New technology is leaving old categories in the dust. Companies must keep redefining how they communicate their value.
The actual process of repositioning your messaging isn’t the hard part. But repeating the process over and over while you’re still scaling and selling and trying not to confuse the customers who already bought into the old story? That’s next level.
Caitlin Allen, SVP of Market & Strategic Advisory Board Chair at Simbe Robotics, joined SaaS Half Full. She is currently in the middle of her third repositioning since joining the company in 2023.
Simbe makes Tally, an autonomous robot that roams store aisles to digitize the shelf, giving retailers real-time visibility into what’s in stock. Her first repositioning was evolving the company from robotics to shelf digitization.
Then the brand messaging moved to a multimodal platform to take the focus off of hardware debates.
Simbe is in the middle of a third repositioning: shifting its category focus toward store intelligence.
“As we retain some of the shelf digitization language, we’re still gonna have Tally the robot, but it’s this next concentric circle of having an intelligent store that can best serve the people that retail is there to serve.” — Caitlin Allen
How? Here’s what she said worked for her.
Create FOMO, get rid of FOMU
The foundation of Caitlin’s repositioning playbook is a two-step gut check:
Step 1: Create FOMO (fear of missing out). Make the market feel the cost of not doing the new thing.
Step 2: Get rid of FOMU (fear of messing up). Once people want in, they immediately panic about getting it wrong.
FOMO without FOMU just creates a lot of buzz, but doesn’t actually close deals. You have to hand prospects and customers a proven path to success to overcome their risk aversion. Give buyers permission to move by building the case studies, lining up the analyst validations, and recruiting credible voices.
Know when your message has stopped working
Caitlin watches for signals and has noticed that the loudest one is both flattering and annoying: your competitors start using your language. Congratulations, you defined a category! But now everyone is parroting your carefully crafted messaging, and you can no longer differentiate your company.
The other tells can be found in your pipeline, when deals start stalling as potential customers weigh your product against other competitors (yup, the ones with the copycat messaging). When Caitlin encountered this problem, she knew she needed to reposition. So she reframed Simbe as a multimodal platform, taking the hardware debate off the table entirely.
Breadcrumbing your new message
In her repositioning strategy, Caitlin doesn’t do the “we were THIS, now we’re THAT” press release reveal. Instead, she calls her strategy breadcrumbing. She weaves the new story through product news, reports, and client wins until customers basically conclude for themselves that the company has repositioned.
“So when we announced our fixed camera at an industry event last year, that was when we started using the language about being a multimodal retail technology platform and kept using the shelf digitization language.” — Caitlin Allen
By the time anything is officially announced, everyone nods and accepts the new messaging because they’re already used to it.
The truth is your customers really don’t care that you rebranded.
Protect what people love
Caitlin’s instinct was to ditch the robot. Then she realized kids show up at stores to visit Tally, who makes little boop-beep noises and has its own swag store. So Tally became the mascot. The lesson here is that the thing you’re tempted to bury might be your most trusted asset.
On AI specifically? If repositioning around it just makes you sound like every other marketer out there, ask why you’re really doing it in the first place.
Watch the full conversation to dive deeper.
Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human.
[00:00:00] Caitlin Allen: A store can be intelligent and a supply chain can be self-optimizing if the shelf is accurate. And so we’re gonna be focused on store intelligence as the next kind of category. As we retain some of the shelf digitization language, we’re still gonna have Tally the robot, but it’s this next concentric circle of having an intelligent store that can best serve the people that retail is there to serve.
[00:00:24] Lindsey Groepper: Hi, and welcome back to SaaS Half Full, the only show serving B2B marketers. I’m Lindsey Groepper, EVP at PANBlast, and I will be both your host and bartender today. I had an awesome conversation with Caitlin Allen, who is the SVP of Market at Simbe Robotics. Caitlin and I met last year in person at an event, and I have been wanting her on the show ever since.
[00:00:45] Lindsey Groepper: She’s gonna talk us through some best practices as it relates to repositioning. I know all of you are trying to reposition slightly or change categories now, uh, with AI being part of your platforms or. Creating AI technologies of your own. So Caitlin has some good advice on how to work through that both internally with your C-Suite and sales team as well.
[00:01:08] Lindsey Groepper: So if you care to grab a drink and join me as I speak with Caitlin.
[00:01:11] Lindsey Groepper: Hey, Caitlin. Welcome to SaaS Half Full.
[00:01:14] Caitlin Allen: Thank you, Lindsey. Good to be here with you.
