334: Using Data to Drive Transformation with CMO at NetApp James Whitemore
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For all of us, it's about predicting where the consumer is going and getting half of it right. One of the things we want to do is create ads that don't suck. Embracing change creates great possibility. I'm Alan Hart, and this is Marketing Today.

Today on the show, I've got James Whitemore. He's the chief marketing officer at NetApp. He's been on the show before and you should go back and check out episode 234 when we did the interview back somewhere in 2020, I think November-ish timeframe. And update four.

for you. Today, we talk about the results he's achieved from all of the transformation work that he started back in that first episode in 2020 and give you the updates of the amazing results that he's seen. Something around that the business that they've been focusing on is

driven from $5 million in average recurring revenue to a line of sight of $2 billion. And they've helped change their brand perception in the C-suite of the people that they're targeting from somewhere around 29% of awareness, knowing something about NetApp.

to over 73%. Those are some amazing stats. And so we're going to diagnose sort of how he was able to achieve that, his advice for other marketing leaders in terms of how to drive transformation. Spoiler alert, it's about revenue, not about demand or leads and much more. I hope you enjoy this conversation with James Whitemore. James, welcome to the show. Alan, thank you for having me back. It's not often I'm

I'm invited back to places. I'm remembering, I'm going to, I'm not even going to get it right. There's some quote, I think it's from a famous American writer that something to the effect of, I don't want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm feeling, I'm feeling that maybe the podcast theme should be that one as well, but welcome. I'm glad to have you back. Looking forward to talking quite a bit about NetApp and what's going on. I know people that are listening to this, we've had you on before, so you should go back to episode 234 and listen to James in our first conversation.

But we've covered a lot of ground with you. And we talked, I think, at length at that point in time about your path to the chief marketing officer at NetApp. But maybe you could just recap kind of your story and your background and how you got to where you are in kind of the highlight fashion, if you will. Okay, happy to. So I am a salesperson at heart and I started my career in sales. And one of those mouthy salespeople that's always telling the marketing team what they should be doing and what...

what's good, what's bad. And I got into marketing in my first role at IBM in a product and

marketing role in the storage group and then went back to sales and came back into marketing and then joined Sun Microsystems from IBM and joined in a channel marketing role and then went to the field at Sun Microsystems, ran selling teams in Asia Pacific and then came back into the marketing gang as the head of marketing for the storage product group. Then did a few startups and joined them as

CMO but ended up running the go-to-market functions including sales, marketing and all the other associated go-to-market functions. And the last one of those startups was a company called SolidFire who was acquired by NetApp in 2016 and that's how I got to NetApp. And when NetApp acquired SolidFire the CMO chair was open and they said, are you any interested in being CMO? And I said, no way, no way, I'm a salesperson.

And I was in the sales group at NetApp for a couple of years and then moved into the marketing group and eventually into the CMO role and have been in that role for coming up four years and loved every minute of it. So my reluctance of being a CMO is

It's always short lived when I'm in that chair. I love it. I love it. Yeah, no, that's awesome. That's awesome. And I have a special place in my heart for salespeople turn marketers because you guys know how it happens, right? Like on the ground floor. And I think it puts a sharper edge on the plans and strategies that you develop when you have that.

if you will. I think you're right. And I think the relationship between sales and marketing could be a torturous one sometimes. But if you've got somebody who already understands the mentality of a seller leading the team, it's easier just to develop a great relationship. And I also think that if you look around the slate of CMOs in tech, so many more of them are coming from commercial backgrounds and selling backgrounds and the

The understanding of revenue engines rather than demand engines, the use of data to really drive decisions seems to be so much more important for a CMO today rather than creativity. That's obviously still important, but it's that revenue and data element which seems to be most prevalent.

Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Well, the last time we talked, I think it was November of 2020. It was a major event going on during that time called a pandemic. I think we were both in the throes of trying to adjust to hybrid and virtual work. And you had some beautiful camera set up, if I remember correctly, because you look great on video. Yeah.

been happening since that time? I guess that's almost two years since we last talked. So what's been happening? Yeah, first off, from a business perspective, it's been a period of great growth for NetApp. Our business is data storage, data management, and associated services, and

That business has remained very healthy. We have continued to expand our cloud offerings, cloud data management, data storage offerings, particularly in partnership with Google, Microsoft, AWS, and VMware, and those offerings have matured very rapidly.

