Samsung CMO on Tech Innovation, Flying Ostriches & Doing More with Less - Benjamin Braun

Summary

Uncensored CMO: Samsung’s Benjamin Braun on Innovation, AI, and Strategic Marketing

Host: Jon Evans
Guest: Benjamin Braun, CMO for Europe at Samsung
Release Date: February 5, 2025

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1. Evolving Media Landscapes

The podcast kicks off with a discussion on the transformation of traditional media into multimedia formats. Benjamin Braun observes the shift from audio-only podcasts and radio shows to video-streamed content:

“Radio isn't necessarily voice only anymore. It's a medium that is also full on color and many frames per second.”
— Benjamin Braun [00:50]

Jon Evans adds that Samsung’s transition to video podcasts was driven by the desire to create promotional clips, which have garnered substantial online engagement:

“There’s probably like, we’ve had three, maybe 400,000 views on YouTube.”
— Jon Evans [01:24]

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2. Democratizing Content Creation with Technology

Braun highlights how accessible technology has become, enabling anyone to produce high-quality content without hefty investments:

“You can buy these professional sounding wireless microphones and use your mobile phone to record podcasts. That’s it.”
— Benjamin Braun [02:18]

Both hosts emphasize the affordability and ease of creating professional-grade media, underscoring brands like Rode that simplify the production process.

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3. Leveraging AI Across Samsung’s Product Portfolio

A significant portion of the conversation delves into how Samsung integrates Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance user experience across various devices:

• Washing Machines: AI optimizes washing cycles based on the dirtiness and weight of clothes, conserving water and detergent while reducing cycle time.

  “The Samsung washing machines use AI to detect how soiled the clothes are and adjust accordingly.”
  — Benjamin Braun [06:05]

• Ovens: AI prevents overcooking by automatically adjusting temperatures and providing real-time notifications.

  “The Samsung oven will automagically stop to prevent burning your dinner and notify you.”
  — Benjamin Braun [07:53]

• Televisions: AI enhances audiovisual quality by upscaling resolution, suppressing background noise, and improving accessibility features like sign language visibility.

  “The Samsung TV can automatically upscale resolution and amplify dialogue for clearer sound.”
  — Benjamin Braun [09:41]

Braun passionately discusses Samsung’s commitment to making AI accessible to a broad audience, promoting fairness and utility in everyday tasks.

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4. Strategic Marketing: Minimaxi Approach

Braun introduces the concept of "minimaxi," a strategy to achieve maximum output with minimal input, inspired by his experience as a Special Police Constable. He relates this to business by emphasizing efficient resource utilization:

“There’s never enough budget and never enough people or time... we use the minimax approach to drive maximum output.”
— Benjamin Braun [35:04]

He shares successful minimaxi campaigns, such as a LinkedIn-driven promotion at Audi that leveraged data analytics to target potential customers efficiently, resulting in higher conversion rates without extensive budgets.

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5. Olympic Sponsorship as Strategic Marketing

Samsung’s nearly four-decade-long sponsorship of the Olympics serves as a prime example of maximaxi—maximizing brand exposure through strategic partnerships:

“We gave 17,000 of the Paralympians and Olympians foldable devices to aid in navigation and communication during the Paris Olympics.”
— Benjamin Braun [42:28]

Braun explains how gifting innovative technology to athletes not only supported their needs but also generated organic marketing through unboxing videos and social media engagement, resulting in significant sales boosts:

“We saw a 23% increase in mobile phone sales during the Olympic period.”
— Benjamin Braun [46:36]

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6. Creative Advertising Innovations

The discussion transitions to Samsung’s standout advertising campaigns, highlighting creativity and emotional resonance:

• Ostrich Campaign: An ostrich equipped with Samsung goggles creates an illusion of flying, symbolizing technological innovation.

  “Ostriches can’t fly, but with Samsung goggles, they see clouds and sky as if they were flying.”
  — Benjamin Braun [49:38]

• Galaxy Z Flip 4 Launch: Featuring cats and dogs, this campaign leverages relatable and heartwarming animal interactions to showcase the phone’s features.

  “Using animals in ads increases relatability and emotional engagement.”
  — Benjamin Braun [50:59]

Braun underscores the importance of surprise and emotional peaks in creating memorable advertisements that resonate with audiences.

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7. Navigating a Global Market as a CMO

Braun offers insights into managing a diverse European market, emphasizing cultural sensitivity and localized strategies:

“There are big cultural differences between countries. Having one approach won’t work, but you still need to create a theme that can be localized.”
— Benjamin Braun [56:04]

He advocates for CMOs to adopt a scientific, data-driven approach to gain respect in the boardroom, focusing on measurable outcomes like incremental revenue and profitability:

“Your job as a CMO is to create a positive point of differentiation between your brand and your products versus the competitors.”
— Benjamin Braun [58:47]

Braun stresses the necessity of econometrics and financial acumen to communicate effectively with executive leadership.

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8. Overcoming Personal Challenges: Embracing Dyslexia

In a candid segment, Braun shares his personal journey with dyslexia, highlighting how embracing neurodiversity can lead to innovative thinking:

“People with dyslexia have a different way of thinking, which is less linear, allowing for more creative solutions and pattern recognition.”
— Benjamin Braun [68:07]

He encourages individuals to harness their unique cognitive strengths, advocating for a shift in perception towards neurodiverse abilities as assets in creative and strategic roles.

Braun's openness serves as inspiration, demonstrating that personal challenges can fuel professional success and innovation.

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9. Final Thoughts: The Future of Marketing

Braun and Evans conclude with reflections on the evolving role of marketers, emphasizing the balance between creativity and data-driven strategies. Braun envisions future marketing campaigns integrating real-time data and AI to create more personalized and impactful consumer experiences.

“AI can be fun, but its real impact is when it works magically in the background to improve your life.”
— Benjamin Braun [15:10]

Evans echoes the sentiment, highlighting the importance of understanding and leveraging technology to stay ahead in the dynamic marketing landscape.

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Key Takeaways:

• AI Integration: Samsung leverages AI to enhance functionality and user experience across a wide range of products, promoting accessibility and utility.

• Marketing Strategies: Embracing both minimaxi and maximaxi approaches allows for efficient resource utilization and impactful brand exposure.

• Global Sensitivity: Managing a multinational brand requires cultural awareness and localized marketing strategies to resonate with diverse audiences.

• Creative Advertising: Innovative and emotionally engaging campaigns, such as the ostrich and animal-focused ads, have proven highly effective in capturing audience attention.

• Personal Development: Embracing and leveraging personal challenges, like dyslexia, can foster creative solutions and drive professional success.

Benjamin Braun’s insights offer a comprehensive view of strategic marketing in a global context, emphasizing the blend of technology, creativity, and data-driven decision-making essential for contemporary CMOs.

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Notable Quotes:

"AI can be fun, but its real impact is when it works magically in the background to improve your life."
— Benjamin Braun [15:10]

"Your job as a CMO is to create a positive point of differentiation between your brand and your products versus the competitors."
— Benjamin Braun [58:47]

"People with dyslexia have a different way of thinking, which is less linear, allowing for more creative solutions and pattern recognition."
— Benjamin Braun [68:07]

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This episode of "Uncensored CMO" offers invaluable perspectives on integrating technology and human-centric strategies to drive brand success. From innovative AI applications to strategic sponsorships and overcoming personal challenges, Benjamin Braun provides a multifaceted approach to modern marketing leadership.

Transcript

[Benjamin Braun]

Foreign.

