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Marketing Vanguard
Beyond Hardware: How Lenovo's Marketing Team Drives Tech Innovation with AI
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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
Emily Ketchen
I took a lot of opportunities without being 100% ready for them and I think that's so important and it's such an important message for women to take a little bit of that risk, dive in and you'll figure it out a little bit along the way.
- [00:48]
Jenny Rooney
Hi everyone. Welcome to the Marketing Vanguard podcast. I'm Jenny Rooney with Adweek and I'm thrilled today to be joined by Emily Ketchen. She's the the CMO of Lenovo, IDG and ISO. Emily, welcome.
- [01:02]
Emily Ketchen
Jenny, thank you so much for having me. It is great to be here.
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Jenny Rooney
Well, it's always good to talk to you. Our paths have crossed over the years several times and I think I've had so much fortune getting to learn from you, hear your perspective on how you're leading the company forward. But for anybody who doesn't know you, I'd love for you to just kick it off by sharing a little bit about yourself and also about the company.
- [01:22]
Emily Ketchen
Yeah, absolutely. So I've been in marketing for a number of years, Jenny, across a multitude of different kinds of industries, but I would say the majority of my career has been in technology. And I think that's because I am a person who based on my background and I'll share a little bit about that with you and our wonderful listeners here. I'm super open to and love challenge and change. And technology, if nothing else, is always about continual change. And we can get into that a little bit more in the context of what that means from a marketing perspective. But I think a lot of it, Jenny, is anchored to my background. I'm a kid from what we call the third culture. So American father, Scottish mother, but was born in South America, raised in Europe, and I've lived in eight different countries around the world. And so when you're growing up in a frame like that, change is the constant. And so for me, change is something that I embrace and I enjoy and I look forward to it. I'm very comfortable being uncomfortable and I think you kind of have to have that mindset when you're trying to market technology. You're marketing things that have yet to come to market. You're creating a market for things that don't exist yet. So that's been a big part of what I think has anchored me to my love of technology. Now, Lenovo for two beats is the world's largest PC provider, and we're in over 180 markets and have really expanded our organization from that baseline around bench strength in PC to incorporate our telephones and phone division at Motorola, our infrastructure and solutions group, and our services and solutions group. And so beginning to nudge into some of those different areas, all encapsulated by what we stand for, which is smarter technology for all. And then, of course, the layer of AI that sits in that as well. So that's, I think, what I would say has drawn me to the organization is this propensity for the ability for us to be able to grow at the pace of technology, actually set that pace and bring it to customers, consumers, gamers around the world.
- [03:40]
Jenny Rooney
That is wonderful. Tell me a little bit about. I'm always so curious to hear, like you told me, about your personal background, but just remind me about your educational background and sort of what you studied, because I always find it fascinating to think about, like, how CMOs got from point A to point B, especially in terms of, like, what they studied in college, what they aspired to be, and then what ultimately got them to the CMO role in any given company.
