“As we’re all witnessing right now, especially with AI, it all comes back down to: are you an exceptional storyteller?” In this episode, Lauren Everitt shares how Okta stood up a lean newsroom inside comms, why the team favors second‑day analysis over breaking news, how C‑suite video replaces hard‑to‑ship case studies, and where AI meaningfully shortens prep without diluting judgment or voice.
Okta moved core editorial work from marketing to comms and launched a six‑person newsroom in April. The mandate: authoritative storytelling that earns attention and helps CISOs/CIOs act. The team partners closely with Okta Threat Intelligence, executives, and customers to publish:
AI supports research, outlining, and personalization; humans do the final 30–40%: voice, nuance, judgment. An AI governance council and mandatory Okta University training enforce voice, tone, and usage rules across the company.
Lauren Everitt is Director of the Newsroom at Okta, where she leads a lean editorial team inside the comms org. Her team partners with executives, customer marketing, and Okta Threat Intelligence to publish timely analysis, short‑form video, and flagship reports (including Businesses at Work).
Previously, Lauren helped launch thought leadership at Slack during its high‑growth years and Salesforce acquisition. She began her career in journalism (including stints in South and East Africa), a background that informs her focus on sourcing, interviewing, and story craft.
A look inside Okta’s newsroom, from editorial stance to operating model. Here are the highlights:
For Lauren, their competitive edge iis taste. She hires ex-journalists because they bring a nose for the story: they source better, ask sharper questions, and know the “money quote” when they hear it.
Six people, new mandate, and a simple rule: show impact fast or stop asking for more budget. That P&L mindset shows up in the work: clear priorities, sharp measurement, and deliverables tied to outcomes.
Rather than competing with trade publications on breaking news, Okta's newsroom has carved out a different editorial niche: "second-day coverage." Others might rush to publish first reports of security incidents, but Lauren's team focuses on analysis, context, and actionable insights that help CISOs and CIOs make better decisions.
Okta's Executive Exchange video series emerged from a practical problem: traditional case studies kept getting bogged down in legal approvals and never saw the light of day. These videos are less “what we shipped,” more “how leaders think.” Executive Exchange puts decision logic on camera — how a CISO frames a risk, how a CTO evaluates AI — which audiences find far more valuable than product demonstrations.
AI handles the grunt work for Lauren’s team: pulling background, shaping outlines, surfacing the best quotes. Humans handle the last 30–40%: voice, judgment, and the edits that make a piece feel alive. It’s a pragmatic split that speeds things up without flattening everything into the same tone.
Okta’s team uses AI to handle initial drafts and derivative content (ads, emails, social posts), then hand off to product marketers, campaign leads, or agencies for final refinement. This model keeps velocity up across teams without letting quality slide.
With 6,000 employees potentially creating content, Okta has built brand governance with real enforcement mechanisms. Okta University makes voice-and-tone training mandatory, and it escalates if you’re late: first to your manager, then up the chain. Pair that with an AI council that sets usage rules, and you get consistency at scale without routing every last asset through brand for approval.
This season on the Animalz Podcast, we’re pulling back the corporate curtain to show you how the largest, most complex B2B SaaS teams actually get content out the door. Our mission: demystify these hidden machines and reveal what it really takes to run content at scale.
Hear from content leaders of some of the biggest names in SaaS sharing the systems they've built, the battles they've fought, and the lessons they've learned along the way.
Check out other episodes in the season here
The Reeder (Devin Reed) (01:58): A go‑to newsletter for audience empathy and voice inspiration.
Content Marketing Institute (02:19): Consistently strong editorial Lauren reads.
Minuscule (02:34): A personal media pick: short, dialogue-free animated stories about insects.
Tim’s Africa Documentary Project (10:58): An early-2000s web series filmed and edited in Africa, capturing a first-time visitor’s perspective through weekly on-the-spot storytelling.
Businesses at Work Report (15:02): Okta’s decade-long flagship data report, now managed by the newsroom team.
Okta Secure Identity Commitment (16:05): Company‑wide initiative informing newsroom themes.
Executive Exchange (17:16): Short‑form C‑suite video interviews with customers and Okta leaders.
Oktane (23:14): Annual flagship event; this year’s plan includes broadcast‑style video recaps.
Jasper (27:28): AI assistant used for drafts, personalization, and derivatives.
Okta University (30:54): Internal training enforcing voice/tone and AI usage policies.
Wickstrom Dairies video (32:51): Slack customer story filmed on a Northern California dairy farm, showing how the farm coordinates milking and operations entirely through Slack.
Follow Lauren Everitt on LinkedIn.
Lauren Everitt [00:00]:
It comes back down to like, are you an exceptional storyteller? Like, isn't it an exceptional story? Does it follow the traditional narrative? I think with journalism, it's so instilled in you, so you know how to tell great stories, especially with AI content. People are really intrigued about how to think about problems or how people approach problems. So if you can kind of like share how these leaders are like approaching a problem or approaching AI, and take people along the journey with you, I think there's some really cool content that you can get from that.
Ty Magnin [00:28]:
Welcome to the Animals podcast. I'm Tim Magnin.
Tim Metz [00:31]:
And I'm Tim.
Ty Magnin [00:31]:
Tim's in this season on the Animals podcast. We're pulling back the corporate curtain to show you how the largest, most complex B2B SaaS teams actually get content out the door here from content leaders of some of the biggest names in SaaS, sharing the systems they built, the battles they fought, and the lessons they learned along the way. Today we're sitting down with Lauren Everett.
Ty Magnin [00:52]:
Lauren is the former director of content marketing at Octa. She just a few weeks ago switched into a role where she's leading their newsroom effort, which you'll hear plenty about today. Lauren has been in charge with actor's global content strategy for years, and before Okta, she led content marketing at slack through many of their boom years before the IPO and the acquisition by Salesforce.
