Tune in to Time for A Reset
Lara – 00:00:01:
If we’re not uncomfortable ourselves from time to time, we’re definitely not growing. And if we aren’t as leaders asking uncomfortable questions or bringing ideas to the table that make people slightly uncomfortable, then we’re just not doing our jobs. And that probably starts with curiosity and asking interesting questions. But it’s also about just on a practical level, exposing ourselves to things way outside our own comfort zone and outside our industry, certainly, so that we are inspired ourselves.
Paul – 00:00:32:
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 Lara Dewar, who is the CMO of GSMA that represents the world’s mobile network operators. Lara has spent a long time working in various different sectors, including financial services, obviously telco, as I just mentioned, and also in the charity sector. And one of the highlights when Lara and I were catching up was the fact that when she was at World Vision International, she had the joy and wonderful experience of bringing Meghan Markle on as an ambassador. And as a Canadian, I know that that was a particularly wonderful point in your life, Lara. So we might just start there and you give us a little bit of a window into that trip. I think you made a trip out to India and there was a lot of focus on making the world society better for girls and women, which is a passion area of mine. So before we jump into the reset, maybe you’ll just spend a minute or so just telling us a little bit about that, Lara. Welcome.
Lara – 00:01:54:
Thank you so much for having me today. And yes, what a fabulous way to start. My work in the charity space was this brief moment, like a chapter that I took out of for-profit enterprise. And I think those experiences really shaped me as an individual and certainly grew and stretched me in lots of ways, personally and professionally. We had an opportunity at a point in time to engage with Meghan as an ambassador. We didn’t know, by the way, when we first engaged that she was involved, with Prince Harry. And that news broke a few months before we went on our trip. It changed the dynamic of the trip quite a lot, but it didn’t change the work and the focus. And the work and the focus was really about girls’ empowerment, women’s empowerment, microfinance. We touched on matters of bullying, girls’ education, those sorts of things. And so navigated between Delhi and Mumbai. And of course, in those elements, you get to know each other very well because you’re experiencing fairly confronting issues and experiences, landscapes, and met with dozens and dozens of women and girls who trusted us with their stories, with their triumphs and their heartaches. And our job, our privilege was to come back and share those stories, hopefully in meaningful ways to raise awareness and funds to continue the good work of the organization.
Paul – 00:03:24:
Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I know you spend a lot of time talking about the industry that you guys, that GSMA represents and talking about the new developments and new possibilities and inspiration across the world. So I guess my next question might be an interesting one for you to reflect on your discipline as a marketeer and as a CMO. If you had a big orange red button in front of you that said reset on it and you could hit it right now, what is it that you would reset when it comes to marketing?
Lara – 00:03:55:
I think I would reset the definition of marketing. I think that marketing has become something today that it wasn’t even a few years ago. But I think that we also sometimes think about it or talk about it in its parts rather than in its whole. I think marketing done at its best is a really strategic discipline in the organization that acts like glue pulling pieces together. And too often we reduce it to either talk about data or to talk about product or to talk B2C or B2B. When really it’s a very strategic discipline. It belongs at the C-suite table. It belongs in strategy discussions. And it has a real responsibility, frankly, for reputation and what I would call brand stewardship. Which I think if we focused a lot more on the vision and telling the brand story, everything else would come.
Paul – 00:04:55:
I love that, Lara. I think… The phrase you coined there, the metaphor of the glue, I think is a really interesting one because talking to many marketeers across the world, the CMO job has become complicated. The breadth of disciplines and touch points that CMO is expected to have all the way from corporate reputation and storytelling all the way through communications, all the way through to running campaigns is pretty broad these days. And I think it can be somewhat challenging. And recently, actually, I talked to Philippa Tilley at Unilever and she talked about the fact that marketing should be the growth epicenter because otherwise it’s just fluff, which I thought it was quite an interesting, I mean, the growth thing I think we’d all agree with, but the fact that marketing can sometimes by some of the C-suite be looked at as a cost fluff, the coloring in department. How have you made sure that marketing plays that strategic role in the organizations that you’ve been in?
