← Uncensored CMO
Uncensored CMO
How Sephora built brands through creators, partnerships and loyalty - CMO Zena Arnold
00:43:09
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone. Just before we get into the show, I just wanted to give a really big shout out to my founding sponsor, System One. As many of you know, I worked at System One, and before that I was actually a client of theirs. Now, the thing I love about System One is when I need to make a big decision, they have been there to help me. Because what System One does is use the power of emotion to help predict the likely impact of my innovation or advertising. So when I've been stuck in the boardroom needing to justify why we're going to pick one creative route over another or, or launch this innovation over that one, it has been indispensable. It's also really simple to use. Very actionable and incredibly good value, too. So if you want to find out more about System One's Test yout Add or Test yout Innovation, simply go over to systemonegroup.com and find out more. Okay, without further ado, let's go on with the show. So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the uncensored cmo. Now we're going to be talking about beauty with someone that knows all about beauty who runs Zephora, the cmo. Zena, welcome to the show.
- [01:07]
B
Hi. Thanks for having me.
- [01:09]
A
Oh, it's a delight to have you. And thank you very much for spending the time with us. Now, dying to get into Zephyra, all about what you're doing and how you're doing it, but give us a quick overview of your career, how you got to this point.
- [01:21]
B
Yes, I've been fortunate. A lot of really great experiences. I grew up and started the formative years of my career in CPG and packaged goods, and it was a really great place to start my career. In cpg, you learn so much not just about marketing, but about business and that marketing is a growth driver for the business. And that's been formative information that's helped me in every role that I've had. So I spent 10 years or so in academy companies, CPG, Proctor and Gamble and Kellogg. And then I made the jump to Google, which was really fascinating. Not that I was there in the early years by any means, but still high growth time period. And they brought in someone like me with more of a classical CPG background because they had always been experts in digital marketing. They were really looking for people to help them grow and develop deeper brand connections. At that point, a lot of the products and that Google was competing in were becoming crowded. Lots of competitors coming in and product differentiation was there, but not the first and primary thing. So you really needed that kind of classical thinking of how do we position this brand, how do we talk about our product benefits in an impactful way for our users? And that's why they brought in someone with my background. So I was there for almost seven years, had a wonderful experience. I worked on a few interesting product areas. Google Play, which is the content store for Android, and then Chromebooks and Chrome os. And really fun time to be working on that and helping to accelerate that growth. Because I was not a typical marketer in tech. Most of the marketers are very focused on marketing, communications, advertising and product marketing positioning. But when I was working closely with my leader in Chrome os, Chromebooks, he said, zena, you're not a typical marketer. You're asking me about my portfolio strategy and how we were thinking about growth. I said, yeah, because I grew up in packaged goods and we really think about marketing as a growth lover and something that's beyond just the communications side. So I actually moved over to the product team in kind of a business operations role and was running our overall business for Chromebooks in the US and had a really great experience there, kind of heavy operational role. But I'll tell you, the thing I missed was marketing in that role. I wasn't so close to it anymore and ultimately realized that's what I love, is where I can do marketing, the consumer insight, the messaging, the communications, and have a strong kind of business foundation to it. So I left Google and went back to packaged goods, where we have both of those things. And it was at Kimberly Clark and then PepsiCo. And I really feel like it's all come to this wonderful amalgamation in this role I have now at Sephora. It's fascinating and people laugh, but I tell them Sephora is a lot more like Google than it is traditional packaged goods. And by that I mean just the pace of the work that we do, the quantity of things that we do. Retail is very much about how are you relevant right now for your shopper, for your customer, for your client, and the kind of way that you need to be agile and respond to market dynamics is really similar to tech. The thing that's slightly different, we don't have the endless budgets that tech does and the endless kind of scaling that you can do when you don't have physical products. But we really see everything we do as a fresh chance to engage with a customer, meet their need at the moment, and it's really fun.
- [05:49]
A
Yeah, I'm fascinated, actually, that you said it's more similar to tech than packaged goods because obviously you retail a lot of packaged goods, don't you? Effectively you have thousands of different products in your range. Just looking back over your career, what have been the two or three most significant lessons that you've learned along the way that have kind of made you the marketer you are today?