- [04:03]
Emily Ketchen
It's such a great question, Jenny. I studied international relations at one of the Claremont Colleges, so Pitzer College down in Southern California. And at the time that I went to Pitzer, there was not a degree in international relations. And so I actually pitched the Academic Standards Committee to be able to get that degree based on five different fields of study. And I kind of came up with it on my own, which I think was a little bit of a harbinger for how I've approached my career and how I've kind of moved forward Now. I thought for some time that I might want to be a diplomat just because I had grown up in different places around the world. At one point, Jenny, I was absolutely committed to becoming a veterinarian. I was just certain that was going to be part of my life. I love animals. I'm a big equestrian. I was just sure that was going to be in the future. Where I think the knob turned for me, if you will, is I had a tremendous opportunity my last semester of college to go to work for KB Home in Southern California as an intern. And I got to interview a Lot of the executives kind of make my own way in terms of what I wanted to learn about and what I wanted to kind of be a part of. And I was absolutely intrigued by the CMO and by the marketing organization that was parlayed then into a full time offer. I graduated from college, went straight to work and started out in kind of their purchasing department, but had always had eyes on marketing. And I think that's what started the genuine interest. I'm sure it's anchored back to again my background where when you're a child growing up in different countries, you're in observation mode. And that's so important in marketing, right? It's the study of humanity, the intersection of those insights coupled to need with a healthy dose of persuasion. Because you've got to be able to persuade your customers around the benefits and differentiators of your brand. And so I think that sort of combination of different areas really drew me to marketing and that has been the thread. Now I have worked in profit, nonprofit, a foreign government, I worked for an airline. I've done all kinds of different things until I really settled into technology. And even within technology, I've done a number of different PC organizations, science, software. I did for five years just to be able to really understand what it's like to be able to market something that is intangible. You can't feel it, it doesn't come in a box. Right. How does that actually work? What a great setup to where we are today in the context of cloud, SaaS and understanding all those things. And I think one thing that comes to mind for me, Jenny, is at this point in my career there's this wonderful benefit of being able to look a bit over your shoulder and seeing how all the different things that you did ladder to the experience that you have as a cmo. And what I mean by that is in one role I was a PR manager, in another role I was an events manager at a number of the agencies I worked at. Which I think is a super important tenet of great marketing. Understanding what happens in an agency. We went from being one of the largest creative accounts to really five or six years later being a media based account. So working that transition, understanding the difference between creativity and media global has always been a thread. I've lived in Asia, I've lived in all these different places. That sets you up, I think for a great perspective in the context of being a global CMO for a global brand. And I would just say all of those bits and pieces have come together a bit like the pieces of a puzzle. And I can see it so clearly now. But what I will say, Jenny, is that I took a lot of opportunities without being 100% ready for them. And I think that's so important and it's such an important message for women to take a little bit of that risk, dive in and you'll figure it out a little bit along the way. Right. So I think that's been a big hallmark of some of the things that I've done to sort of get me to this common thread between the education, which is where you started the question, all the way through, to experiences that have led me to this role.
- [08:17]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah. And you started by saying you love, and I'm not going to quote you directly, but this concept of like ever changing, you sort of embrace the fact that nothing's ever static. And I mean, look, marketing is an ever changing practice, full stop. And anybody who thinks that it is sort of locked down and there's any sort of formal prescription around it is kidding themselves. And obviously it's interesting that you have the global purview. I mean, we are living in times right now where the global lens is frankly something that everybody's looking at, should always be looking at. Obviously, tariffs is the biggest, one of the biggest headlines in the news right now. Obviously AI is something that all marketers literally are working through in real time right now to figure out how to employ, how to use themselves, how to deploy. How are you thinking about those two things? Let's just start there because I mean, whenever there's a headline topic, it might affect you personally and with your brand and your company, but obviously it's also something that's affecting the industry. What's Emily's take on those two big headline things that are happening right now?
- [09:16]
Emily Ketchen
Yeah, I think from my perspective, to anchor back to your point on ever changing, the advent of AI has been incredibly exciting for us, Jenny. It's a once in a 30 year career opportunity to create a category. And for us at Lenovo, that's all about category creation. AI, PC. And what does that mean? How is it that you think about being able to take hardware and add on all of these different areas of software and AI that enable customers from businesses to small and medium businesses to consumers to be able to really reap the benefits of AI, and I mean tangibly, right in their daily lives. And so that has been an extraordinary journey for us. Again, category creation. So leaning out and sharing the promise of what AI will deliver in the context of what it will bring to you from Your technology. So for example, things like the ability to summarize an entire meeting together with deliverables. Now if you spent any time in an agency, that was a huge part of the actual work that you had to do. So that's one very tangible benefit. Things like going from text to image and doing all of these kinds of things incredibly quickly and incredibly efficiently. Those are the kinds of things that we're bringing to customers fingertips and we're extending that across into our Motorola brand. When you think about the AI capabilities attached to a smartphone and what that looks like. So it's incredibly exciting in the context of the world of AI making that tangible, making it real, bringing it to customers, category creation. To your point, everybody's thinking about it. And so how are we at Lenovo making that tangible and real for our customers? And insofar as sort of the geopolitical frame and things that are very topical today, like tariffs, that certainly affect your business too. Absolutely. And it affects everybody's business. Right. So we're all very much in the same boat and we feel that we are resilient and we're absolutely looking at it, thinking about it, doing all of the things that you would expect us to be doing as we navigate and as we do that together.
