constantly.
Ransomware became a household word, so you are in such an interesting time, but also delivering technologies that are saving brands. So we could do a whole show on cybersecurity, but I want to now get into the MarTech stack because you got to CrowdStrike about 18 months or so ago. And you kind of had not a blank slate to work with, but walk us through what you inherited and some of the things that weren’t there that you said we’ve got to change this, we’ve got to bring in the scientific part, we’ve got to become data-driven.
Jennifer Johnson: Yeah, and we talked about this. I think the title of this show, art and science, is so perfect because I talk about that a lot, around everything is art and a little bit of art and a little bit of science. And if those of us in marketing, some of us have probably heard someone along the way say that marketing is arts and crafts or used to be arts and crafts. Which I, by the way, take offense to. I don’t love hearing that because even the art side of marketing is a little more than arts and crafts, but the point I think was probably coming from a good place of that it was a lot more of the art side. And over the last 10, 15 years, the science side of marketing has become so much more of not the dominant piece of it, but it’s become so much more dominant because now you can measure what you do.
And it’s not a little bit of, okay, we think it did this or we know it had an impact. We just can’t completely measure it. So you need to fuse the two together. So it’s not an either or, it’s an and. And you need to do both, but you also need to bring both together. So at CrowdStrike, our brand has always been a strength of us as a company and that’s beyond marketing. It’s every touchpoint with the company, but marketing has done an amazing job well before me on really building the brand and bringing a persona around the adversaries and the bad guys. And really for me, it was how do we continue to carry that torch forward? But I saw a real opportunity to invest in the science side of it. We’re a multi-billion dollar ARR company. We have 28 products on our platform.
We work with every segment in every industry of companies and so that becomes really complex really quickly. And so art isn’t going to get you need to go. We’ve been very public with the street on our path to get to $10 billion in ARR. That doesn’t happen with art alone, so we have to really think strategically and thoughtfully about the whole customer journey. How are we bringing new customers in? But that’s really kind of the starting point, if you will. It’s then how do we get customers to expand logically around the platform? And when you have 28 products, there’s a lot of different paths that customers can take and ultimately the goal is to consolidate on our platform. So you really need the science on that part. And so it wasn’t a blank slate, but what I really looked at when I came in is how do we modernize our tech stack?
How do we modernize our ability to be data-driven? How do we use data? And now data science and AI is a whole nother element to it, but how do we bring data in to help us be more predictive around where to focus? And I think that’s been a huge value in what we’ve done with just even taking the tech stack as an example, is being able to bring that notion of AI and machine learning into the marketing tech stack. And so one of the tools that we brought in about 18 months ago now is 6sense. So for those marketers, you probably know 6sense. And really, that was really instrumental not just to marketing, but to our sales development team that are doing the prospecting because, again, we sell to millions of organizations. We saw that every company potentially on the planet. Every company on the planet is a potential customer, so where do you focus? And we have hundreds of thousands of people coming to our website. Being able to get the insights and the data and the signals on intent, it really helps to almost create that funnel before the sales cycle really even starts of where do we focus and what messages do we send. Because you can tell what they’re in the market for and you can tell where they are in the buying cycle. So you can be very, very targeted with the message, with the offer, with the product area. And then that’s one big piece of the equation, is how do we be more strategic about who we’re bringing in?
And then now we’re really layering in data science and the tech stack to be predictive around their propensity to buy and what the next best product is. So that’s a whole nother journey now that we’re taking on, is there’s 28 products. I mean, we know where the logical growth paths are and where the logical next step is, but based on who they are, based on their behavior, based on what they’re doing with the technology, kind of bringing in that PLG esque kind of motion of where do we actually help guide them. So that’s been a really big initiative, very impactful initiative in the company and in the team and really giving marketing a seat at the table of bringing the data to the conversation. I think that’s a big part of it, too.
Lisa Martin: And that’s pretty differentiating, too. You mentioned when we were speaking before that you brought data science to the sales team. So many organizations say we’re data-driven or we’re working to become data-driven. It’s a whole other ball game to actually be living it and having the impact that you’re talking about, the proof in the pudding. Share a little bit about how 28 different products, customers at different parts of the journey, hundreds of thousands. You talked about just the horizontal applicability and impact that CrowdStrike has in every industry. What’s that journey like from prospect to loyal advocate to expansion? And how does the MarTech stack and those levers of art and science help really customers go on that journey seamlessly?