Ty Magnin [01:13]:
In this episode, Lauren shares how her background in journalism led her to where she is, what her role at Okta has evolved to, and how AI has had an impact in how content marketing is structured and performs there. And she also shares how video is becoming a more important part of her content marketing mix. I really hope you stay tuned for the entirety of this episode.
Ty Magnin [01:35]:
It's a great one. Enjoy! Lauren Everett, thank you so much for joining us today on the Animals podcast. You know this, we always start with the same question, and it's, it's a doozy. What content are you consuming lately? Yeah.
Lauren Everitt [01:49]:
Well, thank you guys so much for having me. Really excited to be here. Gosh, I think from, like, a professional perspective, I've been following the reader a lot by Devin Reed, formerly of gone. I just think he has such a fun point of view and voice. And when it comes to like, audience empathy and like really knowing your reader, he does it so extraordinarily well.
Lauren Everitt [02:09]:
Both pivoting from sales to now, like marketing to other content folks. And once I have a chance to interview him. So, obviously a bit partial, but, him and then Tommy Walker with Content Marketing Institute, just like reading, great writing. So I'm kind of on, like a New York or Atlantic binge right now. I have two small children, so there is a lot of Miss Rachel and Cocomelon in their household, unfortunately.
Lauren Everitt [02:32]:
But yeah, the cartoon called minuscule. No, no, no, it's very but it's like for kids, but enjoyable for adults too. It's like a little exotic and it's about little insects in their lives.
Tim Metz [02:43]:
Oh, that sounds cool.
Lauren Everitt [02:45]:
It's fine.
Ty Magnin [02:45]:
We both have. Yeah, we got some little kids too, so maybe we'll check.
Tim Metz [02:48]:
They're going to check it out.
Lauren Everitt [02:49]:
Yeah, sure. I don't know, like five minute snippets. And it's it's there's no voice, but the sounds are very hyper realistic anyway. It's worth checking out.
Ty Magnin [02:58]:
Cool. YouTube.
Lauren Everitt [03:00]:
Yeah. YouTube. I think Netflix even. But if you look on YouTube, it's crazy because there's like 14 million views, so I'd never heard of it. But I'm like, apparently it's doing really well. So, yeah, it's a thing.
Ty Magnin [03:12]:
Nice. I like it. And, would you give a short intro for the audience that doesn't know you yet?
Lauren Everitt [03:17]:
Yeah, sure. I'm Lauren Everett, director of content marketing at Octa. Prior to octa, I was a slack. And I'm kind of follow my careers. Followed a very familiar story, I think, on here. So I was initially a journalist and then transitioned over to content marketing. I've had a pretty peripatetic career, so I would say if I just, like, pick out a few inflection points or defining moments, I think one of them was, being a journalist and Southern and East Africa.
Lauren Everitt [03:45]:
I think it taught me to be very scrappy. Still a lot of perseverance. And then also, I worked for time with John Byrne, who's, was the EIC for Fast Company Businessweek for a time. So it was one of his first employees and startup. He's just a magnificent interviewer, a great mentor. So I learned quite a bit from him.
Lauren Everitt [04:02]:
And then prior to joining Octa, I was at slack as a senior content marketing manager. And there I launched a lot of their thought leadership initiatives, which I am very bullish on reports, as I'm sure we'll like, uncover during this conversation. And I think a lot of that stems from that very early experience. But yeah, that's that's me in a nutshell.
Ty Magnin [04:18]:
So you've noticed too, in Tim and I were just talking about this before you hopped on that there is like, kind of a path into becoming an enterprise content leader. It seems like. I don't know, Tim. What do you think 60% of the folks that we interviewed this season have mentioned that their background is in journalism. Would you agree or maybe hire a higher percentage?
Tim Metz [04:38]:
Yeah, I think, you know, I let's say I think 50 or 60%. Yeah, definitely.
Ty Magnin [04:41]:
And so Lauren, what's up with that. Like why do you think that is the case.
Lauren Everitt [04:45]:
That's a really great question. I think part of it is like to excel at this job, you have to be highly, I think, inquisitive and curious about the world around you, especially when I think about like sourcing story ideas. There are so many experts within and within the business that a lot of times we are very like external focused, even within the confines of the company and sourcing story ideas.
Lauren Everitt [05:09]:
And I think it's almost like putting on your journalism cap, because I, I can tell you what I think the story is for like an identity security company. But then we had this other threat intelligence team who's like sole job. Is that so if you kind of come in with this like interview or a journalism perspective and you build out your Rolodex, you just kind of know how to sniff out the really good storytelling.
Lauren Everitt [05:29]:
And I do think storytelling is such an art form. And even with all as we're all witnessing right now, especially with I like, it all boils back and it all comes back down to like, are you an exceptional storyteller? Like, is it an exceptional story, doesn't follow the traditional narrative arc. And I think with journalism, it's so instilled in you.
Lauren Everitt [05:47]:
So you know how to tell great stories, whereas sometimes when I've hired folks who have a more pure marketing background, it's a little bit harder to instill. Like, I can teach the marketing tactics and the tools and like how you build out a messaging framework and how you build out like a content journey. Those things are much easier to teach than to instill, like a hunch for telling a great story or like kind of when you're Spidey senses go off and you're like, oh, that's the quote.
Lauren Everitt [06:09]:
Like, that's the mining quote. That stuff's harder to teach, I think. So that may be why journalists tend to kind of excel in this role. Also in the journalism industry right now is not great. So I think other people are jumping ship. Yeah. Myself included.
Ty Magnin [06:24]:
There. Can you tell us a little bit more about your Africa chapter?
Lauren Everitt [06:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Love to talk about that. I think my, my two goals going into that where I wanted to do, I wanted to write and I knew I wanted to live in Africa. So, specifically South Africa, and then I transitioned to Rwanda and then Kenya. So I did like a six, seven month internship in South Africa, where I was writing for a magazine called The Big Issue.
