Robert Jones, Lead Creative of RevPartners is known on LinkedIn for his paradies, music videos & comedic approach to B2B marketing. He has successfully leveraged his entertaining content to generate leads & close business for his company and on today’s podcast, he tells us the secrets behind his success.

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Transcript

Jess Phillips (00:01.8)
What’s up guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Social Standard Podcast. My guest today is Rob Jones. He is the creative lead at Rev Partners where he creates hilarious and entertaining content all about their main focus client HubSpot. So Rob, what is up and welcome.

Rob Jones (00:18.574)
Great to be here, yeah, the shirt. I need more HubSpot shirts, but that’s what I do. I recently was promoted to creative lead, so even more humorous content about RevOps, HubSpot, all that stuff coming out very soon.

Jess Phillips (00:28.509)
Love it.

Jess Phillips (00:32.284)
Yeah, I love it. And we’re gonna get into your background and kind of why you’re an interesting candidate for some of this stuff. But today, I think generally what we’re gonna discuss is how entertainment and humor are showing up in the B2B marketing side of the equation, if it’s a fit for all businesses and how you are helping HubSpot lean into this trend directly or indirectly. So let’s start with that first piece because I think this is what’s really interesting. So give me the background really quickly on who Rev Partners is and what you guys do.

Rob Jones (01:00.822)
Yeah, we are a HubSpot partner. They have a solutions partner program. We were the fastest to diamond and fastest to elite. So it’s kind of a criterion or ranking system for partners. We have standardized on HubSpot, which is a differentiator in that other agencies may work with multiple.

CRMs or multiple vendors like if you want to move to Salesforce you can or HubSpot you can’t we’ve done away with that It’s HubSpot or nothing for us so we can move you from we do a lot of integration work a lot of data migrations We can code and build stuff for you, but if the end result isn’t that being HubSpot then we don’t we don’t touch it But we’ve been around for about two and a half three years. I’ve been with the team for I mean not even two years yet Which is crazy even think feels like five years

But yeah, we have a lot of fun doing it. We have some of the best people in the world, and that’s from a culture that was intentionally cultivated to unlock human flourishing. And I’m almost the best example of that I can think of.

Jess Phillips (02:03.452)
Yeah, so I think along those lines, tell our audience a little bit about your experience because before, RebPartners, you were not doing anything like this.

Rob Jones (02:12.01)
Yeah, I was a promoted to customer, as I used to hear back in the day. So I was done everything. I’ve been a personal trainer. I’ve sold cars. I’ve done insurance work. I’ve been a public servant in the firefighting space. I’ve been an EMT. I’ve done everything. So moved here. I had an opportunity to break in. I do have some sales experience. Started off here as like an intern.

a window closed door open, whatever, it was like a gaping hole opened, a wall opened, and I ran through it, so I was in the room, a portal, yeah, a portal, the hole, everything fell down, I just walked through. So, promoted to interim sales director, and then sales director for about a year, and then moved kind of into the branding space. And I think a lot of that was just contingent on the avalanche of, I don’t even think it would be called success, but just like attention from inbound last year with the, I’m the orange suit guy,

Jess Phillips (02:40.372)
portal.

Jess Phillips (03:02.24)
Hmm. That’s right.

Rob Jones (03:05.226)
Most people are just like, that guy’s wearing an orange suit, that’s me. So that kind of changed things, but it’s been what I’ve been most passionate about, regardless of career forever. I used to make phone videos and jingles and songs for the last 10-15 years just for fun.

Jess Phillips (03:21.064)
That’s awesome. Well, but what I think is interesting for our audience specifically, and we’re gonna get into this because you make a lot of really funny, wacky, crazy content about HubSpot. But what I want our audience to take away from this is that you had no background in this. This is just something.

that kind of came about. So you started making what I would say, you’re doing music videos about HubSpot. You have started a band at Rev Partners, where it’s, I believe, a bunch of other teammates that are playing in a band. So you’re creating songs about HubSpot. You’ve taken a spin off of a real American hero that Bud Light has done, and you’ve created the real admin, I believe.

Rob Jones (03:59.007)
Yeah, real admin of Genius was a good idea.

Jess Phillips (04:00.432)
Yes, okay, the real admin of geniuses, right? So you’re taking a lot of interesting cultural trends in the B2B and even B2C space, and you’re applying them to this. But there’s a reason that you started out making content. What was that reason? Sure.

Rob Jones (04:14.494)
I enjoy it. One of the things that’s been almost counterintuitive.

for everybody has something they do on the side or a hobby or passion and how do you monetize it and I’ve thought, you know, considered all of that but I enjoyed this the most. So the advice, unconventional advice was if you can’t do it for free and then get paid later then you don’t enjoy it enough to do it. There’s a lot of debate on should you charge, should you not, should you do free work. If you don’t enjoy it enough, I think Dickie Bush told me this or Thomas Cole, anyway, they said if you don’t enjoy it enough to do it for free then you’re not going to make money or have longevity at it. So I just started doing it because I enjoyed it.

Jess Phillips (04:48.912)
Okay, that makes sense. And part of it too was, they were learning the product, right?

