← Marketing Trends
Loading summary
Transcript81 lines
- [00:00]
Rebecca Messina
Any marketer at any seat at any table needs to know how they'd answer the question, how do you bring value here? Where is there new value to create? Forget the job description because that's how you dispel myths about marketing and even how you dispel myths about yourself.
- [00:13]
Stephanie Postols
How can a marketer think about this environment?
- [00:15]
Rebecca Messina
Now marketing has to connect to the growth agenda of the company. It's just an imperative that we work cross functionally, that we invite others in, that we use language that others can relate to, that we tie our goals together with theirs. Global just meant who you were serving, not necessarily where you sat. And it gave birth to this idea of networked marketing, which really turned us from a function, but more into a collaboration model of how we networked the work and how we wired the work. And I think it's very, very relevant today, maybe more than ever. I think operating models are an innovation in infrastructure. When all else fails, innovate your operating model and I think you can have great results with your teams.
- [00:50]
Stephanie Postols
You don't hear many people talking about that. That's so opposite from like how so many team structures work. That's not just relevant for marketing. That's everywhere. Hey everybody and welcome back to marketing Tre your host, Stephanie Postols. And today I am so excited because I'm joined by Rebecca Messina. Rebecca has over 30 years of global marketing experience being the first ever global CMO at Uber Plus. She also led global marketing efforts at Coca Cola for 22 years during its peak success. And she was also the global CMO at Beam Suntory. Today she's a senior advisor at McKinsey together with an expansive private advising practice. Rebecca, welcome to the show.
- [01:31]
Rebecca Messina
Thanks so much for having me, Stephanie.
- [01:33]
Stephanie Postols
So excited. You know, since the second I met you, I was like, we need to get you on this show. You have way too many stories.
- [01:38]
Rebecca Messina
Aw, I felt the same way about you.
- [01:40]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, I'm glad that we made it happen. So I love to just jump right into it with some of my favorite people. So with you, I want to go into. I mean, you've been leading marketing efforts in really traditional places, but also very high growth companies. And so I want to hear when you step into an organization today, what are some common misconceptions about marketing that you see at the executive level?
- [02:02]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah, I think so many people step into a new role and they think whatever I did in my last role will work here. So that's. And we can certainly go there for a minute. Cause I've got some horror stories. But importantly you have to know what environment you're in. So said differently, look, marketing is the Coca Cola company. Marketing's the center of the universe. Marketing at Uber wasn't even a seat at the table for the first 10 years of all that growth. So to believe that those two contexts and what people in that company thought about marketing, they were vastly different. And so the misconceptions are often kind of tied up in what that company is and how its relationship with marketing has been. So if you're at Uber, to some degree, you're going, well, most of our growth hasn't come from having marketing or having marketing in this more traditional way with a global CMO and things like that. At Coke, they couldn't imagine a world without it. And Beam was really somewhere in between. But definitely very, very marketing had a big seat at that table. And so the misconceptions are largely just tied to whatever that company's growth agenda and the relationship with marketing has been. But maybe if there's a red thread, it's in all of them. Even in the Coca Cola company, there is sometimes some skepticism around marketing and its role in growth. And I think you have to recognize just where you are in that. You know, Coke is a very expansive role for marketing. You lead the R and D agenda, you lead the product agenda. That is not what is happening in tech centric, product centric companies. I always say, just know the context you're operating in. Makes a huge difference. When you're stepping into not only the executive role, but any marketing team you may come on is to just understand what's in the hearts and minds of the people that you're going to interact with, because that's their context of marketing and that's what you're up against.
- [03:49]
Stephanie Postols
Okay, so let's get into, like, how to do that. So if you're stepping into this new company, how do you go about auditing these leaders and figure out, like, what do you care about? How do I speak it back? You and your language. Like, what does that look like for you?
