Episode Transcript – Patrick Zinga of Heineken

Patrick – 00:00:01:

We have culture as a pillar within our KPIs in terms of how does everyone contribute to the culture of the business and help us grow and develop. Because if we’re not having fun and enjoying our brands, then how can we expect our consumers to enjoy our brands? How can we expect to create very good, creative, thought-provoking advertising if we’re not actually enjoying being in a role?

Nick – 00:00:27:

Welcome to the Time for a Reset podcast, where we interview senior marketers on the big issues of the day and how they’re dealing with those challenges in an ever-changing landscape. We deep dive into the latest trends, strategies, and tactics that will help you stay ahead of the curve and stand out in a crowded marketplace. This episode is hosted by me, Nick King, Global Practices Lead at CVE. Let’s get into it. With me today is a man that needs no introduction. With over 13 years experience, Patrick Zinger currently works at the Heinen Company, where his role sees in managing the in-house digital media team, as well as building the data strategy and the MarTech stack for the UK business. His priorities are providing and driving the value of media and its impact in order to enhance the consumer experience. Previous roles saw him in grace in the world of media agencies, where he helped clients like Microsoft, Unilever and Visa with their digital media and data-based strategies. In his spare time, he enjoys photography, as well as advising and mentoring the future talent coming into the industry. Patrick, so good to have you here. Thanks for joining.

Patrick – 00:01:25:

Thank you for having me.

Nick – 00:01:26:

So Patrick, where we always start, what would you hit reset on in the marketing industry?

Patrick – 00:01:33:

Word hit reset on intrusive pop-ups. Anything that’s too intrusive in general, especially in the digital space. Things like having multiple consecutive ads in the middle of a video, autoplay videos, excessive retargeting. Anything that’s just overly too intrusive or too data-led. But I would then move all of the focus more towards value-driven, relevant, and people-first marketing. That respects not only the consumer’s time and space, but also the industry as a whole.

Nick – 00:02:12:

Okay. That’s really interesting. Where do you think the priority and the focus needs to be? Is that a advertising challenge? Is that a big tech challenge? Where do you think the responsibility of solving that challenge lies?

Patrick – 00:02:26:

It’s on all of us. It has to be on all of us. It definitely starts in terms of the partners that we work with and the partners that we choose to work with as well. I think the environments that we’re creating always has to be consumer first. And we always have to think about the user experience of the internet and what that essentially looks like. And we have to respect how people use the internet, how people browse, but also there’s a fine balance in terms of ensuring we’re investing in the industry as well. And we’re giving ourselves adequate enough areas to speak to consumers.

Nick – 00:03:03:

And it feels like that your philosophy lends itself to a more premium world. How does that  manifest itself at Heineken? Are you focused on bigger publishers and bigger advertisers, or are you happy playing the whole ecosystem from the absolute premium to a different end of town, if I can say that more politely?

Patrick – 00:03:23:

Yeah, of course. It’s a little bit of both. I think as with life, pretty much everything is in moderation and everything’s out of balance. Of course, we have premium brands. We want to be aligned with premium inventory. We also want consumers to have the best experience of our brands, which means we have to have better creative, we have to have better placements, and we have to work with partners that enable us to do so. So I would never want one of our ads on a bleeped word site because it’s not how we want to be represented and it’s not how we want our brands to be represented. We always want a good view of us as a company and as a brand in general. So that’s my focus, particularly in digital advertising. And it’s why within Heineken, we built a particular pillar. It’s called consumer experience. The focus on the consumer experience side is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s focusing on how our brand’s represented in every channel, not just online, how we can ensure there’s a consistent message across every channel and the experience our consumers have of our brand is consistent as well.

Nick – 00:04:36:

And have you found that got easier or harder over the past  10 to 15 years that you’ve been working in the industry? Because sometimes I feel that Yeah, there’s all these checks and balances and it should be easier. But other times it feels like understanding where your ads appear is just as hard as it’s ever been to focus on.

