← The CEO’s Guide to Marketing
The CEO’s Guide to Marketing
The one with Tubi CMO Nicole Parlapiano about problem-solving, creativity, the time to traction, and effing around and finding out.
00:52:42
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- [00:00]
Nicole
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Host
Here's my first question. You're a chief marketing officer and you oversee marketing and comms. You oversee a two sided marketplace. But your career, which we're going to get into in a little bit, but your career includes a lot of time on the agency side. And I'm wondering, having worked with so many clients, having seen so many different enterprises. Right. Struggle to get marketing right and the struggle is real. What's your take on what CEOs, CFOs and maybe the rest of the C suite just don't understand about marketing speaking broadly, not about where you are.
- [00:42]
Nicole
I mean I think they think because they see commercials and they have an opinion on commercials that they know what is good and what isn't. But I think that and I'll say it's two way street. It's both sides of the team is what is the marketing team and how is the marketing team communicating with the CEO, EO and the cfo? One, about what the real business problem is? Two, is it a problem that marketing can solve? And three, like how do you explain and articulate your strategic plan to solve it? So I think about it, it starts from the beginning and you have to be aligned on the data that you're seeing from your customers. And like often we will sit in consumer insight reviews with the CFO and the CEO. I don't think that that is happening at all levels of all organizations and I think that it depends on the CMO and seat on the agency side. Like you're dealing with different types of CMOs across all different types of brands and there's some CMOs that are just in it for the glory. There's some CMOs I'm in it for the glory. There's some CMOs that they are in it for the headline. They are in it for the buzzy thing. There's some CMOs that. Yeah.
- [01:57]
Host
Can I ask a question when, when you're talking about this, I have spent enough time on the agency side myself to know that of course you're right. From your perspective when you talk about the CMO who's in it for the glory in the headline is is that the CMO who's kind of marketing to marketing to the marketing trades and the internal audience as opposed to their consumer or customer and is less concerned about the business though they would never, I'm sure admit this perhaps even to themselves though than they are to your point about the headline.
- [02:26]
Nicole
Yeah, I mean I think they're more about their personal brand and their personal presence and then you know on the agency side, if that's the way that CMO operates, you know, even though you get a brief that this is the problem, that that person wants this celebrity at this launch event, that we have to do something that's going to get earned media and hero them, and sometimes that might be disconnected to actually what's going to drive the business. I mean, I've been. And I won't mention the company, but on the agency side, Fortune 500 CMO gave a brief, what they were pushing us to do. I was just like, this is not going to meet this brief. You can do this party with John Legend, but this is not going to meet this brief. And so it's fine. But I want to have your back. Because, you know what's going to happen is he doesn't hit his KPI and then we blame the agency. And then it's like we didn't have this conversation. And so I just said, I will do it, but I want you to know that you could take this money and burn it in the palm of your hand.
- [03:29]
Host
And what did that CMO decide to do?
- [03:32]
Nicole
Took the money and burned it in the palm of their hand.
- [03:35]
Host
What? I mean, I listened to that story. I've lived that story. I look at a lot of super bowl ads. Yours, yours, it's aside.
- [03:46]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [03:46]
Host
And I'm like, y' all just burn 10, 15, $20 million.
- [03:50]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [03:51]
Host
Hope there were marshmallows. I look at that and I'm like, what doesn't a CEO or CFO or that person's, you know, direct reporting boss.
- [04:00]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [04:01]
Host
Not get that that person is allowed to have a job any longer?
- [04:05]
Nicole
I mean, it could.
- [04:06]
Host
Because they should be fired.
- [04:07]
Nicole
Yeah. It could be the CEO. Right? Like, it could be the CEOs. Like, I want headlines. Don't care how I get them. Like, maybe they're okay with just the earned media. I don't know. Like, I think on the agency side, you're often not seeing at the CEO level what the CMO and the CEO are talking about.
- [04:23]
Host
Right.
- [04:24]
Nicole
But.
- [04:24]
Host
Which is its own problem.
- [04:25]
Nicole
But I do think that's why, like, especially in tech, there is this ick factor towards those types of CMOs, because they want some. Like, they want people to come in, know the data, know the numbers and grind and. And do it with their head down. And then if you do things that are driving the business, you're a good cmo. And sometimes those things are not the sexy things. And so I've worked with all different types and, like, do the kind of celebrity One cycle out rather quick. They do, but it depends on the organization. Some organizations, they are aligned around a celebrity CMO strategy where we put stuff out there and where we are getting earned media and people are talking about us and it might not actually be driving the business.
- [05:11]
Host
Yeah, yeah. And if the organization's aligned then it's the CMOS job essentially.
- [05:17]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [05:18]
Host
But it's certainly the CMO's job. And you brought this up in the beginning and I want to kind of dive into it regardless of whether the CEO is a star fucker or not. And there are plenty of those.
- [05:29]
Nicole
There are plenty of um.
- [05:31]
Host
It's the CMO's job to understand and you said it so clearly what the problems are. What the problems are that marketing can solve and how marketing's gonna go solve them. And I'm wondering what advice you have for the CEOs across product and service categories. So broad brush on how to help and, or listen to their CMO when they identify problems. Figure out which ones marketing can and can't solve and, and let's stop there. Let's start there.
