In this episode of The Optimal Path, host Ash Oliver welcomes Marcus Brandford to discuss the transformative power of research in marketing and product development.
In this episode of The Optimal Path, host Ash Oliver welcomes Marcus Brandford to discuss the transformative power of research in marketing and product development. Delving into how research can inform creative campaigns and marketing decisions, Marcus shares how Figma harnesses customer insights to understand its audience and build impactful brand connections that drive better business outcomes.
About Marcus:
Marcus Brandford uses research to power marketing decisions. His career began on the agency side at Known, a marketing strategy firm where he ran custom studies for many Google teams as well as Microsoft, Intel, Viacom and others. After leaving the field to pursue his MBA from UC Berkeley, he joined Figma in 2022 as a dedicated researcher for the Marketing function. Marcus works with the Brand, Growth, Editorial, and PMM teams to introduce the market perspective into the creative process, helping teams build with their audience in mind.
Connect with Marcus:
You can connect with Marcus on LinkedIn.
Resources:
• The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop
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Ash Oliver:
Creativity may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of research. Some may even deem these as two disparate things. One, scientific, logical and systematic, and the other, imaginative, artistic, and emotive. But research involves discovery and enables us to solve problems in more effective and innovative ways.
Marcus Brandford:
Creative meets research in the marketing and branding space of, let's workshop your ideas with somebody. Let's not test, pass, fail. Let's work it with the people that you're really building it for and try to build on it rather than slash it or cut it down. So I think it's a mix of giving them the info they need and also giving them room to be themselves and use their skillset because a researcher is not a brand person, and you need to give them that space to do what they do best.
Ash Oliver:
Today on The Optimal Path, we're discussing the transformative power of research within marketing teams. We'll uncover how integrating research into marketing fuels creativity, generates more impactful and lasting user and brand connections and how all this can drive better business outcomes. I'm Ash Oliver and this is The Optimal Path, a podcast about user research and product decision-making brought to you by Maze. In this podcast, you'll hear from research, design, and product leaders about the ideas informing decision-making across all aspects of product development.
Our guest is Marcus Brandford, a researcher at Figma who uses research to power marketing decisions. His career began on the agency side at Known, a marketing strategy firm where he ran custom studies for Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Viacom among others. After leaving the field to pursue his MBA from UC Berkeley, he joined Figma in 2022 as a dedicated researcher for the marketing function. Marcus now works with the brand, growth, editorial, and product marketing teams to introduce the market perspective into the creative process, helping teams to build with their audience in mind. I'm super excited to have you on, Marcus. Thanks for being here.
Marcus Brandford:
Thanks so much for inviting me. I'm very excited. I've listened to a bunch of these episodes, so it's cool to be here.
Ash Oliver:
Oh, well, I'm touched by that. And this is actually a topic I've been really looking forward to discuss with you, and it's something that I think is really underrated, and that's the topic of bringing research to marketing teams.
You have a very unique vantage point given both your background and your position at Figma. So I'd love to have you maybe start by explaining the importance of research in the field of marketing and maybe, specifically, the work that you do at Figma.
Marcus Brandford:
Yes, definitely. So when I think of where marketing fits and what marketing means, I think a lot about how a company positions itself can relate it to the rest of the world and the rest of the companies that are out there. So it's how you're seen, how you're perceived, how people get to know about you, and it's about introducing yourself to people who've never heard of you before. So when I think about research in that space, there's a lot of ambiguity and human perceptions and where people fit and how you are perceived relative to everything else out there. So anything that can give you a little bit of signal, a little bit of a clue into what the right move might be or changes you can make, I find really, really helpful and really valuable, and the people I've worked with have found the same. So research with marketing is very similar to research in product or design or in many other spaces, where it just helps you get a better peek into what else is happening and what's going on in people's minds and help you just make informed decisions.
