Tune in to Time for A Reset
Melanie – 00:00:01:
So if you really understand the consumer’s journey, then you will be able to market to them much better and help them be aware of your brand and want to consider and purchase your brand. And that path to purchase is different in every single category you’re in. So some of that have a really long consideration period where you need to do a lot of education. And that’s your role as a brand is to educate, but not try to sell until they’ve moved through that information and education process. And now they’re starting to look at products.
Paul – 00:00:33:
Welcome to the Time For A Reset Marketing Podcast: Insights From Global Brand Marketeers, brought to you by CvE-Marketing Consultancy. I’m your host, Paul Frampton-Calero, and in each episode, I dive deep into the minds of senior marketing leaders from around the world. Join me as we explore what they want to hit reset on an ever-changing landscape and uncover strategies that drive successful brand transformation. Welcome back to another episode of Time For A Reset. Today, I’m delighted to be joined by Melanie Huet, who’s the President for Brand Management and Innovation at Newell Brands. So welcome, Mel.
Melanie – 00:01:24:
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Paul.
Paul – 00:01:26:
Delighted to have you here. This is one in a series of a number of conversations we’re having with senior marketeers at CPGs to go deep into the transformation and evolution on the CPG side of marketing. So I’m really excited to have this conversation. Mel has spent a lot of her time in CPG, has worked at big giant CPGs like Kraft Heinz, Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, and obviously now at Newell Brands. And I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but she comes with a huge amount of experience in this sector and a huge amount of experience in the brand and marketing space. So I’m really looking forward to asking you this first question, Mel, which is, if you did have, as we were talking about a second ago, that big orange or red button in front of you to reset something in the marketing industry, what is it that you’d reset?
Melanie – 00:02:09:
Whatever the color of the button is, if I could hit that button, I would reset how we have split brand marketing and performance marketing into two very separate groups. To me, that’s a travesty. So I understand when it came online, why it happened. But, I worked for a CMO who used to tell us when digital marketing was starting, there is no digital marketing, there’s just marketing. And I thought that was really smart. And I see brand marketing and performance marketing the same way. It should be one team, one media budget, one aligned set of goals. And now when you look at that whole funnel of media, they’re right on top of each other, brand and performance. So I’d love to see us bring them back with a holistic mindset that it’s marketing.
Paul – 00:02:55:
I love that, Mel, because I think we’re very good at marketing of creating these silos, aren’t we, in these separations, whether it’s brand and response or brand and performance marketing or offline and online, as if the consumer ever looks at these things like that.
Melanie – 00:03:09:
Right.
Paul – 00:03:10:
So you touched on the fact that obviously over time, there’s become that separation. At one point, I guess all marketing was really considered brand. And then digital came along and we were able to measure things through to response and performance marketing was born. It’s almost to me as if we’ve almost created two slightly different cultures and tribes as well, though, because there’s the data-driven side of performance marketing. And then there’s brand, which tends to be, I’m not saying exclusively, but a lot more about mental availability and top of the funnel consumer insight. Do you think it’s easy to bring those two worlds back together now?
Melanie – 00:03:44:
Well, you said easy. I don’t know if it’s easy, but I do think it’s possible. So I think there’s two different questions there. And I liked how you framed it up because I do think people that sort of associate themselves as brand marketers are seen as fluffy people that can never deliver an ROI and nobody really knows where they spend that money. And I do think CFOs have fallen in love with performance marketers because they’ll walk in and be able to talk about this dollar drove this conversion, this ROAS. And that’s really a CFO’s dream. But in my mind, it’s one conversation. Because also like you mentioned, Paul, when a consumer sees an ad on Instagram, they don’t know if they’re receiving an upper funnel brand building ad or a targeted communication to drive conversion. They just know they’re seeing a message. And that’s why I feel so strongly that we really need to be one team.
Paul – 00:04:35:
Yeah, great. No, I think that’s a great point. And I often think about the fact that we almost like position data, and you’ll know this work in the CPG space, that there are a lot of orgs with DDM teams in CPG, which suggests that data only lives in that team. Whereas obviously, data that leads to insight applies as much to top of the funnel as it does to bottom of the funnel. But we have this habit of going, well, if we’re using data, that’s going to drive an outcome that we can probably measure within seven days. Therefore, we should put it in Performance Marketing. So we haven’t really helped ourselves ever since probably direct marketing came along, even before digital, like just DM and targeting people in their homes with door drops. We haven’t really helped ourselves because once it became possible, as you said, it’s much easier for a financial or exec audience to look at, I spent this and I got this outcome within a short period of time. Whereas having a brand conversation requires talking about leading indicators and how those metrics will suddenly start to concertina towards sales in the long term. So I imagine you must have to have conversations around setting expectations about the time it takes to pull through things from brand into response. Is that true?