- [06:12]
B
As I was saying, I learned a lot about managing a business and not just marketing and packaged goods. That I think has been really critical to success everywhere that I've been. Because I think the best marketers are the ones who ultimately realize we're around to drive a business. And that's why we exist, why we get investment. And what I've seen, the best marketers are the ones that can show that investment has a strong return. And so getting that fundamental of business in addition to marketing has been key for me. I think the other thing I've really enjoyed and grew in both my packaged goods days and at Google and in tech is storytelling. How can you really find an impactful insight in your target customer or target consumer? How do you craft communications to change their behaviors and how do you get them to connect with you and how do you break through? So those kind of fundamentals too, I've picked up along the way and are really important today. Everything is extremely fragmented, hard to get people's attention, and really thinking through some of those basics of insight and behavior change are how you ultimately drive, drive successful marketing.
- [07:42]
A
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And moving on to Sephora, what is it about the business that makes it so successful?
- [07:49]
B
So many things I think. Firstly, beauty as a category is super dynamic. It's been really cool to see it evolve over time. When I was growing up, and I'll say I've been a beauty enthusiast my whole life, the definitions of beauty were really different. It was much more aspirational. There was a lot of you must meet this ideal in order to be beautiful. And what I really love that the whole industry has done, Sephora, a number of the brands that we carry, and most importantly, consumers have really redefined that in the past many years. It's now about self expression, it's about self care. People don't see it as an ideal or a goal to be reached. It's more of the process. It's the fun that you have, it's the community that you connect with. So industry is changing in lots of really great ways. We've also seen such an enormous level of engagement come our way through all the social media platforms. Once people have a voice to share their point of view, they do. And beauty is one of the most popular categories of content out there in social media, because everyone sees it a bit differently and that's what makes it really fun. So we've seen a lot of that growth as well. I think where Sephora has really won and is driving the forefront of growth in this industry is because we really take a lot of time to figure out what do our clients really want and need, and that's beyond just a product or set of products. What's the shopping experience? It's, you know, what's the marketing and communications. It's really a broad set of things that I think we've just been so focused on and driving in many different ways that's driven our success.
- [10:02]
A
One of the things I love about Sephora is the branding. It's so distinctive, isn't it? I mean, as marketers, we're always talking about distinctive assets, but your black and white stripes and the way you kind of present yourself is very, very distinctive and disruptive, isn't it?
- [10:20]
B
Yes, we do. We've got, luckily, a lot of really great distinctive brand assets and we all see ourselves as stewards of that brand every day. I talked about earlier the pace and quantity of the work that we put out there. We've got new products launching every single week. We've got thousands of campaigns that we run every year. And it's so, so important that we maintain these of cornerstone things of our brand so people know what to associate with us and that it's Sephora bringing them all of these wonderful things. So we look into it, we look at it every single day.
- [11:01]
A
Now, I'm not your typical customer, however, I do have two daughters and every time I come over to New York, they always say, daddy, you have to go to Sephora and bring us something back. And of course, I go in and I'm like, where do I start? You know what I mean? And so last time, I think I grabbed one of the assistants and said, right, right, you've got $200. I've got two daughters, they're 16 and 18. Literally, tell me what I should buy. So what's trending? What can I only get in this store that I can't get back home in the uk? And they were amazing. I mean, literally, I mean, how to spend money. I mean, honestly, it was like I could have just written an open check, I think, but it was great. But I just wondered, from your point of view, what are the things that are trending at the moment in the category, what are the things that people should be looking out for?
- [11:48]
B
Yeah. Oh, gosh. You know, there's a trend of the minute, I would say, in beauty especially, things come and go so quickly. Where I think we have had such success is really leaning into not just what happens to be trendy at the moment, but is this speaking to something broader and deeper that is a true need or concern of our client? Is it authentic to us as a brand? Can we actually say something meaningful here, either in a marketing capacity or from the product standpoint, do we have the products to meet that need? And you mentioned it. You had this great experience with a BA Beauty advisor in our stores. That's one of our critical points of difference. And they are seeing and hearing all of the trends all the time. This is where they shine in, both helping our clients navigate that world, but also as a marketer, they tell me all the time, this is what we're hearing. This is what's getting popular, this is what's not. And so it's a different channel and one of our most unique and differentiated ones to drive both the client kind of help and knowledge and our own.
