What’s your story? How did you get into marketing?
Vasu: I started out as an electrical engineer, but then when I was at Intel I started working in business strategy, which I loved, and that got me into marketing, which I realised was my calling. I still love strategy, and making sure things come together, but I also love telling the story of how we do what we do. I’m lucky enough to have some great mentors and sponsors, and they convinced me that I needed to become a CMO.
What does your marketing team look like?
There’s about 130 people in total across global comms, global brand, events, product marketing, demand gen, digital, marketing automation, field marketing and ADRs. The biggest group is in California, but we have people in EMEA, Japan and Asia Pacific.
You’ve been at FireEye for seven months – what attracted you to this role?
The company has been on a real journey – it’s three organisations coming together, and I felt there was a huge opportunity to change the world. It’s a tremendous market, and we have an extremely inspirational CEO in Kevin Mandia. My first challenge is to change brand perceptions.
What’s your vision for the brand?
We want to be the best cyber security firm in the world. We have an unrivalled combination of the work we do in the lab, and the work our security consultants do on the front line, which is driving innovation that we put back into our products. Currently there is no global leader in this space, and there’s a great opportunity to disrupt. There are lots of great companies in the market, but they are siloed and only focused on particular areas. I don’t see a natural category leader amongst them. We’d like to do what Apple did with consumer electronics space with the cyber security space.
You’ve set yourself a big challenge – how long do you think it will take to achieve it?
That’s a difficult question to answer. To get the business where I would like would normally take about three years. But we have startup culture at FireEye, where we can make things happen faster. As an example of this, one of the first steps in the process is to create a unique and ownable visual ID – what I inherited when I took on the role of CMO was inconsistent and a fragmented. We did the same thing at my last organisation, and took a year to complete. At FireEye, it’s taken us a quarter. So I think and hope we can make the whole process happen faster.
What needs to happen to marketing to enable you to achieve that?
My first priority has been to stabilise and reduce complexity in the company. We’re trying to move from ‘Marketing 1.0’ to Marketing 3.0’. This involves switching from being ‘product-out’ to ‘customer-in’. We have to reflect the fact that today’s buyers can access information whenever and wherever they want or need to.
What makes a great CMO, as opposed to a great marketer?
There are three aspects to being a great CMO.
- A great CMO works for the team, not the other way around.
- They have to know what their north star is. They have to understand why you exist as an organisation, and what you’re good at. And you need a clear and strategic plan that will allow marketing to deliver.
- I believe that imagination is stronger than innovation. Mankind has grown up with stories. You need to be able to tell magical stories about companies, create immersive experiences and understand how you make people feel. And you need to bring this trilogy together.
How important is getting the right technology going to be in helping you to achieve that?
I’m a geek and I love technology. If you’re in the tech sector, you have to invest in martech. You can’t not do it. Your buyers are online and you need to understand how to reach them. I’m a big believer in having the right information. Marketing is a business function, and we need to measure everything. So our investment in martech is growing, and we’ll be investing more in digital.
What does your tech stack look like currently?
We have over 50 products, split over our different business areas. Technology proliferated because of our history as three separate companies, and because of silo-based decision making. And sometimes there are just hot bits of tech that people just wanted to trial. We’re definitely looking to consolidate this number. Marketo and Adobe are our foundations, and we’re not looking to change these.
What are the challenges that you’re going to face in building that stack?
Looking at the whole martech landscape is scary. The big challenge is integration – each time you take on a new bit of technology, you have to work out how it will integrate, and you need to train people to use it. Integration challenges aren’t always considered properly in the pitch process. Each tech stack is different so will face a unique set of issues. Martech often becomes sticky because no-one wants to break everything else by ‘sunsetting’ a particular application, and the deal with the pain that will cause. Or to admit that they made the wrong decision in the first place.
How can you ensure your tech stack is fit for the future?
Your tech stack is evolving, and the vendors are evolving too. You need to stay on top of this, and of your changing needs. You need to have the ability ‘sunset’ technology that has outlived its usefulness, or has become obsolete. You have to avoid ‘Frankenstein’ technology!