Melanie – 00:05:44:
Oh, absolutely. We were always looking at our investments, trying to understand the return to driving on our investments. I’ve had the privilege of working on so many great brands, Paul, like you mentioned at the beginning. And so many of them were living and breathing off of prior investments, brands that used to have a ton of advertising, like for example, Capri-Sun, tons and tons of advertising in the 80s and 90s, that that equity was being paid off for decades, I’m the advertising. And then you get to a team where it’s like we have a lot of advertising and now we’re trying to measure. So yeah, it’s a little tough sometimes to measure the equity piece, but it’s really critical. And like I said, the performance marketers tend to be a favorite in the C-suite because they walk in with their little numbers and it’s all snappy. They’re like that $5 got you $2.
Paul – 00:06:33:
Well, and also quite often some small D2C brand piques the attention of someone in the C-level and all they do is performance marketing half the time. So it’s like, well, do we need all this other stuff? And it’s like, well, to your point, if you look at the strength of Capri-Sun or Coca-Cola or whatever else and stock and the mental availability that’s been built over years and decades just means that consideration is almost always there rather than you having to build it to your point when you are a fresher brand. So you talked about aligning marketing strategy with business. And I’d love to hear a little bit more about how you work with the org to make sure that marketing is really anchoring up to where the business is trying to get to.
Melanie – 00:07:13:
Yeah, I’m a really big believer that marketers need to be financial stewards of the business too. And so I think that’s how we avoid the fluffy, Melanie just wants to spend money but doesn’t want to be held accountable type nomenclature that could be assigned to a marketer. So if you’re a financial steward of the business, you have your business goals. And then we look at the marketing strategies that we need to deliver those business goals. And today, things are like they’re moving at such a fast pace. I mean, things are moving on a daily basis. And it used to be more like we’d see a change come every six months, or it was a much, much slower pace. And today, it’s frenetic. And so what we try to do around some of those things, Paul, is try really hard to have the business goals and the marketing strategies, and they’d be very flexible and agile on the execution of the strategy. Because that’s the place where you can move. So today, it’s TikTok. Tomorrow, don’t know. It’s going to be or on this particular brand, I need to penetrate Gen Z. So I’m going to be in Snapchat, or we can move execution around on a daily basis. Strategy needs to be more stable and constant.
Paul – 00:08:20:
Yeah, no, I think that’s absolutely right. And there’s always been, or at least recently, there’s been a lot of talk about agility in marketing. And I think if you talk to 10 different CMOs, you’ll probably get a slightly different version of what agility means. In some, it might just be an adjective. And others, they’ve actually deployed agile sprint and standups within the business. It sounds like you’ve worked hard to build a culture of flexibility to be able to maneuver the execution. And is that something that you’ve built internally and connected through to your agency ecosystem as well?
Melanie – 00:08:53:
Yes, but I would say that agencies are naturally a lot more agile than marketers in a manufacturing environment. And private equity really taught me how to move immediately, pivot today. When you work in a private equity environment, when they give you a to-do, they mean do it that night, or the next morning, within hours, within days, they don’t mean come back to me in three weeks with a plan document, then six weeks later, we’ll talk about X. And then maybe three months later, we finally do something. And I think that’s the opportunity for CPG marketers and public companies is to really evolve your mindset around I need to act now. And also flex your media plans and a lot of your other activities to, okay, I started loading spend against this particular asset, is it scaling? Is it engaging?
Paul – 00:09:42:
Right.
Melanie – 00:09:43:
Within hours? Am I going to pour more money on or am I going to abandon? Because maybe it just wasn’t the strongest piece of…
Paul – 00:09:49:
I love that. I think that’s the nirvana of what is possible, as you said earlier. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s possible as long as you have the right culture, the right mindset and the right processes. And I had a very similar experience. I spent 18 months in a VC back, startup and the CEO, the founder would ask for something and literally was expected that that day you would have something. And it creates a very different way of thinking because I think it’s on the wall behind me. Done is better than perfect or something similar, progress over perfection, that you can spend a lot of time trying to make something like really, really precise, but you can get to a fairly good place in a short period of time. And then to your point, put it into the wild, see what the data is starting to tell you and then adapt. Whereas possibly the old school of brand management in CPG was to your point, those much longer timeframes where you had the time and you went and did every bit of research possible. Then you started to think about evolving the product, then testing it before you got close to putting it in market, especially with AI. You can almost create something as a test and put it into market within hours these days, can’t you?
