Head of Content @ LASSO | Co-host of That's Marketing, Baby | Delivering daily cheat codes for small content teams

I'm a creative director turned content marketer and strategist with more than 20 years of experience conceptualizing and executing breakthrough work for B2C brands like Eggo, Rice Krispies, Blue Cross, Cottonelle, and McDonald’s, and B2B brands like Fastly and Island.

I have a knack for leading cross-functional teams toward a common goal, bringing order to the oft-chaotic creative process, crafting insight-driven global campaigns, and bringing stories to life via long- and short-form content.

Jess Cook

I've worked with a lot of talented people over the years.
 
But every once in a while, you meet someone who just 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘵 in every way that matters.
 
Annalisa Rodriguez is one of those people.

I had the privilege of working with her for a short time at Fastly.
 
And this week, she joined Vector 👻 as our Sr. Content Marketer Manager — a sentence that makes me so happy I could cry.
 
Annalisa has a journalism background that shows in everything she touches. Long-form, repurposing, content design... she's equally amazing at all of it.
 
But what makes her truly special is her ability to take the things people 𝘴𝘢𝘺, turn them into content that makes readers 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭, and connect it all to results when buyers 𝘢𝘤𝘵.

(Read: not a common skill.)

Bonus: she's already vibing with us in Slack, and keeping our cat-loving hearts fed with pics and videos of her kitties, Oreo and Darkness. 😻
 
With Annalisa on the squad, we now have four marketers at Vector. And for the first time, a real three-legged stool:
 
→ Product marketing 
→ Demand gen 
→ Content

(i.e. I feel like I just collected ALL OF THE POKEMON.)

Annalisa's going to be sharing how she builds content here at Vector. You'll want a front-row seat for that, so go give her a follow.

Then stand back, 'cause sparks are 'bout to fly, y'all.

3 years ago, ChatGPT was supposed to kill content marketing jobs. Instead, content marketers are becoming CMOs.
 
That's not a coincidence.
 
In the age of AI, anyone can spin up a landing page, launch a campaign, or generate long-form content in minutes.
 
That's useful. Really.
 
But it's also made one skill more valuable than ever: storytelling.
 
The marketers who understand how to build a brand, create ownable content, and connect with an audience in a way that AI can't replicate—those are the people snagging seats at the table.

And not just in content, but across 👏 every. 👏 single. 👏 marketing. 👏 discipline.
 
(I shared more on Behind Good Content with Peter Conforti recently. Peep the clip!)
 
In fact, it's the skill I'm building Vector's entire marketing team around.
 
👾 Alex Virden is the most story-focused PMM you will ever meet. She doesn't just "do positioning"—she crafts narratives, messaging, and truly delightful content that make marketers feel seen and our product make sense.
 
Kelly Arndt's content background means he gets something most demand gen marketers miss: storytelling makes or breaks your demand gen activities. You can have the perfect targeting and the slickest automation. But if your message doesn't connect emotionally? None of it matters.
 
As B2B gets more crowded and products become more commoditized, storytellers ARE the differentiator.
 
And if you're one of us? Lean into those skills. They're more valuable than you think.

Just back from an incredible week at Above the Fold where I ran six content workshops over two days. I have but three pieces of photo evidence I was even there.

1) Schnitzel dinner with my ride or die agency guy, Justin Dunham. We've had two Zoom calls a week for nearly 5 years straight and had yet to meet in person. It was worth the wait. (For both the hang and the schnitzel.)

2) Got to meet my buddy from across the pond, Luke Winter - the man, the myth, the legend behind our "Next best way" ads. We talked shop (obvi), and concerts, and about what we do when we're not at our desks. His hair is just as fab in real life.

3) My parents were also flying out of Detroit at the same time as me - something we only realized a few days before. So we met up for an early bird special before boarding. They paid, of course, because I'm only 42. 🥰

So glad I went. So glad to be home. So ready for this damn snow to melt.

I've been a VP for all of 4 weeks.

And I'm obsessed with learning from leaders ahead of me.
 
The shift from "doing all the things" to "leading the people who do all the things" is real. I love it. But I also know there's so much more to learn.
 