Rob Jones (04:53.95)
Yeah, it was very helpful to have like a, I mean, as funny and comedic as they were, like a chronicle of me learning. I can go back and look and evaluate my knowledge of revops and HubSpot and product features like through videos. So yeah, it’s a good forcing function to learn also.

Jess Phillips (05:05.728)
Sure.

Jess Phillips (05:10.608)
Yeah. So how, I mean, are you a funny guy in general? Do you take on a persona as you mentioned, you know, you dress up and when you’re in this content, you’re in the orange suit, which is the HubSpot color. And you are you call yourself the mayor of inbound, right?

Rob Jones (05:27.178)
Yes, so that’s a super long and odd story. To condense that, it kind of just happened at Inbound last year. Inbound is HubSpot’s kind of key, big conference in Boston in September. It’s in a month this year also. And so I just wore pre-Inbound. It was like,

Jess Phillips (05:35.017)
the conference.

Rob Jones (05:44.302)
It’s been COVID, we’re the fastest-tiering elite partner, nobody’s ever really met us in person, like we should make a splash at this event. And our co-founder chimed in and said, yeah, we wanna be bombastic. And so I was like, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna buy this suit. It’s literally just something I ordered on Amazon for like 50 bucks. And that kind of trend, people just kind of caught on to it. I mean, people in the HubSpot community, like executives have like…

Jess Phillips (06:05.674)
I love it.

Rob Jones (06:11.794)
either purposefully or accidentally endorsed me as mayor of Indell, which is crazy. It’s a good way to start a personal brand on accident.

Jess Phillips (06:17.78)
Well, I think it’s a great way to start a personal brand, but I also think, you know, let’s not look past the fact that that’s great branding for Rev partners, right? Because now if you weren’t on HubSpot’s, you know, corporate radar before, you definitely are now.

Rob Jones (06:32.446)
Yes, I have, it’s been acknowledged and so the idea that even though I wasn’t the most, there’s a lot of people that know HubSpot way better than me, everybody at RevPartners is probably more proficient in using HubSpot as a tool than I am and I don’t pretend to be an expert, I just, you don’t have to be an expert to love a product or a service or anything.

So I do, that’s my contribution. Now I am learning a lot more every day, but it’s more of redirect, and this is kind of why we’re here, using comedic content to redirect and turn into revenue. I don’t care about the expertise, I care about the attention stream. So for me, controlling more mindshare attention by drawing kind of like a hybrid of like actually informative and I mean, I call it edutainment. I’ve heard other people say edutainment. Yeah, bringing that in puts the eyes and ears on the people that actually know what the hell they’re talking about,

Jess Phillips (07:00.761)
Yeah, of course.

Jess Phillips (07:07.658)
Yes.

Jess Phillips (07:19.516)
Yes, edutainment.

Jess Phillips (07:25.854)
Exactly.

Rob Jones (07:26.084)
my team at Road Partners and it’s worked pretty well.

Jess Phillips (07:28.828)
Yeah, and I think you’re a really interesting example specifically of how you can take edutainment and throw it into just like, you’re taking education, you’re marrying it really well with entertainment, and it makes people want to pay attention. And isn’t that the whole goal of marketing is to get people to pay attention to you and your brand.

Rob Jones (07:50.09)
Yes, attention is very expensive. So I mean, now we’re in a scroll economy where people can, I mean, there are literally metrics invented for, did you watch past the first three seconds? And a lot of people can’t meet that, right? So.

Jess Phillips (07:52.797)
It is.

Jess Phillips (08:00.444)
Right. Yes. Yes, exactly.

Rob Jones (08:03.878)
How do you capture attention? And so people talk about demand gen and demand capture. I like the attention gen and attention capture plus like the holding on, right? Used to be e-bucks or gated content or whatever it was. Now it’s like, did they go to my YouTube shorts playlist and watch anything else? Like what did they look at from there if you wanna get like attribution oriented? But that’s the approach. It’s just like.

Jess Phillips (08:12.052)
Sure. Yeah, the stickiness quality.

Rob Jones (08:28.83)
As dumb as this is going to sound, I’ve said it before, so maybe I’m immune to it, but there’s a scene in…

an Adam Sandler movie where he’s talking about drawing a blue duck, right? And he’s like, I drew a blue duck blue because I’ve never seen one before, and that’s why I have it. And a lot of my strategy, if you want to call it that, is like, what have I never seen in this space in B2B? This exists everywhere else, B2C, people making their own content, but nobody and you probably think this way, too. That’s coming to B2B and people.

It’s harder to earn people’s attention initially and it’s harder to keep it. So you really have to have like either I do a lot of parodies, but you have to have like original takes. They don’t have to be new, like inventing the wheel, but something that looks different in a different space. It’s called anachronism, like things that are out of place in time, I think work really well in B2B because it’s relevant already.

Jess Phillips (09:20.544)
I think, I know, I think you are 100% correct. I mean, that to me is, you know, I think that’s probably a really important way is like you’re taking the same thing, you’re just putting it in a different perspective. And that is important whether or not you choose to do it through a comedic lens or not, right? You can do it in through a thought leadership way as well, where you just tie in, you know, what you’re doing with something else that somebody’s never even really considered. Just giving people a reason to pause and say, hmm, right? That’s a big.