Patrick – 00:04:55:

Yeah, definitely. Quality inventory. I think quality content in general is the reason why it’s at a premium is because there’s not a lot of it out there, which is why we have a responsibility as advertisers to ensure we are funding things like quality journalism, as an example. Appearing in news sites and not having a fear of not appearing against bad news, etc. Because we feel we may look bad on us as brands. That’s why we have a responsibility to also challenge the partners that we work with and ensure they’re not putting our ads on sites with a ton of clutter, that we are appearing our premium in environments that they’re working. For example, YouTube are working with better creators to create content that consumers actually want to consume and want to watch and want to view. Because the more of that good content that is out there, the better it is collectively for all of us in the industry. So it’s getting harder to find that content. Everything is getting more and more expensive. If you’re looking at TV inflation, for example, that’s an extortionate amount in comparison to what it previously used to be growing year on year. Everyone’s moving into the digital space. It seems like everything’s being digitized, which makes my job a lot harder because there are blurred lines. In terms of what’s the agency’s responsibility versus what an in-house digital team’s responsibilities are. Now that there’s problematic out of home, now that audio is getting more and more automated and personalized, technology is essentially advancing what traditional advertising looks like in the future. So to keep on top of that, to make sure there is consistency in how our brands appear in all of these new developing spaces is hard. But I think we’re doing okay at this particular moment in time. Fingers crossed.

Nick – 00:06:42:

Yeah. I think we’ll dig into how you’re doing that a little bit later. But I wanted to take it back to the beginning. I think a lot of the times people can fall into this industry, but you did an advertising-led degree, so you clearly had an eye on it. Could you just give us a bit of a view of how you got into the industry and why you want to plow this furrow?

Patrick – 00:07:03:

Yeah, it’s a bit of a weird one because you’re in a room full of advertisers or a room full of media people at an agency. And everyone goes around talking about what do they do, before they got into the industry. And a lot of people just fall into advertising. Whereas I had always enjoyed TV ads, especially the humorous ones. And this is when TV ads used to be very creative, used to be incredibly funny, and also used to help create those memories and bonds with brands. I feel like we’ve slowly moved away from the creativity element, especially when it comes to TV ads in general as an industry because there are so many restrictions placed on us in this day and age. So for me, I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was growing up. I didn’t even know that I wanted to do higher education, just because the thought of being in debt was a turnoff in terms of higher education. Like myself, I was working  full-time when I was 16, 17, alongside my studies as well in college at Sainsbury’s. I don’t know if it’s now not legal, right? But back in the day, I was working full-time for a couple of years. And one day I went with a friend to a university opening. This was at Bucks, a new university. And a few of the lecturers just started talking to me because they assumed I was there for the open day instead of accompanying a friend. And there was one particular lecturer who I thought, wow, what you’re selling, I’m completely buying into. We talked about the fact that it was an advertising course. It was one of the first of its kind. Only two other universities actually did it. We talked about, we talked about, the mix of not just being theoretical, not just reading loads of large books. And writing paper, but it was more around putting that theory into practice. So they had a really good relationship at the time with GroupM and PHD and a few other independent agencies who would come in, give some of the talks, give you a live pitch brief, they’d bring a client as well into the sessions to essentially take you through what the problem was. So you felt as though you were a marketer. You felt as though you were part of an agency before you were even in an agency. And that real life experience when I was being told about it at the time really appealed to me. So that’s how I went into doing advertising as a course in university. And to be honest, it was one of the best decisions to accompany a friend to an open day.

Nick – 00:09:36:

Yeah. I love those serendipitous moments that take you on a path. But do you think, is the industry going to evolve and keep that coming? Because I sometimes feel that we’re pulling the ladder up. There’s a lot of grant programs. I mean, you’re clearly doing some work in terms of mentoring. How do you think we continue to progress as an industry? And I think what’s been so amazing about our industry is we’ve always been open to new people coming in with new ideas. That’s how everybody understands the new platforms. And yet sometimes it feels that we’re getting further and further away. Is that your experience or do you see it differently?

Patrick – 00:10:12:

I think if you were to ask me this question 10 years ago, I would say that we’re a very long way off. And I agree with every single point you made there. But genuinely, in the past two to three years, I’ve seen substantial change in the right direction. One of the things that I really enjoyed learning about recently at Heineken was the fact that we are in the process of removing across all of our job ads the requirement for a university degree. Because a lot of stuff that we do, and it’s been shown time and time again with people I’ve worked with that only went to college or didn’t go to college at all. You do not need a university degree to do what we do. It’s an attitude. It’s a want to learn. It’s on the job training. That’s what essentially drives success in our industry. I don’t think a degree or certification surely shows the value of an individual and their contribution or their potential contribution to a business. So I’m glad that we’re leading the market in regards to that. And I’ve seen quite a few other companies also doing the same. There is a lot more focus on apprenticeships and what we can potentially do within that particular space of bringing people on. And there’s a significant more focus on bringing in people from different ethnicities, etc. into the industry because there is value in various opinions, various backgrounds contributing together to tell a story. And that’s where good ideas essentially come from. It’s that collaboration across a variety of different people and their different lived experiences. So I’d say, yeah, we’re getting much better and significantly better to what it previously used to be. But we’re not there yet. And there still needs to be significant change. I think one of the problems that I had when I was an agent it came to this particular topic was we had all of these new initiatives of bringing people in from various backgrounds, etc. But there was no focus of when you get them in, how do you keep them in? How do you keep them in our industry? How do you create a culture of belonging, a culture of openness that enables those individuals to feel as though they’re seen, to feel as though they can succeed in this industry? That’s difficult. When I was young and you’d look up and there was no one that looked like me in senior positions. So it was difficult to envision a future in advertising because I thought, well, if no one three, four roles above me look like me, then is this an environment I want to continue in? Or is this an environment that’s going to allow me to flourish and grow in my career? And that is something that is true for a lot of people coming into the industry. So I feel like as long as companies are aware of this and they understand that it is not just getting people in. It’s not just going to university open days or college open days. It’s going to be a lot of people going to college open days and saying how amazing their brands are. And they have this apprenticeship in place and all of that jazz. It’s once they’re in, how do you keep them in? How do you keep them engaged? How do you ensure that you invest in them and their future? Because it’s just not the same anymore. If we’re talking about brands and companies 30, 40 years ago, where individuals will join and be at a company for 10 plus years, that isn’t how it is now. Right? You’ll see someone’s LinkedIn and they’ve been out of five or eight different companies in 10 years when it just goes to show that there is a significant onus on the companies to give value back to the employees. They actually have, like I said, we’re in a good place currently right now. There’s been a significant amount of progress, but there’s still a long way to go.

Nick – 00:13:51:

Yeah. I love the whole concept of trying to change that entry criteria. My background, I set up a data and tech consultancy. And my co-founder and I, we went to the same university. And I think I went in with what was maybe a relatively snobby attitude that everybody would have a university degree, some suits-esque, if you’re a fan of suits, view that would only have the best. And actually, this is part of what really changed my view of going, we’ve just got to consider everybody. Very few walk into this industry being able to do it. My brother and sister-in-law are both doctors. They have trained their entire life. And when they started working as a doctor, they could be a doctor. Very few people can do it. So why are we obsessed with one line that says, you can do this, let’s just open the doors and train people and teach them what to do. And I love that you had live client pitches. That  work is going to be invaluable and way better to have that experience than somebody who has no clue what a client wants or expects. So it’s great to hear how you’re operating. So returning it back to Heineken, obviously, everybody’s always interested when you see that somebody is leading an in-house team. Can you just touch a little bit on what does an in-house operation look like to you and how that actually functions day-to-day with any other partners that you’ve got outside of the Heineken marketing team?

Patrick – 00:15:15:

Yeah, any company that’s interested in doing it, I’d tell them it’s hard. It’s not easy at all. I think a lot of people look at it from a cost perspective, not only from a cost perspective, but completely forget the people aspect, which I would say is the most important bit. If you are thinking about in-housing and bringing specialisms in, you also need to think about, again, how do you keep them? How do you keep all that knowledge and all that understanding and all those specialisms that you’re bringing into your business? How do you ensure that those individuals have space to grow and develop and can keep on top of their work and the industry as a whole? We’ve gone through significant change. We started the process four years ago. We’ve moved from a team of six post-COVID to now we’re a team of 16. So there’s been substantial growth, if you think, in three and a half years to go from team of six to 16 is a significant expansion of the team. And it’s because… The business has believed in what we’re doing. They saw the value in what we were doing and we were always able to build business cases and showcase back to the business that yes, it’s efficiencies. Yes, media is a little bit more efficient. Yes, it’s more transparent. And yes, it’s great that you have people working at a company where we all have one vested interest and it’s making our brands work harder for our consumers. We’re all trying to sell the products that we build and we have a vested interest in doing so. So it works out better that way because you’re one brand, one team, and you know your marketing director and your managing director all value your contribution to the wider business. And I wouldn’t have stayed as long as I have stayed at Heineken if I didn’t believe that was the case, if I didn’t believe the senior individuals in the business were seeing the contribution and appreciate a contribution my team is making. So in terms of setup, it was when I came in, it was predominantly to do all of the operational side because yes, we want to onboard a team, but there’s so much operational elements to it that you need to figure out. How do we put training into place? How do we set up our folders? How do we get access to data? How do we work with the legal teams and the brand teams directly? How do we work with procurement as well as the agency that look after all of our offline media to ensure that we’re syncing online and offline so that’s consistency across the board. That stuff’s difficult and it takes time. So the first year was literally getting the basics done and making sure it was done right. And the first KPI was just, let’s prove that we can be more efficient. Cause that’s the first thing we need to do is you’ve onboarded and in-housed the team, let’s confirm that to the business. It was a sound investment, at least from a monetary and procurement perspective, you guys are better off. The next part essentially is building that team. It’s okay. Now we can focus on, we’ve got the basics done. Now we can focus on innovation. Now we can focus on how do we want to grow the business above and beyond just buying ads. It’s our contribution to the brand teams. How do we ensure we get more aligned with what their focuses are? How do we build the brands with them and are seen as not an in-house agency that work for the brands, but instead. Individuals that also contribute and care about the brands that we’re building collectively together. And that’s what we did in the second year was embed our team with the wider marketing function. It was done really well. And we were very lucky that we had my previous boss. She was just very good at understanding strategically what she wanted to achieve and how she wanted to go about doing that. And she hired really well in hiring me for one, but she also trusted her team to do their job. She wasn’t over my shoulder all of the time when I was hiring individuals to come into my team, she let me lead those conversations. She let me hire who I wanted to hire who I believe would contribute and add value to our team. So there’s a lot of trust that needs to go into building an in-house team. So. I’d say we’ve been very lucky because another company would have looked at it, looked at the headcount and just based it on numbers. Oh, there’s a lot of people on this team. A lot of people means a lot of money coming out to pay for these people, a lot of money going out to pay for pensions, a lot of money going out to pay for allowances and expenses, et cetera. Instead of really looking at the value of going, okay, but how are they helping build the brand of tomorrow, the brand of the future and having them in-house? How does that actually benefit us as a business above and beyond an efficiency? Yeah. So yeah, it’s been a journey.

Nick – 00:20:05:

Yeah, it sounds like a great opportunity and you’ve grasped it. One thing I’m always interested in is how you build that culture within an in-house team because the cultures that exist within agencies, for good and for ill, there’s like wide range, but it’s very clearly defined. How did you think about what that culture was when you’re building that in-house operation?

Patrick – 00:20:27:

I mean, imagine going to work for an alcohol based brand. And not having fun, not enjoying yourself. I mean, that would be absolutely horrendous, right? Again, luck. We’ve been very lucky that it’s Heineken that I work for. Would it have been the same if it was a financial brand, if it was another brand that isn’t the same ilk as Heineken? I think Heineken always have this ethos of celebrating togetherness, the joy of togetherness. And that is consistently pushed through across every single team. I think we have culture as a pillar within our KPIs in terms of how does everyone contribute to the culture of the business and help us go and develop. Because if we’re not having fun and enjoying our brands, then how can we expect our consumers to enjoy our brands? How can we expect to create very good, creative, thought-provoking advertising if we’re not actually enjoying being in a role? It’s a little bit different when it’s an in-house team and you’re particularly new to a business because you have to also think, as you mentioned, the culture of that in-house team and how it also is embedded into the overarching culture of the business. So the first few things I needed to make sure when I was building the buying side was succession planning because people care about their future. People care about the fact that if I’m going into a business, they have a plan and they believe that my contribution would lead to me being developed and me progressing and moving forward. That there was a way in which they could learn and be agile, still leverage the agency partners that we have and the knowledge coming from the agencies and not feel as though, oh, I’m essentially just working here until I’m fed up and I can move back to agency or move to another account in a couple of years. So that had to essentially be sorted and thought out really well. And then what we wanted to ensure is that people are having fun. Because what I enjoyed when I was coming into the industry, I started off at Mindshare. It was the most, still is probably the most fun I’ve ever had because it was such a great introduction into the industry. We were doing some really cool stuff, had a really great relationship with the creative agency. We truly believed in partnering with our clients. So we saw them all the time. They gave us business updates, the same way they would give a business update at their company. We went out with them. The whole building relationships by doing something fun outside of work, that is my ethos. I enjoy being with my team. I regard a lot of them as friends. You don’t have to be friends with everyone at work or four-star. I’m not friends with everyone at my job currently, but the ethos has always been, how do we ensure we’re consistently showing up and having fun with each other and enjoying each other’s time. And that doesn’t necessarily have to be drinking. I get it. We’re an alcohol brand, but we do a lot of other stuff. We’ve done one of the peaks in Wales as an example, we did axe throwing as an example, all these little things they contribute to building a culture where people feel appreciated and more importantly, feel safe. And we have an open policy where feedback is always warranted. You give feedback and you receive feedback and we must be happy to do so collectively across the board, whether it’s to your boss or to an individual that’s reporting into you. Everyone is treated as an equal. And we truly believe that any good idea can come from anyone, whether you’re new to the industry or someone who’s been here 30, 40 years, that doesn’t matter. And that’s essentially what needs to continue. And as I was mentioning before, if you’re building an in-house team, you’ve got to get the culture, right? Otherwise people will leave. That’s the biggest problem is why build an in-house team. If people were just going to leave afterwards and you lose all of that knowledge, you’ve spent so much time and effort to bring in.

