What most marketers miss about marketing effectiveness with Sorin Patilinet

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Insights Unlocked

Episode: What most marketers miss about marketing effectiveness with Sorin Patilinet
Date: November 10, 2025
Host: Johan Reed (CMO, UserTesting)
Guest: Sorin Patilinet (Marketing Strategist, PepsiCo; Author)
Producer: Nathan Isaacs

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Episode Overview

This engaging episode explores the real drivers of marketing effectiveness through a fresh, systems-oriented lens. Sorin Patilinet, author and PepsiCo marketing leader, joins UserTesting’s CMO Johan Reed to challenge common misconceptions in marketing. The conversation dives into systems thinking, the evolving role of AI, how to define and align on marketing effectiveness internally, and why marketers often miss focusing on what truly creates impact.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Missing Voice" in Marketing Thinking

• Sorin’s Book Motivation: Sorin explains writing his book to amplify the brand/advertiser’s perspective, often missing amid academic and agency voices.
• Quote:

  "I felt that there's a missing voice in all this conversation and that's the voice of the brand, the voice of the advertiser. ...We are here to make our brands grow and our brands ahead of our competitors."
  — Sorin Patilinet [03:32]

2. Systems Thinking and Marketing Effectiveness

• Why Systems Thinking? Sorin advocates for moving beyond narrow marketing KPIs—viewing marketing as an interconnected system involving strategy, product, pricing, distribution, content, and measurement.
• Quote:

  "I'm trying to bust that myth. ...Marketing is how effectively you apply your strategy, how effectively you think about pricing, product distribution, media, content and also measurement."
  — Sorin Patilinet [06:20]

• Barriers to Adopting Systems Approach: Cognitive load and time pressure are major obstacles, but advancing technology will help.
• Quote:

  "System thinking...does require a lot of cognitive effort...sometimes you don't have the time. ...But I think will be solved easily with the advancement of technology."
  — Sorin Patilinet [07:29]

3. Execution vs. Knowledge: The Real Differentiator

• Most Companies Have Enough Knowledge: The challenge isn’t knowing what to do, but executing holistic systems and successfully translating insights into action.
• Quote:

  "What separates great companies...is their ability to implement those insights and to execute that system...in real life. And that's the hard part."
  — Sorin Patilinet [09:22]

4. The Role and Future of AI in Marketing

• AI’s Transformational Potential: AI, especially LLMs, enhances marketing effectiveness by making sense of vast, unstructured consumer data and improving confidence in decisions.
• Duality—Excitement and Anxiety: AI will rapidly change marketing, but human experience and real-life insights will still matter.
• Quote:

  "Everything that a researcher does is to improve the odds of a decision to be successful and AI can only help improve that probability. ...I'm very excited about AI. I'm also scared about AI at the same time."
  — Sorin Patilinet [14:05, 14:50]

5. Redefining "Marketing Effectiveness"

• Complexity Is Increasing: Proliferation of channels and tools means decisions get fragmented; short-term KPIs may miss long-term effectiveness.
• Aligning on Effectiveness: The most critical step is to define and clarify what "effectiveness" actually means for the organization.
• Example from Mars: At Mars, the team aligned around creative effectiveness as a core driver, enabling focus and compounded learning.
• Quote:

  "The number one job to be done is to clarify what is effectiveness for your organization and to align that message with everyone until it's 100% clear..."
  — Sorin Patilinet [23:19]

6. Consistency, Focus, and Internal Communication

• Relentless Repetition: Sorin’s lesson from Mars—stick with a focused measurement and approach it consistently for compounded value.
• Healthy Internal Competition: Turning measurement into a positive competition can drive engagement and progress.
• Quote:

  "Set your definition or align that definition and only use that. Don't be bored by what you do. Don't try to find the next cookie. Do the same thing over and over."
  — Sorin Patilinet [28:38]

7. The Marketer’s Real Job: Knowing the Consumer, Not Chasing Tactics

• Avoid Platform and Format Fixation: Marketers often focus on ad formats because they’re familiar—real impact comes from knowing the consumer and category deeply.
• Quote:

  "We do spend much more time talking about which format of media shall I use...when the real conversation...would be around: Is this the category I'm playing or should the category be bigger? What are the category entry points? How are people actually perceiving that category? ...The difference is marginal [between ad formats]."
  — Sorin Patilinet [32:34]

8. Rethinking Marketing Leadership Titles

• Should CMOs Be CMOs?

