Tricia Gellman on marketing budget allocation
From Building C-Suite Buy-In & Selling The Brand Story with Tricia Gellman, CMO of Box · · B2B CMO Project
“I pitched to Aaron that we work with the agency who could help us get added awareness and very quickly therefore also have a measurement platform because that's part of their, you know, mode of operation and it's harder at an enterprise to bring on new software in the time I wanted. Yeah. And he basically said that it was a waste of money to pay for any platform that would measure awareness because we would know if we had awareness based on the vibe. That's good. Wow. So this was the conviction. Thank you. Maybe all maybe all work for CEOs like that. I'm going to move 30% of my budget and it was like that sounds like I you know, I basically pitched that. I'm going to move 30% of my budget. We're going to connect. We're going to create this funnel, but I would really like to be able to tell the board like are we being successful? And he said, we will know. It will be a vibe.”
On , Tricia Gellman, Chief Marketing Officer at BOX INC, spoke about marketing budget allocation during Building C-Suite Buy-In & Selling The Brand Story with Tricia Gellman, CMO of Box on B2B CMO Project.
About Tricia Gellman
Tricia Gellman, Chief Marketing Officer at Box, appeared on the B2B CMO podcast on April 25, 2026. She discussed her approach to building C-suite buy-in and selling the brand story, noting that Box CEO Aaron Levie made two foundational decisions before she joined: not building their own large language model and not partnering with a single AI partner, and prioritizing getting users to try AI even if it meant losing money in some cases. Gellman said she moved 30% of Box's budget into awareness and pitched working with an agency to measure it, but Levie told her it was a waste of money because "we would know if we had awareness based on the vibe." Gellman also reflected on her previous roles. She described her time as CMO of Salesforce Canada as "not viewed as strategic" and "not viewed as necessary at all," stating that she left as a result. She recounted an experience at Adobe where a new C-suite was brought in to take the company to the next level but was fired within six months after the team "was falling apart."