Javier – 00:00:01:
For me, CMO, humbleness, curiosity, that will allow you to learn, and by learning, you grow. And being curious, not only, of course, about the context, the consumer, but also about your team, your people, trying to understand their own fears, motivations, doubts, aspirations.
Paul – 00:00:23:
Welcome to the Time For A Reset Marketing Podcast: Insights from Global Brand Marketers, 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. This morning, I’m delighted to be joined by Javier Meza, who is the European CMO for Coca-Cola. Javier has actually been at Coca-Cola for a few years, actually, I think close to 27. So in a second, I’ll maybe ask him what’s made him stick around in Coca-Cola for so long. Javier started in brand management in Latin America and then was involved in both the Latin region, moved to Atlanta to HQ in Coke, then I believe went back to Latin America as CMO and recently came over to Europe and now runs the European marketing function for Coca-Cola. So some very deep experience in Coke. So before we actually go to the reset, Javier, I’m intrigued, what keeps someone at a company for 27 years?
Javier – 00:01:29:
Hey, Paul, thank you so much for the invitation and for the question. In fact, I am one of the young veterans of Coca-Cola. Let me stress that because I really keep myself entertained to be young. I will say three things. The first thing, and it’s interesting because when I joined Coke, I had this idea of I’m going to stay, maybe 10 years there and then move on and do other things. I have other interests in life, things I still want to do. I still want to do after Coke. But then I discovered the world through the eyes of Coca-Cola and that has been amazing. It’s a truly global organization. We really operate with this global mindset. We are really globally connected and that’s fascinating. I had the routine not only to work, but also to live in many continents and it has been a rich journey. The second thing I would say is the values of the company. We do mistakes, of course. We are humans. But honestly, we wake up every day trying to do the right thing. And along these 27 years, many times in my career, I had discussion about, but look what competition is doing. And the answer was always, yeah, we are Coca-Cola. We don’t take shortcuts. You know, we are really serious about following guidelines, following regulations, it’s really serious. We still make mistakes and we will, if we make a mistake, we fix it. And for me, it’s important. You know, I have three kids now. They are 24, 23 and 19. I need to be able to look into their eyes and say, believe me, we are trying to do the right things. And the third thing is the quality of the colleagues and the talent I work with globally. One of the things when I talk to people that left Coca-Cola or left Coke and came back, one of the things I keep hearing is the average intellectual quality in Coca-Cola is very high. So it’s very rewarding and enriching and fresh to work with such talented people with such expertise.
Paul – 00:03:19:
Brilliant. Well, they sound three pretty good reasons. And as you say, Coke is one of the most progressive forward-thinking marketers. And I think you’re right. Of all of the marketers I’ve ever met from Coke, there’s a hyper-intelligence around the real parts of what marketing is about. And I know you’re going to talk a little bit about that, that it’s not just shifting units in stores. It’s about building deep relationships and having purpose and everything else. So without further ado, why don’t we start with your reset? That’s what I always ask people to think about. If you had a big orange button on the table and you could change something right now, what is it that you would reset in the marketing industry?
Javier – 00:03:56:
The reality is consumers are doing that for US. Consumers have a big button and they keep pressing that. And the reason is because they have evolving needs and expectations. And that forces us marketers to rethink how to satisfy those needs and expectations better without competition again and again and again. My reason is really going back to understand that market is a fundamental function in organization and society. You talk to friends and family and people confuse marketing with advertisement, sometimes with false advertisement. Sometimes they believe that marketing is not really an important function in society. That’s my reset. I believe it’s very important in society, very important for the organizations, because marketers are the ones that have to create a recurring value exchange between consumers and the organization, while also creating value for other stakeholders around. But is this fundamental recurring and value exchange that’s marked in about now for organizations the value. We need from consumers, cash flow, data advocacy. Those three things. Independent in the business you are, you need cash flow, you need data, you need advocacy. What consumers need from organizations through the brands? Benefits, clear company benefits, inspirational values. And satisfaction of the expectations. Needs are usually limited within the industry. In my case, beverages. What people need has to do with the beverage needs. Refreshments, their squinting, nourishment. Expectations are not limited within the industries. If Amazon is offering something, they expect Coca-Cola to offer the same. Level of service, sustainability, social impact, personalization, purpose. So expectation, I would say, is what keeps US more busy these days. Needs as well, of course, we need to have great products, great testing products, high quality products. But expectations, that’s very dynamic. One of the expectations we have seen and is really changing the way we market this expectation of engaging experiences through personalization.