Nick – 00:24:17:

Yeah. And I’m always interested with in-house teams. When it comes to innovation, I think one of the amazing parts about working with an agency, you just get everybody coming in, tell you all the things they’re doing. Just from a time, but just access point of view. How do you get that culture of innovation when you’re thinking about an in-house team?

Patrick – 00:24:36:

We’ve been very lucky that we align our, we call it the MLA or media learning agenda with our agency. Because again, it’s offline and online. We need to ensure that’s combined and consistent messaging throughout. So we tell them in advance, we share our objectives, our business objectives. We share our team’s objectives. We tell them we want to win awards. We want to be creative. We want to do all of these things. And then we ask them, how do you help us do that? It goes back to what I was saying in regards to the agency and client model needs to be focused on partnerships. It needs to be focused on how do I get the best out of my client? How do I help them improve what they currently have? So it was never seen as, oh no, in-house team, they’re taking money away from us and investing it themselves, et cetera. It was always, how can we help this in-house team flourish? And luck is probably going to be something I say multiple times in this podcast, but we’ve been truly lucky. We’ve had great people that who have really just aligned with us and they’ve focused on how do we build those bonds and that relationship with the in-house team and ensure that there’s consistency in terms of what we’re doing collectively together, that we’re all going towards the same goal, which is essentially selling our brands to consumers. So we’ve worked with our agencies to help drive innovations. The good thing about an in-house team is you do not necessarily have fixed partners that you need to work with. There is no, you need to hit this target or this particular partner. My team is at the freedom of their own. They’ve got their own fate in their hands. Essentially. I let them talk to whoever they want to talk to, whoever they believe is relevant to help us drive our objectives. Because as I mentioned, when you have an in-house team, everyone essentially all working towards one objective. And if they believe that partner can allow us to do that, then they’re free to speak to whoever they want to speak to. It’s a mix of both. It’s allowing the team to have the freedom of wanting to be creative and not being stuck in Excel sheets all day, getting them to meet different partners, reaching out to different partners, but also getting them to work closer with them. So, and if now, then we asked them, so who’s new that we should be talking to? Who have you seen? Who should we be leveraging more? What are we doing? Well, and while we’re not doing well, be open and honest with us. How can we improve and how can we learn from your talents that you guys have? We have a few secondments from density and in the team as well. So it’s a. Collaborative effect and you only can grow innovation and grow the strength in terms of what we’re trying to do with partners and whether that be media agency, creative agency, the partners that we work with on a day to day occurrence or big and small. So yeah, it’s a collective effort across the board.

Nick – 00:27:23:

Feeling off that innovation piece and moving on to the data side, that’s obviously clearly a big part of your role. How are you thinking about your data strategy? Often I sometimes think people think that CPGs, alcohol brands, it’s like, well, data is something that e-comm and DTC do. But I’ve certainly seen it. Most CPGs have an enormous data strategy. How are you thinking about that and bringing that to life within Heineken?

