How Reddit is upping the ante on authenticity
On this episode of The CMO Show we chat with Roxy Young, Global CMO of Reddit – the internet’s community of communities.
Roxy was in town for SXSW and stopped by our studio to chat through her role at the company, what sets Reddit apart in today’s social media landscape, and the unique opportunity it offers brands who want to engage their communities in an authentic and effective way.
We hear a lot about ‘authenticity’ in the world of customer relationships, but what does that really mean?
For some brands it’s an irreverent Tweet once a week, while for others it’s offering greater transparency around operations and marketing tactics.
While both valid examples, they still sit within a marketing approach where brands talk to consumers rather than with them.
Roxy Young, Global CMO at Reddit, says organic chatter, unbiased debates, and authentic engagement are becoming more and more important for consumers, and that Reddit is a place brands can turn to for those unvarnished, real-life conversations.
“Invite people to have the conversation. They’re on Reddit to engage in the first place,” she says.
“When you open a conversation, people will share all kinds about themselves that is deep and important. They’ll share resources, anecdotes, and more. It’s next level for engagement.”
She adds that by having communities moderated by people from within those communities, Reddit takes authenticity to the next level.
“Every single community is moderated by people. It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s just about how you join in – whether you’re a moderator, a contributor, or you’re just reading along. We figured out pretty early on that the only thing that scales with people is other people.”
Keen to hear more from Roxy? Then fire-up this episode of the CMO Show and put your brand on the subreddit to success.
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Credits
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The CMO Show production team
Producers – Rian Newman & Pamela Obeid
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
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Transcript:
Hello, Mark Jones here – you're listening to The CMO Show, a marketing podcast made for and by marketing professionals here at ImpactInstitute.
Mark Jones:
We as marketers know the importance of authenticity, but the struggle remains with moving away from reliable forms of top-down marketing.
And so, one of the alternatives is to look at how we bring alive these conversations in community, and that’s the focus of my conversation with our guest today. She might just have the inspiration you need to embrace your own sense of community and bring alive these real-time, live conversations.
***
Roxy is no stranger to the notion of community, and it offers a refreshing alternative to the everyday tactics that marketers like you and I are familiar with. Reddit breathes new life into authenticity and it allows brand to put forth the same type of authenticity that we value – reaching entire communities of the people that are actually of value to you and your organisation.
If you’re intrigued, I don’t blame you. Reddit is an incredible brand and it’s an amazing story. I had a great chat with Roxy fresh from SXSW, which was held recently in Sydney for the first time outside of the US, so let’s get into our conversation, and hear from Roxy Young.
Mark Jones
Roxy, so good to have you in the studio.
Roxy Young
I am. I'm here in the studio with you. And thank you so much for having me, it's absolute pleasure to be here.
Mark Jones
We've already established before we hit record that you're moving here.
Roxy Young
That's right.
Mark Jones
When is that, next week, week after?
Roxy Young
I'm working on it. I've been doing a little bit of research, so it's in the works already. I may never leave. Sydney has been so delightful.
Mark Jones
You are not the first person from North America to have that sentiment. Now, you are from San Francisco. Reddit itself is of course from the Bay Area, and it's probably worth saying it's just a global phenomenon. I'm just thrilled that you're here. You've been at SXSW, which of course everybody in the Australian universe has been. A few quick comments. What's it like seeing the Aussie version of the Austin experience?
Roxy Young
Yeah, I've been going to South by Southwest for probably 20 years, and so I've had the pleasure of seeing how South by Southwest has evolved in the United States. And it was such a thrill to see for the first time ever Sydney hosting SXSW Definitely felt the energy. We had a great room yesterday with some fantastic questions. And I think I was just happy that I wasn't on at the same time as Nicole Kidman, because I do think that she was quite the draw. I'd like to think that it was me, but I think maybe Nicole Kidman.
Mark Jones
You've got to feel sorry for the people whose agenda clashed with hers.
Roxy Young
That's right.
Mark Jones
You're going to lose, there's no question. Is there something you took away from that conversation, apart from the fact that we all love Nicole?