Jennifer Johnson: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think anyone who’s in this field knows that there’s been a lot of data around the percentage of the sales cycle that’s done before anyone ever talks to a human being. And so we have front loaded a lot of our top of funnel, as you would expect, with digital retargeting using social media and paid social and digital to really hone in and follow people through that front end of the journey. Peer review sites, so there’s a whole team that’s really a growth marketing team that’s digitally focused, that’s really focused on driving the right journey before they even get to an SDR, which is they’re kind of the first person that they would talk to help prospect.
So there’s a whole marketing tech stack around digital, digital retargeting. 6sense plays a key role there because we can obviously, as I said before, we can actually see what people are searching on, what their intent is, what they’re searching on from a product or what kind of initiatives they have, where they might be in the buy-in cycle based on their behavior. And so we do all that to basically nurture these prospects and even help the SDR team. Say if you have 100 people that you can spend time with and call on, who are you going to focus your time on? So that’s one whole piece of it. And then it’s of course we get them into a cycle. I think that becomes a little bit more it goes from digital led to maybe more in-person and physical led. It’s an interesting conversation that we’re having as a marketing organization right now. How do you move people from that early stage pipeline opportunity to a later stage? What we’re seeing is that this is where you would want to put in more of your in-person events, your workshops. And they don’t always always have to be in person. They can be virtual, but more hands-on things where they can actually feel, touch, experience the technology, talk to other customers.
Our user conference obviously plays a big role in this phase here to help bring people along. We talk about it as the power of the crowd and it’s real when people feel the magic of the momentum we have. And you were at Falcon last year. It’s real. And then once they become a customer, there’s typically a logical land. I mean, we obviously try to get that land as big as possible, but there’s typical product set that usually is in that land, in that first initial deal. And then it’s looking at data science to say, okay, customers that look like this, that behave like this, that use the product like this, this is how they tend to expand. Or this is your typical PLG using analytics, using data, using data science around the propensity to buy to say customers that look like this, they might buy 10X more. I was CMO of a company named Amplitude that does exactly this.
It helps you with digital analytics to actually understand what customers are most profitable, what customer journeys are going to actually net the most revenue. So those are the things we look at. So we tailor the digital and the tech stack with the in-person events that help educate customers on expansion. And of course customer storytelling is woven throughout that entire journey. I think the last thing I’d say is having data. This is less about the tech stack and more about the analytics. I think one of the biggest things that we’ve done that has transformed in a very positive way and we had a great relationship with sales. We’ve always had a great relationship with sales, but one of the things that transformed it the most was marketing and, in particular, field marketing, coming to the table with data.
So, many times it’s the activity trap that field marketers can fall into, where if they don’t come with a point of view, if they don’t come with data, a lot of times it turns into what do you want to do, sales team? And sales team will give them their wishlist of all the things that they want to do. And there’s good intent, but at the same time, they’re not marketers. And if you support 20 salespeople, you’re going to get 20 different iterations of a plan. And then all of a sudden the field marketer is looking at it going, “How am I going to execute all of this?” Because there’s no way. And then you fall into this, I call it the activity trap. And then it’s more is better. More is not better. We hopefully know that as marketers. So this flipped it completely on its head, where now field marketing can come to the table with data.
We track pipeline, we have pipeline goals all the way down to a rep level. And we have pipeline goals that we work with rev ops to set by week. So every week that our field marketers can go to their sales teams and say, “Okay, here’s where you’re doing a great job in building and converting pipe. Here’s where you have some weaknesses.” They can get it granularly down to an individual rep, say, “Hey, this rep might be having some challenges. What’s going on?” And that allows us to rapidly shift our investment where we need to help adjust to fill those gap areas. But it also drives a different discussion because we’re leading the discussion in the places where the business needs it to go to, not because a sales leader with all the best intentions they have is coming up with their wishlist of things. And so it’s not only given marketing a seat at the table to drive the right discussion, but the sales team obviously appreciates it, too, because we’re coming with something of value to them.
And so it’s really transformed that whole relationship and I believe that field marketers are a really important piece of the equation. And I think with COVID, there was a lot of discussion about everything’s going to move to digital. What’s the future of field marketing? What we’re seeing is you still need, and it’s not just about running events, but you still need in person. You need in person. You need a combination of digital and physical events and programs. And so how you bring those things together and do it in the right way to support the business, field marketing then becomes the CMO of their territory instead of the event planner.