Lauren Everitt [06:48]:
And then I did a year as an online editor for All Africa Nairobi. And that was a really, really cool experience because we were building out the team and it was similar to like Huffington Post, like kind of a content aggregator for all the news happening. But then we got a lot of development grants that we were also doing a lot of original reporting, and I've mostly focused on, like health and international development.
Lauren Everitt [07:08]:
So that was really cool. And then I also that's where I made the switch over into content marketing when I was when I was working in Rwanda, I was freelancing there. And I got connected with this sort of startup that was kind of billing itself as like the LinkedIn for young professionals in East Africa. That was their first full time employee, and we didn't really have a product yet, but we were trying to build kind of this two sided audience.
Lauren Everitt [07:29]:
So both for hiring managers and for job applicants. It's like the only thing that existed for a long time was this career magazine that I ran. It was just me. And it was so cool because it was the sandbox where it's like, if you did one thing, you could immediately see the implications of it. Like, if you publish on this topic, you could see how it perform, and if you promote it over Facebook, and if you put paid promotion or if you did a wiki page or if you like, you know, made a syndication deal and then you could directly see the impact.
Lauren Everitt [07:54]:
So I think just being forced to do all those things has really helped me in my career, because it's like it gives you enough knowledge to kind of understand where things are coming from and which levers you can pull. But yeah, it was just a very formative, fun experience. And I learned so much.
Ty Magnin [08:09]:
Yeah, yeah, the early stage stuff really can inform what you end up doing later, I think, because like you, I don't know. For me it like helped drive kind of a nose for revenue. Like always being able to chase a number two. Like feeling growth in momentum. Exactly. And then also like you kind of know you learn a little bit about all the functions within marketing, you know, and how it all connects.
Ty Magnin [08:29]:
And it's harder to get that when you are just like purely at a larger enterprise.
Lauren Everitt [08:33]:
Oh, exactly. And I transitioned from there. And just like I was so used to doing everything, like writing all the social copy, creating the post, creating the newsletter, creating my own images in Canva, and then finally the art team was like, we appreciate you trying, but please stop creating this garbage. And I heard you were good. Like I was using like early Canva days.
Lauren Everitt [08:52]:
And anyway, a lot of stock imagery.
Tim Metz [08:55]:
But what's the story there? How do you how do you go from from there to slack? It sounds like a big like like I.
Lauren Everitt [09:02]:
Yeah.
Tim Metz [09:02]:
From Africa.
Lauren Everitt [09:03]:
To Slack. I will I kind of the time was wrapping up in Rwanda and like the startup, we sort of ran out of funding and started to do, and so then I was moving back and my now husband was in San Francisco. So I was kind of figuring on my next move, move with him. Also doing a lot of freelancing.
Lauren Everitt [09:19]:
And then I had been using slack the whole time I was in Rwanda and was like, it's completely infatuated with the product. And then they posted the job description for basically content editor. So I was super excited, applied for that. And I still I'm very close with, my hiring manager, who actually followed October's VP of Kind of Content for author, and now she's at a sauna.
Lauren Everitt [09:38]:
I still have no idea where she hired me because I would not have hired me based on my resume. But she was also a former journalist, and she was, like, really excited about my journalism experience. And then the editing test and interview process. She extended an offer. So, yeah, I was there pre IPO and Salesforce acquisition.
Lauren Everitt [09:56]:
So it's a really wild ride. So much fun. A lot has changed, you know, since I was there, but it was pretty cool to be. We had a lot of when I joined the team, it was, you know, kind of the halcyon days where you're like, flush with all this investment and you're about to IPO. So you have like unlimited budgets and you can just try all these really cool content experiment like experiments.
Lauren Everitt [10:18]:
And it was it was a wild and especially coming from nonprofits of Rwanda. And then like following like benefits. I was like, are you kidding me? I remember someone complaining cause we only got like $2,000 or something for our office stipend of, like, I can't buy a chair for less than a thousand. I'm like, you can go to Walmart and buy a chair for $20.
Lauren Everitt [10:37]:
Yeah. Coming off of, like, my journalism nonprofit salary.
Ty Magnin [10:41]:
But yeah. Yeah. Different lifestyle.
Lauren Everitt [10:43]:
I'm sure. There you go. Just up where it's very quickly.
Ty Magnin [10:46]:
Okay, so I actually I've got to pause and turn into Tim for a minute because, Tim, I didn't know you've lived in Africa for any period of time, and I've known you for quite a while. Yeah. Catch me up, bud.
Tim Metz [10:57]:
Well, I went to Africa in 2005, and I was just like, I'm going to do my own internet documentary project. So I took my camera and I took my laptop. I was a video maker at that time. And then I basically made kind of documentary, but on the spot. So I would like film for a week, and then I would edit it and I'd put it online, and then I would continue.
Tim Metz [11:16]:
But so it's not like episode. It's kind of like an ongoing story, but it kind of also created itself as I was there. So and I just kind of went like, I don't know anything about Africa, and I'm just going to film how I go there. It's like any random person from the West would go there and then just like, you know, what is different, what it's like.
Ty Magnin [11:31]:
For vlogs were vlogs.
Tim Metz [11:33]:
Yeah, because there was no like YouTube was kind of like, I mean, it's kind of existed, but not really. And there was no social media. So like I just had a website and I put it there and then when people would come to it and then they're kind of word of mouth, and when it went quite well, actually, it was quite nice.
Tim Metz [11:47]:
The videos are still there. I will put it in the show notes if you want, but this is like two and 5 to 6, so I don't know what. When were you in, in Nairobi you said.
Lauren Everitt [11:54]:
Oh gosh 2011 in 2012.
Tim Metz [11:57]:
Oh okay. Okay. So it's a bit like yeah.
Ty Magnin [12:00]:
Yeah.
Lauren Everitt [12:00]:
Yeah. Been in like yeah yeah yeah. 2011 2012. So that's very cool. I'm excited to see the videos. Yeah.