Roxy Young
Yesterday, the conversation was great. I think one of the biggest things that I observed was how many people in the room actually use Reddit or have had an experience with Reddit. We won brand tracking every year. And like all good marketers, we're out there tracking our brand, tracking our brand health. And according to my data, about 56% of people between the ages of 18 and 34 in Australia have heard of Reddit. And yesterday when I was in the room, now granted I probably have a little bit of a biased sample, but about 80% of people raised their hands. I think that was one of my biggest takeaways is our mission is to create community empowerment and belonging for everyone in the world. And sometimes when you're based in North America and you're thinking about the universe of people who are using and engaging with your product, it felt good to be here, be in Australia, engaging with the audience and having so many people raise their hand and say, "Yeah, I use Reddit."
Mark Jones
There's a real difference to seeing data on a screen and then humans in a room who raise their hand, they go, "Yeah, like it." Right?
Roxy Young
Yeah.
Mark Jones
There's a little heart thing that happens. Reddit is not a new brand or a new entity, it's been around for a long time. And correct me if I'm wrong, and please do, but I've had this sense that back in the day it was very cool, particularly with techies. And then it wasn't cool. And it became cool again. And now I think it's still cool. And then there was the whole Super Bowl thing, which made it even cooler. Give us a sense of how you see the Reddit brand, because I think if you want to start there, this is a brand management job, is it not?
Roxy Young
Yeah. It's a great question. I remember when I was interviewing for this role back in 2016, I joined the company in 2017. I had a lot of very candid conversations with the CEO, Steve Huffman, who's the co-founder of the company, and returned to be the CEO in 2015.
Mark Jones
And you knew him, right?
Roxy Young
I did know him, but I had a lot of conversations with him. What is the role of marketing for a product like Reddit? That is proliferating around the world every single day, whether you like it or not. People are encountering Reddit, they're sharing content that they find on Reddit. And so when I stepped into the role, I said I want to focus on three Rs: recognition, relevance, and reputation. I want more people to be able to recognise our brand and who we are. I want us to be relevant for more people. And I want us to have a positive reputation around the world. And so I agree with you that I do think laying that brand foundation was something that had never been done at Reddit. I do think that maybe there were marketing people from 2005 to 2017 when I joined. But when I asked them, "Have you done any marketing?" They said, "Well, we've got some stickers." And that was the extent of their marketing.
I stepped into the role, and I really focused on helping our team that was out in the market talking with brands and businesses. They were having to sell a story about, what is Reddit? What are people using it for, and why is that relevant for you? And so we started building out that narrative, and it was an evolution. And where we landed was, find your people where they find community. Reddit is where people are finding community, whether it's plants or pets or parenthood, or cars or cartoon or films or fashion.
Mark Jones
And just to jump in for those playing at home, don't know what we're talking about still. You can jump in there and create content on just about anything, or join a conversation about anything. It's like this community hub. There's links, there's content, there's threads, there's all sorts of stuff. Am I doing a decent job?
Roxy Young
Yes. Reddit is a community of communities, there's over 100,000 communities. And you can dive into any interest or topic or hobby that you have. What's unique about Reddit is that everything is being contributed within the context of a community. Unlike other platforms, like an Instagram or an X, where you are following a person. On Reddit, you are following a community, you're engaging with the community.
Mark Jones
You have a topic.
Roxy Young
Yeah. And so if you are interested in skincare, you're in r/SkincareAddiction, and you are looking at things that people are talking about and contributing. Every single community is moderated by people. The community is started by people, it's moderated by people. And it has rules that are aligned with, what does this community want to be about? How do people engage? What's the quorum and the vibe of the community? And if you're a community about cats, you shouldn't be talking about dogs. Those posts will be removed. And so I think that's what's really unique about Reddit, is it doesn't matter who you are, just how you contribute.
Mark Jones
That human curation piece, I immediately think about, how do you sustain it? But I think more importantly, it's quite the novelty these days. Because we're used to bots and AI. And then for anything that's not, it just gets abandoned, right? Too hard. These things run wild, like I don't know, weeds in the garden. Is that right?