- [13:12]
A
Well, I have to say, when I got home, I was very popular, so she did a great job. But you're right, actually. You know, the amount of expertise that exists in the people that work for you, that can represent the customer. And how do you, as a marketer, stay close to the customer? How do you get all that intel?
- [13:30]
B
Yeah, a lot of different ways. You know, I mentioned our frontline folks, our beauty advisors. You know, we stay very close to them to hear about what people are asking about or in some cases, what they're not asking about. Clearly, we see all the sales data of everything that we are selling and can look into what's working, what's not. We've also got a great social listening program where we lean into all the things that everyone is saying about beauty to try to get through all of it, to find the nuggets of this is what's coming next. I'll say too, we've got an amazing merchant team that they live and breathe this stuff. And I swear, they sometimes think trends into existence because they are thinking 18, 24, 36 months ahead of time. So we use a lot of different sources to find what's relevant, what's trending for people, and we also listen ultimately to what people want when they're voting with their wallet. So we see these are the types of things that are actually getting purchased and how do we lean into that for our assortment and our marketing.
- [14:46]
A
Now, one of the Biggest moments last year was when you launched Hailey Bieber's Rhodes Island. I mean, I was looking up the data. I couldn't believe this, actually. $15 million in one week. Is that the biggest, would that be the biggest ever product launch?
- [15:00]
B
That was the biggest brand launch we have ever had. Yes.
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A
That's amazing.
- [15:04]
B
She and her team have built such an incredible brand. Just really putting so much into the product again, meeting the needs, the marketing behind it. It' an outstanding presentation and group that comes through with all the multifacets of what it takes to be successful.
- [15:27]
A
So if someone's listening and they go, right, I've got this beauty idea, I want to go and pitch Sephora and I want to get a big partnership going, what would they have to convince you?
- [15:36]
B
Yeah, you know, beauty is such a crowded space these days. Many, many people have started brands. Cost of entry is not so, so high. I'd say there's a things that are needed. Like first you've got to have a differentiated product, like is it actually doing what you say it's going to do and is it a high quality product? Then you need to have a point of view. Why is it different? What's the consumer need you're addressing? How are you helping meet kind of cultural trends or broad macro trends and having a distinctive point of view, really, really important. And then the third one I'd say, which is maybe the behind the scenes is almost as important as the front of scenes. Product and positioning. It's do you have a great team? So we see a lot of amazing founders and you think about everything you have to do to be a founder. Belief in yourself, an artistic vision, a product vision, packaging vision, all of these things. And there's also people for a successful business that need run the legal and the finance and the operations. And having a really strong team behind you as a founder is absolutely critical. I've seen so many amazing visionary founders that don't have a great team around them and ultimately can't make the products or get them into the hands of the customers that really want them. So I'd say not just have a great product and positioning, but have a great team as well.
- [17:21]
A
I'm lucky because I get to meet loads of startup founders on this podcast. And you're so right because the amount of times they say the reality of being a startup founder is actually quite boring. You have to do the real basic things consistently and to a high standard. And of course the idea is easy, but the execution's hard. And you're absolutely right. And Also, when you're dealing with someone like you, you've got hundreds, thousands of stores, there's a lot of logistics to manage and a lot of pricing to get right. And there's a huge amount involved, isn't it? Beyond just having a good idea?
- [17:50]
B
Yes. And that's where having that team to support that vision is really key because the operational side of things can make or break a brand.
- [18:02]
A
How important is celebrity? Because obviously Rare Beauty would be another example of a brand that's launched in Sephora. So what difference does having a sort of celebrity partner make?
- [18:12]
B
I mean, I think it's a great way of getting some instant recognition and credibility. I wouldn't say it's by any means a definition or a necessary thing for success. I think Rhode has just done so amazingly well because Haley and her team have a really great vision of what they want to offer and they execute against it. So. So. Well, I don't know that it's only because she's a celebrity. I think that helps. But really it is having that singular vision of what products that you want to offer, very maniacally focused on making them excellent and then getting all the back end kind of operational stuff. Right. And really she and her team have done all of those things.
