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- [00:00]
Edelman Representative
Why are brands still overpaying for ideas that don't travel? In today's algorithmic era, attention is earned, not bought. That's why earned campaigns are 93% more likely to drive major profit gains. At Edelman, we build ideas that earn attention first and use paid media to scale what works. The result is smarter investment, stronger performance, and better business outcomes. Learn more@edelman.com earned for me as a
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Sarah Larson
CMO in consumer electronics space, our ultimate sellout is that we are selling our product. So my marketing is not worthwhile if it's not moving product because I'm failing at my job.
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Jenny Rooney
Hi everyone and welcome to the Marketing Vanguard podcast. I'm Jenny Rooney with adweek and I'm thrilled today to be joined by Sarah Larson. She's the CMO at hisense. Sarah, welcome.
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Sarah Larson
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
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Jenny Rooney
Yes, great to see you, Great to meet you and great to hear about what you're doing at hisense. I understand this is a new role for you.
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Sarah Larson
It is a new role for me. I would not say that CMO is a new role, but new at hisense and probably the bigger thing. It's a new role for hisense. So they haven't had a traditional over encompassing CMO before. So I am super excited to have stepped into this and it's been just a very rocket ship like joyride since I started in November.
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Jenny Rooney
Okay, I love that and I want to get into that and that's very interesting that you're the first CMO for hisense. Before we get to that, I'd love for you to tell everybody a little bit about your own career path and what led you to this place and the roles you've held along the way.
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Sarah Larson
Yeah, sure. So I have been doing this for about 30 years now, which feels like nothing and everything, all in the blink of an eye. I actually am a very non traditional cmo. I followed a non traditional path and I think that's actually part of my recipe for success. So I started on the earn side of the house. I was with PR and on the agency side and then through that saw the whole tech bubble happen and got deep involved in tech and then migrated into support social media and everything that took off with that. So started putting social media and digital under my experience belt and then just shifting into sponsorships and paid and kind of that blurring line between earned and paid and owned and what we can be doing in that. And it was just taking little pieces from all the different marketing and communication channels. And really assessing a knowledge base of how they can work individually and then how best to have them all working together. And through the years I shifted eventually from agency side to in house. But I think the agency earned background is what makes me a little bit unique in that I'm very comfortable obviously with promoting a brand. But I also have built into my DNA that protect mentality. So I can see risk before it's even something that we realize. And I'm very tuned into not just looking around the corner, but also making sure that I'm pulling all the different resources and channels to work together in synchrony so that we have a very consistent message across all of our marketing.
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Jenny Rooney
Can you give me an example? I mean, like, so how does that play out and talk a little bit about how you've built that muscle and how you're carrying it through.
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Sarah Larson
Yeah, well, it's like a dual fold muscle. So I think one of the things, and I have my hat tip to every agency partner out there because an agency person has to be so adept at justifying every dollar that they're spending and being able to get up to speed super fast on any subject matter and really know how to explain it at a C suite level way. But it might be something that they only have been pulled into a month or two ago. So it's, it's having building an arsenal of tools that you know how to get up to speed fast and then you also know how to speak eloquently and persuasively to really bring people along in the ride that I feel like from a real life application works so beautifully as a cmo because essentially that's what we do every day. We, we're justifying all of our marketing decisions and we're making sure that all the different key stakeholders feel like they have some skin in a game so that they are not challenging the change. Instead they're embracing the transformation.
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Jenny Rooney
Okay, so talk to me a little bit about what drew you to hisense, especially since to your point, this was going to be their first CMO role.
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Sarah Larson
Yes. So with Hisense. I have deep roots in consumer electronics. When I was on agency side, I was embedded in LG and then my previous role was with Samsung and working in tech. I had worked with Motorola and a bunch of other tech type of brands. So I've always been drawn to this whole consumer electronics home appliance space. I love working for brands that are products that I use every day and I'm a very design home design centric person. So for Me, entertaining is the center of my social life. I love working for brands where we're making products that make entertaining all the better.
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Jenny Rooney
So tell me a little bit about Hisense. Like it's a cons. Is it a B2B 2C or is it. Or do you have both? I mean, I would imagine you're in both sectors.