Roxy Young
Yeah. One of my favorite quotes from our CEO, who is a wise person and who founded the company, is that the only thing that scales with people is people. As your platform continues to grow, you have to continue to invest in people. And what is unique about Reddit's model is that, yes, there are automated aspects of what we do. We have a content policy, and you shouldn't be contributing content that is not aligned with the policy. And we've got algorithmic ways of identifying that. But because of this unique community model where people start communities, people moderate communities, we have this layered aspect of how content is being reviewed and evaluated, which makes it a very curated and high quality experience. In addition to the fact that every community is moderated so that it's aligning with the rules of the community, people can vote. They can vote things up, they can vote things down.
Mark Jones
That's going to be the unique thing about Reddit, right?
Roxy Young
It is. So many platforms, they have a positive signal. You can heart it or you can thumbs up it, but the absence of a positive doesn't necessarily indicate a negative. And with an explicit negative signal, that is a sign to us that this content does not need to be distributed. It's not valuable to the community.
Roxy Young
We often joke that it's very hard for bad content, or content that is inaccurate or not truthful to go very far on Reddit, it gets down voted.
Mark Jones
Business question. What's the business model? How do you make money?
Roxy Young
The business model is advertising. We have all of these people who are on Reddit in these interest-based communities, and that's an incredibly strong signal. Let's say that you are a brand or a business and you want to reach parents. Well, chances are, if you are targeting people who are visiting our parent communities, then chances are that they're a parent, it's probably better than demographic targeting. So interest-based targeting based on the communities that people are visiting. And so just like an advertiser would pay for reaching their audience on Google search, they can pay to reach that audience on Reddit, and run their ad creative. And then we've got several different ways in which they can optimise to achieve their business goals.
Mark Jones
Okay, here's some fun stuff. Your job's a bit meta, and that's a deliberate pun. Because you're investing much of your time in brand building in the three Rs that you mentioned earlier. So bringing people to the platform, I presume, is one of the goals. And sustaining the reputation. And you've got an advertising engine that you're running. And so no doubt you're learning from how that's actually working for your advertisers as well. Tell me about that. What are you learning from that experience? Because I'm seeing you coming at this from two interesting angles.
Roxy Young
Yeah, it is really unique. I think what we're hearing from brands is that Reddit is such a unique place because it's where you can reach people based on their interests, and you can reach them in a very contextually rich environment. A brand or a business can say, I want to reach people, but I only want to reach them when they're having conversations about electric vehicles. Because I'm in the business of selling electric vehicles, and if they're talking about battery range or prices, that's where I want my brand to be.
Mark Jones
It's mass and niche at the same time.
Roxy Young
Absolutely.
Mark Jones
Right. I get it. What I want to know then is, what have you learned as a CMXO? Excuse me. What are you learning from this? Because I imagine you are doing the work as much as you're learning.
Roxy Young
Yeah. I think what I'm seeing and what I'm observing is as the social media platforms, and Reddit oftentimes gets categorised as such, continue to mature, I think there's a craving and an appreciation for authenticity, real candor, unvarnished. And that's hard for marketers. I think some of the things that I've learned is when we've been at our best as marketers and proponents, and evangelists of the Reddit brand, it's when we've really opened ourselves up to the possibilities versus having these grand plans that we've been concocting for years and years. And I think that brands succeeding on Reddit have also learned that. We've got brands coming on the platform, opening up and being a little bit more vulnerable. Asking people to contribute and share their stories, share their experiences, and it's a really different way of marketing.
Mark Jones
And I wonder whether that attracts a certain type of advertiser that's prepared to be vulnerable, or even just risky. Because my experience, marketers like control.
Roxy Young
Oh, yeah.
Mark Jones
Right? This is a fixed environment, I know what to expect, I'm not going to get in trouble. Well, actually you might.
