← The CEO’s Guide to Marketing
The CEO’s Guide to Marketing
The one with Walmart CMO William White about the essential strategic importance of remembering you can do anything but not everything.
00:47:43
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- [00:00]
William White
Foreign.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Welcome Back to the CEO's guide to marketing. Today I am sitting with the CMO of Walmart, William White. William, thank you for being here.
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William White
Hey, I'm very excited. You've had me. I've listened to the podcast and love it, so it's fun to be a guest.
- [00:21]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Oh, well, thank you. Don't forget to smash that subscribe button and give us five stars, William. But let me, let me credential you. Not that your reputation doesn't precede you, but you've been at Walmart as CMO for five years and prior to coming there, you had over 25 years of customer and commercial leadership experience and global organizations really focused a lot of your career on CPG and retail specifically and including Target and Coca Cola. If I have this right, at Walmart, you've got responsibility for the full range of marketing strategy, including customer insights, experience and planning. And kind of from a remit perspective, not shockingly, there's a real focus on driving demand and building loyalty by strength, both strengthening and modernizing the Walmart brand. Reframing Walmart, the world's largest physical based retailer, as a digital first destination. And while you have many, many accolades, amongst them is that you have appeared on, Excuse me listeners, I just cleared my throat. Amongst them is that you have appeared on the Forbes world's most influential list four times in 2023. You appeared as number one on that list. I, I don't remember exactly where you were last year. Could you refresh my memory?
- [01:51]
William White
I think you know better than I do. I did not repeat. I did not. I did not repeat. I, I, I, I fell behind some worthy illustrious CMOs.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
While it is a ranked list, everybody on that list is influential and we're all winners.
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William White
We're all winners.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
It's an honor just to be nominated as, as I said on stage at the Oscars quite recently in my own head. Okay, thank you for being with us. I really do appreciate it.
- [02:21]
William White
Yeah, again, psyched to be here. I'm very eager to dig in with you today.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
All right, actually, let's just jump right in. So you know, I referenced just a minute ago that, you know, an important part of your job is strengthening and modernizing the Walmart brand. Really opening the aperture on the Walmart brand's historical framing. A lot of my previous guests on the show have pointed to, when we've talked about brand, they've pointed to the value, the accretive value of a strong brand being, amongst other things, the ability to drive pricing power, to drive incremental margin to ask for more for the same thing than your competitor, perhaps. But for Walmart, who has long, I mean, is it decades long been an EDLP marketer, everyday low pricing marketer, the value of brand is not in fact in pricing power, but in framing. As my friend Chris Ross at Gartner says, why you and not them? Right? Because you do in fact compete on price, you just compete on lower price or edlp. So talk to, talk to us about the import of that strengthening of the brand for Walmart and when pricing power isn't its value, what is?
- [03:48]
William White
Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question and I think we should start with the premise of what is a brand and which I know you'll want to explore in more detail but at the simplest, maybe good way to set that up. If, if a brand is a promise kept. Walmart has been focused on the core of our promise, which is everyday low price for 62 years and 62 years EDLP, 62 years of VDLP. And so if so our power I think comes from keeping that promise of everyday low price to our customers for 62 years. That has enabled us to build trust that it has enabled us to build the strong brand that we have and to keep people coming back. Now you've alluded to a modern modernization of the brand and you know, I think that in recent years we are expanding that promise and offering more reasons to, for customers to come in and you know, and for us, you know, we've been earning their dollars certainly with the low price, but increasingly we've had a stronger assortment where we've had better quality of goods like great organic and foods, we've had better style but we were also really driving a greater level of convenience. And so I think that this, so what has often brings people in is the low price and they know that they can trust us for that. I think what is keeping customers with us in recent years, as you know, there's a, you know, many options, easy, you know, at your fingertips is, you know, a better assortment and a better experience. And so, so again, the promise kept I think has built the trust that has enabled the growth that we've seen.