- [03:59]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah. So obviously now, first I grew up at Coke, so I knew the language, I knew they were, I knew how they thought, which actually is a curse. And it's got a lot, you know, there's a lot of good to that too. Right? So as I grew more senior there, I knew how, I knew the language, I knew the role marketing played, but I also believed in white space. And that's a framework I think everyone needs to have. And never more important than today. What I mean by that Is I never went into a role, any new role. And as I ascended and accelerated in my career, like it was always like, where's their new value to create? Forget the job description because that's how you dispel myths about marketing and even how you dispel myths about yourself. So like, where's their new value to create? Chase that. And typically when you chase that, you start to create a way that marketing maybe gets a more expansive view. Or maybe marketing's welcome in a form it wasn't welcome in before, or maybe marketing's now got a chance to talk to other people in the C suite it wasn't talking to. So I found that that's really, really helpful in any of those environments. I'm going to contrast that with walking into Uber and there first, in those early days, you know, I didn't have 22 years growing up there. I was an outsider in the industry, right? I came at that point from CPG because I brought things that they didn't have. But at the same time I didn't have a lot of what got them all of that, that expansive growth that they had experienced after those first nine years. And so there was a lot of really going this way, going across the organization and listening. And one thing became very clear to me that I always say watch your language. So another framework is watch your language. What I mean by that is had I shown up there and I had the horror stories of my in between role of where I brought just too much Coke with me, had I shown up there using that CPG language, I think it would have been really hard to, to set the agenda for marketing in this new company. And so the framework there I used was one of like language that met them where they were, not language that I was most familiar with. So here you have this person who at this point has, you know, 26 years of marketing experience leading brands and these huge companies and I'm avoiding using the word brand. I am avoiding with all of my heart and soul how to avoid using that word. Which seems crazy for a person who's been brought up in a brand building world like the Coca Cola company and being Suntory for as long as I was. But it was the divisive word. It was the word that in that world signaled department, not value. It doesn't mean that that department didn't create value. It just meant that it was like it pitted performance and brand did a lot of things and it didn't do what it needed to do. Which for me what it meant was value. And meaning. And so instead, I talked about, how do we bring meaning to the company? How do we bring meaning to our performance marketing efforts? How do we use meaning as a way to generate growth that much easier? How do we use meaning to connect with consumers and drivers? And that language just kind of took the tone down of like, oh, you're talking about the department. No, no, no. I'm talking about the work and the value creation is one of the things that we can do as marketers. And so that was really, really helpful was knowing that context and really recognizing that my language could fundamentally change my interactions with and with the product team, with everyone I interacted with, and really using language that they felt they could understand and they could relate to, even if it was uncomfortable for me.
- [07:27]
Stephanie Postols
Yep, I love it. I had a funny skit in my head at one point around marketers changing the words of things, even though some of them are kind of the same thing. Of like, no, no, no, it's not brand awareness. It's top of funnel awareness.
- [07:38]
Rebecca Messina
Yes.
- [07:39]
Stephanie Postols
Very different things. Can you sign off on my budget?
- [07:42]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah, there. There is a little bit of that, but it's also like getting rid of the fancy jargon, right? Like, if brand's a decisive word, at the end of the day, it's a meaning. It's a way of creating a navigational device that people can assign meaning to. And so if I could get rid of that word and it could help, I was. I was all in.
- [08:02]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah. What other things did you have to navigate? Because to me, Uber feels like Uber is what companies are today. I mean, to me, at least, the world I see is like, less Coca Colas and way more companies like Uber that marketers have a chance to get into. So, like, what other things are happening today that are kind of similar to these days?
- [08:20]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah, well, I will say, and while I 100% agree with you, there are some fundamentals there that I see the Ubers of today could benefit from as well.
- [08:30]
Stephanie Postols
Okay, like what? Tell me more.
- [08:32]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah, so, and I see this in a lot of the companies that I advise, because the fundamentals of, you know, call it data driven versus insight rich. And I, like, in the absence of things at a company like Coke, and a lot of your CPGs mean that you try harder on other things. So the way we had to navigate consumer landscapes at Coke and understand what people cared about, we couldn't get that from data. We had to get that from sitting with people and ethnographies and in home. And you had to extrapolate and you had to predict and you had to really use past behavior to do that. And, and so some of that kind of ethnography, some ways, maybe even anthropology, is, I think was really is helpful as I think about, like what I can now do in the companies that are, let's call them, 21st century companies born of a different ilk and in a different way. And so some of that I miss sometimes when I get inside companies and I just don't see that that like the whys and the way we asked whys, I just think was, was really different. That said, Stephanie, I think as we look at a lot of, let's call it today's companies, again, born in the 21st century and the marketers that are inside those, one is not foreign to the other. Again, it's a product of the value that marketing has created inside that company. But the biggest one being the role I think that marketers play in the creation of product agenda or not. And I still believe that there is a bigger role for marketing to have closer to that agenda, maybe not leading it the way it does in cpg because of what I said about those fundamentals, because of what I think a marketer can uniquely know. I mean, I think if marketing is what, consumer driven growth, who else knows the consumer maybe, maybe in that way than I think a marketer with maybe some of that background. So bringing those two worlds together I think is, is awesome and I love it. What I also think I really quickly grasped was, you know, if Coke plans, Uber iterates and, and those two things don't really coexist very well. Because if you are a manufacturing company and it takes you a long time to make what you make, your ability to iterate is just almost unnecessary and maybe even some days, some ways dangerous, right? And so what we make takes a long time, takes a long time to produce. It's gotta go through a lot of approvals and it can't quickly be brought back in. Unlike the Ubers of this world, where a mistake is made, we shift a product, we can quickly fix that bug, we can quickly send you an update, and things will be better. And so I think that mindset also plays a really big role. And I think your ability to kind of lean into either of those two environments, and I always say if I could take the planning rigor of Coke and the iteration mindset of Uber, you are like, you are creating an incredible marketer because you have this ability to plan for the long term, creating incredibly long growth agendas, and yet pivot along the way, which is what today's marketers need to do.
- [11:38]
Stephanie Postols
Do you think there's a space for that? I mean to me I'm like, it seems like that sounds like a perfect solution to me. So where, where are the gaps?