Paul – 00:05:58:
Right. Brilliant. I love how you articulate marketing. It feels like you just explained, as if you would to one of your friends, why marketing is important, which I think some people often struggle with when they go outside of the marketing industry and people say, what do you actually do all day? Are you just the people that put ads in front of me that f interrupt my day? No, it’s a bit deeper than that. So I like the way you articulated that. And I also like the fact that you talked about the experiences and personalization and the data part, because I know Coke has been on a journey to start thinking about first parties, zero party data. So I’d love to come back to that a little bit later. But how do you think about putting those experiences at the center of how marketing is created? Because of course, the challenge with marketing can often be that there are so many different touch points that a consumer might have with your brand and your brand is pretty omnipresent across the globe, that keeping that consistence can sometimes be quite challenging. And you talked about personalization. So how do you get your teams to think about delivering a consistent Coke experience in Europe, even? Because Europe has a lot of countries that are very diverse, doesn’t it?
Javier – 00:07:01:
It is. And let me tell you something else before I go into this personalization of experiences and consistency. Back to the marketing society. One of the funny things about marketing is that we are very much exposed. You go on the weekend to the barbecue, and your friends will tell you, hey, I didn’t like that ad. I didn’t like that promotion. I went to the supermarket, I didn’t like the poster. And then you have a friend that is a finance consultant or is a surgeon, you don’t go into barbecues, hey, I didn’t like the way you did the surgery last weekend. We might get very much exposed. And I think that’s part of why sometimes marketing is not well understood.
Paul – 00:07:36:
No, I think you’re right. Everybody at the boardroom table has an opinion on marketing and communications, don’t they? Not everybody goes, I don’t think I’m those numbers right. I think your P&L needs to be done in a different way.
Javier – 00:07:46:
Yeah, exactly. But back to the personalization and the consistency, a very important question, because at the end of the day, all the experiences we create to engage consumers have to be out there on a clear growth strategy. So it’s very important. We believe in the long term of our brands and the growth of brands in the long term. Because of that, we have very clear brand positions and brand purpose. And we anchor those brand positions and purpose in deep human values. If you take a brand like Coca-Cola, it’s about inclusiveness, authenticity, optimism. Those three values are quite diverse. They might be expressed in different ways, in different cultures, in different moments in time and history. And those values are in you. The fact that we have anchored the brand into those universal values allows us to be consistent over time, across cultures, before COVID, during COVID, after COVID, because the position and the purpose is anchored in values. The storytelling, what we say about the brand, is true to that positioning, but also reflects the changing environment. Of course, when we speak to a Gen Z versus a millennial, we use different languages. Of course, what we were saying before COVID, during COVID, after COVID has been adjusted, but it’s still true to the same values. So one of the things that we show is that whatever we create as experiences follows a brand growth strategy. Between the brand growth strategy and the experience, there’s still something that we call the creative strategy, which is the articulation of the values of the brand and benefits of the brand for consumers. At the end of the day, the experiences, they are in a way shorter, right? We create experiences for four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks. And we keep updating that because we want to keep consumers engaged and entertained. So we need to keep offering new use. But those experiences are true to a creative strategy. That is true. To a brand growth strategy. That is true. To a brand positioning and a brand purpose. In the experience, we have a lot of flexibility for localization. Of course, if we are sponsoring a football team in Spain that we don’t sponsor in either. Yeah, of course, the Spain local team can take the experience and use that partnership to create something engaging for consumers. The brand purpose, the growth strategy, the creative strategy are more consistent. And let’s say we have more cart race of that. The actual expression of experiences is very much flexible and localized.
Paul – 00:10:19:
Nice. That’s a good framework. I like the way that you talked about that. There’s consistency in the framework, but it gets localized and personalized depending on the audience, the context, the geography. One of the things that I always think about with Coke is you could argue that Coke has such strong, spontaneous awareness and everyone knows Coke. You could argue that it doesn’t need to invest in the top of the funnel in awareness and consideration in the ways that maybe other brands that don’t have that do. But of course, Coke has always fundamentally believed in doing that and the long-term value that add stock, the value that you get year after year, continuing to invest in Christmas campaigns every year, even though everyone knows Coke and will associate Coke with Christmas. I saw a nice activation actually last week in the UK where you put the Coke Christmas ad on the side of the Tesco vans as part of a retail media activation, which I think is smart because it feels like the ad from the TV has suddenly arrived on the street, but in your locality, which I think is a really nice activation. But I suppose my question is, why do you as a CMO believe and how do you justify continuing to invest in the top of the funnel when you could argue that really you just need to be at point of sale to nudge people into buying?