  "Maybe all the CMOs should change their title...maybe you're a customer marketing officer, because...you are basically forced to think about the customer."
  — Sorin Patilinet [35:31]

• Holistic Strategy: Effectiveness must integrate across teams and disciplines, not be siloed into only media or channel management.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the difficulty of measuring strategy effectiveness:

  "It is something that we often go very fast through because we want to get to the tactics and the execution...Strategy is saying no to 100 things that you could consider. And we don't like to say no."
  — Sorin Patilinet [36:42]

• On building internal alignment:

  "Get a senior sponsor. ...It's very difficult to do anything if you start from a team of 1. Your CMO, potentially also some other senior leader in the organization should be sold in first..."
  — Sorin Patilinet [30:59]

• Final encouragement to marketers:

  "Start the conversation. I don't think there's anything more important than that."
  — Soren Patilinet [39:57]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [03:32] – On missing voices in marketing thought-leadership
• [06:20] – Systems thinking in marketing
• [09:22] – Challenge of execution, not knowledge
• [14:05 – 14:50] – AI’s promise and uncertainty in marketing
• [23:19] – Defining and aligning on marketing effectiveness
• [28:38] – Consistency and positive internal competition
• [32:34] – Why consumer understanding trumps format obsession
• [35:31] – Should the CMO become the “Customer Marketing Officer?”
• [36:42] – Elevating marketing strategy above tactics

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Key Takeaways

• Marketing is bigger than tactics—it’s a system.
• Defining “effectiveness” is foundational—document it, align on it, and repeat it.
• Embrace technology and AI as tools, but keep strategy and consumer understanding as human-led priorities.
• Focus internal measurement and communication, and stick with it for compounding results.
• Above all, marketers who truly understand their customers—and not just their media mix—will cut through complexity and drive impact.

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For continued conversation and resources, listeners are encouraged to visit usertesting.com/podcast or connect with Sorin Patilinet on LinkedIn.

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Transcript

[Nathan Isaacs]

Welcome back to Insights Unlocked. In this episode we're joined by Soren Patilanay, author, marketing strategist and PepsiCo Insights leader who joins User Testing's CMO Johan Reed for a fresh take on what really drives marketing effectiveness. From systems thinking to the power of creative consistency, Sorin shares how marketers can cut through complexity, embrace AI, better understand their customers and make smarter decisions. Enjoy the show.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.

[Nathan Isaacs]

Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, principal content marketing manager at User Testing and joining us today as host is User Testing CMO Johan Reed. Welcome, Johan.

[Johan Reed]

Thanks, Nathan. It's great to be here.

[Nathan Isaacs]

Our guest today is Soren Patilinet. Soren is a marketing strategist, engineer and author who helps brands grow by combining science, creativity and technology. He currently works with PepsiCo's global marketing teams to advance best practices in marketing effectiveness. Before that, he led global marketing research at Mars, where he built award winning measurement tools that shaped better advertising and media decisions across the industry. He's also the author of the new book Marketing Applying Marketing Science for Brand Growth. Welcome to the show, Soren.

[Soren Patilanay]

Thank you, Nathan. And thank you, Johan for having me here.

[Johan Reed]

It's our pleasure. We're glad you could join us. And congratulations on your new book. That's pretty, pretty phenomenal news. It is.