[John Evans]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the uncensored cmo. In this episode of the podcast, we're talking all about technology with somebody that really knows about it. Benjamin Braun. He is the CMO for Europe at Samsung. Now, in case you didn't know, Samsung are the world's number one manufacturer of both mobile phones and TVs. There's a very, very good chance that you have one of their products in your home right now. And I'm talking to Benjamin about the role of marketing to drive future success. That company, how does he drive revenue? How does marketing drive profits across a vast portfolio of products? How are they using Olympic sponsorship? What's the role of AI? How are they connecting with their customers every single day to make what they do better? There's loads of questions I had for Benjamin, and this is a really fascinating episode. I know you'll love it. Here it is.

[Benjamin Braun]

I find it interesting that a lot of original podcasts have graduated into actually being videos. And it's not only podcasts, it's actually radio shows as well. On the way to work, I listen to BBC Radio 4 and also LBC and both now also video stream live from the radio studio. So radio isn't necessarily voice only anymore. It's a medium that. Is it also full on color and many frames per second?

[John Evans]

Well, it kind of makes a lot of sense, actually. I mean, we've been recording audio for maybe five years, and then two years ago we decided to video because we're going to the effort of meeting people, setting this up and we just thought, well, why not video it? And the main objective really, I think, was to kind of create the clips that we then used to promote. But, you know, there's a. There's probably like, we've had three, maybe 400,000 views on YouTube.

[Benjamin Braun]

Some of the mystique, it's not insignificant. Some of the mystique that we used to have with radio shows is that you didn't actually know what the presenters looked like.

[John Evans]

True.

[Benjamin Braun]

Or what was going on in the studio. And as LBC or as you now livestream or put it out, suddenly you can see what's going on behind the scenes. And it's quite interesting as well. Yeah.

[John Evans]

I think people are fascinated as well about how the whole podcast works and what it looks like. They have this image in their head, probably from listening, and it's quite intriguing to find out what it actually looks and what the person looks like. You know, who's the person behind the V?

[Benjamin Braun]

One of my favorite tech companies is Rode, which Produces a lot of podcast equipment. And what I think is beautiful is that you can buy these professional sounding wireless microphones and use your mobile phone to record podcasts. That's it.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Benjamin Braun]

Your investment is £100. €100. And your first studio is there.

[John Evans]

You're right. So, I mean, one of the things I always tell anybody who asked me about this is the rode mini USB mic is less. I think it's about £90 or less, certainly less than £100. You will sound better on every zoom call teams meeting. You do have it slightly out of camera, just kind of just below the camera. And you will sound like a studio professional for a very small investment. So there you go. So I think that's a top tip for anyone listening.

[Benjamin Braun]

And I've got rode wireless mics in my bag that I travel with because I record a lot of my own content on my Samsung phone. I use the wireless microphone since I'm very, very often a distance away.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Benjamin Braun]

And then I edit everything on my Samsung phone. It folds out to a big screen, so you can actually edit it. It's almost like a tablet. And then I publish it and it goes really, really quickly. And there's no need for an agency or a studio or technicians. You can do everything yourself. Which means that things that in the past was limited to people who had production capabilities and knowledge, it's become democratized. Almost anyone can now create a podcast or a video show.

[John Evans]

Yeah, well, people often say, how do you get into marketing? And actually the barrier to entry, to get into marketing or advertising or creative, you know, being a creative is so low now, really, in terms of the equipment, as you say, the platforms you can publish on. I mean, you were telling me, weren't you, before that you went and actually did a, a video in Gangnam and where Gangnam Star was filmed and that got. How many views did that get?

[Benjamin Braun]

So the video got 550,000 views within the first 24 hours. And I filmed myself talking about a piece of research that we at Samsung had conducted across Europe where we saw that 90% of people have a degree of understanding of AI, but only 15, only 15% of people can actually use it to their advantage. And what I was trying to call out in that video is that we have upon ourselves an obligation to help people understand what AI is and how you can use it, because otherwise we end up in another democracy issue that not everyone has access to AI. So if you, if you draw the parallel, if not everyone has access to the Internet, it's very unfair.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Benjamin Braun]

If not everyone has access to a smartphone, it's unfair. If not everyone has access to AI, it's unfair. And we are at a place where some brands only allow people who pay the most premium price to access their AI. At Samsung, we made a decision, a cautious decision, that we want as many people as possible to get the benefit of AI. So not only are we giving it across a range of our devices, but we've also started to push it out for the last year or so to older devices because we want everyone to use AI to their advantage. Something as simple as if you're getting a long complicated document or if it's in a different language, it will summarize it for you, it will translate it for you. If you take a photo and the photo is okay, but not great, the AI can fix that for you. There's so many things that I, our devices can do and a lot of this is software based, so we can push it out over there as a free upgrade to our consumers.

[John Evans]

Yeah, it's a massive democratizing force, isn't it, AI because it enables lots of people to do things they could never do before. An interesting question though, is what? Obviously in terms of a manufacturer, there's what you want to use AI for, but what does the consumer want AI to do for them? Have you got any intelligence on what actually people want to use AI for?

[Benjamin Braun]

So the research that we conducted across Europe and we asked 11,000 people, so it's statistically significant, is that people want AI to remove the mundane, the repetitive things that people have to do so you and I get freed up to do things that we actually enjoy. And so if we can look at what can be automated, what can be done faster and better with the help of AI, let's do that. I'll give you a couple of examples. I've got three kids, they're all in school, so there's a lot of uniform washing that goes on when I throw those uniforms into our washing machines. In the olden days, the washing machine would go for 2 hours and 43 minutes of whatever someone had programmed it for. But it doesn't necessarily need that much time. So what the Samsung washing machines do using AI, it detects how soiled, how dirty the clothes really are, the weight of them, and then only uses the time, the water and the detergent that's actually needed. So that cycle is much shorter. And then once the cycle is done, it sends me a notification on my watch, on my phone, or on my Samsung TV to say it's ready now. For me to hang up or put in the tumble dryer, et cetera. And then it does that extra little thing that I really appreciate, which is when you start running low on detergent, it actually orders new detergent for you.

[John Evans]

That's good.

[Benjamin Braun]

And it just takes out one thing from your to do list. And we do this across all of our various different Samsung products. These small, helpful things. The Samsung oven, for instance. Yes, we put a camera in it. So on your phone or on your tv, you can see what's going on inside of your oven. Okay, that's good. But it also uses AI. So if you're about to burn your dinner, the Samsung oven will automagically stop and therefore you're not going to burn your dinner and send you a notification. If you walk out of the house and you forgot the oven on, it will warn you and you can remote stop it. And then of course, we sparkle it with a bit of fun. That camera records the whole chocolate chip brownie baking that you're doing and creates a nice little social media.

[John Evans]

Is that from inside the oven? Can you see your baking and see.

[Benjamin Braun]

How it goes from little to little? Big and beautiful, right? And that creates a hyperlapse of it that you can then send via instant messaging to your friend saying, hey, come over for whatever I've baked. And there's some tricks in there that are also nice. We our ovens, they infuse the cooking with water. So rather than just using heat, which actually shrinks things, it uses water. So if you put in a. I'm Swedish, put in a beautiful piece of salmon, it kind of grows and the color becomes more vivid as using a water chamber in there. And the smells are just astonishing.

[John Evans]

Well, actually my wife's Norwegian, so we always have Norwegian Christmas Eve. Cause we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. And we all have belly of pork is like the national dish. And that requires quite a certain amount of water to be under the dish to give it, keep the flavors and keep it tender. So that'd be quite handy for that.