Javier – 00:11:33:
Absolutely. If this is about next month’s sales, we put 100% of the marketing funds down the funnel. We will get the next month’s sales, no doubt. But as you said, we are here and we’ve been more than 135, 37 years. And that’s because we do both. We care about the short term, but we also care about the next generations. I’ve been 27 years working for Coca-Cola now. The base of consumers we have today is not the base of consumers we had 27 years back. Back then, I was only focused on driving short-term sales. Today, our business would be significantly smaller. So one of our objectives is to make sure that we have a healthy consumer base and that we renew our consumer base as people age and go through different life stages to make sure that we offer to those aging population a relevant portfolio. And that’s why we have an expanding portfolio of beverages. But also, we need to ensure that the new generations invite us to be part of their lives through our beverages. So the reason why we still do a lot of these upper-funnel investments is because we need to think about the new generations that are coming. And for competition, they are smart, they are aggressive, they do great work. So we also need to remember that every day, right?
Paul – 00:12:47:
Any new entrant into the market thinks, if I just take one percentage off of Coca-Cola’s market share, then I’ve got a business. So no, I think that’s a great answer. And I think it’s a good answer for a lot of other people to hear in the marketing industry because, when we often talk about data and personalization, I think people naturally go to, oh, that means less investment. That means that I can focus and narrow who I’m talking to, that who’s in market, who’s got the highest propensity to buy. But I think that the way that you guys think about data is more, yes, of course, you want to find some effectiveness and efficiency in where you’d run your advertising media. But I think you think about it more, unless I’m wrong, of how do we make the experiences more valuable and deeper by knowing a little bit more about the end consumer at that point? Rather than can I spend 50% less budget? You probably do a bit of both, right? But I think you’re more driven by personalization is going to drive greater engagement, which will drive greater brand love, which will drive greater long-term equity. Would I be right in thinking that?
Javier – 00:13:49:
I would say if I have to explain the three reasons why we are collecting first-party data, we believe in first-party data. I would say the first one is better consumer understanding. If you have first-party data, you can harness better insights that want to shape your marketing narrative, your programs, your ideas, your experiences. And especially insights, in our case, we want to have first-party data from behavior. And by behavior, I don’t mean lifestyle. There is consumption behavior. I want to understand who are the people that have set the price. Pick any brand. Powerade, which is one of our lower brands. I want to understand the people that have power in their repertoire, habitual, why, how they use it, what they think about them, versus people that say, I will never drink power. And there are people on both sides. There are people that say, I will never drink power. And there are people that are ready to drink it. People that have tried power, but they are not standing the harm. So if I have insights about those three segments, I can shape my programs better. So insights. The second thing. Yeah, there is something about efficiency. Because honestly, if I can combine my first-party data with second-party data, I can do audience planning. And I can say, I’m not going to spend a lot of marketing dollars. Again, a person that says I will never drink power. I will rather put that money against the person that already tried power. And he’s willing to drink power. And also I don’t need to spend a lot of money against the people that are already drinking power on a habitual basis. We call them already part of our consumer base. We will not put a lot of dollars there. So by having this first-party data and combining with second-party data, I can do audience planning that drives better. I would say connection planning efficiency, which makes my marketing investments ROI higher. So it’s not about investing less, as you said. It’s not. I agree with you. It’s about. Investing smarter so the return on investment is higher.
Paul – 00:15:49:
Yeah, greater effectiveness.
Javier – 00:15:51:
Greater effectiveness. That’s it. Yeah. That’s exactly the journey we are in.
Paul – 00:15:55:
No, that’s really clear, Javier. Thank you. And you mentioned audience planning, which is a favorite topic of mine and our business. Is your philosophy that audience planning should be owned by the brand? Because a lot of marketeers tend to outsource at least some audience planning to agencies rather than doing themselves. Coke has always been at the forefront of ICP or whatever you want to call it, like intercoms, communications planning, and audience planning is the new language, isn’t it? But to me, audience planning is having the insights across all the possible touchpoints, both those that are advertising paid media led, but also those that are organic and those that are on site, in app, whatever it might be. So what’s your philosophy on who owns audience planning in your ecosystem?
