Xenia Muntean, co-founder and CEO of Planable and member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, recently joined Carlota Pico to talk about the company she built from the ground up. Xenia, who’s originally from Moldova and now based in Romania, explained how Planable was born from her desire to create a more pleasant and productive way for marketers to work—and her frustration with tedious content creation processes.

Since Planable was founded in 2016, over 5,000 brands worldwide have started using it, including BMW, Volkswagen and Wendy’s (just to name a few). Tune in to hear all about Xenia’s entrepreneurial journey and what she thinks is in store for the future of marketing.

You can watch the full conversation in the video above or on YouTube, listen to the podcast on Apple and Spotify, and read our recap below.

Key takeaways

• Planable’s main aim is to help marketers be more productive and efficient through an end-to-end workflow. It provides visual content calendars where social media teams can plan, discuss, leave feedback, coordinate and approve content in one place.

• It’s a revolutionary time for marketing, thanks in part to the coronavirus. Marketers are reevaluating their priorities, goals and tactics, and upping the speed and quality of content production. People are focusing less on publishing uber-polished content, and more on just getting authentic stuff out there.

• Planable offers a seamless workflow where teams can produce content quickly and easily. With increased demand, your operations need to be bulletproof; if they’re delayed or disorganized, you’ll waste valuable time and your brand will suffer.

• One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned in 2020 is that we must always be alert and prepared for anything, since unexpected events can change the way we operate overnight. You need to be flexible, stay alert and deal with problems as they happen.

• The best campaigns are the ones that bring a lot of value to your audience; things that are informative, helpful, reassuring or useful will engage your followers. Planable has provided high-value content through webinars over the past few months.

A campaign is like a product; it needs to be meaningful, it needs to speak to your audience, but more than anything, it just needs to provide value.

Rapid-fire recs

Who’s an influencer or professional role model that you admire?

One company that I find really inspiring is InVision, a digital product design platform. They’re building a collaboration app for designers, and I’m really passionate about design and collaboration, so it’s obvious why I love what they’re doing! I really look up to them, both in terms of the company culture and what they produce.

Melanie Perkins, the CEO and co-founder of Canva, is super inspiring as well.

A book, publication or event that you’d recommend?

One of my favorite events is Cannes Lions, known as the International Festival of Creativity. The first time I attended it, I was blown away by the vastness of the event and the type of people attending it. I presented Planable on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions 2018. Of course it’s not happening this year, but if you can attend sometime in the future, I’d definitely recommend it!

What’s your favorite app at the moment and why?

I love Notion. I discovered it about a year ago, and we recently started using it at Planable, but I also use it for my personal life. It’s basically an app for taking notes, but really it’s so much more than that! It combines notes, wikis and databases in one place. It’s color coded and super organized, so if you’re into making lists and organizing stuff, you’ll love this app too.

Connect with Xenia and Carlota on LinkedIn.

This post was edited by Mary Kresge, a freelance content creator based in Madrid.

For more recommended content creation resources:

The Ultimate Guide to Managing Multilingual Social Media Accounts

Multilingual copywriting: Adapting your ads for new markets

To see the full transcript, click on page number 2 below.