Nicely, when I joined that cloud portfolio, it was less than $5 million in annual recurring revenue. And we just laid out a plan for our financial community and our board, getting it to $2 billion in a very short space of time. So really, really rapid growth in that cloud.

Holy cow. Yeah, it's crazy. And marketing has been a huge part of that. It's very much a marketing-led revenue engine. And we've learned a lot about the different marketing engines of Google, Microsoft, AWS, VMware, and how we plug into that and how we really work with them to drive revenue. So that's been a huge learning. And I think the other thing we talked a lot about was the Marketing Tech Stack and what we were trying to do to use the pandemic technology

as an opportunity to teach our sellers who are, you know, a lot of them are classic enterprise B2B sellers, how to be more digitally savvy and how to be more able to act like an inside seller rather than a field-based seller. And that's made huge progress too. Yeah. I mean, going from, cause those were, yeah, you're right. Like those were early days, I guess, of, of launching some of those cloud products. Yeah.

going from a 5 million average recurring revenue to line of sight, let's put it to $2 billion. That's a, it's hard to put words, obviously. I'm like struggling for words. People don't think about NetApp for a, you know, for that, you know, people were a 30 year old company. And the first thing that people who know NetApp, uh,

I think of as a classic engineered storage systems and software company. So a lot of work that I've been doing and my team has been doing over the last two years is about changing that brand perception. And I think we've been quite successful in that.

too. And one of the things I think I'll be most proud of it in my career is the way that we've been able to change perceptions within the C-suite who were generally familiar with NetApp, but not intimate into what we were doing. In most large organizations, NetApp had been a part of their IT infrastructure and

It was just always there. But as we've introduced more and more cloud services and they get run up blind for approvals and recommendations into the C-suite, it was really important for us to change that perception. And we just have made remarkable progress there where two years ago, less than 29% of CIOs were

I think it's somewhat familiar or very familiar with NetApp and that now ranks at over 73%. To shift it from 29% to 73% in two years is something I'm very proud of.

Yeah, another phenomenal stat. I mean, so, all right, we've got to deconstruct this. Like, how did you do this? Because everybody wants to know, like, what was the engine behind all of this growth and perception change all at the same time? Well, your growth is very much tied to the market growth, right? And the growth of cloud services in the marketplace and

It's not that we just ride the back of people like AWS and Google and Amazon. That's not it at all because we have to be able to position our products within their broad portfolios. And a lot of work is done to make sure that

the NetApp services that are sold through their marketplaces and as their first-party services are the services of choice for large-scale enterprises as they migrate their workloads to the cloud. So it's not an easy thing, but it's carried by market momentum.

And in terms of perception and changing perception, I think we spoke about it when I walked into the CMO chair here. NetApp was a 25-year-old company, and it looked very similar to...

and tone and personality to every other big IT company. You know, the blue color schemes, the very kind of like change the world with technology type of language. And I looked at it and said, we'll never, never make our voice heard in this. So we did a lot of work on our brand messaging. We brought a lot of kind of like self-deprecating humor into the messaging and

I always believed that if our audience isn't being entertained, they're not going to pay attention. I think it was just a complete change in style, which really did capture people's attention and made them stop and take a look at who NetApp is and what we're doing. And obviously, just quarter after quarter of really strong earnings growth gets you attention too. So it's a combination of factors.

No, that makes sense. And from a marketing standpoint, I mean, we did talk about like the new campaigns and the humor and how you're positioning yourselves, but making that more vibrant, so to speak. But to achieve that scale that you guys have achieved, like has there, I mean...

Must have been quite a bit of tech, more tech, if you will, in the background. How did that play out? Well, that's exactly it. The ability to look at every tactic of execution on a real time basis and understand what's working from a content perspective, from a channel perspective. It's so key and it's tools like Calibre Mind and Lytics that have been so important to that.

And a huge amount of work that has gone on within our own teams, within the marketing teams, to really teach them how to use these tools, how to think like a seller, not just a marketeer, just as we're working with our sellers, teaching them to think like a marketing person, not just a seller. And a lot of cross-population of skills, I think, between the marketing and sales teams.

How does IT come into play for NetApp? I mean, it varies the collaboration and the synergies or lack thereof, depending on the company you talk to. So I'm curious what it's like at NetApp. It's critical. I mean, it's absolutely critical. We just had a change in CIO the previous year.