[Soren Patilanay]

I mean, it's like it's one month old, but it still feels weirdly real. I was in London last week and I saw it for the first time in a bookstore in Waterstones and it was like. I think it was one of the highlights of the year so far. So I think it's hard to beat.

[Johan Reed]

That must be a great feeling to see your work on the shelf out there where people can get it. That's amazing.

[Soren Patilanay]

Quite humbling because it was like next to David Ogilvy and Byron Sharp and all this kind of like people I look up to. And yeah, it's a fantastic feeling. So I hope it won't stay there. I hope it will sell and it will be reordered.

[Johan Reed]

Yeah, it's better to not see it on the shelf, right?

[Soren Patilanay]

Yeah.

[Johan Reed]

What inspired you to write it and what are you hoping that marketers will take away from it?

[Soren Patilanay]

I was very much. I think it's a cliche to say that you wanted to write the book you wish you had. When you started your career, but it's exactly what made me write this book. Don't get me wrong, I think we have a lot of great insights, a lot of sources of information in the marketing space. I mean, we have numerous academics that became like star personalities and are everywhere. We have amazing researchers from agencies and even research companies that are sharing their knowledge with the, with the wide world. However, I felt that there's a missing voice in all this conversation and that's the voice of the brand, the voice of the advertiser. And practically the reason why that voice is not that present is because we don't have anything to sell. We are here to make our brands grow and our brands ahead of our competitors. But we do have a great experience that, that's complementary to the one that the academia and the research practitioners are bringing. And I felt that this is a great opportunity for me to be part of that conversation and to leave something behind. And I hope that this book will provide a kickstart to anyone who will read it in whatever they will do next in marketing.

[Johan Reed]

I love that. I love that notion. And I don't think it's strange to say that you wrote a book that you wish you had. I feel like that's, that's the only logical thing to do to help marketers have the tools that we wish that we had had when we were starting our marketing journey. I think what struck me is that you're really focusing on not just sort of a tactic or a KPI or you're really sort of zooming out and talking about a system approach, systems thinking. Can you, can you talk a little bit about that and why you chose to focus on the systems aspect?

[Soren Patilanay]

I think it comes from my background. I'm a trained Engineer. I studied 5 years Telecommunication Engineering and then never worked a day in my life in engineering. I loved advertising, I loved marketing, I loved understanding people much more than understanding systems. And I, but I've took my, the way of thinking, I've took it with me throughout my career. And system thinking is something that's at the core of how our engineers think, how you plan the world and how you should think about most complex processes in the world. And it's one of the lenses through which I also look at marketing. We, we tend sometimes to oversimplify everything. We tend to think that marketing is, is just community, it's just advertising. We are for, for some tech companies, the marketing department is the department that does the leaflets for, for some advertisers because price is no longer under their remit as marketeers or because products is in R and D. The only thing that you have in your scope as a marketeer is advertising. So that's why you tend to put the equal sign between advertising and marketing. And I'm trying to bust that myth. I'm trying to, to bring the to, as you say, I mean to go at a higher level to think that marketing is not just advertising. Marketing is how effectively you apply your strategy, how effectively you think about pricing, product distribution, media, content and also measurement. And all those give you a holistical view of marketing effectiveness. That should be the lens through which you should qualify your performance of the brand. Not just whether my ad worked or my ad had likes, was liked or not.

[Johan Reed]

What do you think the barriers are for people who perhaps didn't grow up with an engineering mindset to adopting this? Because when you, you know, I also started my career studying engineering and I think it makes tremendous sense to me. But as with many things that seem to make sense on the surface, you always ask the question then why doesn't everyone else see it this way? So what's your perspective on that?