Ty Magnin [12:07]:
Right. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for taking me down that down that rabbit hole a little ways. Let's talk about octa and then maybe we come back to slack. Sure. Yeah. I guess tell us about sort of the scale of octa now in terms of, like headcount, maybe at the total at the company and then also, your content team, like, what does that look like?
Lauren Everitt [12:24]:
Yeah, absolutely. I it's funny, I just Google that this morning I was like, I wonder if that question comes up and I don't think I know the answer. Oh 6000 and flag is 3000, which I when I think I joined slack, I was 1800, so I grew quite a bit. But but yeah. So we're 6000 that octa currently and we kind of it's an interesting kind of set up because we have our off zero content marketing team because they really have a different marketing motion.
Lauren Everitt [12:49]:
It's very much more bottoms up versus enterprise fire down. So they kind of do their own thing and are very focused on developer marketing. And it's pretty different motion from the octa side. And I've actually kind of made a very recent transition. So I joined as like the director of content marketing, traditional content marketing role. And then as of January of this year, I got an opportunity.
Lauren Everitt [13:09]:
Our STP of comms really wanted to invest in a newsroom. It's like a brand new project that would be run on the comms team. So I joined that pilot team. So I think I, out of habit, said direct our content marketing was actually director of the newsroom most like as a couple weeks ago. But, so that's when the title change went into effect.
Lauren Everitt [13:28]:
But yeah, we've been on that team since January and then launched the newsroom in April, and then my team consists of six people. So, we have editor, managing editor, our director. We just have some, like, operations kind of associate, full time writer. Reporter. So, yeah, I'm pretty nimble and lean. Team. Definitely. Especially as we transition away from marketing than this new project, I kind of have to prove our worth in order to get more investment in headcount, but scratch it.
Ty Magnin [13:56]:
And did you bring your whole team with you from marketing to comms?
Lauren Everitt [13:59]:
No. So not a few folks stayed. So initially I was also overseeing the social media team, and it made more sense for them to continue sitting on marketing. So they stayed as well as we had like a full time writer brand writer. So he stayed on the marketing to help kind of launch this new brand campaign. But yeah, so it's a pretty, pretty big transition.
Ty Magnin [14:18]:
Yeah. And did that, like leave any kind of hold behind within the marketing work or the rest of the organization?
Lauren Everitt [14:25]:
That was in terms of the marketing side, I think they're still working through, but a lot of it was absorbed either through like agency support or PPM or campaigns. I think we're really fortunate in that the PMS, like product marketers and campaigns team really lean into content creation, especially now with Sky, to get them to like a first draft or a lot of the derivative content.
Lauren Everitt [14:43]:
And we still oversee a lot of the large like flagship reports, reports, which then they'll draft us off of. But yeah, so there's definitely been some like reshuffling or reallocation of like responsibilities and roles and all of that. But yeah.
Ty Magnin [14:56]:
And did the big reports come with you like, the people when you guys do it's business that work great.
Lauren Everitt [15:01]:
Exactly. Businesses I work and that's like ten years in the making. So, yeah, it's come with us. We've always, like, kind of been our baby. So. And there's a big newsroom and earnings media play too. So that's what we're kind of able to like just by keeping it on the comp side, at least for now.
Ty Magnin [15:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. It will tell us more about, the kinds of stories that you're focusing in on now with this change of scope.
Lauren Everitt [15:25]:
Yeah. It's really exciting because with the newsroom, sort of the impetus behind it was to really build this owned content hub where we can really tell the arc the story, establish it as a credible authority in the space and like, really bring value to our readers. And so as a former journalist, like content, somebody who loves it, I mean, it's so much fun to kind of get to play in like top of funnel content land and not have to always go down and be thinking through, like the products, like, the customer case studies approve ROI in terms of like our content focus areas.
Lauren Everitt [15:57]:
What's been really cool is we're kind of like a few years ago we had this security incident, right. And as a security company, that's a big, big deal. And so then we launched this after secure identity commitment, and it basically revolutionized the way we work. I mean, from a day to day basis, it changes the way we approach things.
Lauren Everitt [16:12]:
And it's all about like, how do we not only secure, like, our infrastructure and how we work, but how do we elevate the industry with kind of knowledge about like threats and like, what are the implications of AI and how do like secure your identity infrastructure and what that looks like? And so a large part of our focus is like, how do we tap our experts, both internal and external, to really position ourselves as a leader in the space and really help educate the industry and our customers and our prospects?
Lauren Everitt [16:42]:
So it's been really cool. So a lot of like when I think about our content mix, we lean heavily on like a lot of our internal speakers and executives to really share, like, their thought leadership. We have a really close partnership with the Active Threat Intelligence team. So they're a fairly new team, but their whole focus is just like, what are the new and emerging threats?
Lauren Everitt [17:00]:
And I, I'm it's been really cool because we work with them to publish that content and package it up and like a really, like consumable format. And it's a nice cause we're also getting a lot of, like, earned media from that as well. And then we just launched this series called Executive Exchange. And so we really want to like, shake up their approach to customer videos.
Lauren Everitt [17:20]:
And with this series in particular, we interview like CISOs and CTOs and CIOs, basically those like C-suite titles that align with our target buyer personas, and like really go deep on a specific subject that may be top of mind for them. So maybe it's like, you know, the evolution of phishing, you're seeing like phishing attacks and things like that.
Lauren Everitt [17:40]:
But it's something that's like keeping CISOs awake at night. And here's what your peers are doing. So it's all these short video snippets, hearing from our executives, like elevating our customers and their knowledge, but at the same time, like bringing that really important knowledge to light for others to learn from. So it's really cool. Just next week, we'll launch a series with our CEO about how he's speaking about agenda AI and what that means for identity and spoiler alert, it's, it is a Wild West out there.
Ty Magnin [18:08]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I imagine it's really important for your persona in particular that you're writing for to be on top of this stuff.
Lauren Everitt [18:15]:
Oh, exactly. Exactly.