Ash Oliver:
I love that. And I think most people would be familiar with maybe the field of market research when we compare this to product research, for example. I'm sure there are methods in which the research on both sides might differ, but what parallels can you draw between the two, specifically, or are there any methods that's used on the marketing side that may differ from the product research end?
Marcus Brandford:
One thing that I think is important to say, and I hope is seen and understood out there, is that marketing and product research are really, really similar. And I think there could be perceptions that because the product development process might feel different than a marketing team or marketing agency making something. A lot of what the research is there for and the impact it has is doing similar things. And so in terms of methods and approaches, I'd say 90% of what I do and the way I approach a problem is the same as the way a product researcher would. So in terms of methodology, there's a lot of one-on-one interviews and focus groups, diary studies, surveys, those things are all really common.
I think one big difference that I've seen is a lot of my work in marketing research is extending beyond people in our product universe. So we're looking outside the people who've never used... in my case now, who've never used Figma yet, and so what is the way we can talk about ourselves? What is the way we can position ourselves to really appeal to people who this is a brand new space for? And that feels different than product research because I know a lot of the focus is current users and making their experience better and really focusing on being inside the product. Marketing feels like it's a little more about storytelling to the rest of the world.
Ash Oliver:
I think it's hugely important inside of marketing as you've described in terms of being able to market and introduce yourself to the types of audiences you're trying to reach. Maybe you could expand a little bit on the importance of the research done in the field of marketing and how that might contribute to the success of the campaigns and strategies run within.
Marcus Brandford:
Definitely. I think for marketing teams, I could focus for maybe specifically on someone like a branding team or an editorial team. A lot of what they're doing is content creation for an audience. And so what becomes really important is really understanding that audience deeply. And I think for a place like Figma, a lot of that is happening naturally. It's like, a lot of the company is really tapped into the design community and what people are thinking and what's in the culture today. And so the team is naturally very good at making things for them. But I think, in general, it's about helping these teams understand what this audience thinks about, what they care about, how they engage and find content, and so they can build the right things to appeal to them.
And I like to think about it as giving gifts to people, whenever I give a great Christmas gift or birthday gift, mostly comes from knowing that person really well and thinking about the little things or things that maybe they haven't even thought of. I think research and marketing is really similar, and product too, it's understanding a person, or an audience really well allows you to give them something that is meaningful and helpful and makes a difference.
Ash Oliver:
I love that analogy. That's definitely something that resonates, and I think could be a good North Star inside of marketing teams, especially to perpetuate that desire to get to know the audience and their customers and potential markets more deeply. Can you explain a little bit about the approach, because you made mention of Figma most especially entirety of the company being really tapped into the design industry and the players in the space and really intimately be included into that community? How would you say you could maybe advocate or inspire that type of culture if perhaps you work inside of a company that maybe doesn't have that much understanding of the customer, especially in the various departments?
Marcus Brandford:
That's a really good question. I think at Figma, I think it's built from the early days around how the company came to the products it did. There was a lot of co-collaborating with customers from the ground up. So it's part of the DNA. I think we're also very lucky to have an audience that is really online and uses Twitter and engages with our company and representatives through Twitter and other social media and all sorts of places. So we're lucky in that sense that there's those avenues built, and the social side and even within the product side and the way that communication goes back and forth. For companies who don't have that as much, I think it's about establishing new lines of communication if they're not happening on social, which is a rare thing. So I think as simple as setting up frequent or consistent research sessions of... we've done something at Figma where we have teams that schedule interviews weekly.
They have people representatives come in and they hear from their community. It's not necessarily for a specific study or for a specific issue or product, but it's, let's have a standing time once a week, twice a week, where we're going to have a new customer recruited, where we can talk to them about whatever is coming up on our minds or on their minds, or just to open a line of communication. So just creating the space to talk to people regularly makes a big difference, I think, and takes it out of being really laser focused on a specific study or issue and more broadly about just opening that line of communication, if it's not happening naturally, then creating that space so they can talk to you regularly and just learn about what's on their mind and how things are progressing.