[Benjamin Braun]

Where I think AI is successful is when it does something for you, but you're not necessarily aware of it, it kind of acts in secret on your behalf. So if you are watching Samsung TV and you're watching some of your old VHS recordings or kind of family movies, or you're streaming over various different streaming sites and the quality that's being fed into your TV isn't necessarily high resolution. The Samsung TV then automatically upscales it to higher resolution on the fly. If you and I, who are now getting a little bit older, and as a foreigner, I sometimes struggle to hear what actors are saying. The Samsung TV then suppresses the background noise and amplifies the narrative of the actors. And so you can actually hear what they're saying in a much clearer way than before, which is really helpful. And of course, we're helping other people who, if you've ever seen sign language, usually that sign language is really small somewhere on the screen. What the Samsung TV can do is we blow that up to make it bigger so it's easy for people who want to use sign language to see. And we can auto subtitle things if there isn't subtitling going on. So all of this AI, when it works for you magically in the background to improves your life, that's a really good thing.

[John Evans]

That's very cool. Actually, I get the hearing thing because weirdly, I've noticed in the last few years, my hearing, I pick up sound in another room more than listening to the person who's in the room. So I often have to say to people, can you talk a bit louder or can we turn the music in the background down? Because my ears aren't, you know, my ears are kind of picking up sound rather than voice, weirdly. So actually that. That would suit me perfectly.

[Benjamin Braun]

And there's always the fun stuff as well that draws on AI capability. This phone here, it will live translate into 20 different languages. So if I'm out traveling, which I am almost every week, and I find myself in Korea quite often, and I don't speak Korean, people can speak to me in Korean. It will live translate into whatever language I prefer, and I can speak to it and live translate it back into Korean, which is fantastic when you're sitting in a taxi or in a restaurant or even having kind of professional meeting conversations. And it does it also over the phone. So if you're trying to book a restaurant, it will live translate that.

[John Evans]

So you can book a restaurant.

[Benjamin Braun]

I speak English and I'm speaking to the restaurant and whatever I say in English is translated into Korean and they hear the Korean instead.

[John Evans]

That's amazing.

[Benjamin Braun]

But then there's the cool camera stuff. So with your permission, if I can take a photo, this would be a bit fun. Maybe we can show it on the video of the podcast. So I'll take a traditional portrait photo of you here and so you can do the kind of a normal edit. So if we go in here, this is of course all. I'm going to smoothen your skin a little bit. First of all, oh, nice.

[John Evans]

And then you met me a few years younger.

[Benjamin Braun]

Yeah. I'm going to add a bit of color to your face. With your permission. I'm going to slim your jawline down a little bit just to compensate for the Christmas food.

[John Evans]

Okay. Thank you.

[Benjamin Braun]

Open up your eyes a little bit like that. And then it always becomes more professional if you kind of blur the background. The bokeh.

[John Evans]

Oh, it doesn't. It. Yeah, it does that.

[Benjamin Braun]

So that was my. That was my initial stuff. But then we can do objects. Eraser. There's this black. Black thing here that I think is a little bit disturbing. So we can erase. Can take that away like that. And then if we just reposition you a little bit, kind of rules of thirds. Nice to have the microphone in there. And we make this very professional by putting a bit of gray tint on there. What do you prefer? That one. That looks good. And that is your new LinkedIn photo.

[John Evans]

Fantastic. There we go.

[Benjamin Braun]

But then we can have a bit of fun as well. So if we go back to the colorful one, we click on the Samsung Galaxy AI.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Benjamin Braun]

Say you would be. And say you would be appear in an animated Pixar Disney movie. What would you look like? Well, according to the Samsung Galaxy AI.

[John Evans]

Ah, there we are.

[Benjamin Braun]

This is what you would look like.

[John Evans]

This is my avatar.

[Benjamin Braun]

This is your fantastic. Oh. If we can take it and make you into a painting from your high school yearbook.

[John Evans]

You put me into Leonardo da Vinci painting, of course.

[Benjamin Braun]

And this is what you would look like as a painting. And this I think would probably look like if you ever did. If you ever wrote for the Wall Street Journal. You usually do these kind of sketches for their authors or something like that. And then let's just. You final one. But then I'll show you. If I click on that AI button again and I click on sketch to image, I'm going to. Now you are the king of the CMO podcast.

[John Evans]

You said it on me.

[Benjamin Braun]

I am now going to draw a crown on there. You can clearly see that's a king's crown.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Benjamin Braun]

The Samsung Galaxy A. I will interpret that.

[John Evans]

You interpret that as a crown.

[Benjamin Braun]

I really hope so.

[John Evans]

There we go. Yes.

[Benjamin Braun]

And that. That was my attempt.

[John Evans]

Podcasting royalty.

[Benjamin Braun]

We've got a slightly better. There you go.

[John Evans]

Fantastic. That's very impressive.

[Benjamin Braun]

Loads of cool stuff.

[John Evans]

I love it.

[Benjamin Braun]

So AI can be fun.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Benjamin Braun]

But where it really has impact is when it does the magic for you in the background. That frees up your time to do other things. That's really important.

[John Evans]

Yeah. That's huge. Now, you're almost a walking advert for your tech here because I notice you've got a ring on your finger as well, which just explain that for anyone listening, because I was fascinated by this. It's a black. It's a black ring. Very subtle, but it's quite. It does a few things, doesn't it?

[Benjamin Braun]

So that's the Samsung Galaxy ring. It comes in different sizes and different colors. It's made out of titanium. It's very lightweight. It's 2.3 grams.

[John Evans]

This is very lightweight.

[Benjamin Braun]

Actually, the battery lasts the whole week. And what it does, it. It checks my heart for any issues. It checks your steps. It also looks at your skin temperature and if you're about to start a family, your skin temperature is actually a very important factor to when you're more likely to conceive. But it also then gives you insights into your sleep. So, for instance, I can look at my watch here or on my phone that last night, although I was in bed for 7 hours and 56 minutes, I actually only got 5 hours and 46 minutes of sleep. And that is because when you have three young kids, they come in and.

[John Evans]

Usually the ring is the only thing you'll wear. So you're not having to wear the watch, are you? It's picking the data up from this.

[Benjamin Braun]

Doing it from the ring, and that obviously shares the data with your watch and with your phone and it provides you more insights. It also checks if you snore because it will alert you if you potentially have sleep apnea. If there is a potential issue with the heart, it will give you a warning. The data that it has picked up, you can then decide to share that with your cardiologist, etc. In fact, we have a colleague who works for one of our agencies and his Samsung watch alerted him to a potential heart issue. He's now had surgery and had stents fitted in his heart, which is pretty amazing. So from everything we know about healthcare is that we very often go and seek medical advice when it's too late. If we at Samson can help people have a proactive view of their health and give these helpful nudges to just improve a little bit. You didn't quite get to 10,000 steps or Benjamin. Actually, you only slept five hours last night, which means I will probably be a little bit more agitated than normal today. So I'm now aware of that. I will remain calm. So those things are really helpful and I know I will go to bed a little bit earlier tonight to try to compensate.

[John Evans]

That's Great, isn't it? Presumably it can also predict stress levels, you know, if you're overworking under sleeping and those kind of things as well.

[Benjamin Braun]

How stressful is.

[John Evans]

Yeah, how stressful is a podcast.

[Benjamin Braun]

How stressful is it to sit opposite John in a podcast? So when I woke up this morning and got the kids out of bed, there was a degree of stress. When I saw you in the lobby earlier, I wasn't stressed at all. And now my stress level is maxed out.

[John Evans]

Oh, you maxed.

[Benjamin Braun]

This is a very stressed version of Benjamin.

[John Evans]

Wow.

[Benjamin Braun]

And I think if we go and look, you can see that my, my heart isn't racing, but you know, I have elevated pulse, etc. Because, yeah, this, this was, this is not, this is uncommon for me.

[John Evans]

Yeah, yeah, well, you are in uncommon. So there we go.