Lisa Martin: I like that. That’s awesome. The synergies that you’re describing that marketing has with sales at CrowdStrike is unique. I talk with a lot of CMOs unfortunate to have this position and some of them really nail sales and marketing relationship. I’ve seen CMOs that own the SDRs, for example, but what you’re doing to really create this individual pipeline and leverage the data to help sales sell better is marketing really leading the company in terms of helping to influence and generate revenue that you can actually track, which is huge. All about generating revenue at the end of the day, right?
Jennifer Johnson: That’s right. It is. I mean, we love the work that we do with our brand. It’s amazing. It makes everybody feel really good and that affinity does wind up translating to revenue at some point because we do a Super Bowl commercial. People love seeing that the company that they’re investing in is a Super Bowl advertiser. It makes people feel better and more confident in their decision. Ultimately, everything we’re doing is to drive revenue. We’re a for-profit company, but at the end of the day you have to bring those two things together. I think the other thing that we’ve done a really great, or we’re continuing to do a really great job of, is fusing the art and science together, bringing brand and demand together.
So when you have that amazing brand campaign, when you see that Super Bowl ad, it’s not just, wow, they just did a Super Bowl ad and then went away. It’s connecting the storytelling from that ad all the way through to the storytelling they see when they go to the website, they go to digital in connecting the brand story to the platform and product story. And that sounds logical, but sometimes it’s not done. And a lot of times it’s not done, where you have a brand message and you have a product message and they don’t necessarily logically connect. Or people have to do, what I call, the mental math to connect the dots. To connect those two stories together, we make it a much more seamless connection between brands and platform.
Lisa Martin: It’s integrated. Yes. I’d love to just kind of double click on the Super Bowl commercial a little bit. We’ve talked a lot about the science and the foundation, how you’ve brought data science to sales, the individual pipeline creation that’s really data-driven. What was some of the artistry involved in getting that message out in the Super Bowl commercial? For anyone that didn’t see it, I’m sure they can find it on YouTube, but I’d love to just get your … What was the artistry and sizzle that really helped carry that brand message forward?
Jennifer Johnson: Yeah, so we’ve done two Super Bowl ads, this last year and the year before. A couple things and the decision to do a Super Bowl ad, we believe that we have a responsibility to bring cybersecurity to the mainstream because it’s such an existential threat to all of us as consumers. And as one of the largest companies, that Super Bowl commercials are not inexpensive. Not everyone can afford to do it. We believe it is almost like carrying the flag for the industry in a way to bring the importance of cybersecurity to everyone. And to do that to a mainstream audience, it obviously has to be a relatable message.
It has to tie it together in a way people can understand. So the first year that we did the Super Bowl ad, it was about taking an event in history, the Trojan horse, and actually tying it as the most infamous breach in history that people can relate to and tying it to what would’ve happened if they had CrowdStrike. So you’re taking some events that everyone hopefully knows of on some level and tying it to our technology. And even the words we used of how we described what we did, it was very simple. And so the average person could probably get it on some level and the notion we stop breach … It’s not just the notion, it’s our mission. It’s not just a tagline, it’s our vision, it’s our mission. We stop breaches, that’s what we do. In that story, we stopped the most infamous breach in history.
So now juxtaposed that with the Super Bowl commercial last year and we took it to the future. So we went from the past to the future and it was kind of a future western, if you will, where we actually brought the adversaries, the bad guys, to life. Each of the adversaries, they were the outlaws, the bad guys that came into the town. And there were four of them that represented actual adversary groups that we track. So one of the things we’ve done as a brand is we’ve put personas around hacking groups and e-crime groups and nation state groups and given them personas. And that’s how we track them.
That’s how we talk about them, so they have a look and a feel to them. And so we brought them to life in a very sinister way in the ad. And then our heroine, Charlotte, so the other thing we did is we came up with how are we going to put a persona to our brand around positivity, and truth, and wisdom and protection? And we came up with our cybersecurity heroine, Charlotte, who was in both years’ ads. And so she kind of comes in and saves the day, if you will, but in the end it’s the story of good and evil. We’re good and the bad guys are the adversaries, are evil, and something that people can relate to. And look, all of that is how I said it, is if you don’t know anything about cybersecurity and all you took away from it is that CrowdStrike is cybersecurity and when you think cybersecurity you think CrowdStrike, that’s a win.
