#19 - Rachel Kim

Hey all,

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This week, we chatted with Rachel Kim, fractional CMO at Mutiny, about how she turned an original research report into a full-on content machine.

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Rachel and her team flipped B2B papers on its head. Instead of writing and publishing a report that’d wind up sitting silently in the “Resources” section, the Mutiny crew built a research ecosystem — designed for LinkedIn, engineered for reach, and packed with original insights that users would actually care to understand.

Here’s how Rachel and her team pulled it off:

1. Find a strong hook — but make sure you nail the “so what”

A lot of B2B reports die in the first sentence. Either the topic’s too broad, too safe, too obvious, or… no one actually cares.

Rachel didn’t want that.

“We started with the question: what’s a story I would want to read?”

The answer: sales and marketing misalignment. 

Emotional. Evergreen. Still weirdly unresolved. But more importantly — underexplored from a business lens.

“We realized that nobody had really understood the business impact of sales and marketing alignment,” Rachel said. “So we went in and found it.”

Mutiny’s team ran a custom survey and uncovered a key stat that created the report’s foundation:

Teams that are aligned are 2.3x more likely to exceed revenue goals.
Teams that are misaligned are 2x more likely to miss them.

That single insight gave the project legs. It turned an ever-so-familiar tension into a measurable business risk — and then it tied directly to Mutiny’s product value (bringing sales and marketing together through a shared dashboard).

“A strong hook like the revenue stat is good,” Rachel said, “but the ‘so what’ has to tie back to the product. That’s when a report becomes really impactful for a company.”

2. Build it to stand out

The Mutiny report didn’t look like a B2B doc. To break away from the bland, corporate style of B2B, they overinvested in design and UX by using a consumer-focused design agency to make it stand out.

The report was actually a website, complete with bright colors, a scrollable layout and, of course, animated raccoons. The design wasn’t just bold — it served a purpose. The entire experience was built for shareability:

• Pull quotes and charts that popped on LinkedIn
• Visually driven takeaways readers could scan for quickly
• No sign-ups necessary to access the report

“The gated content playbook is overdone,” Rachel said. “We wanted as many people to see this as possible.”

The takeaway: if you want people to engage, design something that’s easy and fun to engage with.

3. Launch it like an influencer campaign

B2B organizations invest a lot of resources into creating original research — but most completely skip the distribution step. Rachel and her team treated their report like a product launch, with thorough planning and a real GTM motion.

“We had an entire Notion plan before launch. And one person dedicated just to distribution.”

Before launch, they identified 50+ relevant influencers by asking AEs, “What do your prospects read?” Then they wove those influencer quotes into the report — both to add credibility and to increase the chances those influencers would share it.

Once the report was ready to go, they activated:

• Influencer posts
• Newsletters
• Podcasts
• Mutiny’s owned channels
• A small amount of earned media

“Over 90% of impressions came from new media — not traditional outlets.”

Rachel planned this project with distribution in mind from the start — and it shows. By working backward from the end goal, she’s completely reimagined how B2B reports get published. And it’s brilliant.

4. Plan for what happens after

The report launch campaign wasn’t a week-long initiative. Rachel built the campaign to anchor an entire quarter and then some.

A few weeks after launch, they released the Collaboration Index — a Buzzfeed-style quiz that let marketers and sellers score their alignment.

Then, Mutiny hosted a 50-person summit at Dawn Ranch, featuring speakers that included Mutiny’s CEO. She used the report as the foundation of her keynote.

“Nobody wants a salesy keynote. But if your CEO is sharing proprietary insights? Now they’re a thought leader.”

Each one created a new way to interact with the same core idea, extending the shelf life without inventing something new.

And they’re just getting started. The goal is to turn the State of Sales and Marketing Alignment into an annual piece of IP — one that builds Mutiny’s credibility year after year and sets the standard for how B2B teams publish original research.

This conversation was a masterclass in building B2B content that stands the test of time. Check out the full episode below to learn more about how Rachel and her team made it happen (and how you can use their playbook for yourself).

Next Guest:

Sam Jacobs, CEO @ Pavillion
Thursday, July 3rd

Thanks for stopping by, folks. As always, feel free to reach out with questions, feedback, suggestions, or anything else that’s top of mind for you.

Peter

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