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Sarah Larson
We do have both at Hisense. So at Hisense we have B2C. We, you know, TVs, laser TVs, home appliances, air conditioning, H vac system. But then we also have that B2B side with professional displays and professional H vac systems. So you get a little bit of both, which I personally like because I like flexing those muscles differently. How we target consumers is very different than how we would target anyone in the business community.
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Jenny Rooney
Tell me what, you know, kind of journey they've been on that caused them to need a CMO at this point in time.
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Sarah Larson
Yeah, so hisense has always had a head of marketing, they've always had a marketing group, but they never really created the environment to bring about the necessary change with marketing to tie everything together. So I had started consulting with them, and it was through that process that I started raising some thoughts about a different way that we could approach how we go to market. And with that, it led to, based on my experience as well as their own needs, this perfect marriage of me stepping into the role as a cmo. So I could bring together both the traditional marketing aspects that typically fall under a CMO as well as non traditional. So I have product marketing and product management all underneath me. I have retail, and not just pop, but even the display, display and the training and the labor that we have in putting up different displays at retail level, and the strategy and the insights and all of the communication, all of that sits underneath me. And I think the key differentiator that we have is marketing's. Ultimately, I'm responsible for sellout. Like that is my goal. I make a point of anything we're doing needs to tie to sales, and I see that as a shift in CMOs in general right now. But that's also something that I have always firmly believed in. We need to justify what we're doing where it counts, and that's at the bottom line.
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Jenny Rooney
Did you also pick that up from your agency experience?
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Sarah Larson
I would say definitely from agency experience, because as anyone that works on the agency side knows, you're doing marketing, but you're also running a business. Whether you're running your practice group or you're running an office, you're looking after a P and L, you're looking after, you know, your overhead and you're making sure that you have the right resources and that you're staffed up properly. It all leads to sellout. And for me, as a CMO in consumer electronics space, our ultimate sellout is that we are selling our product. So my marketing is not worthwhile if it's not moving product as I'm failing at my job.
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Jenny Rooney
We'll talk about that a little bit. And this gets into creative and marketing strategy. Somewhere I read that you've described hisense as operating the category. Consumer electronics can be a sea of sameness. Right. And so breaking out of that commodity zone is tough. And some categories obviously have that more than others. But how are you doing that and how are you thinking about doing that? No, you've only been there since November, but, you know, since November.
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Sarah Larson
But I do have a long track record in this space and I think that's a lot of what I bring to the table. And again, it's agency, it's earned background. I have a very strong creative side to my brain. So it pairs beautifully with that analytical side and it really shows up in the content that we're creating. Like, I'm a firm believer that content is king. You can have the best distribution plan with your paid media, but if what you're actually saying isn't resonating with your end target, it's. It's a waste. So for me and what I found through the years of working with consumer electronics, people want to know how and why they should buy your product and how it's going to make your product better in their lives. So what I really focus on is showing, not telling consumers how our products make their lives better, easier, more convenient, more accessible. It's not about text and specs, which is what a lot of consumer brands take tend to talk about, especially in electronics, when you're talking about a TV or a fridge, you're talking about what's the innovation in a very technical sense. I have pretty much thrown that tech speak out the window. And instead I want to tell you as a shopper, what's in it for you? Why should you care? How is this TV going to make your hosting a Super bowl party the most amazing party on the block? And everyone wants to be there.
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Jenny Rooney
Yeah. It's a means to an end. Right. And it's sort of like the whole point is that you have to speak to that end in that outcome and that desire, you know, that need that you, your product needs to check for any given consumer. And it's so interesting because I think so many marketers get hung up on the. The means as being the most important thing as opposed to the end.
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Sarah Larson
And that's totally.
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Jenny Rooney
It's the whole life shift.
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Sarah Larson
It's a shift in mindset too. That feels so glaringly obvious to me, but yet many people who work in marketing don't do it. But when I think of it as the point of view as a consumer and a shopper, I want to know what's in it for me. Why should I buy this? Why do I need this in my life? Marketing doesn't work if it's not a message that you can connect with. That I think is the biggest miss that you see with so many marketers. They're so fixated on this is what we should be saying about our product. They're not thinking, what do consumers want to know about our product?