Melanie – 00:10:50:
Oh yeah, absolutely. There’s all sorts of techniques. You can put it up for sale, actually, even if you don’t have the product, get some feedback on if people click on it or want to buy it. I mean, there’s so many tools we never had. So to your point, Paul, it’s completely changed. I love your VC experience because I have a similar experience, which is when you’re taught to just get going, just get moving and just get it done. It’s amazing how 80% good, but first to market is a massive advantage over maybe I’m 98% good on what I’m doing. So I’ve refined a few points, but I’m much slower. You’re going to lose.
Paul – 00:11:27:
Yeah, 100% agree. And I’ve often found, I think you and I aligned on this, I’ve often found that people talk about that, talk about growth mindset, but unless you’ve been in that environment or you’ve been exposed to some training to put you into that environment, it’s quite difficult to step out of the old world of, well, sure, I’ve got time and I don’t need to do all of that today, do I?
Melanie – 00:11:47:
Well, you know, it’s so funny, Paul. I don’t know how it was for you, but for me, it was shocking. So, you know, I went into this new culture. I mean, it shocked the heck out of me. I was like, whoa, I’m like, what’s going on? And it feels a little reckless at first. And then you learn, yeah, and then you learn it’s not reckless. There is actually a lot of thought put into it.
Paul – 00:12:05:
It does. I agree.
Melanie – 00:12:07:
But your time frame and your requirements for execution change where you have to move, you have to do more with gut, you have to be agile, and you have to also know which pieces shouldn’t move at that pace. So I think a lot of things in marketing should move that way. And that’s how I try to conduct myself and coach others. There are certain things like packaging where you better go slow. You better measure several times. Because a fake package could end your brand.
Paul – 00:12:34:
Right. No, I like that. The distinction between where you should and where you should take some more time, like you say, strategy and making sure you’ve aligned stakeholders or getting the packaging right. It can’t be applied to everything, but it probably can be applied to a lot more than most people think it can.
Melanie – 00:12:49:
Yeah, I think so too.
Paul – 00:12:50:
So CPGs, I mean, I touched on it a second ago, and I know you guys in your brands have definitely gone down this route. There’s been a shift. Historically, CPGs didn’t have that much access to data. Clearly, the retailers still have most of the data, but that world has changed dramatically. How has, in the time you’ve been in CPG and in Newell, have you seen shift towards being more data-driven in how you do everything, like insights, planning, and then, of course, like the actual performance marketing? But I’m almost more interested in how it’s just changed the process of how you go to market.
Melanie – 00:13:22:
Well, there’s so much data available. So if you’re lucky enough as a brand to have D2C, you have a tremendous amount of real-time data. And at Newell, we do have Yankee Candle, and we do have a yankeecandle.com website that transacts quite a bit of our business. So we are able to have the advantage of having that. But assuming you’re a brand that doesn’t have a D2C, you’re stuck more in the traditional world of CPG or durables where less information exists. Other tools have come online. So you can pull up Amazon ratings and reviews, get as much data as you want, real-time at your fingertips. There’s all kinds of things you can go scrape off the internet. There’s data you can buy. And now the audience data that you can get through Amazon and quite a few other partners is pretty fascinating. It tells you who’s buying, and it also lets you target who you think you want to buy your brand. We’ve had some great success. We launched the Sharpie Creative Markers. It’s been huge, huge launch renewal. So if you take a look out there, Sharpie is one of our marquee brands. Our launch is exceeding expectations. And we did some of the traditional work. So we did some bases work and all the things marketers would know around studying products. But we also used some social media data. We took a look at white space in the market, and we realized there was an opportunity to fill in a gap around creative markers. And then our brand marketers and the agency spent some time just observing consumers, Paul.
Paul – 00:14:47:
Interesting.
Melanie – 00:14:48:
And what they found was when they handed them the markers, the consumers automatically started drawing on bicycles and other items that you wouldn’t have expected, wood and different types of material. Because when they saw this beautiful opaque marker lay down, to them, the world is your canvas. You could take this marker and use it on almost anything. So that exploration ended up showing up in the advertising work.