Ash Oliver:
I think that's really important, whether it's been reinforced through habits and cultural factors inside of the company from the beginning or whether that's something that the company is trying to transform or had more in that direction. I think the important thing I wanted to underscore of what you said is making that more of a natural habit instead of always tying it to some sort of specific study or endeavor, which just helps build that continuous learning mindset across the company and doesn't necessarily have to gate it to a particular research endeavor, for example.
Marcus Brandford:
Yeah, exactly. And I think creating those programs within Figma, there's a specific program for it and I think that helps keep the momentum there and keep those channels open. It's hard to say a culture should change or principles should change but it's much simpler and it feels more actionable to just create space to interview people once a week, twice a week. That feels very possible and I think would make a big difference for teams just to stay on the pulse a little more.
Ash Oliver:
And certainly, I think on the minds of a lot of teams, especially now just considering the competitive landscape that we work in and the increasing competitive nature of the industry, I think that teams that invest in keeping these lines of communication open and really deeply understanding their users or potential users are much more set up for success than those that don't. But one could assume that given Maze's position as well, I'm wondering what's a maybe notable story of some of the research endeavors that have yielded maybe some of your most significant insights, if you could share maybe an example story from Figma?
Marcus Brandford:
Yeah, definitely. There's two that come to mind and I bring up two because one is a little more generative and one is a little more evaluative. I think it's important to talk about both of those in the context of marketing because I think they do very different things and they're perceived in different ways, potentially, their marketing teams. And so on the more generative side, I did a study relatively recently around Figma fandom, and so understanding what are the main drivers of the features or elements about Figma's products and brands that turn regular users into big fans of the brand or the company or the products. And so really distilling doubt into specific drivers, what those things are, what they mean, which audiences they really apply to. And that's been really helpful across the board for marketing because it distills and pulls apart the different elements of what people really like about the brand.
So it makes it easy for the marketing team to speak to one of those or two of those or three of those at a time in a way that sparks a lot of ideas. It can inform brand campaigns, it can inform what blog posts to write and just sets us up to give us the content to speak to for appealing to new people because the core idea was if we talk to people who really get the brand and understand the product and are there, then maybe we can get some clues as to how to pull more people into that space. So that was one. I'm happy to speak about that more if interesting. But I wanted to share that one first.
Ash Oliver:
I love this exercise. I'm curious just a little bit about how you tactically divided this work. Was this something that you spearheaded and championed from the beginning? Is there something that permeated it and was collaborated outside of the marketing team?
Marcus Brandford:
Yeah. It started, actually, a request from our brand team, a brand strategist came to me and said that they were thinking about some new campaigns of, we want to rethink how we talk about ourselves. We're a different company, we're evolving, we're speaking to new audiences now and we want to get a better sense of how we can speak to the great things about Figma in a genuine way and in a way that feels like it's relevant to both our core audience and the people we want to speak to. So that's where it came from. And so the idea was not mine but I set it up with an unmoderated study so we could talk to a lot of people, and just framed, I think it was maybe even three or four different questions around the moment they became fans with Figma. It was around how Figma impacts their work, how Figma impacts the way they work with other people.
And so by dimensionalizing their fandom into a couple of different categories for them, their history, also how they relate to other people and their work, some things could fall out that were consistent trends across people. And so as I went through the study, I started to realize there was more there than I originally thought. It felt really powerful and spoke across the brand and across the company and product. So it gathered momentum as the report came together and then at the end, it ended up being a foundational piece for different marketing teams, whether it's sales or brand or editorial or PMM to reference and think of new ideas as they were coming up with their campaigns or working in their individual work.
Ash Oliver:
I really love this example. I'm not surprised to hear about this in the context of Figma. I love how this has just such a trickle-out effect into so many other teams. And this is why I said at the top of the interview that I think it's super underrated, this level of research. I think research maybe isn't even done to the extent of which it should be in general. But then even in looking inside of marketing teams, I don't think it's often that we see this kind of centralized research endeavors happening, but it makes such a big difference in so many areas of the business. Do you feel that there's maybe some underlying challenges that are presenting obstacles and that's why this isn't happening or is it just not as well understood as to the potential upside of doing this kind of thing? What are your thoughts on that?