[00:01:16] Lindsey Groepper: I am excited to have you. We met last year in person at an Empowered CxO event, which is a killer event that I’ve talked about on this show many times before. Uh, but I tapped you to see if you’d have any interest in coming on and joining us. You’ve been very busy since you took on your role, uh, with Simbe, so we wanted to chat today.
[00:01:36] Lindsey Groepper: Um, but before we dive into our topic, want to understand if we got you a drink, Kit, and if you’re joining me for one today.
[00:01:42] Caitlin Allen: We sure did. It is a bourbon blueberry, um, without the blue– bourbon, sadly, but it’s 9:00 a.m. on a Monday. So
[00:01:49] Caitlin Allen: cheers.
[00:01:50] Lindsey Groepper: fair. Cheers. I am drinking a screwdriver fully loaded, uh, but it is noon on a Monday. And for those that are regular listeners to this show, they know that I always stick true to the process. I think the earliest I’ve imbibed was, like, at 10:00 a.m. on a Monday.
[00:02:06] Caitlin Allen: You know, I don’t, I don’t judge. That just sounds
[00:02:09] Lindsey Groepper: thank you. thank you. I appreciate it.
[00:02:11] Lindsey Groepper: You know, this is my process. This is what I do, and you know, it’ll make for a really great Monday. It’s fine. So cheers. Thank you for joining me.
[00:02:20] Caitlin Allen: you for having me.
[00:02:21] Lindsey Groepper: Mm-hmm. So today’s topic, what we’re gonna talk through is, uh, sort of best practices around repositioning. And sometimes you, you have to reposition for all different types of reasons.
[00:02:33] Lindsey Groepper: Um, but Caitlin has gone through now what is in the midst of her third, um, repositioning since she’s been at Simbe. So definitely has some best practices to share with everyone. Uh, but before we dive into that, I do wanna give our listeners an understanding of who you are a little bit. Caitlin, uh, if you can give us just quick background into your, your role in B2B SaaS marketing, how you got into it, um, and then currently what you do at Simbe, and then for those who don’t know, quick elevator on why Simbe exists.
[00:03:02] Caitlin Allen: Sure, sure. Sounds good. So I’ll start with my background, and then we can get into where I am today. So, um, got into B2B enterprise software by accident, I think like many of us. Um, I started in the nonprofit world and then was the ghostwriter for John Miller at Marketo, wrote a lot of the definitive guides with him.
[00:03:20] Caitlin Allen: And I–
[00:03:21] Lindsey Groepper: know
[00:03:22] Caitlin Allen: He’s incredible, continues to be. Um, my career has, shaped itself, Lindsey, around building markets for transformative tech. And over the past 10 years or so, um, I’ve been really focused on helping scale category-defining companies. And it’s been across a variety of different sectors, deep tech, enterprise software, consumer platforms.
[00:03:44] Caitlin Allen: I was part of Lyft’s IPO and Happy Returns acquisition by PayPal, and also had the honor of being a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Um, I am currently the senior vice president of market at Simbe, about three years ago, an executive recruiter who I really respect, um, and who has become a friend and placed me a couple of times, called and said, “My favorite CEO of all time is hiring his first head of marketing.
[00:04:09] Caitlin Allen: Do you wanna talk to him?” and I was like, “Joe, you say that to all the girls, but yes, I do.” so that’s how this ended up, coming to be. retail is one of the most critical systems in our economy. It’s not just the world’s largest employer, but it’s how individuals access food, clothing, you know, how our homes get built and maintained every day.
[00:04:32] Caitlin Allen: and yet for decades, retail’s operated without a live understanding of what actually happens inside of their store. And what I mean by that is what is on the shelf, how is it priced, and what’s in the right place? And the way that that’s been traditionally approached is s-something called manual audits, where store teams walk up and down aisles.
[00:04:51] Caitlin Allen: It is their least favorite task, and they’re not great at it because it’s hard to do repetitive and boring work well. So what Simbe does is digitize the shelf to give retailers real-time visibility into shelf conditions and helps their data flow across store operations, the supply chain, and digital channels, which is, has been really fun to be a part of.
[00:05:14] Caitlin Allen: Uh, we’re now in 10 countries around the world and about half a dozen retail sectors, um, and help stores everywhere from like your five to 10 store chain that’s local all the way up to Fortune, um, 20 retailers that haven’t been announced quite yet, but we’re almost there.
[00:05:30] Lindsey Groepper: Getting close. But we’re talking robots.
[00:05:32] Caitlin Allen: Yeah.