- [06:02]
Nicole
My advice to CEOs is to make the time like I think make the time to go deep on and have a consumer obsession. I think every CEO that is a good one has a very strict consumer obsession. And so making the time for the whole executive team to look at whatever your insights tool is, however you're talking to your consumers on a regular basis to identify or you're you know, detractors on a regular basis that the whole C suite is rallying around. Okay, this is what we heard from our customers and these are the implications across product for in my case, across content and across marketing. Because you know, you could have an issue like okay, people are using our product but they're not talking about it. The people that are using our product are not talking about the product to the same degree that of our competitive set. So you have to think about like marketing can do some things to drive word or mouth, but that's also a product issue. Issue.
- [07:04]
Host
Yeah.
- [07:04]
Nicole
And so it's, it's because somebody didn't.
- [07:06]
Host
Make a product worth talking about.
- [07:08]
Nicole
Right. And so like what how can you drive more talkability in your product to then create the flywheel in marketing? And I think that CEOs that run very silo organizations like oh, this is all marketing or this is all product and doesn't foster, hey, you two have to get together and solve this problem. And it's a cross functional issue. Very few problems are just solved at companies that it's just one department's, you know, job to solve it.
- [07:37]
Host
I, I have been giving this a tremendous amount of thought as we head into the CMO Summit in Aspen a few weeks, and I'm really glad you're going to be there. And I've come to define this as or see it. I don't know that I define it, see it. Where marketing and product once were of, of a singular kind of entity, We've moved from having a relationship, the 4Ps, to having a situationship where we're just hooking up sometimes. And if we're hooking up sometimes, you know, that could be fun for a minute, but it doesn't create an enduring. Yeah, I'm kind of belaboring the analog doesn't create a relationship internally that serves the relationship we're trying to build externally.
- [08:21]
Nicole
Yeah, I mean, I think it depends. I think on the tech side, tech companies, usually product is the tail that wags the dog. And so you'll find that they're the most dominant department. And it's just like I've worked with product teams that are like, we don't need you. We'll tell you when we want to go to market. And that's a disaster because when that we're shipping a feature, we don't have a clear idea who it's for. We don't have a clear idea how to communicate. We haven't thought about who it could detract. We haven't thought about it from a comms angle of how we're going to talk about it and if it's even something we should talk about. So there's a lot of things that go on there or you find product teams that bring you in very early. Like I said on the customer UX research on what do we need to identify what did we find? And we're working together to figure out what. Okay, what are the features we need to build? And like you're thinking about that go to market before those products are even in dev. So I think it, I think that it depends. Whereas in CPG or physical product companies, I found that marketing kind of drives product strategy. Certainly cpg, it seems like more geared to that, like marketing can, you know, have more of a stake in actually what products will be launched. And you know, sometimes there's, there's things that come from marketing. It's like, hey guys, we need this built. Like, this will be fun, but you have to just really be mindful of not putting a tax burden on the product team. Tech roadmaps. Are very tight and sometimes if you just want to do something that's just in a moment, that's dev time that you're spending for one isolated moment and you really are trying to. I try to gear myself more around the things that can be lasting so that we're not wasting anyone's time. But I think that it really depends on what kind of organization you're in and how a CEO sets the tone for who is responsible for driving the business. And in the C suite, we're all responsible and we work on specific missions together, but we own those OKRs together. There is no finger pointing, you know, and I think we have a really good muscle around that at my current company. But I've been places where it's been super contentious and hard.
- [10:29]
Host
Yeah. You know, I've been. Have, have you seen or heard Brian Chesky talk about Founders Mode?
- [10:36]
Nicole
Yes.
- [10:36]
Host
Right. Which, which really kind of changed my perspective on a few things. When I heard that he and Jensen Wang similarly have something like 60, 65 direct reports, my first thought was how in the world does that make any sense? Like how do you manage through that? But when I heard Brian actually talk about the why, which he says it avoids a game of telephone.
- [10:59]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [10:59]
Host
He reorganized the business. I think I'm getting this right and I, I'm certain I'll hear from somebody at Airbnb if I'm getting it wrong that he reorganized the business so that there's less emphasis on function and more emphasis and focus on the business.
- [11:13]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [11:14]
Host
Right. Because if every function is so vertical that they're thinking about functional OKR and not organizational okr, well then there's. That's the absence of the integration that's essential for promoting and facilitating growth.
- [11:29]
Nicole
Well, it's just you're not amplifying your impact, you're just spiraling. Like, I mean, we, that's, that's, that's. It's even on marketing teams. Right. How many marketing teams have their own function, has their own KPI and they're not co owning everyone's role in how we drive a business objective. So like, I think it starts at the top, but even within our own marketing teams, you have certain teams just doing their thing, jamming away on their goals without any, like, care in the world about what's going on on the other side of the business, about whether.
- [11:59]
Host
It'S moving the business forward.
- [12:00]
Nicole
Yeah, yeah. And thinking about, you have to kind of train your teams to care about part of the business. Meaning like, you know, we're a marketplace business. But my whole team cares about the demand side of the business, which is our advertiser revenue and the viewer side of the business. And we're trying to balance that at all times. So every marketer, every month we go through how is that marketplace healthy? And you know, whether you're on, you know, the social or the growth marketing team, if, you know, viewership is very healthy, but we are in a revenue situation, then we all have to kind of get, rally around how we, how we figure out the revenue problem because it's holistic. Right.
- [12:39]
Host
Do you think that that language, like a growth marketing team actually works against what we've just been talking about? Which is to say, isn't everybody on the growth marketing team?
- [12:50]
Nicole
Yeah, everybody is.
- [12:51]
Host
Yeah.