Marcus Brandford:
I think the biggest challenge for this type of work that feels like it spans teams and spaces is that it hits the classic issue of being relevant to everyone but not really actionable or relevant to any one team. So I could see the argument of a team seeing this, this is 70, 80% of the way there but what do I do next? What is the decision I have to make for my role, my context, my job? And that is real and I really empathize with that because I felt that in anytime there's a broad readout across teams, different teams are really looking for different things. And so with this, I'm a little newer to working across marketing teams in this way within one company. And so OS and I learned early was that it's really helpful to meet with teams one at a time and personalize or bolt on the extra 15, 20% of the context for different teams.
So for the fandom example, when meeting with the editorial and content and social teams, one fun exercise was looking at things that we've posted online, whether in our blog or on social and seeing which percentage of pieces map to which pieces of fandom or elements of fandom, and so we can see what we're representing really well online and what's not a spoken to. And it's not saying you should do this or do that, but it's showing the landscape and what we are gravitating towards naturally and maybe some gaps that might exist. So I think little things like that for... something extra context for editorial, extra context for brand, those things can bring it home for specific teams, and then those individual readouts, the discussions can be really focused on their work rather than trying to be everything for everybody at the same time.
Ash Oliver:
It also speaks to just the leveling up of the work that you're doing to take it that extra step. It's knowing of your audience both externally as you were running this research endeavor, but then really understanding the context of your audience, even in a broad setting like this, being able to mold it and give it its extra applicability just shows the caliber of the type of researcher you are. I'm curious about the other story that you had, the example.
Marcus Brandford:
It feels different and I wanted to bring it up because of that, and also really fun. So it was one of the first projects I did when I came to Figma. It was around understanding how our homepage was being perceived or experienced by visitors, that our homepage had been up for years and hadn't been really evaluated in the same way that our products are on the research front because there wasn't a researcher staff to that experience. And so it was really treating our homepage marketing page like a product in a way of, basically, a usability study and we learned some good lessons. We talked to Figma users and non-users and tried to get a sense of what they were experiencing as they went through it, and also people who felt like core designer audiences and then other roles that are really important to us and people that we care about but hadn't originally designed for, thinking of product managers and developers.
So just seeing how these different roles and almost personas were perceiving the site, it was really helpful to see, across different roles, just some things about the length of the site or how messages were landing and gained some really good feedback that we then used. We just created a new homepage in line with Config in June, so the new page is up now and speaks to newer audiences and different contexts. A lot of the foundational learnings we had from that first set inspired what's now up today. So it was nice to see you come full circle recently.
Ash Oliver:
Oh, that's so rewarding. I love that you brought in both examples as well because I think another thing that we're going to explore in this conversation is research, especially in the context of marketing and it's connection to creativity. But before we get there, the two examples I think show almost like a right brain, left brain kind of approach to different types of studies, but both having significant benefit in terms of brands and brand perception in the market, that competitive differentiation. I see how this ties into lots of different areas of success metrics for the business, but also just in that brand equity that you're building. When brand is oftentimes difficult to measure, I'm wondering maybe if you can speak to some of the tangible ways that someone could try to articulate the measurements of the brand perception or the success of these types of studies, for example.
Marcus Brandford:
Yeah, especially I imagine over time or are people responding to what we're building, that sort of thing. I think one classic example is a brand tracker study or brand pulse study to better understand... this is probably more common practice in marketing research, maybe less so amongst the product side, but running the annual or biannual or quarterly quick survey on how your brand is being perceived by the audience you really care about. So it's a lot of questions around brand perception, what attributes are associated with you, what attributes are associated with considering the company or satisfaction with the product if they're already in and running that regularly as you put campaigns out and put an evolve of messaging or change things, you can see if that's having a lift or an impact on the way your brand's being seen by the outside world.