[Benjamin Braun]

So we, and we also know that when you go to a hospital and there are studies upon studies on this is that you change your behavior and your body physiologically changes as well. So the measurements that you do when you're in a hospital aren't necessarily the measurements that are the true reflection of what's going on in your body.

[John Evans]

It's like, it's like I'm on blood pressure reducing pills, but like every time I go and get my blood pressure tested, it goes up. I think because I'm having my test done.

[Benjamin Braun]

And by, by picking and collecting more data points, more data at a higher frequency, we get a much better view of what's going on with people. And then medical professionals can create a much better treatment plan for you.

[John Evans]

Yeah, amazing.

[Benjamin Braun]

Just imagine this is the beginning, right?

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Benjamin Braun]

Just imagine as we evolve this, how many people we can help live a longer and a better life. And Samsung has a lot of cool medical equipment. So I think we're famous for our TVs and our phones and washing machines and refrigerators, etc. But we also have medical equipment. So we have some amazing sonar scanners. And so if you need your heart scanned, ultrasound scanned, or a fetus ultrasound scanned, and you meet a radiographer and they have seven minutes per patient, it is likely that they might miss something. But what we do with the help of machine learning and AI is we can compare your scans live with millions, if not billions of other images. And therefore our AI system on the Samsung Medical Kit will indicate saying there's an anomaly here that the radiographer or the sonographer or the doctor should have a little bit a closer look at. And that will also help speed things up to identify potential issues.

[John Evans]

Yeah, that's phenomenal Isn't it? That's incredible. I mean you have such a broad portfolio as well, don't you? From medical things to vacuum cleaners, washing machines, TVs. Is. There's amazing. What I didn't, what I was surprised when I did my research for this conversation was just how big Samsung is as an organization. Am I right saying it's the fifth largest brand in the world now?

[Benjamin Braun]

Correct. Which is Interbrand does this study and they've been doing it for years and years and we are the fifth biggest. I find it interesting because Samsung is a Korean brand. It was grown out of a necessity. It's actually a family company. The grandfather started Samsung and our first ever product, our first ever product was noodles and groceries.

[John Evans]

Wow.

[Benjamin Braun]

And so there was a need to feed the nation. South Korea was a new nation and there was very little in terms of logistics and infrastructure. The country had come out of a horrific war. The second World War had happened, the Korean War had happened. And so for anyone who's been a university student, a very easy way to, to get a fairly nutritious meal is to add hot water to a pack of noodles. Instant food. Right. So that was one of our first products. And then eventually it evolved into refrigerators, fans. But then something interesting happened. In the lead up to 1969, Samsung were producing radios and then started dabbling in TVs. And we created this first black and white flicker free tv which was real innovation then. I think the trick there was to disguise it as this beautiful furniture, a piece for the living room rather than a utilitarian thing. So it fit with a living room in this big wooden casket. And suddenly we had an opportunity to export this product. And that's in 1969. That's when Samsung went from being a domestic Korean consumer electronics brand to being a global brand. And ever since it's grown and as we sit here today, Samsung is the world's biggest. When it comes to TVs, there are more Samsung TVs than any other TV in the world. For the 18th year running, we're the world's biggest. When it comes to mobile phones, there are more Samsung phones out there than any other brand. And we're the fastest growing to when it comes to a lot of these domestic appliances. And if I look at it, and I've been with a company for six years and I try to put my finger on what is the point of success, what are the DNA components that has led to this. And I think it is listening to what consumer wants and through technology, innovating that and that's worked. And then to add a little bit of magical sparkle on top of it, we also try to do things a little bit differently. We try to create a point of differentiation through technology. So for instance, if you are going to go and buy a new tv, I think the best way to find a couple arguing is to observe them trying to buy a new tv. One one partner probably wants a bigger and bigger, bigger tv, and the other one probably not. And it's always a discussion about how should, how big should the TV be, et cetera. We've changed that conversation because we realize that if people argue about TV in itself, it's a very narrow conversation. So what we do with our TVs is when you switch off the TV, the Samsung Frame TV, instead of displaying a black box on the wall, it shows the most famous art from galleries and museums around the world.

[John Evans]

Oh, brilliant. That's very clever.

[Benjamin Braun]

Or in my case, and hopefully in your viewers case, you can take your photos, your family photos, upload it to the Samsung frame tv and it automatically makes it into a oil painting or watercolor painting, just like we played around with. It just looks stunning. So instead of having a black box on the wall in the living room, it shows art or family photos. So the conversation is no longer how big is the TV that you're going to watch sky sports on or the football on. It's suddenly a conversation is how big is the piece of art that we want in the living room.

[John Evans]

That's a great excuse the pun, but great way to reframe what a TV is, isn't it? And think of it as, I mean, I was thinking about the first TV I ever bought when I, you know, moved out of home. And it was the biggest TV possible at the time was 28 inches. And I looked on your website Today, the smallest TV, 43 inches and goes up to 98. I mean, it's almost cinema size, but say. And the price as well. I mean, I was blown away by this, but you can buy a Samsung TV for £35,000. I did put it in the basket. I haven't clicked on order yet, so. So that is incredible. So why would someone pay that? Is that the most expensive TV out of interest? I mean, and why would people pay that much money for it?

[Benjamin Braun]

There are TVs that go up to 146 inch, which is called the wall because the entire wall. But we actually have LED TVs that go mini, LED TVs that can go any size you want. So if you just give us your dimensions, we will make the TV the whatever ratio, whatever size you want, so we can go to super big. But another thing that sets us apart from a lot of our competitors is that we do the range. So you can today order a Samsung TV for £400. €400 and you can go up to £35,000. Right. We have a whole range in between because we want to cater for everyone, so some people don't need 8K resolution TV. And so we have a solution for you. Right.

[John Evans]

And also the entry level ones, to be honest. You know, three or four years ago would have been state of the art as well, because the technology updates so quickly, doesn't it? You're still getting Ultra HD for £400.

[Benjamin Braun]

And I think that's really important when it comes to mobile devices. We have phones that will cost £2,000 and we will have tablets that cost up to £3,000 and laptops, etc. But today you can also go in to Argos or to Tesco or to Amazon or to samsung.com and pick up a tablet for a phone for 50 bucks.

[John Evans]

Why do you think the brand is able to do that? Because, you know, traditional marketing theory would suggest you have to position the brand at a certain price point, that brands that are famous for being good value are not going to be the ones that are famous being expensive. But you seem to be able to stretch the brand across an enormous number of product categories and price points as well.

[Benjamin Braun]

If you are going to cater and take responsibility for the society you live in, you have to be able to cater for everyone's needs. If you look in schools, if I look in my kids schools, it's really interesting because you have a cross section of society there. You have people who come from homes, who have disposable income, who can buy their kids a phone and a tablet and a laptop, etc. But then we also have kids who come to school who have no technology at home and they don't have broadband at home. And the only time they get to learn about these devices and play on these devices are in school. And therefore it is critical that we at Samsung can support schools with products that allow all of the kids to become proficient in them. Because once again, it becomes a democracy issue. When you graduate school, if you don't know PowerPoint, when my kids graduate, if they're not experts in AI, if you don't know how to use Excel, if you're not good at doing research online, or use google, etc. You will not Be competitive in the marketplace.

[John Evans]

Yeah, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Now, I really want to talk about your marketing, Olympics, advertising, you do all that kind of thing. But just quickly, I'd love to kind of fill people listening in into your background and how you got here, because you have a really unusual career path. I don't think I've ever interviewed anyone on this show who started out as a Met police officer and for 10 years as well. So tell us a little bit about that. But what I'd love to know is what could marketers learn from a Met police officer?