- [19:04]
A
And you were telling me earlier, weren't you, that you even have a department, brand marketing department, which most people think is you advertising yourself, but you have a brand marketing department for the brands that launch within Sephora, don't you? How does that work?
- [19:15]
B
Yeah, that's right. That's actually one of our key differentiators as a retailer. We have a function within my team that we call brand marketing. And as you said, most people, people think, oh, that's marketing the Sephora brand. Right. Because at most companies that's what brand marketing is. But here it's actually how do we market and help grow the brands that we carry? We have definitely taken a stake as a retailer in, we want to grow the next big hot brands in addition to having all of the big popular, beloved brands. And for us on both ends of that spectrum, we devote a lot of time and effort with, with these brands to help them with their positionings, to help them with their product roadmaps, to help them with marketing. And we do that in close conjunction with our merchant team. And it's truly a differentiator. We do annual planning in depth. We have these sessions called in the Kitchen where you think about coming with ingredients and we say, how do we make something great together? It's a very different relationship than I'd say most retail retailers have with the product companies that they carry. We invest a lot because we know our success as the Sephora brand is dependent on what brands that we are able to cultivate and grow.
- [20:41]
A
And you're very famous for that, of course, aren't you? And a lot of your range is brand exclusive, isn't it? That give people a reason to come to you rather than go somewhere else. One of the sort of dilemmas it must set up for you though is how do you manage the choice? Because like there's so much choice, isn't there? And I know in behavioral science people talk about choice paralysis, that when you've got too much choice, people don't know what to do. Now, talking about how close you are to your customers and how much you know them, your loyalty program is huge, isn't it? And a big, big part of your business. How many people have you got on your program?
- [21:11]
B
Yes, we are over 45 million in North America and we've been growing so much over time because we've really spent time to hone what is our value proposition. And you know, I'll say we've taken a bit of a differentiat one versus some others in the marketplace. We really think about when you become a beauty insider. What's the information we can share with you, what are the samples we can give you, what's the birthday gift that we can give to you? All of these kind of unique benefits, the points you earn, you can use them to get kind of cash off of your purchase. You can also use them in our rewards bazaar to get products, to get experiences. And what we hear from our clients is they really like the offerings that we have because it's not so transactional. There's actually unique and interesting things that they can get from us beyond just a simple discount. So we're thinking now about how do we continue to grow our loyalty program. What are the other benefits even beyond the Sephora ecosystem that we can offer to the people who are members of our program? So some exciting things we're working on that hopefully you'll have me back to talk about in the future.
- [22:32]
A
45 million in North America, that's actually quite a sizable percentage of the whole population, isn't it? It is not far off the population of the uk. That's a lot of people.
- [22:43]
B
It's a lot of people.
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A
That's a lot of data and insight you must have on kind of buying behavior and what people look for and that kind of thing. How do you use all that insight?
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B
Oh, in lots of ways. I mentioned earlier, we're always looking for what's the new emerging trends. We use a lot of the data that we get from our clients. What are they buying, what are repurchasing and what are they not repurchasing. We can see a lot of wonderful trend data coming from that. We also use a lot of the data that we get from our clients to make things more personalized and effective for them. We've got a great personalization program we've built over the years where we use a lot of different signals from how often someone comes to our store or to our site or app to what types of products are they buying, how can we show them things that are going to be really interesting to them based on their purchase history and all these other kind of insights that we have on their behavior? And it's been working. So, you know, we really aim to make that shopping experience as personalized and effective for them as possible. You know, you mentioned that kind of conundrum of choice. And we carry a lot of products, there's a lot of things coming out. But when we can actually use the context, contextual clues we have about our shoppers, what they want to serve them up, the types of things that they're going to be interested in, that's where the shopper has a great experience and we are actually able to meet their needs.
- [24:15]
A
I mean, presumably that's the dream of personalization, isn't it? Is that you can then target all 45 million of those people individually? Is that how you're using the data now is to make it very personal?
- [24:26]
B
Yes, we use it absolutely. And in various channels. Obviously most programs have been developed on email over the years, but what's been fast growing for us is our SMS program. So now that's how especially Gen Z prefers to communicate. So how can we send them texts that are relevant and compelling for them, Whether that's interesting, new launches, whether it's a reminder for repurchase, hey, it's been a two month stage since you've bought a shampoo. Maybe it's time to restock all of these various things that we do based on what we think that they will engage with and their actual shopping behavior. And that's how we drive the engagement up.