- [05:53]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
So I want to, I want to ask you then, how would, how do you define the value of the brand as opposed to the role of the brand? Right, so if the role of the brand is the promise kept, right, to ensure that you're delivering that. Excuse me, again, the value of a strong brand when it doesn't strategically lead to the ability to create pricing Elasticity. What role does it play in customer acquisition and retention? And how would you explain that to. Not your CEO? Doug obviously gets this, but to a CEO or a CFO who might not.
- [06:37]
William White
Yeah, well, I mean, I think, I think the power of a brand draws people in. And then if you're keeping that, if you're keeping that promise, if you are staying true to who you are and you are delivering value for the customer where they feel that they are getting more than they give, then that creates the loyalty and the engagement that ultimately leads to customer lifetime value. And I think that any CFO or CEO certainly would strive for that. You want to have customer lifetime value. You want to build a strong customer base. And brand is an enabler of that. It is a driver. It is a driver of that.
- [07:29]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
For.
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William White
It prevents. And just to say, like, one last thing on that, I mean, it's. It allows you to move from the transactional to the emotional in a way where you are reducing the switching that you might have in moving out. If the relationship is just transactional, you can be replaced.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Right.
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William White
And brand enables that emotional connection that keeps someone there.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
All right, let's talk about emotion, because I think it's so important, right? And it, it has been a through line in our conversations on the show. And I think it's, it's that to, to paint the rest of the C suite with a broad brush, right? To speak generically and broadly, I don't, you know, it's very hard to quantify emotion, and I don't know that. And you know, you may have a different opinion that again, speaking globally and broadly, that there is an, in fact, an understanding and appreciation of the role emotion plays, even, even, and in particular, subconscious emotions in driving purchase decisions. How. How might you explain that? Right? Because you can't see it. You can't quantify it. You can't measure it. You can measure outcomes of it. How might you explain it to the, to the CFO in this instance that it's like emotion schmotion, you know, show me the numbers.
- [09:03]
William White
Yeah, it's, it's. Yes. You cannot, you cannot quantify everything. I would maybe kind of take a step back and talk through maybe a series of KPIs that kind of. To think about, that kind of get there. But I think, you know, if the role of marketing is to create and capture demand, then you, you have to, you have to look at what is the role of marketing in driving traffic and driving sales. And I think that is pretty easy to quantify. You know, we have we most marketers have a way of tracking that you track what is the engagement and loyalty that you're driving. So are you increasing? You're the moving kind of people up in the relationship journey with you from a casual to a weekly customer. That is a sign of engagement and loyalty. And then how are you building brand equity? What are the core components of your equity as a brand that you're trying to reinforce and move the needle on? All of those things are traceable and trackable.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Can you give the audience just a couple of like, you know, for example, we trace and track X. Yeah.
- [10:22]
William White
So for marketing driven sales we use a marketing mix model, classic mmm where you know, we are, we are looking at all of the different factors that all of the investment decisions that we're making from a marketing standpoint to understand the efficacy of those, the role that they're playing, lane and driving incremental sales. And there are non marketing factors of course as well. And that's all tracked within the model. And so you know, that is not something that is a real time, I mean, you know, as marketers who use MMM know I mean that's not something that's used in real time to make kind of daily tracking decisions. But that helps you look at the kind of the totality on a monthly quarterly basis of you know where and how the, the channels are driving.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Right.
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William White
Their effectiveness for you.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Okay.
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William White
As as an example on, on equity measures. I mean those are, you know, those are custom trackers that we run around different dimensions of the brand. We look at a total brand NPS score, net promoter score as kind of an overarching marker for marker for the brand. And so you know, kind of long winded way in to say there are a number of metrics that we are tracking. It is so important to note that all of these things work in conjunction.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Right.