- [12:52]
Nicole
Yeah, everybody is.
- [12:53]
Host
So, so let me, let me take the same conversation. Sorry. For those from an audio perspective, I just kicked Nicole by mistake. That was what I was apologizing for. And, and kind of ask the same question about creativity. Right. Because you're a wildly creative marketer, you've had wild creative success. And I want to talk a little bit about some of the, under some of the problem identification for which creativity has been part of the solution. But I also think that creativity is often seen as, and siloed within marketing, as seen to be a creative, I'm sorry, an organ organizational imperative. Now you're, you're in Hollywood, you sell a creative product day in and day out or you sell an audience that is drawn to a creative product day in and day out. What, what's your perspective on why. And maybe you disagree with me, but, but why creativity has been siloed within organizations. Yeah.
- [13:56]
Nicole
That'S a good one. I think people don't believe that they are creative. And I think there's creativity in everyone.
- [14:04]
Host
Yeah.
- [14:04]
Nicole
And I think we don't foster it enough. And I think maybe it's marketing's fault because you're like, this is the brand team and they're the only people that can come up with any ideas when.
- [14:15]
Host
That is self defeating?
- [14:16]
Nicole
Yeah, it's self defeating. When actually a lot of people can have ideas good and bad.
- [14:22]
Host
And I mean, most ideas are in fact bad.
- [14:24]
Nicole
They are bad. Right.
- [14:25]
Host
That's just the law of value.
- [14:26]
Nicole
But it's people exercising that muscle. And I, you know, sometimes I think some CMOs would be upset that like, you know, everyone's hitting you up with their next new idea that isn't on the marketing team. Or I saw this, we should do it that way or we should do this in social. And you know, I Always try to create space for it and listen and take it in. Because I love that they think that way. I love that they're thinking about the business. I want to invite the dialogue. I might not implement any of it, but. But I think it's healthy for everyone at the company to put on their creative hats and kind of think bigger. Because I think creativity ultimately solves communication problems. Creativity solves business problems. Creativity solves the problems that we all just get bogged down sometimes in the day to day. Our brains need it and even engineers need it. So it's like where you invite it and where you make space for it. And I think that at work, if you're not exercising that muscle, no matter what you do, it gets very boring very fast.
- [15:27]
Host
Yeah.
- [15:27]
Nicole
And you can't solve problems as easily. But it's, it's. You think about there's the expression of creativity through actual output, but there is creativity that's needed every day to solve different types of business problems. Right.
- [15:41]
Host
Every position and everybody's responsibility, in my opinion, is to bring a creative mindset to whatever it is that at every level. You know, you talked about the fact that you want to encourage creative thinking and ideas to come into you and yet you're not going to implement all of them. You're not going to implement most of them.
- [16:02]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [16:03]
Host
I'm reminded of when I was at CAA and I would get calls from. So I'm running CA marketing. I get calls from agents with the best of intentions, but not always the best of ideas. Right. Like I got a great idea for the Coca Cola company and the idea wasn't a great idea. And I would say really interesting. But here's why it won't work with them. Right. Because I thought. Turns out I was wrong, by the way. I thought that if I explained why the idea wasn't likely to work.
- [16:36]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [16:37]
Host
That it would help them learn and frame what might be more likely to work next time. And therefore they'd come back with another idea that was just better informed.
- [16:46]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [16:47]
Host
Turns out that did not like being told their baby was ugly, even though their baby was ugly. And it kind of changed my attitude towards a. Like suddenly ideas from others. It was like, oh, this is just a pain in the ass. Because I'm gonna just say yes and then blame it on the client. But I don't want to blame it on the client because the client had nothing to do with it because it's not a good idea and I'm not bringing it forward.
- [17:12]
Nicole
Yeah. I always ask the question first, what problem are you trying to solve? Yeah, that's a great idea.
- [17:18]
Host
Solve that. Think that way.
- [17:20]
Nicole
That's a great idea. What problem are you trying to solve here? Or if it's, you know, in that case, yeah, it's. It's, you know, when someone comes with like, oh, I have this great idea, okay, what problem is it solving? What problem are you trying to solve? Ideas are ideas, but we're in business to solve problems for the business. So if they can't think about what problem they're trying to solve, or they can't point to a direct insight that made that idea compelling, then it's just an idea. And, like, you got to unpack it more. So at least it teaches people to come with, like, a problem framework of, like, this is what I'm trying to solve. So then this is why I think this would work. And then you can have just a better conversation. But I find that some people just have, like, they're just shooting from the hip and they haven't thought. Oftentimes they haven't thought it through. And then they're like, okay, like, you know, marketing isn't just for the sake of creativity. We're here to solve business problems. And if you can't articulate what problem you're trying to solve for our consumer, for our business, you know, then. Then there's nothing for me to do here.
- [18:23]
Host
How many, how many pro. I mean, the world is filled with problems. Your day to day is filled with problems. The business has a gazillion challenges. How do you decide which problems are most worth solving? And how do you ensure an ongoing focus on them rather than the distraction of all the other problems that are, you know, you wish were solvable but aren't? The big bets aren't where focus should be allocated.
- [18:50]
Nicole
Yeah, I mean, I think there's. You have to think about, okay, we have these problems. It's like, what's the right timing? And like, when you're thinking about your year, it's like, what channels do I have availability? And how can I think about, is it the right channel, right message? And what are those opportunities just for.