Rob Jones (09:47.342)
I mean, the best marketing, I think, generates some sort of emotional response. So if you think about the all-time ad campaigns, for me, my favorite are all funny. But some of the also successful ones elicit some equally strong emotion, whether it be every kiss begins with K. All of those that transcend, they do a good job of connecting to emotion. I just can’t make a serious or sad or like…

Jess Phillips (09:53.065)
Yes.

Jess Phillips (10:06.056)
Yes.

Rob Jones (10:17.798)
I can’t do any of that, but it could happen to B2B too, right? Like you can take the same emotional, not instructive or informative or talking to people, but like telling a story, that’s coming to B2B. I think it’s coming with people that are influencers or creators.

Jess Phillips (10:22.292)
That’s right.

Jess Phillips (10:28.191)
Yes.

Jess Phillips (10:32.208)
Yeah, oh, 100% is there. There’s absolutely no question. And I think it’s going to be, to me, the question is what platforms really sort of win out when it comes to this? So we’re gonna talk about that in a minute, but first I wanna go back to your point about kind of emotion. Because one of the things, if you look at, and you also talked about the parallels with B2C, right? Right now, who’s winning the content game, in my opinion, that’s B2C is Barbie, right? Mattel’s CEO is everywhere, right?

Rob Jones (10:58.615)
Yeah.

Jess Phillips (11:02.76)
He’s not made any sort of, he’s not hiding this at all. He wants to be the entertainment empire of Mattel. And he wants to do that. Why? To sell more product, to sell more toys. So that’s an interesting take. Hasbro, which is another toy company, they also have the same approach. And what’s interesting is the CEO of Hasbro actually said specifically in a recent interview that I was listening to that they have a little bit of an advantage, right? Because their consumers want.

like a deeper experience with their product. And there is an emotional connection that they have there. There are also communities that are created around their toys, around their games. And then there are also end up being social activation, socialization opportunities around this as well. So one of the things that I was thinking about is how does B2B come at that? Because no one gets emotional over SaaS products, right? There’s not really a true emotion that’s evoked that you have. So you have to sort of figure out a way around that.

And I would venture to say that the way that you figure that out is through comedy.

Rob Jones (12:07.022)
There’s a lot that you just said. Yes. So there are emotions involved in SAS, in your work, in all of that. I mean, it’s contextual, so it’s by example. But if you take one that I’ve played on before, and then a stamped comedy at the end, is like, how frustrating is it that 40% of your day is just admin work when you could be out there selling because your system is broken? And capturing that feeling of like,

Jess Phillips (12:10.96)
You’re right.

Jess Phillips (12:17.823)
Yes.

Rob Jones (12:37.118)
God, I just changed my password, I just did this, or now I have to go into all this and, you can capture that emotion and not say anything funny about it and that be your campaign, or that be something you build a character or a persona for. Because people, I would wager 100% of people can relate and empathize with frustration about technology. Right, so if that’s your angle, like HubSpot’s easier to use, then you can pair it with that emotion and have something impactful. I have done that.

Jess Phillips (12:41.117)
Yes.

Jess Phillips (12:56.401)
Of course.

Rob Jones (13:05.882)
to the hundredth degree of insanity with SpongeBob or whatever else stupid song or video that I make up. But it is paired with an emotion. As far as the question about who can come to B2B, anybody with a cell phone and the internet, now every person can be if they want to be their own media company. So companies like Mattel, that’s not a media company, has a media or marketing division. That’s how big they are, is they have a media division.

smaller like bootstrapped or startups or you know people in this space that we’re in they don’t have that budget yet but each person there can be their own media company so if you’re a consultant or you’re you know whatever you’re doing or you’re in the SaaS space you can have demand gen that’s more of like the operations and the metrics and measuring and strategy moving forward but every person that has internet and a phone can be a like satellite subsidiary media company of the company.

That’s almost how I view myself. And we’re trying to help build that so that you don’t have a percentage like, I think it’s one out of every 10, 10% of people enjoy being on camera or create content. It’s probably less than that. But at an org that’s 60 people, if you can get 20, 33% or 50% of them to have their own voice, have their own, first of all, it’s better for engagement. On LinkedIn, especially company pages and brands like…

They’re not prioritized. It’s easier to get attention or to get engagement if you’re a person, not a company. So doing that and empowering people to share their personal brand and their story and kind of marrying it or pairing it with like the overall campaign or like the direction of the team, that’s what I think is important, what we’re trying to do.

Jess Phillips (14:36.744)
Right, right.

Jess Phillips (14:51.292)
Yeah, I think that’s right. And I do think that B2B marketers are set up well because they do have an ensemble of people that they can pull from, right? Or they could do another thing, which is they can hire someone like you, for example, or anybody else who is an interesting actor to effectively cast them in a role to create content for their social media platforms. And we’ve seen that happen a lot in B2C, and that’s something we do at the social standard as well. But I do think that it’s…

fairly impactful for B2B, especially if you don’t have anyone who’s, you know, in that 10% that wants to be in front of the camera or in content. So I do think that that’s interesting. And I think the other thing too is like, when you look at, you know, you drew, you drew sort of interesting parallel there with B2C and B2B, but like, do you think, is every, is every company on the path to becoming a media business? And should they all?

beyond the past becoming a media business.

