Stop Chasing Attention. Start Creating Desire // Lessons from Best Buy, AB InBev and Reckitt

Summary

The CMO Podcast — “Stop Chasing Attention. Start Creating Desire // Lessons from Best Buy, AB InBev and Reckitt”

Date: August 12, 2026
Host: Jim Stengel
Guests: Ryan Dulea (CMO, Reckitt), Jenny Weber (former CMO, Best Buy), Matthew Bull (Chief Creative Advisor, AB InBev)

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Episode Overview

This episode of The CMO Podcast brings together three marketing leaders to explore the nuanced difference between chasing attention and building genuine consumer desire. Hosted by Jim Stengel, the conversation (recorded at the 2026 Cannes Lions Festival) delves into how top organizations cultivate creativity, the cultural shifts necessary to foster risk-taking, how technology and AI are reshaping creative processes, and why unwavering human insight is crucial for building brands that people love.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Desire vs. Attention: The Heart of Great Brands

• Jim Stengel sets the frame, sharing that while his teams at P&G could capture attention, translating that into business results — the gap between engagement and action — proved elusive. He introduces the idea that the modern challenge for marketers is to “close the gap” and truly create desire, not just fleeting attention. (00:01)
• Matthew Bull defines desire:

  “Desire is something that you want but don’t have, right? … It’s usually scarcity, right?” (00:55)
  This theme becomes the thread for the entire conversation.

2. How World-Class Brands Create Desire

• Matthew Bull (AB InBev):
  • Describes a strategic shift for AB InBev in 2017:

    “Let’s give ourselves a big, audacious goal. … To be the most creative, effective marketer in the world.” (04:29)

  • Successes framed around changing internal culture — permission to create and fail, formal systems like ‘Creative X’, the ‘Creative Council’, and fostering internal competition.

    “You’ve kind of got to give permission to people to be creative … So the CEOs got to say, I believe in the power of creativity to transform fortunes in brands.” (06:05)

• Ryan Dulea (Reckitt):
  • Shares a personal story about experiencing his own product (Vanish stain remover) as a consumer, and how authentic “magic before your eyes” created real desire for him (08:01).
  • On external desire: Adidas shaped him as a player and consumer — “I honestly can’t put on a pair of football boots or a pair of running shoes that’s not Adidas.” (08:57)
• Jenny Weber (Best Buy):
  • Cites Core Power Yoga for their passionate instructors and localized, yet consistent, brand experience:

    “Their enthusiasm and love of the brand that they work for just comes into every single class … they treat every single class like a unique moment.” (09:59)

  • Admiration for Apple and Meta as retail partners, with Apple as the standard-setter and Meta as the brave early innovator (11:14).

3. The Culture That Creates Desire

• Creating Trust and Permission to Fail
  • Jenny Weber:

    “I think you need creativity from all the teams around that creative team. … Some psychological safety goes a long way.” (17:25)
    Calls out the importance of recognizing boldness and providing a safe space for failure.

  • Matthew Bull:

    “We’ve been very good at … the importance of positive conflict. … If you walk into something and you go, ‘Here’s my idea. My job here is to have a conflict with you. Positive to make the thing better…’” (18:43)

• Healthy Debate and Learning from Failure
  • Jenny Weber:

    “We have pretty healthy debates and you don’t have to be in that functional area to have an opinion … that’s really helpful too.” (19:24)

  • Ryan Dulea:
    Speaks to the necessity of operating with frameworks that allow for local experimentation and learning, particularly with the pace of AI and social commerce:

    “The pace of learning is just too fast now … to do this, you need to be able to give people frameworks that they can operate in, but let them test and learn.” (20:36)

4. Blending Human Creativity and AI

• Ryan Dulea:

  “If you leave everything to generative AI, you’re going to create a sea of sameness … you will always need humans to generate ideas.” (25:13)

• Matthew Bull:
  Describes the “human sandwich” — humanity on both sides of the technology layer, with agency partners deeply valued as people, not just vendors or tools:

  “We don’t choose agencies. We choose people. … What that does for us, Jim, is they will … run through brick walls for us.” (26:13)

5. Lessons from Internal Creative Teams

• Both Best Buy and AB InBev have built strong in-house creative cultures, with Best Buy’s “70,000 square foot studio” and AB InBev’s internal “newsrooms” (29:38, 22:21).
• Interplay with external partners is called “a really nice ecosystem” — internal teams bring brand love and depth, partners bring fresh challenge.
• Bull: Modern in-house agencies attract top talent and foster environments where creative failure is normalized and internal debate drives standards:

  “One of the problems with failure is everybody thinks failure is something when you put something out there. Failure happens inside here all the time. … If you can create an environment where failure in here is accepted … you minimize external failures.” (22:41)

6. What Drives Desire Internally?

• Jenny Weber:

  “I just believe deeply that desire is a heart-driven thing. … When people love the brand, you can help other people love it.” (30:35)

• Ryan Dulea:

  “It comes back to really knowing your consumer, especially if you have a broad portfolio.” (31:20)

• Matthew Bull:

  “If you want to be successful in anything … your team has to believe. … Every single part of it is just build the belief.” (32:37)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On creative ambition:

  “Creativity is all about creating desire. Desire for people to want things is to do work that people kind of loved and reacted to.”
  — Matthew Bull (05:24)

• On creative culture:

  “We have a thing called the Justice League, where all our top agency partners are part of it … we show them how much we value them as human beings.”
  — Matthew Bull (26:13)

• On brands that inspired desire as children:

  • Bull: “Manchester United, that’s where we were from. That was it for me. … To this day … if Man United came calling, boy, it would be difficult.” (33:28)
  • Weber: “Maybe Benetton … it was like a fashion brand that I wanted very badly and saved all of my money for.” (34:19)
  • Dulea: “The first pair of Copa Mundials I bought to play football … it was out of reach … when I put those on, it was like I was never going to wear another brand on my feet again.” (34:48)