[Benjamin Braun]

So I'm Swedish. I moved here because one of my sisters had moved here, and I wanted to be part of society and looked at various different ways to do that. I looked at being a justice of peace in the courts. I looked at being a medic. Someone told me that there is a scheme which is called being a special police constable. You are a police officer in a police uniform. You have the same rights and privileges, same responsibilities, but you don't get paid. And you do it as a volunteer police officer. It's not pcso. They get paid. They don't have police powers. This is a police officer, but you're not paid. And so I signed up for that scheme. I did the training, and I learned a lot. Once again, I learned that there's never enough police boots on the ground for a shift. And so every time I showed up for the parading, the briefing by the sergeant and inspector, they showed a lot of appreciation. That meant they could crew another car. And so I felt like I'm being really useful here. You also see the ugly side of society. You see all of this terrible stuff that you. Otherwise, hopefully, you will never be exposed to. I feel like I live a very privileged life because I sit in this beautiful meeting room doing a podcast with you. I travel, I stay in hotels. I mean, the worst thing that can happen to me is I get a paper cut, probably. But then as a police officer on response duty, you respond to 999 calls, and they are real 999 calls. People fearing for their life, people who are desperate for help, and you are the first person to respond. And I did that for 10 years. I got a bravery award from the commissioner because what I felt is that I was empowered to also act when I'm not on duty. So I've rescued people from burning houses. I've resuscitated people when I'm off duty, because you get trained to do that as a police officer. Very often when there is an accident. People don't know what to do. But as part of the Metropolitan Police training, you're drilled into what to do and you can take charge. And to this day, I still find myself in positions where no one knows what to do. But I do. And it fills me with a degree of pride to be able to help out and help people who are in need. Today I'm wearing this blazer. It's a normal blazer. I bought it online. But what I have done to kind of pay a tribute to when I spent 10 years as a special police constable is that the buttons are for my police uniform.

[John Evans]

Are they?

[Benjamin Braun]

And so as you can see, they are the Metropolitan Police crown. So I've kept the buttons. The uniform is hung up for the time being as I no longer.

[John Evans]

And if you've got a good eye for what crime might be about to happen or, you know, you could judge a character like that. So you must have a sort of a radar for, you know, what people are up to.

[Benjamin Braun]

I think I can detect it. I think my wife would argue that wherever I am, there's always an issue. I'm not sure that's true, but I probably spot this issue.

[John Evans]

You spot it before anyone else.

[Benjamin Braun]

On my first ever, I got the job at Samsung and within a week they flew me to Korea to meet with the global CFO and some of the other leaders of the company. And on the plane, it's a 14 and a half hour journey to Korea. On the plane, there was a medical emergency and they asked for if there was any medical personnel. Didn't say anything. I assumed there's a doctor, a nurse, paramedic or something. And then they asked again because there wasn't anyone on board. And so I said, well, I have advanced life support training as part of being a police officer. I showed them my police badge, my warrant card, and I could help a person who had a medical emergency on the plane, which is great. That person was in a pretty dire shape and I could help. That's.

[John Evans]

That's as well credit to you. And maybe more people should do that because.

[Benjamin Braun]

So what can you learn, is your question. Yeah, as I mentioned, there are never enough police officers on a shift. And so you have to be really smart with how you use your resources. And this is true for business as well. There's never enough budget and never enough people or time to do what you're meant to do in the workplace. So we very often in the police use something called minimax, the minimum amount of input to drive the maximum output I'm not talking about being lazy here. I'm talking about being reflective of the situation you're in. You need to police the entire area from the the River Thames, through Leicester Square and Soho and Oxford Circus and Oxford street, all the way up to St. John's Wood. It's a massive area. And you would rock up for your parading, which is what the briefing is called, and you would realize that you were only six officers.

[John Evans]

Wow, that's a big area for six, isn't it?

[Benjamin Braun]

Yeah. And there are other units operating, but for your response team, There are only six officers. And if you're double crewed, so two officers in one car, you have three cars to respond to all 999 calls. It's impossible. So what we did using the minimax approach is we looked at intelligence. Where is the highest propensity for crime in our area, based on intelligence and activities that we knew that were going to take place. And then we took police vehicles and we place those at these potential hotspots. Because what we know is as soon as someone sees a police vehicle, people assume that there's police nearby and people alter their behavior, which is really interesting. You think about it, when you're driving on, when you're driving and suddenly there's a police car behind you, even if you're keeping your speed limit, you still decrease your speed. And so when people see a police car, people assume there's police nearby and people alter, hopefully for the better, their behavior. So we started very often our shifts by placing police cars, police vans in potential hotspots areas, and that drove crime down.

[John Evans]

Wow.

[Benjamin Braun]

That's one minimax of doing it. If you extrapolate that and you look at what we need to do at work, very often I feel like we as marketeers or we as business leaders try to do all of these big gorgeous projects, but sometimes we have to stop and reflect going, if I don't have enough time, if I don't have enough budget, and if I don't have enough people to do this, what should I do instead? What is the minimax in business to solve? Whatever you want to solve. I can give you a couple of examples. My best ever marketing campaign to date was something I did when I worked at Audi and I did it on LinkedIn. It was a conversation I had with Joshua Graff at LinkedIn. And by taking data that LinkedIn have and data that we had at Audi and mashing it together, we got a really interesting, a rich picture of people who are more likely to convert to Audi. We knew from data, historical data, that when you get promoted, one of the first things you do is to update your LinkedIn profile with your new title. Right again, that's part of the ego, I think.

[John Evans]

Yeah, totally.

[Benjamin Braun]

We also know that certain titles are more likely to drive an Audi. We also know that getting a promotion means that you probably reward yourself with something. We also could, from the data, understand where people live and their proximity to an Audi dealership. And based on that data, we could orchestrate a data driven campaign that said, congratulations, John, on your promotion. And here at Audi, we'd like to give you a test drive for a whole week of this new car and we'll deliver it to your drive and you can have it for a week and we'll pick it up and if you want to keep it, keep it. If not, no questions asked, just congratulations on your, on your promotion that converted more people to become Audi drivers than any other campaign that I did when I was there, including the ones that I won gold lines for in Cannes. They were big, spectacular, expensive productions. But this LinkedIn data mashup was the minimax of it.

[John Evans]

I love it. Yeah. And what I love about that is most people don't have big above the line budgets every single day to spend.

[Benjamin Braun]

We hardly ever have.

[John Evans]

Exactly. Very few. I mean, you're in a rare position of someone who might occasionally be able to do some, something on that scale.

[Benjamin Braun]

And there are so many times where I think we are rushed to come up with something big and visually exciting and expensive produce and time consuming and complex, when the minimax is a small change. I worked at American Express and one of my jobs was to drive people to paperless statementing. And it's really hard to get someone to give up their paper statements. And so I found that we send out our American Express cards with a sticker on that says phone this number to activate your card. And then we try to upsell, cross you cross, sell you travel insurance, et cetera. And I found that the person who printed these little stickers that go onto the card is this guy in Brighton. And I went to see him and I said, can I make a change to the sticker? Thought this is going to be very complicated. Turns out it was just printed from a standalone laptop to a thermal printer just there, just that very easy to change. So I changed it. To activate your card, go to americanexpress.com activate. And I built this journey online where you activated your card and I defaulted people to paperless statementing, explaining to them, you will have a Library online for tax purposes, et cetera. With everything you need accessible all the time for privacy. You won't lose any of these things. Loads of really good reasons to be to have paperless statementing. And that little change on that sticker drove the majority of people then to opt for paperless statement because people could still opt out for papers. Minimax.

