How marketers should approach an IPO, with Navan's CMO
from Ad Age Marketer's Brief Hosted by Ad Age
An initial public offering (IPO) moves fast, and much of it is handled by bankers, lawyers and others who do it for a living. For Erika White, chief marketing officer at Navan, the risk for a CMO is getting so caught up in the checklist that marketing misses its chance to make the moment count. Having been through IPOs at Affirm and Navan, she uses the moment to set the company apart, treating it as a signal of staying power to enterprise customers, who buy on reputation. White explains why she expects every marketer to know the business metrics in the company's S-1 filing and earnings reports, and why any marketing activity that can't be tied to one of them needs a conversation. She also discusses why a public company's marketing team needs both early employees who believed in the mission and people who have operated at scale, and why close partnership with the founder matters when positioning is effectively "on file forever." Plus, how she defends experimentation once budgets face more scrutiny and her advice for CMOs heading toward an IPO: learn the company's story and love it, because they'll be telling it a lot. Dig deeper: ~The strategic branding lesson hidden inside SpaceX's IPO ~Performance marketing vs. brand-building—how the best brands weave them together ~The Ad Age CMO Survival Guide
Embed this episode
No transcript yet.