- [19:11]
Host
Those in the audience who may not understand as much when you say, as you're thinking about the year, do I have the right channels available? What might be a calendar shift in channel availability?
- [19:24]
Nicole
So for me, we always have opportunities for fall NFL. So. So it's a TV commercial.
- [19:30]
Host
Got it.
- [19:31]
Nicole
I typically have access to mostly 15 seconds. So when I'm thinking about that specific execution, I have to think about communicating A message that solves a problem for me that makes sense for that channel.
- [19:47]
Host
And that follow in the context of.
- [19:49]
Nicole
In the context of. Right. And so I think that like it's all around timing, you know, like when we rebranded a year and a half ago and we were approaching our second super bowl, it. We had to think about what's the next business business problem that we have. And we had a few. But I think that it's. We, we rebranded and we didn't. Haven't really done anything to. On a mass level to say people like what we stand for and what we believe in.
- [20:19]
Host
All right, let's, let's talk about, about you guys in super bowl because you know that I'm like madly in love with the brief you gave your agency with the brief you gave Mischief for your first super bowl ad, which is what, 22 or 23?
- [20:34]
Nicole
23.
- [20:34]
Host
23. And the brief was, tell me if I'm wrong, as succinct a brief as I've ever heard, which is told the agency that you wanted to create work that would get people to ask what the is doing. Yes, right. Why? What was the problem you were solving for? Presumably awareness and, you know, some degree of understanding. How did you get to that level of brevity and clarity? And then I got a follow up.
- [21:03]
Nicole
Okay, well, it was. We had really, really, really low consumer awareness. And I think we were at a point, I had just started. I wrote. You mean the brief was written in August. I started in August. And I think we had some signs of what the Tubi brand really is. But I didn't have like complete validation. But what I did know is we were not like our competitor set. We don't have these water cooler shows. Our brand is not our content or one singular piece of IP or content. So you could look at that in entertainment and say, well, that's such a weakness. And I think we had to flip it on its head and make it a strength which is we do have the world's largest collection of Hollywood movies and TV shows.
- [21:55]
Host
What do you have something like 300,000.
- [21:57]
Nicole
And we have creator content now. But then it was, we believe the riches are in the niches. And it's like we had these deep rabbit holes of content that people really felt seen in that they couldn't find anywhere else. So we knew we wanted to tap into that.
- [22:15]
Host
Was that the strategy of the business's creation? Was it riches and niches and let us mine the long tail.
- [22:23]
Nicole
The initial phrase that the founder Farhad used to use was we were Super Serving the underserved, meaning the people that Hollywood isn't creating for.
- [22:34]
Host
Yeah.
- [22:34]
Nicole
That they are feeling excluded and so making sure that there was a breadth and depth of content on the platform that was reaching audiences that at that point were not in. In the market for paid streaming. So I think that was the initial thesis. I hated Super Serving the underserved.
- [22:57]
Host
You did? Why? Because I love it.
- [22:59]
Nicole
I hated.
- [23:00]
Host
I mean, they're hard to find advertising for Super Serving.
- [23:03]
Nicole
It just feels very techy language to me. And it's not a fucking soup kitchen. Like I hated it. So we moved on from it. But if you like it, then, you know, maybe I could reconsider. But I think it was really just. It's more than that. And so I knew that that was his original thesis and I knew that our viewers were deeply engaged in these specific niche fandoms. And so we knew that that was the experience. I wanted to honor the two beak experience, but I also wasn't looking to explain what we are. I didn't know what we stood for yet. So that's why it was like.
- [23:39]
Host
So I'm really struck by what you just said. But you weren't looking to explain what we are, but getting people to ask what the fuck you are. And by the way, just for our audience, that was literally the brief. I'm not just, you know, throwing out an F bomb, which I want to do, but not in this case. You're asking them to do the work of answering that question. Right. You were asking them to ask the question and then go do their work to find the answer. Which, which strikes me as pretty brave. Right. Because I mean, you know, to, to paraphrase the old quote about never underestimating. Nobody ever got broke underestimating the intelligence of the American consumer. Nobody ever got broke by asking the American consumer to do less. Right. And you were asking them to do more. Why? What conversations did you have about. About maybe the risk of that. Like maybe they'd ask the question what the is to be and say I don't know and just move on.
- [24:43]
Nicole
Well, I think you. It's, it's in our, it's in the creative execution to shock, surprise and delight so much that they do want to know. To intrigue. I think we lose a little bit of intrigue because we're trying to land all these messages, you know, with thousand RTBs in one 30 second spot. And I think sometimes surprise and intrigue are very compelling, often more compelling. And I think people are not as. I don't think The American consumer is as lazy. As long as you're putting something compelling in front of them that gives them a laugh or gives them a surprise or I don't know, gives them rage, they'll look into it.
- [25:22]
Host
It's funny, you talk about, you know, A thousand and one RTBs in a 30 second spot and there does seem to be like sometimes this polarity where you got either a thousand and one or zero.
- [25:33]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [25:35]
Host
Sorry everybody. That's just my observation. Don't take it personally. But there's also a lot of creativity that feels like it's in service of itself rather than solving the problem. Problem. Right. And it's creativity and spectacle as strategy as opposed to the means of trans. Providing access to the information.
- [25:59]
Nicole
Right.
- [26:00]
Host
That the end that you want the end user to have. And I'm, I'm wondering how you manage for that. How you kind of evaluate with your agency partners internally what good looks like and where creativity is in service of problem solving and, or opportunity creating as opposed to just being a little self indulgent.