[John Evans]

And sometimes it's like looking at what exists in your supply chain that you're not using. I was working on quite a small drinks brand called Firefly. It was like a kind of posh fruit drink. And the design had these black and white photos on and, you know, it kind of showed people kind of having fun, you know, jumping off, jumping into the sea or, you know, celebrating a climb to the top of the mountain. We just had this like, promotion where people would just send us their photo, would upload their photos to websites. And because we'd invested in kind of digital printing on the production line, we could print people's personal photos onto the bottle as it went down. The production is amazing. And we just, we just thought about, how do we. Because we had almost no marketing budgets. So our marketing budget was basically allowing people to print their own labels, personalized. And of course, people did it for weddings and birthdays and celebrations. And of course the next thing they do, they share it online, don't they? They then post their photos online and that became our marketing.

[Benjamin Braun]

There's a good experiment that we should all try for 2025, is we sit down with our teams, we look at what the business challenges are that we need to solve with the help of marketing. And we tell everyone there is no budget constraints, we just need to solve this. Throw everything at it, the entire kitchen sink if you want. And people come up with these amazing things. And once you found the idea that you think is really compelling, you say, that's a brilliant idea. Now we're going to have to do that with zero budget. And sometimes there is a way of doing it, or at least a low budget.

[John Evans]

Yeah. And often I think sometimes the solution for that I found in my career is partnering with other people. So you may not have the media, but what if you partner with someone who does have them? I mean, at Samsung, you would be partnering with EE or Vodafone or sky, for example. So it's often partnering as a way to do that. Let's pivot from Minimaxi to Maximaxi, because probably the biggest thing you could do on a brand would be, say, sponsoring the Olympics, wouldn't it? That'd be Something really big. And I know you've been a sponsor. How long have you been a sponsor of the Olympics?

[Benjamin Braun]

For almost 40 years now.

[John Evans]

That's a lot of money. I mean, I presume you can't say how much money gets spent on it, but how would you value something like the Olympics, which is the sort of greatest, the greatest stage on earth you could pick to be on?

[Benjamin Braun]

I think we have to go back to why we did it. So on one of my initial trips to Korea, as I was trying to understand Samsung, I asked, why are we sponsors of the Olympics? I probably asked when I saw the number, why are we doing this? We can do a lot of other things with this money. And someone explained to me that the Samsung chairman, a family member, had attended the Olympics when it was in Seoul, Korea, and he had observed that how young people from across nations, nations that necessarily don't appreciate each other very much, still get together and compete and friendships are born. And he believed that's a beautiful thing. And he said that a company of our size and the wealth that I have as a person should be put to societal good. And from there we evolved our relationship from just being a local sponsor to being a global partner to help the Olympic Committee with a lot of, I mean, a lot of this is run on voluntary basis and there's a lot of help needed. And so Samsung can provide a lot of that help. We also want to help the athletes. So for the Paris olympics, we gave 17,000 of the Paralympians and Olympians this foldable device. It was the first kind of device with AI built into it, which allowed people to navigate Paris and speak and understand French with her device.

[John Evans]

Oh, that's helpful.

[Benjamin Braun]

Which is really helpful. We preloaded it with money so people just tap the Parisian metro to travel if people wanted a drink. Your legacy is in the drink industry. You just tap a vending machine and you could get your cold drink out on a very hot Parisian day. I also like that you can just put it up like this and it's kind of a built in tripod and the athletes can film themselves and then watch back in ultra slow motion and understand how they can improve whatever technique they need improving.

[John Evans]

For anyone listening as well who can't see this, it's also a thing of beauty, isn't it? It's gold.

[Benjamin Braun]

Appropriately. I mean, as a father of three kids, I wish everyone could be a winner at home.

[John Evans]

Everyone's a winner. Exactly.

[Benjamin Braun]

But when it comes to the Olympics, there can only be one winner. But everyone who got one of these 17,000 limited edition phones. It's a gold, it's a golden, golden phone. So the minimax here is interesting because the cost of traveling on the metro or buying wine during the Olympic period went up a lot. Hotel rooms became ludicrously expensive. So does media during the Olympic period. So what could we do without spending a lot of media money, still get great coverage. And so by gifting these 17,000 devices to athletes and asking them to unbox them in their social media channels, that gave us access to communities that we would otherwise never be in disregard the money. We would simply not be in all of these athletes, instas and tiktoks, et cetera. And we did one more thing. When people stood on the podiums, normally those victory photos are almost like corporate photos. People stood there.

[John Evans]

Yes, they're very serious, aren't they?

[Benjamin Braun]

Very serious. And so we created something called the Samsung Victory selfie. So people handed the phone out as the athletes were on the podium and we asked them to take a victory selfie. I think maybe you and I can take a victory selfie.

[John Evans]

Oh yeah, let's do a victory selfie.

[Benjamin Braun]

Victory selfie.

[John Evans]

We do.

[Benjamin Braun]

And we just have to warn the people in the background. Here we go, George and team, you're on our victory selfie.

[John Evans]

You're on the selfie now. Let's do this.

[Benjamin Braun]

And that shot, that shot there was on the front page of so many newspapers and in digital and everywhere, plus those victory selfies that were published. So it was a really nice minimax, the way we hacked the Olympic marketing by giving our products, asking athletes to unbox them, and then creating the Samsung Victory selfie that got us coverage that we would not be able to buy.

[John Evans]

Yeah, I love that. And also we tend to assume that Olympic athletes are these big celebrities with lots of wealth, but actually, unless you're, I know, Usain Bolt or Simone Biles, most athletes are kind of coming from lots of small countries where they're not particularly well known and you know, they're not necessarily that wealthy, are they? So to provide something of value, like you say, to buy a drink and get around and navigate a foreign country with the language barriers, that sort of thing. Incredibly useful.

[Benjamin Braun]

I saw, I saw so many beautiful unboxing videos where, as you said, people from nations that don't have a lot of disposable income, I think athletes are probably some of the last celebrities that are grateful.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Benjamin Braun]

Because most of them don't have sponsorship deals and they've poured their entire life into becoming the best at Whatever sports they've chosen. And I love these, I mean, they were so emotional, the videos when, when they got the box and they look into their filming saying, I hope it's a mobile phone and they would have competed four years ago. And they got a phone that they're filming on right now and then suddenly they unbox and it's a new AI foldable device in gold and they're like so happy. That was magical moment. If you're then the CFO or you're the CEO of the company and you go, right, 17,000 films given away, okay, at cost for us. Was it worth it? What we could see was we saw in some of our countries a 23% increase in mobile phone sales during that Olympic period. So answer is yes, there is a way to drive positive incremental revenue out of these very expensive sports sponsorships. But you have to find a differentiated approach, otherwise it doesn't work.

[John Evans]

That's good. It's a bit like we have this debate every year when super bowl happens in America. It's like, you know, £7 million for 30 seconds. Million dollars rather for a 30 second slot. Is it worth it? And the answer is it's worth it if you activate it in the right way. So you can buy your way into the platform. But it's what you do with it that matters the most. I thought I'd move on to your advertising if I can. I went into system one database and we've got 563 Samsung ads. So in the spirit of putting you on the spot, I thought I'd get you to guess. Can you guess what any of the top three campaigns that you've done might be?

[Benjamin Braun]

I would hope that one of the top three is the ostrich campaign, which literally was an ostrich running. Is it up there?

[John Evans]

Describe that, because this is genuinely one of my all time favorite ads. It's just genius. But describe it for anyone who might not have come across it.

[Benjamin Braun]

So, as you know, ostriches can't fly. So we're following this ostrich running as fast as it can down, done an open safari and suddenly you realize it's wearing Samsung goggles and inside the goggles it can see clouds and sky as if it was flying. And we've opened up a new world for this ostrich.