• On the World Cup:

  “The world needs positivity. The world needs people coming together and enjoying themselves and loving something. And I think that’s what sport does.”
  — Matthew Bull (36:03)

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Notable Segments (Timestamps)

• 00:01-01:29: Jim Stengel on the attention/desire gap and brand accountability
• 04:11-07:30: AB InBev’s journey to “Most Creative Marketer” at Cannes — metrics, ambition, and culture
• 09:49-11:11: Panelists share external brands that spark desire for them
• 17:25-22:31: Building cultures of creativity — psychological safety, debate, and reframing failure
• 25:13-27:02: Integrating AI, human creativity, and agency partnerships
• 29:23-30:21: Best Buy’s in-house creative studio and the power of brand love
• 30:21-32:37: The core conditions for turning creativity into genuine desire
• 33:28-35:16: The first brands to inspire longing and aspiration

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Closing Takeaways

1. Great Creativity Creates Desire:

“Great creative work isn’t about winning awards…it’s about building brands that people genuinely want to be a part of.”

2. Culture of Trust:
Desire is born in an environment where people feel safe to leap, fail, and challenge each other positively.

3. Build Belief:
Ambitious goals, creative freedom, and human insight allow teams to do extraordinary things—technology accelerates, but people inspire.

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This episode is essential listening for anyone seeking to understand what separates “attention-getting” campaigns from the brands consumers love for life.

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Transcript

[Jim Stengel]

I spent years at Procter and Gamble trying to answer that question. We had the creative, we had the reach, we had campaigns that genuinely stop people. And then we watched that value quietly disappear somewhere between the moment of engagement and the proof of a business result. That gap between attention and action is where most media budgets go to die. And most digital media platforms have been content to live inside it, just a little upstream from accountability. Infilion is the company that decided to close it. They they started as the original attention company, built on the idea that a consumer choosing to engage with an ad is worth more than one who ignores it. But they did not stop there. They have built the infrastructure to connect the moment of attention to the proof of action across every screen, every format, every vertical. That is not a feature. That is a fundamentally different idea of what an ad platform should be. And it is the one brands have been waiting for. Learn more in the show Notes.

[Matthew Bull]

So desire is something that you want but don't have, right?

[Jim Stengel]

Well, yeah. Are you one? And finally get Are you one? It's usually scarcity, right?

[Matthew Bull]

Exactly.

[Jim Stengel]

So it's out of reach a bit.

[Matthew Bull]

So there are things I admire, like on running and stuff, but if you ask me for design and I love craftsmanship and I love people that take things personally. And that's why I loved Apple in the early days when Johnny I've was there and Doves was there and you can just see that they loved what they were making. And when you look at great work, you can always see when someone loves the product that they're advertising and marketing.

[Jim Stengel]

Hi, I'm Jim Stengel. I've helped hundreds of major brands discover and activate their purpose. Because when a brand's purpose is clear, compelling and authentic, profit naturally follows. Each week I welcome the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of your favorite brands, to speak to how their job is so much more than marketing. These leaders share their inspiration and challenges along with how they try to build a full, healthy and happy life in and out of the office. And it's that energy that reaches everyone they touch. And we're glad you're here to feel that energy and to learn from these remarkable leaders. So here we go. To kick off this episode, Matthew Bull of AB&BEV shared a simple but powerful thought. Creativity is all about creating desire. This week we're returning to our conversations captured at the Havas Cafe during the Cannes Lions Festival. This time exploring creativity and desire. That idea became the thread running through the entire conversation as we explored what it really takes to build brands that People genuinely love. I'm joined first by Ryan Dulea, Chief marketing Officer at reckitt, the global consumer health and hygiene company behind brands including Lysol, Durex Finish, and Airwig. Ryan has spent more than two decades building global brands, previously holding senior marketing leadership roles at Mars and PepsiCo before joining Reckitt. Next is Jenny Weber, former Chief marketing Officer of Best Buy. During her time with the company, Jenny led marketing for one of the world's most recognized consumer electronics retailers, serving millions of customers across North America. And before becoming cmo, she held leadership roles across marketing, customer experience, and retail strategy, helping transform Best Buy into a modern omnichannel brand. And finally, Matthew Bull, chief Creative Advisor at AB InBev, the world's largest brewer and home to brands including Budweiser, Michelob, Ultra Corona, and Stella Artois. Matthew has spent his career at the intersection of creativity and business, previously serving as global Chief Creative Officer at the Mullin Lowe Agency. Together, the four of us explore how leaders create cultures where creativity can thrive, why the best ideas often require permission to fail, how AI is changing the creative process, and why human insight remains the key to building brands people truly desire. Here's my conversation with Ryan, Jenny, and Matthew. All right, we're welcome to the CMO podcast. You're three amazing companies, three amazing leaders in my research, and I want to get you to start Matthew to talk about. We're talking about desire and brands today. You have won a desirable award in Cannes this year, creative market of the year. And it's the only company that has ever won it. Three times.

[Matthew Bull]

Three times.

[Jim Stengel]

So tell us a little bit about the journey to win this desirous award. I know we could spend the whole show on this, but talk a bit about what you think the two or three most important levers or choices or changes you made to earn that award.