Tim Metz [18:17]:
It's not just about like, storytelling, but it's also about speed or not like to be really like being out quick with stories.
Lauren Everitt [18:22]:
Yeah, there is an element of that. I wouldn't say, like, I don't think we're trying to compete with some of like the trade publications that kind of like get things out and like, here's the latest hack. And then like, I guess we wouldn't do so much over the like ambulance chasing. But there are stories that do have like a time sensitive element to it.
Lauren Everitt [18:38]:
Like if we do hear, like there was this big kind of revelation about like generative AI being used by like, these North Korean like laptop farms to apply for jobs and massive unsecured debt.
Tim Metz [18:51]:
Wow.
Lauren Everitt [18:52]:
Yeah, yeah. I thought it was very timely. So we knew we needed to get something out pretty quickly because there was like or recently like Vercel, you know, that AI tool and people were using it to spin up these very like sophisticated looking websites that people were then logging into. So we wanted to sort of. So a lot of our stories do have a timeliness element to it, but we really try to provide like the second day coverage.
Lauren Everitt [19:11]:
So it's not that I don't think we would ever win in the competition to be like the first to break the news. But if we can provide maybe that analysis or commentary or like actionable insights, like that's where we see the newsroom providing value, if that makes sense.
Tim Metz [19:26]:
Yeah, I wrote to I wrote down ambulance chasing. I didn't know that term, but it immediately makes sense.
Lauren Everitt [19:33]:
For journalism journalists who are like very, very attuned to hear, it's like especially if it's like one of our like the is you see like your competitor getting hacked or something or something happened to them and you're like, oh, we should cover that thing. Like, well, yeah, okay, take a beat like we're not going to do it.
Ty Magnin [19:49]:
I'm curious about the video component that you mentioned. So you're doing some of these high quality videos, for this for the C-suite and probably you said customer videos too. So maybe there's like, a broader approach. How do you collaborate with video? I guess, like, tell me about your video programs. And I think a lot of people in content like, you know, where does video sit with them?
Ty Magnin [20:09]:
How do they how do they do video? So I'm curious to learn from you a little bit how you.
Lauren Everitt [20:13]:
Yeah, it's a to be honest, it's a very new motion for us when we were squarely on marketing and content marketing, our focus was written content. But with the newsroom, part of our mandate is also to pilot new content types and innovative storytelling techniques. And we've had a lot of support from leadership on that. So, you know, right, with that, as long as we can but I think in terms of video, I mean, one of the other driving factors is just I like, how are we still surfacing our content in the age of AI, where it's like there's a lot more competition for written content and videos, I think are still a little
Lauren Everitt [20:44]:
bit of the bar is a little higher. So it makes so it makes it stand out a little bit more. And also when we look at like performance two, we see a lot more traction, like on LinkedIn which is our primary account social channel with video is like no surprise. So we just kind of started some pretty straightforward pilots just to see.
Lauren Everitt [21:03]:
And then as we can like prove out the successful get more funding. But in terms of our video program, we really I think the big one was the executive exchange series. And with that one, we had tried written content and we just weren't seeing the metrics that we wanted and we just weren't seeing the performance. So that's when we kind of went back to our customer marketing lead, who's lovely to work with and has great relationships with our customers.
Lauren Everitt [21:23]:
And fortunately, at the time, they were also kind of trying to figure out because more customer, it's harder and harder to get customers to buy into a full case study because. Right, you have to get like so many approvals and through legal work. I mean, I think every content marketer knows, like you'll get a case study almost done within the customer side.
Lauren Everitt [21:41]:
They'll put the kibosh on it.
Ty Magnin [21:42]:
Half of them never see the light of day. Right. And then you have to, like, decide at a certain point, are we just going to anonymize this thing and publish it anyway?
Lauren Everitt [21:49]:
Exactly. And so what was nice about this is it's more focused on the individual and it's not so active. Okay. So especially with octo like people that want to share their security implementation and exactly like what they're doing to safeguard their infrastructure. And so what's the nice with this as we're just going deep on very high level topics that people still care about, and it's been very easy to get buy in from both customers like initially and to get sign off from their legal teams.
Lauren Everitt [22:15]:
So just from a lot of different angles, it made sense. So we started with that just because we had an agreement with customer marketing and it like was also furthering their goals to kind of get more customer content out there. We're expanding that now to really focus on our internal executives as well. We have some really, as I'm sure most like SAS companies do when you're talking to like your chief product officer or you're like, you know, like your CSO or your CTO, it's just one of the things that I've found to is like, especially with AI content is people don't there's so much already telling you, kind of like what to think that people
Lauren Everitt [22:49]:
are really intrigued about how to think about problems or how people approach problems. So if you can kind of like share how these leaders are like approaching a problem or approaching AI, and take people along the journey with you, I think there's some really cool content that you can get from that. So that's kind of our angle for executives.
Lauren Everitt [23:08]:
And then another kind of big bets that we're taking with video is historically like our big event is octane AI. Historically we've just done like the write off. And here's like the post event coverage. And here are the highlights. And here's all the product announcements. I think we realize, like all these other teams are doing the same thing like product marketing is going to do it.
Lauren Everitt [23:25]:
We're going to issue a press release and all the product announcements. I'm like, how do we like differentiate it and then differentiate it from like the online version. And so we're actually bringing in a broadcast journalist to do these video snippets and like same day recaps and then a highlights reel. She's like very high energy, very, you know, like recognized in the industry.
Lauren Everitt [23:44]:
So she's going to come in and do it because I'm like, how do we just capture the energy of someone who doesn't want to like, sit down and commit to the full live event? Can we do like a seven minute video that captures all the highlights in the product update, accompanied by like a 200 word article? So that's one of the other initiatives that I'm excited about to just try and like, see how it goes.
Ty Magnin [24:02]:
Yeah, I like it. Yeah. You're kind of in the place of, doing some experiments, even at your scale, right? Because of, you know, the change of demand. And I guess the way that content's being done and how to stand out.
