Brand, Content and Product Marketing at Clari. Ex Salesforce, Gong, Talend

I help B2B SaaS companies go from “what do you do again?” to “how did I live without this?”

Over the last 10+ years, I’ve led marketing at some of the most iconic (and category-defining) companies in tech — Salesforce, Gong, Clari — and now Cordial. From brand storytelling to GTM strategy, my teams have designed categories, launched products, repositioned companies, and created campaigns that punch way above their weight.

Today at Cordial, I’m focused on helping retail brands win the battle for attention — with smarter AI, deeper customer signals, and personalized messaging that actually performs.

I also teach with the Product Marketing Alliance and nerd out about positioning frameworks, lightning strikes, and the psychology behind why messages stick.

If you’re a fellow marketer, builder, or founder — let’s connect.

Cringe LinkedIn habits I notice way too fast:


- When someone likes their own post.

- When someone regularly checks who viewed their profile.

- When someone says “you know where to find the link 👇”.

- When someone posts a selfie that has absolutely nothing to do with the content.

- When someone writes “Thoughts?” and clearly wants applause, not thoughts.

- When someone says “hot take”.

- When someone ends with “Agree?” but you feel like disagreement was never an option.

- When someone…


... actually never mind. I should probably log off.

See you.
Mañana.

Julien Sauvage 

Product marketing leader with 15+ years of hands-on and managerial experience leading product marketing, go to market strategy, and pre-sales within startups and enterprise companies, specializing in Artificial Intelligence and data-related technologies.

Proven experience leading product marketing teams to drive product positioning, sales enablement and adoption marketing, resulting in rapid growth in awareness, pipe, ARR and product adoption.

Comfortable leading or working with partners in product, marketing and sales to drive product strategy, customer events, and sales activities.

- Launched Einstein at Dreamforce ’16
- Scaled the Einstein business to $100M+ ARR
- Boosted adoption for Analytics and Einstein (2x MAO)
- Drove leadership positions with industry analysts for Salesforce, SAP and KXEN
- Created all product and industry content for KXEN leading up to the SAP acquisition
- Worked on POCs and go-live deployments at 50+ customers across a spectrum of industries

CMO @ Cordial | Ex-Gong, Clari, Salesforce, Talend | Investor | Advisor | Positioning Nerd

It started as a joke.

A pun.
Me playing with words.

Some of you probably know this about me:
I love croissants 🥐 
A lot.

So I thought: what if we put a QR code on one?

And… what would we even call that?

𝑄𝑅𝑜𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑛𝑡.

That’s just me and my slightly tired French brain doing what it does best.

Then Steph Pennell and I started pulling on the thread.

What if we had a pop-up café as one of our #NRF activations?
What if it was Parisian-style?
What if it served actual French croissants?
What if each one had a QR code that led to a custom landing page?

That was the seed.
The core idea.

But without a real narrative, it would just be another random marketing thingy, right?

So I stepped back.

We’re Cordial.
We help brands earn attention by acting in the moment, not by sending more messages.

And that’s when it clicked.

A Parisian-style café is a pretty good metaphor for what good timing feels like.

A good café earns your attention.
Timing matters.
Relevance beats volume.

That became the connective tissue.
The way to tell the story.

Hence the name: "Le Café de l’Attention".

Cordial’s way of showing how brands earn attention.
Not louder.
Just better timed.
And worth stopping for.

Good coffee.
Good timing.

If you’re at NRF next week, or just in NYC, swing by.

Or DM me ahead of time.

LATTE-ntion on me  ☕️

Sorry. I did it again.
Start with a joke. End with a joke.

À bientôt  🥐

Le Café de l’Attention is still open for an hour or so…

Good vibes.

Good coffee.

Good QRoissants 🥐

Is it me, or you can’t cross a street in New York…


… without seeing some Cordial branding?