Patrick – 00:27:48:

Yeah, I swim in data. I live and breathe data. It’s not just the title that I have. Our team is called the Data Driven Marketing Team, DDM. We’ve just always used the acronym DDM. There’s data in there, I’m sure. And everything that we do is around data and insights. But there isn’t an overemphasis, I would say, on data when it comes to creativity. Because creativity is sporadic. It’s weird. It’s wonderful. It’s crazy. It can come from anywhere and anyone and sometimes data doesn’t help you be creative. So one of the things that I had to get used to and adapt when I came client side was understanding how to build a business plan or how to build a proposal to take back to the business. And when you’re building those proposals, they’re very data heavy, data led. It’s essentially showcasing this is the data that we have. This is the projections based off the back of that data of what I believe we can essentially get to. And here’s the sources of data that I’ve utilized to build this plan together. So in general, across the board, all of our marketers are mini data analysts because they have to be. And the way the world is turning where data seems to be the next currency or the current currency as it currently is, we all collectively have to put in more of an effort to read and understand data. But more importantly, to turn that data into insights because there’s a ton of data out there. But there isn’t a lot of insights to actually draw a business forward on our side. I mentioned CX before or consumer experience. It was a project. And now it’s pretty much a part and parcel of what we do here. We do CX based planning. So consumer experience kicked off because when the massive joke that Google put into place about a calculus future and everyone fell into that trap, we were also one of the brands that started thinking, crap, we don’t have any data. We don’t have a lot of consumer data. How do we get more? And how do we ensure that we save ourselves or have a future where we can still understand our consumers, their purchase behaviors and what we mean to them? So we put this initiative forward, which was around halfway acquisition. So how do we build our first party data, clean the data that we currently have, figure out how much data we have, put a process in place to actually utilize the data we have. So not just build and grow, but also to activate off the back of the data. The biggest element of that was we still needed to be consumer first and consumer focused. So part of CX planning is thinking about the value exchange. How do you go above and beyond the functional need of the actual product itself when you’re thinking about your consumer? So is that better experiences in our pubs and how we work with our customers? Is that a competition where we’re giving stuff away, where we’re building merchandise? We know people love our glassware. Do we give away more glassware? So it was essentially a whole project, which was focused on how do we create better consumer experiences, grow our first party data, but also utilize the data to drive insights and move our brands forward based on those consumer led insights. So yes, we have a first party strategy. We’re focusing more on zero party data as well. So given the consumer back the choice to speak to us, to tell us what they like, what they don’t like to be part of a community to help grow and change our research and development of new products in the future. We’re using surveys more now that we’ve previously done before we’re launching new glassware limited edition staff or working closely with our PR teams to think about what experiences can we have that are limited experiences for only a small set of consumers. And we’re thinking about building it for the future consumer. So yeah, we are extremely data led and extremely consumer led and moving forward. Like I said, that probably needs to be the case for all marketers moving ahead.

Nick – 00:31:39:

Yeah. And I think it’s actually a legal requirement that I ask you about AI. How are you thinking about AI in terms of some of those, particularly the data side? And you talk about those insights. I think to me, that’s such a huge opportunity is leveraging those insights. But I’m always interested in what people are actually doing rather than writing an article about what they may do in three years.

Patrick – 00:32:03:

Yeah, I think artificial intelligence has obviously been around for a significant amount of time, especially in the digital space. I remember when I used to work in search and most of the pre-bid solutions were automated or utilized some form of artificial intelligence. So it’s always been around. And it’s the same with, as I mentioned before, when we went calculus, all of a sudden people started talking about contextual as though it was a new thing, the new sliced bread. And you have to sometimes tell the industry to calm down a bit and realize these things have always existed. How we utilize them is what’s changing or what’s developing. I think for us, I’ve always said this, even when I had clients previously in the past, when you’re optimizing towards something, realize that in itself is excluding something else. So you need to be very careful in your balance of, I want to optimize towards a more cost efficient click. So essentially you’re saying you want to go towards individuals who always click. Is that necessarily the right case when you are an FMCG brand when mass scale actually is more beneficial to you as a brand, as a product where personalization comes at a limit, where you don’t want to be too personal because you still have to have mass appeal, where you need to be consistent in how you show up across the different environments your consumer has access to, the different touch points. So for us, yes, we utilize all of the AI tools that Google have put forward, Amazon have put forward. Yeah. Yes, there’s efficiency in terms of the CPMs we are now paying. They’re slight efficiencies. They’re not significant enough for me to say this is life changing at this particular moment in time. It’s fine. It’s working. It’s doing well. I feel like where the opportunities from an AI perspective are is of course creative. It’s production. And that’s where probably the massive saving could essentially be. It’s idea generation. It’s putting things together that we wouldn’t have necessarily thought about. It’s no more going into those awkward meetings. Workshops where everyone’s asked to brainstorm. We’re going to brainstorm an idea and think of something that is new and exciting when you can actually utilize this tool that helps you do that and helps you get to an informed decision quicker. It’s the insights bit. It’s the dashboard and building insights off the back of those dashboards and the analytical tools. That’s essentially where potentially we can get to, like I mentioned, those answers quicker. So we’re still figuring it out. We’re still trying to understand where it fits within the business. How we utilize it. We’ve used recently creators, for example, in influencer activations that have used AI in some of their creative and we’re again still talking internally. What does that mean for us? What does that mean for how we work with creative agencies moving forward? So I still feel like there’s a lot of change to come and we’re not currently there. But again, good thing about being an in-house team is test and learn. We do it all the time. Anything that’s new, anything that’s upcoming. We’re more than happy. Just put it into place because there’s a level and element of trust, especially from our legal team to just get the job done and get it done well.