[Matthew Bull]

I think the first thing on the subject of desire is you've got to want it, right? So it all started, I think, 2017. We had a big group marketing leadership meeting, and at the end of the meeting, Miguel Patrizio, the global cmo, and Marcel Marcondas, the US CEO who's now our global cmo, stood up and said, let's, let's give ourselves a big, audacious goal that we want to aim now. Remember, at the time, we'd grown enormously as a business through acquisition mainly, but we had all these precious, wonderful brands that consumers loved, and we probably were not doing work that they loved. They loved our brands and our products, but they weren't Doing the work we loved. So we set an audacious goal, a desirable goal for you, Jim, and that was to be the most creative, effective marketer in the world. And we wanted to brutally, you know, as a business, we're always a business that likes targets. Stretch targets.

[Jim Stengel]

I know you are.

[Matthew Bull]

You know, we love that sort of thing. So we said, we want to win. Can. We want to win, fes. We want to just win. And we knew the way to do that was to create compelling, wonderful, creative work. Because to me, creativity is all about creating desire. Desire for people to want things is to do work that people kind of loved and reacted to. And so far, so good. But we've only just started.

[Jim Stengel]

Well, you won it last year, you won it this year, and you won it a couple years ago.

[Matthew Bull]

So we won a 22, 23. We took last year off and then.

[Jim Stengel]

Oh, okay, you won. Okay, super. Okay, amazing. So before we leave that, to win it three times, what has been the red thread?

[Matthew Bull]

Right. So, you know, in order to get those things done, you have to obviously set the ambition up. Very important. Then you've got to change the behavior of the team and almost give them permission to. Interestingly enough, in businesses, you've kind of got to give permission to people to be creative and to take, because it means taking risks. So it was to create, I guess, a culture that allowed that. We obviously put lots of systems in places. We have very interesting systems. We have the Creative X system, which is teaching brains trust, internal, where we really interrogate the work. So before we put work out there in the world, it's gone through a lot of interrogation internally. We have Creative Council, we have outside people that are not associated with the company to look at the work that we put out there. And they go, and they're honest with us. This is where you are. This is where you aren't. And then we have an internal awards thing as well, which also, as an external jury, and they really look at how good it is. So all those parts, and then what that does is it drives healthy internal competition, regional competition. But the most important thing is to turn around and give permission to people. And so the CEOs got to say, I believe in the power of creativity to transform fortunes in brands. And we installed all those systems and. And then, really importantly, we picked great creative partners across the board. We are really, really lucky. And in. In fairness, they're also lucky.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm going to come back to the culture piece and hear from you two on that, but I want to Keep in the introduction phase here about desire. So I want each of you in this podcast panel to talk about one brand for you that compels you. It creates desire within you and not one of your own. So, Ryan, you're smiling.

[Ryan Dulea]

I had one of my own. As a leader of a house of brands, it's very hard not to pick one.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah.

[Ryan Dulea]

Okay. What would you.

[Jim Stengel]

What's the one in your portfolio?

[Ryan Dulea]

So the one I would pick in our portfolio, ironically enough, is brand called Vanish. Yeah. If you live in Europe or other parts of the world, you recognize it. If you're from the US you might not recognize the brand, but it's basically a stain fighter. When I joined Wreck It, I actually moved to the uk and as part of moving to the uk, my kids played cricket for the first time, which looks really nice when you get dressed in the all whites and you get ready to go out there on the field and play. When they come back after rolling around in the grass, it's three hours. It is serious amount of grass stains and mud laid in. I was still in the trial phase of some of our products because I was new at record. So I was like, oh, what the heck? I'll give this a try. There's no way this is going to work, but I'll put some Vanish in, we'll let it soak for a few hours and see what happens. Amazingly enough, it came totally clean. And while that's an incredibly functional experience, that magic before your eyes just completely shocked me and changed the way I actually thought about even taking care or doing laundry.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah.

[Ryan Dulea]

Simplified things for us dramatically. So that's one that stood out as me. As soon as you had said desire,

[Jim Stengel]

I'm glad I asked. Now an external brand.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yeah, external brand. For me, I've always been a passionate football slash soccer player. I can never just say one word or the other. Living in the UK now, because if I say soccer, I get corrected and told it's football. If I say football, the first thing people ask me is American football. So that's what I played my whole sport growing up. So Adidas has always kind of been near and dear to my heart and some of the early advertising components of that. I honestly can't put on a pair of football boots or a pair of running shoes. That's not Adidas. So it's just stayed close to me because of everything they've been through my life and wearing that brand, through playing as a child and up through adolescence and through some of my adult years.

[Matthew Bull]

Great new work. By the way. I mean, yeah, this one is just a brilliant World cup is brilliant.

[Ryan Dulea]

You still play occasionally with the kids. I've left most of the playing now to my children who are doing a better job of it being trained on the European side of the. Yeah, that's good.

[Jim Stengel]

Jenny, how about yourself?

[Jenny Weber]

I was thinking about this. I think I love Core Power and it's interesting, it's such an interesting brand. I love the experience.

[Jim Stengel]

I go what the brand is in

[Jenny Weber]

case some are power yoga, they do hot yoga sculpt classes. I think the reason I love it is because the instructors love it and so they create this incredibly welcoming experience. They are very passionate about it and the instructors, you know, it's not their full time gig for the most part. Most of them are doing this on top of something else. But they love yoga and they love the Core Power brand and I think their enthusiasm and love of the brand that they work for just comes into every single class. They treat every single class like a unique moment and then I love the other people that go. It is I think truly a very. Sounds like a cult open and. Well, it kind of is, it is kind of a cult. But they're like neighborhood spots. Like I go to a couple, there's a few in Minneapolis that I go to and so I think they probably have kind of neighborhood feels to them to some degree. But it's a fantastic experience. And you can go, I can go to a Core Power in Denver or in California or in Minnesota and they all feel very similar. Kind of have their own like nuance to them but you know what you're getting, you know what to expect. You know you're going to get an excellent class and you sweat like you're in the middle of France now.