Paul – 00:15:13:
That’s brilliant. I love that.
Melanie – 00:15:15:
Yeah.
Paul – 00:15:16:
Yeah, that’s beautiful. Isn’t it? Because I mean, it’s able to be brought to life because the product is created by definition. And by creating a new product with that, you created a new spectrum of creativity. And then that’s just fed into how you’ve done your own creative marketing. So that’s actually quite a nice infinity loop.
Melanie – 00:15:34:
It was.
Paul – 00:15:35:
Funnily enough, I have to tell you this story. So when we were out in Japan the last couple of weeks, my seven-year-old, because cash is a big thing there, he had coins and he asked if he could have coins. So we kept giving him things to do and he would get a few coins. And then he started going and buying things in the shops. Anyway, he’s got back here, found his coins in the UK. And the first thing he went into a shop to do in WH Smith, which is like a stationary newsagent shop, went in and bought his own Sharpies. That was his choice of product to buy, but his own money. And very proudly, when I came out of my office last night, he’s like, I bought these Sharpies and look what I’ve drawn. So I just thought it was nice human story that connects back to what you were talking about.
Melanie – 00:16:13:
That was nice.
Paul – 00:16:15:
Yeah, he’s talking about starting his own YouTube channel soon and getting likes.
Melanie – 00:16:20:
That’s awesome. I love that we have another brand ambassador. That’s amazing.
Paul – 00:16:23:
I’m following. So maybe he can be your new brand ambassador.
Melanie – 00:16:28:
Okay. It’s in the family, I guess, being a famous podcast.
Paul – 00:16:33:
Maybe. One of the other areas I link to the data piece, Mel, there’s been a lot of talk about zero-party data and certain CPGs have gone very heavy into collecting lots of either zero first party. And sometimes the difference can be a little bit unclear. How much have you guys started to think about? And you touched on buying data a second ago. Have you started to think about different ways to collect data or work with some of the retail partners to get access to new second party data, potential use cases? How big is that for new brands?
Melanie – 00:17:05:
Most of our categories are purchased on a really long purchase cycle. So it could be years before you come back into the category. If you think about we sell Coleman tents or we have a lot of products that don’t cycle rapidly like CPG. So for those brands, the data is not as meaningful to us as looking at other triggers like when someone’s entering the market to buy. That’s the most meaningful thing. And we actually partner with Amazon, Google, those types of companies to help see all the indicators of I’m about to enter the marketplace. So we can work for conversion for this. But for the brands that move at a high pace, like they’re bought every other week or once a month, I think this data is really helpful as long as you can do something with it.
Paul – 00:17:49:
Absolutely.
Melanie – 00:17:49:
So I’ve seen a lot of brands that creates a lot of consumer names, but then they don’t do anything with it. You have to keep those lists updated. You have to communicate in a way that drives some value for the consumer. If you’re not able to update your list and provide meaningful content. You can actually be at risk of turning people off where your communication annoying and they want you to go away. And your desire would be that they love you and want to engage with you and spend more time with you.
Paul – 00:18:17:
So true. And there are a few that have fallen into the trap of just, we need X amount of X million email addresses and we’re going to start a CRM program. And the interesting thing, I think, and as you rightly point out, in the broad CPG category, there are so many different types of products with different cycles and different attribution windows. So it varies, but there are also, I think, so many different types of ways of accessing data, like you said, potentially working with different media owners, vendors to get access to intent data, buying in certain data, working with retailers to get access to data, or even just almost like renting data. You don’t, like anything, if you’re in a business, you don’t always need to buy and acquire. There are other ways to rent or to borrow. And I think maybe the data space is still a little bit mason from that perspective, where it’s like, well, everybody needs lots of first party data. Well, it’s expensive to get in the first place. Then it’s expensive to maintain. And to your point, you then got to deliver on the expectation that something of value is going to be provided at some frequency. So you start a ball rolling that if you’re three years down the line and you haven’t followed through, you’ve invested a ton of money that isn’t going to return. So I think you’re right that you need to think very carefully when building data strategies, because otherwise everyone could just fall into the same approach and go for hitting a very short term metric of numbers of email addresses or number of data records, and then not quite know what they’re going to do with it later.