Javier – 00:16:40:
That’s a good question. And to be completely honest, we don’t have a conclusive answer yet. We have a global partnership with WPP that is public. We are working very close with them. We have created a lot of capabilities together over the last three years, and we are very happy with the partnership. In this particular topic, we are still in the pros and cons. We know it’s the future. We know it’s something we need to do. In Europe, around 80% of our digital media investments are already based on audience planning. Not all of that’s still connecting this behavioral data that I told you that we are significantly lowering when it comes to behavioral data, but we are doing audience planning. And I like that about Coke, as well, that we are not dogmatic. We usually go in, okay, let’s embrace, let’s move, progress before perfection. And over time, we will find an answer to that question. We’ll have it.
Paul – 00:17:31:
I love that answer. I think that’s a very honest answer because I’m not sure, I don’t think anybody has completely cracked it because to your point, the world of all of this new data, the privacy challenges in different parts of Europe with GDPR make it way more challenging than in the North America or LATAM, some of the markets you’ve worked in. And then the fidelity of the data, how much it costs to push the data into systems, how much it costs to maintain the data, the expertise to then run the campaigns with the marketing technology. It’s not a simple thing to achieve, right? So I think that’s a very honest answer. I think anyone that says that they’ve got it entirely cracked is probably slightly too optimistic about the future. I want to come back to the point you made about the value that you think is Coke in your communications and how you develop it through experiences. As you said, if you were at a barbecue with one of your friends, it’s a can of Coke or a bottle of Powerade. But of course it’s not. It goes much deeper and more rooted into communities and into different ways that different people associate and have connected with Coke. So how do you think about ensuring that the value comes through those experiences? Because some experiences probably deliver it better than others. Some can be just a badge on a shirt, and some are all the activation around a football tournament where people go to a fan environment and they feel like they’re in the… So I’m just interested in the relative value and how you judge which experiences drive greater value, I suppose.
Javier – 00:18:54:
A very good question. And it also depends, of course, on which brand and where in the life cycle the brand is. But overall, with the fourth type of marketing activities, you show, right? We believe in occasion-based marketing. In our case, beverages, we do a lot of research to understand consumer habits in terms of occasions and motivations. You know, why people drink certain beverages during lunchtime versus dinner, in weekdays versus weekends, when you are by yourself versus when you are in a social environment. So we have a good understanding of that, and we use insights of that to deliver what we call occasion-based marketing. So we really deliver messages related to occasions. The second thing we do, of course, is innovation. Consumers move, competitors move, you better move as well. If not, you can become irrelevant. So innovation is the second type of things we do. The third thing we do is passion points. We really activate passion points, music, sports, entertainment, lifestyle. You’ve seen EuroCup, FIFA World Cup, Olympics, Tomorrowland, music festivals. We do a lot of passion points. Because passion points, offer us the possibility to do emotional shortcuts between the brand and the consumer, and also an amplification opportunity. You have millions of people watching the EuroCup. That’s a perfect moment where you can go with a real-life message. And the fourth thing we do is sustainability communication, social impact communication. More and more consumers, especially in Europe, they pay a lot of attention to that, and they validate their purchase decisions, their brand repertoire, based on that part of the communication. So occasions, innovation, passion points, sustainability. That’s what we do. How we do it, that’s where experiences comes to life. Any of those four, at the end of the day, we translate into an ecosystem of experiences that connects four things. Our product. So you could see, for example, take Beetlejuice Fata. We did a very nice activation a couple of weeks ago for Halloween, connecting the Beetlejuice movie with Fata brand. We created a product experience. Limited edition, a new flavor, packaging designs, very exciting. We saw a lot of consumers, it triggered a lot of transactions online and offline. The product experience is connected with a digital experience. QR codes on the packaging that when people scan the QR code, they land into a digital experience. We had a lot of activities digitally to engage consumers. You can also win through the digital experience invitations for the premiere of the movie. So we move from digital into live experience, real life experience. And of course, we communicate a lot of that through retail activations. So every time we have a product experience, retail experience, digital experience, live experience. No different from Christmas, coming now in Christmas season. We will have packaging activation, QR codes. Through that, you’re going to be landing in a digital experience where using the AI, you will be able to talk to Santa, share with Santa some Christmas memories, and Santa is going to create for you a digital snow globe that you can post in your social media. We will have the real life track experience. And this track experience connected to social impact. We will be donated in the case of UK where you are now, we were partnered with FairShare, which is one of these food redistribution organizations. They collect food and redistribute to people in need to avoid food wastage. What we will be donating to the Christmas track, 1 million food portions for this initiative. And all of that, of course, activated in online and offline retail environment. So the way we bring to life this idea of express is always product, retail, life, and digital in a way that is connected. And we try to move consumers across those four avoiding death ends in the experience.
