In the latest episode of Scratch, Tracey-Lee gets into what it really takes to build trust in a controversial space, how she sells brand investment to a CFO who only speaks performance, and the Black Friday campaign where Payflex faked a data breach and somehow lived to tell the tale.

The key takeaway:

1. Radical honesty is not a risk, it's a requirement In a controversial category, you have to be as loud with your rebuttals as your critics are with their attacks. Silence reads as guilt.

2. BNPL customers aren't who the headlines say they are Payflex users are not over-indebted people stretching to survive. They're actualizing. Identity-driven. The emotional need sits at the top of Maslow's hierarchy, not the bottom.

3. The two-year brand cliff is real Cut brand budget today, nothing happens for six months, maybe a year. Then sales tank. And to recover it, you spend two to three times what you cut. The lag is the weapon CMOs need to use in every CFO conversation.

4. Brief writing is a tattoo, not a tick box WATTW. What are we trying to achieve here. If you can't answer that before you brief, you shouldn't be briefing.

5. Marketing is an advocate for the market, not a go-to-market function Marketers need to be in the product room early, sometimes aggressively, because no product strategy survives contact with a customer insight that nobody bothered to bring in.

6. Learn the finances early The biggest unlock in Tracey-Lee's career was understanding what CFOs actually care about: customer equity, market share, lifetime value. Not ROAS.

7. Boldness needs justification, not just instinct The data breach campaign worked because it had a clear strategic logic behind it. Payflex is an innovator and Black Friday demands standout or silence.

Watch the video version of this podcast on Youtube ▶️: https://youtu.be/fPIrrl9Qg3I

Scratch is a production of Rival, a marketing innovation consultancy that develops strategies and capabilities that help businesses grow faster. Scratch is hosted by Viren Samani, and he’s joined by Tracey-Lee Zürcher-Campbell of Payflex in this episode

Find Rival online at www.wearerival.com, LinkedIn

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Find Tracey-Lee on Linkedin

Say hi at media@wearerival.com, we’d love to hear from you.

Rival is a marketing consultancy for brands that want to challenge convention in their category. We’re on a mission to understand what challenger brands do differently to grow in categories that are being disrupted, and use a challenger playbook to deliver outsized impact through an integrated, tech-enabled approach. Past guests include CMOs from Mastercard, GE, Shell, Hyperloop, Adobe, PepsiCo, and Papa Johns.

If you’re interested in learning more about marketing from successful CMOs, we compiled a list of the top 5 CMO podcasts to listen to in 2024; check it out here 🔗 https://www.wearerival.com/content-hub-articles/cmo-podcasts-you-cannot-afford-to-miss-in-2024