[Jim Stengel]

You have a lot of brand partners in your stores.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yes.

[Jim Stengel]

And E commerce of those. Which one do you admire? Creating desire. I know you'd hate to single one out, but is there one in the

[Matthew Bull]

asking for a discount?

[Jenny Weber]

Yeah, they will for sure. I don't know, it'd be hard to single out one. I think Apple does an incredible job and not, I mean just they really understand consumers and they, they don't ever put anything out until it's 100% ready. And you, you see that in all the products they do. They're also, they always are raising the bar with us and require us to, to do our best. I think Meta is doing some really interesting things. We have an incredible partnership with them where they now have store within a store experience with us which is something we can uniquely do but they are also bar raising partner that is on the edge. I think they're a little different if you compared them to Apple. Like they're sort of anticipating I think where customers are going to go and are bringing product to market maybe before everyone is there and I think that's great. Like it's like an interesting, you know they're pushing innovation in our environment and getting customers there. So it's fun. I work with some, I mean I work with a lot of amazing brands all the time.

[Matthew Bull]

Sorry, I didn't mention.

[Jenny Weber]

No, I mean I could list all a lot of them but those two are really interesting brands to work with.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah.

[Matthew Bull]

Matthew, so desire is something that you want but don't have, right?

[Jim Stengel]

Well, yeah. Are you one and finally get or you want? So I would say it's usually scarcity, right?

[Matthew Bull]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jim Stengel]

So it's out of reach a bit.

[Matthew Bull]

So there are things I admire like you know, on running and stuff. But if you ask me for desire and I love craftsmanship and I love people that take things personally and that's why I loved Apple in the early days when Jony I've was there and Jobs was there and you can just see that they loved what they were making and you know when you look at great work you can always see when someone loves the product that they're advertising and marketing. So I love Patek Philippe because I think they have. You know we had Malcolm Gladwell with us yesterday and he has said an amazing thing. He said hold your principles tight, fit your ideas loosely. And I thought that's so great. And what they do is they hold their principles so tightly. They are such, they're so passionate about the craft and what they build and what they make and you see it in every watch. And of course to me one of the greatest advertising lines of all time, you never really own one, you merely keep it for the next generation.

[Ryan Dulea]

So that's my brain.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah, that's good.

[Matthew Bull]

Do you have one?

[Jim Stengel]

Oh, always does Jim, you know, here I'll keep it close to home. I find France desirable and I find Cannes desirable. I mean I, I love coming here.

[Matthew Bull]

Yeah. When did you first come here?

[Jim Stengel]

2003. I came to France before that of course, but. But France to me is always something. I don't fully understand it and I wander around thinking how right. And you know, it's just to me it's a beguiling country. When we lived in Europe the last three weeks we stayed here before we moved back to the States and we were here Five years. We, we took a station wagon and drove through France for three weeks and stopped in different places, met different people, went to small towns. I mean, it was magical.

[Matthew Bull]

They're living. I have a house near Bordeaux.

[Andrea Sullivan]

Yeah.

[Matthew Bull]

And what you find about people in France, not everywhere.

[Ryan Dulea]

Right.

[Matthew Bull]

So the south France is a little different. They, they know how to live. That's what you feel.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah, that's right.

[Ryan Dulea]

For sure.

[Jim Stengel]

I also, I'll keep it more. I. Alfa Romeo to me is full of desire. The dad of one of my close friends in childhood had one around the time the graduate came out. And I have one now.

[Ryan Dulea]

Oh, wow.

[Jim Stengel]

I have a 19632600 and it is beautiful. And my wife's on my case to get rid of it because it sits in that garage. Doesn't get driven much. And when I do drive it, it breaks down silver.

[Matthew Bull]

Oh, six seats.

[Jim Stengel]

You can see the, the, the tie to the Ferrari in the look of it. There weren't many made, so it's, it's rare.

[Matthew Bull]

Yeah.

[Jim Stengel]

So, but that to me is.

[Matthew Bull]

Oh, that's lovely. That's a lovely, passionate brand.

[Jim Stengel]

Yes, it is.

[Matthew Bull]

That's great.

[Jim Stengel]

Okay, let's go back to your own question.

[Matthew Bull]

You answered very well, Jim. Well done.

[Jenny Weber]

Nicely done. Put them on.

[Ryan Dulea]

Keep it coming, keep it coming.

[Matthew Bull]

You got it, you got it.

[Jim Stengel]

One of the things I have learned from years of talking to the best CMOs in the world is this. The question is never just whether your creative is working. The question is whether your infrastructure can keep up with it. Because a brilliant campaign still has to travel through an ad stack, through data, through decisioning, through supply, through measurement. And every hop in that journey is a place where value leaks out. Most platforms solve one piece of that. A data company, a dsp, a measurement vendor, you stitch them together and pay a fragmentation tax in performance, in speed and in accountability. Infilion built something very different. Demand supply, data measurement and creative connected in a single composable platform. The highest performing opt in attention formats via Infilion's proprietary tech in the industry, Agnostic identity resolution solutions and now Catalina. 130 million US households of verified purchase truth running as live signal through every campaign they execute. No black boxes, no hops, no fragmented vendor relationships to manage. The only company I know of that can take you from the first moment of attention to the final proof of action for any vertical on any screen without leaving the platform open. Composable agentic that is Infilian. Now you talked about the culture and you talk about all the things that you've Done in this journey to be market of the year for the third time at Cannes. I'm going to flip it to you two and talk about what do you do as leaders in your culture to create a culture of creativity that results in creating work and brands that are desirable. So talk about your learning, talk about your journey on that. Jenny, why don't you start?

