ETL 53: Jenny Haggard on Why Spotify Invests in Thought Leadership Research

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Transcript: Jenny Haggard and Bob Buday

Bob Buday: Since you’re a lot younger than me, I wanted you to know that when I started in the thought leadership business, back in 1987, it was not even called thought leadership. It was called a bunch of things, and there was no common name for it.

But at the time, people in these roles largely worked for management consulting firms like McKinsey, like the company I worked for back then, a company called Index Group (later CSC Index). Consumer companies did not have people with “thought leadership” in their title. So it’s great to meet somebody in a consumer company with thought leadership in their title.

Your predecessor at Spotify, who’s now at Netflix, Marion Boeri, has thought leadership in her title at Netflix.

Jenny Haggard: Yes, yes. And we’ll hopefully dive into this a little bit more on the difference of those roles and how it’s really evolved at Spotify.

Bob: You joined Spotify 12 years ago. It was a roughly $1 billion company, and now it’s grown 17 times that size. That’s astronomical growth in revenue and number of customers, with more than 700 million streaming customers. But anybody who stays at the same company for 12 years seems to be unusual. What has kept you there these 12 years?

Jenny: Those of us who have been here a long time like to joke that it feels like six different companies for two years each. The Spotify that I started at in 2014 was basically a startup. We’d only been around for about eight years, and in the U.S. for only three years. We were really trying to convince the world that streaming was a good thing.

You look at the Spotify of today, where we’ve got over 751 million fans using the platform. We’ve paid out over $11 billion to the music industry just last year alone. Those are two very different companies.

I’ve stayed for a few reasons. First is the growth — and not just of the company, but my growth as well. In my tenure at Spotify, I’ve done sales strategy, content marketing, branded content, content monetization. I led creative strategy for a bit, and now I’m in my role as head of thought leadership.

Most people have to go to different companies to get that range of experience. But I feel so lucky that I’ve been able to grow with Spotify. So definitely, growth has kept me there.

I love the Spotify brand. I use it in my daily life. When I started in marketing, I made a promise to myself that I would only work at brands that I believe in and that I think are positive. I feel very lucky that a brand that I love, in the same way that I have chosen it, has chosen me for all that time, too.

‘I think smart and kind is probably the rarest combo in tech. I have found it, and I’m not going to let it go.’

The last reason I’ve stayed – and it’s cliche for a reason – is the people. I remember when I interviewed at Spotify I had nine different interviews, and I walked away from each one thinking, “Wow, everyone is not only really smart, like really brilliant, but also really kind.” I think smart and kind is probably the rarest combo in tech. I have found it, and I’m not going to let it go. I’m really grateful that I’ve been able to build a reputation here. I’m a big believer in building instead of hopping.

Taking a Risk on an Unknown

Bob: Twelve years ago, when you joined Spotify, did you feel it might be a risk? Like these guys may not be here in five years?

Jenny: Absolutely. I used to work on the media side at a media agency that’s part of WPP. One of the Spotify reps came in, and at that time I worked on a massive hotel chain. They came in and pitched this idea, and I thought, “Wow, this is really cool. I think this could drive results for the brand.” I didn’t know this at the time. This was the first time that they had not only pitched something like this, but sold it. It really opened my eyes to how [Spotify] uses data so creatively.

One of our strengths is that we have first-party data, and how we express it — how we put storytelling and context around it. That was why I joined Spotify. I had been a customer in several ways, as a user and as an advertiser, and decided to go over.

But at the time my parents asked, “What is this company? We’ve never heard of it.” At that time, we were a lot smaller. We were a startup. So it was a risk. But looking back on it, I’m so glad I did it, and I’m constantly thinking in my head, what’s the next Spotify? What are these next companies that are going to be as big as we are now? And watching their growth and trajectory with great joy.

Bob: Look at OpenAI or look at Anthropic. They’re at — what, $100 billion in revenue?

Jenny: That’s a lot faster [revenue growth] than us. The length [of time to get to multibillions in revenue] gets shorter and shorter every year.