- [11:46]
Rebecca Messina
I do think there's a space, a big space and I think there's a number of gifts. I think some of them are in our own selves. Right. Like, you know, when I look at how we led at Coke, it was layers and layers of approvals. Again, the planning mindset, the de risk, the ensure. Everyone's bought in, everyone's behind this because our ability to go back was almost impossible. Undoing something was so hard to undo. And so I think we put a little bit of that on ourselves. Right. You know, and particularly, and one thing I would say that's right for the manufacturing team as well and the supply chain team, but it's not right for a marketing team. A marketing team can't take on and own all of that manufacturing mindset. Marketing today has to pivot and iterate and operate, optimize. And so I think like why does, why does marketing, the one closest to the consumer agenda, need to house all of that, dare I say, burden of that. And then I look at Uber and I do think, or any of the companies that I'm inside that are of this generation. And I think about in the spirit of iterating and optimizing, I think sometimes there is a lack of a depth of certainty of where we're headed, of planning for that future. You know, I was in inside a Japanese owned company, Beam Suntory for almost three years. We wrote religiously 10 year growth plans because that's in their culture, that's how they think. And I will never forget what it feels like to be able to see that roadmap. And again, you know that there's going to be a thousand pivots along the way. But to have a sense of where this company's going to remember they make products that sometimes you have to bet today on a whiskey that's going to come to fruition in 20 years from now. And so it actually makes a lot of sense. But the same is true for some of the technologies that need to be really thought about and planned for. They don't need to be that different. They're really mindsets sometimes tied to the business model of the company. And I think it's a lot of how we lead. We can lead our marketers to be more innovative, we can lead our marketers and incent them to put more thought into plans. That's on us as leaders.
- [13:54]
Stephanie Postols
What does that look like when like you're saying put more thought into plan and having these marketers think different? I mean, we always hear about marketers having a hard time, especially now. It's like, you have to do more with less. You're going to have the same budget you did four years ago. Like, how can a marketer think about this environment now and really make sure that they're being heard, that people are understanding the goals that they have, that the goals are correct? I mean, how can they audit the space that they're in right now so that when the CEO gets what they want to do, it's like, ah, yes, of course, this makes perfect sense. Like, what does that look like? And I'm asking because I know you go into all these companies and you do this all the time.
- [14:26]
Rebecca Messina
So I think marketing has to connect to the growth agenda of the company. And even if in that company, marketing isn't at the center of the universe, a lot of the Coca Cola way, where the growth agenda is tied to these products that marketing created. And on the innovation agenda, any marketer at any seat at any table needs to know how they'd answer the question, how do you bring value here wherever you sit? And the ability to answer that question can come in, you know, short snippets of, I'm going to do this in the next three months to answering the question of how does marketing bring value? Right. And so, but I think we have to be able to answer them at both levels. I think we have to be able to say, here's the unique mission that marketing plays inside this company, any company and everybody inside that marketing team should be able to answer that. And then take it all the way down to the individual of how I contribute to that marketing mission and that marketing mission, which is connected to the company's mission, that line. And I can tell you from some of the private advising work that I do and the research we have, that line is rarely drawn. Rarely. And so what a CEO sees is a marketer over here who's disconnected from the growth agenda. And that plays back to some of those myths you asked me about earlier, that marketing isn't center of growth, doesn't have growth top of mind, isn't as accountable for the metrics as maybe other teams are. And so I think one of the things I try to do and when I mentor folks as well, is can you draw that line, no matter how senior or junior you are to today to the mission of marketing, that dies to the mission of the company and where you fit into that. And could you answer the question of how you do that for the short term, but also how you do that in the long term? And again, it's just in how we ask the questions.
- [16:06]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah. In a couple of the other interviews I've done, the CMOs I've talked to, I've talked about the importance of this cross functional collaboration now more than ever of if you're not talking even to your CTO about what you're doing, if they don't know there's a problem, because a lot of the tools that you're buying, they probably need to know about and they will probably give you red flags, ideas of what not to buy. And your CEO, you better know what they're doing because like you said, you have to tie the growth plans and the actual company plans. Do you see this evolving in the spaces you're playing in of like this becoming more crucial?
- [16:34]
Rebecca Messina
Crucial. How do you. What's the under, what's the understatement of crucial? It's imperative and it comes across in research. McKinsey has. It comes across in research. I've seen in my private side. I will say the company least expected that did this. The best was actually Beam Centauri. I had a CEO who forced collaboration across the functions. I will tell you, he was masterful. And what he didn't do, I've seen other companies do this where they pit the leadership team against each other and it almost becomes a competition and there's some value to that who can get there faster. His was the opposite. If you walked in with a problem as a single function. So head of marketing or head of innovation at the company? I was marketing innovation and I had R and D under me. I walked in with and only talked about the problem that I had that could be solved if I went with others. He would literally give this to me, which was walk out of the room, go talk to your peers and only after you and the peers can't solve this do you bring it to me. And if that became a muscle of mine. So in the beginning I probably used old habits and I thought, well, my boss will help me solve this. And he refused to. And the way he incented us was as a team, not as individuals. A very small percent of our bonuses as the ELT was even made on the individual level. It was what we achieved as a team. And so it was incented. The behavior was not tolerated. He didn't let us pit each Other. And it was extremely helpful and helpful. As I went into this kind of more unknown environment of Uber, where again, to go fast, to go alone. One of the things I tried to do was indeed forge more of those relationships. Cross functionally with the tech team, with the product team is my first point. And with the finance team, those are only the four areas together with marketing that needed to work the closest. And I really thank my boss in that middle space who forced that collaboration. And I think it's something that we can force on our teams. It's. It's a must. You know, I, I saw a number where Marketing only owns 60% of the marketing activities inside a company. I don't know if the number's exact, but it's astounding. Marketing only owns 60% of the marketing activities inside a company. You can't find another function with something similar to that. Right. Finance owns, you know, 85% of the finance activities or. And so as such, it's just an imperative that we work cross functionally, that we invite others in, that we use language that others can relate to, that we tie our goals together with theirs. These are must dos.
