The Journey to Head of Marketing - with Brandon Redlinger, VP Marketing Chili Piper

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Rike, Founder and CEO of BenchMarket, and your host of the Metrics at Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of the top B2B SaaS and cloud thought leaders, CEOs, executives, investors and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed and benchmark validated decisions. Now, on to today's show.
Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. Today, I am joined by Brandon Redlinger, the Vice President of Marketing at Chili Piper and a long-term professional friend. We'll be covering four primary topics with Brandon today. First, the path to VP of Marketing and beyond.
Second, it's just the benefits of building a personal LinkedIn brand and following. Third, the evolution of the B2B CMO role. And then fourth, how will B2B Marketing evolve in the AI era? Brandon, with that background, would you mind giving a brief overview of your journey, becoming a guest on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast?

**Brandon Redlinger** (1:22)
Yes, absolutely. And thanks for having me, Ray. Always good to catch up with a friend. But yeah, so how did I get here? Good question.
I did start my professional career. My first real job out of college was in sales. I was in SDR. This is way before they called it an SDR. But I was on the phone seven, eight hours a day. We were doing hundreds of activities a day. And I look at the SDRs and the BDRs now and I'm like, man, these guys have it easy. But so I started out in sales, carried a bag for a little bit as an AE, about two years, and then made the move over to the marketing side.
And I really got interested in the tech side of marketing. And then where do you go if you want to learn tech marketing? You go out to the Bay Area. So went out there, was the either first or second marketing hire at a few companies in a row, most notably Engageo.
Then early on, Engageo got acquired by Demandbase.
And then from there, led DemandGen and ABM. And then it took a role at another company where I led product marketing. And then that's when I made the move to the VP level. And then now I'm at Chili Pepper. I've been here less than 30 days full time still.

**Ray Rike** (2:33)
We're going to double click into those first 30 days. But I first met you when you were the head of DemandGeneration at Demandbase. I think John Miller was kind of the consistent linkage from Engageo to Demandbase. And to me, first meeting you.

**Brandon Redlinger** (2:49)
Yes, that's correct. That is correct.

**Ray Rike** (2:51)
Well, let's talk about this.
You have now been a VP of Marketing twice. Is that correct?

**Brandon Redlinger** (2:57)
That is correct.

**Ray Rike** (2:58)
What can you share about your experiences of being an SCR, then head of DemandGen, then a Senior Director of Product Marketing at revenue.io?
What are some of the insights that's led to your journey of becoming a VP of Marketing? What I think is very early on in your career.

**Brandon Redlinger** (3:16)
When I rewind you back to the days when I'm first getting into tech marketing and those first few roles where I'm leading marketing at companies, or the first marketing hire, I should say, and a lot of what I was known for during that time was the demand generation. That's when growth hacking was a term that everyone wanted to use a lot. That was a lot of the work that I did early on.
Then when Engager got acquired by DemandBase, I went from being head of growth to then head of demand gen. I was really getting banjo-ed hold as the demand gen guy.
I always knew that I wanted to lead a marketing team one day. In some instances, being known for one thing is great, except if that's really not the thing that you want to be known for. I always knew that if I wanted to lead a marketing organization, I needed to round out my skill set a bit more. That's when I went from being head of demand gen, then to senior director of product marketing. A lot of people look at that job and go, okay, that's interesting. How the heck did you do that? You're not a product marketing guy.
That's when it really hit me. It's like, yeah, that was the smart move because, of course, you're doing a little bit of everything in the early days at a company. Even that EngageO or PersistentCube before that or IndestructibleSuccess before that, you're doing product marketing still, and you're owning that function, but that's not your title. So for me, it was a pretty easy jump to make because I had been doing a lot of product marketing, though I never held that title or was solely the only one responsible for that, or that was the only thing I was responsible for.