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Jenny Rooney
Right, exactly.
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Sarah Larson
That's really the mentality that I try to bring to what we do.
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Jenny Rooney
So are you working with agency partners now?
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Sarah Larson
We sure are, of course, Yeah. I love agency side only because that's our arms and legs and our pulse being on what's happening in the industry. Because it's very easy to get myopically focused when you're in house and you're so concentrated on your brand and your numbers and market share and your own little slice of, of the pie that I rely on agencies to help with expansion for my team because it's never. I never have enough people, but also to bring that new fresh thinking. That's where I really rely on my agency partners.
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Jenny Rooney
Agencies are going through a tough time right now. I mean, what would you say to them, you know, as they seek to navigate what are, I would argue agencies have had a tough time for decades for various reasons. Right. The reasons might have been different, but now more than ever would the consolidation that's happening AI happening. You know, it goes so far beyond just in housing, in house agency concepts that we been talking about for the last like 10 years or so. There's a little bit of an existential crisis happening. So how do you, having been on the agency side, what would be your best advice, especially based on what you just articulated, is the unique value that agencies bring to you as a cmo.
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Edelman Representative
Why are brands still overpaying for ideas that don't travel? Earned campaigns are 93% more likely to drive major profit gains because in today's algorithmic era, growth is earned, not bought. That's why I left advertising because I truly believe in the power of ideas that people want to spend time with, not paid to spend time with. At Edelman, we build ideas to earn attention first, then use paid media to scale what works. The result is smarter targeting, stronger performance and maintenance, measurable business outcomes. Learn more@edelman.com earned wow.
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Sarah Larson
Yeah, I think it's really emotional intelligence and that empathy of putting yourself in each other's shoes. So whether it's me as a leader thinking on the brand side, thinking about my agency partners and what they have going on and understanding their pressures, but it's also agency partners understanding what it's like for me and my team. Like, yes, they might be working on a social post. That is the most important thing that we have to get out the door. But in my mind, that's one tiny sliver of everything that I need to accomplish in that day. So anything that an agency partner can do to make my life better, smarter, do my job in a way that it makes it easier for me, helps me with selling to my leadership, that's always going to be extremely well received. And I think there's also so much importance on building relationships with your agency partners where you have that trust. I have agency people that I have worked with for years and years and years, and then I have ones that I met as soon as I joined Hisense. And if I can make that instant connection with them and on more of a business level, but also a personal level, I feel like then you develop a trust where I know they're going to get something for me that I need. And I know they understand the importance of, you know, being on time or thinking outside of the box or bringing even more to the table than what the ask was. That's my favorite thing, when someone gets a brief and they say, yes, we can do all this. But have you thought about this? Because this might be another way in. I love having those type of discussions. And when your agency partners become sounding boards and more of a council, that's where I think you really see success.
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Jenny Rooney
Who are you working with now?
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Sarah Larson
So we work with a variety of agencies. Actually. We work with Agent 42. On the social front. We're working with Vayner X's new group, Tamara Group.
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Jenny Rooney
Yep.
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Sarah Larson
On social cultural hijacking front, we work with Mind Groove on media and. And then MBA for our pr.
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Jenny Rooney
And you probably personally, again, given your background, have a lot of involvement in that.
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Sarah Larson
So much involvement. In fact, I just had a conversation with my CFO and he hadn't even understood this whole merger of holding companies buying other companies and why it was such a big deal. And he was asking about a specific agency, did I know anyone there? And I said, honestly, I don't think there's a single agency in the US that I don't know someone or know someone who knows someone there. Like, it's such an incestuously, beautifully connected community. And having worked in this space for so long, everyone moves around. And that's also why whenever I'm doing any sort of mentoring or speaking to college grads, it's always, do not burn any bridges because you are always going to in some way shape or form work with someone else again.
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Jenny Rooney
So, so, so true. I want to ask you about shifting gears a little bit to part brand partnership. You know, partnerships working with, you know, major sports franchises. I know you're an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 26. How do you regard global sponsorships? I mean, that one's massive. Obviously this is just such an exciting year for that. But how are you going to connect the dots and make sure that that drives business?