Lara – 00:05:53:
For example, I think it’s very important that marketing be recognized as something that’s commercially contributive. And I think that we’ve got to work on ways of reporting and tracking those things so that we can demonstrate, define, and frankly, prove how we’re adding value to an organization. That’s for CMOs who don’t have direct line of sight to a commercial line item, because we all participate in some way, but it’s very difficult to prove those things from time to time. I think that at our best, CMOs are organizational game changers. And from my perspective, the ways that I’ve participated is to ensure that I’m part of those strategic discussions, to ensure that when we are asked to do something tactical, that we also pull it back to the strategic. And there’s a role to play where you have to be somehow the ambassador for reputation in an organization. You have to be the ambassador for reputation in an organization. You have to talk all the time. And sometimes when I say all the time, I mean, you think you’ve told the story before, or you think you’ve made this point before, but it bears making it again, which is at the end of the day, there’s a customer we serve. We might call them a member. We might call them a customer, a stakeholder. However we define them, we need to start from there and work backwards, not the other way around. And it’s our job to continually remind an organization. About that, because organizations are very self-serving from time to time. We have a great idea. We want to go do it. We think there should be market for it when really, actually, we should be looking outside in.
Paul – 00:07:35:
Yeah, and as you say too often, the actual customer or the audience that you’re serving maybe gets lost in the pursuit of some wonderful campaign communication or initiative.
Lara – 00:07:45:
Or we drink our own Kool-Aid a little too much. We think we’re fabulous. We are. And lots of organizations are great. But we have to remember that at the end of the day, we started with a service or a fulfillment of a need. We’ve attracted an audience or a group of customers. And it’s our job. It’s our privilege to continue to serve them in some way that’s meaningful to them.
Paul – 00:08:05:
Right. Now, I think that reminder of the fact that marketing is there to remind the business to serve its customers in the most meaningful and sustainable ways is a fantastic one. Because as you say, we have various different organizations and festivals, conferences that celebrate marketing. Some are on creativity, some are on data, some are on insights, some are on customer experience. But as you say, it’s a good reminder to come back to the real purpose that marketing plays. And I also heard you say, which I think is important, the importance of continuing to market the value of marketing within an organization.
Lara – 00:08:40:
Yes. It’s really helpful when your CEO, in my case, my director general, has put the CMO at the leadership table. It’s very difficult when that gets seconded maybe or put under another discipline that’s at that table. I don’t think it’s possible in this moment in time for organizations who want to be sustainable to not have marketing as part of the discussion at the leadership table. It would be a real miss in my view. As big a miss as not having people and culture at the table.
Paul – 00:09:13:
We may be slightly biased, but I couldn’t agree more with you. And we’ll come back to this later on. I think there’s a really interesting inflection point going on with, obviously, AI and the fact that if marketers and CMOs don’t seize the opportunity to really lean into technology and how it can transform marketing, there’s a danger that the pendulum swings a bit more to the CIO or the CTO in leading technology-led marketing when actually that will probably take us further away from serving the customer. So I want to come back to that in a little bit if we can.
Lara – 00:09:46:
Absolutely.
Paul – 00:09:46:
So linking to your point about strategy, Lara, I think sometimes the word marketing strategy or strategy per se can mean a different thing to many different people and can be a bit loose. What are the key strategic imperatives that you think marketing should guard in this current business environment?
Lara – 00:10:04:
So I think there’s a couple of things, but I’ll speak very personally from my experience in the role that I play in representing the mobile industry. The first for me at the top of the list would be reputation. We live in a moment in time where geopolitics continues to shift very quickly sometimes, and it’s polarizing at best. And the geopolitics impact economies. That’s the significance of the consequence of what we’re talking about. So for me, reputation is at the top. And because in my case, my portfolio includes communication and brand, that means that I am the steward of the reputation of the organization. So we think we spend a lot of time safeguarding and thinking about how to intelligently and really compellingly weigh into issues and still maintain somehow, the point of view of a global organization and a global board. So that’s at the top. The other way that we strategically participate is in our portfolio of products. wWwe do everything from advocacy on behalf of the industry to hold events on behalf of the industry to develop standards on behalf of an industry. And so we have a very wide, maybe product line to represent. So we’re always thinking about how do we pull together the whole story of who the GSMA is. We’re responsible to a group of members. We have to prove value to them. And it’s too easy to operate as a component part, a disparate part, if you like. So our challenge really is how do we make sure as we do those individual or disparate activities that we never lose sight of the whole. And then another really important element for us is how do we talk about impact? So whether it’s what we deliver. Externally to somebody else or whether it’s how we’re contributing as marketers. Impact is a very difficult thing to measure. It takes a lot of thought. It takes creativity and it tends to be quantitative rather than qualitative. So always just tougher. So how we measure it and then how we communicate it are really, really important. Those are three of in my top group of priorities. Then there’s lots of things that we do that I hope are part of everyone’s discipline. But developing a really great team. A team that, again, doesn’t get lost in the silos of the work but can work across. Finding ways that we can leverage work from one area to another. But team building has been a big part of my job in the last couple of years. Attracting the right people to the organization and growing them within the organization. Finding the right role. Finding places where they can thrive. Super important. So you can’t lose the people discussion inside of the role that we play.