[00:05:33] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah, very cool. I have yet to see them in my grocer, but I’m sure that it’s coming. Uh, and I, I suppose one other, uh, role that we both play that we should acknowledge is being mothers, because yesterday was Mother’s Day, and as our crazy lives would have it, I was explaining that I, I saw all of my kids, but not all three of them together, uh, just in, in different parts and did different things.
[00:05:56] Lindsey Groepper: Uh, and you were traveling, but, and you celebrated with your mom last week. But, you know, we’re all out here doing the best that we can. But shout out to all the moms. We love you.
[00:06:04] Caitlin Allen: We
[00:06:04] Lindsey Groepper: Appreciate all you do. It is our hardest and most fulfilling role, but we do it every day, and we love
[00:06:11] Caitlin Allen: It’s the
[00:06:12] Lindsey Groepper: it. It is rough. I actually had, uh…
[00:06:15] Lindsey Groepper: I was at a concert on Friday night, and, um, one of my friends who was slightly overserved, paid me a, what I think was, like, probably one of the best compliments of my life, which was, uh, because my, my teenage son was also at the concert, like, but, like, across the stadium. And she said, “I really admire the relationship you have with your kids.”
[00:06:33] Lindsey Groepper: And I was like, “That could be one of the
[00:06:36] Caitlin Allen: Oh, I love that.
[00:06:37] Lindsey Groepper: received, right? Like, that’s what we live for. We die for them. We want it so bad. Um, and as parents of teenagers, both of us, you know how it’s like, God, you just want them to like you so bad.
[00:06:50] Caitlin Allen: And
[00:06:50] Lindsey Groepper: Love me, like me, pay attention to me.
[00:06:53] Caitlin Allen: Like me, love me, and make good decisions independently.
[00:06:57] Lindsey Groepper: Yes, please. Yes. Absolutely. Okay, we digress. Um, so excited to dive in today. Talk to us, um, about sort of this journey, because when you came in semi-focused on robotics, then you pretty quickly realized that you needed to pivot messaging and positioning into digital shelf, and now you’re in sort of the third wave.
[00:07:20] Lindsey Groepper: And it sounds, you know, it sounds heavy, it sounds like a lot, but I, I would imagine that many folks that are listening, if they haven’t already gone through one, they’re, they have to be going through it right now, just given the, the AI landscape and how everyone’s business is changing right now. That, I mean, old categories are being left in the dust and new categories being created, um, out of necessity that, you know, current categories are just no longer solving the new problems.
[00:07:44] Lindsey Groepper: So it sounds intense, but I, I imagine it’s pretty relatable to our listeners as well. Um, so give us a little bit of like context into where you were versus where you are.
[00:07:55] Caitlin Allen: Yeah. maybe to set the stage too in a couple different ways. We’ve gone through th-three phases of repositioning. We’re in the midst of the third right now. to your point, Lindsey, like because of the AI era that we’re in, every business model is changing. I grew up in SaaS, like most of your listeners.
[00:08:13] Caitlin Allen: I’m currently in something that’s called RaaS, which is robots as a service. it’s specific to physical AI. And, you know, we’re, we’re living through this moment… We probably all remember when we had our first smartphone or, you know, like I remember logging onto the internet for the first time. We’re also in this moment where we’re going to be sharing public physical space with robots, if we haven’t already, for the first time.
[00:08:37] Caitlin Allen: You know, be that in Melrose with the delivery robots or, you know, in a store where Simbe’s robot Tally is, et cetera. so our company was founded 10 years ago. Takes a couple of years to build a prototype and hardware, so we announced Tally, the world’s first shelf inventory robot, in me, 2017.
[00:08:55] Caitlin Allen: I joined in late 2023, and at the time, there wasn’t high awareness of the issues that we solved, and so It was very hard to understand how to communicate the value prop. and so our first, repositioning was around basically evolving the company from robotics to shelf digitization.
[00:09:17] Caitlin Allen: and the core of that strategy, there were a couple different pillars. So the way that I summarize the strategic element of a repositioning exercise is you’ve got to create FOMO, and then you got to help people get past FOMU, which is my acronym for fear of messing up. Like once– It’s natural once we have a fear of missing out, if we’re gonna be doing something new, then we need to help people basically develop a proven path to success.
[00:09:45] Caitlin Allen: And so that’s been, the repeatable motion, so to speak, that we’ve been in, over the last three phases. So the first one, raising problem awareness for all the people that we influence. The people that we influence, there’s several concentric in circles. There’s retail corporate. So typically we were starting in store operations and then also talking to supply chain and technology and IT and sometimes finance.