Lauren Everitt [24:13]:
Right, exactly. I will say that's been one of the nice things about moving away from marketing is just because with marketing, it's already so prescribed. Like it's like, here's our personas and we need to like develop this full content, like full funnel content experience.
Ty Magnin [24:27]:
Report and for blog posts.
Lauren Everitt [24:29]:
Exactly, exactly like as you say that I'm like, oh yeah.
Ty Magnin [24:32]:
Like ordering a pizza.
Lauren Everitt [24:35]:
So it's been really cool because I've kind of like all cleared off the table and they were like, spin up a newsroom and build content for it. So then we're like, at first it's like kind of terrifying. So like, I have this blank site that I need to populate quickly. And how do we do it? That's really exciting.
Ty Magnin [24:50]:
It's exciting now. Yeah. Well, so I kind of want to back up and talk about the void left behind from, you know, before, like the content marketing motion now is different. And you mentioned that like AI is kind of helping fill in the gap, I guess, in a not so insignificant way. Can you tell us more about that?
Ty Magnin [25:09]:
I think a lot of folks are starting to see that an experience. It.
Lauren Everitt [25:13]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I will say, like often is not using AI to like draft content wholesale, but I think it has condensed a lot of the work, like the prep work. I know for us specifically, like all of the research and like interview questions and all those things, like a lot of times you can take a pretty massive shortcut by using it for that, even just like outlining, like you have customer interviews or an interview, and then you just kind of like feed it into whatever I or, that you're using, then you can make spit out the outline and the juiciest customer quotes.
Lauren Everitt [25:40]:
So I think we're using a lot there. And I have seen the marketing team and us as well lean in, especially on like derivative content. So historically when we would do a report, obviously, like every report has a tale of, I don't know, 50 other pieces of content. So you're writing the ads, you're writing the emails, you're writing the landing page copy and all of that.
Lauren Everitt [25:59]:
And I think all of that which historically sat with our team now sits on marketing and I think marks that team. And we did the same thing like lean into I mean, humans still reviews it, but I was doing the first pass at all of those things. And another interesting thing is it's it's pretty cool. And I haven't tried to think if I've, like, been on an org where this has happened before, but, like the SEO content specifically, and the blog now sits with our digital acquisition team and they have an editor who was formerly on our team.
Lauren Everitt [26:28]:
And sorry, that's one person I should have mentioned earlier. That now sits on the digital acquisition team, like the digital team to oversee, like all the blog content. And we do outsource that to an agency. It's like all SEO content is to an IT. So I can say it's a combination. Like we shortcut it as much as we can with AI, and then kind of either like the product marketer or the campaigns we've or an agency, we'll kind of take that content over the finish line or draft like, well, we can use AI to get a pretty robust outline for an SEO article, but we still need someone to do that.
Lauren Everitt [27:00]:
Last, what is it like 30 or 40%?
Ty Magnin [27:03]:
Something like that. Yeah. Interesting. Are there any, specific tools that you all have implemented in order to enable this model, or is it all like, you know, bring your own.
Lauren Everitt [27:12]:
Here until I guess, yeah, I would, yeah. So company wide we use ChatGPT. So that's the primary one. Oh sorry. Gemini I don't know. I said a few of us have access to the pilot, chatbot company. It's Gemini, and then we use Jasper in particular on the content team. So, that's been really helpful, especially like when you can create audiences or personas that you apply to content.
Lauren Everitt [27:35]:
Oh, sorry. That's the other thing I should have mentioned where we use AI specifically as like personalization of content. So you kind of have your core piece and then how do you personalize it. And so we typically will use like I if you want to take like a different angle on it or like say we have a sales buyer, but if we have a sales buyer and you're like with the CTO buyer, how do you like reframe it.
Lauren Everitt [27:57]:
So use AI to get like first pass of that. Yeah. Jasper is a big one. I think if there's anything else I mean, personally I love using cloud, but we haven't gotten clearance on that one yet.
Ty Magnin [28:08]:
Interesting. Is there any centralized like governance over the tool from a content person's like, does anyone in content or with that experience get to help set up Jasper or like own that in order to like or build the workflows or something like that? Or have you not really experienced that so far?
Lauren Everitt [28:26]:
That's a great question. It's so funny because we just conducted this survey about AI usage, and it's like 90% of companies are using AI for all these like functional areas and only 10% have any governance. I find some place that feels like highly relevant to.
Ty Magnin [28:42]:
So, or even the 10% or the 90 I guess.
Lauren Everitt [28:45]:
Yeah, I want to get myself in trouble. But, yeah, it's interesting, I think for discrete. So we have like an overarching like governance council who kind of manages like what teams, how you can use it and what information you can input. And that's pretty strict and like really robust on an individual team level. And the content guidance, it's really, I would say up to the teams we have like our own internal guidelines for the newsroom.
Lauren Everitt [29:09]:
But then I know, like the SEO team kind of has different guidelines for how they approach SEO content. Even like the off zero content team has their own kind of approach to AI. So it's like across all the content creators of the business, there's no like one standardized set of guidelines for how you approach AI. It's kind of up to the prerogative of like the individual content team lead.
Lauren Everitt [29:29]:
We probably shouldn't have one, but it's not there yet.
Ty Magnin [29:32]:
Is there any like, voice governance at Okta to like, help everyone that's contributing content to sort of have a follow the brand standard?
Lauren Everitt [29:41]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I will say especially like when we use Jasper and everything, we do have a brand team and they are really the arbiter of like voice and tone. And then we my team had defined like the editorial style guide. So that's like the source of truth for how, you know, like all of the like punctuation and all those types of things.
Lauren Everitt [30:02]:
But yeah, in terms of I mean, there's a lot of if you're a content creator, we do have trainings that's like mandated that you complete, like you need to complete, like the voice and tone training and you need to complete like guide training and you need to complete. But then there is a lot of like trust and expectation that like once you've completed these trainings that you're professional enough to like implement, it's there's not, you know, some companies there's like every single piece of content is reviewed from like a brand and tone perspective.