Paul – 00:22:47:
That’s a superb example. Thank you. I think actually you answered probably my next question as well around where you put innovation at the heart. So I think that really shows integrated communications and all of the different touch points. I think a lot of brands struggle to do that. So I think that’s great. Actually, interestingly, my eight-year-old son told me we needed to go to Nando’s the other day because there were Fanta chicken wings. And I guess that’s one of those things that you talked about is like innovation partnership, bringing a different audience. And we go to Nando’s a lot, but that new occasion was prompted by my son seeing something in some gaming platform, maybe on Fortnite or something. And he’s like, oh, dad, there are Fanta wings at Nando’s and that are there. And then we ended up going and visiting. So those are really nice examples. So I want to change tack a little bit, Javier, and talk about the other part of the job, which is leading change and driving the agenda of marketing at the boardroom. Obviously, you’re lucky you’ve been in an organization that has always believed in marketing and put marketing at the front, which makes it a little bit easier. But I’m sure that there are times when it is more challenging to get marketing to the top of the boardroom agenda in terms of some of the initiatives that you want to push. Could you maybe just talk about either in your 27 years or more recently, how do you go about leading the necessary change to make sure that Coke does have the right capabilities to keep staying competitive in market?
Javier – 00:24:10:
Yes, of course. I think you mentioned that the keyword, which is, because, one thing is to design a new marketing model. And this is what I was explaining to you. We have this type of marketing initiatives, occasions, innovation, the type of experiences. Doing that at the scale in more than 200 countries requires a lot of capabilities. And a lot of my work over the last three years has been building those capabilities. And making sure that, to your point, that the senior leadership of the organization, of the system in our case, because we operate through local partners, which are the butlers, that they understand what we are doing, the destination, and the journey. Because, of course, when you are developing new capabilities, you will not be as effective or successful as they want. There’s a learning curve in the repetition. You will learn. Track adjust, repeat. So there’s a learning curve. I think part of the transformation leadership has been being able to explain that roadmap to the organization, to the marketing team, to the system leadership. Provide clarity on the learnings and the results, being transparent about the things that are working, not working, and push it for more. Capability is something that is sometimes one of those words that are repeated a lot, but sometimes you say, okay, but what are you talking about when it comes to capability? And part of my job has been, let’s be very clear about which capabilities we need to build in order to bring to life this transformation. And it’s basically in our case, it’s capabilities related to consumer segmentation insights and understanding, which I explained before, this idea of segmenting consumers. The second one is this idea of capabilities related to consumer engagement, this idea of experiences, upscale, audience planning, digital platforms. The other thing that we’re doing is better analytics for distribution models to understand where to put resources. And the fourth part of these capabilities has to do with influencers, co-creators that we use more and more to bring customers. And the third part is innovation effectiveness. So those capabilities are the ones that are at the center of what we’re doing. Capability is something interesting. I have a story about a couple of years back when I moved to lead marketing in Asia Pacific. I arrived in Singapore. My first week in the Singapore office, my boss by then, the Asia Pacific president, invites us to do the review of the quarter results. And we review P&M. So I said, okay, let’s have a meeting. And I went to the meeting with my iPad. And I had all the documents in my iPad. And one of my colleagues came with printed copies of P&M and backups. I don’t know, 20 or 30 pages printed. And my boss says, I cannot believe this. You have a MacBook. You have an iPad. You have an iPhone. Why do you show up with printed copies? And I said, I know the answer. Because we have printers. If you get rid of the printer, nobody’s going to show up with printed copies anymore. And we use this as a way to say sometimes building new capabilities requires sunsetting old capabilities. And this is something that we have been doing very consciously in the last three years. We put ourselves the objective of significantly shift our media investments from traditional media. And we went from relatively low digital mix to really high digital mix in two years. But it forced us to sunset capabilities and create new ones.
Paul – 00:27:36:
That’s a really great point, actually. It sounds quite simple, but I think it is a really great point because probably part of the reason that people behaviorally don’t move to new capabilities, they’ve got the crux. It’s like how many people still produce everything in PowerPoint when there are a multitude of different ways to actually deliver presentations today is because PowerPoint’s a little button at the bottom of your machine, which is easy to use. So I think that’s a really interesting point actually, Javier.