[00:10:07] Caitlin Allen: Then there’s also the, the store team, which are the folks that walk up and down the aisles and work with the robot every day. and then also the shoppers. So we needed to think about all three of those different audiences as we thought about the repositioning. we focused on the core use case.
[00:10:23] Caitlin Allen: There are many use cases that the robot can help with. You know, on-shelf availability, which is basically like are the items where they should be, which blew my mind when I started. 60% of items that grocers, for instance, think are out of stock are actually in the store in the wrong spot, which is why when you order Instacart or DoorDash and they tell you that like half the items weren’t found or were substituted, that’s the reason.
[00:10:49] Caitlin Allen: we needed to focus on our core audience and the core use case. And then a lot of our work was around developing third-party proof and an ecosystem of credible voices. So the third-party proof took the shape of a variety of reports from analyst firms that quantified the problem.
[00:11:06] Caitlin Allen: We had a survey that surveyed store teams about whether they liked their jobs with or without the robot better. And the 9 of 10 sh- store team managers do prefer their job with Tally around because they don’t like doing the manual work that it r- it takes away, um, which allows them to then focus on interacting with people.
[00:11:26] Caitlin Allen: And then we also had some reports that focused on shopper preferences too Um, and then of course, you have to amplify those messages to the different audiences that we talked about. And so we assembled a group of partners, strategic advisors, um, you know, and by partners I mean co-marketing, technology, all sorts of things to help us amplify, the message.
[00:11:48] Caitlin Allen: And we’ve focused on a go-to-market that leads with a monthly announcement and then has an omni-channel go-to-market that brings that to life. Interestingly, about 25% of our net new business for the last two years has come from, PR announcements. and then about 50% has come from events. So it’s a really like physical-based, go-to-market strategy.
[00:12:11] Caitlin Allen: phase two was– So we started to notice, okay, the industry is starting to understand the problem. We see conversations about the problem. Our competitors piled on and started talking about the same things. And I think that’s one of the signals I watch for when I’m thinking about when it’s time to start repositioning.
[00:12:31] Caitlin Allen: so as we were going from being positioned as a robotics company, to a shelf digitization company, we rebranded our platform as the store intelligence platform.
[00:12:41] Caitlin Allen: And the, the thought at the time was we offer more than robotics. Our business model is built on effectively like the data insights that we’re selling, and that’ll become increasingly a part of our offering over time. And we knew that over time, if we digitized the shelf, then we would also be able to digitize the store with this, which is kind of the starting point for the entire supply chain.
[00:13:03] Caitlin Allen: And so we branded the platform as the store intelligence platform, but focused on the category of shelf digitization. so then phase two was the industry started to have a debate around what hardware device type is the best way to digitize the shelf. Is it a fixed camera? Is it, you know, a phone?
[00:13:21] Caitlin Allen: Somebody walks up and down the aisles and like takes pictures of the shelf. Is it a robot that moves around? And so we introduced some new technology and rebranded as r- the only retail technology platform to offer multiple modalities. And the thought was, let’s take the conversation away from how do we do it, what do we do it with, to like what’s proving outcomes at scale?
[00:13:44] Lindsey Groepper: Right. Right. Because I, I do feel, I literally just got off a call and said this, is that often- oftentimes people don’t care how it works, just that it works. So like I– Great, you’re offering me three different ways. Awesome. I just– As long as it works, I’ll pick one of these ways. But a lot of times people just get caught up and they’re like explaining how, and it’s like, it works.
[00:14:06] Caitlin Allen: It’s so true, and I think it’s a very common misstep for those of us in tech. We want to talk about the things that get built all day because we’re proud of them and they’re disruptive, but it’s the fastest way to make someone’s eyes glaze over if you don’t contextualize with the why.
[00:14:21] Caitlin Allen: Yeah.
[00:14:22] Lindsey Groepper: Um, you had mentioned, uh, the word signal, and so I wanna go back to that, um, for our listeners, is what are some of the other signals that indicate that whether that is your– whether it’s a current category, maybe it’s your current positioning, but that that is starting to hold you back and may need a change.
[00:14:40] Lindsey Groepper: What are some of those signals?