Roxy Young
Well, what I will say is that we offer a range of solutions for all different kinds of risk profiles or sophistication levels. And I'll talk about some examples. Let's say that you simply want reach and performance. We have the tools and solutions for you to achieve that. You can find your audience with interest-based targeting, perhaps you layer some contextual aspects onto that to even further refine it. You can run your creative, we can offer you the measurement, and that could be the solution that works for you. Or you could be a brand. I'll give you a fantastic example that hopefully the audience will get a kick out of. There was a bidet company that said, "You know what, we want Reddit to name our next model of our bidet." And so as you could imagine-
Mark Jones
... in Australia, that's not a thing.
Roxy Young
Yes. I think it was-
Mark Jones
I'm tempted to describe it for the listener, but I'm not going to. They're going to look it up later. Keep going.
Roxy Young
Well, this is just a great example of taking it to the next level saying, we'd love for you to name that the next model of our bidet. We had a beer company do the same thing.
Mark Jones
The ability to engage and get real with people seems to be the thing that comes through. Which we talk about in marketing, but it's easy to say and harder to do. As I was saying, because you might get in trouble. What's some lessons around making that work well? What have you seen really work well, beyond bidet naming? Which I think is fantastic, by the way.
Roxy Young
I think inviting people into the conversation that matters to you is what people on Reddit like to do, and that's why they're there. That why they're there on Reddit is to engage. And so, when you open up a conversation, and let's say you're a financial services company. You open up a conversation about, what are you doing today to save for tomorrow, to make a better tomorrow? People will share all kinds of things that are deep and important to them. They'll share spreadsheets and planning tools, and I think that's next level in engagement.
Mark Jones
As we'd say, that escalated quickly. In a good way. It's just such an incredible melting pot. One of the things that's really, I would say been a brand distinctive, is an unvarnished... It's an unvarnished quality, but it used to be quite a hacker's paradise. If I could call it that. It actually looks pretty slick these days, I've got to say. But how do you get that right, the presentation and the style? Because that experience, picking up on the X, you see what I'm doing? The X in your title.
Roxy Young
I love it. I love what you're doing.
Mark Jones
Seamless. How do you get that right?
Roxy Young
Yeah. A big part of this evolved role that I've been creating is thinking about the holistic consumer experience. And one of the newest changes that I made as a result of this new role and this evolution was bringing our community team under the umbrella. And so our community team is a phenomenal team that is engaging with our communities, engaging with our moderators. And there is definitely an evolution that we are going through as Reddit continues to focus on new ways to uplevel the experience that people are having so that more and more people can find community and find belonging.
We have to do that in a way that doesn't alienate the people who've been using Reddit for 10, 15 years. And it's a delicate balance. And so some of the things that you'll see is, when we roll things out we'll oftentimes give people flexibility. They don't have to necessarily use this new feature, they can use it in the old way as well. And so just giving a lot of optionality, but we have to do that in a way such that things don't become cluttered and overbearing. It is hard and it is a balance, but we want to be able to serve all of the audiences in the way that's right for them.
Mark Jones
What do these community moderators, customer experience people, the teams that you've referred to, think of the marketers? Is it a dirty word?
Roxy Young
Actually, no. I think what our community wants from us is our community wants transparency. When we decide that we want to market Reddit and take our brand outside of the platform and bring more people in, we reach out to the community and we say, "Hey, we would love to feature your community. Here's what we plan on doing." Or if we're going to feature a particular piece of content because it was so fantastic and somebody contributed it, we reach out to them and we say, "We'd love to use this in a campaign."
And so I think what they want from us is transparency, they want us to be straight with them, and they expect the same thing of brands and businesses. If they're on Reddit and they're participating, they just want them to raise their hands and say, "Hey, I'm Netflix and I'm here because I want to talk to you about One Piece. It's really popular. We'd love to bring the showrunner, the producer, the director to have a conversation with you because we think that you guys would really enjoy that." And so I think they want transparency. They want that directness about your intentions.
Mark Jones
That's really fantastic. Now, let's talk measurement and analytics.
Roxy Young
Let's get right into it.