Rob Jones (15:44.678)
Should they I was gonna say should they be I mean people that are ahead are already So, I mean look at lavender they have hired I mean, I’ve personally kind of been I don’t know when they were found I assume my journey kind of is parallel to theirs as far as like them

Jess Phillips (15:50.777)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jess Phillips (16:01.17)
I believe so.

Yeah, and it’s just for our audience. I’ll interrupt really quickly to say, it’s Lavender AI, correct? So Lavender AI is an email sort of, it’s a tool that allows you to improve your emails for outreach. So if you’re a sales person, this is sales tech for you that hopefully helps you with your open rate, I believe, and like your general engagement with email. And they have done some really interesting content work specifically around their product that has been, I think they started out really low-fi, LinkedIn content that went really, really sort of viral,

success with it, so much so that they’re actually launching Lavenderland right now, which is a streaming service, I would say in quotes, on their website where they’re gonna have a ton of content that you can binge watch at any point in time as part of your customer journey. So with that in mind, go ahead.

Rob Jones (16:46.814)
Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. I mean, that doesn’t exist anywhere else. No other company, especially in this space has their own stream. I mean, that’s just wild. Um, whether it will achieve what they’re looking for it to achieve or not is yet to be determined, but like we’re sitting here on a podcast talking about them, they’re not a sponsor. They’re not like that. We’re talking about them as a, as a trendsetter. Um, shout out Jen Allen, uh, who’s awesome and Todd, I know all of them, right? It’s crazy that they’re so available and they’re so good at what they do. They almost.

Think that Jen and will and Todd and everybody they have currently was like hired on and they were already they already had an audience Can you create that organically? That the well, I mean that’s what we’re trying to do So like I can see where that would be a concern where somebody maybe it hurts your like brand affinity I don’t think lavender is ever gonna have a problem with that because they’re they just work so well together and all their messaging is The same but you could you could see somebody being a hired

Jess Phillips (17:23.038)
Right.

I think so.

Rob Jones (17:44.658)
spokesperson that doesn’t have the same effect as an evangelist right like if they’d have hired me to come over there wearing an orange suit To be like you just paid him to not like he doesn’t get it. He hasn’t used the product There’s almost some authority or credibility issues. That is not the case now But yeah, like those types of initiatives It’s wild to me to think that we’re we haven’t been around nearly as long as some of the other people in our space like just Our solutions partner areas and we’re already we have the third or fourth most LinkedIn followers

Jess Phillips (17:55.55)
Right.

Rob Jones (18:14.466)
Like all of that growth, like we prioritize. And I mean, like we see it on the backend as far as like sales metrics and retention and all of NPS or all of that is, it’s hard to attribute directly. And I know correlation doesn’t equal causation, but a lot of these things line up pretty well, right? Like, so that’s.

Jess Phillips (18:17.532)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Phillips (18:31.496)
Sure. So what you’re saying is that Rev Partners has prioritized LinkedIn growth for their company page as well as their employees pages. And that you guys have seen on the backend turn into leads revenue engagement.

Rob Jones (18:51.658)
Yes, it is a source for us. Like a deal source would be LinkedIn referral. And it’s from other people that we’re now, I don’t wanna say training or coaching or like creating because I have a very, these people are amazing by themselves. I’m just kind of a cheerleader, right? Like you can do it. I’ve already seen it. You do this stuff internally. Just post, just share it with the public. Like everybody.

Jess Phillips (18:55.867)
Okay.

Jess Phillips (19:16.138)
Yes.

Rob Jones (19:17.646)
That’s one of the things. But yeah, we’ve seen that and we’ve gotten several deals sourced and closed, I mean, it is important to note, from LinkedIn. So if you’re not considering that as a strategy, then you’re not considering your entire strategy. Like you’re not considering all the options available to you.

Jess Phillips (19:26.001)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, unbelievable.

Jess Phillips (19:32.496)
Yeah, that’s right. Now is LinkedIn, LinkedIn is a priority for you guys. Are there any other platforms that as a B2B marketer that are a priority for you?

Rob Jones (19:40.766)
Yeah, I got promoted Wednesday to this. So yeah, there will be other platforms that will explore, threads happened for like three days and then it’s gone. So I don’t know what happened there. I’m sure it’ll take back off, but it depends, right? You have, I mean, you have to know your audience to an extent and where they prefer to be, like meet people where they are. If I do all this and then I’m a frequent TikTok user, cause I like watching the cool like videos of them cooking or funny stuff that happens or sports highlights, meet them there. So make TikTok.

Jess Phillips (19:48.382)
Yep.

Jess Phillips (20:07.36)
Sure.

Rob Jones (20:10.454)
content. If it’s YouTube, whatever. I don’t think Facebook is a rule. I mean just from in this professional space, LinkedIn to me equals Facebook. One’s professional, one’s not.

Jess Phillips (20:21.364)
Well, I think it depends on what you’re doing, right? Because if you are creating content that is edutainment style content, that doesn’t necessarily, in its video, that doesn’t necessarily work well on like meta platforms. I don’t think. I think that’s more TikTok, that’s more YouTube.

Rob Jones (20:24.532)
Exactly.