Spotify’s Thought Leadership Goals

Bob: Given you have the thought leadership title at Spotify, that signifies that Spotify sees thought leadership as important. Our prior interview — with Richard Murphy, formerly head of thought leadership at ServiceNow – showed that ServiceNow sees thought leadership as crucial. What are the key goals for thought leadership at Spotify?

Jenny: First, I’ll give you some background on the thought leadership role at Spotify. So that title and person you mentioned before, they sat exclusively in the research function, which was great because there was a lot of rigor around the research. And it got us some really good insights.

‘My role as the head of thought leadership is really to be the conductor, not the whole orchestra.’

I think the challenge was there was not a cohesive marketing strategy around it. There was not a strong plan to get that research out into market and make sure our clients knew about it. I pitched the role I’m in today to the head of marketing at the time. I said, “I really believe we need a marketing lead on thought leadership.” Luckily, they supported me.

My role as the head of thought leadership is really to be the conductor, not the whole orchestra. I’m trying to get people on board, galvanize them internally, to then deliver things that galvanize people externally.

When I started at Spotify, we had two challenges: We had to convince people of the power of Spotify and convince people of the power of audio. It was a two-front war. We had a lot of ground to cover.

I believe people respect Spotify. They know Spotify advertising. They understand the power of our platform. I think what marketers are still missing in the realm of audio is they have not readjusted their marketing plans to make room for sound, which has really become the foundation of culture. It has grown over the years. It not only captures attention and evokes emotion, but also consistently outperforms other forms of digital media.

That’s what I’m passionate about: showing marketers the power of sound and the unique power of Spotify. We are bigger than just a format. We are this powerhouse that can help marketers achieve their goals.

‘The best thought leadership really gives not a rear-view mirror, but a look around the corner, a look at what’s coming.’

The Rise of ‘Active Audio’

Bob: Would it be fair to say that there still is a perception out there among advertisers and maybe even agencies, that sound equals radio, and radio was always – say, whatever — 5% of our total marketing spend, and since radio may be going away, that 5% should go to zero? Is that the perception that you’re trying to change?

Jenny: Spot on, Bob. The research we just rolled out recently is called “The Sound-On Era.” The whole point of it is to help people understand that the definition of entertainment has evolved over the years. It used to mean mailing DVDs. Now it means so much more: Audio has gone through that same evolution, and marketers need to catch up.

In the Sound-On era research that we did, we interviewed over 5,000 consumers, 105 marketers and 30 experts. This is kind of like what you do on your podcast. We interviewed 30 experts in fields of AI and voice and futurism and academia and other interesting places to understand the future of media.

The best thought leadership really gives not a rear-view mirror, but a look around the corner, a look at what’s coming. What we tried to do is show the intersection of audio and AI.

It is accelerating the rise of active audio. That audio is not what you just said — a radio ad or a jingle. It is so much more than that. At Spotify, we know this. We’ve built a lot of products that are more than just audio. Convincing marketers is about showing them, not telling them, so that they can see the power of it themselves.

Bob: When you look at advertising revenue in, say, newspapers versus Facebook alone in the US and Canada, and you see the Facebook ad curve go up like this, and the newspaper and AD curve go down like that. There was an inflection point, where Facebook, and probably Google with search, was able to convince the majority of advertisers that their dollars were much better spent with Facebook and Google than certainly in newspapers.

Jenny: That’s what we have built, and now we’re really trying to get advertisers on board with that vision. We’ve spent a lot of resources and a lot of time moving to be a more automated platform. We’ve seen the benefits of making it easier for advertisers to buy, create and measure on Spotify.

More advertisers are coming over and doing that, and we’re helping them. We’re giving them more insights, we’re giving them more knowledge about their business, and we’re enabling them to reach their fans. Just like people come to Spotify to be fans of creators, we’re trying to help brands connect with their audience of fans too.