- [19:19]
Stephanie Postols
I love it. So when it comes to the world we're in today, at least from my perspective, is that it seems like marketers are a little timid now to take big bets, because, I mean, there was a while when they did and maybe there wasn't as much oversight of metrics and then all of a sudden, you know, the budgets got pulled in and then like every dollar counted and there was no brand building and there was no, you know, those bets. It feels like we're moving into a better space, hopefully. Now this is my optimism saying that we are, but what do you think about like taking big bets? I'm assuming you've done this at Uber and like the other places that you've been, but I'd love to hear some stories around like what you've done and especially times when you're like, this might not work out. I'm a little nervous about this one or this one crashed and burned, but was like a great learning experience.
- [20:06]
Rebecca Messina
So. Oh, big bets. They're like how to be a hero or how to be the get fired. Yeah. At the door. So first of all, the idea of big bets, we had big bets in our plans at co we called them that you were obligated to name them. And big bets, ironically, were the things that had all the cross functional collaboration. And it's something I loved and have taken forward, which is a big bet. Can only be a big bet if it involves more than your area.
- [20:39]
Stephanie Postols
Oh, I like that.
- [20:41]
Rebecca Messina
Right. And that is such a simple framework, but so powerful because if it's big, it requires more of us, maybe even all of us. If it's big, it'll get the attention of more of us and all of us. And so I think the bigger question is how to determine what the big bets are. Because once they get that status, if in fact you buy into the perspective I just shared with you, then how you do it is it's going to be through collaboration, through metrics that are measuring a multifunctional, multi layers, because they're by definition a bet this company is making that it believes it's big. It also means that the risk is shared. And so you're more likely to do better things if you're not going down alone. And if, in fact, you have the confidence and the comfort of knowing that the resources are behind you as you go at this. Big bets don't fail because the idea wasn't big enough. They often fail because they weren't resourced properly. They didn't have the timeframe they needed. We didn't have the cadences, we got distracted. And so that for me is like how big bets succeed. I was fortunate that I was enabled, empowered to lead a couple of those. And that feeling of knowing that I'm taking a hundred people with me, let's just give you an example. Like, really, like there's a hundred people on this sheet of paper that are owning this bet with me is huge and both, yeah, daunting that you get the privilege to lead it, but also there's tremendous comfort and power in that. Not the power I have, but the power of knowing that, like, wow, I've got a hundred people signed up to go on this journey with me. And I felt an enormous responsibility. And I think you just try that much harder to not let people down. But in so doing, sometimes you will need to pivot, you will need to walk in and say, time out. It appears that as far as we've come is where we need to stop. And knowing when to do that is as much art as science. And I don't know that I always got that right. But I always tried to own the role I had in either the success or the failure of it. But setting it up right for success is, I think, the number one thing about big bets. And I really think when we did that well at Coke, we did it better than anywhere I've seen.
- [22:56]
Stephanie Postols
What about it did you do Any at anything at Uber that.
- [22:59]
Rebecca Messina
Well, they were all big bets.
- [23:01]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah. I'll say. Coming in as like, the first cmo.
- [23:04]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah. So maybe that was part of, you know, like, some of the things we did didn't have some of that foundational elements to it. We were still doing big bets and putting them on one person. Right. It's just some of those fundamentals weren't there yet. And so, yes, there was a couple of big bets we did. We did one around the Super bowl in 2019 that I don't think, you know, it. It didn't fizzle, but it didn't have the impact that I think we had believed it would have. When I go back and I think about it, when we debriefed it as a team and did our, like, you know, learning review on it, it was clear. It was like the insight wasn't right. It wasn't the rigor that we should have had to call this big bad. We didn't bring in the other functions soon, all the things I'd known, but we were moving really fast and it felt right. But yet again, it's a good example of where I think I failed on my own. Bringing of the fundamentals forward that I knew. And so. But also, I think it really sometimes felt like everything was a big bet, you know, or at least everything was a new bet because there was so little tried before, particularly on a united marketing front and even similarly on how we thought about the Org. Some of the biggest, biggest things we were doing in those days was completely reorganizing and reshaping how the teams across the world work together. And I mean, imagine at that point, marketing was distributed across 80 countries, but really distributed meaning, like all of those 80 places that we were operating had leadership that went one way. So there was no collaboration this way. Right. There was a lot of duplication, but again, that's how they went fast. So what we were really trying to do was network that organization to be unlike any other, to work in new ways in recognizing which capabilities needed more global or like, centralized leadership that could be shared and where you still needed to keep that really close, tethering to the local market, to move really fast, more on some of the, like, kind of call it in field work. And so that was a big bet. Right. We were betting on an entirely new way of working on a company that had experienced great success. But as we were looking down, you know, barreling down the eyes of an IPO and kind of the next phase of the company, it was required and that Was really seen as a big bet.