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William White
And so just take, just go back to the, the marketing mix. We know that if we're trying to drive short term sales, obviously there are conversion level tactics and spend that we could invest in to drive. But we also know that the more upper funnel marketing activities make the lower funnel work harder. And so the more we are building a level of awareness, the more we are building a level of broad engagement in the brand that makes the conversion work harder. And so again you've got to create demand and capture demand and part of creating the demand is building the brand.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Actually I want to ask you about that because you know, you talk about the relationship between the upper funnel and the lower funnel, which I think is Just lost by so many, both on the marketing side and across the C suite. Not everyone, you know. So for the listeners who are like, no, I get it, like I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about others. But when you refer to awareness, so I'm going to assume for the moment, tell me if I'm wrong, that you know, Walmart's got pretty high awareness.
- [13:08]
William White
Sure.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
So, so for you, and I'm thinking about your Q4 results. I think it was Q4, I know it was at the end of last year. Is your fiscal calendar.
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William White
Yeah, we, we are, we end our year fiscal year at the end of January.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Okay.
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William White
So, so we run, we run February to January. So Q4, it might have been Q4.
- [13:28]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Or Q3, but, but a lot of the growth in your business, if I recall correctly and obviously let me know if I driven by kind of, you know, a new household, which is the 100,000 plus household. And so to drive the upper funnel with that audience, to invite new, higher, higher demographic audiences in, you didn't need awareness. You needed a different understanding, a different comprehension, a different relationship with the brand. How did you, how did you plan for that? And, and what lessons beyond, you know, retail? Because retail is such a beast of its own. Walmart amongst the biggest of those beasts.
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William White
It's a big beast.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
It's a big beast. What lessons, you know, might, might other C suite folks learn from what you did there?
- [14:18]
William White
Sure, lots a lot to unpack in that. You're correct. We don't need more broad scale brand awareness. We have, you know, the highest of the high brand, brand awareness. But there's a reframe that we have been driving for the last couple of years. And the reframe really has two dimensions to it. One that we are beyond, you know, the great stores that we're known for and you know, being in communities all over the country, we are a digital first destination. And so building greater awareness of our digital capabilities and our, the, the digital relationship with our customers has been a big part of the reframe. And that includes things like you can get delivery, you know, you can get Walmart delivered in less than an hour. And you know, that is kind of new news for people. There's awareness to drive around the convenience factor of Walmart with fast delivery.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
So it's not awareness of Walmart, it's awareness of this service offering.
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William White
Yeah, yeah, right. And, and really? Yes, absolutely. But really important to say we need to drive awareness of the service offering. But it's not only hitting the RTBS it's also a reframe of who is the Walmart brand. So yes, we're going to, we're going to hit the fast delivery as a reason to believe but it needs to ladder into a broader reframe about who is Walmart and driving a new level of reconsideration about Walmart so that you know, there's a brand element, change element to that as well. So the digital first destination, the fast delivery, that's kind of component one. Component two is the change in assortment and you know the again you can look across the categories but whether it's in food and having just wide range of fresh and organic to on the more general merchandise style discretionary categories like we have on trend, great quality, fashion, home and that style component is also new news for people and what they might not have thought about us before.
- [16:40]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
So let me lean into that a little bit. One of the things I've talked about a lot on previous shows here is in a world where everything connects in many, many companies large and small, but in particular large, not everything is connected. You used, used a phrase a moment ago that all things work in conjunction. Right. So what. And again kind of talking less perhaps about Walmart specifically, but using it as a reference, you don't control merchandising assortment, you don't control the products and the diversity of products are on the shelf, but your ability as a CMO to succeed is inextricably linked to them. Right. There are these related interdependencies. How do you work internally kind of what's a process perspective? I talked about this for example with Lorraine 2 hill on one of our first shows where we talked about the relationship of being a marketer in a product driven organization. Right. How, how what, what's your story of kind of integration? Again, we don't need to make it about Walmart but, but the need for, and what CEOs need to understand about those related interdependencies that are often disaggregated rather than integrated.
