Leslie Knope once said, “We need to remember what’s important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn’t matter, but work is third.”

And we agree, waffles are important. But we’re here today to talk about friends. Because making marketing friends is key to supporting your growth and content production.

That’s one of the lessons we’re taking away from Parks and Recreation with the help of our guest, Director of Content Marketing at Intellimize, Jen Lacey. Together, we talk about building relationships, collaborating for creative problem solving, and embracing your weirdness.

About our guest, Jen Lacey

Jen Lacey is Director of Content Marketing at Intellimize, where she’s responsible for web strategy, brand and maintenance including a complete corporate rebrand. She oversees content strategy, production and promotion to align with sales and revenue goals, which has resulted in a 32% increase in pipeline. She  shapes the brand’s footprint through multiple content channels including PR, web and partner channels among other responsibilities. Prior to joining Intellimize in July 2022, Jen served as Marketing Director at Fountain. She also spent nearly 9 years in marketing at SparkPost (acquired by Message Bird).

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Parks and Recreation:

• Build relationships. Create sources of mutual support and collaboration. It’s a symbiotic relationship that strengthens your content and marketing. Jen says, “Leslie is all about building relationships, which I feel is the foundational thing that has helped me excel and thrive in my roles, being able to work cross-functionally with different stakeholders, getting feedback from people, my CS team internally, working with customers, doing outreach to talk to customers about how they're using our product…being that kind of conduit and building those relationships is so critical to success anywhere, and especially in the B2B world.”
• Collaborate for creative problem solving. If you’re working on a tight budget - and let’s be real, most of us are - you gotta put your heads together with your team and brainstorm innovative solutions. This is when a lot of great ideas come up that could be your next big success. Jen says, “In the show, Leslie does this constantly. Every episode, there's some new problem or something that they've got to solve. And she's always thinking outside the box of how to motivate her maybe not-so-motivated team to do things. Or how to get creative in approaching different challenges. And I think that leaning into that creativity and collaborating with people, and using your team, your different individual team members to their strengths is how you circumvent a lot of those challenges.”‍
• Embrace your weirdness. Your weirdness is a strength that you can use to be relatable and connect with your audience. It’s what lets your audience know that there’s a human behind the content. Jen says, “Don't try to be anyone else. Think of where you stand out and where you can contribute, and embrace that. Embrace what makes you unique and weave it into your marketing tactics and strategy. I think everyone associates B2B with straight-laced, very serious LinkedIn ad campaigns and email nurtures that are dry and boring. But at the end of the day, I'm marketing to other marketers. They’re still people. And that human element is what makes us relatable. And so coming up with weird, unique, wacky ways to connect with them and get their attention and then pitch them on whatever it is you're trying to sell them on or get them to do, is key. That’s how Leslie anything done in her office, catering to people's unique personalities and being weird and being herself. And her team loves her for it at the end of the day.”

*”In B2B, there's only so many ways you can say the same thing. And we're all kind of saying the same flavor of something. Like we're all selling to other businesses, whether you're selling to tech people or you're selling to other marketers. It's the way that you can get yourself to stand out and lean on that creativity, especially if you don't have a giant budget to work with or a big team or a ton of bandwidth. How can you embrace your creativity and think outside the box, even if you're saying basically the same thing? Like how do you stand out, how do you set yourself apart?” - Jen Lacey

*”There are so many ridiculously great characters in the [Parks and Recreation]. Putting two people that are opposites together is a great B2B marketing takeaway because we have so many opposites in the business world. Whether it's your CIO and your CMO, or your CFO and the salesperson. There's these huge differences between people just based off of like personalities. And you can play with that stuff so much and turn it up to an 11. And I think the big lesson there is turning up those things to 11, which makes it so funny because you see parts of the Ron Swansons or the Aprils in people you work with. And that's why these shows are so funny.” - Ian Faison

Links

Watch Parks and Recreation

Connect with Jen on LinkedIn

Learn more about Intellimize

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com.

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK.

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.