- [26:23]
Nicole
I mean I, I think we've talked about this. I think it's all in the brief.
- [26:27]
Host
Mm.
- [26:28]
Nicole
And I think you have to evaluate the creative of if you think it's actually going to meet the brief and meet the business objective. And so creativity for the sake of creativity, how do you line that up to a KPI? How do you know what message like are you looking for message resonance on something? If you're not sharp about it and you're not measuring towards it then like you have to see it and you have to be grounded into does it meet the brief and we have to write good briefs. But I think, I don't, I'm not familiar with like creativity for the sake of self serving. Like we just like this ad because we think it's fun but it's not really saying anything, you know, And I think it's, it's hard because I think I watch ads and I feel like where did it get lost that we, our job is to entertain and I think we've lost that art.
- [27:16]
Host
Do you think that's marketing's job broadly or your job within the context?
- [27:21]
Nicole
No, I think, I think, I think that marketing should be entertaining. People should want to engage with it, they should laugh, it should evoke emotion. Well, I think too much of it does nothing.
- [27:33]
Host
I completely agree. Right.
- [27:35]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [27:36]
Host
I don't know that I think marketing's job is to entertain. I think that marketing's job is to persuade and sometimes we can persuade through entertaining. Right.
- [27:44]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [27:45]
Host
We have to inform, we have to educate, we have to inspire. And entertaining is. Is a strategic. A strategic direction.
- [27:53]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [27:55]
Host
Or. Or executional direction actually.
- [27:59]
Nicole
But I don't mean that that's the end goal. I'm just saying you need to make the creative engaging so people don't just completely tune out of it.
- [28:07]
Host
Yeah.
- [28:07]
Nicole
You know, you have to make it.
- [28:08]
Host
Fun to watch recognizing. Right. Like that's a truth inarguable. Why do you think so much work is not engaging? Why do you think so much work does get tuned out?
- [28:21]
Nicole
I think that there are some organizations where there is an exorbitant amount of reviewers and eyes on creative and it's death by a thousand cuts.
- [28:31]
Host
Yeah.
- [28:32]
Nicole
And I have a true belief that maybe there was a good idea somewhere, some there and in the ether and as a cmo, it's like how much are you going to let your work. How many people are you going to let in to review the work and are you willing to go to bat for certain things?
- [28:47]
Host
Have you ever had a hill that you've had to die on?
- [28:50]
Nicole
I mean, I die on hills all the time and many lives. Prior to being at tubi, I was at organizations where we work. I would hide my work, I wouldn't show anyone. I'd run in markets and I would exclude most of the executive team from the work because there was a lot of eyes on it and I had to drive a business objective and I needed to be able to put work out there to educate people on what we work was in specific markets. And everything went through Adam and Rebecca and they were very hard on the work. So I, I got my hand slapped a lot.
- [29:29]
Host
I think. I think being hard on the work is great as long as it's grounded in what's right.
- [29:33]
Nicole
Well, it wasn't grounded in what the business was.
- [29:36]
Host
You bring up something that I think is really important, which is that the absence of alignment about what business you're actually in.
- [29:45]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [29:46]
Host
Like how. How common do you think do you think that might be?
- [29:50]
Nicole
I think it's more common than you would think.
- [29:52]
Host
I mean I think it's. I hadn't stopped to think about it before but you know, they're. I'm thinking about a plant based client I had.
- [30:00]
Nicole
Yes.
- [30:01]
Host
Right. And they were making plant based food. They were og. I think they actually thought they were in plant based hot dog business, plant based sausage, plant based patties. And that wasn't the business they were in. That was the biz, that was what they manufactured. But it wasn't the business they were in.
- [30:15]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [30:16]
Host
Right. And, and I, I hadn't, I don't know that I've ever stopped to think about it before. But yeah, I tend to think it's reasonably, it's not uncommon. And in all the conversation about the absence of alignment between CEO and CMO, C suite and CMO and I just had two folks on from McKinsey talking about exactly this based on their new research. I don't actually hear a lot of conversation about the absence of alignment. That starts from the, from go. What business are we in fact in?
- [30:52]
Nicole
Yeah, well, there's, you know, I've been at different organizations at different sizes. You know, when you're a series C to series G, it can get confusing because you're in a hyper growth environment and you have investors telling you they need more growth from you. You need to think bigger, need to think bigger. And you might even not have, I mean hopefully by time you get to series C funding you have product market fit. Sometimes you don't, unfortunately. But I think that in that path to aggressive growth you might get confused about what business you're in because you're trying to think bigger than the current business you're in. You're trying to grab market share from another part of the company. So. But I mean I think.
- [31:38]
Host
And aggressive growth isn't always sustainable.