- [11:32]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah, I mean look, you're right about it. It's category agnostic. I mean I talked to the CMO of a beauty brand yesterday and same thing like it doesn't matter really what category you're in. But both of those topics, everybody's trying to figure out how they will be affected, but also how they will affect what's happening in that regard obviously internally and thinking about your organization, specifically with the AI piece because I love what you said about creating, you're actually creating something new using the technology, using sort of for your consumer set for your business customers.
- [12:04]
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- [13:05]
Jenny Rooney
Then of course there's the whole topic and we don't have enough time today to go into that in so much detail. But you know, a lot of people are wondering, well, what does this mean for internal marketing organizations and teams? What does this mean for the skills that a CMO needs to be thinking about bringing in house versus what can be taken up with AI technologies? Likewise, questions around where does this put agencies? You know, so I'm not going to have you answer all of that, but the question is more around as you think about your priority set in terms of decision making, where do those things fall?
- [13:36]
Emily Ketchen
Right now we have been very adamant about the use of AI in our organization. So from our perspective, very early days and this is really full credit to the organization. This is just a team of people who've really been front facing on this and perhaps because we're in technology, Jenny, but we immediately established an AI governance council inside the organization and we stood that up from a marketing perspective. But quickly, folks from security layered in, legal layered in, HR layered in, right. So we have this entire organization that is designed to create transparency and governance around the way that we use AI coupled to that is a full education program. We actually went out and canvassed the entire marketing organization. So hundreds and hundreds of people and we said, what is it that you would like to learn about? You can't sell it if you don't know what it is, right? So what would you like to learn about and what would you like to be a part of? We got the answer. We went out and went to industry leadership and said we need a whole series of licenses, we need an education program. We've been working with a top notch educator. We have 11 modules that every single person in marketing is going through to be able to learn how to use AI, to be able to understand all of the different elements of that, how to use it, when to use it. And so I think that is a journey that we're on. The team themselves have been spending time innovating and a great example of that is something like a prompt library. The whole kind of piece around generative AI is around how good are you at asking the question and then editing the responses. Right. And so if you have a prompt library and ours already has something like 275 prompts in it that are already ready to go, a team of our internal folks do this all by themselves because they were fascinated by the journey. So that's one great example of how we are leaning in. We're doing it the right way. We've provided the licenses, we've provided the training. That's one element. The other element to your point, Jenny, is how are we using IT in marketing? And so we are out there thinking about the technology all the time. So here's one great example for you. We are key sponsors of the F1. We are also very interested in talking to CIOs and senior level decision makers. So the intersection of those two audiences, for example F1 and CIOs from a contextual perspective, can be really difficult. So we've worked with an organization called ctag and they have actually helped us, through the use of AI, do a much better job of contextual selection and super increased by 40% our ability to reach that sweet spot of the CIO, who's also a fan of the F1. So using it, testing it and actually finding results has been super helpful. And I think that's largely due to the work of our Insight COE and our Media coe. And part of that strategy is in house. And so we're pressing ourselves and the in house team on media works with an agency. We have an incredible agency partner. And so there's a lot of back and forth there. But it's been super helpful to see how you can actually deploy AI in your marketing and get those results back. And again, it nudges the team internally to be open to testing and learning, which I think is so important. Again, done the right way with the proper compliance and transparency in place. But it's been fascinating to see how that has really shaped and helped some of our strategies.
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Jenny Rooney
I love that. And you said it's CTAG is a tool that would be able to help you identify that juxtaposition. Or the intersection of CIA.
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Emily Ketchen
That's right. They're the providers of that particular AI technology. And it's been just fantastic.