Rob Jones (20:35.454)
Right, and there’s stuff now, and I’ve seen a ton of it. I’ve subscribed or followed a lot of it almost as research, which sounds crazy, but a lot of people are getting into this and it just hasn’t taken off yet. A lot of the people that are almost overproducing or spending a bunch of money to have it, it’s not taking off either. So the takeaway for there almost removes the block or limiting factor of you having experience. Look at me, or you having like.

Jess Phillips (20:43.197)
Uh huh.

Rob Jones (21:02.462)
Superior production quality look at some other place things that you see you’re asking like I wonder how much that spent or I wonder How much that cost or I wonder how many views and it’s just not successful because people aren’t authentic like what sells now is Emotion, but it’s authenticity. So I think that’s why the people that are winning. They’re incredibly authentic and it’s That’s the strategy of like how you present yourself do whatever you do funny not emotional whatever thought leadership

Do it in an authentic way and it resonates more with the people.

Jess Phillips (21:33.884)
Yeah, 100%. I think we’ve seen that exact same trend in the B2C space, right? And I also think that when you are, when you’re on a platform, you need to, that platform content needs to feel like it belongs there. Right, a highly produced video on TikTok doesn’t really feel.

Rob Jones (21:48.618)
Right, right.

Jess Phillips (21:49.184)
proper, right? That doesn’t, that wouldn’t make any sense. And I also think that too, you’re right, they’re saying that we’re early days on a lot of this stuff and so it’s a, it’s time to do like more lo-fi, test and learn, be fast, try things. What does it move fast and break things? I think that’s kind of where we’re at and that’s the sort of what you have to be doing. You don’t need to have a $30,000, you know, podcast budget to go out and create a killer podcast.

Rob Jones (22:13.366)
You’re exactly right. Move fast and destroy everything is what I’ve pivoted to. But yeah, I mean, it’s crazy to think, but almost like for me, and I know that just, again, it’s scroll economy, I would argue that you’re exactly right. On LinkedIn or on TikTok, like an overproduced video seems more like an ad, right? It’s out of place. And so that actually might stand out to me more if it weren’t intentionally an ad, like if it were well done at all.

Jess Phillips (22:30.636)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Jones (22:38.726)
On the inverse, I find myself more attracted to and engaging more with lower produced quality on LinkedIn. So there’s more like, on LinkedIn it seems more like those videos are ads or they have an agenda and the selfie stick videos. I like those more. It resonates more. Again, it seems more authentic. And so it depends on like which platform you’re I’m currently on for what sticks the most. Another weird, you mentioned this earlier, but another odd concept.

Jess Phillips (22:52.829)
Yes.

Rob Jones (23:07.07)
and it’s me and it’s Lavender, but like people, they’re used to, I love jingles, I mean they just stick in your head forever, and so even Lavender’s little jingle that they have is almost an old school throwback to like how marketing kinda used to be done, and that’s the only reason I’ve put music in mind. I’m not a musician, I’m not any of that, but I’m decent enough to like put something out there, and people have that nostalgia, right? That’s an emotion that ties you to whatever you’re watching or viewing. So the intent there is like,

Jess Phillips (23:17.088)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Jones (23:36.838)
you learned your ABCs probably by singing them. Just like the core things, I mean there’s a market statistical improvement in like musical memory. So that’s why I do that. It probably seems dumb and like, weird owl of B to B, somebody call me weird owl of B to B, which is a thank you, that’s a huge compliment. But it’s because it sticks in your head longer. So I encourage anybody out there to like try new, weird, something you haven’t seen before and see if it sticks.

Nobody knows what they’re doing by the way. If you want to buy my course, I don’t have one because I haven’t figured anything out yet, enough to charge anybody. But that’s my free advice, right? Just go fast, break things, figure it out later.

Jess Phillips (24:06.249)
Yeah.

Jess Phillips (24:15.124)
Yeah, I like that. And I think what I like about, what I would say, it seems like the takeaways for how to leverage emotional marketing in B2B is to talk to people about their pain points because that’s where emotions lie, and then capitalize potentially on some nostalgic marketing that they will identify with and enjoy.

Rob Jones (24:36.598)
Yeah, I mean that’s…

Whatever you’re gonna do, it needs to be done decisively and authentically. So if you choose, I mean again, for me, it’s the funny stuff. But that’s all, it’s all real. And then the conversations after, I can’t tell you, for anybody that’s an influencer, anybody that’s creating content, I even make a point to tell everybody here this same thing now. That’s not even half of it, depending on what the goal is, right? So if you’re just trying to make like viral videos, then I…

I think there’s more important pressing things to get you there, but the engagement on the back end is almost more important than the video itself. Somebody spent, for me, it’s like two, three minutes to watch a video or listen to a song, whatever it is, and that needs to be thanked and thanked quickly. People that have like 100,000 or a million followers, they have specific times they engage, and it’s part of a strategy, but it’s almost too automated.

Rob Jones (25:38.086)
of your audience and asking and DMs and even being on a podcast like this without engaging people won’t buy it anymore and it doesn’t advance future videos. It doesn’t advance future creative ideas from an individual standpoint. So 100% on the engagement.