Melanie – 00:19:43:
That’s right, Paul. And a better place to spend money, in my opinion, is on the path to purchase. So if you really understand the consumer’s journey, then you will be able to market to them much better and help them be aware of your brand and want to consider and purchase your brand. And that path to purchase is different in every single category you’re in. So some of that have a really long consideration period, where you need to do a lot of education. And that’s your role as a brand is to educate but not try to sell until they’ve moved through that information and education process. And now they’re starting to look at products. So some of those might be some of our baby products, for example. And then you have other products where it’s like, okay, once they’re in, they’re going to transact really fast. And so you may only have two or three quick opportunities to convert to sale. And so that’s a completely different ballgame to be in a lot of CPG tends to sit there. Plus, you might benefit a lot if they have a positive view of your brand prior to even entering the category. So that’s what I find so fun about marketing is there’s so much data out there. But you need to understand back to the beginning of our conversation. What is your business goal?
Paul – 00:20:53:
Right.
Melanie – 00:20:53:
What’s your marketing strategy? So you actually go look at the right data sets. I mean, in some way, we’ve almost moved into a world of there’s so much data. You can be distracted and wandering around looking at the wrong data sets that really aren’t that helpful. So if you go back to the basics of marketing, you know, what’s the path to purchase? What does matters to my consumer? Those are the places where you’d want to get data and then use to ultimately drive sales.
Paul – 00:21:18:
Yeah, great point. And I touched briefly on the retail side. Given the nature of your products, how important is the eruption that retail media over the last few years? How important is that to what you guys do? And I appreciate that some of the categories, the purchase are much more spread out or longer term, but is retail media an important part of your strategy going to market? And how do you see that space evolving? Because as with any new, you can’t call it a channel because it’s not a channel, but any new area, I struggle to know what to call it or discipline. Often, there’s a lot of very fast growth, then there’s some consolidation. I’m not sure we can continue with 100 plus RMNs for the next 10 years, for instance. So I’d love your perspective on that.
Melanie – 00:22:03:
Well, I’m glad you asked. I think retailer media is critical, Paul, but it’s really Amazon’s like 75% of the retail media market. So there’s Amazon and there’s everybody else. So maybe I’ll give you my answer in two parts. So for Amazon, we see that a lot, especially the younger you are, the more likely you are to use Amazon as your search engine when you’re looking for a product than Google. So now we have both Google and Amazon competing for being the search engine of choice. And it moves a lot in the category. But some categories, like I said, Amazon is actually higher than Google in terms of where a consumer might go. So it’s absolutely critical because that’s where they’re going to start. You need to be present and you need to be participating in a major way. For everybody else that’s in retailer media, I think it’s going to be interesting because now the marketers are looking at this as part of their general media buy. And at first, we were just excited that those were coming online. And now you’re going to have to compete with all the rest of the media and show that your ROI is actually going to deliver. That we’re not just spending money and it’s sort of going out into the great big blue sky. We actually need to see that we’re getting a return on investment. And some of the retailers are doing it pretty well, I would say for most, I still see it as a gap.
Paul – 00:23:21:
Yeah, no, really interesting. I mean, it chimes with a lot of our experience. I mean, some of the CPMs that emerged originally in this space, when you actually then compare it to, as you say, other open web or other digital or even traditional media acquisition costs, just because it’s good data, if it doesn’t work as well, it still doesn’t work as well. So I think there’s some interesting compression there. Obviously, the incrementality piece is critical to real proof. And I think you’re right there, some that do that very well. And there are others that maybe haven’t quite proven exactly what incrementality is proven beyond the the trade environment. And then, as you say, the comparison with paid media makes it a whole different ballgame. It’s not just because a retailer has media inventory that you’re always going to buy it unless it actually returns.
Melanie – 00:24:07:
That’s right.
Paul – 00:24:08:
So we’ve almost got close to it a couple of times. I don’t think we can have this conversation about resetting in marketing without talking about generative AI. Every business is at a slightly different stage. And to me, there’s the automation, email improvement, creative production piece. And then there’s the potential for new ways of generating insight, new ideation and everything else, which is probably more nascent. Where are you guys in your, I guess, either evolution in thinking towards AI or your hope for what AI could actually bring to the business?