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Jenny Rooney
Wow, that's amazing. I want to go back. You said the marketing organization developed the guidelines. Right. The responsible use begs the question, is it the CMO and the marketing organization in any given company that must own that particular role? Or is it Chro or is it the cfo? Like, I think everybody's also trying to figure out what area of the AI decision making must the marketing organization necessarily own, as opposed to the CEO or somebody else in a leadership role.
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Emily Ketchen
Right. Or even your chief legal officer. Right. Where does this all sort of sit? So I think first and foremost there has to Be good communication and collaboration across the C suite. It has to be a topic of conversation. Now, again, because we're a technology company, we're talking about it all the time. We actually see the next decade of our business as we step into our fifth decade as the decade of AI. Right. So it is in every narrative in the organization. My own point of view, Jenny, is the CMO owns the customer. Now, I'm not the only one who owns the customer. Right. We have an incredible services organization, we have an incredible E comm organization. So I'm not alone, but I ultimately bear that responsibility. And so I believe it's our role to make sure that in the deployment of AI, in the way that we're thinking about it, in the way that we're using it, that it is customer friendly, customer safe, privacy centric, all of those things. And I will contribute to the overall strategy of the organization, but I am by no means alone. And we have a significant amount of energy, enthusiasm, investment in our organization around AI. So it's relatively straightforward from my perspective because everybody's very committed and involved. But I absolutely think the Chief Marketing officer owns the customer. Again, not alone, but we have to be the one setting the tone and setting the parameter about how we're going to work with our customers in that context.
- [19:19]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah, no, I love that. That's so, so helpful. And again, I think that's a subject of conversation that CMOs will continue to have as we move forward. What's next? What's on the horizon right now? Just from a new standpoint in Lenovo's world, what can we be paying attention to? What should we, as Adweek or anybody else be kind of watching from you all? And what are you excited about?
- [19:39]
Emily Ketchen
What I'm most excited about and what I think we really stand for in so many different ways is the power of our ability to innovate. When you look at our products and services and solutions, they're tremendously unique. For example, at Mobile World Congress, we unveiled the world's first solar powered PC. I mean, how extraordinary is that? You actually can be out in nature, you can be traveling, you can be out and about and you actually can compute from a solar powered perspective. It's the new yoga solar PC that we just unveiled and it has a solar panel mounted to its cover and it will allow you to gain power from the sun or from light and you'll be able to use it. We also recently launched our thinkbook plus gen rollable PC which when you indicate that you want it to expand, will Expand your screen from the bottom right up to the top to 16.7 in terms of the size, which is more than 50% of the traditional screen size that you have. So all of a sudden you can open windows and be way more effective and have the incredible power of this innovation, which I think is so important to be alive and well in an organization that represents technology and that brings things to your fingertips that are new and that are different. And I will say for us, it's very heartening. At CES, I think we won 186 awards at Mobile World Congress, 145 judged by a group of press and media who specialize in looking at new technologies and evaluated our ability to be innovators and to bring that level of innovation and so continue to look for that from us and not just in the form factor, but also in the way that we think about services and solutions. I think it's super important if you are a technology company to keep innovation alive and well inside the organization.
- [21:40]
Jenny Rooney
I love that. And you've always been a big champion of that. I mean, that's such a platform for you personally and that's how you've led Lenovo thus far. Emily, always a pleasure and always inspiring. I know that we're going to be together in cans. Let's do a part two of this because I just feel like there could be between now and then, even though it's not much time, there might be some new things that are going to be coming out before then and I'd love to have a continuing conversation with you there.
- [22:07]
Emily Ketchen
I would love that. It would be absolutely my honor. And Jenny, you always have the best questions. Thank you so much for that and thank you for the time today. It's such a pleasure to be here with you and I super look forward to seeing you at Con and to part two.
- [22:20]
Jenny Rooney
Sounds great. Thank you so much, Emily. Take care.
- [22:23]
Adweek Podcast Team
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- [22:50]
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