Inside Marketing Design at Contentful

Charli: Welcome to a new episode of Inside Marketing Design. This is a show where we speak to designers working at different tech companies and get into real in depth look at how brand and marketing design functions within those companies. Today we're taking a look Inside Marketing Design at Contentful. Contentful is a content platform that helps companies to manage content at scale across digital platforms. And I'm speaking with Grace Tai, who is the brand design team manager there. She's been at the company for about two years and she recently got this promotion at the start of this year to be managing the brand design team. So we talked about that, a little bit about that transition. We touch on the goals of marketing at Contentful and how the brand design team fits into those, how they keep things organized and how they work together with other design teams within the company to get things done. Without further ado, let's get into the episode and take a look Inside Marketing Design at Contentful. Welcome Grace to Inside Marketing Design, it's so good to have you here.

Grace: Thank you so much, Charli, it's great being here.

Charli: Let's start with talking about the design team at Contentful. So you started as the people will know from intro, as the global brand designer on the team, was the other people on the design team when you started?

Grace: So on our marketing design team, there was not, so I was the first full-time hire,

Charli: I had a feeling that might have been the case. 'Cause now, obviously, you're in this management role, and how many other designers are on the marketing design team side now?

Grace: So we have one full-time visual designer who is based in Berlin. And then we have three other freelancers that we work with on a very close basis, pretty much daily, who are located all around the world. So it's really great, global team.

Charli: That's cool, so how does that freelancing relationship work? Do they sort of do the equivalent of full-time hours for you or are they part time?

Grace: So it's really on a project basis, and we just have like an ongoing project tracker essentially and I'll drop things into their queue, and we've worked together for so long now that it's just like a very seamless system, so it just kind of depends on on what requests come in.

Charli: Do they feel like part of the team to you as well, even though they're freelancers?

Grace: Absolutely, yeah, they absolutely feel like part of the team, I have conversations with pretty much all of them almost every day, we're working simultaneously on tonnes of different projects. And yeah, they're very involved, and they've met different members of the team as well. So I definitely feel like they're integrated.

Charli: That's cool, that's kind of how things are conducted as well, 'cause I'm the only marketing designer who's actually full-time at the company. But we work with freelancers regularly for various like, different creative assets, and they definitely feel like they're part of the team, especially when you work with them on multiple projects. They're not just hired for one project. So yeah, I get it. It's cool to see other companies making use of freelances in that way too. What about the wider team? Like do the does the marketing design team fit within the marketing team itself? Or does it fit within a design team? How does it work there?

Grace: So yeah, so we fit into the marketing team, I report into our Director of marcoms and brand, and obviously that rolls up into the overall marketing department, and my counterparts are our product designers who roll up into the product design team, so we actually have what's called a brand council where even though we're part of different departments we'll come together at least once a month, all the designers from different teams so that includes the product designers, website designers, my team, including our copywriters as well and our learning services team who produce like training videos for us and we'll just all get together and discuss things that involved the brand and like how things are going, give each other updates. So yeah, this is something that we actually started the first couple months that I started at Contentful and it's been a really great, really great system just helping us to all kind of, feel more connected across the company even though we're not in the same org.

Charli: I love that, and I love that you called it the brand council as well. It sounds so official. Is there someone who's in charge of that brand council, like who is the person where, like what they say goes, in terms of like, no, this is not our brand, we're not doing this?

Grace: Yeah, so ultimately that rolls up to my manager, the director of brand. I'm the one who runs the meetings. But she definitely has the final say.

Charli: Okay, cool, this is sounding like a lot of people. How big is Contentful as a company as a whole?

Grace: So when I first joined Contentful, we were only at 150 people. And in the last almost like, less than two years, we've grown to I think now we are at 400.

Charli: Whoa!

Grace: And yeah, continuing to grow every day. So it's certainly exciting.

Charli: It's wild to me that you're at 400 people like in the whole company, but yet, there's so few brand designers full-time on the team.

Grace: It's true yeah, which is why we work really closely with our freelancers.

Charli: Yeah it makes sense.

Grace: Yeah, definitely wouldn't be able to do it without them.

Charli: What about the marketing team? How many people on the marketing team itself?

Grace: The marketing team itself. We're growing quite a bit too. If was going to take a guess. I guess, maybe 30, 40 people. I might have to double check that.