How Spotify’s Thought Leadership Team Works

Bob: Describe your thought leadership group — how many, their roles, and where you’re going with this group.

Jenny: We do not have a thought leadership team at Spotify.I loved in your book where you talk about that there are a few key roles. We don’t have people who are only focused on thought leadership in research, in editorial, in comms. My job as head of thought leadership is to be the conductor of the orchestra.

I couldn’t do my job without others, especially our great research and insights team. I tell them what we’re trying to achieve; the message that we’re trying to get across; or this problem that we’re trying to solve for advertisers. They go and do what they do best, which is to think about the research. I’ll partner with them on it to make sure we’re nailing those messages and asking good questions, and what I think good research is about.

I’ll partner with our channels and our content team to make sure that we’re expressing that in the right way. I’ll work with our comms team to get earned press on that. Our comms team is amazing in that regard.

In the “The Sound-On Era” report that we just released, I put together the master brief for it. I got alignment from leadership across the company in different in different areas of podcasting and creator relationships and things like that.

I wrote the report. We got the research back from our research partner, Bold Insight, who was fabulous to work with. They gave us a 150- to 200-slide deck of amazing insights. I needed to turn that into a story to tell the market, think about what we are trying to say, and then write it.

I brief all of our partner teams to then go do what they do best and get that work out. So again, I’m the conductor of that orchestra, and I wouldn’t be able to do my job without all those amazing people.

There are pros and cons to everything. One advantage is that Spotify is scrappy. You think about some of those tech companies we just talked about: tens of thousands of employees, sometimes hundreds of thousands of employees. At Spotify, we’re 8,000 or 9,000 people. And I know from experience that it is a lot easier to turn around a speed boat than it is a cruise ship.

We’re able to be nimble and flexible and move in that way. It’s definitely a pro. And because all the people that I work with are tapped into other projects, we’re able to bring that to thought leadership. This makes it much more connected to business outcomes, to business priorities, to what we’re trying to achieve as an overall company, instead of just in the silo.

Advocating for Thought Leadership

Bob: So was it hard to argue to leadership — or was that Marion’s job before you? — that Spotify needed somebody in charge of thought leadership?

Jenny: Yes. And Marion’s so good at what she does. I worked with her when she was at Spotify, so the idea of thought leadership research was already embedded in us.

I think the challenge with any company is asking how what we do in any role ladders up to revenue, growth, and other key priorities and metrics for the business. That was the battle I had to fight. It was to say, “I want this to be a priority for Spotify. I want this to be measurable, something we can prove its value and worthy.”

I’m sure you know, in your job, that’s an ongoing battle. It’s really important to have alignment early on with leadership on what thought leadership is. [We’re] continuing to work through that. But I’m thrilled with how supportive the organization has been to have me in this role, and to be able to not only create the content, but then go out and share it, and to make sure that we’re getting Spotify in front of that audience that we care so much about.

Bob: A lot of people will say to me, “Thought leadership research — isn’t that the same thing as market research?” I tell them that when you do market research, you don’t share that with the public. You keep it to yourself if the research is to help you with your brand, to fix a product that’s not selling well, or to figure why a marketing campaign is not doing well. But with thought leadership research, you go public with it because you are trying to move an audience to think differently about some issue.

Jenny: Absolutely. And if you have a point of view that you think is going to better the world or better the industry, it’s best that everyone has access to it. That’s my belief.

The Thrill of Storytelling

Bob: What aspects of your job do you like the most, and why?

Jenny: I’ll first say that this is my dream job. I love what I do. I couldn’t say that for some of my career. I’ve been at Spotify for 12 years. I wasn’t happy for all those years, to be very clear. But I’m so happy in my current role, which I’ve held for the past two or three years. I love the work. I feel much more connected to what we’re doing as a company, and I’m passionate about driving business outcomes within that role.

My favorite parts of the job are the storytelling. I love being able to take the research and think about the larger picture. Instead of looking at a stat or data point, [I love] thinking about the insight and what that leads to. I also love the opportunity to inspire people with that thought leadership. I see people’s eyes light up when I explain something — a piece that we’ve done or a POV that we have. Seeing the shift is really exciting.

