Welcome to our latest podcast episode! We had an enlightening conversation with Gregory Kennedy, the founder of BrandZen and a seasoned marketing expert from Silicon Valley. In this episode, Gregory delves into the intricacies of effective marketing strategies for startups, drawing from his extensive experience and successful track record in the industry.
Throughout the conversation, Gregory provides not only a great overview, but also actionable insights on building authenticity, leveraging social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, navigating changes in SEO, and maintaining consistency in content creation.
Whether you’re a startup founder, a marketing executive, or simply interested in the evolving landscape of digital marketing, we hope you find the conversation enriching!
Full transcript of the chat with Greg:
Mauro Battellini: Greg, thanks for joining us.
Gregory Kennedy: Hey, thanks for having me.
Mauro Battellini: It’s good to have you here. After almost a year of interacting on Twitter, you’ve been sharing lots of insights and posting lots of content, going from zero to 1000 followers really fast. Lots of memes, coffee, and cycling content. We’re going to talk about that later. But especially for our European startup audience, could you tell us a bit more about your background in tech marketing in the US and what you were doing prior to becoming a fractional CMO and starting Bronson?
Gregory Kennedy: Yeah, I’ll give you the long story. I grew up in New York City, and I went to an art high school. This was a long time ago, prior to the internet. I came up in graphics and advertising in New York when it was all traditional, literally traditional meaning photographic methodologies, and a lot of analog equipment. I saw the transition from analog to digital. I was really adept at digital, like desktop publishing, Macintosh graphics, as people referred to it at the time. I just loved it. I thought it was the most brilliant thing in the world. It was a nice mix of my art background and my interest and aptitude for technology. I just continued doing that. I saw the dot-com boom in New York City and worked in web design. It was very successful. When I was pretty young, we won a lot of design awards. I just loved the whole high-tech world. I saw what was going to happen with the internet pretty early.
For people that don’t know the full story, there was this massive boom in the 90s. It was insane. Yahoo went public, and all these companies raised tons of money with huge investments made in the space. It was fun being a big part of that. The crash was really significant. People thought, “Will we ever make a website again?” I doubled down on it. I thought the internet was going to be a significant innovation and that everything would migrate to it, which happened, obviously. But that wasn’t the belief at the time; it was a fairly contrarian worldview. To live in New York City and be involved in that world and think that everything was going to go to the internet was unusual. I remember when Conde Nast, the publisher of Vogue and many other magazines, was a huge employer in New York that had just built a skyscraper; they were almost like Google.
In 2004, I made a big bet to move to San Francisco and go full-on into the internet and startups. When I got there, there wasn’t actually a lot happening at the time. San Francisco was still reeling from the fallout of the dot-com bust. I joined an advertising agency called Carat, which was the current leader in digital advertising. I talked to a few different firms and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I doubled down on digital advertising, thinking, “Hey, this might be big.” At the time, it was still all traditional: television, radio, print, and all that. Joining that agency was an excellent experience with all these fantastic customers. I worked for a few startups after that. Then I decided that the design world was really changing since about 2008. I was still doing creative work as a co-director, but I looked at the technology and the space and decided I needed to evolve my career. So, I decided to go back to school and get a marketing degree and go full into marketing, leaving creative work behind.
At the time, people would ask, “What’s different between being a marketing director and a creative director?” I’d say, as a creative director, it’s 85% marketing, 10% high school principal, and 5% creative. So, all I had to do was give up that 5%, and it was basically the same job. It was an excellent switch. I went into the B2B side and worked for a number of different successful startups. I was part of an early unicorn in the mobile app space. When iOS was developed and launched on the iPhone, there was a huge wave of mobile startups, which was really fun to be a part of. I even had a startup that did mobile app acquisition and was heavily involved in the space. Then I worked for a firm called AdRoll [now called NextRoll]. Many people have heard of it. I was the head of content marketing at AdRoll. At the start, we were very early with content marketing, around 2010 or 2011. We did it because we didn’t have a big budget. We thought, “What can we do and afford?” and we made a huge impact. People at AdRoll saw that and asked if I could come there and do that for them. Content became a significant part of their strategy in driving user acquisition. So, I did that for a few years at AdRoll, then went to a company called Sojern. I was there for five years, serving as VP of Marketing. Sojern was a marketing platform sold to the travel industry. We managed various channels and services for travel companies. Examples of customers would be Disney, Hilton, Hyatt, and other hotel chains. I loved working there. It was an excellent team and an excellent space. COVID was really tough for travel, and it was a challenging time, but I saw it through at Sojern. Then I decided I wanted to do something different, so I went out on my own. I’ve been consulting since then. That’s how I met you. I wasn’t someone very active on social media, but to help build my consulting business, I thought it would be important to have a presence and double down on that. I’ve been really successful, with 5000 followers now. I’ve had lots of stuff go viral. It’s very exciting and fun. I’ve also seen marketing transition to focus more and more on social media, which wasn’t the case five years ago. So, a big part of my business and what people are looking for is a content-rich approach to social media.