Lauren Everitt [30:27]:
And we just like the steel which we produce. Content would be such an immense bottleneck to do that. So we don't actually review like everything through a brand like brand lens. But we do enforce the training, and we do have like very robust guidance, around it.
Ty Magnin [30:43]:
How do you enforce the training, like take us into that program?
Lauren Everitt [30:45]:
Yeah, I mean, it's really cool and I wish I could take credit for this. This is actually came through the brand team. So we got to like insert our guidelines into it. But we have like this after university and it's like, you know, it's the same thing where you deliver like your compliance training and legal training that you have to complete every year is like an employee of so many large company or even maybe small company.
Lauren Everitt [31:05]:
And as part of that, like basically we slot that in there and it becomes a mandatory training. So your manager and their manager gets alerted if you're over do on it. So, so there is like actually some teeth to it, which is nice. Because yeah, if you don't complete it, your manager and then their manager gets like these incessant emails about how you are delinquent.
Ty Magnin [31:28]:
Right, or delinquent. But like, a developer doesn't have to take the voice and tone training. Right.
Lauren Everitt [31:34]:
Like unless they were. Yeah, exactly. Unless they were like, well, I say that we do have like some contributors from the developer side. So if they were like publishing then they would need to like complete the training. But a lot of them are more just kind of like guest publishers. And then they it gets routed through an editor who kind of does the whole process of like, and that's both on the off the side and off the side, like everything that like goes on.
Lauren Everitt [31:58]:
The active blog is reviewed through an editor for like a quick check on voice and tone and like, copy edits, but that's more for specific to the blog and say nice.
Tim Metz [32:07]:
Interesting. I have one more question. This takes it in a slightly different direction, but we have written down this question said if budget and time were no limit, what new content format or series would you launch? But it sounds like you actually live that reality at slack, so I would almost want to change it to like, what's the craziest content thing you did at slack?
Lauren Everitt [32:27]:
Oh, craziest content thing? Oh, well, I know when you have a lot of budget, you can get really creative. And I was just coming off, we were doing customer videos and we had a chance to kind of like reimagine how they would be. And so, we had a really incredible film team there. So we wanted to do like a visual component, and we also wanted to like show that slack had use cases outside of like the traditional B2B SaaS.
Lauren Everitt [32:50]:
So we identified this dairy farm that was using slack, and it was so cool. It was like in Northern California. And I forget how many cows they have. Oh, we got to go out there and do this video shoot, on the dairy farm. And we had like drone footage of all the cows, like talking to the farmers and like all and all the, like the milking was coordinated over slack.
Lauren Everitt [33:10]:
And it was kind of just a show like how ubiquitous this tool is.
Tim Metz [33:13]:
Is it like, yeah, we still see it.
Lauren Everitt [33:15]:
I was trying to find it. It was Wickstrom Dairies.
Tim Metz [33:19]:
Because I remember now you say that I remember like from Slack's website, it was like one with and with Nazar or something. Sorry. I'm going to mispronounce it NASA, ESA, NASA or NASA. I always mispronounce that acronym.
Lauren Everitt [33:31]:
We didn't see black health to which ones we filmed in Brooklyn. And they kind of have like home health providers that would like walk the streets of Brooklyn and like, help provide just like, you know, like I think, I think we were all so sick of just filming videos and offices and we're like, how can you get outside the office and actually get like, interesting B-roll?
Ty Magnin [33:50]:
That's not people.
Lauren Everitt [33:51]:
Working on their laptops. So.
Ty Magnin [33:54]:
I go to a dairy farm for the day and produce a video. That sounds fun.
Lauren Everitt [33:58]:
It was so, so fun. It was a really, really cool experience. Yeah. I highly recommend it if you can find any like, steer customers. Yeah.
Ty Magnin [34:06]:
Yeah, it makes the visuals a lot more interesting.
Lauren Everitt [34:08]:
It really does. And the use case is just like, fascinating. I don't know if it like, resonated so well with enterprise buyers, but.
Ty Magnin [34:17]:
I was paying by.
Lauren Everitt [34:18]:
The accounts, but.
Ty Magnin [34:20]:
Nice. We'll thank you so much for joining us. Yeah. Just learned a ton. I'm know our audience to to where can people find you to follow along on what you're publishing and,
Lauren Everitt [34:30]:
Yeah, definitely. Check us out on the OC, the newsroom, and then I'm always on LinkedIn, so, we'd love to connect with new folks there.
Tim Metz [34:37]:
Nice. Awesome. Thanks so much. We're fully there.
Lauren Everitt [34:40]:
Thanks for your time. So great to meet you guys.
Ty Magnin [34:42]:
Well, Tim, that was another good one,
Tim Metz [34:44]:
Yeah, that was great. Yeah. Even though it's in the middle of the night for me, I was really energized by Lauren. Super cool.
Ty Magnin [34:50]:
There you go. That's the proof, right? It's like you can tell how good it went by, how sleepy Tim is by the end. You know?
Tim Metz [34:57]:
Yeah, yeah. Especially now. Yeah, it was really nice. I, 30 wrote down the thing. It's like, I think there's a newsroom trend there also. At least in enterprise we have several people who have newsrooms now, I think.
Ty Magnin [35:08]:
You name it, I don't remember.
Tim Metz [35:10]:
Maybe. Yeah. I think Mallory has a kind of newsroom at square. I think Stephanie definitely had a newsroom. I don't know if she had it now or it was in the past. I think we had another one.
Ty Magnin [35:21]:
I think a lot of enterprise SaaS companies end up with, a PR blog type thing. Right? And it's often like, call, you know, that slash press or reset slash newsroom. And it is separate from the blog. Often though, it's publishing their own updates in content. So it's like, you know, like we just hired a new CTO, right?