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William White
Yeah, I mean the starting point which you were articulating is that everything communicates and every touch or doesn't.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Yeah.
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William White
And so every, every touch point that someone has with your brand is creating an impression, it is driving, it is driving the equity good or bad. And so having a consistent, thorough, you know, a thorough and consistent brand identity way of working, way of operating is really important in a company such that the brand is showing up across all these touch points in similar ways. And the thing that I say all the time, which truth be Told I stole from Mark Mattu is be it, do it, say it. And the notion of, and I think this is very important for a company, but thinking it from in brand terms is it starts with the be it. Who, who is the company? What are the values? How are those showing up, how are the actions of the people in the company, you know, the do it part and then say it, you know, how are you communicating? All of those things have to be linked and have to be real across, across the organization. And so kind of more to your question in terms of the ways of working and the integrating, I think it starts with being really clear on who the brand is, which starts with, with the promise, the values and ensuring that when we're operating together we are as a leadership team in sync and that we're, you know, moving across the same strategy and making sure that we're showing up in ways that are consistent. Whether that's in a digital environment, a physical environment with, through the humans that are interacting with, with customers. All of those things have to, to, to, to feel like they're, they're part of the brand expression. That's, that's, you know, consistent.
- [20:20]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
You know, you talk about being in sync across the organization. Can you, can you share a story of, of it keeping, keeping it anonymous of a time marketing and X were not in sync and it really was kind of punching growth or the potential for growth in the face and how you overcame it, really?
- [20:45]
William White
Yeah. Trying to think of a good example here that can be, that can be anonymous. But I would maybe say broadly that in a big organization there are a lot of priorities and you know, everyone, everyone has their thing that they're trying to drive. And I think the times when we are most out of sync is when what we're stating is our overarching get really ruthlessly prioritized down, down a path. And the secondary or third priorities are showing up in bigger ways and doing, working a little bit more in isolation in a silo. And that can lead to something for the customer to see where maybe the marketing material, the marketing expression is showing up focused in a certain area and another part of the business has something else on a much higher volume.
- [22:01]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Right, right.
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William White
And, and those, those are the types of things, I mean, this kind of broad and generic way of describing it. But when, you know, the priorities become a little bit out of whack or when multiple priorities start to show up and, and they fragment the message, they fragment the experience for the customer in ways that, you know, one plus one is certainly not equaling two and certainly not equaling three, which you're, you know, you're always going to get. And so that, you know that that's where things go awry. And so I guess, I guess the way of resolving that is just having more clear, robust, senior level moments of clarity and alignment. And you know, at Walmart we have a lot of really great routines. And we start Monday mornings. Senior leaders, you know, very focused on the operations of last week and the week ahead. And throughout the week we are driving the priorities. At the end of the week, we have meetings with operators to understand where and how things are maybe falling down, where things aren't showing up across the system in the right ways. And we, and we triage.
- [23:19]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
That is that. I'm sorry to interrupt, but is that notion of triage, which is to say looking at what is and isn't working and being agile enough to adapt and optimize in real time. Right. If we retail lives and sometimes dies by that or the inability to do it.
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William White
Yep.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
For, for enterprises, for organizations that aren't retail. Right. That same need to continue in an uncertain world, to continue to tweak, modify, learn from what didn't work, to optimize for what does is is essential for business success. Right. It's essential for driving positive outcomes. But I don't think it's understood by a lot of the C suite that marketing is an imperfect. Like every other investment they make in their lives. There's no such thing as a sure thing. What advice would you have for our C suite listeners on how to kind of, maybe it's about the adoption of a retail mindset for non retail businesses in terms of how you continue to source improvements from today's data, tomorrow's improvements from today's data.
- [24:37]
William White
Yeah.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Does that make sense?