I believe everyone on Earth is given a skill and a talent, and that it’s meant to be used for good — not hidden under a bushel basket, but shared with the world. I believe mine are speaking, storytelling, and inspiring people. And so, I’m thrilled that in this role I get to do that, and do it in a way that helps the business. I wanted to do this job at Spotify for a long time. But it took the intersection of my passion and my skill and the business need and the right timing for that to come to fruition. I’m thrilled.

Why Sound is Making a Comeback

Bob: I’ve read “The Sound-On Era” report and think it’s excellent. Great work. You had said recently on LinkedIn that it was your favorite research report. What was about it that you loved, and why it is important now for Spotify and its brands?

Jenny: “The Sound-On Era” was a big research project. It took us six to nine months to build this and get it out in the world, which in tech is a pretty long time. It’s kind of like dog years.

It takes a long time to build something of worth. The research included 5,000 consumer responses, 105 marketer POVs, as well as 30 interviews with these experts. And the purpose of it was to show marketers where the future of media is going.

To do that, we had to start with history — this idea that voice was our original interface. Before we scrolled, we spoke. Before we typed, we listened. And then the screen era took over. It was a time of optimizing for clicks and feeds, and we got faster and more measurable, which was great.

But we also lost attention. It splintered. In the era we’re in, now the Sound-On Era, voice and sound have been restored as our fundamental interface. It’s because technology has finally caught up with us, not because we’re rejecting it. What I love about this research it is that [sound] is such a part of our core DNA at Spotify. It is a continuation of who we are.

Seeing Around the Corner

Jenny: “The Sound-on Era” research looks around the corner. I think a lot of research understandably focuses on what has happened or what is happening right now. We tried to look in the future a little bit more and see what’s coming, so marketers can prepare for that. I love that kind of work.

If anyone tells you they can predict the future, they’re usually wrong. But we have the responsibility to have a hypothesis about it. It’s absolutely fine if we’re wrong, but we need to be brave and take that risk and look ahead.  I feel like this is one of the first times we’ve done this as a company. Maybe we’ll be right. Maybe we’ll be wrong. But we really believe in building toward something. This research reflects who we are as a company.

I believe we’ve given marketers an understanding that the sound-on era is already here. And as audio becomes more active and interactive, if your brand doesn’t have a sound-on strategy, it’s simply not being heard. We’re giving marketers the research to show that this is coming and a strategy to meet them in that moment.

Bob: This kind of research helps your organization reduce the chances of being blindsided by a startup or an existing company — an Apple or wherever – that comes out of nowhere with you guys not even recognizing what they’re doing.

Jenny: This is why vision and mission is so important at a company. Spotify’s mission is to “deliver creativity — one note, one voice, one idea at a time.” And I love that vision because in that mission statement, we’re likely never going to achieve it, and that’s okay. We’re not supposed to. It’s supposed to be something you can continue to work on, strive towards, and move forward.

Secondly, if we know our mission, that’s going to enable us — just like you’ve said, Bob — to avoid being taken by surprise. We can stay laser focused on what we’re doing while keeping an eye on everything outside. Internally, galvanizing around that one mission will put us in a much better place.

‘I hope our company looks different in 10 years, because in tech, if you don’t move at speed, you’re dead. If you don’t continue to innovate, you’ll be gone.’

Bob: What are the new opportunities here with within your vision? It seems to me that in 10 years Spotify will be doing things it had no idea about today.

Jenny: Yes, and I’m proof of that. When I started 12 years ago, we were a music company, period. At the end, that was how people knew us, which makes a lot of sense. That’s when a lot of people fell in love with the brand. We were this, this antidote to piracy. That was why the company was founded. We wanted to make sure you could support and get access to all the world’s music.