- [25:14]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah. I mean, it seems like that's something that's gonna be more important than ever now is like thinking about global marketing efforts and how to manage the team. And I've definitely seen many times where a company will try and centralize things and it just like kills the uniqueness of that team of, like, what they're best at. Yes. How do you think about that balance between, like, let the team do what they're best at, but also let's have standards make sure things don't go crazy.
- [25:38]
Rebecca Messina
I love. Maybe my favorite subject in marketing is marketing operating models. And I think it's because it's the. It's the thing that it's our biggest lever and it's least used. And so what do I mean by that? I will. So many companies come in the front door at McKinsey or even in my private advising and want to talk about structure. And really, it's. Any structure can work if the operating model, not the operating structure is right. And so as a framework, I would tell people, like, put the word structure down the boxes and the lines and the reporting lines and think operating model. And the operating model is really. Go back to that thing we were talking about the mission of marketing and how it creates value inside that particular company, which should be unique everywhere because you know where it sits in that value creation in the value chain. And then what capabilities are required to deliver on that mission? And that should be the next question answered. Not what boxes are under that mission, it's what capabilities? And then the question is, where do those capabilities need to sit? Do they need to serve many, a lot, many markets, if it's global or. Or do they need to serve? Few, but we really, really good at doing something over and over again. And then you can start to get into that distribution of them, as you would say, or that. And how connected are they? And so for me, I try not to think global or local. I try to think about where should something sit and who should it serve. And I think you need a hybrid. I think we did this really cool thing at Coke, and I think they do it probably even better now. But we started it, which was like we actually gave global work to teams that were local. So I'm going to make it easy. Like Coke does the World cup over and over again. It activates the Olympics over and over again. But instead of always the global team out of Atlanta running that because it was a global work, what if you allowed markets where the activation of this was really important? You know, World cup is far more important actually outside the US Than it is in the us so let Brazil and the marketing team in Brazil run how we think about activating the World cup for the globe. Put some resources there, but allow that culture, that team to lead that work on behalf of the company. And it changed fundamentally what it meant to work inside that company. If you believe you can hire great people everywhere you operate. I think we at Coke did a great job of distributing ownership and leadership of a lot of that work and letting folks do that. So it was like global just meant who you were serving, not necessarily where you sat. And it gave birth to this idea of networked marketing, which really turned us from a function, but more into a collaboration model of how we networked the work and how we wired the work. And I think it's very, very relevant today, maybe more than ever. I think operating models are an innovation and infrastructure. It's like the last thing people play, right. When all else fails, I'll change the structure. I'm like, actually, when all else fails, innovate your operating model. And I think you can, you can have great results with your teams.
- [28:45]
Stephanie Postols
And you don't hear many people talking about that. And I'm like, that's such a good quote you have right there where it was, I think you said global is who you're serving, not where you sit. That's so opposite from like how so many team structures work. I mean, that's not just relevant for marketing, that's like everywhere. So.
- [29:02]
Rebecca Messina
And it's really true. And I've seen it work incredibly well. It's, it's fun to work in that environment. You know, you didn't sign up if you're in a big global company, didn't sign up to just serve that market. You signed up for this bigger, this bigger idea and you get to sit on these brands that are privileged like Coke and Uber and being. It's part of why you're there.
- [29:20]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, yeah. So cool. So when, I mean, you've got some great, I would say unconventional ideas when it comes to like how to make marketing work. What about like hiring a high performing team? How do you think about finding these people now? Like, what qualities are you seeking or what unconventional strategies do you have around that?