[Soren Patilanay]

So I think, I mean I've looked a lot into system thinking and it does require a lot of cognitive effort to take into account every kind of detail. So uh, and sometimes you don't have the time. It's not that you don't have the brain power. You simply need to make a decision like in that second and, and basically you'd narrow down on the specific element that you want to think about. As they said in Silicon Valley, move, move fast and, and break things. That's one, one strategy of going to the market. Uh, but that's not, not taking into account all the impacts on, on, on the entire system is a miss. But it is not the only growth strategy therefore. So I think, I mean pure real life pressures is what prevents us to always think in system and maybe some cognitive load which I think will be solved easily with the advancement of technology. I think we have already access to amazing tools that allow us to basically look at all the repercussions of all our decisions across the ecosystem that decision might touch.

[Johan Reed]

I think that's an interesting point because it's systematic thinking supported by systems because you need to be able to look at the data across all of the different elements of the system to understand how it's interacting. Is your sense as you've, as you've spoken with people about this, is your sense that most companies have that or lacking that, is that, is that the place to start with Systems thinking is with the systems.

[Soren Patilanay]

Or so I'm going to give like an unexpected answer is that my approach in the book was to elevate the conversation to a system of marketing effectiveness. Every single company that I came across has their system. So it's not that we don't have the knowledge. There's so much information out there. It's just about picking the right kind of method KPI metric that you, you want to use. I think really what separates great companies with, with from not so great companies, if, I don't know if, if you may say so, is their ability to implement those insights and to execute that system, that holistic marketing effectiveness system in real life. And that's the hard part. I think even looking towards the future, I think we're moving into an age in which information will no longer be the currency. We know exactly what, what we need to do. I think it's how that will be the, the big unlocker, how you implement it, how you drive your organization to make those decisions, how you convince your stakeholders from the cmo, CFO and CEO. Those are the hard elements which I think are future focused and maybe where we have a chance with, with AI.

[Johan Reed]

Yeah, I was going to come to AI later, but since you brought it up, I don't think we could have a podcast without it. I agree with you. I think we're seeing the mechanical aspects of data analysis and summarization and all of that is definitely being taken by AI, which leaves us as humans more time to go and do sort of the internal campaigning and value development and also critical thought about how do we want to structure our system of marketing and is it, is it serving us? Where do you see that going? Do you see AI tools helping us to really embrace this systems approach to thinking or are we still going to see people who are, are sort of mired in doing it the old way and just focusing on the advertising KPIs.

[Soren Patilanay]

I don't think anyone in this world would think that AI want impact or want help the future of marketing. The question, the right question is in what kind of, what kind of scope will it impact? Because it already has. I mean the, the evolution of AI, which has been boosted by the, the launch of large language models, was not, was not a stranger to marketing capabilities and marketing research. Even before that the launch of ChatGPT, I mean we've, I've used models that were looking at, at consumer attention, that were looking at various kind of like behavioral metrics in research environments and we're using AI computation to Basically large, not large language models, but machine learning models to drive conclusions and to drive insights. So AI was always at the core of measuring the effectiveness of marketing. The layer that LLM brings is a layer of conversation, of layer of integration, which I think is what will help to think about systems.

[Johan Reed]

Yeah, I'm very excited about AI's impact on marketing as well because I think it gives us the opportunity to increase the volume of data that we look at, both structured and unstructured. And I think your point is well made about looking at large volumes of unstructured consumer insight and behavioral data, looking at how are people interacting, what are their attitudes, what are their impressions and then making sense out of that. And I think that dovetails nicely with. You've shown that attention opens the door to people, it gets people on the hook in marketing, but it's that emotion that encodes that. And, and I feel like that's where the LLMs are going to help us make sense out of all of this emotional feedback and behavioral data that we're getting in order to improve the marketing output.

[Soren Patilanay]

Absolutely. I think, I mean everything that, that a researcher does is to improve the odds of a decision to be successful and AI can only help improve that probability. No research will tell you for certain that consumers will act that way. It's absolutely impossible. But I think because now large data sets are easily to process, we will be able to increase that percentage of confidence because at the end of the day that's what it matters. It matters if we take route A or we take route B, if we choose campaign A or prize B, and what's the confidence that we have in those, those decisions? So, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm very excited about AI. I'm also scared about AI at the same time. So it's a, it's something that I think about daily through the lens of my son who's 10, and I don't know exactly how to guide him in his career. He became interested in like brands and marketing, but I honestly don't have a clue how to, how to paint him the picture of what marketing will be in what in 12 years from now when he would graduate. It would be totally different. And I think it would be foolish to think that you can imagine how the world of marketing will look like in 12 years.