CIO Bill was absolutely a strong ally and partner to marketing. And we would joke that we are BFFs and we would host joint town halls. And I think at one stage, someone sent us some love heart necklaces to wear. But it was just a real strong partnership. As Bill retired, we have a new CIO on board. And

working very closely with him, helping him understand all of the marketing technology stats. But his team, the team around him remained very, very consistent and they just work so well together. We couldn't do what we do without the IT team, that's for sure. Well, you're obviously measuring your impact through revenue and also through this perception change. Are there other near-term measures that you look at or how do you think about measuring your overall impact and making sure you're showing traction

I'll give you the C-level pitch on that and a lot of work done to educate my peers around the leadership table over the last couple of years on the marketing metrics that matter. I started this campaign of educating that the lead is dead. Don't ask me about leads. You can ask me about anything, but just do not ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,

ask me where's my leads or how many leads have we got and they're starting to really understand that and you know we spent a lot of time talking about how antiquated linear serial lead flows are and how important it is to understand every interaction you have with the prospecting

customer over every stage of their buying process. And now we can actually visualize that and show them all those interactions. So the three things I focus on with the leadership team and with our selling teams is, you know, first up, you should hold me accountable for the marketing team, accountable for reaching and engaging the audiences that matter. And

You're just developing this understanding that you don't get anywhere if you aren't getting your messages in front of the people who matter, the audiences that matter. And a lot of work has been done with our selling teams on really segmenting audiences by enterprise accounts, commercial accounts, by acquire accounts versus existing accounts and really building a...

but you're a full picture of who our target audience is across the portfolio. And now we can have a meaningful conversation about how we're reaching them and engaging them.

The second set metrics is always about how we are helping create opportunities to sell. And we look at that in terms of influence pipeline. It's not about leads. A lead is nothing unless it results in an opportunity to sell. And this concept of influence pipeline and engaged pipeline is so critical. And then the third area is impact on revenue, looking at all the deals that are closed and

whether they're closed by our sellers or through marketplaces of our cloud partners or through our channel partners. What was marketing's impact and contribution to that revenue? So we got audience reach and engagement, opportunity creation and engagement, and then influence on revenue. Those are the three things. Yeah. Well, I mean, it says so much. It sounds so simple, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And at the end of it, I guess it is, but getting there...

Getting there must be a challenge if you don't have the right tools, process, etc. Well, it's been a two-year slog. I mean, it's been a three-year slog, actually. And a shout-out to our marketing operations and technology team. They just worked tirelessly to do it. The first thing they had to do, you know, we're a data company, right? You would think that we had every piece of data available.

centralized that we would ever need. No, it's like the cobbler's shoes. So worked tirelessly for a year on building out the company's first Snowflake database and bringing in 16 different internal sources and numerous external sources of data into one data lake that can then be fed into tools like CalibreMind and Lytics and all the other technology that we use. And that was so, so critical.

And then actually the other thing that we really had to focus on was the budgeting tools. And it's not just good enough to be able to show marketing's impact on pipe and revenue. You've got to be able to show ROI numbers. And what we learned very quickly was that the budgeting tools that we currently

had were basically not good enough to support the new technologies that we have for attribution and tracking. So we use a tool called Hive9, which basically manages all of our spend and is able to associate any element of spend to individual campaigns and tactics by country, by region, by channel. And that then gives us some really good insight on ROI numbers. That was an important part of it.

No, that's amazing. That's amazing. I have not heard of that system. I would have to check that out. Obviously, rubber meets the road with sales. And you just described in that last, you know, the revenue impact. I hadn't been thinking about the fact that you sell inside of an ecosystem, right? That it

multiple ecosystems i should say um and so you've got partners that are helping to close sometimes they're closing the deals sometimes you're closing the deals sounds like there's also a split between what's marketing closed and what your own sales force might be doing so how do you think about that that sounds extremely complex it's complex yeah but to me it's you know i'm just a data nerd and a marketing as a science but i find it fascinating and just looking at the very

a deal that's closed, how it got there, what partners touched it, where it bounced in and out of maybe an AWS marketplace and into our marketplaces. And it's just fascinating. It is complex. And what I school the team is...

that don't get sucked into the data. You've got to be able to make sense of the data and use it to guide your activities. But if you try and overanalyze everything, you won't be successful. And that's still a learning process. But I love the complexity of it. Really love it. That sounds fascinating. I'm envisioning you with like a big,

box and it's got a big crank crank on it and that's your like marketing machine and you're looking down at the horizon to see what's popping out at the other it is like that you know sitting in front of me on the screen i've got five dashboards open which are all showing different parts of the marketing process and cycle and you can just see it all happening and