[Jenny Weber]

Okay, well, first of all, I wish I could have been taking notes while you were talking. Matthew, I think you're creating something special which is fantastic. And congratulations.

[Jim Stengel]

We won't edit it all out.

[Jenny Weber]

Yeah. So that I can go back and listen. Okay. Right.

[Matthew Bull]

This part of one big great team. Part of one big great team.

[Ryan Dulea]

Right?

[Jenny Weber]

Yeah. Okay. Well, I think that's. That's one thing.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah.

[Jenny Weber]

Giving. Lifting the team up and giving them credit, I think, and calling out when you see something that is creative and bold and when you see them pushing the envelope, I think that's one thing that I really try to do. I would say the second thing is really being comfortable with failure. You have to create an environment where it is okay to fail and where ideas can come to the table and maybe not see the light of day for whatever reason. And I think when you do that, people are feel safe and willing to bring their ideas to the table. And that's across the board. We have an internal creative team. But I think you need creativity from all the teams around that creative team. And I think, you know, some psychological safety goes a long way. And making people feel like they're heard and trusted and safe to bring any and all ideas to the table I think is very impactful. So, yeah, I think those are some of the things I do.

[Matthew Bull]

Sorry, go ahead. No, you're. The interview.

[Jim Stengel]

No, no, you got it. You're taking it over. I'm okay with that. I can take a break.

[Matthew Bull]

No, just one of the things which is, you know, the, you know, giving people permission and part of that is obviously allowing them to feel relatively safe about it. It's one of the things that we really been very good at as a business is telling people the importance of positive conflict. So, for example, it's really no fun when everyone's just sitting and agreeing, but it's also no fun when everyone's shouting at each other. So if you walk into something and you go, okay, here's my idea. My job here is to have a conflict with you. Positive to make the thing better as opposed to tell you how bad you are or how bad the idea is. So that's great that you and. But you Need a leader that's giving people permission to do that, to be wrong.

[Jenny Weber]

Yeah. I agree with you that you don't always have to agree in a conversation and that we can really respectfully push each other to get to better outcomes. And I think I have tried to create this. We talk a lot about it's okay to debate. I've created, I think, an environment where we do have pretty healthy debates and you don't have to be in that functional area to have an opinion on something that you see. And I think that's really helpful too.

[Jim Stengel]

A question for all of you based on what you just said, Jenny, you had some P and G experience. I do as well. We, we said at P and G we want to accept failure as a learning experience. I'm not sure we ever activated it because it was a competitive place. You know, if you didn't get the next role, you might be out. So it, I think it. The culture had strong, strong pressure to, to not make a mistake.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yeah.

[Jim Stengel]

And that's a tough one. And I think, you know, they, they've dealt with that, I think, pretty well, but it was really, it was a big hurdle.

[Jenny Weber]

Yeah.

[Jim Stengel]

So what have you all done to really walk the talk of failure's okay. Stretching is okay. It's all good. It's all part of who we are.

[Matthew Bull]

Oh, I've never failed, so I don't know what you're talking about. Okay.

[Ryan Dulea]

No, look, I, I think for us, and I think about. When you reflect on today's landscape in the marketing world, between AI and social commerce, the pace of change is incredible. And I think the learning model for us actually changes. You know, back in traditional marketing, you had time to step back, reflect, think about it, create these nice central modules that you could deploy out to teams for them to activate. The pace of learning is just too fast now to do this, you need to be able to give people frameworks that they can operate in, but let them test and learn. Some of the progress we've made probably in our understanding of how to reach consumers in the next generation has come because our markets have had the freedom to operate in that area, been able to go out and do live streaming that we would have never thought of centrally be on air, you know, 12, 24 hours a day, talking about Dettol to people in China and people buying off of that really disruptive changes that we would not have ever deployed from the center. So I think it's required for today's world and everything you do, because the pace of change and the pace of learning has gotten so much faster.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah, it's good. Jenny, anything on that?

[Jenny Weber]

I think the only other thing I would add, I do feel like in retail everything changes so quickly. We have maybe more space to make some mistakes or put something out there that doesn't quite work and be like, okay, that didn't work. What did we learn? Do it differently next time. I can see in packaged goods where it's a little more rigorous, you're manufacturing something like, you can't have a mistake on a package. Like, that's not going to work. So I think there's something to the retail environment that is also conducive to that kind of attitude. Learn and fail and learn.

[Jim Stengel]

We're going to move to you in a minute, Ryan. But you two both have creative teams internally.

[Ryan Dulea]

Who.

[Jim Stengel]

And I've seen both of them and we were. We visited the last year and you can tell when you walk into the room, they're loving what they're doing, they're feeling free. You know, they're. They're communicating well. They're holding each other accountable for great work. I mean, you can feel it.

[Jenny Weber]

Yeah.

[Jim Stengel]

You know, and yours too.

[Jenny Weber]

It's great.

[Jim Stengel]

Your creative team.

[Matthew Bull]

Yeah, it's a. It's. If you think back to perhaps when I owned my agency, I would say that if you were failed in advertising, you'd go in house.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah.

[Matthew Bull]

And. And nowadays it's an aspiration.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yeah. I always thought that was the starting place of a great career. Instead,

[Matthew Bull]

we do a lot of lang. So now it's just so transformed. I mean, we've hired a guy a couple of years ago as our CCO in the European thing. Top dude, Matt, who. He would be going to top agencies in the past. So now, once again, you have to create an environment where those people feel welcome. They're not the same voice as the finance or the ops department, but they still feel welcome. So we've got a thousand people now in house agency and we've got newsrooms. And every single day they walk inside, they look at what's going on in the world and they have ideas of it if they think it's appropriate for our brand or so there's a huge amount of credible young talent inside there, which we need. That's what we need. And just a thing to reverse a little bit on. One of the reasons we do things like brain trust, et cetera, is failure. One of the problems with failure is everybody thinks failure is something when you put something out there. Failure happens inside here all the time. And that often cripples people in a culture. So if you can create an environment where failure in here is completely and utterly acceptable, and we as a leadership team put things in place to ensure that the chances of it failing ultimately are just minimized significantly. That, I think, is a big part of your point.