Now we have podcasts. We have over 7 million podcasts on platforms, several hundred thousand of which are video just like this one. We have audio books. You think about an industry – publishing — that hadn’t had a ton of innovation. The feedback we’ve had from bringing audio books to our platform has been so positive. They’re telling us that their audience base is younger than it’s ever been, because we’re giving access to a new generation of readers.

We’ve got music videos. We have all sorts of technologies, some of which I can’t talk about because they are still building. But, yes…I hope our company looks different in 10 years, because in tech, if you don’t move at speed, you’re dead. If you don’t continue to innovate, you’ll be gone.

Bob: That’s got to be part of the excitement of working at Spotify versus, say, an ad agency. While some ad agencies move faster than others, they don’t have the same pressure that a tech company like a Netflix, Facebook, or Spotify has to keep innovating, right?

Jenny: Absolutely. It means there are pros and cons to everything you know.

The 3 Rs of Authentic Thought Leadership

Bob: When I sent you a bunch of questions for this podcast, you had a question for me, which I thought was better than the questions I sent to you. It was about the implications of a growing world of AI slop for thought leadership professionals. You mentioned the importance of genuine thought leadership. Are you seeing slop in thought leadership created by other organizations on the topic you’ve been creating points of view on?

Jenny: Yes. Take one look at LinkedIn, where everyone now thinks they’re a thought leader because they’ve put some AI, some LLM [large language model], on a topic. They get some engagement and call it “thought leadership.” That’s really performance rather than thought leadership, in my opinion. The internet made information available and free to everyone. The same thing is happening with LLMs. If every company has access to the same LLMs, processed and trained by the same internet, and now running on the same outputs and expressions of that data, their content will appear in a sea of sameness. Genuine thought leadership requires research, rigor, and risk. Proprietary research is something that Spotify is really good at. We have incredibly rich audience insights that are not available on the web. It is proprietary. It is closed.

As I said, we spent six to nine months working on this research. That’s rigor. Having real experts on our research team is incredible, and so is working with external partners who can raise the credibility of it. One of my favorite parts of our project was working with other experts who are a lot smarter than I am.  I just tried to keep up and learn from what they were sharing with me.

If you are saying something that’s already been said, it is likely not thought leadership. I believe thought leadership requires having a unique perspective. This is where a lot of companies fall down. There’s a lot of fear to the effect of, “If we say something [new], we’re going to be held to that. If we say something wrong, we’re going to look like idiots.”

What has moved culture forward is people taking educated guesses, people having hypotheses and seeing if they pan out. If no one experimented, nothing would have been discovered. So I’m a big believer in thought leadership that takes that risk.

The Impact of AI on the Profession

Bob: So let’s talk about genuine thought leadership and its three Rs: research, rigor, and risk. What does that mean going forward? Has the bar is raised because we’ve had chat GPT since November of 2022?

Jenny: Bob, you were early on this. You’ve said that because AI is raising the bar on mediocre content, it’s raising the prevalence of mediocre content, which means the bar for genuine thought leadership goes even higher. I think that’s great news, because it elevates the importance of thought leadership roles in a company. It elevates the importance of thought leadership research and marketing, this idea of putting out unique perspectives in the world.

The challenge, I think, is going to be what you and I have already talked about. We believe thought leadership should be accessible to everyone, which means it becomes part of the internet, which means it gets pulled in by LLMs, which means your unique point of view then becomes everyone else’s point of view.

What I keep thinking about is: How we can ensure we continue to have unique perspectives on what’s happening in the world, in the industry and marketing, and to keep doing it in a way that still feels authentic and fresh? It’s difficult. And in my view, it means you have to keep doing unique and in-depth research.

The good news is that we already have a parallel model internally at Spotify. If I think about the music industry, curating used to be done just by humans — making mix tapes. I remember making a mixed CD when I had a crush on a guy. Then AI came along, and it did really well at Spotify, which is continuing to keep human judgment as part of the equation.

