Colin Fleming is the current SVP of Global Brand, Events, Product, Content, & Customer Marketing at Salesforce and has worked at Salesforce for over 10 years. Previously, Colin was a brand marketer for EventPro Strategies and a Marketing Director for & Partner for eSoles Custom Footbeds. Prior to starting his marketing career, Colin was a Redbull racing driver.
This is part 3 in our special 3-part mini-series focused on Salesforce’s world-renowned Dreamforce conference.
Part 3 features another fascinating interview with one of today’s brightest minds in marketing. Colin Fleming is the SVP of Global Brand, Events, Product, Content, & Customer Marketing at Salesforce. Colin and his team have been tasked with bringing Salesforce’s revolutionary new Salesforce+ product offering to life and planning its official launch at Dreamforce 2021.
In this interview, Colin shares how Salesforce+ came to life, why he’s likened it to Salesforce’s version of Disney+, and what he’d do differently if given the chance to execute the massive Salesforce+ rollout all over again.
“The content we're putting out is not transactional. It's not behind a gate. It's essentially there to help people be better at their jobs as sales people or marketers or commerce individuals or admins or devs. It's really to help people be better. And we think organically that will help grow the business.”
“A lot of the time people look at it like, ‘I'm either a brand marketer or I'm a demand gen marketer.’ The world of marketing now has to be thinking about a balance between those two things...You've got to be able to capture that interest and turn it into demand generation for the business.”
“We think the content we produce could live on a Disney+ or a Netflix. And I think the success or failure of Salesforce+ is in some ways predicated upon that–do we deliver on the content quality required to keep people's attention, to keep people coming back and to engage with us in a more robust setting?”
“Tastemaker is a word I use quite a bit inside Salesforce. We think that what really resonates these days is [content that’s] super unique.It's got to be tighter. It's got to be more thoughtful. It's got to get to the point and be helpful. And people sniff out authenticity very quickly.”
*(2:15) - Colin’s first job at Salesforce
*(2:40) - Life as driver for Red Bull racing
*(4:11) - The origins of Salesforce+
*(9:07) - Why marketers have underinvested in content
*(12:50) - Community building and long term investments
*(15:10) - Planning the rollout of Salesforce+
*(17:06) - How to think about educational + entertaining content
*(23:34) - The scale of Dreamforce and Salesforce+
*(29:20) - How Salesforce+ will organize its content
*(32:00) - How Salesforce+ thinks about advertising + partner relationships
*(37:00) - What surprised Colin about the Salesforce+ process
*(41:07) - What Colin would do differently about the Salesforce+ rollout
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