- [24:41]
William White
I mean, maybe it does and it does and I think that it is. It's always the balance of how are you building for the future, how are you keeping everyone strategically focused on the long term while, you know, dabbling in dealing with and being agile in the short term? And you can't. Yeah, you know, it's always a balance. You can't be focused on one more so than the other. I think specifically within marketing, and I think this is kind of important framing is we have dials that are short term and long term and there are certain activities that we can be far more nimble on and certain ones that have longer lead times. And I think for us, what I work on with our team is that we are appropriately sweating both. And so in A performance environments, marketing environment where you know, we are really driving the day, the week, you know, the hour sales. Like there's a, there's a real nimbleness to that.
- [25:44]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Yeah, yeah.
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William White
But when we think about our budgets and the capabilities that we're building for the longer term, there are certain things that we know we need to invest in for the future. There are capabilities we need to invest in for the future. There are certain activities we know like might not have the immediate short term impact but are helping us to understand how the market in the marketing world is changing. And so we're not blowing the bank on those, but we are investing in those constantly and learning from that and adapting along the way.
- [26:24]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
I want to ask you a question about kind of, you know, whether there was a formative moment early in your career that kind of led you to be the marketer you are today.
- [26:36]
William White
But.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Well, that was going to be my next question. You bring up something that I'm going to get in front of it with which is, you know, as you're thinking about the future, as you're thinking about the long term, you know, one of the things that I know that you've done in your time with the company is what's the Data points like 80, 85% of your media is shoppable media. Right?
- [26:58]
William White
Yeah.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
And, and you and I would say, you know, Walmart creator and Forbes, we've partnered on the creator upfronts and, and you've really invested in the how marketing will evolve and who, where the marketing will come from. I'm wondering what you think about kind of the rise of you know, agentic, agentic marketing and bots marketing to bots that may influence the way you look at strat planning for brand and business both through a marketing lens. Does that I'm asking now for the second time if the question makes sense. By the way, you know I was out of the country last week for our listeners. I'm like still off my game so apologies but, but can I, can I.
- [27:49]
William White
Let me, let me. I want to talk to a couple things you mentioned in there. One, I do we, you talked about making the funnel more shoppable and I want to, I want to talk about that a little bit first. And so you know I mentioned at the top the importance of how the marketing funnel from awareness down to conversion works together and one and they support each other. Another big component of what we have been pushing towards and the capabilities we've been building on are how do we collapse the fundamentals and making the upper Funnel more shoppable and the lower funnel more brand driving.
- [28:29]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
It's really interesting. I'm sorry to interrupt again, but it's. You know what I love about the way you framed it was how do we collapse the funnel? Which is really a proactive and ownership perspective. Because what I would have said is the funnel has collapsed and you're taking that reality and turning it in that constraint, that challenge, and turning it into an advantage which shouldn't be lost on our audience.
- [28:56]
William White
I want to toot the horn of the Walmart marketing team because I think that we've been driving a lot of that happening. I mean, we have been focused on the collapsing of the funnel, making the funnel more shoppable for five years now. And I think in many ways have been at the forefront of social commerce.
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Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Yeah. Certainly in the United States, for sure.
- [29:21]
William White
Yeah. And of course, we've taken learnings from what we're seeing in China and across Asia, but that's having a great team of people who are super curious and want to do great things and want to innovate and enabling them to do that. And so I'm excited about how we've. We've moved that needle. We do not look at it as it's happening to us.
- [29:48]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Why do you think Asia and China are so far ahead of the US and in, in driving behaviors like that?
- [29:55]
William White
There's a whole host of things, but I think that the one, the mobile adoption, I mean, we went, we went from computers to mobile. They went straight to mobile.
- [30:04]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Right. Leapfrog. Yeah.
- [30:06]
William White
And then the digital wallet is so pervasive there. And the digital wallet enables social commerce to happen. Right. And so, you know, being mob mobile and having that, I think function drives form. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [30:23]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
And what, what about bots? Marketing to bots.