Mauro Battellini: How planned was it that you would put together BrandZen? It’s almost like you’re a fractional CMO, but at the same time, you have some kind of support, right? Do you have people working with brands, or is it like a brand for yourself?
Gregory Kennedy: Great question. My approach to consulting right now is that I’m 100% independent. I focus on several different areas, but all digital, mostly high tech, and mostly startups or people involved in that space in some capacity. Most of my customers are B2B. I do a few consumer customers here and there, but my experience and focus are on business-to-business. I generally stay away from media buying. That’s the one thing we don’t do as a group, but we do everything else. It’s easy to put it into the content marketing bucket, but our definition is quite broad. We help people make websites, do case studies, blog posts, social media support, and email support. Depending on the technical needs of the customer, I partner with people. As a fractional CMO, I can come in and help with strategy, allocation, and internal alignment. I partner with people to do the fulfillment of certain things like media buying, where I work with either an individual or an agency. For websites and web development, I partner with an agency that has fantastic developers. The same goes for marketing operations, Salesforce, and HubSpot support. I don’t have this expertise in-house; it’s all done through partnerships.
Mauro Battellini: So how does it usually work? Do you only start with new companies that are designing their marketing from scratch? Or can you come on board like a little bit later as well? Yeah,
Gregory Kennedy: Great question. It’s a mix of both. Some companies are much further along and might already have a CMO with whom I partner to do different projects. I have a lot of experience going from zero to one, taking an early-stage concept team and helping them essentially go live. That’s why you need marketing. There’s a team of people who have invented a product, they’ve been working diligently on it, and they need to share it and market the firm.
At that stage, going from zero to one is where working with a fractional CMO can be really beneficial. Sometimes I’ll stay on and continue to scale, and sometimes it makes sense to part ways. I’ve done a lot of this, having my own startup and working for a couple of other early-stage companies. I’ve seen that trajectory in Silicon Valley and how you navigate it. It’s very hard to do, and each stage requires a different approach.
You can literally map it to venture capital fundraising rounds: you’ve got seed companies, then Series A companies, then Series B companies. Once you get past B, C, and D, it’s an established company that usually has a large marketing team. At that stage, there’s not as much need for consultants, although sometimes there is, which is great. I have clients I’ve known for a while, and I continue to work with them.
Usually, seed to Series A is where there’s a need for external support, someone who can come in and provide a third-party perspective on what they need to do to take the product to market. So, I really focus on that early go-to-market phase.
Mauro Battellini: Zooming into that zero to one stage, what would you recommend a new startup focus on? What are the first marketing considerations they should be looking at?
Gregory Kennedy: Obviously, it’s different for different people, but at the highest level, they have to get really clear about who they are selling to and what their product means to those people. Usually, they have some ideas about it, but it’s not always clearly defined. Often, there is some experimentation. We might think we can sell to this group or that group. So, you need to figure out a way to navigate, test, learn, and grow.
The important questions to focus on are: Who are you selling to? Why would they want to buy your product? Who’s going to pay for it? What value do they get from it? These are crucial questions and not always easy to answer. But that’s where people need to focus: Who is the product for? Why would they want it? Why would they want to buy it right now? You don’t want people who are going to buy it a year from now if you’re a startup; you need to make traction right away. You need to understand what it is about your product that moves the needle for customers and why they would want to pay for it.
Mauro Battellini: For a typical B2B startup, would you have any set of recommendations? What is basic hygiene for a B2B startup? They have to be quite scrappy and figure out their strategy as they make some mistakes. What experiments should they start doing to figure that out?
Gregory Kennedy: For a B2B startup, they need to figure out social media. It’s becoming more and more important. That’s one of the reasons I decided to build my own following. I was a consumer of social media, reading things on Twitter and LinkedIn, but I didn’t spend enough time creating content. Today, if you’re an early-stage company, you have to figure out that channel.