Charli:That's fine, we're all about rough estimates here. Let's talk about what kind of work the marketing team and like you as the designer within all the marketing stuff, does then. I'm gonna take a step and guess that Contentful has a very digital focus when it comes to its marketing.And probably lot of content focus, given that's what you do for other people.

Grace: Yeah yeah for sure.

Charli: Tell me more about that. What sort of things? What are the main projects that the marketing team and the designers within the marketing team work on?

Grace: So we work really closely with our demand-gen counterparts. So, our main focus is really about like driving pipeline, driving the Contentful brand, like thought leadership in the marketplace. And so I spent a lot of my time working on projects, for example, like different kinds of assets like whitepapers, nurture assets, campaigns that we do, infographics, like things like that. And on a broader scale too, we're also working on providing assets related to the brand to the entire company. So things like templates, libraries, things like that. Because we are a small team, we're really about like empowering the rest of the company to kind of, feel comfortable making those design decisions with the assets that we give them.

Charli: Yeah, and you making sure that you give them everything they need so that they're not gonna just go off book and create something that you're like, oh, that doesn't really fit with what we do around here.

Grace:Yeah, exactly.

Charli: Yeah, I love it. So you stepped into a management role fairly recently. It was at the start of this year, right that you became the manager of the design team. Tell us a little bit about that, about being sort of promoted from within and what that was like, and what it's been like to become a manager.

Grace: Yeah, for sure, so I mean, this was something that I knew going in, that I was really interested in, I communicated it with my manager. She was really on board with it. So yeah, I was very excited to make that move. And, I mean, it's definitely been a learning curve. I think one of the biggest things that I noticed within the first month was just how the amount of actual design work that I touch diminished like rapidly. Like most of my role right now is is really about like project management, making sure, blockers are moved out of the way, making sure that my team is empowered to do what they do. And, lots of meetings, of course, and all of that kind of stuff. So it's been really interesting. It's been an interesting transition. It's something that like every designer needs to think about, in terms of if you're someone that really loves to be in the weeds all the time, and like, really, really doing the day-to-day design, I mean, a design management role might not be the right fit, whereas if you're someone who likes to do a little bit more high level stuff, more the creative directing, and like the art direction, and obviously a lot of project management and like, networking and meeting with people. If that's like your jam, then design manager role would be a great fit for you.

Charli: Yeah, agreed that makes sense. It's a good thing to think about. What are some of the things that you've learned in this transition? Any any tips to share?

Grace: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I've learned is really about like growing trust within your team. That's a really big thing for me, especially whether it's with your full-time designer, or with your freelancers, like, I really work hard on empowering the people that I work with to kind of make those design decisions. My management and I have a, we had this thing that we called the Vulcan mind meld. And the whole idea is like, when somebody starts on your team, whether they're full-time or freelance, like you spend the first say, like 90 days, really getting into the weeds with them, like really giving them a lot of feedback, it's a lot of repetition of things. But the whole point is that after this time, which can be like more or less than, than 30 days, 90 days, it doesn't have to be like that amount of time, but it's basically around setting parameters to be like, look, in this timeframe I'm gonna be like, very, very, in your space, but don't worry, 'cause the whole idea is that we will kind of develop this Vulcan mind meld, where you'll know what I'm thinking, I'll know what you're thinking, like you'll understand to the point where, you'll feel empowered to just kind of go off and make decisions. So that's been the way that I've been running my team. And it's been working really, really well. I think empowerment, building trust, those are like the biggest things that I've been learning.

Charli: And that's so smart and like amazingly you talk about this when you're new at this management thing. You obviously had great mentors around you and it's clear that you are well suited for this role. Yeah, that's a great tip. Like spending that early time really getting deep with people and getting to know them. Oh, we've got a friend in the background.

Grace: My dog's just in frame.

Charli: I love it, I love it, we'll keep the dog in. That's just part of that remote work life, you know.

Grace: Exactly.

Charli: Speaking of remote, are you normally remote or are you just remote now for the pandemic?

Grace: I'm just remote now just for this COVID time period.

Charli: But your team is all over the world.

Grace: This is true.

Charli: You're constantly managing remote team.

