Episode 190: Mike Zeman from Life360 on Selling to CMOs and Buying as a CMO

Ari Paparo (0:00)

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Welcome to the Marketecture Podcast. This is Ari Paparo. I'm here with Eric Franchi and we have a pretty big announcement. So, Eric, I heard you have a certain special day recently.

Do I have to sing? Am I going to have to sing here?

Eric Franchi (1:38)

You don't have to sing. You got me.

Eric Franchi (1:42)

It's today, man.

Ari Paparo (1:44)

How old are you?

Eric Franchi (1:48)

I've unlocked the second century.

Ari Paparo (1:50)

Does it end in a zero?

Eric Franchi (1:52)

Yes. It's the big 5.0.

Ari Paparo (1:54)

All right. Everyone, you heard it here. It'll be a day late by the time this podcast comes out, but you got to hit Eric everywhere on LinkedIn, on Twitter, etc. He's not going to give you a term sheet unless you wish him a happy birthday.

Eric Franchi (2:07)

Good exchange.

Eric Franchi (2:08)

You got me. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.

Eric Franchi (2:10)

I appreciate it.

Ari Paparo (2:12)

All right. Today's guest today is Mike Zeman. He is the CMO of Life360.

I think he's a really interesting guy. Life360 has been a sponsor of Marketecture, but this isn't a sponsored post. He just has been on both sides of the table, both as a CMO and as a vendor and as an agency person, really seen the whole sides of things. Increasingly, I know there's something you cover a lot in your other pod, it's increasingly difficult to sell in to this market. Donnie Stangaric.

Eric Franchi (2:41)

Yeah, it is. It is. It's interesting to have a relatively new entrant that's a consumer app where you can have a conversation with. I'd love to get into what works, what doesn't work, how he allocates budget on both sides, because obviously everybody that listens to this wants to understand the CMO brain in terms of just how to sell to them.

But then he also has the responsibility of helping his sales team break into agencies and brands. This would be a very interesting one. They've acquired AdTech. There's something for everybody here on this one.

Ari Paparo (3:15)

Right. It's a consumer app that acquired an anti-commenting, Nativo, so we'll hear about that too. Then we'll be back with the news where we have a bunch of not so great news about Trade Desk and the LG privacy issue and a bunch of other stuff.

Eric Franchi (3:29)

A late-breaking one that I think is big. You tell me if it's big.

We'll save it for the news.

Ari Paparo (3:34)

All right. We'll save it for later. All right. We'll be back. All right. Mike Zeman, thank you so much for joining us.

Mike Zeman (3:41)

Pleasure to be here.

Ari Paparo (3:43)

So Mike, as part of Life360, you've been a supporter of Marketecture, various conferences, but we want to move beyond kind of talking about how cool your product is and stuff like that and get to the real stuff, like, you know, get to the insights because you're CMO of an interesting company that's both a consumer company and sort of an ad tech sledge vendor company. So we think you probably have some really interesting insights.

Mike Zeman (4:06)

Yeah, looking forward to talking.

Ari Paparo (4:07)

So what's it like having moved from, you know, you started your career at Viveki, Google Square.

So you've really kind of straddled the line between consumer and B2B. So what's it like?

Mike Zeman (4:22)

It's cool. It's fun to see all the different facets of the industry. I've been doing this, you know, since 2001 It's sort of the dawn of digital marketing in many ways. And yeah, it's just been it's been great to meet lots of different people and face lots of different challenges, you know. And at the same time, I think a lot of the muscles are the same, no matter what side of the business you're on. Yeah, you have to be a great storyteller. You have to build great relationships that are not transactional in nature.