Lisa Martin: That’s a huge win.
Jennifer Johnson: Yeah. If you’re in cybersecurity and you kind of understood some of the more nuances of the story, like who these adversary groups were, the notion that it was a little futuristic, so it was bringing in AI into the ad in a way. And our technology is part the human element of our threat researchers and our threat hunters together with our technology and our AI driven technology, bringing that together as part of our differentiation. So if you understand cybersecurity and technology, you probably got some of the more nuanced messaging in the story, but there was something for everyone. And that’s the beauty of storytelling, really.
Lisa Martin: Yes. Yes.
Jennifer Johnson: And it makes people feel good. I’m a partner of CrowdStrike. I’m a customer of CrowdStrike. I’m an employee of CrowdStrike. I am so proud that I’m affiliated with this company. And in the end, that’s success.
Lisa Martin: Totally. And we got that when, like I said, I met you at Falcon last fall. And just the voices of the customers really sharing not just stories of we’re faster, we’re more efficient, but really metrics driven outcomes is huge. I’m a huge fan of customer marketing and of customers really sharing what they’re doing, but how it’s actually really impacting the business. That was a great theme that I think we brought out of Falcon last year. Last section for you, you mentioned AI. I know that CrowdStrike is really leaning into gen AI. Walk the audience through what you’re doing there because it’s really remarkable and you’ve got results that are demonstrating it’s working, it’s impactful.
Jennifer Johnson: Yeah. Well, AI as a company, AI has been in our technology since day one and now we have generative AI in our technology. As a marketing organization, we are leaning heavily into generative AI to help accelerate how we work as marketers. So we have over 25 different use cases across the marketing organization right now that we’re using ChatGPT for. And that’s everything from things you would think about. Content creation, that’s kind of the obvious one that marketers are using it for, to creating digital headlines for AB testing, to best practices planning templates, to writing our email copy for the SDRs, or editing content. I mean, translations. There’s a lot that we’re doing across the board. One of the things that we did is we’ve used it to help relaunch parts of our website. And the thing I would stress to marketers is it does not replace humans.
Full stop. You can use ChatGPT, and there’s even a little bit of an art in ChatGPT, if you’ve used it. You have to ask the question and keep refining it and keep asking and prompting it to get to the answer that you want. And so there’s a little bit of art in that. And then when you get the answer, there’s refinement that has to happen after that. You’re not going to get something and just copy and paste it and put it on your website and say that’s it. You have to have to really have the human element to keep refining the messaging. I mean, it went from months to a few weeks in terms of how fast we were able to move to get some of these new areas of our site launched. And it’s not only the speed in which we’re able to operate the conversion.I mean, it’s amazing the conversion improvement. So when people come onto our site, it’s a much more rich experience. It’s a much m ore engaging experience.
They’re finding the content they want, they’re engaging with content more. And so we’re proving that it works. And so that’s my message I think to anyone out there, is if you’re kind of resisting it, consciously or not, don’t resist it because it actually does really help. And you can start using it with just basic things, like help me write this email. It just takes some things off of your plate that helps you kind of accelerate things. I found that very useful. The other thing is it doesn’t replace humans. You still need humans for it. It can just help do your job faster. And so I’m a big believer. I’m seeing at work and so I’m really driving this into the team and the success breeds success. So when the team saw how successful this one team was in their project and how much internal recognition they were getting, every team now all of a sudden is raising their hands. They want to be the next one to go. And they’re like, “We want to do it now.” And so it’s contagious and so we’re seeing a lot of good initial success with it that we’ll continue to use.
Lisa Martin: That’s outstanding. You talked about the website updates. You mentioned to me the other day that you guys are using it for AB testing, but your proof is in the data. You talked about the impact of conversions alone is huge and it’s kind of going viral, no pun intended. Within CrowdStrike, you’re saying more teams are saying we want to be the next team to actually leverage gen AI to make big impacts that ultimately impact revenue. I think that’s a great message. I’m completely with you on the use of gen AI for good. I use it a lot myself and it’s fun how you can interact with it to be creative.