Melanie – 00:24:43:
Yeah, two interesting questions. So we think that we’re in front of our peer set in utilizing AI and implementing it in our organization. We saw it as a huge leapfrog opportunity for Newell to take advantage. We have some older IT systems in our organization. So for us, AI is like, yes, this is amazing. This could give us a real advantage over others that maybe have an advantage over us up until recently. We have a governance process, Paul. And I do think that that’s important for people who are looking at AI is making sure that you keep a handle on the scope of it in the organization. And that also from a legal perspective, you protect yourself in terms of risk and IP and other things where those can come into play with AI. But once you’ve worked out that piece, we’re doing a lot of testing and learning. And when we have a successful test to learn, then we move into basically pilot and scale. And some of the fun things we’ve been doing is we’ve been building digital personas, Paul, that have really advanced our insights capability.
Paul – 00:25:45:
Oh, nice. So actually build, what’s the word, almost like a virtual persona and then play out what that person does customer journey wise. Is that what you mean?
Melanie – 00:25:55:
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. So we’ll take our consumer segmentation. And let’s say that person is into gadgets, and we’re talking about home appliances, what we can do is we can then build a profile based on our segmentation data, and create this person. And we could name this person Paul or Melanie or any name we want to. And we can build multiple of them. So we can actually build a digital focus group. But with these synthetic personas, we can then ask them questions and engage them. And so we’re getting all kinds of high fidelity feedback off of them, and they go scrape their answers from the web. And we’ve told them who they are and what they like to do and all those great things.
Paul – 00:26:34:
Yeah.
Melanie – 00:26:34:
And we’re finding that responses are really on target, as if we had talked to a human. So it’s been a huge leap forward for us in terms of how we conduct insights at the company.
Paul – 00:26:45:
I love that. I really like that, actually. My brain is spinning about how to apply that request. I think that’s a fabulous use case.
Melanie – 00:26:53:
Yeah, [inaudible] to go read it this summer.
Paul – 00:26:55:
Yeah, fabulous use case. My team of consultants, I’m always encouraging them to be better at content creation and put out thought leadership. And quite a few of them were saying, well, we struggle a little bit with starting on LinkedIn. So I built a GPT that basically helps putting a few pointers of what you want to write out. And then it starts to develop posts for you. And you know what? I probably spent 35 minutes teaching it and then it does it. And to your point, it’s incredible what value you can get out of quite small. It goes back to our earlier point about what you can get out of just doing 80%. AI has almost taken it to another level where spend a small amount of time, teach it, ask it some of the right questions, have a dialogue, and then the output you’ll get is pretty remarkable. And don’t expect it to be perfect, but it gets you to a place that allows you to then enhance it and saves you so much time. So I think that persona piece is both probably automates, speeds up the process of gaining insights, but it also just makes this way more accessible to all of your marketeers to do that.
Melanie – 00:27:54:
It does. And it’s particularly helpful for the little brands that are always told, you’re not a priority, you don’t get any budget, you don’t get people resources. And so for them, they’re like, yes, I finally have something. And so once we’ve set them up, we let the insights team use them with the marketers. And so those teams feel like it’s a tremendous improvement over where they were.
Paul – 00:28:17:
Yeah, that’s super smart. I like that. So, Mel, as we come towards the close or the end of the interview, I’m going to change tack a little bit. And there’s a two slightly more forward thinking questions. The first is, as a senior marketer, you’ve seen how, as you said, like the evolution of marketing in a CPG, exposure to a private equity, and how brand and performance and how all of that has evolved. If you’re looking forward in a world where technology and AI is clearly going to play more of a role in what we do. And marketing is becoming more scientific, what do you think the attributes of tomorrow’s senior marketer will be?
Melanie – 00:28:53:
Well, I think we need to future-proof ourselves, Paul, so that we don’t show up as old marketers that can only talk about building brand equity. And so a future-proof CMO, or whatever title they want to give us, looks like someone that can really hold their own in the data conversation, that you understand data, you understand MarTech, you understand master data, backend systems, as well as all of the pieces around content and digital assets. So there’s a lot in the technology space. As well as understanding all the algorithms on all the different social media platforms and places where you place your media, so that you can be a party at the table around the media conversation. I think the second piece is you need to be a financial-driven leader and really hold yourself accountable, that the work that you do, that you don’t see yourself as a cost center in the organization, you see yourselves as driving revenue and top line. So that’s really important that marketing starts to hold itself accountable for sales, as well as probably driving the gross margin line. And then I think finally, we still do what we do, which is we’re there to build brands, make sure the brand positioning is relevant, make sure we’re building that equity with current and future consumers, and always building a pipeline of new. So it’s become a really complicated, large scope role.