Ty Magnin [35:41]:
That hits the newsroom. But yeah, I think the version that Mallory and of course, Lauren was talking about today was much more about, like finding stories out there and bringing it.
Tim Metz [35:49]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And having like, a real kind of newsroom.
Ty Magnin [35:53]:
Yeah. I wonder if they mix that into actually the, press stuff that they're pushing that's more internal updates, like the company news.
Tim Metz [36:00]:
Yeah. I also wrote down, like, I think because we were searching for like, what's the definition of enterprise? I think maybe the definition of enterprise, when you need to Google what size your company is that you work at because it is like that. That means that it's big. You know, it's like, I don't know if we have like 3000 people or 6000 people over there.
Tim Metz [36:17]:
Yeah, yeah.
Ty Magnin [36:18]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's big. Nice. What were the most impactful takeaways for you?
Tim Metz [36:23]:
I mean, more of like a general observation. But I keep also thinking like, oh yeah, we need to dig in more into storytelling and journalism and what we can learn from that. Like the other end of the spectrum is like the keeps like like, let's say adjacent skills and fields that, like most content marketers, can probably learn more from, like one is to me is like product marketing.
Tim Metz [36:43]:
And what other one is journalism? I mean, even though it's obvious, but it's like, I think we don't do that enough where it's like, okay, what can we learn from this and how to apply that?
Ty Magnin [36:50]:
Yeah, I think about design too. Is another axis there of like, you know, someone you might collaborate with, but like, if you really have that, you know, those tricks in the bag, right, then I think you can make more impactful pieces video to write videos right up there.
Tim Metz [37:06]:
Yeah. For sure. And yeah, and because of AI, it's almost becoming more adjacent to some of these things, especially like video design programing.
Ty Magnin [37:15]:
I think they're getting closer, in terms of.
Tim Metz [37:17]:
Yeah, like more accessible to content marketers. I also just really liked her story. It's so nice to hear instead of like, going from like an NGO in Africa, that's like going to slack. It's about the IPO. That's crazy. And but also how it's like it's also kind of a nice analogy. I've also had that even I wasn't really I was going for like a really small startup to like a, like a startup for like ten people to start off with like 200 people.
Tim Metz [37:41]:
But then even there had a difference in like what she said, like how I wanted to be scrappy about doing the website. And then people were kind of pushing back, like, you had to do website for like 1500 bucks, like it's going to cost at least 10,000 bucks. And I'm like, I'm sure I can do it for 1500 bucks.
Tim Metz [37:53]:
Like, yeah, okay, it's then people almost don't take you seriously if you say, even though it is possible, you know, like that. What about you? What do you think? What do you take away?
Ty Magnin [38:02]:
Yeah, I think the impetus of I changing the role of content at Octa and then opening up in a way, like a space for her and her team or, you know, some majority of it to go occupy me or go after a different opportunity I found really interesting. Right. So the idea that like, okay, now a campaigns team, like if the content team was primarily helping write content and I can basically help do some of that.
Ty Magnin [38:28]:
I mean, maybe not the drafting, right, but like creating a good brief and so on and so forth. And like, you know, your campaigns and product marketing team is like reasonably skilled at producing content at writing, then. Yeah, listen, the role for a content team, like it's just it's it's smaller now in terms of its scale because people are able to kind of like, you know, push their way into that area.
Ty Magnin [38:48]:
I mean, pushes in the right word. But you know that I've heard murmurs of this happening in other companies. I think we even heard from some of our guests this season that there are some similar conversations kind of happening. And it's interesting to see how she landed her feet in this press newsroom play. And, you know, it's we don't know how proven out it is.
Ty Magnin [39:06]:
Like obviously Lauren is excellent. Like she'll figure herself out. And and I think the team will have some good value here. But it's like, you know, it's new, it's somewhat experimental in that way it seems. So I don't know what my takeaway is from that. I think one that like it's surprising that then there couldn't be like a content ops, almost like marketing ops.
Ty Magnin [39:23]:
Right? But like to help set up the AI tooling to produce more consistent quality outcomes, you know, that kind of thing. Like there feels to me like there's like there should be someone there thinking that way or like, responsible with that for that. And then the idea of like having an editor to review content such as you might from an agency.
Ty Magnin [39:42]:
And I think they have that set up in a few places in the like, their stuff's going on edited. Right. But like someone with that expert AI to also play a role there, it feels like those two things could be true for other enterprises that are undergoing a similar shift. But then it is like, it's definitely true that the the value of writing content, you know, it's just not what it used to be.
Ty Magnin [40:04]:
So, yeah, not turning on doom and gloom. I mean, I think what's cool about, like, Lauren's new role is she's applying the same journalism skills to bring something net new to her audience. That's of value, right? She's figuring out video that we're doing more of that, which is like going to be, you know, it's less eye a ball in.
Ty Magnin [40:21]:
Thus, you know, probably more important in the way people want to consume information. And, you know, the the big effort that she does around, like their annual businesses at work report is coming along with. Right. So like there's still these things that are needed in some like emergent content motions or types or mediums that I think folks will want to really rapidly learn into as they maybe continue to support traditional content through a different way again, like the ops and stuff.
Ty Magnin [40:49]:
So I think maybe that's the direction we're heading, you know, enterprises and all the way down to startups.
Tim Metz [40:54]:
Well, that's that's super cool, right? To actually hear that they're doing like she actually described all these different initiatives they're working on, and they're actually super interesting, high quality brand and story driven formats. And hopefully this trend we'll see in more places because I think that's that's kind of that's great to make and great to consume. Yeah. And it's fun when stuff.
Ty Magnin [41:15]:
Right. Like that's the stuff that we content marketers are always like, oh, I really want to get into this. And so yeah, now's as good a time as any. Probably better time than ever to get going on those. Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks all for listening to another episode. We'll see you again soon.
Tim Metz [41:29]:
Yeah. See you in the next episode. All right.