So that's a pretty common practice and just nice to keep in place. Even if you're not about to launch a big brand study, it's nice to just know where your brand standing is. If something happens and you're worried that things might drop, you have a record of where things were four or five, six months ago and can see what the impact is. So a good practice and healthy practice for marketing teams to have in place. And it's more of a regular pulse on where we stand more than a deeper dive, like that fandom study I was talking about earlier.
Ash Oliver:
And this relates, I think, a little bit to some of the differences perhaps in how we see product teams and the product development cycle versus how things maybe work on the marketing side, especially around marketing campaigns and waterfall versus agile. I'm wondering if you could maybe describe a little bit of the differences there, the observations that you've made and maybe some of the best practices in terms of where teams can lean on research in a more agile marketing environment.
Marcus Brandford:
Yeah. I've seen, and I don't know it all, but my understanding of where research in tech and product development came from is rooted in academia and as computer engineering practices became more common and basically, scientific method of, let's put a hypothesis out, let's test it, let's see how it goes, and then iterate and do it again. That's really been adopted by the product side of the world because that world is so rooted in that engineering almost academic roots. And so that method has gone very far, and I think at least from what I've seen in the marketing side of tech teams is it doesn't have those same roots in that kind of scientific engineering space.
And so I haven't seen that, essentially, scientific method adopted in the same way on the marketing front. And a way I like to think about it, and you alluded to it, is that this agile versus waterfall approach, and I think in product, being a waterfall which is essentially doing all of the work upfront and building something over a long time, like four months, six months a year and then releasing everything at once is not very common anymore because people have realized as they release smaller things and get reactions and iterate and have that scientific kind of approach, that they're just more successful.
You can batch things up and make pivots along the way and iterate as needed to get to where you want to go. And on the marketing side, that happens but it's not as common. There are a lot of marketing campaigns that people spend a really long time in really big budgets working with agencies, and then they come out with a big splashy commercial or campaign and that doesn't have the same iterative process that products do. And I don't know if that's needed. I think a lot of marketing teams could benefit from being more iterative in what they create and how their brand is built. And I think it's tricky because if it's a really big brand campaign, you don't want to release it to the world and then change your brand a bunch as you go. But I think that there are ways to do it, and research really helps unlock that of, you are thinking about some early on territories, well, that's like, let's test those with people that we really care about and see which one of those territories feels most appealing to them.
Or we've built our website, it's halfway done and we built this campaign, it's halfway done. Let's show to some people while it's in progress and tweak the last 20%, and then once it's done, we can run it by people and see what they think as well. So just a little bit more, put it out there and get feedback and pivot along the way instead of doing all this work. And the longer you go, the harder it is to turn and change, and then releasing it and then finding out what people think is the other older school approach in my mind.
Ash Oliver:
You bring up such a great point. I think that marketing teams could benefit a lot from adopting a bit more of this scientific approach. Would you have any other best practices or advice that you would give to marketing teams looking to improve their research practices?
Marcus Brandford:
Yeah, I think, if it's a marketing team looking to improve research in general, if it's a team that's not used to using research, thinking about where your strategy is and where you want to go and what the big questions and gaps are in that space. And if you're not used to working with research, it's not as obvious, but those are the places where if there are researchers around, or if you're new to the practice, those are the things that a lot of times, you can just talk to people out there and learn more. So looking at strategy, looking at gaps, and then building hypotheses around those of, we think this, we have an assumption that this, but let's talk to... it could be as simple as 10 interviews with an audience we care about. And if you have a researcher, then they know how to distill those questions in the research plans.
And if not, then most marketers are really sociable, smart people and I think have a lot of the instincts that research requires. And so they are likely well-equipped with a little bit of researching into what the best approaches are to conduct interviews as well. So I think that's in general just approach-wise. So more tactical things that I keep in mind is marketing can be subjective in nature a lot of the ways, at least brand perceptions. So instead of just thinking, do people like it or not, there are more dimensions that people can use, and some of that come to mind when testing something is three pieces of dimensions, or three dimensions that I think about are, is something relevant to you or not? Is this actually useful to your work? Is something unique or differentiated compared to what else is already out there?