- [25:12]
A
Now loyalty obviously is so, so important, but obviously you need to also grow new, you know, new audiences for the brand as well. How do you attract new customers to Sephora?
- [25:22]
B
Yeah, in a few different ways. You know, I'll say we have, have an approach that we have in our marketing of. We need to be a part of cultural conversation to drive breakthrough and we need to drive the business. And so we really look at bringing in new clients. It can happen at all points in the funnel. It's someone's looking for a particular product, we want to be able to tell them that we have it. And when someone's not necessarily thinking about beauty, we want to be a part of their consideration set for how they think about great places to shop on the kind of more top of funnel side. One thing we have been doing quite well over the past year, year and a half or so, is developing deep partnerships. We've been doing them in a few different areas. We've been in sports, women's sports and men's. We've been doing it in music and we've been doing it in content. And it's been really great because we've actually been able to break through, getting a lot of conversation and engagement on these various things that we've been doing. You think about typical, this is an ad that I'm going to place and I buy an impression. That works, of course. And now it's getting harder and harder to break through. We've been doing such great work with partnerships in getting the earned media coverage, the social engagement that's really, really gotten people very excited about Sephora and how we're supporting the artists, the sports that we have.
- [27:05]
A
I saw some research last year actually, that was looking at different channels and creators almost operate like a TV channel in terms of brand building, because sometimes people think about creators as being kind of bottom of funnel, but actually they're much more important to kind of build the brand advocacy, create community, that kind of thing. And I know you've got a particular program, haven't you, for creators?
- [27:25]
B
Yes, yes. You know, I think as social media influence has grown, we actually look at it not just as one part of the funnel, but actually programs throughout. So we have a program called the Sephora Squad, which is about 250 or so creators that we work extremely closely with over the the course of each year. These folks we develop deeper relationships with. We engage with them on a deep basis to share with them, not just here's some product launches that are coming, but here's the things that are important to Sephora. One of the most fascinating things I found about the squad when I started here, the team has really developed a fascinating way of recruiting folks for the squad. Typically, most folks who have these kinds of programs will say, okay, give me a dossier. On each creator, how many followers do they have, et cetera? For us, we actually spend the time and part of the application process for the Squad is a creator has to have their followers come to us and tell us why they should be part of the Squad. And it's so great because I'll say this is where we've found the diamonds in the rock of creators that they might not have 50 million followers, but the 400,000 that they do are so rooting for them, are so behind them. Take everything that they say and do with a lot of importance. And I think that's the key to success in these types of programs, is with all the social media algorithms that are changing all the time. You really want to have people who are making content for you that are authentically excited about you and their followers are also authentically excited about them and about their partnership.
- [29:23]
A
That does make sense, actually. I've seen a lot of evidence suggests that having a large number of micro influencers who all got highly engaged audience is much better than one big influencer that's got like a less engaged audience, because everyone's following the person because they just want to hear the latest news. Whereas actually with micro influencers, you follow them because you really care about the topic they, you know, they talk about or them as a person. So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense that. How do you measure that? Because I think that's always the challenge people have, isn't it? Is. You know, particularly as creators and more brand builders than a sales channel. How do you sort of measure how those 250 are impacting on the brand?
- [29:58]
B
Yeah, we have a lot of pretty robust measurement programs. We take a look at the content that they're creating on our behalf and what reach that has, but we also look at. At what sentiment is there, not just from the creator, but from all the engagement that they get on it, you know. Now the new kind of power metric in Social is the engagements, the shares. And we take a look at all of those things to see, okay, they might be making content, but are people finding it interesting? Are they passing it on? Are they actually being influenced by it? I'll say we have this kind of full funnel approach when it comes to creators. We've got the squad who's making very specific content about Sephora and about the products that we carry. And we also have down through the funnel, affiliate marketing that reaches thousands and thousands of creators that are part of our program. So we kind of have different metrics and things that we look at for all of These, those. But the key being are we driving great conversation about Sephora and then at the bottom of the funnel being are we driving conversions and sales on Sephora.