There are a lot of changes in the market. For instance, Google announced changes to how search works. I think SEO and search engine marketing are going to get much more difficult going forward. There might be real competitors to Google, and while they might not take all the traffic, they’re definitely changing how it behaves. It’s possible that people will do fewer searches, or if they do, the searches won’t necessarily drive people to web pages anymore. This will influence both search engine marketing and optimization.
Another big change is that social media platforms have deprioritized links, meaning you have to build your audience on the platform. Every startup needs to focus on their social strategy and build a platform around the founder, CEO, or a creator. They need someone to be the face of the company, to figure out that narrative and platform. Brand accounts are struggling, especially on X. On LinkedIn, they still do well, but on other platforms, they have less traction. Consumers prefer to follow people rather than brands. For example, many more people follow Elon Musk than follow Tesla. People want to follow individuals they understand and relate to.
Every startup needs to figure out their social media strategy, platform, and who will represent them on social media. This approach is similar to how we used to build platforms around CEOs or founders for public relations, but now it extends to social media. There are significant differences in how it’s done now compared to pitching directly to journalists. In social media, you have to be more proactive and manage a lot more feedback, both criticism and praise.
Mauro Battellini: What you mentioned about no one wanting to follow a brand. Is that why there’s so much meme marketing and content that has nothing to do with the brands?
Gregory Kennedy: I would actually separate out B2C and B2B. On the consumer side, yeah, memes seem to work. You had the McDonald’s McFlurry trend on TikTok, which was quite impressive. I’m not even sure if they had a lot of control over it. But it’s very different from what happens on the B2B side.
In B2B, it’s about building an audience and sharing expertise and data. If you have unique data from a platform that you can share, building that high-level content is key. This dynamic has always existed, but the fundamental difference between consumer marketing and B2B marketing is that in B2B, the content is fact-based, while in consumer marketing, the content is generally fiction—a made-up narrative. Think about TV commercials or McDonald’s characters; they’re fiction, made-up stories.
On the B2B side, it’s almost always facts, data, reports, thought leadership, best practices, interviews, and perspectives on new technology. It’s all fact-based. At a high level, this is important to understand when you’re talking about marketing. Many people confuse these two, which is one reason social media strategies in B2B struggle. They try to mimic consumer approaches, which ultimately don’t work. There might be a few examples where people successfully use fictional narratives, but that’s not the standard approach and it’s not easily adoptable for most people.
If you think about it from that perspective and have great content, lots of information, and facts to share, that’s what I would recommend for any B2B startup. Even large companies have lots of interesting information and data. IBM has made a big investment in content marketing with tons of research, and Google is the same way. Facts are what drive B2B marketing in general and social media specifically.
Mauro Battellini: In terms of what you mentioned before about search changing, and obviously the role of AI in this, as I understand it, AI companies have almost absorbed a lot of the content out there, not only from blogs and media brands but also from social media and so on. All that content that was based on links or connections from Google to each page or site—those connections are going to somewhat disappear and be presented to you in a centralized way, right? Therefore, it’s recommended for brands to create their own audiences in a more direct way.
Gregory Kennedy: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that’s exactly where it’s all headed. The type of answers you get from AI chat is very different from what we traditionally knew as search. Google’s very clear that they’re going to double down on AI and AI responses. There will be a world for what we might call “generative engine optimization.” These things are going to exist, but they’ll be very different. I don’t think they will have the same impact they once did.
There was a time when you could really drive a lot of cheap traffic through search. I remember this from many years ago, and it got more and more difficult over time. I think that trend will continue. There will still be people who are very good at it and well-established, who have spent a lot of money on it and will continue to thrive. But for early-stage companies or people doing things differently, it’s going to be very difficult. It’s not impossible; it can still happen, but I just think behavior is going to change.
Mauro Battellini: So, for example, for a small or new company that was blogging a lot and potentially basing a lot of their marketing on content, is that an example of a company that should totally readapt their strategy?
Gregory Kennedy: I would say the key question is: How do you plan to distribute that content? That’s the important part. Everyone is creating content, but where are you going to build your audience? How are people going to consume it? About a year ago, I noticed that LinkedIn has replaced B2B blogging. I don’t visit B2B blogs anymore, unless someone sends them to me or I stumble upon them for some reason. But I spend a lot more time on LinkedIn and read a lot more content there.
This transition means that you now have an audience on platforms like LinkedIn. Twitter has added long posts and made changes, but there’s a lot less linking off those sites now. There was a time when you could drive traffic through those sites, but those days are over.