[Johan Reed]

Yeah, I think if you could ask us three years ago if we thought marketing would look the way it does today, the answer would probably be no. What are, you know, you mentioned some, that you have fears. What are some of those fears? Specifically especially in the shorter term.

[Soren Patilanay]

So I fear the, I'm a firm believer and I think I wrote it in the book that actually the best advice I would give my son is to get as many in real life experiences as he can. Because I still believe that people will make decisions based on what other people that they like appreciate and trust will tell them to do, rather than what a prompt bot will tell them to do. Probably increasingly less, but still very, very relevant. So having real life experiences and having a varied type of experience that are not in front of a chat prompt but in front of real people, that's I think what, what be what will make the difference going forward.

[Johan Reed]

And that'll that will dramatically affect how we measure marketing effectiveness, won't it?

[Soren Patilanay]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Johan Reed]

I think, I think that's the thing that as a marketing leader is the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around is that how we define effective marketing is changing and it's changing very rapidly. And being able to, to to do effective planning and setting KPIs and thinking about effectiveness as a discipline that outlives the campaign, that outlives the the current year KPI or current year target, I think that adds a significant la complexity for marketing leaders to grapple with. Especially as we talk to finance and to others about how are we justifying our spend, what are we getting back for that that spend? What is your perspective on how marketers need to think about that?

[Soren Patilanay]

I wish I would have like the perfect answer. I think we're learning, I'm learning along the way. It's because, face it, I think technology has evolved much faster than any other field of business. I think if we would say that we've made progress in marketing or we've made progress in measurement or in effectiveness, this pales to the progress that the tech companies have made in grabbing our attention, selling our attention and offering us something in return for that. So, and that created a sort of fragmentation. Marketing is much difficult, much more difficult today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. And it's becoming increasingly difficult to the point that in some companies I'm certain that people are making only a set of decisions because there's simply not enough time to, to look at the entire marketing plan because you now instead of a TV and a print ad and an out of home ad, now you have like seven types of audiences on Meta and two on TikTok and you each execute a different creative. And they might, one might have an equity effect desired, one might have a sales impact desire effect. So it's becoming extremely complicated. But, but I have trust in, in technical solutions that will be buil on AI that would allow us not just to measure those impacts, but to actually run prompts of questioning how those impacts are intermingling with each other or how they are basically talking to each other.

[Johan Reed]

So it's. If I, as I, as I listen to you and I'm sort of processing.

[Soren Patilanay]

This and putting things together, I don't have the answer. I mean, I'm just, I don't think.

[Johan Reed]

Any of us do. None of us have the answer. I think that's, that's what makes these conversations interesting. And it feels to me like a lot of the, the optimism you feel is that we will have the support to, in a world where we have less and less time to work on these things because the pace of execution is increasing. The tools are helping us by giving us better synthesis on the insights so that we can build this culture around thinking and thinking about the decisions we're making and framing that up against the data and the insights. Because I feel like in the last several years the marketplace has evolved rapidly, but we didn't have the insights. So we started relying more and more again on just going with your gut. And as we're seeing the scaling of channels and the complexity and it's harder and harder to justify spend based on your gut. So it feels a little bit like for those marketers who embrace this and say, I am going to leverage these tools to inform myself, I'm going to do research, I'm going to ask for behavioral insights to come back to me and I will build a culture around considered decision making. Those are the marketers who will, will be successful going forward and will be able to operate in that system.

