The power of courageous marketing with Gong's Udi Ledergor
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What is courageous marketing according to Udi Ledergor?
Enjoy the show. Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing, where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers, and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution. Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, Principal Content Marketing Manager at UserTesting. And joining us today as host is UserTesting's CMO, Johan Reed. Welcome, Johan. Thanks, Nathan. And our guest today is Udi Lederger, a five-time B2B marketing leader who served as CMO during Gong's rise from SaaS startup to industry dominance. Udi has advised startups, served on boards, and mentored hundreds of marketers. His work reveals how courage and creativity can build iconic brands. He's also author of the recently published Courageous Marketing. Welcome to the show, Udi. Thank you so much, Nathan, Johan.
I'm excited to be here.
How does Udi's career path influence his marketing philosophy?
I'll jump right in. I looked at your journey and I read your book, Udi, and it stood out to me that as a magician and a musician, to get to the CMO role and now the chief evangelist role, that is anything but a typical career arc. And so what I'd love to start with is when you look back at that arc, going from this performing arts background to building one of tech's most iconic brands, what really stood out to you as being pivotal in shaping the way that you think about storytelling and brand today? I think the main point that I figured out, which is also the theme of my book, Courageous Marketing, is that most marketers either... by choice or because they feel they don't have permission to do otherwise, they tend to do best practice marketing.
Why do marketing 'best practices' lead to ordinary results?
They tend to follow conventions by looking around them, what the bigger competitors are doing and thinking that if they do the same, they will enjoy the same status. But that's the fallacy because by doing that, you create a sea of sameness and you do anything but stand out. By the time anything becomes a best practice, everybody's doing it. And so it's really a boring practice that if you do it, you will get ordinary results. If you want extraordinary results, you need to do something different. And that's where courageous marketing comes in. That's where... trying to take in what others are doing, understand the context, the environment, your customer needs, their expectations, the competitive landscape, but then coming up with a crisp, unique point of view
that is not like someone else, is not the Uber of, but actually something entirely fresh that hasn't been seen, that's for some people difficult, but I think the harder part is for people to feel that they have permission to do that. Because once you create that environment, we can talk about that later if you want, on how I created that environment for my team and how it was created in virtually every team at Gong, Once you have that permission, a lot of people's creativity just starts flowing. And that's when you start standing out and people start paying attention because now you're different. You're not following the best practices. You look different. You sound different. You put out a different product. You try different marketing channels. You put out different marketing messages. You can create an entirely new category and I can go on. But that is the theme, the transition from best practice marketing to courageous marketing.
I love that. I think your point is well made. We're often surrounded by creativity, especially when you start talking to people about their hobbies. You discover that you have photographers and poets and all kinds of people with creative bent on your team. But often we're in this quest for a predictable result.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is courageous marketing according to Udi Ledergor?
0:25–1:30
2
How does Udi's career path influence his marketing philosophy?
1:30–2:26
3
Why do marketing 'best practices' lead to ordinary results?
2:26–7:26
4
How can marketers build trust and alignment with sales?
7:26–15:38
5
What are smart ways to manage marketing budgets for experiments?
15:38–25:26
6
How should marketers measure brand investments creatively?
25:26–35:20
7
What career advice does Udi offer to marketers at different stages?
35:20–45:01
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Insights Unlocked
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