Mark Jones
Well, how do we measure this thing? And I'm starting to feel like you need someone on your team. I'm picturing the listener with CMO, and they've got a team, and now you need a Reddit manager. That's just all they do. There's probably so much scope here. But that said, how do we measure Reddit? Is it something that you can easily plug into your existing suite of spend and your campaigns? What's going on here? Just talk me through that.
Roxy Young
Yeah, there's multiple ways. If you're making an investment on Reddit to reach your audience and achieve your business goals, you absolutely have to be able to measure it. And we give you the tools to do that. You can either do it directly on the Reddit ads dashboard. And you can see, how many people did I reach, how many people are viewing my creative or my video? How many people are clicking through? If you implement the pixel, how many people are converting? And so that's fine, you can take all of our direct measurement tools. Or you can say, no, I want to use a suite of third party tools because I want them to validate. We work with a number of different partners on, whether it's Brand Lift, or TV Tune-In, or Foot Traffic, or Viewability. Whatever it is that you're trying to learn, whether it's direct conversion, incrementality, an end result that's measured through something other than clicks, we have a suite of solutions that can work for you so that you can make sure that your investment is yielding the results that you need.
Mark Jones
That's very impressive. And since we're being so geeky, which I'm loving, what about first party data and the whole exit from third party? What are you doing there?
Roxy Young
What's so unique about Reddit is that we don't capture a lot of data. On Reddit, nobody knows who I am. You don't know how old I am, you don't know if I'm employed, you don't know when my birthday is. Unlike other platforms that are-
Mark Jones
Isn't that a problem though?
Roxy Young
It's not. And the reason why, is because we believe that privacy is a right. And Reddit has always had this perspective, it's always had this stance. And I think it hasn't been until recently that marketers are scratching their heads and saying, "Oh my gosh, over the last few years consumers have just been giving up so much data, and is that the right thing to do?" Well, we've never collected in the first place. And the way that you target and reach people on Reddit is through their interests.
I'll use myself as an example. I'm a woman in my 40s. Based on my demographics, you probably wouldn't assume that I'm interested in sports, that I'm not a parent. And so you may make all these assumptions about me. But on Reddit, you can actually see that I'm in sports communities, I'm in communities about playing the guitar. There's all these things that you wouldn't know about me just based on my demographic data. We believe that we can achieve business results for advertisers. We can give consumers complete control over their identity and what information they share, and have a successful business doing that.
Mark Jones
I had a Jumanji flashback, but maybe that's not quite appropriate, but I think you get what I'm saying. You could be somebody else completely, but it's about how you engage in these topics.
Roxy Young
That's right.
Mark Jones
Now, a couple of things before we wrap up. Firstly, Super Bowl. The Super Bowl ad, five seconds, won all sorts of awards. Some people may not know it, but what happened?
Roxy Young
Yes. I love talking about this, especially now that I've had a little bit of distance from it, but I will recap the story. In early 2021, there was a community on Reddit called r/WallStreetBets. And this is a community that is focused on high stakes stock trading, and they were very much in favour of a particular stock, GameStop, which is a store that sells video games. And so the community liked the stock, a lot of people were buying the stock, and the price of the stock was going up.
Mark Jones
Yes, it was a big deal.
Roxy Young
And was going up. And so this was becoming a phenomenon. And even people like my mother, who's in her 70s was like, "I'm seeing Reddit on the news a lot, is everything okay?" And so the marketers got together, we got the team together, and we said, "We should use this moment to showcase the power of community. This is the power of community on display. And as marketers and evangelists for this brand, what can we do to amplify this amazing moment that's showcasing the power of community?" And so we gave everyone that task on a Friday, we came together on a Monday. We looked at several different ideas that could achieve this goal of helping us amplify this phenomenal story about the power of community.
Roxy Young
And one of the ideas was, let's do a five-second Super Bowl spot. And I think as soon as we saw that idea, we all knew in our guts that this is something that we should go for. That this moment that we were experiencing, this power of community was so big that it needed something equally as big in terms of capturing it.