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Sarah Larson
You know, I'll be honest, I am not a big fan of global sponsorships. I think they can so easily be done incorrectly and you end up with just logo soup. But if you are smart and strategic about how you leverage that and leverage the sponsorship more as an asset that you're using as a means to communicate and connect with your end shopper, then it can be a beautiful, successful thing. So for me, when it comes to partnerships and especially like on that global level, I really want to break it down to a much more local feel where I am having multiple marketing touch points within the sponsorship. And I want to make sure that I create a message that leans into the sponsorship from a passion area to that we know resonates with our demographic, but not as the end all, be all, and particularly when it comes to FIFA World Cup. You know, Hisense had partnered with Club World cup previously, and in that the approach was very much targeting that super soccer fan. But then when I came on board, I proposed doing a bit of a different strategic approach because the reality is your tam is so small if you're only focused on people that are super soccer fans. But you've been up the funnel if you're looking at casual soccer fans who love to host. So our big thematic we're playing so true is hosting, because honestly, that is what we as a nation love doing and we are the host nation for FIFA World Cup. It was almost an epiphany moment that we had when we were brainstorming all the different creative ways in. And by leaning into hosting, it creates the that natural dialogue around product and it also ties into this cultural phenomenon that is hosting. And it gives us so many other touch points beyond just watching FIFA World cup matches where you do have hosting occasions and our products can help make your life better with it.
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Jenny Rooney
It gets back to that empathy piece you were talking about before. You know, and of course you mentioned empathy in terms of the agency client relationship. But I'm also thinking of it in the. What we were saying before is it's seeing beyond, you know, as a marketer, it's going from thinking about the means in and of itself in regarding your product, whatever you're selling as a means to an end and knowing what that sort of broader, you know, broader space is. I mean, that's the talent right there that good CMOs bring to their organizations. Because nobody else is going to do that. Nobody is tasked with that.
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Sarah Larson
No. And that's why I think the CMO role is so fascinating. Because basically we're the great unifiers. Like that's what we should be doing. And we should be owning buy box sellout and consumer relationship and voice of the consumer. Like for me, research needs to be the backbone of every single thing that I do. There is not one component of marketing go to market product strategy that shouldn't be based on research. And the other thing that I feel is so important is that we're constantly checking in because we cannot make the assumption that our consumer behavior hasn't changed. That would be so ridiculously naive. Look at how Covid changed the trajectory of accepting technology. And it used to be no one wanted to do anything with a QR code and now that like a two year old knows how to scan QR code. So why would we assume that what we knew two years ago from a path to purchase study is what our consumers are still doing today? That's just foolish. And the other thing that we as marketers need to do with research is also future proofing. Like the biggest mistake you could have is think your target demographic is your target demographic forever. If you are not shifting and at least putting some investment into future generations coming up, you'll miss an entire generation and they'll grow up into your target demographic age range with absolute zero affinity for your brand. So it's important that you're dual targeting, that you're definitely focusing on who you know is buying your product. But then you're also cultivating those future generations of buyers.
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Jenny Rooney
Yep. No, I love it. So I'd Love to ask a few more questions about you, you know, where you're getting your inspiration from, how you're spending your downtime. You know, we do something with Marketing Vanguard. We take people on what we call inspiration excursions and it's a mouthful, but the whole point is to take groups of CMOs out of their day to day headspace because you cannot continue to be a creative, passionate, visionary chief Marketing officer if you're not getting good inputs. Right? And so where are you getting your inputs? Where are you spending your time? Where do you find you're getting your greatest inspiration to help you then go back to your day to day work and be successful?
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Sarah Larson
Yeah, Ginny, that's such a great question. And I would say it's a little sprinkling of everything. Like for me, I. I'm not a creature of habit, which I think is a wonderful thing. I will give a shout out to the Morning Brew and to Adweek because those are two things that as a non creature of habit I read religiously. But other than that, I get inspiration from anything and everything. My two daughters are both Gen Z, so spending time with them, that's a huge source of inspiration. And hearing what's trending and what they're talking about, I find that so fascinating.
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Jenny Rooney
I can attest to that.