- [29:38]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah, it's funny you bring that up on the, on the heels of the operating model because, you know, it's like a talent war out there right now and we hire this great talent and we put them into crappy operating models. Right? We put them into operating models. Where there's no decision rights and people aren't clear on the scope and nobody knows what their roles are. We see this, I see it time and time again inside the companies I'm in. So really interesting is as we think about hiring talent, think about the operating model we're putting them in. Because what's really frustrating is we fought to get world class talent, but then we put them in a sub or mediocre operating model. And again, the operating model going beyond this global or central or any of those things you talk about, I mean everything from like, how are decisions made, how does information flow, how do we meet, not meet, how do we come together, what do we believe in as a culture, all of that. And so one is like, think about that, you know, and sometimes I think it stops great talent from coming as well. So that's one the biggest thing that, you know, I often get asked to like play. I'm fortunate that I get to help companies hire folks and so sometimes they're not going to come work for me. I'm just one of the people that gets to interview them. One of the things I'm looking for today is, and this is going to come across as super unconventional, but is capacity to learn. I promise any marketer that any job they come into today, that same job, three to five years from now will be different. Five to ten years from now will be different. I can't make that promise for other functions. I think yes, there will be evolutions or changes to those too. So the capacity to learn is the number one thing that I think marketers have to have. You know, I started, I was, you know, global media manager at the Coca Cola Company in 1995. I could not run media only at Coke. Now that that requires somebody who stayed in media only and became really, really good at that. But my ability to learn how to take all of these functions with people better than me, under me on many of them is I think an important quality that I have. And I think, think one that all marketers have to have is our ability to learn. Not be an expert on everything we're working on, but our ability to learn and evolve is the thing that I'm really looking at. The other one, I would say that's a transcendent, kind of like a transcendent quality for marketers today is their ability to articulate their role in the growth agenda. Again, I can't say that enough because it's what gets lost and it's how marketing constantly loses its way and to recognize that that Sometimes has to change as well. It's not like we could go into Uber and say that marketing needs to have an even bigger role and it needs to look like Coke. No, it is to say that it's going to continue to evolve as the company's model evolves and find new ways to bring value, even if it's still maybe on the third rung of importance at that company. And I think that's a really important quality as well. And then the last thing I would say is marketers. There's so much to learn today. It's so specialized and fragmented. Our ability to collaborate. You won't succeed today without it. Even if you are a specialist of specialists and what you bring is so unique and even if you could argue that the only person in marketing who knows how to do things that way, if you can't bring and invite others in, at least on my team didn't have a hard time. But I think in most companies that I'm helping support them building out their teams, it's going to be a tough gig as a marketer going forward.
- [33:07]
Stephanie Postols
Yep, yep. I agree with all three of those. So circling back on the capacity to learn, I mean, we're seeing this in the world of AI right now. Things are changing so rapidly and I'd love to hear from your perspective. I know before the interview you mentioned I'm not, I'm a non native AI person. I was not born into this space. And so I would love to hear how you're thinking about it when it comes to, you know, the marketing space. How are you helping your clients think about it and staying on top of it.
- [33:33]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah, well, first, and actually go back to a little bit, how I met you is like one jump at the opportunities when you're invited in to help a company. So I got asked to invite, you know, to come in and help a company, an AI. Really a next gen AI company. Wanted an advisor with my kind of experience. So jump at it. One, because you get a front row seat, or maybe not front row, maybe a third row seat in a company that is really leading the way. And yeah, you'll bring what you know, but you will learn a ton. So that's one way that I've done it. The second is literally learn and read every single day, whether it's 10 minutes, 10 seconds. Put yourself in an environment where you take in something new on this. There are countless newsletters, podcasts. It's only because you're not trying to learn that you're not on this. It's it's plenty out there. How much of it is accurate? How many of these predictions? That doesn't really matter right now. What matters is that you're topical and you're seeing how they kind of come together. Third is I literally just signed up for a class at MIT on AI that is available to all of us. Right. So go do that. And then the last thing is I mentor a lot of folks and I'm really lucky to do that. And some of them are of kind of, let's call it my Generation or their CMOs in other companies, but many of them are, you know, really, let's call it more native, if you would, to. To this space more native. And they're reverse mentor. Ask what they're doing, what tools they love, how they're using them, how they're bringing them to the work, how they're changing their lives, and just use that relationship in a way that just can feed you what you are maybe not naturally having access to.
- [35:19]
Stephanie Postols
Mm, I love that. Do you see? I mean, to me, when I'm looking at the things that are happening with that, it seems like every role is changing and it's happening like it's going to happen even more rapidly over the coming years. Is there anything other than, like, learning and staying on top of it and probably playing with the tools and just seeing?
- [35:36]
Rebecca Messina
Yep.
- [35:37]
Stephanie Postols
Like, how do you think about, like, kind of predicting, like, to me, I'm always in a space of like, how is my world gonna change? How is my role gonna change? I mean, do you think this is something to think about, or is that a little too paranoid to go into that space?