Grace: Yes, absolutely and very familiar with Zoom calls. Our company runs on Zoom. Most of my team is remote, like the marketing team is split between Berlin and San Francisco. But most of my team, I sit on the marcoms team, are in Berlin. So yeah, it's been definitely really interesting to kind of adjust to all of that. So like going into total remote work with COVID wasn't as big of a change since I'm used to running my meetings via Zoom.

Charli: Yeah, that makes sense. Do you ever get to meet up in person with your team?

Grace:Yes, yeah, I always try to head over to Berlin a couple times a year, that's a great time for me to just kind of connect with people, and just get that face time. Like, there's there's a lot you can do with technology. But in my opinion, nothing beats that kind of face-to-face contact.

Charli: I agree, our company retreat is looking like it might be canceled due to the pandemic, and so I'm really sad. That I won't get to see my people for a while. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah, hopefully we'll be back to it soon, How did your role and responsibility like how you spend your day to day change when you stepped into this management role? You mentioned that you obviously stopped doing a lot of design work, but when you were in the global brand designer role, were you still responsible for a lot of things? And like had had that weight, or did that just come with the management?

Grace: I would say, so yes. In my previous role, I was still managing our freelance team at that time. I just didn't have a full-time, direct reports. So I think the the transition I guess it wasn't as big of a jump, although it is definitely, there are a lot of things that are very different between managing full-time versus your freelance team.

Charli: Yeah, totally. Let's talk about a project at Contentful. I find this really interesting to go through with people on the show how a project happens like right from the start, right from, who comes up with the idea for it and who gets this onto your plate? All the way through how the work happens. And yeah, this is one of my favorite parts of the show. I'm hoping that other people are enjoying listening to this. So let's talk about how it happens for you, where does the project come from?

Grace: Honestly, it can come from so many places, but if I think about like some of our main main major design projects, typically all of our projects revolve around the goals that we set for our department, right. So that's kind of like our starting point. And those are set for us by our CMO. And then usually my manager and I will talk through them and talk about how they relate to visual design, how can we contribute to these goals with the tools and resources that we have. So that's typically how the projects will get started. And then from there, in terms of like systems, we typically run everything through JIRA, that's the way that we track everything. We've got a great like ticketing system. For these big projects, one of the things I've learned actually, and I didn't always do this, but I do it now, and I'm really glad that I did finally learn to do this, which is to document everything. It sounds like one of those things where you're like, oh, you know I'll remember it.

Charli: I always say that to myself.

Grace: We talked about it. And yes, I've just learned you got to document everything, make things, the more transparent you make your projects, I find it to be generally a lot easier in the long run. So that's something that I had to learn, 'cause I was more coming into this role, I was more kind of like, oh, we'll just loop people in as we need. We have a wiki where, for large projects that we try to document, who is involved, we have a framework that we use, called the rapid framework, that basically gives everyone their roles within this project, which I find that to be super, super helpful. 'Cause I'm sure we've all had projects before where halfway through, we're like, wait a second, who's responsible for that?

So that's been a really huge thing for us in terms of running our projects, really documenting, having this clear framework from the get go. And I find one of the best things about it is, it really helps you with like the feedback iteration loop because we all know that can be like an endless loop, you could be almost done with the project and then, at the 11th hour, someone will come in and be like actually. So with the documentation it's great because A, you don't have to reexplain things to people, they can read it for themselves, and get all of the background. And it also it makes it very, very clear what those checkpoints are, and when those are hit, and it's really about setting those expectations with people to be like, look, we're gonna have two or three checkpoints with this project. These are your times to say your piece after this last checkpoint, like, we're close, like the ship is sailed.

Charli: Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Grace: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I find people really respect that. And for the most part, since we started doing that, it definitely has cut down on the backpedaling.

Charli: Oh my gosh, this sounds so organized. And I feel like maybe it's out of necessity, right? It sounds like there's a lot of people involved with projects, and so this just has to be how it gets done. Otherwise you're gonna waste a lot of time filling people in.

Grace: Absolutely.

Charli: Who are the people giving feedback on a project, like as well as you and your team of designers and your manager, what are some other stakeholders that are often involved in the main projects that you work on?