Which is why I am counting down the days until Exit Five's Marketing Leadership Retreat in March.

I want to see how seasoned VPs and CMOs are building their teams, scaling high-impact programs, actually using AI (not the LinkedIn version, the real version), and proving brand value to skeptical CFOs.

Not so I can copy them, but so I can put them to work in a way that makes sense for Vector 👻.
 
March 18-20 in Paradise Valley, AZ.
 
I'll be the Hermione of the group: taking a bajillion notes and being way too eager to ask questions.
 
If you're going, let's connect. I'd love to meet you!

If you want to go, there are still a few tickets left! 
You can get yours here: https://lnkd.in/gXdGx4u3

I have a rule I live by in marketing: Test small before executing big.

It's why I ran an influencer pilot before making it a full program.
Tested new messaging in ads before our repositioning launch.
And why I'm so excited about what we're announcing today...

Vector 👻 𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁-𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗔𝗱𝘀. 🎉 

Here's the metaphor that's been living in my head for this:

Clay is the proving ground. 🏁
It's where GTM teams experiment with signals, build enrichment workflows, test what actually predicts buying behavior, and figure out which audiences are worth activating.

Vector is the Autobahn. 🚗
Once you know what works? You open it up. Contact-level targeting, live audience updates, suppression logic that actually follows your buyers—running modern ads playbooks at full speed.

This isn't hypothetical for us.

It's exactly how Kelly and Sara have been building Vector’s ads program.

• Kelly uses Vector to identify accounts and contacts signaling intent. 
• Sara uses Clay to enrich and score those ICP contacts. 
• Then, they use Vector to activate those contacts across LinkedIn and Google, keeping our paid targeting aligned to real buyer signals as they move through the funnel.

When your team’s already living the use case, you know you're onto something.

Grab some time to see it in action: https://lnkd.in/eugn7rJh

I love a good Uno reverse. 

Especially when it's aimed at Joshua Perk 👻.

In the season two finale (!!!) of This Meeting Could've Been a Podcast, Josh and I take you through our entire website redesign process: from the awkward "you literally told me no when I suggested this six months ago" conversation (haha), to how we worked with our design agency to build the new look and feel, to the 37-item launch checklist 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 (Josh) did not see coming.

But one of my favorite takeaways from the entire project goes a little something like this...

The second someone lands on your site, they start to form an opinion about your product. 𝗔𝗻 𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺.
 
They assume the same level of polish and thought put into your website go into your product, too.
😒 If the design feels dated, they assume the product UI is clunky.
😒 If product screen shots feel too mocked up, they assume the product isn't robust enough.
😒 If it's hard to figure out what you do, they assume the product is just as convoluted.

A lot of teams either go full nuclear on a redesign and lose everything distinctive about their brand, or they're so precious about what they have that the "redesign" is just a fresh coat of paint on the same old house.
 
So when Josh and I sat down to figure out what to actually change, we built three buckets.
 
𝗕𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝟭: 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽. These are the things that make you you. The stuff your audience would immediately recognize and miss if it disappeared. You don't want to lose them—you want to evolve them. Same personality, better haircut. For us: Ghostie, bright colors, bold statements with a wink.
 
𝗕𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝟮: 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝗽. These are the things that aren't bad, exactly—they're just limiting. They paint you into a corner or kill your flexibility, even if people associate them with your brand. For us: super saturated color usage that made text basically impossible to read.
 
𝗕𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝟯: 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲. These are the things actively working against you. They're building a perception you don't want—making you look smaller or less sophisticated than you actually are. No sentimentality. They gotta go. For us: all-caps headlines and ghost visuals in spots that should have had actual product screenshots.

The reason I love this framework is it gives you permission to make bold changes while protecting the things that actually matter. Before we kicked off the project with our design agency, Josh and I literally listed out which parts of our brand fell into which bucket. It made every every design decision after that so much cleaner. 🤌

The FULL second season of is out now! Just search This Meeting Could've Been a Podcast.

Some learning curves only make sense after you’ve lived them.


Funnel Vision was supposed to be 𝘵𝘩𝘦 thing for Vector 👻. Six months of building. A slick product UI. A beautiful narrative about contact-level intent. Launch posts. Playbooks. Customer testimonials. A scroll-stopping GIF with ghosts shooting lasers out of their eyes.
 