[00:14:41] Caitlin Allen: Yeah. So definitely competitive landscape follow on, pile on, which is a, a compliment implicitly. It also creates messaging homogeny where it’s hard to stand out. So that is– that’s the biggest thing. Um, I also just because, particularly because of how long our sales cycle is, Lindsey, or, and it’s, you know, it’s anywhere from…
[00:15:05] Caitlin Allen: depends on the size of the retailer, but anywhere from six months to like three years just to land a client. And then we have pilots that then lead to an expansion, which is actually where you start to make money in our business. So effectively, as soon as I start hearing the sales team, our clients, our, you know, the analysts in the space start to use our language, that’s when I start to straddle to also bring in the next wave because it, it’s gonna take so long to shape and influence the next stage.
[00:15:35] Caitlin Allen: so it’s, it’s really a lot about just the listening piece of hearing what competitors, what advisors, what analysts and the sales team is starting to say. it’s also, um, the signal comes from pipeline, like what are the blockers? And that was where the choice to reposition as a multimodal platform came from.
[00:15:53] Caitlin Allen: we were getting way too many, um, stalls in the sales cycle around the question of, “Well, do I need a this device or this device?” And so just to take it away, uh, not admit– resolve the issue was, was kind of the solution there.
[00:16:10] Lindsey Groepper: You mentioned long sales cycles, and I, I had a question around that, so thank you for bringing that up. how do you reposition without maybe, putting fear or uncertainty into some of these in-market deals or in-progress deals? or how do you put reposition congruently or in a way that maybe doesn’t seem like it, because that does seem like it could create some friction with in-progress deals.
[00:16:33] Caitlin Allen: So it, to me, storytelling that builds intuitively and creates, like, concentric circles that create a larger and larger vision, they’re additive for the most part. So it’s– There’s a lot of focus that we have and a lot of team training on how does this just build on the thing that our clients have already said yes yes to.
[00:16:56] Caitlin Allen: Now, there are some nuances. I mean, you can imagine, for instance, so before we positioned as a multimodal tech company where we were just selling robots, we often positioned against some of the kind of hardware that we now offer. And so that one had a lot of nuance. so the way that we handled that was to really emphasize remaining foundation, which is the robot.
[00:17:22] Caitlin Allen: Like, our, our platform functions on top of that data because it’s got the most, the highest frequency and fidelity of data that’s captured of any technology. But then there are, like, specific use cases like the rotisserie chickens or the high-value jewelry where, you know, you either wanna make sure there’s not theft in that area or it has super high turnover.
[00:17:41] Caitlin Allen: And so you want– You, you know, a robot, like, traverses a store, like, three times a day. sometimes may want more focus on a rotisserie chicken section than three times a day. You might want it continuously. So in that case, a fixed camera is really valuable. So it’s just– It, it was really just focusing on how that’s valuable for the client, emphasizing that it’s really not that big of a change.
[00:18:03] Caitlin Allen: It’s just an evolution of the vision we’ve all had all along.
[00:18:07] Lindsey Groepper: you talk about, you know, robotics being the core and then going multimodal. How did you determine like what parts of the brand to protect and hold onto, even if maybe it wasn’t necessarily serving you today, to keep that trust amongst your stakeholders?
[00:18:27] Caitlin Allen: It’s such a good question ’cause– And I actually really changed my mind on this. So at first– Because Simbe Robotics is our website, and when I joined and we were repositioning around shelf digitization, my thought was get rid of the robot. Like, get rid– We, we took Simbe Robotics out of Simbe’s name. I’ve thought about taking it off the website.
[00:18:49] Caitlin Allen: And so what I realized over time i-is people love the robot. Like, people have a relationship with the robot. It’s cute. Tally is– Like, it makes little boop beep noises, and kids wanna come to the store to visit it. We have, like, a swag store that shoppers buy all sorts of stuff from. Kids love their stuffed robots.
[00:19:09] Caitlin Allen: And so what we made the decision to do was to personify Tally. So Tally became our brand mascot, so to speak. That, a- and so that was like, it was a way of, of holding onto the robotics idea, keeping the website, but still repositioning around self-digitization. So, you know, we, we were talking about this a little bit earlier, like we were focusing from the positioning perspective on the outcomes, the how was still part of the brand.
[00:19:39] Caitlin Allen: And that was, that was, it was very different for me in terms of what I felt like was good for the business over time as, as we learned what, what mattered.
[00:19:48] Lindsey Groepper: before we hit record, we were just talking through sort of the flow of the show. One of the questions that I had was, around sales enablement, and you had mentioned earlier in this conversation too, because, right, a lot of this repositioning is driven by you in charge of market, marketing team, obviously with, C-suite buy-in.