Grace: Honestly, it ranges, we have such a wide variety of projects. But usually it's within our marketing team, I work closely with our product marketing managers on a lot of projects, and they'll usually weigh in like on a technical aspect. I work closely with our field marketing team putting on events with them. So yeah, it's really across the board. Our campaign manager is like one of the people I work with most on a day-to-day basis. So yeah, it's kind of across the board.

Charli: And who does the design work? 'cause you mentioned that you were sort of stepping back from that a bit now. Is it still something you dabble in every now and then though, you still do some design work?

Grace: I do, I do dabble. And I will work on certain things. Like for example, I'm working on a project right now, establishing a design system for a lot of our content assets that we release, up to this point, we've been growing so fast, moving so quickly that a lot of the things that we've been creating have been kind of, make it as you go.

So it's kind of been put together, Tetris style. And so really, this project is about me kind of going back to the beginning and thinking holistically. So those are the kind of projects that I will still be involved in. But yeah, for a lot of our projects, my designer will work on them, or you'll have some of our freelancers work on those projects.

Charli: And is there a clear division between the work that your full-time designer will do versus what the freelancers will do?

Grace: Yeah, so the work that they're freelancers do, typically are things that are more of an ongoing basis. So it's like, they're very well rehearsed in it, and they all kind of have their own areas of expertise that they work on. So that's really helpful because I know that if a project of this nature comes out, I'm gonna assign it to this person and so definitely makes that a little bit more seamless, and people can just jump right in without a lot of upfront prep work.

Charli: Yeah, so it sounds like the freelancers handle more of like the production side of things. And then internally, you're handling more of the higher level stuff like the design system and making those big brand direction decisions. And then your designer will be handling any sort of internal, like new creative assets, perhaps that aren't so routine.

Grace:Exactly basically.

Charli: Yeah, that seems very similar to how we do things too. We have freelancers work on a lot of things that are like repeated, whereas I'm internal handling more of the higher level stuff.

Grace: Exactly yeah.

Charli: So you project manage all of these projects as well, right? There's not another project manager who...?

Grace: Unfortunately no, so that's all me.

Charli: Tell us more about that. How do you go about managing projects? Any any tools or tips to share with it?

Grace: Again, it comes back to being really super organized. So whenever I have projects that are not rip and repeat, especially with our freelancers, I spent a lot of time on creating the brief for the project, trying to give them as much information as possible to let them just kind of go with it. I mean, other than that, I have different spreadsheets for each of our freelancers where we will track, the project, the status, number of hours, all of those kind of details. And I find that to be really helpful. One of my freelancers actually told me that she uses that same spreadsheet now with all of her clients, 'cause she said it was so helpful. So I take that as a good sign.

Charli: Oh definitely.

Grace: And then like I said, internally, we use JIRA a lot.

Charli: I honestly never thought about using JIRA for anything other than development, like product teams. I don't know why, as you're saying this, it makes total sense.

Grace: Well, it's one of those things too, because Contentful started out as a developer focused product. And so we kind of just expanded those tools for use around the company, but it's so ubiquitous now that it just kind of works, yeah.

Charli: It's just what everyone uses, I love that. You mentioned, writing briefs for the freelancers. Do you tend to write, like a formal brief up for either yourself or the full-time designer on the team are things a bit loose internally?

Grace: Internally, things are a bit looser. So it kind of again, depends on the project. But yeah, for the most part internally, I give my designer a lot more freedom in terms of, deciding the creative direction that he wants to go in. And I will provide the structure, and make sure that he has the proper specs and all that kind of stuff to get started.

Charli: Yeah, that makes sense cool. And just because this is something that people love to talk about, what design tools do you use to actually get your work done?

Grace: We're big users of Adobe Creative Suite, mostly Illustrator, InDesign, those are the top two that we use.

Charli: Cool, all right, yep, always gonna ask that and clear that out. Okay, so you're designing a project, either the freelancers or you or the designer internally, who needs to give feedback on a project and like who has the final sign off or something?

Grace: Again, it kind of depends, but typically it's between myself and my manager. So, yeah, depending on the scope of the project and things like that, she'll step in and make that big call, for other projects I'll just do that directly.

Charli: Yeah, and do you have a, I bet you have an amazing process for feedback as well and collecting that. Is that hold on through JIRA too? Does feedback happen through there?