And then we killed it.
 
As a copywriter, you get used to having your darlings killed. But this one hurt differently.

It had been the entire company's full focus for two solid quarters, and we all believed in it wholeheartedly.

But when the data shows most customers aren't finding value, you listen.
 
The new episode of 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱'𝘃𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 is about what happened when we swung for the fences with Funnel Vision—and missed.
 
What broke (besides our hearts lol).
How we told 180+ customers.
Why it was the right call.
And how making the wrong decision led us to exactly where we needed to be.

P.S. Sorry not sorry for swearing at you, Joshua Perk 👻

"We need an explainer video," is one of the most exciting and anxiety-inducing things a marketer can hear.

They can take forever.
They can be expensive.
They usually require buy-in from everyone and their mother.
And, because of all of the above, they need to last a while.

BUT, if you get it right, the payoff can be massive.

Because a great explainer video doesn't just educate—it gets people excited: 
"Oh my gosh, this is a different way of doing things. I want to try it." 
"They're fixing that thing that's driven me insane!"
"That was cool. I want to see more from these people." 

And if you're building something category-defining, like we are at Vector 👻, they're 10,000% worth the effort.

HUGE shout out to João Freitas and his team at MezzoLab Studio, for not only being the brilliant minds behind the video, but also making the process FUN.

If you've ever wondered...


what the inside of Vector actually looks like, how it works, and what this whole contact-level advertising thing is all about...

then Thursday, March 5 is your lucky day. 

In our first-ever Booooo-t Camp, our mother of Customer Solutions, Ally Saylor will show you the three most impactful plays you can run inside of Vector 👻.

1. Visualize who visits your site from target accounts 
2. See which ICP clicks on your paid ads
3. Create an ad audience of your entire ICP

Be sure to hydrate. 'Cause your campaigns are 'bout to get SHREDDED: https://lnkd.in/ehJJQcbN

slAy E 💅

Recover lost revenue systematically- 78% of pipeline ends in lost (SaaS standard), yet orgs don't have a system to re-engage these deals. Reps check in, marketing runs nurture, and reps sort through  vague lost reasons, notes, and call transcripts to piece together what happened to reach back out

Our system captures feedback from your buyers so you know why you really win/lose (from their POV), and identifies exactly who you can win back, sending those quality leads back to sales with all the context they'd need to re-engage the deal. We measure this as a funnel- making 'lost' forecastable

Julia Carter

Some surprising things your buyers want from you 🤷‍♀️ (we have 1000s of data points supporting this based on feedback buyers give on why they didn't buy) 

Explain how it works > explain the value
- Buyers cite 4x more that they didn't understand how the product works vs. "I wish I understood the value" 
- A lot of orgs push value first (value is obvi key!!) but if the buyer doesn't know how it works..... they won't sign 

Pricing is not the biggest blocker (shocker!!!) 
- Understanding why pricing is the way it is... is a blocker
- Usage models are confusing b/c they don't know how to forecast costs -> help them through this 
- Long contract lengths are a reason for loss b/c they don't understand what really happens after they sign -> explain the benefits/why

Reps who exceed expectations lose better + have higher win-back rates
- If you are rated 'above expectations'- ~60% of your buyers are willing to re-engage with you 
- If you are rated 'met expectations'- that number drops to 30%.......

BE MORE SPECIFIC!!!!!! How can THEY succeed 
- This is obvious............... but is a reason for loss in 25% of deals sooooo 
- They want: how it fits in their workflow, what their team needs to do differently, examples from similarly sized companies, what does this replace, use cases based on their unique needs

Friendly reminder to: tailor to them, show up the best you can (you have a 2x better chance of winning them back down the line if you do), explain how it fits into their workflow, and explain why pricing/contracting is the way it is 

Happy selling ✌ 

(BTW at BuyerExperience we capture this feedback to send your reps deals they can win back + how)

taplio

The Battle

Jess Cook

Julia Carter

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreJess Cook's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJulia Carter's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Jess Cook

Julia Carter

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jess Cook's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJulia Carter's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJess Cook's LinkedIn Performance