Q&A with Randy Frisch, CMO at Uberflip

MEDIA 7 | September 26, 2019

Q&A with Randy Frisch
Randy Frisch, CMO and Co-Founder at Uberflip has led the content experience movement, prompting marketers to think beyond content creation and focus on the experience. 

Randy also co-hosts the Conex Show, a weekly podcast featuring top marketers and their strategies and secrets to success. His talks empower marketers with the strategies they need to capture their audiences, prove their worth, and align their vision.

MEDIA 7: If I were to say to a bunch of people who know you, ‘Give me three adjectives that best describe you’, what would I hear?
RANDY FRISCH:
Determined, passionate, caring.

M7: From Flipbooks to the world’s first content experience platform in just 6 years. What are some of the top reasons that helped drive Uberflip to where it is now?
RF: 
We started as a solution that would allow marketers to share content to readers whenever they wanted and on whichever devices. People still want to consume content whenever they want. Think of the way in which we consume video content on Netflix or music content on Spotify. We’ve been successful in large part because we’ve been able to create a product that marketers need, that make it easier for their buyers to become customers. But that hasn’t been enough.
The differentiator for us is culture—the values we strive for as an organization (not just the work environment). I’ll share my 3 favourites here:

● H.U.S.T.L.E.: this one stands for Heart, Unique, Skill, Tech, Lean, Entrepreneurial. My co-founder, Yoav Schwartz, and I actually screen new hires for these traits.
● Valuable, Relevant & Consistent: this one comes from the initial definition of Content Marketing (“creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content”) by Robert Rose and Joe Pullizzi at the Content Marketing Institute. It only makes sense that our teams and employees should expect to be valuable, relevant, and consistent.
● Give Back: It’s important for us to give back to our communities and while we do this in numerous ways led by people across our team, one of my favourites is an annual charity ping pong tournament we host called Startupong which brought together startups in Toronto to raise $50,000 for Sick Kids hospital this year.
We’ve been successful mostly because we’ve been able to create a brand around engaging our team, our customers, and even our partners around these values.


"As marketers, we need to take our buyers on a journey using content. We need to be able to get a buyer from one piece of content to the next—think of a nice hiking trail through the woods."

M7: How can modern marketers leverage the personalized content recommendations given by Uberflip AI?
RF:
 It all comes down to the journey we take our buyers through. We recently produced a report with Heinz Marketing in which we found that only “1 in 3 B2B marketing leaders [of 283 interviewed] believe their current website encourages people to engage with their content at a high volume”. Essentially, we are leading buyers to a piece of content and leaving them to fend for themselves among your content. A visual I like to use is that of walking someone into a dark forest with no pathway and leaving them there. Not a good experience at all. As marketers, we need to take our buyers on a journey using content. We need to be able to get a buyer from one piece of content to the next—think of a nice hiking trail through the woods.

Uberflip AI serves up recommendations on our platform personalized to our buyers after they’ve consumed a piece of content. This allows them to stay and engage with more content while they’re in a content experience. Uberflip AI gives marketers the ability to predict what topic or piece of content their buyer might be interested in based on their behavior on a website, benchmark them against other users, and deliver content that they might be interested in, in order to extend their journey.


"Buyers want personalized content and they want it when they’re ready to buy. And it has to be a great experience."

M7: How does user-generated content help in scaling ABM campaigns at Uberflip?
RF:
I believe the best UGC for ABM (acronym overload!) is the reviews from customers. The best way to learn is from our peers. We often copy our competitors or look for best practices. There are many ways we can relate to a target account by showing them what their peers are saying. It could be finding a tweet from someone they respect speaking about the value of your platform. Think of it this way. If Roger Federer tweeted that a certain shoe was key to his play you'd likely win over other aspiring tennis players. In the world of B2B marketing, we can sometimes find more professional review sites like G2 or TrustRadius where highlighting a review from someone in a related industry can help win over the next target account.

M7: There is a lot of buzz around your book “F#ck Content Marketing”. What inspired you to preach this influential gospel?
RF:
 I was off to Dreamforce in 2017 and I came across a SiriusDecisions stat that 60-70% of all marketing content goes unused. It brought to light that even I contributed to this problem by driving my team to create more and more content. I had a revelation.