🚖

There’s no such thing as “too many croissants”  🥐 

Last 30 min of our Café de l’Attention here in front of Javits in NYC let’s goooooo ☕️

Look who’s RIGHT THERE

right in front of Javits for National Retail Federation

☕️ and 🥐 on us

Good timing gets noticed

Good location, too

in front of National Retail Federation 


see you there? ☕️ and croissant 🥐 on us

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘀𝗮𝗶𝗱:
"I want your input."

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘁:
"I’ve already made the decision."

From the Horrible Bosses Glossary. Entry #1
More definitions coming soon.

Thinking about Martin Luther King Jr. today.

Beyond the speech everyone knows, there was real craft behind it.

A sharp point of view. Words chosen carefully. And a message repeated with intent, not noise.

Pure clarity and passion, held long enough to matter.

Good reminder that the most powerful movements don’t start loud.
They start clear.

💙

It’s easy to hate on B2B ads.

But not for the reasons people usually think.

It’s not because B2B buyers are boring.
And not because emotion doesn’t belong at work.

It’s because B2B marketing often makes things harder than they need to be.

A few observations I keep running into:

- In B2B, we confuse clarity with lack of credibility

- That’s why we add layers, jargon, and enterprise-y stuff.

- We try to impress instead of help.

- We say everything, instead of choosing one thing.

- We optimize ads for internal approval, not human reaction.


- - - 


Meanwhile, good ads, regardless of category, tend to do the same few things well:

- Create tension
- Convey one clear idea
- Stay simple


➡️ There’s a brutal test I like.
If after three seconds you don’t know what the ad is about, it failed.


- - -

Some strong (recent) examples of this done right:

1️⃣ OpenAI used billboards showing everyday moments, like being stuck with your car…letting you instantly recognize the problem without a single feature callout.

2️⃣ ClickUp ran ads that were just text being typed, recreating the exact friction their product is meant to remove.
	
3️⃣ Perplexity promoted its Comet browser with a vertical, text-only ad that simply said “Ad-free YouTube.”


No demo.
No setup.

You recognize the situation immediately.


- - -


B2B advertising isn’t hard because the audience is rational.

It’s hard because we forget they’re human.

I wish this were a better picture, but my kids didn’t let me 😄

As soon as my shipment from The French Cookie Guys arrived, they opened everything and ate a bunch of cookies.

Delicious. Délicieux.

They serve both consumers and companies.
It’s not just yummy, the packaging is also beautiful (I swear).

Net net: it’s unique.
And we all need a little bit of “unique” in our lives every now and then  🍪

Also, the founder has a great story. Follow Fabrice Talbot, and learn how you can go from Salesforce product management to cookie bliss.

🇫🇷

Sometimes you have to do things that ain't natural
when you think you know the way.


Like...


Sometimes you have to slow down
when you think you should move faster.


Sometimes you have to narrow the story
when everyone is asking you to make it broader.


Sometimes you have to say no to more channels
when the dashboard tells you to add three more.


Sometimes you have to ignore the shiny feature
and obsess over the boring workflow.


Sometimes you have to stop explaining
and let the market react in silence.


Sometimes you have to sit with the mess
instead of rushing to a framework.


Sometimes you have to measure one thing properly
instead of tracking ten things poorly.


Sometimes you have to build conviction internally
before chasing external validation.


Sometimes you have to do less marketing
to create more impact.


Sometimes the right move feels uncomfortable.
That’s usually the point.


Sometimes you have to…

— your turn.

I wasn’t bready for this…


( seen in nyc this past week )

🥖

“CIOUS”


that’s the name of the deli I just walked by in nyc this morning.

I mean, you don’t need to be a PMM to nail your naming.

or do you?

A founder once asked me:
“Why marketing?”

I said I still don’t know.

I’m fine not having the answer. I like the chase.

This feels like a workout invented by the dogs.

Seen in an SF park.

Maybe next time you’ll think about this.

The next time you say:

“hand-off”

It implies someone
was actually holding something.

After watching and working on hundreds of video ad campaigns, you start noticing the same pattern.

➔ Most B2B video ads try to do everything at once.