[Jim Stengel]

So, Ryan.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yes.

[Jim Stengel]

Put your spin on what you just heard about what the culture you're creating at rektt.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yeah. Look for us on the creative side, we actually do something similar, but in a slightly different model. So we partner with a couple of our agency partners, McCann, BrandTech Group, and we have hybrid studios where we're actually doing a lot of the downstream creative for us. So we still partner, think about the big ideas centrally, but then we're activating that locally through these content hubs that we've developed in partnership with them across different areas of the world, it's a nice way for us to maintain some of that level of continuity with the ideas we're creating centrally, but still being able to activate it in a way that's locally relevant.

[Jim Stengel]

Are they co located? They work together?

[Ryan Dulea]

They are co located and the model varies a little bit depending on the region for us, because we operate slightly differently in the US than we will in Europe, than we will in Greater Asia. So we kind of have different hybrid models across those environments that are best suited to deliver in the local market.

[Jim Stengel]

The world of working with agencies is obviously dynamic.

[Ryan Dulea]

Right.

[Jim Stengel]

You talk about your partners, so could we spend. You're already going there. Can we spend a little more time on that? You know, how has that evolved to help you do better work, to have a more creative culture internally? Are you working with them in a different way? Are you making different choices? So speak a bit about your strategy there.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yeah, I can start and hop in. I think for us, as we look at the changing world, we think about generative AI and agentic AI. We always believe it's going to require kind of a human in the lead and you're just accelerated or empowered to a greater level by the AI that's supporting you. So as I think about creative, I think it's very much the same thing. If you leave everything to generative AI, you're going to create a sea of sameness. Everything's going to amalgamate to the same general endpoint because it's collecting data from the same places. So you will always need humans to generate ideas. I do think as you move further downstream, the ability to replicate and localize and adjust that idea to be as relevant as possible becomes incredibly powering. And for the first time, you can really do it in categories like ours, where we exist, where it wasn't really feasibly possible before to try to make those adjustments and changes on some of our brands and business.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matthew Bull]

You know, I would just say from us, Marcel did the opening speech. And one of the things he said is, we look at Marcel.

[Jim Stengel]

Your global CMO made the opening speech in Cannes this year. Very popular, by the way. I didn't see it, but I'm hearing a lot.

[Matthew Bull]

He was great. He was great because he's got. He's a human, and he calls it the sandwich. The human sandwich. So there's humanity, which is us, and then there's tech, which we use all the time. That's filling, and then there's humanity on the other side, which are our agency partners. And we have. We don't choose agencies. We choose people. So we have a thing called the Justice League, where all our top agency friends, partners are part of it. And we meet with them regularly. We get them involved in things regularly. They're all, obviously, our lead agencies around the world. We, for example, have them for three days in New York in a couple of weeks, and then we'll take them to the World cup finals. So we try and show them how much we value them as human beings. And what that does for us, Jim, is they will, most of them, run through brick walls for us. Okay. Which I think is essential.

[Jenny Weber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. I love.

[Jim Stengel]

If you are a chief marketing officer in consumer products, I want you to think about something for a moment. You have creative that works. You have campaigns that capture attention. But somewhere between that moment and the register, the signal gets lost. You cannot see what actually drove the sale. You are making optimization decisions on inference, not truth. Well, that changed in February. Infilion acquired Catalina. Four decades of deterministic purchase intelligence. 130 million US households, 70 retail banners, $600 billion in verified annual consumer spending. And here is what really matters. Over 90% of consumable purchases still happen in store. Infilion and Catalina together can close the doop from digital advertising to inlane purchase and incentivize the next one. This is not a measurement tool you consult after the campaign. This is a live signal that runs through your media while the campaign is in flight. You can now optimize from attention to action in real time against people whose actual purchase behavior. You know, a consumer products brand needs return on ad spending. It needs foot traffic. Infilion now delivers all of it, not as separate vendors. You reconcile later, as one connected platform, that is what closing the gap looks like.

[Andrea Sullivan]

Hi everybody. I'm Andrea Sullivan, the CEO of Vive and we have produced the CMO podcast with Jim Stengel for many years. And I'm sitting in his seat.

[Ryan Dulea]

Right.

[Andrea Sullivan]

So exciting. I wanted to tell you a little bit about one of our programs. It's called Vive by Vayner. It's a 12 month program that's designed for C suiters and founders. And we want to help people to grow their businesses, but also to grow themselves. And so we bring in people from Shark Tank to talk to our founders, but we also focus on wellness. We want to make sure that people are leaning into becoming their best selves, their best and happiest selves. So if you are someone that wants to learn how to grow your business and grow yourself, check us out at Vive Co. That's V Y V E Co. We'd love to talk to you.

[Jenny Weber]

I think we have a really strong in house creative team. They're amazing. I mean they're second to none from my perspective. And they really embody and know the brand Best Buy and our partner brands better than anyone.

[Jim Stengel]

That's in a 70,000 square foot studio.

[Jenny Weber]

Yeah, in our amazing, I mean it is a pretty amazing studio. It's incredible. Yes. We have all kinds of TVs, we have all kinds of screens, we have all the equipment. It's pretty, it's pretty spectacular. So they have a playground to play in as well. I do think our partners bring an outside in perspective and they help shake up the thinking and that really is powerful for our inside team as well. And so I think there's like a really nice ecosystem between our partners and our internal team. The internal team, you know, they, they bleed blue and yellow like they love the brand, but then they get pushed and get new ideas from our partners. And I think that's really incredible. It makes the work better all around.