Jess Phillips (25:49.96)
That’s right. Yeah, I think that’s right. And that’s the community element, right? So we’ve touched on, here’s how the emotions happen with B2B, here’s how community happens, and that comes with the engagement and a killer sort of social engagement team strategy or one person, whoever it is. And then the third piece to bring that back is the socialization opportunities. And I do think…

that, you know, there are things like conferences that are coming back that you mentioned earlier, but there are also opportunities to have dinners or experiences or invite potential customers who are, you’ve noticed, been dancing around your content on social but have yet to hit by, right? Invite them in and create socialization opportunities where you can meet in real life and take that and that’s maybe that’s how you bring it full circle to close the deal.

Rob Jones (26:37.622)
Yes, meeting in real. I mean, again, that’s wasn’t an option as much two years ago. I feel how far are we from COVID two, three years, two years? Yes. I mean, like with that.

Jess Phillips (26:42.164)
That’s right.

Jess Phillips (26:45.575)
Three years, I think.

Rob Jones (26:50.582)
people, I don’t know, I took it for granted. So like going back to inbound was like, holy shit, I’ve never been to a conference before when I knew full well that I have been. I mean, nothing that large before, but I was like, man, this is the first time I’ve ever done this. So taking advantage of that if you can, we’re kind of globally spread out, so it’s hard to make that happen, and it’s travel, but it’s worth it. The other component of that with in B2B or B2C, in person or not, is that the two are almost blended now. Right?

Jess Phillips (27:09.858)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Phillips (27:19.017)
Yes.

Rob Jones (27:19.534)
Even if you’re saying dinner like we had to improvise and we had a Partner that did like a wine and paint but it was virtual and everybody had their own thing. That’s engaging That’s kind of fellowship if you will or community Relationship building is I think the core element. So that’s how to decrease churn That’s how to create like evangelists for your brand and referrals. All of that is married together

But the B2B and B2C working from home for like two years, two or three years, however long it was, part of the reason it’s so ambiguous now is because those lines were blurred, right? Like B2C, B2B, I work and live and do everything from one spot right here. So maybe that had an impact on like what works in marketing, it kind of changed during that time. The takeaway is that virtual, in-person, whatever, like focus on relationship building. And you do that with everything I’ve just said, like engagement, all of that community conferences, if that’s…

if that’s available to you.

Jess Phillips (28:15.116)
That’s right. Yeah, I agree totally. Now, another question I have for you here is that when you’re talking about, you know, moving fast and destroying things, as you say, how does that work for a small business or is it a big business? And when I say, and also how does it work for when you’re targeting a small business or targeting enterprise level clients?

Rob Jones (28:38.346)
It’s easier to do the smaller you are. Smallness equals agility or nimble. You can be way more nimble. I think that’s, you literally run a business that’s poised to dominate right now because of personal brand and the approval, like the speed. Speed is your, speed never slumps. Shout out to speed. But the quicker you can get it done and the less red tape and approvals and all that you have to go through, the more of an impact it’ll make. I watched one of the coolest videos I’ve seen that I’d…

Jess Phillips (28:40.746)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Phillips (28:55.014)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Jones (29:07.874)
did a little digging on and realized it took like six months to be produced and like some sort of budget, right? It was fantastic, but I did something in one afternoon after seeing that and posted it the next day that got almost the same amount of engagement, period. I didn’t have to approve it through anybody, didn’t have to do anything. That’s a whole other podcast episode about like culture and how I was empowered to do that and knowing with judgment, right? Like I can, there wasn’t any red tape or any like questions that I had.

Jess Phillips (29:35.048)
Well, let me ask you though, are you posting, you’re posting that on your personal social channels, not on RevPartners though, right? Yeah, that makes sense. You get a little bit more, you potentially get a little bit more freedom to do that, even though you’re acting as an evangelist.

Rob Jones (29:41.198)
Correct, yes.

Rob Jones (29:49.73)
Correct, yeah so, I mean the decision a company has to make is do they want to have an authoritative or polarizing tone or not. If not, they’re not going to stand out. They’ll be, I mean safety versus aggressiveness is kind of the thing but like, I mean I could point to five social accounts that do an unbelievable job of it. Slack is probably number one. They are one of the most engaging. Like I’ve seen them go from 600,000 to almost 2 million.

Jess Phillips (30:09.696)
Sure.

Rob Jones (30:15.114)
I’ve seen Lavender do the same. Lavender had 5,000, 6,000 followers, which is insane for a page at the time. Now they’re at 40K. It’s because they’re engaging. Only them, correct. And it’s because they have a stance, right? Like, your cold email sucks. It sucks, it’s terrible, it’s bothersome to me, right? And we can show you how to get better. So it’s a conversation, but they have a very strong stance on that. The higher up you go into like the enterprise space.

Jess Phillips (30:21.428)
and you’re talking about on LinkedIn.

Jess Phillips (30:35.252)
Sure.

Rob Jones (30:42.622)
and the more moving parts there are, I feel like it’s just a natural de-evolution of how strong of a stance you can have. And so with that, like, the algo loves polarizing things either way.

Jess Phillips (30:49.504)
Sure.

Jess Phillips (30:53.372)
But here’s the thing, here’s where I would push back on that is that the reason that you are taking a polarizing stance is to gain mass adoption for your product. These enterprise companies have already gained mass adoption so they’re already at your finish line. So the question to me is then how do you continue to move the needle for those guys, right? And I don’t think you have to take a polarizing approach but I still think that you can involve comedy in really fun ways. I still think you can address pain points for your customers. It just becomes a little bit more complicated because you have

Rob Jones (31:07.502)
Correct.