Nick – 00:35:07:

Yeah. You touched on the fact that being an in-house team gives you that opportunities. What would you say to other brands that are considering bringing their media in-house? What do they need to think about and what for you is that greatest opportunity?

Patrick – 00:35:21:

Have a five-year plan. It’s not something that you do if you think tomorrow we’re going to have more efficient media. It needs to be you bring an in-house team in because you see the value in what they could deliver for the overarching business, the business as a whole, not for what they can do in making media more efficient. Because efficient media, anyone can do that. Your agency can do that. If you tell your agency, here’s your goal and here’s what you’re supposed to do, I want cheaper CPMs, guess what? Your agency will give you cheaper CPMs. That’s not necessarily the best approach. If you’re a premium brand, why would you want cheap? Makes no sense to me. You have to have a balance, right? So for me, if you’re moving a team in-house, you need to seriously consider what is that five-year plan? What does the first year look like? The first year might not even be successful. But you’ve got to trust in the process and continue investing in that team to help them flourish because I promise you, they will be great contributors to the rest of the company. I think you need to also see them as marketers, not see them as media people. I think a lot of the times we go, you are marketing, you are media. And actually, no, we’re all marketers. We all essentially want our brands to do well. We all want our bonuses at the end of the year as well. We all have that vested interest. So don’t do it if you do not have a future-facing plan of by the end of the five years we put this in place, this is what we expect to get out of it. I also want to go back to the development side of it as well. Succession planning. Think about what the next steps might be for these individuals within your organization. Can you move them around to different parts of the business? Can they move into brand? Can they move into consumer marketing intelligence or data analytics team? Can they become data scientists? Within the departments you’re building out. What does the team and the structure essentially look like? It’s not free people to do all of your social media, your search and your problematic advertising at this very base and simple level. This could potentially be a team of 20, a team of 30. They could potentially start doing more of the traditional media activations that are turning digital, like dynamic, problematic, out of home, like audio, et cetera. So you have to have a plan. If you don’t have a plan, don’t bother doing it because it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Everyone will leave. They’ll move to your competitors who have a much better plan in place.

Nick – 00:37:41:

Yeah, wise words. Just broaden it back out again. I’d love that insight into what Heineken are doing and how you’ve led them. I think when you talk about luck a lot, I’m sure there’s an incredible amount of hard work that you’ve put into it. But when you’re looking about what you want to achieve, but also when you’re bringing people in, from a senior marketer’s point of view, you talked about the skills of a graduate, or hopefully not graduate, as we discussed. But what are you looking for those senior marketeers that you’re bringing into your org? And what do you want to be as we move forward?

Patrick – 00:38:13:

I think compassion and just being human, even when we were having this discussion previously before, and I asked a question around, am I allowed to swear? And you mentioned that professional individuals prefer not to swear. And I think to myself, what the hell does that mean? We’re all professionals. Some people swear, some people don’t swear. Some people do certain things in particular ways. And I think understanding humans, you’ve got to be a bit of an anthropologist sometimes when it comes to running a team and noticing and understanding the behaviors of a team, putting things into place where individuals feel safe to have those open and honest discussions, giving them the opportunity to feed back to the senior guys at the top, like saying, what are we doing wrong as a senior team? How can we improve? How do we do better? Because then that allows individuals at a junior level to think this is a great place to work because my opinion is valued more than anything else. That’s what people want. They want senior managers to seem vulnerable, to be more, more human, as I mentioned, because the whole point of building a good, adaptive and agile marketing team is that there is going to be some good days and bad days, and they need to become accustomed to that. I can’t just be celebrating all of the time. We have to also showcase where we’ve lost and why we’ve lost and why we feel we’ve lost and what can we do to be better? Because that’s what builds resilience more than anything else. The good thing again, that Heineken are doing aside from the climate surveys of how people are feeling, et cetera, is we truly do hold our senior leaders to account. We get monthly updates of how the business is doing, which areas are doing well, not doing well. We are embedding within our marketing huddles, a section which talks about failures, where we’re literally highlighting the projects that we put into place that we thought would do well, didn’t do well and analyzing why didn’t it go well, but being open enough to say not doing well doesn’t necessarily mean you as an individual who ran that project is at fault. It’s not putting the blame and saying you are rubbish and crap at your job. You can’t do your job. That’s why that failed. It’s going, this failed because of X, Y, Z, and getting people to understand that and to build a case study off the back of that and to be proud of the fact that they have a learning off the back of it, which will help them develop and move forward better and quicker because they now understand where they went wrong. That’s the positive. And we need to focus on those positives instead of the negatives. So I would ask the senior marketers of the future to always bear this in mind that you need to support your team and give them the ability to also showcase the bad as well as the good.