It's just fascinating. Sellers are starting to see it as well. Two years ago, they were just schooled to have leads that were passed to them. Those leads were marketing-generated, marketing-qualified. They went through SDRs and then finally landed in the hands of a seller. And it typically took 21 days to move something from a

event in marketing to be a qualified lead in a seller's hand. 21 days, it's nonsense. And now they get your real-time alerts and we're teaching them what to do with those alerts. You know, if you get an alert to say that,

So-and-so in this account has done this. Here's three or four recommend courses of action. And they're really starting to pick up on it. It doesn't take long for them to really pick up on it. And there's just some great examples of how it's helped account teams and the field-based sellers into new accounts to uncover new opportunities in existing accounts. And that's what really makes an impact. Yeah.

Yeah, no, definitely. Those stories and case studies just fuel, I'm sure it's your flywheel, right? It fuels even more success. How has all of this, these efforts and initiatives that you've been on this journey, if you will, how has it impacted your thinking around your overall marketing efforts or the approach in general to marketing? Firstly, it's helped us shape investment models and the

very thoughtfully and based on data. And when I say investment models, the mix between, you know, the basic mix between people and program dollars, how we invest money, and then between brand and demand-based programs. And then in each one of those, the tactics that we use. So I feel for the first time ever in my career that I've got a really good understanding of how I should be budgeting and investing and allocating resources. Yeah.

That's a good thing. Still very much work in progress as we evolve the team and teach them how to use all of these tools and really to be on top of their games, how we work with selling teams and the relationship between marketing and sales and how the classic

Concepts of field marketing really had to be changed where we now call the people in the field marketing business managers who are helping the selling teams really interpret all this data and prioritize their activity. That was a big shift away from the classic field marketing. It was much more event-orientated. So lots of changes taking place in the teams and the relationships between others around the company.

That's amazing. And you've been on an amazing transformation journey of how you go to market in many, many, many different ways. What advice would you have to other CMOs that might be listening to this that are just starting their transformation journey or thinking about driving a new transformation journey? I think for me, perhaps the three key elements are, first, you've got to very focus on the revenue and where the revenue comes from, where it's actually transacted and how it

gets to be revenue rather than just demand or leads. We started by removing the word lead from

everyone's vocabulary we started by changing the name of teams from campaign teams and demand teams to revenue teams so just you go you get the whole marketing organization focused around revenue and where it comes from that's the first thing well second is you've got to have every piece of data you you can get your hands on and the tools and the marketing tech

It's a key part of that, but teaching people how to interpret that data. Data will never be perfect. You've always got to teach them how to make sense of data rather than get too paralyzed by it and just build a team that is completely data savvy. And then the third is...

about kind of like, you know, to me, it's about confidence and swagger as a marketing team that is asked with transforming a company or a market or breaking into two markets. You've got to do it with some kind of like swagger and, you know,

You will never do it if you try and emulate others in that marketplace. You've got to be able to find your voice and really, really emphasize it and build upon it and be prepared to be different in the marketplace. I think those are the three things. - No, those are three great pieces of advice. And you should have a lot of swagger and your team should too with the numbers you guys are posting.

I mean, it's quite unbelievable. You know, I think everyone knows that it's never good enough, right? Right. Of course. Of course. Yeah. It's like, oh, really? Can someone just say thank you for once? Well, that's why you have to come on a program like this because I'll just rub you with love. And I mean, it truly is amazing. It truly is amazing. And kudos to you and the team that you've put together to achieve that. That's really phenomenal work.

And it's so nice to be able to hear when you just started this or just shortly after you started this to now. I mean, such a change, such a change. So kudos. Well, there's a couple other topics I'd like to talk about. One is I think one that's near and dear to you is being an advocate for diversity and inclusion and curious how that's taking shape at NetApp.

And why is it important? And does marketing have a role in helping to drive those efforts? I think it is incredibly important. And I'm very proud of the team we have in marketing and the way that it is really a role model, I think, for diversity and inclusion across the company. A 30-year-old tech company that is dominated by engineering resources, diversity and inclusion is something that is significant.

sometimes a bit of a struggle, but the marketing team is quite phenomenal. And I think in a few ways. Firstly, I think about the power that you get when you have diverse thinking at the table, and it's nothing to do with physical diversity and inclusion. It's just different ways of thinking. And we use a lot of different tools. Strength Finders is one of my favorites to understand the different thinking patterns and what skills people bring to the table. We use that a

across my leadership team, across their leadership teams to try and make sure that we are bringing diverse thinking into the table.