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Sarah Larson
Oh my God, my 13 year old daughter, I was like, you're kidding. Wait, really? How do I not know this? I feel like I'm a trend spotter and I had no idea that that should be on my radar. So I do love that. And I love even just being a fly on the wall when they're with all their friends and listening to how they talk as well as how they talk.
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Jenny Rooney
The words, the language, all of it.
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Sarah Larson
Yeah, totally. And how they keep a lot of the trends where they want no one else to know about it. Like, just think Gen Z is a fascinating demographic to really dig into. And especially now because they span such a wide age gap. You have kids in high school and you have adults that are getting married and that's the same generation. Like it's just generational study. And I will say psychology in general, like that is an area that I've always geeked out on. And I think that's where I get a lot of my inspiration is whenever I'm reading, you know, this study or this stat, and I dig into the research side of it, it's just like, oh wait, I never thought about that. Here's how I could apply that to what I'm doing. Or here's How I can use that knowledge to motivate someone on my team that I'm even struggling with. Like, how do I find the way to push them into what they should be doing? Like, I think psychology is such an important aspect of everything that we do and so not traditional too. Like, you don't have to think about it, just a shopper psychology. That in itself definitely fascinating, but even non traditional psychology, just very more along the lines of human relationships and motivators and inspiration that helps me as a better marketer. Because isn't that what we're doing at the end of the day?
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Jenny Rooney
A hundred percent. You're influencing, you're persuading, you're. And you need to understand who's on the receiving end and what, you know, where, where their minds are. No, I love that. I mean, and kind of a complimentary question to that is, what would your team say about you as a leader?
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Sarah Larson
Well, the beautiful thing is that much of my team I built since I joined and I picked people that I've loved working with over the course of my career and then I was lucky enough to inherit some people that were already there that are just kindred spirits. So. So I would say I have a very tight, smart team and if they were to describe me, definitely an agent of change, I think sometimes they're like, whoa, Sarah, that's crazy. But I am a very calculated risk taker and very much a creative problem solver. And then I feel confident that they would say I lead with kindness too because at the end of the day I want to feel good about my interactions with the people that I work with as well as, you know, the different partners and key stakeholders and even different offices that we are interacting with. I would feel good if I've set an example of how you can be really smart and creative and really kind as well.
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Jenny Rooney
AI friend or foe?
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Sarah Larson
Both. I think in marketing it is definitely a friend. I think there are inherent risks with it. Some very obvious, some not as obvious. But I would never be a naysayer to say, oh, no, bad, no, thank you. Instead, let's figure out more about it and how we can take from it, what will help us and then definitely not use that which doesn't. But I know for me personally, AI has really been clutch in a lot of different ways for marketing.
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Jenny Rooney
And last quick question is, who's next? Who's somebody that I should have on the show? This can be a CMO that you know really well have either worked with or just consider a peer, or it can be a CMO that you've never met, but you admire them and their work and you just would love to learn more about them.
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Sarah Larson
Brooke Blash Hill, CMO at Hourglass. 100%.
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Jenny Rooney
I don't know her.
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Sarah Larson
She's incredible. So she and I worked together a million years ago at Ogilvy. We both went down different paths. She's now CMO at Hourglass. She's been there for a while. She's just a fascinatingly dynamic person who is as much fun to have a deep marketing conversation as it is to have cocktails in the city.
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Jenny Rooney
Love that. All right, well, maybe I'll do both with her and with you.
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Sarah Larson
And done. Jenny, you name the day. And we have to get Brooke over from California. But she's in New York all the time. That would be. We would have so much fun. I don't think we'd ever stop.
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Jenny Rooney
Okay, well, we'll make it happen. Brooke, if you're listening, we're going to reach out. So, Sarah, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure and I look forward to seeing you again in the not too distant future and continuing the conversation.
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Sarah Larson
Thank you, Jenny.
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Edelman Representative
Thank you for listening to Marketing Vanguard, part of the Ad Week Podcast Network and Acast Creator Network. You can listen and subscribe to all of Adweek's podcasts by visiting Adweek slash Podcasts. Stay updated on all things Adweek Podcast Network by following us on Twitter at Adweek Podcasts. And if you have a question or suggestion for the show, send us an email at podcastadweek. Com. Thanks for listening.