- [30:26]
William White
Yeah.
- [30:27]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Planning for that. Thinking about it.
- [30:28]
William White
Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. She would, you would ask about the AI piece of it.
- [30:33]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Yeah. It'd be great if you remembered what I asked you the questions would be.
- [30:38]
William White
Oh, I remembered I was gonna move on. Okay.
- [30:42]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
All right, I'm sorry.
- [30:44]
William White
The. I, I guess what I would say again, kind of stepping back broadly first on AI, like, obviously it's changing how we, we live and operate. It's changing across our entire business. And, you know, there are. Whether it's in, you know, our supply chain or in other parts of our business, gen AI is, is really helping us, I think, to evolve in ways that make us more effective and more efficient. And I would say that within the world of marketing, what we're. Where we're leaning in first and foremost is on how are we reaching customers. So building audiences, looking at propensity models, things like that, how we're optimizing our bidding tools in kind of the performance marketing space. And then creatively I think it's helping us shorten the distance on concepting, execution. Yeah, yeah. But the execution certainly in the upper funnel space and mid funnel space are still human driven today. A lot of the DCO and things like that in the lower funnel, in the dynamic creative optimization.
- [32:01]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
I see. Okay.
- [32:02]
William White
And the dynamic creative optimization spaces, there's a lot that Genai is helping us power, you know, as we're, you know, testing multiple kind of variants of creatives, creative executions and things like that. But as far as how, you know, bots are showing up, marketing to bots, you know, that's happening. We've got to be aware of that. I don't have a, you know, silver bullet answer on how to think about that. It's too new. But what I would say is we as a business feel really strongly that we're people led and tech powered. And so, you know, we want to leverage technology for, for us, how we're operating. We want to leverage the technology to be a great tool to help us get more effective and efficient. But the human element and the humanity of our brand are so important and critical and have been for decades and will be for decades to come, that we want to ensure that we're marketing to humans with great human insight. And we'll continue to do that.
- [33:15]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Yeah. Which again kind of speaks to kind of a macro theme for this show or at least it's my own bias, which is not everything that is measured matters and not everything that you can't measure doesn't matter. To the contrary. So let me get back to that question is, is there a moment or two in your career that you can point to where you're like, okay, my opinions today about the role of marketing are really based on, you know, something Sally said to me when I was four years into my career.
- [33:48]
William White
Yeah, I have a whole host of stories. I don't know how long you want me to go on this.
- [33:52]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
You, you cherry pick.
- [33:54]
William White
But, but maybe, maybe, maybe the first thing that story that I would love to share is more so when I knew that marketing was going to be the field that I would spend my career.
- [34:05]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Okay, let's have it.
- [34:06]
William White
And so my first job out of college, I was working for what today is part of the publicis world, but I was working for a 20th century media company that's been morphed a few times. And I was media planner, media buyer. And I think the second client that I was working on was KitchenAid. And, you know, I'm in my early 20s, living in a very small Manhattan apartment with multiple roommates. And, you know, our kitchen was the size of a card table. Yeah, one of my roommates kept his jeans in the oven because the closet was too small. Like, the KitchenAid was the farthest thing from who I was, but that was my client, and I became really excited and enamored with getting to understand the KitchenAid target and, you know, their core audience. Again, I couldn't have been further from, but understanding the needs, the wants, the motivations was really interesting to me. And, you know, and I geeked out on that. And that was kind of an aha moment to know after, you know, many internships along the way and other kind of fields. Like, to be working in this and to have this moment was like, wow, this is. This is, you know, a field marketing that I'm drawn to and I want to be great at.
- [35:39]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Yeah. You know, you bring up such an important point. And I think at least in my career, I've seen it be a massive tension between CMOs and CEOs in particular. And I can think of one moment specifically from 2002, which I'll tell quickly in a minute, but it's understanding that you're not the target and going to understand the target. And this runs the risk of being cliche, but, you know, there are moments when our C suite colleagues, the cmos C Suites C suite colleagues, see a person, a piece of marketing work, let's just call it an ad or an ad like object, and they do not like it for whatever personal reason they have, without considering that they are not the target.