And the second thing is that in overall role of diversity and the company's ability to build a diverse and inclusive workforce, marketing plays a huge role. And we've done a lot of work over the last 18 months around employer branding and employee engagement and really supporting our employee business resource groups. And we've never really, the marketing team had never really had too much of a proactive role in that before.

And that's, you know, for us, that's so important. The talent that we're hiring today is so different from the talent we hired five years ago. And, you know, a good example for me is we just opened a new international headquarters in Cork in Ireland. And Cork is a very competitive town in tech.

And we had big hiring goals in a very short period of time. And we've blown them away. And everyone said, this could be a real difficult market to hire in. And it hasn't been for us because the way that we built our brand, the way we were able to focus some marketing efforts in that country specifically, in that town specifically. And really, I was able to showcase all this power of this engine that we've been

building in a recruiting way. And that was so, so rewarding. So employer brand and giving the employee business resource groups voice and amplification has been a big part of that. A big part of it too. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. And I love the fact that getting marketing involved in those efforts to, I mean, I can only imagine like the extra juice that that gives to a program that

to help find their audience, connect with their audience, all of the things that marketing can apply to those needs. That's amazing. It's really empowering when you can sit down with your...

CHRO and look at a recruiting task and you cheat it just like any other part of marketing well let's identify who we're trying to recruit tell me specifically who are they then put this engine to work to target them to be able to show the levels of engagement that we're getting with those audiences to show where they are and they've got like

recruiting pipeline. I feel like the engine that we've built here can be applied in so many different ways. It's like, bring me another challenge and let's see what we can do. No, absolutely. Absolutely. And I can only hope that you'll get the same results too. Yeah, so far so great. Awesome.

Well, I have two other questions for you, more on the marketing side of things. And it's a question I've been asking folks that have been coming on recently. Curious if there's a topic you feel like marketers need to be learning more about today, or maybe it's something that you're trying to learn more about yourself. Well, back to the diversity inclusion, that's something we work with the team on as a marketing team. I believe that it is important for each one of them to understand what it means to be an ally and

how critical that is and how important it is for them to have a clear understanding of internal employee engagement, not just external audience engagement. And so a lot of work can be done with the

The marketing team is along those lines. Then just developing their skills about being digitally savvy, being data-orientated, have a transformational mindset. The swagger thing comes from having the mindset that, hey, we're going to change this up. We're going to do something different. We are going to try our best. We're going to fail fast and move on. We do a lot of work around those types of conversations.

concepts of having confidence and transformational mindset. Well, last question, and I probably asked you this question the last time we were together, but I always like to get the updated view of where marketing needs to focus. And along those lines, I asked the question, what's the largest opportunity or threat

you think is facing marketers today? For B2B tech marketing, I think the biggest opportunity is to think like B2C, like consumer marketing, treat everyone as a human, to really stop this big

tech mentality and treat everybody that we are trying to reach everybody in our audiences every prospect as a human and really leverage a lot of learning from the B2C type of space. The biggest threat is around just budgets and maintaining budgets it's a very choppy economic environment and who knows what's going to happen over the 12 months next 12 months and beyond and

You've got to have every piece of data to show how you're making sound investments, what the return of those investments are. And when I talk to my peers around tech, it's kind of like, how are you going to do this, guys? You know, gals, you just...

don't have enough data. And there are some companies that believe in the value of marketing and believe the brand is something that should be invested in in down times. And there are a lot more companies that tend to get very myopic and say every dollar should be spent on demand. Unless you can prove them wrong, you're going to be in a very

bad place. So I think your budgeting is going to be very tight over the next couple of years and being able to defend your position and show the impact of every dollar that you spend is going to be key. And if you can't do that, it's a big threat. Enough said.

Well, James, thank you so much for coming back on the show, giving us an update on the work, great work that you're doing and the great results that you're seeing. It's always a fun conversation to talk to you. Yeah, it's nice to be here. Thank you, Alan. And let's check in in two years time. That sounds great. Sounds great.

Hi, it's Alan again. Marketing Today was created and produced by me with support from my team and podcast editors, sound engineers, and writers at Share Your Genius. Find them at shareyourgenius.com.

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