I think putting content directly onto social channels and building your audience there is the right approach. It doesn’t have to be LinkedIn; it could be Twitter or another platform, depending on who you’re targeting. Reddit, for example, has seen a lot of enthusiasm, and their content is appearing more in search results. Depending on your audience, Reddit can be a great option.
You need a strategy that considers who you’re trying to reach and how you’ll distribute your content. I wouldn’t rely on just one channel. It’s important to use multiple channels to reach all the different people you want. PR is still a great channel, and I work with people who do press releases. They still have a place in the marketing mix, depending on who you’re trying to reach and what you’re trying to achieve.
Mauro Battellini: Speaking of LinkedIn, because in the B2B world, it seems to be so central. How can you fully exploit LinkedIn? Again, always from the point of view of a startup, it seems that even though everyone knows LinkedIn is the place to go, no one really understands when to do an article versus a post, or whether to link to an original source from your corporate blog or something, and duplicate it on LinkedIn. So what is the best way to use LinkedIn?
Gregory Kennedy: It’s always changing, right? The algorithm gets updated, and LinkedIn doesn’t publicly share how it works. The best advice is to always experiment and see what works for your brand and voice. What I think is working right now is doing posts directly to the feed and trying to build an audience that way. Engage with people and don’t disappear. If you’re posting content, participate in the community. That part is really important.
Paid content has a role on LinkedIn, so you want a strategy that uses different types of content, combining paid and organic content. Some features that can be valuable include LinkedIn articles, which are slightly different from posts. I know some people who have had success putting their newsletters on LinkedIn.
You need a strategy to figure out what content goes where, how your audience will consume it, what you want to amplify with paid content, and what you want to double down on in terms of organic content. These decisions are unique to your brand and voice.
Another important aspect of LinkedIn is the interplay between what employees post and the brand’s posts. Brand accounts on LinkedIn still attract attention, and LinkedIn favors them. So, maintaining a corporate voice on LinkedIn is essential, especially for recruiting, which is the primary way most people use LinkedIn. They don’t go to the CEO’s profile to find a job; they go to the corporate profile.
Having a strong corporate presence is crucial, but it’s also important to figure out how the CEO, creators, and employees interact and engage on LinkedIn. More strategy and planning around these interactions can be beneficial. Setting goals and being consistent are key. I’ve seen people have a lot of success with a well-thought-out and consistent LinkedIn strategy.
Mauro Battellini: The consistency part, I guess that’s super crucial. Same as with Twitter, and, switching to Twitter for a bit, when should a startup even consider Twitter? In Europe, especially, a lot of companies are unaware of the platform. And you mentioned hiring, so for LinkedIn, it’s like a no-brainer. But what can Twitter be useful for? How should it be best used? Who should use it? Is it just for the CEO and thought leadership?
Gregory Kennedy: Yeah, that’s a great question. I still think Twitter is a great channel for B2B. The audience tends to skew older, more wealthy, and consists of enthusiasts and subject matter experts. It’s a niche network, but it’s a niche that most startups and businesses want to reach. That’s why I think it’s important.
Twitter’s reputation, to some degree, is correct: the smartest people in the world do go on there to provide their opinions about current events. This makes it brilliant but also challenging. There’s a lot of noise and animosity, and you have to be able to deal with that. That’s just part of how social media works. But it’s extremely valuable if you’re trying to reach those people.
Mauro Battellini: How do you find so much content, by the way? I see you posting day in and day out—videos, images—they all have a reference to some kind of site or marketing tip, or from a more tactical point of view. How do you manage that? Do you have someone that helps you find content?
Gregory Kennedy: People have asked me this question, and I guess no one believes me, but I write it all myself. I don’t have anybody helping me. When someone else asked, I was like, “No, I write it all myself.” I’m just someone who’s very good at coming up with a high volume of ideas. I believe deeply in the power of ideas. Sometimes you’ll hear criticism that ideas don’t matter, it’s all about execution. To some degree, that is true—you need to be able to execute—but I actually think ideas are extremely valuable, particularly if you have a lot of them. I think that’s key to driving marketing and what will matter in the future.
If we live in a world where AI makes execution easier and there’s less craft involved, ideas will become the main differentiator. Being able to come up with lots of good ideas quickly is perhaps the number one skill required to succeed in marketing over the next 10 to 15 years.
Mauro Battellini: That’s funny, I always hear “ideas are worthless, execution is everything.” So now with AI, it’s becoming inverted.
Gregory Kennedy: You still need to be able to execute, and that means different things to different people. Consistency is crucial. What I see with social media is that everyone has a few great ideas, writes some stuff, posts it, but quickly burns out after one or two months. Sustaining it for six months is very difficult. The challenge is that you need a lot of ideas.