Grace: Sometimes it does for big projects. Usually it's a bit it's honestly a mixed bag, it could be a mix between email and slack. Slack is obviously a lot easier sometimes email seems a little bit more formal though. So for like, those big like feedback check-ins, I might do it as an email just to kind of like, formalize it versus slack.

Charli: Make everyone treat it really seriously.

Grace: Right, exactly.

Charli: You mentioned before goals that projects all come from company goals that are said, which I love hearing about. So how do you measure the success of an individual project and how it did actually do with achieving those goals?

Grace: Yeah, I mean, depending on what the project is, of course, I feel like I'm saying this a lot. But it really it really does depend. But like on a large scale for most of the assets that we create, we work closely with our dimension team so MQLs, marketing qualified leads, are our typical barometer of how things are doing.

Charli: Okay yeah, and forgive me for not knowing much about this, but how do they through your site? Is that like free trial signups? Is that people signing up to your email list? Like what counts as a lead for you?

Grace:Yeah, so a lot of the things that you just said. Our primary way is, we will have these gated assets, for example, our whitepapers, yeah, and people will put in their information in order to get access to that asset. And that comes in as a lead and then we'll qualify it and then if it's qualified, then we'll send it off to our sales team to follow up with that person.

Charli: Right, so you're not measuring just number of signups to this guide or the whitepaper, it's number of signups and then the ones of that who are qualified and who are good fit for the product.

Grace: Exactly.

Charli: Yeah, cool, interesting, that's another step there. We haven't talked too much about web design yet. But I'm curious to know if that's a part of what you do. And if you focus on the conversion rate of these pages that are offering up the whitepapers, is that something that you look to like tweak and improve?

Grace: We actually have a separate web design team that I work closely with.

Charli: Interesting. Tell me more about that.

Grace: The web design team basically has a design manager, a UI-UX designer, and then two devs that sit on that team that specifically focus on the website. So I mean, I work closely with them in terms of the overall branding. So when I first started, the website looked completely different. Myself and the web designer, we went in and we kind of did like a from soup to nuts, kind of rehaul of the whole website. And so my role there was really to help her create those templates, those modules that she could later like take and reuse across the site. So that's how brand kind of works with them. We don't do the actual website designing. But we do do the general brand direction like we create all of those assets that they later use.

Charli: That makes sense. And so is that website design team, do they sit outside the marketing team? Are they considered like they're different?

Grace: No they're within, they're within the marketing team.

Charli: Okay, so there's like two separate design teams within the marketing team.

Grace: Yeah.

Charli: Interesting.

Grace: It's an interesting setup, yeah.

Charli: Yeah, yeah cool. This is why I'm doing this show, because that's fascinating to hear about. And I guess you must work with them very closely on things like whitepapers and stuff like that, because you're gonna need templates to host this content that you're putting out.

Grace: Yeah, so our whitepapers are actually mostly within our team, but we do work with them. And we work with our campaigns team on making sure that those are properly put on the website. But honestly, it's a very automated process by this point, it's a well oiled machine

Charli: You've got it down, yeah.

Grace: Yeah exactly.

Charli: So who would be the one to like, let's say a new feature is launching at Contentful, you probably need a new feature page on the website, so the website team handles that separately. and then you handle any sort of, I don't know, I guess social media assets, campaign assets to go along with that feature.

Grace: So, great questions, I'll give you an example. We recently launched a app framework was a big release for our company, it basically allows people to connect all these different types of apps to Contentful, which makes it really flexible and easy to use. And so to launch this new app framework, the website team created the page, our team developed the look of the page, right, so the look was slightly different, my visual designer created some amazing illustrations for that page. And that kind of like, branding for that feature release was then used across the board, like you said, social media assets, email campaigns, things like that.

Charli: Yeah, interesting, I got sidetracked talking about web stuff, because that's what I do. But we're talking about performance. So we know about how you measure the performance of a certain project that you do. What about you individually and the other designer on the team? How is your performance managed? Do you have like, OPIs, KPIs that you have to hit, that sort of thing.