Paul – 00:30:12:
Absolutely. And I love that rounded answer. And I think the way you just finished that is so true. That the breadth and the variety of touch points that a marketer has in an organization today, is both incredible and positive, but also it’s a lot. And I can imagine it can be quite an exhausting role at times because you have to jump between many different disciplines. But I think what you said is really incisive in terms of think about marketing as a growth engine, think about how you understand insights and how you keep ahead of the change and how both consumer and technology is changing consumer behavior, which probably takes me as a slight segue onto my final question, which is every time I interview a guest, everyone’s well, these guests are so smart, so sophisticated. As someone listening to it, how could I possibly ever hope to be in that space? But I know, Mel, because I know myself that we’re all always a work in progress. And there’s always things that we’re trying to get better at, whether that’s professionally or personally. So I’d love you to be vulnerable for a minute and maybe share what you’re working on.
Melanie – 00:31:14:
Well, it’s no secret. I’m a Gen Xer. And there are some of us out there. We do exist. And I’m trying to stay relevant. Yeah, we’re still here, even if people like to leave us off the generational charts. We still exist. And I’m trying to stay relevant and stay up to date. And that’s what I’m working on. And I work on it every day. And so I’ll be sitting in a meeting if somebody drops a new buzzword or acronym, I’m like, oh, great. Now I’m going to spend all weekend trying to figure out what that is. But what I’ve been doing is Saturday morning, I grab a cup of coffee, I sit next to my dog, and I scroll. It’s TikTok. It’s YouTube. It’s Shorts. It’s reels. Maybe there’s a new social media platform. Maybe I heard about a new piece of software or a new buzzword. I go to YouTube and search it and watch some videos because it’s moving so fast that I think all of us that are in marketing have to spend some dedicated time to stay up to speed. And that’s what I work on. So it’s great if somebody thinks that I’m on top of it, and I know all of it, then I’m hopefully doing the right amount of research.
Paul – 00:32:17:
Then it’s working. It’s definitely working. I really like that. And what I like about it is a lot of people will say that I keep up with it, but I love the fact that you are sitting and going and getting native in the platforms and playing around with it because that’s the real way you learn. I often used to say when I first ran my first digital team, which is probably nearly 20 years ago, scarily, that you’re really just learning the art of the possible. By understanding how the technology works and how the pipes plug together. Don’t think about yourself as this technical person. Think about yourself as a person that can help translate and show others the possibilities for the future. Because that’s generally what technology is. I mean, most of digital platforms that have risen are, there’s a new signal, whether it’s intent or what people are doing that has changed the nature of how marketing’s run. And those things seem impossible until they happen. Retail media, retailers selling media seemed impossible until one day the technology was there to allow that data to be monetized as media. So I really like the way you think about keeping in touch. And you’ve taken us on a whistle stop tour all the way from your reset around brand and performance through how to get the right balance of moving quick with stopping to do the big important things like strategy and packaging, the importance of data and using data for the right reasons and at the right time. And then I really like how we dug into thinking about the future and how technology plays a role in how data has to be part of the conversation? So I’m really grateful for having had this conversation with you, Mel. So thank you for making the time.
Melanie – 00:33:53:
It’s been so fun. I love all the topics we dug into as well.
Paul – 00:33:57:
Wonderful. Well, hopefully the next time I see you will be at some point I’ll see you in Atlanta.
Melanie – 00:34:01:
That’d be great. I wouldn’t mind coming to London. So feel free to invite me.
Paul – 00:34:06:
Well, yeah, exactly. We can do the, what’s that film? The Holiday. We can do the Screech.
Melanie – 00:34:10:
Okay. That’s a good idea.
Paul – 00:34:12:
Melanie – 00:34:20:
Oh, thanks. Well, I appreciate it. And I can’t wait to hear your upcoming podcast too on the other topics you’re going to cover, Paul.
Paul – 00:34:25:
Yeah, me too. And that’s a wrap for this episode of the Time For A Reset Marketing Podcast: Insights From global Brand Marketers, brought to you by CvE’s Marketing Consultancy. I’ve been your host, Paul Frampton-Calero, and I hope the insights shared today will help you reset and refine your strategies for successful brand transformation. We’d love to hear from you. If you’re enjoying Time For A Reset, please do leave us a comment or a review on your preferred platform and subscribe to be the first to know when a new episode drops. See you next time as I chat with another senior marketing leader. See you soon. Bye