Thanks to Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi at the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing was supposed to be about creating and distributing content “with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” But somewhere along the line, it became too much about creation and not enough about distribution and driving customer action (converting). And when marketers were distributing content, we weren’t distributing it in ways that led to profitable customer action—think of all those generic emails we sent people, loaded with links to videos and blog posts spread across the internet. We were sending people into dark scary forests full of content (sometimes that of our competitors). And we never got them back.

It all hit me. So I said “f#ck content marketing”, or rather, f#ck what it had become. My mission over the last two years has become to teach marketers how to create great personalized online experiences that we can send our buyers to, that actually take them on a journey leading to a conversion.


"Marketing is now becoming creating and distributing content to drive profitable customer action."

M7: What is the idea behind ‘The Conex’ (podcast show) hosted by you every week, which is already a big hit among the viewers?
RF:
 After 3 years and 227 episodes, we’ve decided to end the Content Experience Show and start fresh with a new show, The Marketer’s Journey, launching October. We had a great base of listeners and guests, but we wanted to spend more time focusing on the concept of the journey—both, the journey that our buyers go through, and the journey we go through as marketers. I’ll be speaking in-depth with marketing leaders about what their journey has looked like as marketers and what they strive for in creating great experiences for their buyers and customers.

M7: How do you see content marketing evolving over time?
RF:
 We’re not just seeing the evolution of content marketing, we’re seeing the evolution of marketing as a whole. Marketing is now becoming creating and distributing content to drive profitable customer action.
Let’s take a look for a moment at the way in which we consume video and music media. We went from syndicated TV shows and weekly programming on set channels (cable) to having bingeable content ready for us on demand (Netflix, Hulu, etc). We went from listening for our favourite song to be played on the radio, to downloading songs on iTunes, to now getting recommended curated playlists and artists based on my listening history on Spotify. We can search for content we want on demand and binge it for as long as we want. And we can do it whenever we want on multiple different devices around us.

Our buyers want personalized content and they want it when they’re ready to buy. And it has to be a great experience. Marketers are starting to catch on. We’re starting to spend time and money on analyzing the data, having great salespeople, and even on distribution. The difference-maker is that marketers are spending more time and money on personalized content experiences and using a content experience platform like Uberflip to accelerate the buyer journey.

ABOUT UBERFLIP

Uberflip is the world’s #1 Content Experience Platform (CEP). With tools to aggregate all your marketing content, they empower B2B marketing and sales teams to create personalized content experiences to engage accounts, nurture prospects, and convert leads, without the help of IT. It’s their mission to put control back in the hands of marketing teams to deliver high-converting experiences, that put the customer front and center.