So, yes — AI absolutely helps us. Our company is built on LLM personalization. We’ve been using AI 20 years before a lot of other brands did. Now, it’s table stakes. What I’m finding, and what our research found, is that human taste is now being elevated as this very scarce asset and a more valuable currency.

It makes a lot of sense. You can tell AI your preferences. You can tell it your intent. You can tell it your emotions. It does not understand human taste. In the same way, on the editorial side of the house, we have a team of over 100 editors actively exercising human taste.

I believe that same approach is critical for content, for thought leadership, for research, if we don’t have the human taste as part of it, people will be able to sniff it out a mile away. This, to me, is more validation for thought leadership as a role, as a career — this path for better business outcomes.

Versatility gets you compliments. Focus gets you a career. Focus gets you results. Focus gets you impact. And so that really changed my perspective.

Best Career Advice

Bob: In a LinkedIn post that you wrote in 2024, you said the greatest career advice you’ve ever received was about the need to focus. Now, I’ve heard this advice aimed at me for decades. I multitask. I read multiple things. I blame the web. You had wondered why, despite getting praised for your work up to that time, you had not been promoted.

Jenny: I’d been at Spotify a few years. I was getting great reviews in my development talks from my managers, I was getting good feedback from my peers. But I wasn’t getting promoted, and I was starting to get a little impatient, which has always been a thorn in my side. I went to our head of marketing and said, “Hey, I could really use your advice. I’m getting all this great feedback. I’m doing great work. It’s not that I think I’m great. People are telling me and supporting me in that. Why aren’t I getting promoted?”

He looked at me, and I’ll always remember this, and said, “You’re right, Jenny. You are doing great work. But you’re doing a little bit of great work in all these areas, instead of diving deep into one area. You need to focus.” It stung a little bit because up until that point I thought that versatility had been my superpower. I was able to do all these different things and do them well, for the most part. But what that taught me is that versatility gets you compliments. Focus gets you a career. Focus gets you results. Focus gets you impact. And so that really changed my perspective.

I decided to focus on the intersection of research, strategy, and storytelling. Instead of trying to do everything really well, my idea was to focus on one thing that I do really well, and that’s this work.

I’m still so grateful for that piece of advice. It’s gotten me where I am today, and it’s continuing to help me grow and move and deliver great work.

Bob: I understand the attitude perfectly of “I need to deliver more value — to keep my job, to keep getting raises – to give a company everything I think it the company needs, and in which I could play a role.” Plus, I have a short attention span; I get bored really quickly. So, if somebody says, “Let’s do this, or I have an idea, yeah, I’ll do that, along with the 12 other things,” I would do it.

I totally understand the sentiment. However, you never become a master of anything if you’re a utility infielder, to use baseball terminology. You are not going to get a full-time position, and you’re not going to get paid the big bucks like a Shohei Ohtani.

Jenny: As a Dodgers fan, I find that a great analogy. What I’m really interested in is how this is going to change with AI. For years we’ve debated about generalists vs. specialists. I’ve done both in my career. As I see AI coming, I almost wonder if it becomes deep generalist — this idea that you can still have depth, but AI is going to give you access to more. It’s about how you express that thought leadership and your perspective and point of view. It’ll be interesting to see how that changes.

The Power of a Great Attitude

Bob: From what you’ve written and from what I can see, you are big on being an optimist about the world of work. And you had written somewhere your dad instilled this optimism in you.

Jenny: I’m one of four kids. I’m a triplet, and I have an older sister. Every night my dad would put up a quote by Charles Swindoll on our bathroom mirror. It’s called “Attitude,” and it is ingrained in me.

I can recite it from memory: “The most important thing we have in life is our attitude. Attitude, to me, is more important than education, than money, than circumstances, than success, than failure. It is more importance than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a church, a company, a home. The remarkable thing is that we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we can embrace for that day. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I’m convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you. You are in charge of your attitude.”

Bob: So did you believe it back then?