Grace: So the way that we do it, so we have our overall department goals, and then from those, we have our individual goals. And so we'll go over them, with our manager, and basically, we will kind of identify, maybe the top like three to five things we want to accomplish in a quarter, and then we'll wait those. So the way that we are measured is, like I said, half of our measurement is based on the MQL, so based on those numbers, whatever they are, that never changes, and then the other half of the goals are a bit more qualitative. So you've got our quantitative side and our qualitative side. So a lot of that just involves, working closely with your manager to basically let them know how things are going and a lot of it is kind of dependent on your manager to say whether or not that was successful. So like I said, it is qualitative, which I think actually works really well, because a lot of the things that we do in InDesign, it's hard to measure, right? It's not like, websites, you can kind of measure how many people are clicking, you can measure yeah, the number of people, whereas things like, branding, overall branding, right, how do you exactly measure that, it's kind of hard to say. So I do like that there's a qualitative aspect to it.

Charli: Yeah, that's nice, and it feels like Contentful is obviously very, it's a place where you can grow and you're gonna have managers who are helping you with career development, as well as just getting your work done.

Grace: Yeah, definitely.

Charli: Yeah cool I love that. What are some areas of growth for you? Like what's next for either you and your role or Contentful marketing brand design team? What are some areas of growth?

Grace: So I think for us, one of our biggest things is like, up to this point, like I said, we're moving so fast, really just trying to get ourselves on our own two feet kind of thing. I think now we've gotten to the point where we've grown, we matured as a company. For our next stage, I would really love to see us really start to think about, again, design systems as a whole across the entire brand. I talked a little about one project that I'm working on, but really to expand that across the entire brand, creating these kind of like holistic systems. That would be the biggest thing that I would love to see us achieve. Really kind of, stepping into. Yeah, that kind of next stage of maturity.

Charli: Yeah, that makes total sense. I get that completely. And what about marketing or brand design within the business? It sounds like you because you're so closely tied to this really important goal for your company of the MQLs, I'm just going to sound real fancy throwing that. Yeah, tell me about the impact that you feel brand design has within the business.

Grace: For sure, so I mean, again an example, when I first came in, we were really transitioning as a company from developer focus to enterprise focused, and so I think one of the huge things that the brand design team has been able to do is really to help our company like elevate our image. Enterprise companies are not going to buy from you, if you look like you're from the 90s, or something like that, right. So the way that your brand looks visually, it's one of the first things people see, is one of the first thing people will judge you on. And so, being able to bring our brand to that caliber, I think, has been really helpful in terms of opening up sales opportunities for us and helping our company just grow overall. So I'm really proud of the work that we've done in terms of really moving us into like a more professional sphere as a company.

Charli: That's really exciting, too, because the company had like good growth with this focus on the brand. I'm guessing that means that at Contentful you don't often have to fight to get design to be respected, which is a challenge that a lot of people can have at companies, you know.

Grace: For sure, for sure. I mean, at the end of the day, we are still a very developer focused company. And so from that sense I think that we're still growing into this idea of being design led, I wouldn't say that we are right now. But I'm hoping that it's something that as a company, we can move towards.

Charli: Yeah, that's another one of those like future growth areas then I guess, cool. Let's end by talking about what your favorite parts of your job. What do you love about being in this brand design space?

Grace: So many things, I think one of my favorite things is, because everything is so visual, you can really see what it is that you're creating, you can see the impact. And I really love that, I love being able to click on our website, and know that, like, wow, I had a really direct impact on that, back when we could go into our office, you could walk around and see the different parts, that I was involved in, creating all of those things I really love. Besides that, I think definitely the people, like number one for sure. Like we just have such a great team. I love working with everybody on our team and like when I have an opportunity to work with people, new people across the company, I just find everyone to be very open. Very, kind, and yeah, just very like transparent.

Charli: Awesome, I love that. Thank you so much Grace. This has been really interesting for me to hear about and hopefully interesting for our listeners to hear about too about how things work at Contentful. Where should people go to follow you online? Do you want to give a little shout out to any of your socials, or website, or whatever?

Grace: Ooh, I really should have prepared that. They can follow me on Instagram, my Instagram is creative.fancy. Yeah, that would probably be the best way to find me. You can also find me on LinkedIn,

Charli: LinkedIn love it, okay, we'll link to those things in the show notes if you're listening on an audio podcast player, or in the description box if you're watching this on YouTube, you can go find Grace. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us Grace.

Grace: Thank you so much. I really had a lot of fun, this is great.