[Soren Patilanay]

Yeah, I think the marketers, as you rightly said, the marketees that will be successful will be the one that will find a way to use all their data to make those decisions. But I'm also conscious from the point of view of the brand that we are overloaded with tools and there is this syndrome of yet another SaaS platform that everybody needs to learn this week. So. Which is just a reflection of how complex is the, the process that we are trying to, the business that we're trying to run here. So I, again, I still haven't figured that out, but I think there is a role in, in all of the partners out there to clarify precisely what's the job to be done, what's the problem that they're trying to solve, Because I see a lot of suppliers of research that are basically offering absolutely everything and packaging that as a SaaS and then going to say that all of a sudden you will spend one hour a day working with this SaaS to manage your workflow. It's not working. I mean, I think there's a, maybe an agent could work on that SaaS and then I will be able to converse with that agent. And so simplifying the complex should be like the number one goal for everyone in the Martech space in the next years.

[Johan Reed]

I would say is that, you know, when we go back to thinking about marketing effectiveness, is that really where people should start, is take a look at what they're doing now and try to simplify it and zoom out, look at marketing as a system and then, and then work on simplifying it so that you can create clarity in the organization. Or is there a different entry point that you.

[Soren Patilanay]

I would, I would think it's a different entry point. And I think the number one job to be done is to clarify what, what is effectiveness for your organization and to align that message with everyone until it's 100% clear to write it on the wall and then once that is clear, to align it again. Because effectiveness has different, different definitions depending on who joined the, the C suite in the last month. But if that changes, the bar changes continuously. So it's less, I would say that the challenge is less so about integrating the systems and, and thinking more holistically. It's really explaining what is it, what is effectiveness. To give you an example, at Mars, we, we understood, we looked at what are the drivers of effectiveness across communications. And we recognized, we knew from research, and it's published research that creative is the number one driver of effectiveness, with approximately half of the impact of a campaign overseeing anything that audiences or targeting or reach can do. So therefore, we defined communication effectiveness as creative effectiveness. So everybody in the organization was obsessed about creative effectiveness. We put all our efforts, we've created a language around that creative effectiveness. We've invested in tools and we continuously use those tools for years and years until the amount of insights accumulated. So much that the compound effect generated amazing best practices and guidelines that are still used today. So that's one example of thinking up, but also narrowing it down to one single thing. But again, the reverse of that is that if you just look at creative effectiveness, that's a creative effectiveness and there's not a marketing effectiveness. And there are other elements, if you look at an MMM output that are much more impactful than the creative, it's your distribution, it's your sales on deal. It's anything that you can do around physical availability that will be probably more important short term than, than your creative. So I don't know. It's a, it's a continuous tango, I would say. But having. Having seen how different companies of large scale work, just because you're part of CPG doesn't mean that you think effectiveness is measured in the same way. So there are different. Everybody adapts that to their culture. Organizational culture.

[Johan Reed]

Yeah. I think your point is well made.

[Soren Patilanay]

Right.

[Johan Reed]

Defining what is, how do we want to think about effectiveness and then identifying. So in that example you identified sort of the prime mover was creative and then that was where the emphasis was placed. Have you seen in general that there's always sort of a majority element that you can point to where you say this is the lever that moves. Moves things. If we can affect that lever. So let's focus on that. Or do you run into situations? Because I imagine that there are marketers listening to this right now who are like, yeah, if only I could say it was only creative. Right.

[Soren Patilanay]

And it's not just creative. I think it's everything. The curse of a large organization is that it has too many brains thinking about the problems of resource allocation. So besides the point of measuring the price effectiveness or promo effectiveness or communication effectiveness, you get into conflicting budgets, you get into different kind of internal politics. I would say that stand in the, in the creation of a unique set of measurement. But what I'm trying to build is not a solution. I'm trying to land the message that you need to think holistically about all these parts and whether they come from the same tool or whether they come from different tools, that's almost not as important. How you see the interaction between, I don't know, communication and pricing and product is where the magic lies, I would say.