Mark Jones
And it was such a great idea because you had to pause it. You had to go and find the ad online, pause it so you could read this thing. Right?
Roxy Young
Yeah.
Mark Jones
Now, I read some commentary which said that was disruptive. Was that really disruptive, or just a really creative, well executed ad?
Roxy Young
I would love to say that it was intentional, we were trying to be intentionally disruptive. But the fact of the matter was, creative was due on Thursday, and this was Monday morning. And so the only thing you really could do was write some great copy. And so that's what we did. We sat in a room and we wrote 10 sentences that was really a manifesto to the power of community. There were a few dynamics that were going on at the time. It was COVID, people weren't out in bars watching the game. In the back of our minds, we were like, ah, people are sitting at home, they may pause it, and they may take the time to read this.
So we turned in the creative on Thursday. And because this was so last minute, the spots were sold. You couldn't buy a national TV spot, but you could buy regionally. And that ended up being really unique. Because instead of one spot that aired one time in one game, we had 13 different five second spots that went off popcorn around the United States, and it lit up social media. And by the end of the game it was one of the most searched terms, and people were just trying to figure out, what was that?
Mark Jones
What was it like for you? What were other marketers, CMOs, CMXOs saying to you?
Roxy Young
I got a lot of phone calls and a lot of texts. And I think my big takeaways were, don't be afraid to be brave, and don't be afraid to be bold. And especially when you know in your heart and you have such strong conviction around the message that you want to share. And in our case, what we were witnessing, this power of community to change real world outcomes and events was so moving to us that we knew that we could do something equally as big to showcase this story. And so we trusted our instincts.
Mark Jones
But to be clear, was the bravery, the creative piece, was the bravery the five seconds? Or was the bravery that maybe this may not be great for our brand? Or D, all of the above?
Roxy Young
I do think it was a little bit of all of the above. I remember after turning in the creative on Thursday, I stepped away and I had some moments with myself where I was like, this is either going to be a real disaster or a real hit, or somewhere in between. Luckily for us, I think it got a lot of people thinking about is there a way to take what the Super Bowl has become, which is, you use a big celebrity, you have this very-
Roxy Young
... very costly shoot, and you release it ahead of time. So by the time they see it, they've already been watching it on YouTube for a week. I think we broke the mould across so many different dimensions that I think it was a good unlock of people trying to maybe rethink what that spot could be.
Mark Jones
Now, today, what's your biggest problem when you look at the current world that we're in and where the business is at? What's the biggest problem for you?
Roxy Young
Well, I don't think that in terms of problem, but more in just terms of opportunity. Our mission is so empowering, it's what gets me excited every single day. And if we want to deliver community and belonging and empowerment to everyone in the world, we've got a lot of things that we need to do to live up to that mission. I'm here talking to you today in Sydney. When I joined Reddit in 2017, we weren't really thinking much beyond the United States. And now-
Mark Jones
You're planning your Reddit Sydney office, where you're going to employ more people.
Roxy Young
Exactly. I might be one of them. Who knows? I think delivering on that mission globally is one of the biggest opportunities. And we're still relatively new in our ads product. Our ads product, 2018 was probably the first generation of it. And so we're five years in and still have so much opportunity to help brands and businesses reach audiences on Reddit.
Mark Jones
Here at ImpactInstitute and on The CMO Show, we're purpose driven, we've got a real heartbeat for social impact. And if you look at some of the disasters that are unfolding around the world as we speak, what is the role that you think more broadly that Reddit can play? It's no secret that in much of the Western world, in fact, the Eastern as well, that we are living in a very fractured time. There's a lot of unkindness, to put it simply. And probably even underplay it. The platform and the business that you've described, and this community that you've been talking about fundamentally sounds like a kind one. And you're quite good at cutting out the unkind bits. What's your take on how you can really do something more with that?
Roxy Young
Yeah. I think the way that we do that is continuing to show up for our communities. In April of last year we announced a community fund, which is a million dollar endowment for communities that want to do more than just be a digital community on Reddit. And there's a great example of the community r/Brisbane. Or Brisbane, I think is-
Mark Jones
Well done.