[John Evans]

It's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. No, and that's number two actually. So well done. Almost got it. So that's the second highest scoring and in fact it was the best scoring mobile technology ad on the Database that we've been testing for six, seven years now. This year it was overtaken by the Galaxy Z Flip 4 launch with the cats and dogs in which again going back to, well, going back to using animals which has got an almost maximum 5.8 star, 1.77 on spike and 95% fluency. So yeah, bringing us back to the phone.

[Benjamin Braun]

So when we say never work with.

[John Evans]

Animals or kids, it's quite the opposite.

[Benjamin Braun]

Yeah. One of my, that's great to hear. One of my favorite Audi ads we made was having kids in the back of the car but no parents up front and a hidden camera with, with a voice saying if you think about the car of the future, what do you think it looks like? And the kids just explaining it and they will talk about driverless cars, et cetera. It's very, very cute. I think the Flip and the Fold are very interesting products. I especially like that it's a perfect handbag size or pocket size phones. You and I and everyone who are listening to this over the last 10 years, 20 years, our entire personal life and our entire professional life is now done through a mobile phone. And if we ask as we do in Samsung all the time, what do you want? People keep on saying bigger screens because you need to do more and more on the phones. But our pockets are. My jeans pocket hasn't expanded bigger, my waistline has expanded over the last 10 years. My pockets haven't. And so we found a way to fold the glass and so it's a very small form when it's folded and slightly bigger than a normal phone when you open it up in my other pocket is my other Samsung phone. And when you open this one up. So it's a normal phone when I have it like this, but when you open it up it's kind of tablet sized here.

[John Evans]

That's very impressive.

[Benjamin Braun]

And you can do everything here. You can split the screen. You can do two things at the same time. If you want to watch this on YouTube or on TikTok, it looks amazing because it's big screen, big size here and it becomes a far more usable tool than when the screen restricts you in what you need to do.

[John Evans]

Well, you'd be pleased to know that number three on our database was the Galaxy Z Fold 4 launch with Leonardo da Vinci in because you were demonstrating in quite a clever way using someone kind of well known and that sort of thing and to show them how to use the product.

[Benjamin Braun]

So, so by looking at the data points that you have in your system, be really interesting to design what the next 2025 Samsung campaign should look like.

[John Evans]

It would. It would. Well, based. Based on this. It would be. So what's interesting about the Leonardo da Vinci one is you've set it in the past so you've got a surprising but relatable kind of story going on. You got some humor, you got some really good acting. And then with the other two, again, it's human entertainment, isn't it? So the ostrich, by the way, everyone should go and Google that because it's very, very clever. Because you've got very, you know, the ostrich perspective in there. But again, it's surprising, isn't it? So you don't realize it's the ostrich intelligence.

[Benjamin Braun]

And I think when. When you run it through your system. Yeah, I like the graph.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Benjamin Braun]

And. And the. The red bit on top is very scary because people are disliking exactly that. But then you get the positive surprise element that usually kicks in.

[John Evans]

Yes.

[Benjamin Braun]

Towards the end when there's a bit of a reveal or something.

[John Evans]

That's it. Yeah.

[Benjamin Braun]

I'm also interested in the way we construct ads in the future if it's going to change. Almost like this podcast, there's going to be a short edit that pulls out the highlights. Let's hope there are some highlights. The highlights before the actual podcast. Almost like a mini trailer for the podcast itself. And I've seen elements of marketing campaigns where rather than doing the reveal in the end that we have been taught to do for many, many years because of people's attention span and people will swipe you through before you even get to that reveal moment. You actually have to lead with the reveal and then build up towards it in the following seconds.

[John Evans]

I actually did this on a brand I was working at. Luke said we had this campaign, it was called the prequel, which is basically started with what happened at the end. So we had David and Goliath. It started with the fight and then it revealed. Then went on to reveal how he got in the fight in the first place and what went behind the scenes kind of thing. Same thing with the drama. Get people in and then you kind of tell the story, which is a.

[Benjamin Braun]

Different way of constructing the discourse of an ad. So maybe we need to reverse it.

[John Evans]

Yeah, well, and to be fair, you're right, actually, because we. Look, you were talking about the face. We call it the face trace, which is people's emotional response as they're watching. There's a traditional face trace that starts low, builds up and ends on a peak. If you can start with a peak and then get them back to that peak at the end, it's that. That would. Yeah, that would have very well. Maybe we could work that in 2025. There we go. We'll try and create some dramas out of the phones to test that theory. I wanted to ask you about being a cmo. Because you run a European team. You've got so many categories. You operate in washing machines, vacuums through to phones and TVs and so on. And you're also working with concepts, big global company. What's the secret to being effective in a large organization like that?

[Benjamin Braun]

As a CMO, there are 44 countries in Europe. We speak 24 official languages. You need to recognize that there are big cultural differences between countries. Having one approach won't work, but you still need to create a theme that can be localized. But when I'm critical about being a CMO and our profession, I very often land on the point that it's time for us to mature as CMOs. If you consider yourself being a part of the boardroom, and you are, because you have that C in your title, you need to be as scientific, as numerical as the accountants around the table in order for you to gain respect in the boardroom. At the end of the day, it's your responsibility to create success with what you've got. And that success in the boardroom is very often down to two KPIs, incremental revenue and profitability that you've won can lie in, or you got 2 percentage points higher awareness and 2 percentage points more consideration, etc. The people in the boardroom will think that's your problem. What we want to see you do is bring incremental sales revenue and improved profitability. Your job as a CMO is to create a positive point of differentiation between your brand and your products versus the competitors. So when it comes to a choice, people choose you. And they shouldn't choose your brand or your products because of a cheaper price, because then you're going down a slippery slope of eroding profit margins. It needs to be something else. It needs to be the value of the brand, the purpose of the brand, what we stand for, the way we communicate, the way we make you feel, the proposition of the products, the technical solutions, whatever it is that you can create into a message and communicate with consumers in channels that are appropriate at times that are appropriate. But that's your job. When you get into the boardroom, they want to know, John, for the million bucks we gave you, how many Incremental microphones did you sell and at what profit?

[John Evans]

Yeah, I think people don't realize quite how hard the CMO's role is in that situation. I mean, I did sort of research last year looking at what skills are required on a board. Number one was financial acumen, the last was marketing experience. And I think what we need to realise as marketers is that to have credibility in the boardroom, we have to talk the language of the boardroom and measure what matters to them and show the value that we're bringing.

[Benjamin Braun]

And the way you measure it and the way you express it needs to be done in a financial way. If you don't use econometrics, I urge you now to get going on econometrics because you need to be able to have these scientific data based conversations with the CFO and the CEO. Because if you're having conversations based on what you feel and what they feel, they will start meddling in your affairs and it won't be helpful. You won't be able to articulate that if you put in another half a million into the marketing mix, it will drive X sales. But using econometrics will allow you to have those data conversations. And that's why it's so important that we as marketeers mature. It is a fantastic job, but sometimes we're not particularly well educated when it comes to expressing what we can bring to the table. We do it, but we're not very good at bringing the proof points in a way that people appreciate it and believe it.

[John Evans]

And that's ironic because we're very good at understanding the customer, our end customer, and marketing to them. We're not as good at marketing ourselves in terms of probably the one question that I think I get asked more than any other question by CMOs or people that in that kind of role is how do you make the case for building a brand in the long term? Because everyone, I think what I've noticed in the last few years is that we're getting more and more short term and it's more and more product orientated. Got to shift this number of boxes. How do you go about balancing that sort of long term ambition to build the Samsung brand versus the immediate need to shift more flip phones this quarter.