- [31:40]
Nicole
No, it's not. It's not. In that case, not. So I think that, you know, when you're even, you know, you could be an established company that the industry you're in is sort of collapsing and you have to think about what's trying to be in a different part of it or a different angle. So I think there is confusion because the market is changing so rapidly that I think every CEO is under pressure to think where is my next growth potential? Where is this going to go? How am I going to give shareholders or my board what they need? Because now, you know, shareholders and board, they single digit growth is not good for anything for anyone. And for some mature businesses that's probably what is achievable. But nobody can deliver that anymore. Right. So the pressure on them, many can't, many can't. So the pressure on them is very high. And I think part of this, you know, when we're talking about CEOs and CFOs, I think we have to have a deep empathy for them and where the situation they're in 100%, you know what I mean? Like they have to go to a board and explain all capital markets. Yeah. And capital markets and really explain Things and really put their neck on the line. And I think that's why, you know, I think the conversations and you have to be operating from the same data set and the same understanding of the business. Because if you are, then the things you're trying to, things that marketing is doing make sense and we know how to measure them. And you know, there's always going to be things like I think I talk to a lot of senior level marketers and the first conversation they have with me is like, how do I get my CEO to invest in brand? And I'm like, why are you even talking about the B word? Do you know who your brand is? Have you guys gone through a strategic exercise as an executive leadership team on what this brand is? What does it mean? Who is it for? What makes you unique? Therefore, then what do you think you should be saying in the marketplace that work has to be done before you can go and unlock a brand budget? Because if they're brought along the way and they're feeling good and they're feeling that strategic thread and they know the direction we're going is right for the business, right for the customer, and will unlock growth and is highly different than the competitive set because they are very competitor led. When they think and you really have drilled down on your point of difference, then you can unlock the budget and we can talk about measurement in that. But like I think you're going to them saying we need to invest in brand and you haven't done the job of understanding it and brought them with you in the journey.
- [34:22]
Host
Well, and I would build on that and say you haven't told them why. Right. And then the other thing is when you talk about, when a CMO talks about investing or anyone talks about investing in brand, that is a brand conversation, not a commercial conversation. Right. It, it, it's like, how do I get them to invest more in brand? It divorces brand from growth when brand is the greatest engine, engine of growth, of course. What's, what's your definition of what a brand is?
- [34:52]
Nicole
It's a set of beliefs, behaviors and a point of difference in the market. That's how I look at it. It's, and it should touch everything, whether it's internal, your product. It's kind of the North Star and the anchor for the entire business of why do you exist? What is your reason for existing? What do you do for people? Why are you different than your competitive set? And like what in what personality and in what vein are you going to communicate that? So it's kind of Just this living, breathing.
- [35:25]
Host
It's the codification of those things.
- [35:27]
Nicole
Yes.
- [35:28]
Host
Do you think that inside, from the breadth of your experience, that there's, there is a explicit codification of how value will be created in most enterprises?
- [35:43]
Nicole
Specific codification, which is say we, we.
- [35:46]
Host
Acme Widget company are going to create value for our customers, our consumers, our stake or shareholders by doing X, Y or Z. Right. Because oftentimes my observation is that value creation is sometimes a function or perceived to a function of greater efficiency. Right. It's internal value creation. It's value extraction rather than value creation, you know, is probably the better way of saying it. And efficiency is not a strategy. Cost savings isn't a strategy. And, and I'm wondering if, if you think that back to the question about alignment and the question or our conversation about whether there's agreement and mutual understanding of what business the company is actually in, what problems it's actually solving, do you think that there is an absence of understanding of how we're going to go create value for our stakeholders? Because growth, aggressive growth, to use your words, is not always it.
- [36:49]
Nicole
Yeah. I mean values, usually when you're thinking boards and shareholders, it's money.
- [36:57]
Host
Yes.
- [36:58]
Nicole
How are we going to generate more money? We're capitalists, you know, but do you have a path to that? And in that vein, it's not always about cutting costs and choking costs and being more efficient because that's not necessarily what's going to make you more money. It's a race to the bottom. Right. If that's all you're thinking about doing and you don't want to be in a place where, if you're not communicating value and that's where brand plays an incredible role is why should I care? Why should I like this product? And how do you get people to be loyal and you know, talk about you and come back to you? Because they love the experience. It's a product as well. But I think you get to a point where if you can't communicate that value and people don't know why they're paying you for certain things, then you just start discounting and then there you go.
- [37:49]
Host
Yeah, it's a very quick.
- [37:50]
Nicole
Gets away from you. Very, very quick. Yeah, so, so that's why, like if you, you know, I hate to give another weird work example, but we in the on the US team did invest in brand, the European team did not. They just ran performance marketing, you know, passed off leads, the sales teams. Therefore they had to give a lot more discounts on their buildings and their Leases. So when everything was kind of going through the shit, the US market, after deploying that strategy for two years, we were profitable. $2 billion business that was profitable. And the rest of the international markets were pretty much underwater because they had to rely on discounting to get to their occupancy goals. And so that is just one company where we were given the right to deploy our own strategies. And the markets showed up remarkably different on the P and L because of the decisions we made.
- [38:48]
Host
Yeah, it's, it's really hard to extract value when you haven't created it. And when you just play at the bottom of the funnel, you're not creating it, you're just, you're subsidizing. Yeah, actually.
- [39:04]
Nicole
Yeah. And you're attracting the type of customers that typically turn. When somebody comes in with the next cheapest thing, they're gone to the next cheapest thing. Right.
- [39:12]
Host
Yeah.
- [39:12]
Nicole
So.
- [39:12]
Host
And we're teaching people to buy price rather than. What's that old expression, you know, pity. I'm making some of this up, but pity the fool who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
- [39:24]
Nicole
Yeah. And I'm, I'm, you know, my brain is so oddly wired that if things are too cheap, I'm like, it must not be good.
- [39:31]
Host
Oh my God.
- [39:32]
Nicole
Like, like something's wrong with me. So I'm like, why can't I buy the cheaper option? So, because I'm like, you know, whether it's wine or whether it's, you know, sunglasses, I'm like, something about me, like the price is communicating a higher value.