- [36:37]
William White
Happens all the time.
- [36:39]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
And I may have told this story on the show before, but it's 2002. I feel like the, you know, term has expired. So, you know, I was actually, I'll keep the company anonymous. I was with the CMO of a. One of the world's top 10 brands, global CMO. He gets a call in the middle of a leadership meeting. He steps out to take it. He walks back in. And I could tell the call did not go well, though I didn't know who it was with. And so I said, what just happened? And he said, you know, the chairman of our board, who is an octogenarian at the time, just killed our celebrity ad because he didn't like it. With no concern for the fact that he's an octogenarian and the ad was targeting 16 year olds. Millions of dollars wasted. Why? Why? How do we overcome like the most basic rule of comedy and marketing, which is knowing your audience and reminding our colleagues that if they're not the audience, absent the data that informs them about the audience, their opinion may be a little bit less important than someone else's.
- [37:50]
William White
Happens all the time. It's happened at every company that I've worked in. Inevitably. I don't know if I have a, a great answer of how to avoid that, but I think that the more the CMO can do to help the C Suite really understand the brand and really understand the customer, that's kind of the starting point. And that honestly is the role of the cmo. I mean they need to be the, they need to be the voice of the customer. They need to bring and really paint the picture for the C Suite. I can tell you at a different, you know, in a different company I was in. This is a good, good story. The C Suite spent a lot of time going out and spending time with customers in their homes, in stores. And I think like those moments of humanity and connection with the actual customer is very enlightening.
- [38:56]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
It's everything.
- [38:57]
William White
And that is, that is a great practice for any, you know, any, any sweet C suite to take part in, to really know, you know, to your point, know, know the audience. And you're, you're going to know that by spending time with them, spending time with them in their homes, anytime with them, like out when they're shopping, not just your store, but other stores, that gives perspective. And I think, I think that ultimately is the starting point.
- [39:23]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Point. I couldn't agree more. And you know, great advice for really everyone in, in our audience, regardless of role, which is just get out there. I'll tell you when, you know, early in my career, it's probably second year of my career. Seven up. Our seven the seven up butler in LA was Avions. I was at Avion Distributor and riding a delivery truck for an afternoon was like one of the most enlightening things. And even two years into my career reframed both I approach things and how I thought we might approach things because I was audacious enough to suggest that two years into my career. All right, we are getting to time so I want to ask you kind of, you know, our, some of our quick questions and quick answers though. I'm gonna, I'm not gonna ask you. You know, the first tour of marketing is fill in the blank and a brand is fill in the blank. I think you've answered both of those kind of in the course of our conversation. So let me start with what's traditionally our third, which is what, from your perspective and experience, not just speaking about your job, but the job of the CMO is the hardest part.
- [40:36]
William White
We can do anything, but we can't do everything. And you know, in a world where there are a lot of priorities, in a world where, you know, everyone's thing is the thing that we have to talk about and market it, it's like, yes, we, we, we can do those, but if we're going to break through, we need to, we need to prioritize.
- [40:58]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
I have actually, I'm going to pull it off right here. I've had this, I don't know if our people can see it. I've had this on my desk since probably two years into my career. And it's a pyramid that says prioritize, focus, execute with efficiency. And, and I do think, I do think we lose sight of the fact, many of us, that strategy is in fact, as Indra Nui said, the art of sacrifice. Great note. All right, so with that, a moment of empathy for our CEO friends. What's the hardest part from your perspective? Being the CEO today, not an easy job.