[Johan Reed]

I think you used a really important word there, which is communication. Which feels like especially in large enterprises, that's often the battle that we fight is getting that communication, figuring out how to land your message internally. Do you have any advice for marketers who are listening to this, who are thinking, how am I going to go have these conversations?

[Soren Patilanay]

You mean internal communications?

[Johan Reed]

Yeah, to create. Because, you know, if somebody's listening to this and saying, wow, you know what? I'm going to read the book. I think this is really important. This could help my organization. How do they get started in these conversations?

[Soren Patilanay]

I think, as I mentioned before, I think identifying what's the real measure of effectiveness for that organization is something that should be front and center to any kind of endeavor in this phase, then I think there is an element of consistency that shouldn't be overlooked. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. A marketing effectiveness practice isn't built in a day. So banging on the same message helps. I've spent almost 14 years at Mars running the same media effectiveness solution every month. So we didn't get tired, we didn't get attracted to the new toy in town because we knew that we wanted to have the same kind of compounding effect that's so, so magical. So set your definition or align that definition and only use that. Don't be bored by what you do. Don't try to find the next cookie. Do the same thing over and over. And what has worked for me is that we are humans and we've always adore a little bit of competition. So any kind of measurement can be turned into a competition with like awards and like I would say positive competition. I still remember moments when different markets or different regions were competing to achieve like the, the best creative effectiveness score. And overall that was helping the, the organization, but it also brought that measure into spotlight and it was very clear that this is how we talk about effectiveness when we talk about effectiveness. So, so those would be some elements that I would add. And yeah, I mean it goes without saying get a senior sponsor. I think it's very difficult to do anything if you start from a team of1. Your CMOs potentially also your some other senior leader in the organization should be sold in first if you want to be successful because otherwise it's going to be an uphill battle.

[Johan Reed]

Yeah, yeah, I think, and I totally agree on getting a senior sponsor, especially one outside of marketing, to help build more of a business coalition approach. But what I think is really important is that notion of relentless repetition and just staying focused. I think as marketers we tend to want to be innovative and trying new things and experimenting. If I hear you correctly, there's a place for that. You should certainly be experimenting in the creative to see what you can do, but you don't want to experiment every month trying a different way of measuring the output.

[Soren Patilanay]

I would, I'm not 100% sure I would say that I think you should experiment in understanding your consumer. You should be creative in ways in you can better understand your consumer. Because once you found the creative message or the creative brand platform that works, you should not change that creative platform just because you get tired of it. So I think yes, in the creativity space, but more in the inside Generation space. So don't get bored by methods. Get bored by how little you know about your consumer.

[Johan Reed]

I love that. I think that's a key takeaway for our listeners because I think there is this tendency to get wrapped up in the internal pieces and maybe not think so much about that. Your point of not knowing enough about the consumer.

[Soren Patilanay]

I'm guilty as well. We do spend much more time talking about which format of media shall I use? Shall it be non skippable ads or shall it be newsfeed ads when the real conversation that we should be spending time would be around? Is this the category I'm playing or should the category be bigger? What are the category entry points? How are people actually perceiving that category? When do they use it? And try to understand those elements better than if it's a newsfeed on meta or on Facebook or if it's a story. The difference is marginal.

[Johan Reed]

Why do you think we get so caught up in talking about the formats and the internal stuff instead of what I think is perhaps more interesting, which is the consumer's mind?

[Soren Patilanay]

Yeah, because I think those companies that are driving that conversation are doing an amazing job. I think all the digital players are doing an amazing job at bringing those products or those brands front and center in the minds of marketeers through various executions. I mean, not only that we use them in marketing, but we use them in our daily lives so we know what we're talking about. And it's, it's not as sexy to talk about when will is my consumer group of, I don't know, toilet cleaner using that product or when, when is a candy bot or how is the candy bought? So, so I think, I mean everybody can have an opinion about, about stories because they probably post stories. Not everybody can have an opinion about category entry points in carbonated beverages because, because it's much more complicated. So. But that's where we, that's the role that marketing plays. It's not the role of choosing the channel of media. It's one of them, but it's a smaller one.