[Benjamin Braun]

So there are a couple of things I think you should do with your CFOs and CEOs and other C level members. You should do mystery shopping with them. You should physically walk into various different stores and see what happens when you're trying to buy products in your category. And then you should do the same thing sitting on your boss's phone or tablet and see how they browse the category and how they buy, etc. And then they should also observe people who are real customers doing it. This is pretty straightforward research. It's easy to do yourself. You don't have to pay a lot of money or an agency to do it, but it will open your eyes and open other C level members eyes into the value of a brand. If you stand on Oxford street at John Lewis on the third floor and you're about to buy a TV and all the TVs look the same, they all show Disney and Netflix and BBC iPlayer, they're all more or less priced the same. How do I convince you to buy the Samsung tv? How do we get people instinctively to choose Samsung ahead of one of our competitors? And we've done that for the last 18 years. I don't think I want to give away some of those. But there are tricks on doing that and it comes down to deep psychological beliefs that people have when it comes to looking at a brand and the perceived value of that brand and the promise that that brand gives you.

[John Evans]

It's a good trick you use there, actually, which is putting your colleagues, CFO, CEO, etc. Etc. In the shoes of the customer. Because it's funny actually, because in business we were so focused on the business metrics that when you ask the question, why did you buy that mobile phone? Why'd you buy that tv? Why did you buy that new suit? That often reveals all the kind of things that we're trying to do as marketers to influence.

[Benjamin Braun]

So when I got the job at Audi, which is a fantastic job, very excited, the first thing that I got on the first day of arriving in the office was a key to a brand new Audi Q5 SUV. Fully specced, amazing, super expensive, looked, wow, glitz. And that was my car from the company. It actually took me longer to get my laptop, tablet and phone to get it going and I had to fill out forms and requests, etc. It was quite cumbersome.

[John Evans]

Wow.

[Benjamin Braun]

Then it came to me ordering my next car. There was a very simplistic Excel spreadsheet where I just put down what car I wanted and they ordered it from the factory and that was my next car. In one of my very first presentations to the leadership there, I said, this stops now. Because what happens is that you do not go to a dealership, you don't go to the Audi website like real consumers do to do the research. So from now on if you want a company car, you order it online or you go to a dealership and that's part of your research process. Because what will happen is you will find loads of things that you think are, that's wrong, that's not good enough. We need to change this. Consumer shouldn't experience this. And so we drive the change that was needed. Another thing that I found when I joined Audi was that the official Audi app was blocked on our phones and asked for it to be unblocked because of security. They blocked all non native apps, which was crazy. That meant that no one used our own app, which meant it wasn't a particularly good app because no one was really feeding back on the app. And so by enabling it and pushing it down as a default app, suddenly we got a lot of people having a lot to say about our own app that drove change, including our website, et cetera. I think something really interesting happened as Covid hit us because the marketing teams were marketeers. But suddenly during COVID many marketing teams also owned the brand website. And overnight the brand website went from being a brand brochureware website to being the number one shopping window of the brand, including Samsung. We had to shut all of our stores, most people had shut all of their stores. And the only way you could still buy a Samsung product was through samsung.com and suddenly the marketing community had to grow up overnight and realize it's not just about glitzy photos and beautifully copywriting and actually needs to convert as well. What we do needs to convert to profitable sales or we go out of business.

[John Evans]

That's so true. Probably the number one tip in my career has always been the closer I am to the customer, the better a marketer I am. And as soon as I see that distance emerging and I start to look into the company and think about the internal processes and decision making, that's when I lose my ability to become a marketer. So any reason you can have to embed being close to your customer day to day? You know, every single day when I.

[Benjamin Braun]

Worked at, when I worked at British Gas and I worked at Compare the market, we did call listening. We read social media posts from consumers, we read people's emails to us, et cetera, as a leadership team to understand what was going on. But I think my managing director at British Gas took it to the next level. He would sit like this in the boardroom and every time we had a meeting, he would bring two people from our contact centers in Cardiff and Leeds and sit next to him. And as all of us presented our various different ideas. He would just lean towards the real call reps and go, what do you think about that idea? And they would just go, rubbish. Will never work in the real life. And he would just shut it down immediately.

[John Evans]

That's genius. I thought that was so smart.

[Benjamin Braun]

Bring the people in who are the closest to consumers to give you real feedback to your presentation.

[John Evans]

There's an argument, actually, I did have this for a time when I was at lucasader Ibina, but there's an argument to have the customer care team report into marketing, because actually that is a hotline to anything that's going wrong. Advanced warning of things going wrong. A hotline into what's good or bad. And you know, the complaint, as they say, One complaint represents 100 people on average, doesn't it? So it's a pretty good process. Yeah. I wanted to end if I can. I know you've been quite open, honest and vocal about your dyslexia and you shared a lot of that online. So I think sometimes hidden disabilities, as we sort of call them, like, they're more prevalent than maybe we realize. It's nice when I think it's good when someone is so open about these things. What have you been able to share about your struggle with it? And what advice have you got for people that might be listening and watching that have also faced some of those challenges?

[Benjamin Braun]

So I went to school in Sweden. My dyslexia impacted my Swedish reading and writing, so I was sent off to. I'm translating directly from Swedish here to retard Swedish.

[John Evans]

Wow.

[Benjamin Braun]

And just imagine as a seven, eight, nine, year old kid, you're told that you have to go to retard class. That could potentially set you up for failure in life because it will knock your confidence. And the reason I decided to start talking about dyslexia was that I was speaking to a couple of people in my PR team about what my narrative should be about. And I told them I have dyslexia. And there was a woman in the team who said, oh, I've got dyslexia too. I didn't know you have dyslexia. You should talk about it. So I thought that's interesting because a lot of people probably shy away from that conversation because it has a stigma associated with it. We know from a lot of research that people who have dyslexia have a different way of thinking, which is less linear, which means that we get to answers in a different way, which means that we might have more creative solutions. We find Patterns and path that are less obvious. And so I'm afraid that people. So the reason I started talking about it is I'm afraid that there are going to be kids in school who are diagnosed with dyslexia who think that they will never, ever be able to achieve. And if I speak about it, and I'm proud about my dyslexia, I hope it gives them confidence to also achieve. Having dyslexia shouldn't be a hindrance. You just need to understand how to harness that power to your advantage. And I know a lot of parents who have kids who have dyslexia who've contacted me now trying to understand how that's impacted my career. And it's only impacted in a positive way because I've. I've kind of owned it and I make it mine and I use it to my advantage. And so the reason I keep on talking about dyslexia is that I want people to know that it is not a career limiting neurodiversity. It's quite the opposite. Use it to your advantage and you will unlock things that other people will not be able to have.

[John Evans]

Yeah, that's a lovely way to look at it as well, isn't it? So not just how do you cope with it, but how do you turn it into an advantage as well?

[Benjamin Braun]

And I don't think I know enough about ADHD or add. It's another neurodiverse area, a spectrum that's interesting. And I know there's a lot of people who are worried about kids having ADHD as well. But we also know that many of the leaders of businesses, many of the greatest innovators in the world, have dyslexia and have adhd. So somehow there is a magic recipe in this neurodiverse community that allow people to be different. It's their personality, it's their character, and their brains are wired or our brains are wired differently. And so how do you harness that? If you are a team leader and you have someone with neurodiversity in your team, how do you work with that person to maximize the value you can get out of them? If you are a parent, if you're a kid, how do you recognize it and use it to your advantage?

[John Evans]

That's a wonderful question. I love that. Benjamin, thank you for being open about that because I think a lot of people will value hearing you talk about it, particularly how it's not held you back and, you know, made you successful. Thank you, mate. It's been great. So I could talk for a long time with you by the way, because I'm like the amount of tech that we could spend probably a whole day kind of getting into. But thank you for sharing your experience and what you've done in your career and I know a lot of people are going to value it.

[Benjamin Braun]

It's been great to be in your studio and I look forward to speaking to you.

[John Evans]

Yeah, look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on X censorcmo or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next.