And then is something, for lack of a better word, cool to you? Is this energizing or exciting? And so beyond just saying I like this, I don't, you can find out things like, hey, this is really relevant to me but it's not that different, or it's really unique but it's not really relevant to my work, or it's relevant and unique but it's not very exciting or not very "cool," in quotes. And so I think that can help you get a little more context as to how something's being perceived and how you want to react or what you want to go for in your marketing campaign.
Ash Oliver:
So really great advice, and I love the mental model in that matrix because I think that might be something that could prevent a lot of teams from starting to incorporate more research as a marketing team. And as you said, there's a lot of natural instinct there that could be useful, but maybe some of the methodology or practices from research maybe a little less familiar. So this is a really great way of tactically looking at this good, bad pass, fail, as you mentioned. I want to talk about how this relates to creativity because I think you have some interesting observations and perspective in terms of creativity and research. Again, a thing that I don't think is talked about a lot. So I'd love to hear how you've seen research build a relationship to creativity and where those two coexist.
Marcus Brandford:
So this, I think, ties back into those academic roots. And I think even the word and term and concept of research does not jive well with creative thinking in a lot of ways. It's hard to mesh those two with the way they're commonly perceived. Research, you think of homework in some ways or something like that for a lot of people. I know it's not that way but I think that's how a lot of people see it. And so with creative thinking, I think there's the main belief that research takes away risks, risk-taking or creative thinking or new ideas, and boils things down to something that's not that interesting. This goes back to I think what you just said in response to what I had said a little bit before about something being pass fail of I think someone who's in a really creative generative mindset, who's really putting themselves out there, the idea of having a researcher take that and then say, this fails the test is a really intimidating or not appealing approach.
And so when working with people who are in a branding space, I think that there is more to consider there. And I think the biggest thing when working with teams that are more forward and creative thinking is about arming them with the context they need to be creative in that way and to give those gifts that we talked about before of, help them understand the audience so they can use their expertise and their really special skillset to build something for them. And I think giving them that context in the generative space with something like a fandom study so they know. And then on the other side, when it becomes more evaluative, making sure that it's not about pass, fail, it's about understanding how something is landing in a more nuanced way. I think one fun way to think about the more evaluative side is I think about standup comedians often. And in many ways, I look up to them for their ability to look at things that are going on and come up with a framework or a concept to point things out to you.
I think it's similar to research in a lot of ways. But a lot of standup comedians, I think most of the most successful ones, they test their stuff out with smaller groups and they run, basically, focus groups or something similar with their content before, like the big show they're in, they do standup pop-up shows at the comedy seller when no one's expecting and they have discussions with people, their audience afterwards to see how it went. And I think that there's a similar way of approaching creative meets research in the marketing and branding space of, let's workshop your ideas with somebody. Let's not test, pass, fail, let's work it with the people that you're really building it for and try to build on it rather than slash it or cut it down. So I think it's a mix of giving them the info they need and also giving them room to be themselves and use their skillset because a researcher is not a brand person and you need to give them that space to do what they do best.
Ash Oliver:
Yeah, great points. I think most especially in any of the generative things that projects that I've been a part of, it reminds me just how much research is the fuel to the creativity. And you can oftentimes create much stronger things if there is that informed insight. But I agree that there's a branding problem of research. Maybe it comes from its roots in academia as you described, but I think that perhaps people feel it's a very sterile process and it would be the antithesis to creativity versus what you've described, which is really more of the fuel to it.