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Battelle has funded a new portfolio of 14 out-of-classroom education programs that build science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills through the latest awards with its Central Ohio STEM Grants. As a nonprofit philanthropic trust, Battelle directs the majority of its giving to STEM-related programming to provide opportunities for students to develop skills to become the next generation of innovators. "Through this program, Battelle is committing more resources toward empowering our local partners’ ideas to expand access to STEM opportunities for students across Central Ohio,” said Wes Hall, Vice President of Philanthropy and Education. "STEM programs that integrate music, agriculture, entrepreneurship and environmental science will ignite sparks of inspiration for thousands of young minds in our community." This is the tenth year for these competitive awards with the largest ever total funding awarded: $772,000. Investment in the grant program now totals more than $5.6 million. Following are descriptions of the winning programs: Continued Programs Capital University Capital University will host 100 middle school females for a day of science experimentation and STEM career and education exploration. Columbus Fashion Alliance Columbus Fashion Alliance's High School Fashion Club builds upon the principles of STEM to bolster the academic and career skills of participants through the lens of fashion. Ohio Soybean Council Foundation The Ohio Soybean Council will reach 400 students in Central Ohio afterschool/summer programs with agriculture-related entrepreneurship lessons, delivered by trained pre-service educators from Ohio State University. New Programs Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Central Ohio Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Central Ohio will host a Youth Empowerment Institute to provide middle and high school students with the opportunity to participate in eight STEM-focused weekend-based sessions throughout the school year. Charles Madison Nabrit Memorial Garden Charles Madison Nabrit Memorial Garden will deliver week-long summer STEM camps and daylong pop-up STEM camps for 115 elementary and middle school students in Northeast Columbus around food injustice. Clintonville-Beechwood Community Resources Center The Clintonville-Beechwood Community Resources Center will engage K-5 students with weekly lessons on design, illustration and publishing as children each create a comic book to be shared at a family reading event. Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA) CAPA will offer Bite-Size Science: The Singing Zoologist to students in grades 1-5 from Columbus City Schools and other districts to teach life cycles, habitats and how these interact with larger ecosystems. Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services will expand educational opportunities for New American students in the community to include programming, coding, using electronics and computers. The program will also and create a miniature working city for the local smart city initiative. Form5 Prosthetics Inc Form5 will leverage the organization’s PRE-FAB Workshop to inspire 9-12 graders. Students will explore engineering, design and medical-oriented careers through a team-based program as participants build prosthetic devices for mock recipients. Friends of the Conservatory Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens will expand a STEM program to reach thousands of students in underserved communities, where they will learn STEM principles using the conservatory's resources. Girl Scouts of Ohio’s Heartland Council Girl Scouts of Ohio’s Heartland Council will launch the Interactive Ecosystem Exploration Project to develop and implement a series of environmental monitoring and tracking systems for girls and to build a better understanding of the natural resources at Camp Ken-Jockety. Highland Youth Garden Highland Youth Garden will offer rising 1st-7th grade students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the daily life of a garden, strengthen their STEM learning, deepen their cooking and nutrition skills and participate in healthy play outdoors. Pyramid Community Development Corporation Pyramid Community Development’s Ctrl-R program will provide online, in-person and at-home STEAM education to underserved minority students in Linden and its surrounding communities. TECH CORPS Unplugged kits from TECH CORPS will excite and empower students on a range of STEM topics ranging from algorithms to virtual reality. About Battelle Every day, the people of Battelle apply science and technology to solving what matters most. At major technology centers and national laboratories around the world, Battelle conducts research and development, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio since its founding in 1929, Battelle serves the national security, health and life sciences, and energy and environmental industries.Battelle conducts research and development, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. Battelle serves the national security, health and life sciences, and energy and environmental industries.

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TALENT DEVELOPMENT

Promethean remains the global leader in IFPDs for education over the last 12 months

PRnewswire | May 23, 2023

Promethean has been named the global leader in interactive flat panel displays (IFPDs) for education, according to Futuresource Consulting's Q1 2023 report on the World IFPD market. The company has been the No. 1 by volume in the global K-12 education sector (excluding China) since 2018 and has held the top spot for more than five years. In the last 12 months, Promethean captured 21.2% of the K-12 market share globally and 30.3% in the United States. In Q1 alone, Promethean had a strong quarter in the United States as the leading brand, capturing 31.6% market share. The launch of the ActivPanel LX in the first quarter of 2023 marked a major expansion of the company's current portfolio of products. ActivPanel LX is a lower-cost panel that provides customers exceptional ease of use and flexibility, along with the quality and longevity the company is known for. With this latest offering, Promethean is well-positioned to meet the needs of a growing segment of the education technology market. "Every school and district have different needs when it comes to classroom technology, and we're excited to offer the ActivPanel LX to customers, no matter their geographic location, student demographics, or budget," said Matt Cole, EVP global sales at Promethean. "We've been a dedicated partner to schools and districts for more than 25 years, and we plan on being around for 25 more." The company's flagship product, the ActivPanel 9, recently won four major awards, including the iF Design Award and the Red Dot Design Award for excellence in product design; the Cool Tool Award from The EdTech Awards 2023 for its innovation; and the Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence: Best of 2022 designation for its role in optimizing teaching for educators and learning for their students. About Promethean Promethean is a leading education technology company working to transform the way the world learns and collaborates. From our founding in Blackburn, England, more than 25 years ago to our global operations serving 126 countries today, we've continued to explore, innovate, and inspire—designing learning and collaboration tools that are built for breakthroughs. Our award-winning interactive display, ActivPanel, and lesson delivery software, ActivInspire and ClassFlow, were designed to engage students, connect colleagues, and bring out the brilliance in everyone.

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Uberflip is the world’s #1 Content Experience Platform (CEP). With tools to aggregate all your marketing content, they empower B2B marketing and sales teams to create personalized content experiences to engage accounts, nurture prospects, and convert leads, without the help of IT. It’s their mission...

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