- [31:14]
A
Now talking about top of funnel, actually I jumped into the System1 database just to see how you guys Compare now the 849 ads in the cosmetic category in the US and you've got the number one with a maximum score of 5.9. So congratulations Mariah Carey Christmas ad which is amazing. So well done.
- [31:34]
B
Thank you.
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A
Did that have a big impact?
- [31:37]
B
Yeah, we had a very strong holiday season and you know, I would love to say that it was one particular thing but we look at that whole time period of kind of Q4 as a full buffet of things that we need to, to do and that we have to push. So we've got some great top of funnel advertising partnerships like what we had with Mariah, we had another great one with the Rockettes in New York City. And then we have so much hardworking media that we put out there to really drive people to see us as a gifting destination and ultimately come to convert. So it's a full kind of mix of things. But I think that's what to have a really strong holiday you've got to have everything firing at 110.
- [32:32]
A
So competitive. I mean it, I mean super bowl obviously is the, you know, most competitive I suppose. But outside of that, Christmas holiday season is just wow. Particularly for retail as well because that's when you tend to buy gifts for other people. You're, you know, you're kind of most worried about making the right choice and all that kind of thing. So yeah, huge, huge ones to get right. Yeah, I'll be fascinated, particularly your Google background as well, how you're using tech to help deliver the brand experience. I know you've got AR for example is something that. How do you use tech?
- [33:05]
B
Yeah, we use it in many different places and spaces throughout the shopper journey. A few I would call out that have been particularly successful are where we start with where is a client need that we could better meet using technology, using AI? So one of the biggest barriers to people purchasing products is I'm not sure if it's the right shade for me or I'm not sure if it's the right product for my skin type. So we actually have an apparatus that we use in store, the beauty scan where we can come and place something right on your face and tell you, okay, here's kind of the top notch matches for you for your skin shade and here's Your skin type and the key types of products that would help address any of the needs that you want to do. So uses AI, uses a lot of data that we get from everyone who is using the apparatus and really helps the beauty advisor guide people to things that would work really well for them. So we've seen great grand engagement and pick up in that on our site we have AI Beauty chat. So this is another type of way for folks to engage. If you can't get to a store and talk to a real live beauty advisor in real life, you can go to our site and talk about these are the types of products I'm looking for or even start with, you know, hey, I don't know what I'm looking for but this is the situation that I need to some help with and we've seen some great, great engagement there as well. On the marketing side, you know, we, I'll say are early in our journey. We're testing, learning. I don't know that anyone's figured out how to use AI perfectly but I keep telling my team we really have to lean in and test and try things because things are changing so fast. We want to do it thoughtfully, but let's look, let's test, let's try. So we are deep in seeing how it can help our workflows, help us spend more time on the things that we want to do rather than kind of the mundane operational side of a lot of the campaigns and things that we put out into market.
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A
Well, I was taking some notes on your AI assistant because I think when I next have to buy for my daughters, I'll be going, what's trending for a 16 year old at the moment?
- [35:30]
B
AI beauty check.
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A
There we go. That's me sorted. Yes, it'll probably be one of those things where you'll be surprised to find out who's using it because it won't be the real experts, it'll be people like me that just don't know what they're doing.
- [35:42]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've actually found it's the full range of people. It might be someone who's an expert, a pro makeup artist, but wants to find out what's new. Or it might be someone that doesn't have any idea at all and needs kind of the basic fundamentals and it can provide all those things now maybe surround us out.
- [36:01]
A
We've talked a lot about all the changes that are going on. Obviously technology, the competitive market you operate in. As someone who leads at the very top of the business, what advice would you Give to someone leading through lots of change.
- [36:14]
B
Change is the only constant as they say right now. I think we are in unprecedented times of macro situational change of individuals, loneliness epidemic. There's just so much that everyone is bringing to their work and their lives all the time and it makes leading challenging. If I had the answer, I would be out there telling everyone in every organization what to do. So I don't. But I'll tell you a few of the things that I do and try to focus on on with my team. I heard this description and I really like it of wanting to build an antifragile team. And so this is getting teams to really embrace the change that is all around us. It's having people be resilient, having them be curious and want to try new things things. It's really leaning into having a growth mindset. You know, I don't know how to do something yet, but I will figure it out. And so as a leader I think it's really responsible to how do I take away a lot of the fears that they have? How do I take away some of the tendencies to be perfect? Because you know, everyone wants to do a great job job. It's just changing. The definition of a great job isn't always having the perfect answer the moment you're asked, but it's how do I learn how to improve what I'm doing every single day? So we try to focus on that as a retailer with the pace of change we have to and it's just been so great because we have such a strong culture here at Sephora that I've really, really enjoyed getting a chance to, to work in and with.