Marcus Brandford:
Just one more piece on that is I think a lot of research across the board and work across the board, it comes down to the relationship with that team and getting closer with that team. And I think maybe product and brand might feel far if you're more product researcher or product designer, but those connections with those teams and building that trust is really big because like I said, I've watched brand teams create things and it's a really special process as they're starting to form ideas and you don't want to stagnate that. You want to help power that. So I think that's just a nice thing to keep in mind.
Ash Oliver:
And thinking about teams as well, and Maze most especially has very big belief on there being benefit to the strength of the learning culture across the company. Not one single person owns that responsibility. There might be a differentiation in where that research is, how that research is being conducted and for what pursuits, but learning takes place across all aspects of the company. But I'm curious, for teams that may not have a dedicated researcher, like yourself, inside of the marketing team crossing the chasm across these different roles, is there a natural place where this maybe could be born from inside maybe some of the more traditional roles in marketing, or do you think, really, it could come from anywhere?
Marcus Brandford:
Yeah, I think it could come from anywhere in terms of running more formal research and conducting that space. It's tricky because researchers, they have the training and the context. I think that's really important. But I think one of the biggest benefits to a researcher's role and the value they can give is they have the space and time to conduct research and think really deeply without the same pressure to produce in the same way that... produce something that's outward facing, like a product marketer or brand person. It's adding on top of their jobs to ask them to do full research practices. And so a lot of times, I think there are people throughout companies and across companies who have the pieces to be really great researchers and do really great research, but they may not have the time for it.
And so I think one thing that could be really helpful for someone like a product marketer is if they don't have a researcher staff, or even though researchers at the company then working with their team or their manager or the group around them to carve out space to do a research project because it's very much... I think could be part of that role and what could be really beneficial for that role, but they just might not have the time to do it.
So I think that proposing research projects as additive and constructive and not like they're distracting from other things would be really important for people who don't have dedicated researchers there because it's the foundation of the decisions that you make, which is the most important piece. So I would say it shouldn't be diminished and seen as a distraction from other work, but really a founding piece or a foundation to other work, so it could be prioritized in that same way.
Ash Oliver:
I love that. And I think that speaks to the age-old objection to research in general is that it's potentially seen as this time intensive thing that's an investment upfront and it could be a distraction from the other work, but in actuality, there's so much benefit to be gained from the research that investment pays dividends.
Marcus Brandford:
Just one more piece on that point is I had a really interesting experience going to business school, which I had years of experience as a researcher, and then went to business school, which was I think a little bit, just in that I didn't know that many other researchers in business school. So I hadn't met any. And I went to all sorts of innovation, like workshops and bootcamps and product management classes in many different contexts in many different ways. The theme that went throughout all these different spaces in business school was talk to customers. You need to talk to customers. It's the most important thing. That's how you pivot, that's how you innovate, that's how you build something useful.
Everyone needs to be talking to customers. And that was the core of a lot of the, what they're called, applied innovation classes, was you have to go out and interview 10 people a week and see what they say and react to their lives. And it was a light bulb moment of a lot of people are encouraging people to do research, and whether that's formal as a researcher or informal as a product person, that is the foundation of the work that's built and making something valuable. So that was really cool to see and inspired my decision to go back to research after school.
Ash Oliver:
Oh, I love that. I'm really glad that you shared that story. I do think that, certainly, a component of a lot of the innovation type discussions, but I think, again, as an aspect that's sometimes may be overlooked and hugely important inside all functions of the business. So I'm really happy that, that through line was there early on for you.
This has been incredible. I really love this conversation. Super relevant. I want to transition to our hat-trick questions. This is a series of questions that we ask every guest, just to get to know them a little bit on the personal side. So my first question for you, Marcus, is what's one thing that you've done in your career that's helped you succeed that you think few other people do?
Marcus Brandford:
One thing I've done that I think isn't super common but it might be more than I realize, is I just reach out to people, not even in a real network way of, hey, I'm interested in this role or this thing, but in just, I'm a fan of you type person and I want to connect, and I just think you're cool, or the work you're doing is really interesting, and would do it through Twitter for a while of like, hey, I'm a beginning graphic designer in high school and I like your music, so here's an album cover that I made for you, or I really like the website you made, and you're a data visualization person, and that's an interesting role to me. So just thanks for doing it and thanks for sharing your experience.
