Knowing your people
When ZoomInfo CEO Henry Schuck founded the company in 2007, it was a deeply personal matter. He saw salespeople and marketers out in the field trying to hit their numbers and witnessed the “emotional, professionally defining and/or debilitating” toll it regularly took on them.
“Promotions, bonuses and feelings of accomplishment are linked to that number—you either hit it or you miss it. There is nothing in between,” Schuck stated as part of ZoomInfo’s reason for existence in his Founder’s Letter.
Law wanted ZoomInfo’s campaign to capture that spirit and break down complex issues into more relatable terms. But ZoomInfo’s experience with agencies had not always been productive—with Law comparing it to criticism he heard about consultants during his 12 years in that field: “They come in and tell you what time it is by looking at your watch.”
Colossus addressed the company’s skepticism by using a one-month trial to put together some initial thoughts before pitching a brand campaign to ZoomInfo’s leadership. At the end of that month, Law was convinced.
“They came with just an amazing understanding of our space, our competitors, of us, how we should position ourselves, where the opportunities were,” he said. “It definitely convinced our leadership team that we could get value.”
Founded in 2020 by veterans of Arnold, CPB, Digitas and The Martin Agency, Colossus has worked with consumer brands like Madison Square Garden, Zipcar and the Boston Bruins, but has done “really emotive, really human work” for b-to-b companies including Toast, Epocrates and Athenahealth. As Law and the Colossus team went through multiple rounds of planning before the pitch to ZoomInfo executives, Law would present research from LinkedIn, Bain and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science to make the case for a more human approach. Colossus, meanwhile, made the case that both b-to-c and b-to-b customers have limited time to absorb the myriad messages thrown at them, so keeping it short and simple helps.
“What we always would say is that the best thing about a brand is that when your salespeople make a call, all the people they are calling already know what you’re calling about,” Colossus’ Balck said. “They don’t have to spend the first 10 minutes of the meeting explaining what ZoomInfo is.”