Javier – 00:28:01:
Get rid of the printers.
Paul – 00:28:03:
Get rid of the printers. Yeah, exactly. Although the annoying thing in your life is that financial organizations still require you to send certain things with papers which requires you to print. So I would love to get rid of it, but I still find when I’m doing a visa application that they want me to actually photocopy something and send it. So I think it’s traditional institutions that refuse to get rid of these things, which means that we can’t completely shift. So I have a question about capability. As you said, you’ve significantly shifted investment into digital and you run a lot of experiential activity, which is sometimes a little bit more difficult to measure. And you touched on effectiveness and how you’re measuring things differently. How do you guys think about marketing mix modeling, media mix modeling, given the heavy investment you have in digital? Because, I think the word is simple, when it was traditional media, we had econometrics, which was easy to use to measure the impact when it was TV broadcast led. And then of course, digital came along, we had analytics and maybe a little bit too reliant on Google. But the truth is often somewhere between a classic econometric model and the regular data that you get from digital. But I don’t think many people have worked out what the future capability is to do that so that you can have not daily econometrics, that’s probably a little bit unrealistic, but at least more regular data at your fingertips to be able to make decisions. So I’m sure you’re not there yet, but I’d love to hear about how you’re thinking about developing that effectiveness capability.
Javier – 00:29:29:
Yes, we’re working on that today as a pilot with the help of BAME Consulting and some other organizations. We are developing the predictive and causal analytics engine. We have decided to start at four markets globally, US, Brazil, GP and Coolant. And we will be having the first piece at the end of this year. And we will refine as we go. But in the intent, as you said, is to make better decisions when it comes to resource allocation. Where to invest, how to invest, up the funnel, down the funnel, across portfolio, across channels. We know that sometimes all the data we need is not there. It’s okay. We will improve this model as we go because, the reality is resource allocation decisions are being made anyway, every day. Someone is deciding somehow with some siloed version of this, with some judgment, with some data. If you put the money in this or that. So whatever we build based on the data available is going to be a step forward. I believe a lot in progress before perfection. And the learning course is one of our top priorities, this econometric model for attribution and better resource allocation.
Paul – 00:30:39:
I’m also, you can probably see here, you probably can’t read it, but it says, done is better than perfect. So same thing. I’m a big fan of that way of thinking. And I always think it’s quite interesting that we think that you can build a perfect model that predicts human behavior in advertising and marketing. We look at weather forecasters and they get it wrong or economic analysts and they get it wrong. 80, 90% of the time with a lot more data at their fingertips. So I think you’re right. Don’t expect perfection because perfection is neither possible nor are you going to get there because you’re talking about human behavior and human behavior doesn’t always follow natural paths. Right? That’s where great actually advertising and marketing comes from is finding a reason why someone did something differently that creates opportunity. So I think that’s a good way to think about it as I keep improving iteratively and progress over perfection, but don’t ever expect the model to tell you everything and for AI to do everything because that’s probably just not realistic.
Javier – 00:31:37:
And especially given the change that’s happening around US, because as any analytics model is based on existing data, if let’s say tomorrow, a new platform appears, that is different, that we never use before.
Paul – 00:31:47:
100%.
Javier – 00:31:47:
Is the wat you wanted that, you know, so that’s what you need this and we do a lot of that, we call experimentation at scale which is basically creating control experiments, to generate council analytics to improve the predictive model. This is part of what we are doing more and more. We have done a lot of these control experiments over last two years. Media placement, we doing those experiments to refine our predictive model. Yeah.
Paul – 00:32:19:
Great. That’s smart. I like that. And probably wouldn’t be a marketing podcast if we didn’t touch on AI at some point. You guys have been one of the first advertisers to actually create ads using AI. So I’m just interested in how much time you’re really spending thinking about this and beyond content creation and maybe copy automation. Are there use cases that you’re really excited about with AI and marketing?