- [39:46]
Host
Well, it does. I, I immediately think of when, when my ex wife and I started the process of, of going through the adoption process. We have two, two kids who are adopted. We met with, you know, this brilliant, well regarded, fantastic adoption attorney. We meet with him and, you know, he's wearing kind of schmutzy khakis and I don't know, he was $500 an hour or something. And I, by the way, we worked with him, he was a legend. Owe him so much, you know, so much gratitude for him. I said to, to my wife at the time, I was like, I don't know, like he could have cleaned his pants and I'd have been happier if he charges a thousand an hour. Right. Because there's something, I mean, price conveys something, as we all know.
- [40:29]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [40:30]
Host
And what's interesting is where we'll choose to spend incrementally because we see value in that. Where we won't. Like batteries. Yeah. I'm pretty Good. With Amazon Basics Luggage. Like, I don't know, Ramo is not doing any better job at carrying my clothes from point A to point B. But I'm spending extra on the, on the luggage.
- [40:53]
Nicole
Well, maybe the wheels.
- [40:54]
Host
You know, it is good wheels.
- [40:56]
Nicole
The wheels are like.
- [40:59]
Host
I do. It is good wheels and I like the handle. It's got some product.
- [41:03]
Nicole
Yeah. So, I mean, there's all those things we have. Yeah. Sometimes I'm just like, what? How price communicates value is very interesting because sometimes it can do the opposite thing.
- [41:12]
Host
And, and I think marketing, going back to what we were talking about earlier, marketing's been divorced oftentimes from that conversation too.
- [41:19]
Nicole
From pricing.
- [41:19]
Host
Yeah. Right. And. And look, as we, as we get towards time, I'm wondering if, and I've been asking this question a bit on the show lately. I'm wondering if, you know, you're at Erewhon and you bump in. I don't know why I chose that. Maybe because I love it.
- [41:38]
Nicole
We're in la, and price, you're thinking bougie.
- [41:40]
Host
Yeah. That's very, very bougie, by the way. I don't think I've ever been inside one.
- [41:45]
Nicole
What?
- [41:45]
Host
Yeah, I don't think I have.
- [41:48]
Nicole
But meanwhile, I mean, like, should we go right after this? There's one in Venice.
- [41:51]
Host
Kids have a whole lot of Erewhon cups from, you know, whatever smoothie they got.
- [41:56]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [41:56]
Host
Like, you know what that's costing us. But I digress. Regardless of place a huge company CEO says to you, I don't know a lot about marketing, but I'd like to. What are the first couple things you want to teach her?
- [42:12]
Nicole
I don't know. It's like, where do you start? Marketing's job ultimately is to create demand for your products and services full stop. If it's not doing that, it doesn't have a purpose. It has to create demand for a product or service.
- [42:26]
Host
All right, so then I guess the, the requisite follow up is how do you create demand? And while the answer to that is who the fuck knows? And it depends.
- [42:35]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [42:35]
Host
What do you teach them about how to, how to think about demand creation?
- [42:43]
Nicole
I mean, I think you can test your way into anything. But how to think about it is if people don't know who you are and they don't know why they should buy you, then they're not going to buy you, like, full stop. Like, how. It's not. There's very few situations that if you build it, they will come. Very few. And I think because some of them are so prominent, especially with, you know, the past 25 years in tech, where products were built and there was no marketing and the product was just so remarkably different that it attracted people.
- [43:18]
Host
Although that's marketing in and of itself.
- [43:19]
Nicole
Yeah. I mean, it's at least a. Yeah, a vein of it.
- [43:23]
Host
Yeah.
- [43:23]
Nicole
But I think that, like. I think that that is ultimately, like, you can't. There's no point in having a business if you're not thinking about how you're going to market it, or you don't have a clear understanding of it, or you haven't done that strategic work. You know, I mean, I just don't think it's worth an investment if you're not thinking at least about it in, like, some framework. Otherwise, you just have a business that's a business and it might chug along and, you know. But how are you gonna get customers? How are you gonna make money? Marketing makes money. Marketing makes money. Yeah. I mean, that's what it does.
- [44:00]
Host
And, you know, I'm oftentimes struggling.
- [44:02]
Nicole
I always tell people, you don't want to do it. Fuck around and find out.
- [44:05]
Host
Exactly.
- [44:05]
Nicole
I'm a FAFO marketer. Like, you know, everyone's had situations in their career where you don't think brands. You don't think it's working.
- [44:13]
Host
What if we stop?
- [44:13]
Nicole
We'll just stop. We'll just do own channels for a whole month. We'll do that. That's what you want to do. And then they're the ones coming to you.
- [44:21]
Host
Okay. Here, here. I was talking to a CMO last. The week before last. It was our first conversation. Really liked her. She's super smart. I'm gonna. I'm gonna keep it anonymous. She has decided that they will do nothing on their own channels. Right. That they do not want. I'm gonna. I suppose they don't want to use their own channels.
- [44:46]
Nicole
Okay.
- [44:47]
Host
And I was like, I can't imagine a scenario where I think that that could make any sense at all, is there? And I know there's situations. All right, tell me, tell me.