Roxy Young
... as you guys call it. And they said-
Mark Jones
Can you say Melbourne?
Roxy Young
Definitely can. I'm going to stop while I'm ahead there. Yes.
Roxy Young
But they said, we want to bring some of the great contributions that are happening on Reddit to the real world. And they tapped into our community fund and created this pop-up art show to showcase some great art that was being contributed. And that's just one small example. But I think the more that we as Reddit can help these communities do everything that they want to do to bring belonging and connection is the way that we can continue to foster more good in the world. One of our community values is belief in the good. And as you just stated, when you can bring people to in the right way with the right context, they will do good and they will be kind to each other.
Mark Jones
Look, that is so cool. And I'm really, really encouraged to hear the story and the belief there, because we need a lot more of it.
Roxy Young
We do.
Mark Jones
Do you reckon there's an even bigger role for you at the company? This is the embarrassing, don't get in trouble with your boss question. Do you have visions of expansion of your career as CEO of the future, or some other role?
Roxy Young
No, I'm going to make up a new acronym. Yeah.
Mark Jones
Yeah, do it.
Roxy Young
I know. I absolutely love what I'm doing at Reddit. I think up until the point that I created this role, there wasn't really a 360 degree view of, how are consumers engaging with our brand? How are we engaging with our communities? How are brands and businesses activating on Reddit perceiving their experience? I just consider myself so fortunate that I'm at the nexus of all of these connection points. How is our product delivering? How is our community delivering? How is our team helping brands and businesses?
Mark Jones
I was actually more thinking about the social impact side of things and maybe creating more communities and things like that. But my experience has been that there are so many opportunities for CMOs, as you are illustrating. And I think it's really important that we stay focused on delivering excellence, but also thinking about, well, what could I do with this? Who else could I bring into this story? Or, how could I change the way my peers are operating, or something? And that's probably one of the enduring successes of this marketing space, is that it's leaching sideways across the organisation. Is that fair?
Roxy Young
It is, 100%. This morning, the first thing that I read when I woke up was our voice of customer report from last month. And it is so fantastic to see that we are sending out, on a monthly basis across the whole company, for the whole company to see, what are consumers saying? What problems are they having? What do they want to see from us? That's something that we've implemented so that the whole company can have a pulse on the consumer.
Mark Jones
That's awesome.
Roxy Young
And what they need from us.
Mark Jones
I'm a bit of an entrepreneur. Are you selling that report, or is just an internal thing?
Roxy Young
It's internal for now.
Mark Jones
It sounds like a product.
Roxy Young
It could be big.
Mark Jones
What is it Reddit/R. Reddit R what? Research. Like the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Roxy Young
Something like that. Yeah, for sure. Well, stay tuned. There might be some exciting things related to that.
Mark Jones
We made up the news here first. Who knows? But look, it's been a delight getting to meet you and understand your story, hear about Reddit in ways that I really hadn't heard before and appreciated. And it is genuinely fascinating, and I think encouraging, to get a sense of where this could go at a time when, look, there's a lot of darkness, but this is a community that's really committed to health, wellbeing, and growth for all the right reasons. I'm really encouraged. Thanks for your time.
Roxy Young
Thank you so much, it's been an absolute pleasure.
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That was Roxy Young – Global CMO at Reddit. I think it’s safe to say that there’s no one doing authenticity quite like Reddit.
I loved hearing about her story, and the way that she thinks about community. In fact, this notion of community I really like, when it comes to Reddit and their strategies and growing the organisation.
By having their communities self-moderated by members of the community themselves, it truly is practicing what is preaches with organic conversation at the forefront, and of course allows the organisation to scale as well.
It seems that to truly find your authentic voice, the intention is the first step – your customers will be able to see right through you if you don’t have that authentic voice and that intentionality behind that. I think that might actually be the most important takeaway of all.
Thanks a lot for giving today’s episode a listen – look forward to seeing you next time.