Jess Phillips (31:24.006)
If you look at like a Salesforce, for example, they have smaller clients and they have enterprise clients. So how do you talk to them on the same channel at the same time? And the question is…

I mean, I think the answer is you do it through evangelists, right? You have your small customer team, you have your enterprise level team, and you let those guys talk to those audiences on their own sort of personal pages on LinkedIn, right? As evangelists, I guess I should document that it’s as evangelists done when I get on Snapchat and start talking about, you know, SAP or anything like that.

Rob Jones (31:56.194)
Right. No, I mean, you’re right. It’s being in that position and having enterprise accounts, you’re not sure who your audience is. It’s so big now, to your point, they’ve already conquered. They’re at the end state. So there’s not a need to necessarily attract, but it moves into retain. Like the growth is smaller, but the retention is more. So you have to cater to more interests and more. That’s harder. Excuse me.

Jess Phillips (32:18.076)
Yes.

Rob Jones (32:26.142)
If you find something that resonates enough universally, you can still have a strong stance and retain and still have growth also.

Jess Phillips (32:34.864)
Yeah, it’s the same value proposition. It’s maybe just communicated in a little bit. Yeah, exactly.

Rob Jones (32:39.222)
Who is executing it, right? Like is it the company or the, yeah, correct. So I mean like, again, it almost mathematically might be more impactful for them. I mean, if you were a CMO or like a chief of demand gen or whatever that looks like, you could just give a directive to your, like anybody on the team, let’s just say a thousand person org, like one of the requirements of working here or retaining, like remaining employed here is you have to put content on social media and then whatever guidelines, right? Like that would be more impactful.

Jess Phillips (33:03.785)
Yeah.

Rob Jones (33:07.23)
if it’s adopted. It’s funny you mentioned mass adoption because our like our value prop is adoption is the most important good regardless of tool. So that’s what we push.

Jess Phillips (33:13.856)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, but I think that you’re an in your you have an interesting perspective to provide here because You are a small business who in theory? Targets other smaller businesses, however

you do it off of HubSpot, which is a huge enterprise based business. Right? So a little bit inception of like within the circle, within the circle, within the circle. But it is interesting because HubSpot, you even told me before we jumped on here that you just had a, you got the CEO of HubSpot to come on like a podcast with you.

Rob Jones (33:34.89)
Right.

Rob Jones (33:48.234)
Yeah, I’m talking to her again, lucky me, Thursday. She’s one of the most wonderful, gracious people ever. So she was like, hey, it happens, that sucks. Let’s do it Thursday.

Jess Phillips (33:57.696)
Mm hmm. Right. And just for our audience, he recorded the whole podcast, but forgot to hit record. So that’s happened. That’s happened.

Rob Jones (34:03.662)
Yeah, I didn’t want that part shared to the audience. I mean, yeah, it’s a blunder of the century there on my part. But yeah, so.

Jess Phillips (34:10.79)
But it feels like there’s probably some comedic inspiration in there when you go to promote that video.

Rob Jones (34:14.818)
I already have an idea. I mean, yeah, I’ve figured that part out already, which is very self-deprecating, but to me it’s funny. You were asking about audience. Repartners is smaller, HubSpot is gigantic. Again, that’s more on the approval and the length of time it takes to get everything through, to get something actually done from idea to delivery. Not the same case here. With the…

Jess Phillips (34:22.026)
Sure.

Jess Phillips (34:37.565)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Jones (34:45.43)
Like, who makes up those things? All I’m trying to do, I think it’s like, who you’re talking to. And there’s some comedic liberties there. There are some, Chris Bogue, shout out Chris Bogue, was helping me through this. He coaches people on how to get on video and how to do this video. His background’s also in improv. And he was like, if you have a really strong opinion, just make a character and give them that opinion. That way it’s not you. So the mayor, like the mayor character can say, Salesforce sucks.

you know, can say whatever and it’s, it’s more of a creative outlet. In the same way, I’m not addressing you, the Salesforce user or this person or whatever. I’m like, there’s PLG and then there’s what I am trying to push, which is PHLG, which is philosophy led growth. This is challenging the indoctrination that Salesforce is the only way to go up market, to enterprise, that’s bullshit. HubSpot can do it now too. Oh, well it doesn’t. There’s been over 5,000 product updates in the last two years, two, three years since the non-compete ended.

Jess Phillips (35:26.688)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Phillips (35:44.148)
Hmm

Rob Jones (35:44.69)
if you still think differently, you’re just ignorant from the fact of not knowing. Ignorance is a weird word, but it just means you didn’t know. It means you had no idea. It’s hard to keep up with all the things that they’re doing to move up market. So challenging that philosophy of Salesforce is the only way. No it’s not. And so once people realize that everything I’m doing comedically or otherwise is not attacking a person or a company, but it’s attacking a concept.

I almost, and this got voted down, but it’s almost turning enterprise or Salesforce or that whole thing into an ism. Like we had lots of isms that over data and thought and like communication. That’s not right. You’re not supposed to not like somebody because they’re, you know, I don’t want to get into that, but it’s, it’s the same concept. You’re challenging something that people have just accepted for 25 years and saying.