Paul – 00:13:02:
Great. Thank you for sharing that, Lara. And I hear you say reputation, purpose, impact, all of which I think are super critical parts of what marketing should represent and anchor to. And how do you think about how CMOs ensure that that part gets fully represented inside brands? Because I think from you representing the mobile industry and broad set of network operators across the world, I can appreciate and understand why you have to put that very much at the top for the industry, whether it’s in region or across the world. But sometimes in brand, there’s obviously a rush to hit quarterly targets and there’s a commercial focus and sometimes reputation and purpose and customer experience fall down the pecking order. How would you suggest to CMOs that they should reset and make sure that those aspects are prioritized in the same way that you prioritize them in the same way that you prioritize them in the same way that you prioritize them in the GSMA?
Lara – 00:14:01:
It’s really difficult, isn’t it? I’ve certainly been in organizations where you can have a tension between groups because to your point, the goals and objectives of one group need to be achieved. And they’re often short term in nature. And sometimes they fly in the face of and very often unintentionally, I want to add, because I don’t think people set out to do this intentionally, but we create unintentional consequences by not just thinking things through. And so one of the ways that we manage it is we state up front. And again, I enjoy the support of the director general in this, but we believe as a member organization. So it’s a unique position in the marketplace because what we do is represent an industry. Reputation is everything. The loss of that would be catastrophic to us. So how we manage that is we’ve got a structure organizationally that allows for business partners who have a wide marketing skill set to manage relationships with each of the heads of our three pillars of activity. So they at an organizational level help us. And then from a leadership perspective, we’ve got KPIs around how we measure those, both our impact as well as reputational elements. And I guess maybe we enjoy the size of our organization is such that for myself and a couple of my team members, we have broad purview to the organization. It really is believed that marketing is the glue. It is the discipline that pulls things together. So it’s our role to see things at their broadest. It’s not everyone’s role to see things broadly. It’s our job to catch those things. So we feel empowered to do that.
Paul – 00:15:52:
And was it that way before you arrived that marketing was seen as the glue? Or has that been something that you’ve worked hard on? Or have you moved that? appreciation and understanding on out of interest.
Lara – 00:16:05:
I think that at the end of the day, what we can’t ignore is the fact that people and personalities play a role. So what I would give a lot of credit to is having a director general who believed that from the start. And he’s put together a leadership team that believes that. And I think I’ve done a really good job of maybe deepening that in the organization by the way that I behave. It happens to be a core value of mine, so I don’t struggle. But you have to remember, at the end of the day, everything we do relies on a person to do it. And so if you’re the leader that can create followership, you can get a lot more done than leaders who can’t. And to create followership, you have to have a vision and you have to be trustable.
Paul – 00:16:53:
I love that. I love the concept of followership. I think too often we bang on about being a leader, but don’t actually realize that to be a leader doesn’t mean people need to be prepared and feel confident and feel able to trust you to follow you. So I love the way you frame that. And we’ll maybe come back to dig into that a little bit later when we ask you about your personal leadership style. Lara, obviously one of the major points of the calendar for GSMA is The World Congress, which has always been a really standout big event that does everything from inspiring and showcasing the latest product in mobile and mobile tech all the way through to setting the agenda. How central is that to what you do and how do you continue to make sure that you can make that to continue growing and developing every year? Because I imagine once you’ve done it so many years on the try, it becomes quite difficult to keep stepping it up and up.