Product. Features. Benefits. Social proof. Multiple CTAs.
All squeezed into 15–20 seconds.

The result is usually the same: a lot of effort, a lot of money, and an ad that doesn’t really say anything well.

It’s genuinely painful to watch teams spend $50K on a video campaign that quietly stalls at a 2% view-through rate, not because the production was bad, but because the ad tried to be a product demo, a brand story, and a sales pitch all at the same time.

So Rish Bhandari and I decided to do something a bit more practical.

We’re breaking down real B2B video ads.
From real companies.
As they actually show up in feeds.

We’ll look at what makes people stop scrolling, what makes them scroll past without a second thought, and how to think more clearly about where your ad budget should (and shouldn’t) go.

We’ll cover:
- Why so many B2B video ads feel corporate and forgettable
- The difference between ads that actually educate and ads that just talk at you
- What really matters in the first 3 seconds, before anyone decides to keep watching

If you’ve ever wondered why your competitor’s video ads seem to work better than yours, this will be useful.

📅 Jan 22, 2026
 ⏰ 08:00 AM PST
 🎥 LinkedIn Live: https://lnkd.in/gXbbXnRY

Don't forget to bring your 🍿

Turning complex software products into clear visual stories | Helping B2B GTM teams ship more videos, designs and web assets on time | CEO @ Content Beta | VC Analyst → Founder

After working on hundreds of ad campaigns, I've seen brands making the same mistakes again and again.

They try to say everything in one video ad: the product, the features, the benefits, social proof, multiple CTAs.

Everything into 15-20 seconds.

And they end up saying nothing well.

It hurts when I see marketing teams spend $50K on a video ad campaign that gets a 2% view-through rate because the ad tried to be a product demo, brand story, and sales pitch at the same time.

So Julien Sauvage 🥖 and I are teaming up to break down real B2B video ad campaigns.

We're going to watch ads from actual companies. 

Talk about what's working and what's not. And help you figure out where to bet your ad budget.

We'll be sharing honest feedback on what makes people stop scrolling versus what makes them scroll past the ads.

We'll cover:

 • Why most B2B video ads feel boring, corporate (typical templated ad)
 • The difference between ads that educate and ads that just talk at you
 • What actually hooks attention in the first 3 seconds

This LinkedIn Live is for marketing teams who are tired of spending money on video ads that don't move the needle.

If you've ever wondered why your competitor's video ads seem to work better than yours, this will help.

Join us on Jan 22nd, 2026 at 08:00 AM PST.

Reserve your seat here (we'll send you a box of popcorn 😅) 👇


#B2Bads #LinkedInAds

I saw an old friend yesterday.

Let’s call him Joe.

Except Joe was… off.

He looked funny.

Sometimes he talked without hearing a word I said.

Every few minutes, I would check my Slack.

Joe didn’t react.

He just kept going.

I couldn’t tell if he was tall or small.

And for some reason, behind him, there was a perfect Hawaiian beach.

At one point I hit a button and my face disappeared.

Joe didn’t blink.

It took me a while to understand what was happening.

Joe wasn’t there.

Joe was on Zoom.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘀𝗮𝗶𝗱:
"Let’s get aligned."

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘁:
"Let’s meet 6 more times before doing anything."


From the Horrible Bosses Glossary. Entry #2
More definitions coming soon.

taplio

Julien Sauvage's Linkedin Analytics

Julien Sauvage

Performance ScoreJulien Sauvage's LinkedIn Performance

Julien Sauvage's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

.css-6ytdur{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39, 43, 72, 1) 0%, rgba(33, 47, 183, 1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Julien Sauvage's Linkedin Analytics

Julien Sauvage

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);}Julien Sauvage's LinkedIn Performance

Julien Sauvage's Best Posts .css-1emoo84{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:400;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);}(last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Julien Sauvage's Linkedin Analytics

Performance ScoreJulien Sauvage's LinkedIn Performance

Julien Sauvage's Best Posts (last 30 days)