Ideas matter in terms of your ability to execute well in marketing these days. You need a high volume of content and to be able to say the same thing in 100 different ways. The messaging and value proposition of your company or product don’t change much, so you need to find unique and interesting angles to get your message across, keep your audience engaged, and prevent them from getting bored. That’s really difficult to do, and the key to that is ideas.
You do need to be able to execute on them, have a plan, and make it work. But ideas will be really important. I don’t think AI will be able to come up with ideas. Ultimately, the ideas still need to come from the team, executives, and marketing people. If you can have lots of good ideas, they’ll be very valuable.
Mauro Battellini: Do you have any secret to avoid that burnout you mentioned?
Gregory Kennedy: Do I have a secret to avoiding burnout? Yeah, I drink a lot of coffee. I’m a huge fan. I think you have to enjoy what you do. If you don’t enjoy it, it’s very easy to burn out. I also think you have to be a consistent person, and maybe not everyone is good at that. It’s something I’ve always focused on and am good at. I learned this from athletics, from cycling, and endurance sports: you have to train consistently. Those who train the most consistently are the most successful. I’ve spent a lot of time doing that and being that person. It’s more of a personality thing than anything else.
You stick to your training, stick to your schedule, talk to your coach, do your ride on Saturday, do your training on Wednesday, and really stick to that. It’s hard for a lot of people. Using the endurance sports analogy, like running and cycling, many people get bored. It’s boring to do a three-hour ride every Saturday and a two-hour ride every Sunday, doing it the way you’re supposed to do it. It’s not a fun ride where you go out and do whatever you want. I think that’s where people struggle.
They think, “Okay, I’ve got to write 10 tweets every Monday,” or “I have to write this blog post or LinkedIn thing,” and you have to keep doing it. You just have to force yourself to do it. I don’t have much more advice than that. In my business and work, I often feel like I’m tapping into skills I learned as an athlete. Sometimes you just have to push through, stay up late, write that thing, and be ready for the next day. I just push and do it.
I don’t know if there’s any secret to it other than what Sam Walton talked about: the willpower and the determination of the founder, the employee, or the person to move the needle and push themselves to do what they need to do.
Mauro Battellini: I thought you were going to say the secret is AI tools. Like they say, “train hard, then the game is easy”. Do you have any tips, for example, about writing down lots of ideas during the day, turning them into content, and then distributing and publishing them?
Gregory Kennedy: There’s, I guess, putting my approach aside, what I recommend other people do. So, there are two things: one, block out the time. If you’re an early-stage company or a founder, you need to set aside one hour and just do it. You also need to look at it the right way. Maybe the first time isn’t great. Just do another one. Keep doing it, keep posting, keep working at it, and eventually, you’ll get better at it. Just like the first time you go out for a run, you’re going to be slow, it’s going to be painful, and you’ll be terrible at it. But once you’ve been running consistently for a year, it’ll be much more comfortable.
So, I think it’s exactly the same thing. A lot of people struggle at that early stage where they’ve only written something once or twice, and they don’t like it. They know it’s not great. You just need to work through that and be comfortable with being a beginner, having a beginner’s mindset. You’ve got to find a way, find a path, and deal with the fact that maybe it’s not great, but it will get better.
So, that’s one thing: give yourself some time, work on it, set a schedule, start posting content, and then get help. There are plenty of people out there who can help and provide you with support, feedback, ideas, or whatever it is, and work with them. I ghostwrite for lots of people. I’ve done it for a long time because I enjoy it. I started writing for CEOs a long time ago. Basically, when I first got into marketing, I think very early on, the PR team came to me and said, “We need a quote from the CEO.” So, I wrote it, and they said, “This is great.” Then all of a sudden, I started writing everything for the CEO.
So, I’ve done this for a long time. One thing that is really important is that if you find someone to work with in that capacity, they need to be ego-free. This point is really important. They can’t need or want or feel ownership over the writing. Not every writer or creative person is like that. In fact, I’d say that most of them are not like that. Most of them want or need ownership over the work. They view it as their artwork, their portfolio, their end product, and they need to get the credit for what they create.
So, you’ve got to look for people who are comfortable with being just the idea person. That’s how I see myself. I make ideas, I write things down. If you like them, great. If you don’t like them, great. If you want to change them, great. In fact, I encourage people to take what their ghostwriters or teams or PR people create, and if you’re the CEO or spokesperson, change it, make it yours. That’s really important. You’ve got to make it your voice.
