Needle in the Haystack: when marketers are asked to turn straw into gold
Bolaji Oyejide on being asked to 4x pipeline, the impossible expectations of venture backed startups, and why marketers are tasked with turning straw into gold.
Bolaji Oyejide once took a job where he was asked to 4x the marketing pipeline. That's not a typo. The leadership had seen the T2D3 models for unicorn growth, tripling revenue twice then doubling it three times, and decided they would just do better. As a young director of marketing, he was asked in the final interview if he was sure he could do it. And he said yes. He was excited and figured they must have done their homework to come up with that number.
The honeymoon lasted three months, until the first quarterly goals were missed. Then the pressure started. Bolaji describes waking up with anxiety every day, feeling like he was living in the Twilight Zone. His team was freaking out and even his counterparts in other departments knew the goals were a fantasy. He was eventually laid off and gaslit into believing the company's failure to hit its revenue targets was all his fault. It was, as he says, completely devastating.
After talking to scores of other marketers, Bolaji realized his story was part of a pattern. He has this perfect analogy for the impossible job marketers are given in these venture backed companies. We are asked to find the needle in the haystack, the one to three percent of people actually ready to buy. But we are also asked to turn the rest of the hay into needles, to make the other ninety seven percent want to buy now. He compares it to Rumpelstiltskin turning straw into gold, and it just does not work.
“Sometimes the Titanic is just going to be the Titanic. You need to decide whether you want to buy a ticket on that particular ship.”
Notes
- As a young director of marketing, he was tasked with quadrupling the pipeline in one year.
- After missing first quarter goals, he started waking up with anxiety every day and felt like he was in the Twilight Zone.
- He was laid off and blamed for the company's shortcomings, a gaslighting experience that made him doubt his own abilities.
- He compares the modern marketer's job to finding a needle in a haystack, while also being asked to turn the rest of the hay into needles.