[00:20:08] Lindsey Groepper: All this work gets done, but then you still have your sales team that is responsible for closing deals, um, in pretty much however they see fit. how do you then take something that is, like, ready to go, polished… I’m, I’m not saying the sales team hasn’t been involved, but I would imagine there’s some friction there of not only what are you saying, but how are you presenting it visually?
[00:20:30] Lindsey Groepper: What decks are we still using that need to be retired? Um, are there Franken decks that are being used all over the place? how do you have that, um, how does that conversation look like? How are they involved in the process? Um, and h- what are some, I guess, things you’ve seen to not do?
[00:20:45] Lindsey Groepper: Any story, any sort of, like, war stories about some things to not do that you could share, um, and also some successes.
[00:20:53] Caitlin Allen: Yeah, I can share some of both. Um, and yes, Frankenstein decks are always gonna be part of the marketing jobs. I’ve just made peace with that. Um, you know, we have an incredible sales leader, and I also, I work extremely closely with him, and I also work very closely with our head of strategy and client success.
[00:21:11] Caitlin Allen: It’s basically like a, a Accenture team that works alongside sales to help sell the, the technology and then make pilots successful. And so I think it starts with, well, it probably starts with my CEO having hired collaborative people because we get along and have a lot of fun working together.
[00:21:31] Caitlin Allen: So, you know, sales, marketing, client strategy, customer success, they see their leaders working hand in hand and affirming each other in public. And, you know, so I think that’s step one or, pillar one. The second is we do a lot of the work together. I think about marketing internally or content marketing internally, like breadcrumbing, and I, put as much time into marketing internally and to my investors as I do out in the market.
[00:22:02] Caitlin Allen: And so it’s, you know, like if, for instance, if something came up in a sales call, I’ll call it out in the commercial weekly because like of, of what worked or what was, what didn’t, and how that ties with what we’re thinking about. So I take them along the process, and then we have reviews as a team where I solicit input around the positioning as well as just holistically like what is, you know, what’s marketing doing well and what’s not, So having them be part of the launch and making it super incremental so that we’re all on the journey together rather than having this milestone moment where we announce the new positioning, I think is probably really important. I will say, like last year, for instance, this was a total flop. we had a chief commercial officer at the time, and I rolled out a training for sales where they were given the new positioning, the new pitch deck, the new script, and then they had to perform, like they had to, to do it in front of us and their peers, and we had a scorecard.
[00:22:55] Caitlin Allen: And I’ve done this in previous roles, and it went over fabulously well. Well, it went over fabulously awful in this particular case. They felt really critiqued. They felt like, you know, they were being treated like little kids, et cetera, et cetera. My language, not theirs. And so we realized we’d made a big misstep, and we stopped doing that.
[00:23:15] Caitlin Allen: And so we had to take a much more bespoke one-on-one approach of coaching, which has been slower. Um, but because of the violent reactions, I think it was important to shift. What we’re doing now in terms of training is like, so for instance, I gave our new repositioning at an investor conference last week that I co-founded with our, our investor Goldman Sachs and has a bunch of executives in the room, and it went over really well.
[00:23:41] Caitlin Allen: One of the C-level executives we’ve been trying to get to for three years asked for a copy of the deck ’cause he said it was the best articulation of our value prop, that he’d ever heard. Thank you. Um, so, you know, you kind of– So last week we mentioned it to sales. That was the breadcrumb. Then they asked for me to give it the presentation today, so I’ll be giving that later today, where they’re gonna be hearing how I did it.
[00:24:02] Caitlin Allen: So it’s, they don’t even necessarily, and I’m not hiding it, but they don’t even necessarily know we’re repositioning yet, but it’s part of my way of like taking them along a process where they have, are concluding that they should want to learn about this because it’s already worked. Um, and I’m, I’m giving a long answer.
[00:24:19] Caitlin Allen: So the last thing I’ll say quickly is we also talked before the recording about the strategic advisory board that, that I chair, and it’s a group of eight different individuals. Some are influencers, some are analysts, some are retail operators and executives. And I also take them through a process of responding to and giving feedback on the messaging, and they are people that the sales team respects.
[00:24:42] Caitlin Allen: So You know, that, that’s also another way of say-saying to them like, “Hey, the people in the market that are, have credible opinions have bought into this too.” but I mean, I wouldn’t be lying if like there’s, there’s still, there’s still folks that say we’re a robot company and it’s, you know, it’s just how it’s gonna be.