Nick – 00:40:55:

Yeah, I so echo that. I saw a presentation by one of the Blue Angels for the American audience. They’ll know that the Blue Angels are the version of the Red Arrows. And they talked about the fact that their debriefs, they always do a, it’s called glad to be here, but the most senior person says what they would change and improve and do. And that vulnerability is not that they’re a bad pilot. They are the best of the best in the world, but they’re saying, I would have done this differently. And that vulnerability and openness is absolutely vital. And I think too often, we’re expected to turn up and just be, it’s like as senior leaders, it’s like I was perfect. A, you definitely weren’t perfect. And B, how do you encourage people to open up about how to improve? And then just where we quite often finish, you’ve talked so eloquently on that. Where are you trying to improve and change as a leader, a marketeer, or just somebody within this industry?

Patrick – 00:41:51:

Always trying to improve every single day that I go into the office. I recently, and a lot of people will probably say this, they see me everywhere now because I’m at every bloody panel, I’m doing every talk, etc. And that came out of me realizing it was something that I actually didn’t do at all. It was something that I feared. I had this fear around public speaking and doing podcasts or just hearing my voice. It replayed back to me and there was a genuine fear. Most people that know me, anyone that went to my wedding, remember part of the speech where I said, I really don’t like people. I really struggle being in large groups because I tend to become a shell of myself. And it takes a lot out of me to consistently feel like I have to engage. I have to talk. I have to do something so people like me and have a good opinion of me. Which essentially meant that when these opportunities came, I would decline and say, no, I’m busy. I can’t do that. So I made a promise to myself that I would change that. And I would do some presentation training. I would say yes to every opportunity. And one year I did 16 different panels and talks. And coming off the back of that, you realize, crap, what I feared previously before wasn’t actually that scary. And I’m probably having fun doing all of this stuff. And I’m enjoying having my opinion being pushed out there. And you realize that a lot of people agree with you and it’s also okay not to agree with you. And because everyone’s opinion is valid and that’s the whole point of the debate and why panels exist is to have a debate and discussion about our industry and how it progresses and moves forward. So for me, as you mentioned, I’m taking a photography course and I’ve started doing that this year because I want to be more creative. I want to have a creative output. I realized. That’s something when you’re lost in all of the data and the insights and all of that fun stuff, you need an outlet out there to go, okay, can I actually just be a bit more creative? So I’ve taken on photography as something that can become one of my vices. So I can take a little bit of what I’m learning from my photography course and trying to put it back into my work in terms of how we can be a little bit more creative and look at things a little bit differently because that’s essentially what photography allows you to do. So I agree everyone needs to think about what scares them and then challenge themselves to get outside of their comfort zone to do something a little bit different, to speak to someone new, to talk on the tube in London, whatever scares you go out and do it because you could reap the rewards after.

Nick – 00:44:34:

Well, I, for one, am delighted that you’ve put yourself out there because I’ve absolutely loved this chat. It’s been absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much, Patrick. It’s been great having you on Time for a Reset.

Patrick – 00:44:43:

Thank you for having me. Really enjoyed it.

Nick – 00:44:46:

And that is a wrap for this episode of Time for a Reset, the marketing podcast with global leaders, brought to you by CVE. I’ve been your host, Nick King, and I hope the insights from this episode will help you reset and refine how you implement successful change for strategic transformation for your brand. See you next week as I chat with another senior marketing leader. And please follow us or subscribe and don’t miss any future episodes. Catch you soon.

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