- [38:12]
A
I'm always amazed actually whenever I talk to anyone in retail like how fast everything is because in CPG you might plan a 12 or 18 month new product launch, right? You've got these long lead times. You go through all the different processes to get sign off and then I talk to retailers like things change every week, like what's this week's focus or even daily, right? What's going to be on the, you know, so, you know, coping with that speed and change is a big, big challenge, isn't it?
- [38:38]
B
It is, it is. And I think what we have realized is the pace of change has only accelerated with all of the new kind of retail options for people to explore out there. You know, we can't sit on our laurels. You know, we've been doing great and the world is changing fast. So to keep, keep doing well, we've got to be Changing what?
- [39:03]
A
You mentioned something really interesting there, which was about the culture and how you deal with fear. Because actually, I hear this a lot from marketers where there's so much worry about getting things wrong and we'd rather kind of play it safe and do okay rather than take a risk and do amazingly sort of thing. So I just wonder, from your point of view as a leader, how do you create the conditions where people can cope with failure?
- [39:29]
B
I firmly believe it's about practice. It's about getting comfortable with the uncomfortable feeling. So I try to encourage the team. Come to me with things that haven't worked. Come to each other with things that haven't worked. What did you learn and how can we improve it for next time? Don't be afraid to take a swing, to take a chance on something. And this is what I feel, feel is great about retail because we have so much all the time. It's easier to do than back in cpg, where you have one big product launch a year. We've got so much that we can lean into trying new things. And I say, well, let's not do everything new all at once, but let's pick a couple of things that we want to test and push on, and let's do it at the scale where it can have impact but not blow up the business. And then it's just about practice. You have to do it a lot so that you start to feel comfortable with it. And it's an ongoing struggle. I have it myself. I have perfectionist tendencies that I'm always trying to overcome. And just remembering that the more I do it, the more comfortable I'll be
- [40:48]
A
with it, it reminded me. I worked for a short period with a Japanese company, and when I went out to see how they did things and went around the stores, I was amazed because they. I think I'm right in saying they had a new product launch every single day. I mean, it was insane. And the window within which they judged whether it worked was one week, right? So again, coming from cpg, you would. I don't know, you'd like. You'd have two or three big launches a year, right? This quarter's launch is going to be this thing. They were doing it daily. And then it was really funny when they showed me the kind of the results over like, 50 years of the company's history. And they kept on saying, oh, yeah, we tried that, that failed. We tried that, that failed, we tried, but the line's going up. And I'm like, well, hang on a minute. We're going to talk about the successes. And they said, oh no, all the success has come from learning. Like, because they tried so many things. And again, because in this case, I think they owned maybe five or six thousand stores. So the ability to experiment amongst those stores and try things out constantly was amazing. But they didn't have that fear of failure that we often have because failure was just a teacher, you know what I mean? And they just constantly learned and tried again. And then eventually one of those products just took off and became billions of dollars of retail success.
- [42:01]
B
That's how you find the successes. You usually have to wade through a lot of things that don't work before you get there.
- [42:07]
A
They exactly. Zena, thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom and story on Zephyr. It's been really good to catch up and yeah, good luck with everything you do.
- [42:16]
B
Thank you so much. Great being here and thank you for having me.
- [42:20]
A
Thank you. So I hope you enjoy that episode of Uncensored CMO as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, by the way, I've got a new newsletter, so if you'd like to get my thoughts on the One Thing that I take out out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the One Thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast just launched, Uncensored Renegades, with the fabulous Corey Marchisoto. She is one of the world's best CMOs. She's an absolute rock star. Every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that it's in your feed. Uncensored Renegades. And finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast, it would not happen without them. So big thanks and lots of love to System One. I'll see you next time.