And I think as marketers in tech, I don’t know if you feel the same way, but I always feel like we have a sense of responsibility to help get that message out there much more consistently about all the positive elements that are coming from AI and tools like Gen AI because there’s so much fear factor out there in the general public that sees jobs being replaced, et cetera. You’re saying, no, it’s really humans and AI together. And I see that a lot with all the companies that I talk with and you just kind of embodied that as well. Last question for you, JJ, is what advice would you have to somebody who is following in your footsteps, wants to get to that CMO stage based on your backstory of how you got to where you are?
Jennifer Johnson: Yeah, great question. I think that taking risks is really important and taking calculated risks because people can take varying levels of risks based on their life and their personal situations and all that. But I think it’s more about when I say take risks, I think it’s seizing opportunities as they come. My first job in tech marketing was an internship at Veritas Software. I think we talked about this and it was back in the early 2000s when all of the Enron, WorldCom, if you remember back then, all the corporate governance scandals were happening and that really created all these regulations around data governance, data retention, data security, data privacy. Sarbanes-Oxley was the big one, HIPAA. There’s things that still exist today from that timeframe. And I worked at a data storage company and so there was a lot of questions around, well, what does this mean for data storage and retention and backup and recovery and archiving and all of that because of these regulations?
So my internship was to go research these regulations and figure out how to map the regulations to the value proposition of our technology and build content around it. So I was doing my internship and one day I got a call from my boss and said our CEO is going on some broadcast. It was probably CNBC, some broadcast to talk about the impact of these regulations on the industry and so he needs to get briefed. And that was a moment where probably my naivete probably worked in my advantage that I said, “Okay, I’ll go brief them.” And so I went and briefed him and sent the briefing document and it was great and worked out really well and I got a job out of it. So I think part of it is being prepared. They say luck is opportunity meets preparation. That probably was a bit of being lucky in that definition. But yeah, seizing those moments when they come to you and not being afraid and taking risks. My path has sometimes taken a … It hasn’t been a straight line. Sometimes it’s kind of taken bit of a left or a right turn. You kind of go laterally to move five steps forward, right?
Lisa Martin: Sure.
Jennifer Johnson: And I think those things are okay. If you really think about how is this going to help me get to the next thing and you think kind of two steps ahead, that’s how I always think. And not everything seems to be a linear, straight line. Sometimes going to the side is going to actually get you there faster or get you to somewhere you didn’t even know you wanted to go. And so that’s when I talk about taking risks. It’s taking risks. Sometimes you don’t know what the outcome’s going to be, but you have an idea. And I think that everyone I’ve talked to that’s been successful in their career has kind of had an element of that. Plus a good mentor. Get a good mentor.
Lisa Martin: Definitely. That’s such great advice. I’m with you on all of that. Taking those calculated risks, being prepared and just being open to possibilities I think is just what I would echo in terms of what you said. But JJ, it’s been so great having you on the program. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to join us on Marketing Art and Science, sharing the foundations that you put in place, how you’re bringing the data science to sales, how marketing and sales are so synergistic, and the use of AI and gen AI within CrowdStrike’s tools and marketing and the impact that you’re having to the business. This has been a fantastic episode. I’m sure the audience loved it, so, again, thank you for joining us today.
Jennifer Johnson: Thank you so much. It was great to be here. Thank you.
Lisa Martin: Excellent. We want to thank you for tuning in and remind you in two weeks we drop another episode of Marketing Art and Science. So stay tuned. We’ll see you then.
Other insights from The Futurum Group:
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CMO Eric Herzog on The Art & Science of The Sales-Marketing Relationship
Ash Parikh on the Evolution of the CMO role and the Influence of Tech on Marketing Management Style
How Modern Marketing is Enabling Domino Data Lab to Unleash the Power of AI
Author Information
Lisa Martin is a technology correspondent and former NASA scientist who has made a significant impact in the tech industry. After earning a masters in cell and molecular biology, she worked on high-profile NASA projects that flew in space before further exploring her artistic side as a tech storyteller. As a respected marketer and broadcaster, she's interviewed industry giants and thought leaders like Michael Dell, Pat Gelsinger, Suze Orman and Deepak Chopra, as she has a talent for making complex technical concepts accessible to both insiders and laypeople. With her unique blend of science, marketing, and broadcasting experience, Lisa provides insightful analysis on the latest tech trends and innovations. Today, she's a prominent figure in the tech media landscape, appearing on platforms like "The Watch List" and iHeartRadio, sharing her expertise and passion for science and technology with a wide audience.