Jenny:  No, of course not. I thought it was so stupid. But now, I think this is the challenge of life. It’s only as we get older that we appreciate what we had when we were young. I’m so grateful for that, because my career has shown me that attitude is one of the few things that no reorg, no restructure, no recession, can take away from me. So having a good attitude, being optimistic has propelled my career.

Another thing I think a lot about is discernment, this idea of being thoughtful about what you do in your life. When people come to me and ask for career advice, they want to know, “How do I climb the ladder? How do I get that role?” My first response is “Should you get that role?” I think a lot of ladders lead where you might not want to go. And so discernment is knowing when to climb up the ladder or walk past it.

This idea of “I can control my attitude. I can discern thoughtfully about my career and my impact on the world” — those two things have really helped me.

Staying Positive as AI Transforms Jobs

Bob: What’s your advice for others who have become negative about their work, their company, the economy – especially because of the fear of AI? A neighbor of ours asked us to open up their house to an insurance adjuster because of snow-related damage. The insurance adjuster said to me, “AI is really going to change this profession oflooking at claims and insurance claims.” We got into a discussion about how that could be possible…Somebody has to go out and size things up and tell the insurance company, “Yeah, it’s legitimate damage.” But that little anecdote shows how some people are really afraid that AI is going to take their jobs, even in roles where you might think AI couldn’t do the work.

What’s your advice for others who are trying to crack this world of work – including getting into this profession of thought leadership?

Jenny: First, I’ll remind everyone that there have always been difficult times. Any time a large innovation comes along, there are casualties. I think about the automobile. When the automobile started, there were casualties left and right. People didn’t understand the power of them. They didn’t have seat belts. If you look back at that time, they were transitioning from horse and carriage to automobile.

Look where we are now. I think we are going through that same transition, where there are going to be difficulties. I encourage people not to focus on the negative, and to start looking forward and seeing what you can do to prepare for and get ahead of it.

Specifically in getting work in thought leadership, I have a lot of people messaging me on LinkedIn asking, “How did you get in your job?” Like, “I want your job. How did you do it?”

Three things really helped me. The first one, and I’m not just saying this because I’m on your podcast — I would say this anywhere – is to get your book, “Competing on Thought Leadership.” When I pitched this job to my head of marketing, and she said, “Yes,” I then thought, “Uh oh. Like what is thought leadership? What am I supposed to be doing?” I googled books on thought leadership, and your book was the first one to come up. I’m so glad I read it because it just gave me a vocabulary, an architecture, a framework through which to view and then build Spotify’s thought leadership strategy.

That is the first piece of advice: Find experts who know a lot more than you do about what you want to do.

Bob: Of course, that’s music to my ears, so thank you. We should let everybody know I didn’t pay you to say that!

Jenny: No, no. When you reached out and invited me to the podcast, I thought, “What a full-circle moment,” because I’ve learned so much from you. It’s a joy to be able to share with others here.

Secondly, think about the impact that you want to drive. When I think about what I want to do at Spotify, I want to make sure the work I’m doing is tied to true business outcomes. Our thought leadership work can’t just be something pretty that appears on social media and our website. It has to make the sales team look more credible when they walk in the room. It has to get Spotify the first call when [a brand’s] CMO picks up the phone and wants to talk to us about restructuring their media mix. It really has to do a lot of work and heavy lifting.

If we connect that work to problems that advertisers are trying to solve, we’ll be in a better place. So think about the impact you want to drive and about how you can do that in your work.

The third thing is to have a point of view. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve interviewed, certainly at Spotify, where I ask them why they’re interested in the role, and they all say, “I just love music. I’m just a huge music fan.” And I’m like, “Well, yeah, you and millions of other people. What is your unique perspective? What are you bringing to this job? What are you thinking about that’s going to help the company?”

So, in everything, have a unique perspective. And this doesn’t mean to always be contrarian. I think [it’s something] social media has really empowered, and it’s not always a good thing. It’s important to have a point of view you believe in, that you can stand behind, not just to get clicks and engagement but to offer something special for people can think about.