[Jim Stengel]

For the senior leaders listening to this, what's the most important thing you do to create the condition in your company for creativity to result in desire for your brands? What's the most important condition that you need to create?

[Jenny Weber]

I'll. I'll start. Okay. I think a lot of this has to do with the heart. I just believe deeply that like desire is a heart driven thing. And so I do think like creativity that is on point and brings the brand to life comes from loving the brand and knowing what is unique about it and creating it like, or thinking about it like a being. I mean we are here we're the advocates for our brands. Like, you know, like, we're taking care of them, we're raising them and really bringing them to life. And I think creativity about the brand comes to life when people love the brand. And, you know, and I think that's like a positivity thing too, like just having good, positive vibes around. I think that helps people be creative. And when you love the brand, you can help other people love it.

[Ryan Dulea]

I'll maybe build off of that from the heart. I think for me, it comes back to really knowing your consumer, especially if you have a broad portfolio of brands and how high up that benefit ladder you can go. I think a couple of our categories. You have a category like dishwashing. With our brand finish, there's only so high you can go on the emotional ladder with the dishwashing brand. Right at the end of the day, consumers want perfectly clean dishes so they can serve their family or serve their guests and feel really proud of what they put out there. But if you talk about that pride or that self confidence, they reject you a bit and say you're just a dishwashing detergent. But if you flip it on its side and say confidence, the dishes are done right, you have a nice place to play, and they can ladder to that benefit that they want higher on the emotional chain on their own. If you flip over to something like one of our pain brands, Neurofin, you're talking about monumental impact. When you have product failure on your life, you can't pick up your grandchild, you can't go to work that day. So the purpose and the role of that brand plays a very different role in that consumer's life. And actually foundationally ironic enough with pain medicine is if you believe it's going to work, it actually works better. So that sense to me of really understanding your consumer at the core and knowing where that value chain sits for them and how you can communicate them in a way that lets them tap into that part. Piece you're talking about, I think is a real challenge when you have a portfolio of brands and something you need to dig into.

[Jim Stengel]

So you have to create the conditions where people feel free to do that.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yes, for sure.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah.

[Matthew Bull]

So appropriately, I used to play lot of sport. I just think there's. If you want to be successful in anything, whether you're a sporting team or you're a business, your team has to believe. And if they believe in the vision that you've set them and in their ability to achieve that, that's what you've got to do. Which means every single part of it is just build the belief. Build the belief. Build the belief. That's, to me, the confidence.

[Jenny Weber]

Ted Lasso away.

[Matthew Bull]

Ted Lasso.

[Ryan Dulea]

We're getting back to football.

[Jim Stengel]

Before we get to the World cup to close this out, I want you, you know, on my show, I always ask people the first brand that made an impact on them as a child. And so I want to ask that with a different twist on it. What's the first brand you remember creating desire for you might be Adidas for you, but the first brand that you cognizant created some desire for you as a child?

[Matthew Bull]

I'm going to start so you can have some time to think because mine is so easy as a kid. Remember, I was born in England and unfortunately it has become a brand. But my design, Manchester United, that's where we were from. That was it for me. And to this day, if you anything in the world, if Manchester United came calling, I turn them down. But, boy, it would be difficult.

[Jim Stengel]

I love that. And your parents were big fans?

[Matthew Bull]

Strange enough? Not really. So it was just, you know, it was my dad less so, my mom, definitely not. But to some degree, when I moved to South Africa, my dad used to send me all these books all the time because he knew I loved football so much. And United was Martin. So that was madness. Madness. My wife, if she ever sees, she'll go, oh, what he's done to this family.

[Jenny Weber]

Jenny, maybe Benetton, I think we had. I mean, we're okay. I'm from Fargo, North Dakota. That is not a big place and I don't know why. We had a Benetton in our mall, which is pretty amazing. And I loved it and couldn't get enough of it and had a lot of desire around it. You know, it was like a fashion brand that I wanted very badly and saved all of my money for. So, yeah, that's probably. Probably there in Fargo.

[Matthew Bull]

Yeah.

[Ryan Dulea]

I actually loved your definition of your question on desire at the beginning of something that's just out of reach, that you really have to strive for it. Actually, when you said that drove clarity as to why I think the Adidas point stood so far out for me. I can still remember the first pale, a pair of Copa Munduals I bought to play football. And I had to save up, use my own allowance to do it. It was one of these things was out of reach. Parents weren't going to get it for me. And when I put those on, it was like I was never going to wear Another brand on my feet again. So as soon as you said that, it kind of came flooding back to me over time. So.

[Jenny Weber]

Love that. Such a great definition.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yeah. Of course, all black at the time. I tried white well before colored. Colored boots were in fad and it was maybe a fashion faux PA at the time. I like to think I was ahead of my time though.

[Matthew Bull]

He's an American.

[Ryan Dulea]

Hey now. Hey now.

[Jim Stengel]

What do you love about the World cup this year?

[Jenny Weber]

The community. Just everyone coming together is pretty spectacular. The Scots. Yes. Taking over Boston. Yeah. Just bringing the world.

[Jim Stengel]

Good for brand America.

[Jenny Weber]

You need that.

[Jim Stengel]

We needed it.

[Ryan Dulea]

It's been great.

[Jim Stengel]

We need it.

[Ryan Dulea]

I tell you what I mean, the way the US team is playing the first half, they played the opening match. I have never seen our team play that way before. So. Love what Pochettin is doing with the team. Love what the team is doing there. It's amazing. And you're my. You might need a mic.