- [41:38]
William White
I think it's easily the fact that you have to triage today's problem while building tomorrow's future. And you know, we, we spent a lot of the first, we've spent a lot of the first half of this conversation talking about that of, you know, the balance between short term and long term. And I think, you know, the CEO absolutely should be building confidence in the future and leaning into, you know, where the company is going. But there's still, you know, there are problems all the time. And so where, you know, where and how you're helping to fix those while keeping focused on the long term. I think that's a really hard part of the job.
- [42:18]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Brutally hard. And by the way, it's the same, I would argue for really, for everyone's job, just at a scale that is, and with implications that are massive size of organization dependent. What do you think is at the root of tensions? Should they exist, and I'm sure they don't in your world, between a CMO and their C suite colleagues, what do you think maybe one or two of the biggest tensions are?
- [42:48]
William White
I mean, I think, I think doing more with less is a real challenge. And that goes into the prioritization conversation. In a world where we want to keep expenses down, keep budgets tight, you know, all of those things while as we're building growth and capabilities and new things within a company, you know, how do we make sure that we're telling that story to customers? And so, you know, that balance is challenging. I certainly think also that we've talked about today, not everything is measurable, is, is a hard one. And then related to that I think is balancing, you know, how marketing is driving short term sales with long term growth and you know, how we're, how we're building the brand for the future and you know where that tension is between. Okay, well we also have to move the needle right now.
- [43:44]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
I wonder if there's, you know, you use the word which was expense, keeping expenses down. And I wonder if the tension, tension, not the tension, is in that too many of our C suite colleagues see marketing as an expense rather than an investment.
- [44:03]
William White
Yeah, well, this, I mean, absolutely, I do think that's the case. I am happy to say I think we at Walmart right now are in the best place we've ever been. Certainly in a reframing of that where I think it is widely understood within the company that marketing is an investment for growth. And I have great partnership with the CFO on that. He has been a fantastic advocate and ally for investing more in marketing. And you know, we, we did invest more. I mean if you listen to our last earnings call that came up, we invested more and we see the results of that. And so we've actually created, we've moved from a marketing as a fixed expense, you set it in your annual planning cycle to more of a variable marketing model where as we're seeing growth, we're continuing to invest in. And that's been a huge unlock and a great, great game changer. And it's through, you know, fantastic partnership with the CFO and the finance team.
- [45:10]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Yeah, well, what, what's interesting about that is many things are many things. But you know, you talked about kind of being a reframing and a lesson for the CMOs in our audience, which is you have to earn the permission to have earned trust and that gets back to expectation management and the definition and narrative you build around value. Which actually leads me to this second to last question, which is if you had the proverbial magic wand and could wave it to address any one C suite misconception about marketing and or marketers, what would it be?
- [45:55]
William White
Marketing does not equal advertising. Yes, marketing. Marketing does not equal campaigns. I think the framing is think about marketing as customer strategy capabilities and campaigns too. But you know, the, the breadth of the discipline and how it comes together is not just the pretty pictures department.
- [46:21]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Yeah. It's amazing that in 10, 20, 25, we're, we have to have that conversation. But I'll share that. I think there are a lot of marketers out there who need to remember the same thing. You know, we're, we're well past the time. I'm where advertising as a proxy for marketing has expired. It's a lever. It's a tool. All right, last question for you, sir. Brands and businesses grow when they understand.
- [46:49]
William White
And serve the needs of their customers better than the competition.
- [46:56]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Yeah. Period. The end. William White, thank you, man. I appreciate it. Always so much fun to have you.
- [47:03]
William White
Yeah. I always enjoy our conversations and time together. And good to spend this virtual time with you today.
- [47:10]
Host (possibly a name like 'John Doe' or 'Michael')
Yes. By the way, a very nice, woodsy background. You look great against it. And again, thank you for real, for being here. To our listeners. Smash that subscribe button. As I said to William up front, hit those five stars and let us know if you have any thoughts, questions or queries of your own. We'd love to hear it. You can send Those to forbe cmoorbs.com thanks, everybody.