Jess Phillips (36:18.79)
Hmm.

Jess Phillips (36:29.056)
Sure.

Jess Phillips (36:32.596)
Sure.

Rob Jones (36:34.946)
There’s a better way. Didn’t we ride horses for like thousands of years before somebody invented the car? Like there’s another option. That’s why I’m being so loud. And that’s why it takes somebody doing something in an orange suit or a comedic to say loudly a message because it’s just like adoption, right? If people don’t adopt it, it’s not gonna work. Same concept with the overall narrative or philosophy.

Jess Phillips (36:58.448)
Yeah, I like that a lot. I think that actually I think that makes a ton of sense. It’s well put. Coming from a firefighter. Yeah, hey, you know what? I mean, maybe more people need to hire firefighters if they’re dropping knowledge like you, right? That’s right. Hey, hey, I like it. Well, look, I mean, I think, you know, this has been a super interesting conversation. I love the perspectives that you provided on emotional marketing, communities, socialization, how to look at like, how to challenge.

Rob Jones (37:03.51)
coming from a firefighter too.

Rob Jones (37:11.158)
Shout out City of Pearl.

Jess Phillips (37:26.464)
current sort of dogmas or isms and bring in fresh blood and how you can do that through comedic lenses. My final question for you is, do you have any advice for a brand who is listening right now and wants to lean into the comedic and entertainment style content? What’s your number one tip for them?

Rob Jones (37:46.198)
Man, I wish I had a prep better for this. Off the cuff, the advice is wherever you are, you’re probably paid for being good at something and for having an opinion. So have it publicly and also be willing to change your opinion. Everything else is just execution. I’ve got a trillion ideas in my head. The only difference in being somebody that thinks a lot and has good ideas and somebody that’s a content creator is a camera.

So if it’s something you’re considering or something you’re passionate about, just record it. That’s all content creation is at first and really into like, you know, if it was a book, like into the fifth chapter, you’re still just recording yourself. Then you can worry about like, oh, the lighting is off or oh, the tone or the, I need to make this shorter. But until you get to that point, just put a camera right here, talk into it, walk around with it and capture it. It’s good for longevity for

for yourself. I mean I look back at stuff and think all the time what an idea. I don’t know if I was sleep deprived or had eight coffees or what but I can make this a little bit better and make it into a video. So it serves as like a chronicling tool for my own ideas and you know whatever I’m doing at the same time.

Jess Phillips (38:54.036)
That’s right.

Jess Phillips (39:01.128)
I love it. And hey, that’s what we’re doing right here today, right? Okay, let’s hear it.

Rob Jones (39:04.818)
I have a question for you. Social standard is an agency. In my head, agency is an odd word. Do you represent people? How does that function work? Because I know what agency means for us. We partner with people. From the sports side of it… Yeah.

Jess Phillips (39:10.941)
Sure.

Jess Phillips (39:23.209)
Sure. Yeah, we partner with brands. We partner with brands and we help connect them with top influencers on all different social platforms. Our goal is to help brands grow and obviously ultimately sell products via word of mouth marketing, which is best done through influencers in today’s day and age.

Rob Jones (39:41.45)
Yep. In my head, you were on the, you represented creator, you were like Scott Boris in the room with John Carlos Stanton or Jalen Hertz and his agent that got him 500 million dollars, whatever it is. In my head, that’s what, I mean that’s not, right, right.

Jess Phillips (39:48.336)
Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jess Phillips (39:55.58)
Yep. We are, well, we are, but we are that for brands, right? We help them find the big, we help brands find the big partnerships and the big people to work with. So, and you’re right, but you know, we do have, we do represent a handful of talent as well. And that’s something that we sort of are always kicking around, it’s like, should we dip into that? And you know, it ebbs and flows, but maybe the B2B space would be the space that we decide to really launch into on that.

Rob Jones (40:05.238)
Right, got it.

Rob Jones (40:20.21)
Man, when you do it.

Jess Phillips (40:22.6)
You’re my first call. You are my first call, Rob. Look.

Rob Jones (40:25.719)
It’s such a good idea such a good idea. I think you could do it. You’ve been fantastic I know that typically these get cut off without my feedback. This is amazing. I want to be on the next one You let me talk without and you cut me off at the same time Which I asked for but I mean I give you a nine and a half out of ten Fantastically done social standard got a tune in

Jess Phillips (40:34.973)
Okay.

Jess Phillips (40:41.148)
I like it. Okay, so next time we’re doing it, I’m going for a 10.

Rob Jones (40:46.154)
Yeah, see that’s why I didn’t give you the 10 because if I give you one, I can never be back.

Jess Phillips (40:48.06)
Yep. Then we’re not going to. Yeah. So there you go. There’s your sticky engagement marketing. Rob, it was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much. And for my audience, if you would like to give Rob Jones a follow, hit him up on LinkedIn. We will also link it down in the show notes, but we will until next time. We’ll see you guys. Bye.

Rob Jones (40:52.867)
There you go.

Rob Jones (41:06.402)
Thank you.

Jess Phillips (41:10.444)
All right. We did it. It’s stopping. OK, cool. Hey, that was great. You did awesome.