[Jenny Weber]

I have beliefs.

[Ryan Dulea]

Belief they do. I believe. I believe. I believe, indeed. You're 100% right.

[Matthew Bull]

I love it. The world needs. In spite of the fact that, you know, the world needs positivity.

[Jenny Weber]

Absolutely.

[Matthew Bull]

The world needs people coming together and enjoying themselves and loving something. And I think that's what sport does.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yes. Yeah.

[Matthew Bull]

And you know, unfortunately, occasionally some people watch sports and behave inappropriately, but that to me is being drowned out by the love and enthusiasm everyone has. So it's just been.

[Andrea Sullivan]

Yeah.

[Matthew Bull]

A positive for.

[Jim Stengel]

Do you have any questions for each other before we wrap up?

[Ryan Dulea]

No. You have any extra tickets for the final? Kidding.

[Jenny Weber]

Just kidding. Take some friends.

[Ryan Dulea]

I'm like, I can join your. Just. I'm not sure what value I'll add to your Justic league, but I'll get a good deal on tickets. We.

[Matthew Bull]

No, no.

[Jim Stengel]

Well, yes, but you're sort of a major partner, right?

[Matthew Bull]

Yeah, we are.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah.

[Matthew Bull]

But yes, no, we, we, we. You know what? This will go through Gino and I'll get into trouble. So it's interesting. I worked as a young copywriter on record. Benfiza. Oh.

[Ryan Dulea]

Oh, really? All right.

[Matthew Bull]

Not domestic Junior lever Haze spray toilet. A whole lot of stuff. Which market in South Africa.

[Ryan Dulea]

In South Africa. All right.

[Matthew Bull]

Jake maybe no, could have been Jake something along those.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yeah.

[Matthew Bull]

The one I remember is Hayes. Hayes.

[Jim Stengel]

Must have been memorable work.

[Matthew Bull]

Now we did do a very good piece of work. It was cruel. I'm an avid bird watcher and we trained this. Oh, we trained this. This double collared sunbird to go up to the haze was natural. It was not Appropriate. But anyway, it was. I thought it was cool.

[Ryan Dulea]

Creators, it's impressive.

[Matthew Bull]

But it was so tough to work with records. They were so conservative in those days.

[Jim Stengel]

Yeah.

[Matthew Bull]

Yeah, they were so tr. So what you've done as well is because I don't know how embedded that was in the world, but much like with us, it feels like there's a transformation definitely inside the business.

[Ryan Dulea]

Yeah, Look, I think it starts with putting consumers first. And I think especially as we look out with our agencies, just seeing them more as partners than people who are necessarily business affiliates or things along those lines. So it's been a rather dramatic shift for us and said it's been a great journey.

[Matthew Bull]

Yeah. Our account guy, poor dude.

[Jim Stengel]

We're in overtime now. It's okay.

[Matthew Bull]

We're in overtime.

[Jim Stengel]

He used to come in, take another shot on golf.

[Matthew Bull]

Rene Behrens used to come in and my credit partner and I was a guy called Tony Granger. He became a. Yeah, whatever. Creative parties for many years. And he used to come in and we used to say, this is the work we want you to go and present to the client. And he'd go, and I don't want to present that work. And I said, you're going to go and present that work. Okay. And I was like 25. The poor dude started to hyperventilate and had to grab a brown paper bag and was. That's what creative people were.

[Ryan Dulea]

Great. Yeah, it's fantastic. You'll have to let me know if you remember any of the names from down there, if they're still around. Do I know that? No. People.

[Jim Stengel]

You know, Mad Men was a popular series. Right. And I have some friends who are rewatching it. I'm like, I didn't. I didn't. I watched a few episodes, but it wasn't as good as real life.

[Matthew Bull]

We are much naughtier.

[Jim Stengel]

Yes, I know. And much more fun and much more irreverent. So, anyway, we should end on that note. Anyway.

[Matthew Bull]

Jim, also, thank you. It's great to see you so involved still and nurturing and helping people going forward. I always tell people, I know there's some other people that take a lot of credit for, you know, PNG transforming, but you were the guy and it's great that you're still involved.

[Jenny Weber]

Yeah. Just having such an impact on people.

[Jim Stengel]

That's my purpose.

[Jenny Weber]

You're a gem.

[Jim Stengel]

Thank you.

[Ryan Dulea]

Thank you.

[Matthew Bull]

Okay.

[Ryan Dulea]

Thank you.

[Matthew Bull]

Thanks, Jim.

[Jim Stengel]

No, really. That was my conversation with Ryan, Jenny and Matthew. Three takeaways from this energetic conversation for your business brand and your life. The first one is great Creativity certainly creates desire. Matthew Bull opened our conversation with one simple idea that stayed with me. Creativity is all about creating desire. Great creative work isn't about winning awards or making people laugh. It's about building brands that people genuinely want to be a part of. The brands that stand the test of time are the ones that consistently create emotional connections with consumers. Second takeaway Creativity thrives in a culture of trust. Trust. Jenny Weber shared that one of the most important jobs of a leader is creating an environment where people feel safe to bring forward bold ideas. That means encouraging healthy debate, recognizing that failure is part of the process, and giving every member of the team permission to contribute. The strongest creative cultures aren't built on perfection. They're built on trust. And third takeaway Creative leaders build belief. Matthew said something that applies far beyond marketing. If you want to accomplish something extraordinary, your team has to believe. Leaders create that belief by setting ambitious goals, giving people permission to take risks, and helping them see what's possible. Ryan reinforced that idea by reminding us that while AI can make us faster, it will never replace the human insight, empathy, and conviction that inspire truly great ideas. That's it for this week's episode of the CMO Podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends. Along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. The CMO Podcast is a Vive original production.