The way most marketing teams approach AI is that I approach my inbox on Friday at 4:59 p.m.
With reckless optimism and zero follow through.
But Katie Masserini, chief communications officer and SVP of marketing at SurveyManky, believes the real problem isn’t AI — it’s that most marketers have forgotten a fundamental truth: Just because you can talk about something doesn’t mean you should.
Katie Mesrani
Chief Communications Officer and SVP, Marketing at Survey Mankey
- Claim to fame: Masserini’s proudest success isn’t a single launch or campaign … it’s the people. She has been fortunate to meet, hire, and mentor incredibly talented people who have chosen to follow Katie from team to team and company to company. “Creating workspaces makes people want to be involved again and tells me again that I’m creating environments where people can grow, do their best work, and feel genuinely supported. That’s the kind of legacy I’m proud of,” Maserini told me.
Lesson One: Stop doing random marketing.
Remember the ban on Tektok?
The team at Sarvimonkey was very enthusiastic. Almost immediately. Well, they knew they needed to tap into the trend by conducting a survey to see how people were feeling about TechTalk.
.
And just as Masserini’s team prepared to launch their findings… TikTok released its study.
“Guess what the media covered?” Mesrani says with a laugh. “It was a study of tectonics.”
Emily Kramer (a Masters in Marketing Alumni) is a phrase for the temptation to jump on every trending topic just because you can. They call it “the random act of marketing.”
And Maserani doesn’t think he’s going to cut it now.
“To scale in this new chapter of B2B marketing, the foundation needs to be solid. You can’t do random marketing. You need to establish your foundation, understand your customers’ needs, and then Discipline and just build from that foundation instead of chasing shiny things,” she tells me.
More volume without a strong foundation? It’s just noise.
Lesson Two: Build your foundation first, then repeat it everywhere.
When she was a senior director at Sheryl Sandberg’s foundation, Messerny worked on a campaign aimed at getting men to be allies with women in the workplace.
He and his team did something most marketers would find excruciating: They spent forever in the planning phase.
“You’re a small organization… so you’d think temptation would just start running away (with something).”
But instead, “we spent so long defeating that idea.”
He asked himself: What is the cost of doing this? What is the price? No is it doing?
Once he had carefully nailed down his vision for the campaign, the execution felt “almost effortless”. Even better, it made consistency possible.
The team came up with something called “The Well” – a document that described how they were supposed to talk about everything. If something in the well is called “wonderful,” you can’t call it “beautiful.” You stuck to the script, and you had to make a real case to deviate from it.
“ It is really important to repeat this exact language,” explains Mesrani.
“And then you need all of your channels to do the same exact thing so that someone has any hope of seeing it, recognizing it, remembering it, (and) feeling good about your brand.”
The lesson for leaders: Take the time to nail the plan and trust your marketers to tell the right story every time.
Lesson Three: Try Scaffolding
Miserani gets frustrated when she sees good marketing ideas hanging in a vacuum.
The solution? What they call scaffolding.
Recently, Cervimonkey’s brand leader had a conversation with Meserni about the opportunity to sponsor F1.
But the idea didn’t fully inspire Masserini until she heard what could happen with it—such as a conference, webinar, and follow-up email nurture campaign.
“Sponsoring an F1 sounds great, but it doesn’t really excite me about the business potential unless you can support it with all of these things and surround it with different tactics and different stories to make it helpful for your customers.”
The takeaway for SMB marketers? Before launching any campaign, ask yourself: What else can we build around it? How can we turn a good idea into a coherent experience that can encompass our possibilities in a way that is actually helpful?
Because in a world where everyone has access to AI and can churn out content, brands that break through won’t be doing more isolated tactics. They will do better work.
Bonus: Survey Mankey features SMB marketers sleeping on.
Before wrapping up, Messerny told me something that surprised me: You can use SurveyMansi to survey people you don’t know.
Want to test a logo design? Ask about product preferences? Validate a business idea? You can reach a target audience (including specific industries, locations, or demographics) without hiring an expensive research firm.
Lingering questions
This week’s question
“As marketers, we often talk about authenticity and alignment but those words can quickly become buzzwords. How do you make sure your team stays connected to real people, not just connection performance?-Bryta Calloy, Co-Founder and CEO, Stories Seen
This week’s answer
Maserini says: You should know exactly what your customers care about and want from you. I think a lot of brands today want to be “cool” and that adds to the sheer number of brands and content in the ecosystem right now.
At SurvivalMonkey, we don’t want to be cool. We want to be the lovable nerds you want to partner with in our high school chem lab because you know we’ll do all the work. And you look smart. This is how you make a difference today: Know the value you provide in the eyes of your customers and maximize that in everything you do.
Next week’s question
Masrani asks: Every leader must justify marketing and brand investments with hard numbers. How do you bridge the gap between creative, intangible brand value and tangible financial results, and how do you justify that brand investment to key stakeholders?