And I think just doing that builds connections and confidence and you don't know where things will go or how things will come around or where people's paths cross, and just tying yourself and connecting to people you look up to and just pure person to person way. I think it has been really valuable for me in tangible and intangible ways, but something that I've done and try to keep doing as I find more people I look up to.
Ash Oliver:
I love that advice. That's great. I have personal stories of that same thing in the wild ways with the universe and how things connect, so that's great. My next question is what is the industry related... and you can use industry related quite broadly here, what's the industry related book that you've given or recommended the most and why?
Marcus Brandford:
The book, I would say, I haven't actually recommended it many times because I only finished it a few months ago, but I'm going to be recommending it a lot, it's called The Dream Machine, by Mitchell Waldrop. I think it's pronounced that way. It's about, basically, the history of personal computing from early World War to defense efforts in the '40s through to Xerox PARC and the research lab that, basically, invented the internet and modern personal computing in the '80s, and just goes through that full timeline and detail and covers all of it. And it's so impressive and inspiring just thinking about the history and the real intentional decisions that were made by these people who changed the world in so many ways and helped me understand how the tech I'm using works on a really foundational level and also just gives really interesting lessons on work culture and experimentation and being cross-functional and the importance of that as you're in new spaces building new things.
Ash Oliver:
That's really cool. I'm definitely going to check that out. I'm super fascinated by that. And also, I think that is very timely in the sense of all of the technological advancements that we are living through.
It's a reminder that those were also big technical advancements of their time. So I think that's a really great recommendation. I'll be checking that out.
Marcus Brandford:
Yeah, very dense but very good.
Ash Oliver:
Nice. I'm not afraid of a dense book.
Marcus Brandford:
Okay, good, good.
Ash Oliver:
My last question for you is what is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
Marcus Brandford:
I think my unusual habit is I have a very deep love for shoes, which I think on the surface is not that unusual. There's a lot of people who love shoes. It's not like I don't really buy that interesting of shoes, I don't have that many shoes, but when I was really young, I was just really fascinated by sneakers and this performance thing that has trade-offs and materials and design and fashion and function. And as I've gotten older, I think it's just a really fun cultural token in a way of everyone wears them every day, and whether it's an attempt to or not, there's a statement in it of, I care about this or I don't, or there's always decisions involved, which is a fun thing to consider.
And so when I'm with my wife or my friends or whoever's around, I can always ID a shoe that they point out, or just know more than they expect, which I think they think is absurd, but it's just been an interest and feels like almost birding in a way. It's like, there's that thing, or that one's rare, that one's less common, and just a fun thing to keep in mind.
Ash Oliver:
I love this, and this is one of my favorite questions to ask for this reason entirely because it's always so intriguing to hear what people will say about themselves. This could be a really fun web project or a book in and of itself, if you ever decide to pursue such a thing. Really identifying someone based off their shoes and the statement that makes is really cool.
Marcus Brandford:
Yeah, no good or bad, just different decisions, and this is a great batch of questions, really fun, and the quirky, quirky is always good.
Ash Oliver:
Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you sharing your observations, your time in the space, some of your thoughts on the topic. I think it's, as I said, something that should be deserving a lot more discussion in this space, and I think this is super valuable, so I appreciate you being on.
Marcus Brandford:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was really fun. I love the discussion and excited to listen to more of these episodes as they go. So thanks again. Happy to be here.
Ash Oliver:
Thanks for listening to The Optimal Path, brought to you by Maze, the continuous product discovery platform designed for product teams. If you like what you heard today, you can find resources and companion links in the show notes. If you want to hear more or subscribe to the podcast newsletter for exclusive content, you can find The Optimal Path by visiting maze.co/podcast. And send us a note with any thoughts or feedback to podcast@maze.design. And until next time.