- [35:48]
Rebecca Messina
No, I don't think. I think there is paranoia. I think the paranoia is we're afraid of things staying the same, but we're equally afraid of any of change. Right. So, no, I think there's paranoia, but that's not the right, I guess, approach to what you're asking. I think about clients that I'm working with, and I have 21st century native to this environment, clients that still don't know sometimes which path to take either. So I don't think it's because of your proximity to the AI sun, if you would, that you have more answers than others. I think it's because it is largely unknown territory and the books are being written as we speak. But we have been here before. Right. In some other ways, we have gone through great change. And because we're also consumers of it, that's the thing that gives me the most comfort. This isn't happening to Us, we're also living it, our daily lives. And so I find that is actually what kind of comforts me, and I think I hear a lot of my clients talk about this too, is like, you haven't made this thing called your daily life that. And if you're serving consumers and you're serving their daily lives, they do kind of come together. And so as I look at what clients are doing, I see a lot of experimentation, and they're experimenting their way through it. To be quite honest, I think many of them would say impact questionable at this point, but it doesn't stop them because I think they know the impact will come. And I think that is part of the journey is getting all of their employees comfortable with it. I think I even heard on one of your podcasts, somebody said that they broke this down for their teams. 10 minutes, 10 minutes. Small things to do every day, which takes a little bit of the paranoia out of it, right? I'm taking these small steps forward or we're experimenting with it. And one thing that we, we did very well at Coke when we had big change. It's really simple framework, but in the spirit of frameworks, kind of depends on, again, what kind of company you're in. But when we faced really big change in marketing, but because we have this ecosystem that's kind of used to how things worked, be it maybe your bottlers or whatever the stakeholders are that you're serving, was we said, like, what if, like right now, 70% of what we do is going to kind of look the same, get measured in the same way. 20% of the things we do, our time, our energy, our money, are going to be against a pilot here and there. We're going to put lots of pilots out there, but then 10%, we're just going to literally a little bit let be thrown at the wall as true experimentation. Over time, that 10 becomes the 20 and the 20 becomes the 70. And it's a great way, particularly for some of the companies. And I've used this with a lot of clients, particularly maybe your legacy companies, your 20th century companies that are kind of looking ahead at this, that kind of helps them navigate this so that it doesn't feel like it's wholesale change, but they're at least moving. And that's really, really important.
- [38:41]
Stephanie Postols
I love that. Yeah, it's. It's cool looking at the opportunity we're in now because it feels like so much of it is democratized in a way that, like, when the Internet came about, only certain people had access, Only certain People knew how to get into it. Like it was a very different world. And so even though this one's moving so, so rapidly, it's like, well, everyone can play around with it to some extent. You don't need to wait for a gatekeeper to let you in. Like when the came and we don't.
- [39:05]
Rebecca Messina
Even know how many times, we're already in it and we're not even noticing it.
- [39:08]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, right.
- [39:09]
Rebecca Messina
That's kind of. It's like a little bit of the boiled frog. Like, holy crap, that was AI of course it was.
- [39:13]
Stephanie Postols
Yep, yep. We'll be looking back like, yeah, of course.
- [39:16]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah.
- [39:16]
Stephanie Postols
Now that we're talking about like the future, what do you believe that maybe others would disagree with you on right now? Like, what are you thinking when it comes to 2025, the world of marketing or just in general, like what you're looking into that maybe is a bit contrarian?
- [39:31]
Rebecca Messina
This idea of like hyper personalization, I love it. I think it's super true, but I also think it's super contextual. Right. And so I think there's like, there's certain things that I, I definitely hear overused. I don't think we can overestimate the impact of AI. I really don't. Hyper personalization and things that I think I'm hearing people so kind of paranoid about or like, yes, there are some businesses and industries that the net that n of 1 is appropriate, but it isn't appropriate for everything. And I think that notion of like taking these big ideas and saying like, if you're not hyper personalized, you're meaningless to consumers, it's just not true. Right. And I think that kind of idea of like pushing people to this brink of hyper everything is one thing I do try to push back on a little bit with clients and be like, okay, what is the role of personalization in your business? What role will play today? What role can it play tomorrow? What role can it play? But like, getting you to this state that somebody says is where the world is going and that state is entirely unnatural for you is sometimes maybe contrarian because we're taking these big bold capabilities or things that we directions we think the world is taking and we're applying them everywhere. I just don't see that being a place that I think is healthy for sometimes for companies to do. The other thing I see a lot of companies do that may be contrarian is they pick from like a menu of capabilities that maybe peer companies are working on and it's. And they kind of throw them on top of their model. So now what you have is a company that's doing everything it was doing and everything else it needs to be doing now when it really doesn't. Because what it's not thinking about is partnerships or how to distribute this differently or actually how to entirely kind of get rid of or let's call it sunset, something before. And so this thing that I, sometimes I challenge my clients with is, you know, you're, you're like looking at what you want to add to. But what if we just kind of white paper this for a minute and we re look at that a la carte menu and we think about it more with that blank sheet of paper? And I think that exercise can be very, very helpful with clients as they look at again that mission and kind of aligning everything up. And that can be a little bit contrarian because they're like, but why didn't you tell me I needed to be hyper personalized and use segmentation more? Why didn't you tell me all these buzzwords? And I'm like, because actually you need about two of those and you need about five of these. And so that's another one of like, understand how you need to be creating value in the environment that you're in. Not everything that's being thrown at you right now.
- [42:19]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, I love that. It's like, get back to the basics, time to get back to work. And the real principles of what you.
- [42:24]
Rebecca Messina
Actually need it is a bit of first principle, right? Yeah.
- [42:26]
Stephanie Postols
Yep. Okay. I love this. All right, so looking at our time now, I want to switch over to the lightning round. So the lightning round is where I send a question your way and you have a minute or less to answer whatever's top of mind for you.
- [42:39]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah.
- [42:39]
Stephanie Postols
Are you ready?
- [42:40]
Rebecca Messina
Okay. Got it.
- [42:41]
Stephanie Postols
First one, what is a marketing book or two that you think every marketer should read?
- [42:45]
Rebecca Messina
Good to great. I've always loved it. I think it's true for a function and an old one, but how brands become icons. Doug Holt. Again, not everything's going to be iconic, but there are principles in there that are amazing.