[Johan Reed]

Yeah, I think that's a really important point is that marketing needs to really own the understanding of the buyer as part of understanding the dynamics of the marketplace. I mean it's in our title. We're not, you know, the. I think that's, that, that. I think that's something really important to come back and anchor to is that it's about understanding the consumer and that rather than understanding the media platforms. Because. And I also think your point is well made about the Fact that we fall victim to the marketing of the media companies who want to market these platforms to us. So they get us talking about this stuff by marketing to us. So I think that's a lesson for all of all of our listeners to remember. Filter out some of that marketing noise and focus on what's really important.

[Soren Patilanay]

And I think I was thinking now while you were talking at maybe you and maybe all the CMOs should change their title because you are Chief Marketing officer, but maybe you're a customer marketing officer, because I think by having customer in your title, you are basically forced to think about the customer and not think about your role in the. In the organization.

[Johan Reed]

So there is a healthy debate in the CMO community, actually that the current debate is a little bit different, which is chief Market Officer instead of marketing officer. But I feel like it gets to that same place, which is my job is to know my market, know my buyer, know what's happening, far above knowing the techniques and tactics of actually marketing, because those are the things that will change. They're changing in real time with AI and new channels and all of that stuff. And while that's important, what's really important is knowing what the customer is thinking and how they want to be spoken to and what their perceptions are. And I think it's harder to get to.

[Soren Patilanay]

Yeah. And that's why, I mean, I think that when I start breaking down these topics into chapters in the book, the first chapter is about the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. While I can confess that it's very difficult to measure the effectiveness of a marketing strategy, it is something that we often go very fast through because we want to get to the tactics and the execution. We want to choose the channel instead of thinking a bit more deeper about how do we segment that market. What's the category, really? Because it's not easy. There are some uncomfortable conversations to be had. And it's as Steve Jobs used to say, strategy is saying no to 100 things that you could consider. And we don't like to say no. I mean, we just want to come up with whatever audience, whatever targeting, and then just go execute, because that's what we know how to do. So I'm trying to also elevate the role of strategy to be a bit bigger in the conversation. Rather than just thinking about media strategy, let's say.

[Johan Reed]

Yeah, and I think that goes back to where we started the conversation, which is that that strategy can't just be a media strategy or marketing strategy. It has to be a holistic strategy that involves pricing and product and a whole bunch of other teams that sit outside of marketing in many cases. And so it's about building that strategy together, identifying what's important, how you will define effectiveness, and then building the strategy around that.

[Soren Patilanay]

Very well said. I would not repeat that because you said it well. I need the notes.

[Johan Reed]

Well, that's the hope. My hope is that our listeners will be able to take the distilled conversation down and then go buy your book. This has been such a fabulous conversation that we've had. And how do people get your book other than going into a bookstore, on the street or at the airport?

[Soren Patilanay]

I think, I mean, it's still, I mean, marketing effectiveness is still a niche topic. It's not the kind of atomic habits or let them kind of like bestseller. And the best place to buy it is online. It's available at all major booksellers. I'm not going to name names, but also the big ones.

[Johan Reed]

So, yeah, I think everybody knows who the big ones are.

[Soren Patilanay]

So I'll be more than happy if, if, if any of your listeners are picking up the book and have any thoughts or ideas, I'll, you can, you can always find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active and I, I'm, I've also wrote the book to basically start conversations because we have never met. But I'm sure that just because this book was launched, this podcast was recorded, we are, we are starting now a conversation that could end up into, into something else. So, so that's what I would like with everyone that reads my book.

[Johan Reed]

I love this. Start the conversation. I don't think there's anything more important than that. Soren, thank you so much for being with us today. This has been really wonderful.

[Soren Patilanay]

Thank you very much for having me. And yeah, it's a pleasure.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

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