[00:24:59] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah, for sure. You bring up an interesting, interesting point about announcing that we are no longer this, we’re now that. and it seems like you You traditionally don’t do that. You don’t make it this, like, hard launch of, you know, we were now– we were robotics, now we’re, you know, shelf de-digitization, or we were shelf, now we’re gonna be into store intelligence.
[00:25:21] Lindsey Groepper: talk to me about just your thoughts around that. When do you think that makes sense, if ever, and when doesn’t it, and why?
[00:25:28] Caitlin Allen: You know, it’s a good question. I, I tend to not because I think people learn in bite-sized pieces and change takes a long time. So that’s why I lean away from announcing in a single moment. I also, as much as I’m proud of the work that we’ve done as a company or a marketing team to get to that point, I’m not sure other people care.
[00:25:49] Caitlin Allen: Like, I’m not sure that it like changes their life the way that it shaped mine. and so we try to make it more intuitive. and so I typically use things like company product announcements or client news as moments of, you know, again, breadcrumbing, like these bites of information. So when we announced our fixed camera at an industry event last year, that was when we started using the language about being a multimodal retail technology platform and, you know, started, you know, and kept using the shelf digitization language.
[00:26:23] Caitlin Allen: Um, you know, and, and there are different moments like I think that right after this podcast gets announced, we’ll have another report that’s gonna launch that is also part of that and will help kind of usher us into the third repositioning wave that we’ve been starting. So I try to make it intuitive where you’re like, “Oh, hmm.
[00:26:41] Caitlin Allen: That’s been happening and I haven’t realized it until now.”
[00:26:44] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah, tell us more about that report. This will be dropping, uh, I’m gonna say it out loud so it doesn’t jump on this date. That’s on me. The twenty-sixth, May twenty-sixth. So will the report be out at that point?
[00:26:58] Caitlin Allen: It’ll be almost out. Um, I think it comes out on the 29th. right now we’re competing as a tech company for store technology budget. That does not just include digitizing the shelf, it includes anything in the store. And so, you know, one of the challenges I’ve been thinking through with my peers over the last couple of months is how do we make sure that we get to the top priority of that list? So what the report is going to show is that the retailers that don’t invest in shelf digitization first are actually losing revenue versus their tech investments. And the ones that start with shelf digitization are getting ROI. They are accel- are accelerating their, their, their value. so that report is, you know, it’s gonna be the foundation of probably the next 12 months or so of what we’re, what we’re focused on, and it will launch new positioning around how a digitized shelf is the foundation of global commerce.
[00:27:57] Caitlin Allen: Meaning, If you know what’s happening on your shelf, all of a sudden Instacart orders are correct, things that shoppers wanna find, in the store are on, in the right place. If you happen to get an ad, which is retail media, that tells you that the peanut butter you like is in the store and you show up and it’s not there, like, that’s a problem.
[00:28:16] Caitlin Allen: So it helps with all of those things. And, you know, if, if this is getting a little bit technical, but A store can be intelligent and a supply chain can be self-optimizing if the shelf is accurate. And so we’re gonna be focused on store intelligence as the next kind of category. As we retain some of the shelf digitization language, we’re still gonna have Tally the robot, but it’s this next concentric circle of having an intelligent store that can best serve the people that retail is there to serve.
[00:28:46] Lindsey Groepper: Love it. Okay. Well, in three days, people, go to Simbe website, get the report. I was happy to hear you say, Caitlin, that you don’t believe people really care that you have reposition rebranded because, um, at PANBlast, we do PR for B2B SaaS and AI companies, and we have a lot of repositioning, a lot of rebrands.
[00:29:06] Lindsey Groepper: And sometimes it’s a, you know, there’s a new logo, color, website positioning, all the things. And more often than not, our clients do want us to write a release about it and announce it. And we’re always saying like, “We c- absolutely we can, but this is not newsworthy. Like n- no one really cares about this.”
[00:29:27] Lindsey Groepper: Um, to your point, and yet I wrote down that this term breadcrumbing is that is a moment in time. And what we want to ensure is when that moment in time happens, that we have done enough breadcrumbing leading up to that moment that when that announcement is made to your customers, for example, if you do choose to do announcement, they say, “Oh, that makes sense.
[00:29:47] Lindsey Groepper: They had a report that came out that says this. They just, you know, onboarded a new head of whatever. They have a customer in this use case. They’ve been doing a lot more thought leadership around this particular topic.” Like that moment in time makes sense. Whereas if you just say all of a sudden we’re this and people are like, “The what?”