- [42:56]
Stephanie Postols
I love it. So earlier you talked about some marketing trends that are maybe overhyped, depending on the client, depending on what they do. Which ones do you think are maybe under hyped? Like people aren't focusing on it enough.
- [43:06]
Rebecca Messina
Right now, talent developing it, how they want to work in the future, flexible models, all of that.
- [43:12]
Stephanie Postols
Yep, yep. Agree. Okay. Describe your marketing strategy in three words. It can also be four words if you need it to be, but less Than five words.
- [43:21]
Rebecca Messina
Know who you are.
- [43:23]
Stephanie Postols
That's a good one. What is the latest ad or marketing campaign that you saw that made you actually be like, well, wow, that. That was good.
- [43:31]
Rebecca Messina
I saw one the other day. Totally odd. I was like, whoa. I actually then went and found it. I like it. But it worked because it made me look it up. Exactly. It was Santa Claus's in the house. And it was an ad for tourism de Puglia in Italy. It was gorgeous. And it stopped me. I was like, I actually looked it up and now I know where Puglia is. I spend a lot of time in Italy, but it was like, wait a minute. Of course Santa Claus is from there. That's where the story was. And the way they did it, it was amazing. Again, unexpected. I also saw something really cute the other day that I don't. Wow. But really cool. McDonald's in the UK, like, took the smiley faces off of Happy Meals, and instead they gave, like, emotive stickers and the family could, like, talk about, like, how are you actually feeling today?
- [44:21]
Stephanie Postols
Oh, I was.
- [44:22]
Rebecca Messina
I thought it was really just a great, like, immersive way to bring you into the brand. And I thought it was really nice.
- [44:28]
Stephanie Postols
Oh, that's good. Okay. I like this. Are there any smaller brands you can think of that are like. Like, standing out? Because, I mean, I think about this from a. Especially when someone comes from a smaller company and people are like, I don't even know what you did there and who that is versus bigger companies. But oftentimes the smaller ones are the ones who are like, they're crushing it when it comes to marketing, and no one knows who they are. Is there anyone who comes to mind for that?
- [44:47]
Rebecca Messina
I have the benefit of touching some of these smaller companies, but I love what Bobby's doing in the. And I don't know if you know, the baby formula company and how they've gone about entirely disrupting that industry. That's a great example. Again, a company that, like, there's the big, big players, and then nobody's come in and kind of done things on our shores and done things their way. And I'm really thinking about product first and consumer centric. That's a good one.
- [45:12]
Stephanie Postols
Yeah, I love it. Okay, and then the last one. What is your biggest marketing prediction for 2025?
- [45:19]
Rebecca Messina
AI will be everywhere. We will go back to work in the office more and more. Doesn't mean where I stand on that. It's just, I see that more and more consumers will push back on all of the change things that are coming their ways this year. And I think we as companies will have to be ready for that. I think as we enter new realms, be them politically or other, there is always a pushback and a counterpoint. And I think that there will be a pushback on not privacy so much as how we're using consumers data, how consumers are interacting with us, their expectations, our ethics. It'll all get challenged as we go both into this unknown new, this new territory, but maybe also as kind of regulation shift. I'm predicting some rumbles as you would. I think that consumers will push back as cha the harder the change gets.
- [46:10]
Stephanie Postols
Okay, now that when you said this, I have one more question that came up that might be a little controversial. Where do you stand on in office work, at home work? I see a lot of talk right now on LinkedIn about, you know, where people should be able to work. What's your viewpoint on this?
- [46:26]
Rebecca Messina
I actually go back to what are we talking about here? We're talking about flexibility and flexibility is a tool. So I often go like what if we stop talking about where and talk about other things of flexibility. What if we gave you flexibility in your comp which is a little bit like tech does in its early years. Do you want dial up your cash or dial up your equity?
- [46:44]
Stephanie Postols
Right.
- [46:44]
Rebecca Messina
So you take more ownership and your own flexibility. And I think we boiled it just down to this idea of you have to come into the office. But actually what I think and again now maybe because I'm more of a free agent, I see that like flexibility is wealth and if you grant me more flexibility, maybe you require me to be in the office. But then where can I get flexibility on my life otherwise? So I think we should just separate those two ideas of like where we work from and flexibility. I do see more and more companies going back to work because I, I do see there's an impact on culture. But I wonder if how the counterpoint to that culture could be if we were more generous and more flexible in other ways.
- [47:26]
Stephanie Postols
I love that. That's such a good perspective. Well, Rebecca, this was amazing as I knew it would be. I'm so glad we got to do this. Thank you for coming on marketing trends. Where can people learn more about you and your work and what you're up to?
- [47:38]
Rebecca Messina
Yeah, they can always one, they can contact me too. Always LinkedIn and I'm fairly active on, you know, your, some of your standard channels. Not too active right now on on X, but I'm active on LinkedIn and other. So I'd love to connect.
- [47:50]
Stephanie Postols
Amazing. Sounds good. And thank you so much.
- [47:52]
Rebecca Messina
Thank you.