Javier – 00:32:43:
A lot. A lot. And broadly speaking, so let’s say two things. One is we at Coca-Cola made a good decision, which is we put some people to think about the long-term implication of AI and strategize, jump in, take opportunities, do things, and learn doing. And this dual velocity is working relatively well. It’s really nice to see while we still discuss what could be the future, we already have some realized cases and see what happens. The second part is at the end of the day, AI is analytics at scale in real time. The more data, the better AI. We believe AI is going to help us in three ways. Enhance the consumer experience. The second part is help us do our core job better, more efficiently and effectively. And the third part has to do with supporting functions, legal, HR. We have already cases there. In the second one, which is do our work better, we have already some engines to harness better insights, connecting the data we have from years of research with external public data and we are offering that to marketers to start harnessing insights. What’s important here for in whatever we do, we believe is AI plus HI. It’s artificial intelligence. Plus human insights and human ingenuity. AI makes us smarter, but will not be able to replace us. So in our case, the ad we have as we speak in the UK, hundreds are coming. We took an existing ad with a lot of emotional connection to people, especially in the UK, and we said we want to update this ad. It has been 20, 30 years already. It’s time to update. We don’t change the creative idea. We don’t change the values we’re communicating. We just want to redo it. But then we said, why don’t we try to redo it through AI? And we did it. And we put it on there. And I know there’s a lot of debate, which is great. We need debate.
Paul – 00:34:43:
We do.
Javier – 00:34:43:
We’d rather have debate. And we are listening, of course. For the main consumer, it doesn’t matter if that ad has been made with the AI or not. They don’t care. They connect to the emotional message. For us marketers, is AI showing us that we can produce something in shorter time with a lower budget? And that’s interesting. So the second point, AI is going to help US do our job in a more effective, efficient way. On the first one, consumer experience. I mentioned before, we have now this AI experience that you can scan the QR code of Coca-Cola and you land in a page, you talk to Santa, and you were talking, you and I talking. Santa’s going to ask you questions, you share memories, and it creates a snow globe. Last year, we did a similar team with Christmas postcards. So we are using more AI to enrich the experience and offer consumers this sense of real-time personalization, which at the end of the day is relevant. What is more relevant than something that has been done for you? So we are really serious about AI. I think it’s still hard to tell today if AI is going to be a real enduring source of competitive advantage or it’s going to be like electricity. Imagine when electricity was invented in scale. People adopted electricity, but I mean the steam engine. Maybe same debate, right? It’s going to be a source of competitive advantage. And today, electricity is everywhere. So it’s not a real competitive advantage. Wi-Fi, everyone has it today. Maybe AI is going to be like that down the road. Three, four, five years on the road, nobody’s going to be debating if the Coca-Cola ad was made with AI or not. Maybe it’s just the norm.
Paul – 00:36:29:
I think it’s a great point, Javier, that I lead our AI steer go in our organization. And I often think when everybody’s got the same tool and everybody’s using it for all the same use cases, then to your point, where does the competitive advantage come now? It obviously comes from those that lean in quicker, like anything does in human behavior. But there’s then the catch up. You’ve lived in a world where D2C started to come to market. And I’m sure everyone was like, oh, my God, it’s going to change the business entirely. And then fast forward five years and most larger organizations have got a D2C element to their business. And a lot of those smaller D2Cs have either gone by the wayside or have been acquired. So trends come. Not every trend ends up completely changing. We know AI is going to change everything. But whether it just becomes, to your point, a normalization of how certain things are done, I think is a really interesting one.
Javier – 00:37:19:
And again, for me, AI, the real advantage is going to be captured by the organization and humans that understand that AI can enrich the AI part of that, the human insight, the human genuity. One of the things I was last week in Disney parties and a big Coca-Cola conference for Europe, and I was talking about this topic to the audience. And what I said to them also is, I have no doubt, I have no doubt AI will change and is already changing how we do things. No doubt. But I also believe AI will not change why we do things. The why we do things is still about understanding humans, motivations, emotions, values, inspiration. We will do that always through a combination of human understanding and artificial intelligence. The why will not change, the how is changing.
Paul – 00:38:12:
Nice, nice. And if you push too far, everything just, almost like in those futurist movies we see, it becomes so robotic and automated that the humanity and the depth of experience disappears, which is contrary to what you’re trying to build, right? So I think it’s knowing when and where to apply it, and it’s going to be interesting for sure. Slight segue from that, you’ve obviously had very senior marketer roles across the world for Coke, and you talk to your teams to inspire them. What do you think the CMO of the future is going to be? Like, let’s fast forward five, 10 years, you pick the number. What do you think is going to be different about the CMO sitting at the bordering table to maybe today or even five years ago?