So, you’ve got to have a team around you who can support you. They can help with ideas, ensure the facts are correct, verify the numbers, and make sure what you say is accurate. But in terms of how it’s said or the exact wording, you should make it yours, and you shouldn’t copy anyone else.
The last thing I’ll say in terms of tone and voice, as an executive, tech founder, or influencer, is that you need to be authentic. Don’t try to be funny if it doesn’t come naturally. I tell this to people all the time. There’s a desire to make jokes and use memes, but they can be high risk. People can take them the wrong way or misinterpret them. Unless it’s really authentic to who you are and you’re the kind of person who would do that, then you should do it because it’s who you are. But if it’s not who you are, don’t feel compelled to do that.
Just focus on your expertise, focus on your knowledge, and focus on being authentic. You don’t have to be funny to be successful on social media. Some of the funny things I’ve done have gotten a lot of views, but they don’t drive a lot of new customers or loyal followers. They’re fun and get a lot of reach, and I enjoy doing them because it’s authentic to who I am. But I always tell people, find your voice and be authentic with your approach and who you are. Find a partner or a team to support and encourage you to find your real voice. They shouldn’t try to turn you into something you’re not.
Mauro Battellini: That’s great advice. I was going to ask you, actually, what your biggest piece of advice would be to any startup founder or marketing exec at a startup that is just starting out. Would you have any one top piece of advice?
Gregory Kennedy: If you’re early stage, not only do you need to be authentic, but I think you need to take risks and be controversial. If you don’t say anything risky, you’re not going to get any attention. That’s just the way it is. A lot of people are uncomfortable with this, but the reality is, you need to say things and be out there, and be able to navigate that in the right way. I also think that people hear this advice and take it in the wrong direction, doing things that are controversial but bad for their business. Definitely seek help, get guidance, and find someone who can help you navigate this and has good judgment.
Let’s use the Apple commercial as a great example. I was highly critical of the one where they were crushing all the instruments. It was very obvious to me when I saw that it was not sending the message Apple wanted to send. That’s the kind of advice you need to seek out from third parties you trust, who can give you that kind of feedback. I don’t know the details of what happened at Apple and how that decision was made, but I looked at it and thought, “Making a video of crashing instruments and tools that artists use—that are non-digital—was not a good look for them.” It’s easy to see why people would take it literally and not like it. Knowing that Apple has a core audience of creative people who enjoy that stuff made it even worse.
I also think that people often say, “The creative audience is small and niche, and Apple doesn’t need them anymore.” That might be true, but at the highest level, I think parents want their kids to play instruments, paint, and do things that are not digital. That’s where it crossed into a message that many people did not align with, leading to a lot of vocal dissatisfaction.
So, for me, it’s a good example of needing to be interesting and controversial, but also understanding the pulse of what’s happening, where the world is headed, and how people feel about things. There’s a lot of anxiety about technology and artificial intelligence right now. People in Silicon Valley are telling others that AI will replace them, take jobs away, and that we’ll need UBI. The hyperbole is strong and influences people, creating anxiety.
Not being able to intuitively feel and understand this is a problem. You need marketing people who are in touch with these shifts and understand consumer psychology and mood at the moment, as it changes. Being in touch with all of that is really important.
Mauro Battellini: It sounds like they got everything wrong—crushing creativity and crushing real-life experiences. But really good advice, sick advice. Everyone’s getting great advice here. Thanks for all the answers and insights for people in startups, people new to marketing, or those getting a refresher. How can people get more from you?
Gregory Kennedy: You can follow me on X or LinkedIn. On X, I am @I_AM_G_Kennedy. On LinkedIn, I am Gregory Kennedy. I should come right up. Our URL is www.wearebrandzen.com. So yeah, just find me on social media or the internet. I love to hear from people. If you have questions or comments, reach out. I’m happy to engage and interact.
Mauro Battellini: Nice! And BrandZen also publishes some insight papers… ?
Gregory Kennedy: Correct! Yeah, there’s a quarterly research report that I do that goes into the trends. And so you can sign up for that on the website as well. Cool. Okay,
Mauro Battellini: OK guys. So there you go. Sign up to it and follow Greg on social media. Greg, thanks so much for being with us.
Gregory Kennedy: Hey, thank you!
Check out these other episodes from the Runway pod!
Robin Wauters on European tech, the business of media and AI
Ex-Fortune editor Jake Meth on planning, writing and pitching the perfect op-ed