Lara – 00:17:48:
We get to do this thing every year called Mobile World Congress, MWC Barcelona. And this year we hosted 101,000 people to give you a sense of the scale. We had in the neighborhood of 2,500 journalists. We have top tier media outlets that broadcast from the show floor. But also, in addition to those impressive numbers, we have 1,100 speakers across about 18 stages. So we have a thought leadership program. We have a ministerial program, which is the biggest gathering of regulators and digital policymakers outside of the UN. And then we have an exhibition, which is probably in the neighborhood of 2,400 exhibitions. And these are mind-blowing. Like every year I walk on the show floor on Monday morning and I have goosebumps. And I’m not just saying that because I’m supposed to, because I’m the CMO of the organization. I literally have goosebumps. Because of what I see and experience. And then we have a startup element called 4 Years From Now. And they have hundreds of exhibitors as well. And more importantly, billions of dollars of investment represented that startup companies are vying for over the course of the week. And so from keeping it fresh every year, the moment I step onto that show floor on Monday morning, I go to the opening keynote. I host a keynote myself. We see some exhibitions. By end of day one, I’m already thinking about what it is we’re going to do better. I literally, in 12 hours change, my point of view. I start the day thinking, holy my God, this is so cool. How will we better this next year? To by the end of the day thinking, I know exactly what we’re going to do next year. That’s going to be different and cool. And some of those things include one of the things that’s very important to me is making sure that we have women represented. The technology world is not a place that has done a great job of putting women into leadership roles. In fact, hiring at the leadership level and technology has stalled in the last couple of years. So this year we had 45% of our keynote speakers were women. That is the best we’ve ever done. And it needs to keep improving. We’ve got a diversity for tech track that I’m super proud of. So that’s one of those conversations that began a couple of years ago. And that program is building. I think there’s elements in our thought leadership where you will see the most current themes represented. So. I found this startling. At the beginning of 2023, we knew our program in February 2023 had to include lots of talk of the metaverse. By the end of 2023, no one was talking about the metaverse. Everyone was talking about AI. And the difference between those two trends is that the AI conversation you can’t get away from at any of our events. It’s everywhere. So we keep it fresh by bringing in elements of things that culturally important and relevant, like diversity. And then we also add dynamically the themes into the momentum that the show creates. And then we add to it all of that conversation that happens out of the ministerial program. Those are the people who are deciding the policy on the technology that we’re there talking about. And the exhibition brings all the innovation, puts it on display, brings it really out into the open. And that’s way beyond product launches, which, as a marketer, I get super excited about the product launches because they’re the most beautiful things ever. This industry does it right.
Paul – 00:21:22:
It’s a wonderful industry. It’s all our stakeholders. I didn’t realize it had grown so much to over 100,000 people. I mean, that’s quite remarkable.
Lara – 00:21:30:
Yeah, so it’s a big responsibility and it’s a really big gift to be able to get to influence this every year by attracting all of the right elements. On top of it, by the way, we have a very high number of CEOs who are at the show. So the decision makers are there, the buyers, the sellers are there, and importantly, the decision makers. So on top of everything I just said, business is getting done and people achieve their annual targets or set up their pipelines for the year.
Paul – 00:22:00:
From MWC, yeah. And I think it’s also wonderful to see, I mean, given we’ve got challenges with growth in Western Europe, that it’s great to see that the mobile industry, amongst others, including the creative industries, where obviously marketing fits are actually continuing to prove to be growth drivers for economies everywhere. And at some point, we were going to come on to AI. I mean, look, it’s impossible not to. And some of the more native AI players have sprung up from nowhere, or whether it’s OpenAI or NVIDIA from the chip perspective. But I think what Apple did fairly recently has reminded us that most of this technology is going to be interacted through a mobile device, which is in everybody’s hand. And I guess Apple cleverly was trying to bring it back to AI for everyone. What’s your view on how AI is going to both impact the mobile industry going forward, but also marketing? I’m sure you spend a lot of time talking about this, and whether it’s in some of your governance groups or talking to the members, what’s key for you in this area?