Javier – 00:38:53:
Yeah, very interesting. So I do believe that we need a set of, a repertoire of tools that is expanding, right? I believe in the future, I need to be much more savvy about analytics. Absolutely. And I go through discussions these days and I believe we have a gap of role in understanding what is real analytics, what the role of analytics, how analytics can be harnessed to improve this value exchange that I have been explaining before. I believe that we need to understand technologies. But honestly, what for me makes the difference is those marketers and CMOs. Can remain humble and curious. I really believe that the moment you lose your humbleness and your curiosity, you stop learning. And when you stop learning, you stop growing. The CMO of Embarkator that believe that is great. Already will start not being great the next day because you lose the motivation to keep learning. So for me, CMO, humbleness, curiosity, that will allow you to learn and by learning, you grow. And being curious not only, of course, about the context, the consumer, also about your team, your people, trying to understand their own fears, motivations, doubts, aspirations. So yes, a lot of new tools, including analytics, this trade of humbleness and curiosity. And the third thing is, in the middle of so much moving parts, Part of our job is to paint a vision that is inspirational and clear enough to guide the organization towards there. And this vision has to do with how we expect the business to grow. How we expect the brand to grow, and how we expect the marketing organization to change.
Paul – 00:40:38:
I love that. And actually the humility and the curiosity, probably you could apply that to any leadership role, actually thinking about it. And I think from humility and curiosity, probably the next obvious space, which you alluded to was vulnerability, which is where I wanted to leave my last question, which is, strikes me that you’re a leader, a marketer that is always learning, is always curious and willing to listen to new ways of doing things. But a lot of people listening will think, well, Javier’s had lots of big jobs. He’s been moved all over the world because he’s doing such a good job. I’m sure there are still things that you as an individual have as a work in progress. So maybe you wouldn’t mind being vulnerable for the last minute or so and sharing what, some of those things that you’re trying to improve yourself, either personally or professionally or both.
Javier – 00:41:24:
Yeah, for sure. And listen, I used to be a perfectionist, and I think I am recovered from that now over the years.
Paul – 00:41:31:
A recovering perfectionist. I think I might be with you on that one too.
Javier – 00:41:33:
I’m recovering. Exactly. And that’s why I put myself always in this progress before perfection. Yeah, that’s valid. So even if it’s not perfect, we will learn and do it. So this is one that is constant, and I keep paying attention to that, not to fall into that trap, because that would paralyze you and the organization team when you try to have perfection before progress. The second thing, I have leadership coaches, and I am very passionate about using them. Three, four times a year, we take one week off just to work on leadership. Personal leadership starts with myself. I am a big believer of this concept of multiplier versus diminisher, and I know that a lot of leaders can be accidental diminishers. They don’t want to be, but they are. So I pay a lot of attention to the gap between intent versus impact. I always am checking that the impact I have in the teams, the boardroom is aligned with the intent I have. And the last part is I finished less than a year ago a one-year Chief Digital Officer program at Keller. The result was I was going in a lot of conversations with my digital experts. I have a lot of people that know a lot about digital in my marketing organization. And I was sometimes sitting and having discussions with them, moving my head like, yeah, and thinking, I have no clue what this person is talking about. And one day I said, enough, enough. I need to go. I need to go and study a little bit so I can at least understand what they’re talking about and try to help and lead. So yes, digital transformation has been one of the things I’ve been investing a lot of my time as well.
Paul – 00:43:07:
Well, that is true vulnerability. I think that’s what you were getting at, the humility, right? If you’re a CMO that isn’t keeping up with digital or AI or analytics, then it’s your job to go out and learn it, not to just push it down on your teams. And I think that’s a really good message for any marketer at whatever level listening to this, because the marketing discipline is probably one of the most exciting, but also one of the most complex and multifaceted. That means that nobody, how can anyone be expected to know everything about everything from TikTok to generative AI? It’s just impossible. So I think that vulnerability, continuous improvement, learning mindset is a really good message. And I’ve really enjoyed this conversation, Javier. You’ve taken us all the way from thinking about the value exchange that marketing delivers to consumers. We’ve dug into data. We’ve dug into how you build those deep experiences through innovation, product growth strategy. And then we’ve talked a lot about building capabilities, and how technology is changing things, but not changing all of those things. So it’s been a really great conversation. So I’m really grateful to have had the time to talk to you today.
Javier – 00:44:14:
Same here, Paul. Thank you for the opportunity. And let’s be in touch. It was really wonderful.
Paul – 00:44:18:
Excellent. 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 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.