Qualities of a Great Thought Leadership Professional

Bob: In my experience in thought leadership, people who are good at research often are not good at marketing those insights, and vice versa. How would you assess someone who’s looking for a thought leadership research role?

‘If anyone ever ends an interview with me and they have no questions, that’s a huge red flag.’

Jenny: I want to talk to someone who is asking good questions. They don’t have to have the right answers. That’s fine, I would say. But I want someone who’s really curious, who’s asking the right questions that can help us either get to the right answer or just pose the question. Spotify can be the moderator of that conversation in the industry. We don’t need to know everything. But we need to be bringing the right questions.

I always look for someone who’s curious. If anyone ever ends an interview with me and they have no questions, that’s a huge red flag. I want to be around people who make me more curious, who teach me new things and help me think about things differently.

On the marketing side of the house, it’s good storytellers. I want people who can reframe problems, who can use comparison and analogy to help me see something in a new way. People who are really gifted in language. I can tell when people have rehearsed for something using AI, because they’re using the same framework, or the M dash, pause — things like that. I want people who sound different, who are bringing a unique perspective in the stories they tell.

Bob: What’s your outlook on the thought leadership profession in companies like yours, the Netflix’s of the world, the Apple podcasts of the world? Do you see a growing role for people doing what you’re doing?

Jenny: I do and I’ll tell you why. Our industry has always ebbed and flowed, and right now the pendulum is swinging very far to AI data scale. Inevitably it is going to swing back, as it already is, to human, to quality, to storytelling. You need people and roles like mine to help do that work in an authentic way. I think our industry needs more roles like this. I know I’m biased, but I really do believe in  this idea that humans have always shared stories, stories, voice, and sound — our original interface. It’s going to come back to that, and the companies that prepare for it now are going to be ready for it.

From Thought Leadership to Sales Growth

Bob: Any questions you have for me, since you have read my book?

Jenny: Yes, a few. I’m really curious about your perspective on whether all thought leadership should drive revenue, or if some thought leadership should simply help drive awareness consideration for a brand. This is the ongoing debate at Spotify in our industry.

Bob: Thought leadership should drive revenue, by helping you market and sell and get customers for the services you’re already offering today. And it should raise awareness of a trend. In your “Sound-On Era” research report, I saw it as being about how marketing through audio media is far more than the traditional radio marketing. The 5% of total media revenue, or whatever, that radio used to get – in this Sound-On Era, it needs to be much more. 

But thought leadership research, while it’s great at comparing best-practice with worst-practice case studies, should also lead to new services. In your case, there’s so much to learn by comparing best and worst practices among advertisers and the agencies who are getting the most mileage out of Spotify and those that are not getting nearly the revenue impact. I believe the learnings could turn into new services or new features of existing services at Spotify.

Jenny: This is a really interesting approach to it. The challenge in tech, and we have it at Spotify, is we’ve got our B2C (selling services to consumers) and our B2B. A lot of our B2B audience fell in love with our B2C brand as users, as fans. So they want to be sold to. They want to hear what Spotify, the brand, is thinking about; what Spotify, the brand, is looking to in the future. They don’t want to hear sometimes about media formats or CPMs or things like that.

Striking that balance can be really tough. I remember reading your book and thinking, “Wow, this is so great that Bob is so aware of the revenue piece of this.” This isn’t like fluffy content. This is actually driving business outcomes. Can you do that without being too salesy?

Bob: Yes, in fact, the more you sell, the more you repel. The insights have to drive people to say, “I need to talk to you guys. You’ve done this study of — just hypothetically – on what advertisers that get the most impact from Spotify are doing differently. We’re only doing 10% of the things that you recommend that the best they’re doing. And we want to talk to you guys about how can we incorporate some of these best practices.”

Because those best-practice advertisers — they’re not going to help them. You guys are in a good position to do that, right on the on the basis of doing research and uncovering insights in an area that nobody really has studied before.

Jenny, thank you for an enlightening interview!

Jenny:  Thank you, Bob!