- [44:59]
Nicole
So there's some. I would say, like, my. The time that I walked into Tinder, it's like our own channels had sort of been ignored, and we didn't have a relationship with the people that had been using Tinder. And we really. The growth was not going to happen from our own channels. It had to happen by partnering with people outside of the channels because people needed to regain. Tinder needed to regain its credibility, and it's not going to do that by Tinder. Talking about Tinder. Right. Sometimes that has to happen on outside channels with external validation and external trust or it's not going to happen. And that was that at that moment in time. But you can think of some businesses like I'm a big fan of Zins and they can't market anywhere at all, ever, little bit at the retail location, but they have to think about marketing through other people's channels because they can't even be on any of the digital channels that most people would have. So I think there is situations where your own channels are not the play or where.
- [46:12]
Host
But while there may not be the play like to, to use them, not at all. Seems to me to be a, a.
- [46:21]
Nicole
Waste of building up equity. Yeah, yeah. I mean I don't know if you can sustain doing that long term and I don't know what kind of product it is because own channels can be defined many different ways. We all have a different set of tools for that. But I think there are situations where your own channels aren't necessarily helpful or you could be.
- [46:44]
Host
By the way, she, you said what she said.
- [46:48]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [46:49]
Host
So point for both of you. All right. You bring up something that, that I think is important. We'll make it the last question, which is, you know, a huge part of your job is resource allocation. I mean everything. Yeah, right. Is, is about resource allocation and where you're allocating people time and money. How often do you. What's the question I really want to ask here? How often are you kind of measuring for the impacts of those resource allocations for real incrementality and how often are you looking at, you know, making meaningful adjustments as opposed to the micro adjustments that happen day in.
- [47:31]
Nicole
Yeah, I mean I think we look, we definitely look at it on a quarterly basis, but I think you need to give, you know, marketing is a long term, long play game. You can't make, you know, you want to iterate.
- [47:43]
Host
Well, it's supposed to be, but it doesn't oftentimes have that luxury.
- [47:46]
Nicole
Right. But you have to, you have to kind of just find, find, find the balance if you can. You don't want to defund something immediately if it hasn't been given enough time to room out, but do want to be able to be nimble and shift money when you need to. So I think quarterly we kind of look at, you know, we set our goals for by halves. We have a, you know, a three year long range plan and then annual plans. But the, the meat of the plan is done by halves because so much can change. So Much can change in just the, the calendar of the year. So much can change in culture and so much can slip and slide around, whether it's product features or content features or content releases. So we look at it and we just say like on a quarterly basis, did the things we were actually going to do happen? And are we measuring towards those okrs or do we need to shift things around? It could be over delivering on something and under delivering on something else and that means that other thing needs more attention and funding. So on a quarterly basis we are looking at shifting funds. But the OKRs don't really change now. They might change if we have to severely defund something. But, but I think it's, how are we getting to those overall business goals and how good are the tactical things we're doing at driving those business goals? Are there things we want to double down on? Are there things we want to defund? Is there money we want to kick into the next quarter? Did something that we thought would happen not actually come into fruition? And why, and why. But I'm kind of taking inputs from product revenue and, and content and I'm trying to balance all of the things that are happening in that ecosystem. And as much as I can feed back on those roadmaps, I do so that I make sure we have, we're lined up kind of strategically so that there is something to kind of grab onto and we don't have massive gaps in, in like our, our flow of things. I guess you could say it's all.
- [49:43]
Host
About the flow of things. And I don't say that flippantly. Right. Because you know, to your point, one of the biggest mistakes marketers and, and others in the C suite make is, is judging long term strategies by short term results.
- [49:59]
Nicole
Yeah.
- [50:00]
Host
Along with not having kind of real clarity around what it is they're solving for and what it is they intend to achieve.
- [50:08]
Nicole
Yeah. I mean, I think that it's all based on the business plan and I think that you're not going to get there overnight. And I think as long as you communicate, okay, we're going to drive this much in the first half of the year. This is the ultimate goal. It's not going to be all of it. And you know, it takes time for things to build. So when we're doing our forecasts, they'll say, oh well, you're spending all this money. Why is it so, why does it take so long to build up? And that's just what happens. It takes time to build up cohorts to build them up, monetize them, keep them coming back. So it's not like it's an even split on the goal. Six months here, six months here, the compounding effect happens, and you're going to see most of the pickup in second half of the year. So we kind of build our forecast that way. And, you know, hats off to my analytics team for really, you know, having the numbers and explaining them and explaining why it's going to take time to get traction and explaining. There's just, you know, some months you're up against, you know, competitive factors. So you have to kind of constantly communicate what's going on and where you're kind of in jeopardy of missing and people are okay to miss. We also have just a philosophy of we take on big goals and you shouldn't hit all of them. And I tell my team this all the time. If at that half everything we've done is green, then we're not. We're not trying. Some things are going to be red, some things should be yellow. We should be comfortable with that. I'm not ever going to, like, be mad at anyone for being behind, but we should make sure that we're being ambitious. And if everything is in the green, it means we're. We're being a little bit too conservative and a little too safe at the planning stage. At the planning stage, not everything should be entirely achievable. And people like, there's a tremendous amount of fear to going to our CEO and missing, and I think that's totally fine. And she's okay with that, too. But we want to. We want to go in as ambitious as possible and strive for it, knowing we might not get it, but it's better than playing it safe.
- [52:07]
Host
It is always better than playing it safe. And with that, Nicole, thank you so much for being with us. Really appreciate it. And to you, our audience, thank you guys, too, for being with us. Wherever you're watching or listening, we appreciate it. If you like the show, give it five stars or I take four. And if you like the show, leave us review because that's how people find it. Thanks very. Thanks to everybody for listening, for watching, for being part of it. We'll see you next time.