[00:30:03] Lindsey Groepper: You know, it’s like, “Where did that come from?” That’s what you don’t wanna have happen. And I, I like your approach of like, does it even make sense to announce it at all? Like what it– what’s the goal to announce it? Because if it’s to communicate to customers, you don’t need to do that. You don’t need to do a, you know, press release and try and pitch the media with that you’ve now repositioned, because that is a, a what thing.
[00:30:25] Lindsey Groepper: It’s really more around like the why, what’s the market dictating the need for it, which is not gonna be communicated in a press release. So I double, double underline that. Then you said like, “Who cares?” Yes, I
[00:30:39] Caitlin Allen: It’s amazing how timeless Si-Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” is. Like, I think he came out with that TED Talk like 20 years ago or something, and it’s, it’s still true. The only time I could ever see a rebranding making sense to announce would potentially be if you’re marketing to marketers, ’cause then you could maybe explain the why in a way that they would care.
[00:31:00] Caitlin Allen: But like I’m– When marketing to supply chain people, store technology, they don’t care.
[00:31:04] Lindsey Groepper: yes. And you could– ’cause then marketers want to understand, like, what we’re talking about. Like, what went into the rebrand?
[00:31:10] Lindsey Groepper: Well,
[00:31:10] Lindsey Groepper: why
[00:31:11] Caitlin Allen: have you learned about me that is ma-
[00:31:14] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah, yeah. Totally. So glad to hear you say that. Um, my, uh, last question is well, it’s basically every company right now is trying to reposition to be, whether that’s AI first, AI forward, agentic, whatever, um, that is on the docket for every marketer right now.
[00:31:29] Lindsey Groepper: what advice do you have on repositioning around AI in a way that is going to build trust rather than dilute? Because that everyone is having to do that right now and many saying the same things.
[00:31:44] Caitlin Allen: Yeah. Well, and that probably says it, right? If, if rebranding around AI is going to create messaging homogeny, then why? Like, what value does it actually add? I think it probably gets to the core question of why do you feel the need to do that? So for instance, like, is your board pushing you to do so? Or is there actually a reason in your pipeline that it will help you, a problem that it will help you solve or a, you know, competitive white space that it will help you capture?
[00:32:19] Caitlin Allen: I, I, it gets– I mean, this seems to be a theme of the conversation, but like, what’s the why? If you do it, I mean, probably best to try to emphasize that it’s something you’ve been focused on for the lifetime of your company, where it’s kind of an iteration of the same thing your clients have already, you know, bought from you.
[00:32:37] Caitlin Allen: But, um, I don’t know. I think we’ve seen so many pendulum swings in, in, in SaaS and in, you know, in physical AI, robotics as a service, where if people pile on too much, then it’s just a fast- faster way to have a lot of people that miss out on the, the tr- the trend. So I would tread lightly
[00:32:57] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah. Good advice. Um, well, Caitlin, is there anything that we didn’t cover on this topic that you wanted to make sure that we tackle today?
[00:33:06] Caitlin Allen: I don’t think so. Uh, we did not drop an F-bomb or swear, um.
[00:33:10] Lindsey Groepper: This is, this is the first episode in a while for
[00:33:13] Caitlin Allen: I feel like is a personal
[00:33:14] Lindsey Groepper: since it’s Monday and it’s early, I don’t know. I’m not, like, super jaded yet. It’s too early. I don’t know.
[00:33:21] Caitlin Allen: I should have actually had alcohol in my drink.
[00:33:23] Lindsey Groepper: Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. We haven’t. That’s good. That’s a win. well, I end every episode the same way with my guests, which is I ask if you have a signature or favorite toast to send us out.
[00:33:34] Caitlin Allen: Hmm. I love that. my husband and I have a date night every Friday, and we always open a bottle of wine. I love wine. Uh, my first job was in a, at a nonprofit where I had to run a wine auction. And then I turned 40 last year and got a master’s of French wine as a way to celebrate. we have a very simple, um, toast, which is just to good company.
[00:33:56] Caitlin Allen: So that’s, that’s mine.
[00:33:58] Lindsey Groepper: Aw, that means you think each other are good company. Love it. Love it. Two good company. You’re a great company. Thanks so much, Caitlin.
[00:34:07] Caitlin Allen: Thank you, Lindsey.
[00:34:09] Lindsey Groepper: Thanks again to Caitlin for joining me on SaaS Half Full. That was indeed good company. Hopefully you took a couple of things away today. If you’re thinking about repositioning or entering a new category, we always appreciate the listen.
[00:34:21] Lindsey Groepper: And until next time, bottoms up.