Lara – 00:23:03:
It’s such an interesting topic. I’m so glad you asked. So Apple reminded us, but I think before they did, Honor did. Honor’s another mobile device manufacturer, and they’ve already got AI on their device. And so definitely seeing consumer devices already with AI on board, which raises all sorts of questions about the ethics of AI, data capture, data sovereignty, you name it. It’s part of the AI conversation, isn’t it? So from an industry perspective, mobile operators have been using AI for a few years now, and they’ve probably used it behind the scenes more than out front. And it’s been about cost reduction or efficiencies that they can gain in the management of networks and data and that sort of thing. We’re definitely seeing this now move into the realm, obviously, through ChatGPT and others into a more consumer conversation. And with that, like I said, all of the elements of how we protect data and how we ethically treat AI are a concern to the GSMA. So we have a group of individuals who are working across our industry on proposed elements of how to operate in an ethical way relative to AI. And that will be used to influence policymakers who, again, as I just described, we don’t just interact with policymakers at MWC, but we have a whole team of people in our advocacy unit who meet with and work to influence all throughout the year. And so we’re working with those policymakers right now. One of our big concerns is that we don’t create another gap. We saw for a while in mobile networks that we had a coverage gap. We now have 95% of the world covered with a mobile network. We now know that we have a usage gap. So we’ve got a gap where people have coverage but aren’t accessing the internet. And we think that creates a divide in an increasingly digitized, world that needs to be addressed. Probably in the neighborhood of 3 billion people right now don’t access mobile internet. And women, to a greater degree, are more impacted by that. And so what we don’t want to have now is an AI gap. So we want to make sure that we’re democratizing AI so that we’re not leaving people behind as we continue to launch new innovations and new technologies. So that’s a lot of where we spend our time and energy on this topic at the moment.
Paul – 00:25:27:
That’s great to hear. And also pretty reassuring. And I think your point about the gap is a really good one. Not just, as you say, from the usage perspective, but also to make sure that we don’t let the bias of male engineers out of Palo Alto or wherever else make sure that we create overly biased tools that don’t work for the 50-50 female-male population we have, right? I think it’s a really good call out. Most of the people shouting and investing in AI, unfortunately, are all rather large male oligarchs or whatever you want to call them. So I love that you guys are spending so much time drawing attention to not just the ethics, but also that gap part of it and the responsibility that we have to get this right for future generations.
Lara – 00:26:19:
Absolutely. It’s a huge responsibility.
Paul – 00:26:22:
And on the topic of responsibility, I suppose the other key area, which is often talked about in the mobile industry is sustainability, given obviously people have got into a habit of buying one device and then a year or two later thinking, oh, I need the next device and technology moves on and AI moves on and we upgrade. But of course, that creates a challenge for the number of, if nothing else, the number of handsets that exist across the world and the amount of computing power and heat that’s being created. So I’m sure that sustainability is also a core part of what GSMA talks to its members about. Could you just share with us where your focus is on there?
Lara – 00:26:59:
Yes, of course. I’m really proud that the mobile industry was one of the first industries to sign up to the SDGs across the board. So I think this is a group of people, a group of companies who have taken this very seriously from the beginning and all of the SDGs are important. There’s been a lot of work in the area of climate. In fact, the mobile industry was one of the first to set a target to become net zero by 2050. And there are some mobile operators already leading the way by using a significant amount of renewable energy across their networks. And we also know that, by the way, this smart technology is a great enabler of energy consumption reduction. So we think there’s lots of areas for the mobile industry to be really stepping up as it relates to climate. And circularity, this notion of handsets and what we do with them. I mean, as a mom and as a person in this industry, this drives me crazy. My children always want to change to the latest device. And sometimes there are good reasons to do that. And sometimes there really aren’t. So we have to be responsible consumers. But then there’s also programs that mobile operators and the GSMA are beginning to engage in. So things like how to reduce electronic waste, how to extend mobile device longevity, recycled materials for new phones. We’ve got operators like Orange, KDDI, Singtel, Safaricom. I want to mention someone from every region who I know. We’re doing these things. Telefonica, these are all companies who have a real commitment to this.
Paul – 00:28:37:
Don’t leave anyone out.
Lara – 00:28:39:
Yeah, I don’t want to leave anyone out because, well, we’re a global organization, so I always try to pick someone from every region so that I’ve not been biased in my view or being too Eurocentric given where I live. But these are important programs and I’m really, really proud of representing an industry that has taken this so seriously and will continue to because of the issue we just talked about, which is AI, which is going to be a huge drain on energy.
Paul – 00:29:02:
Great. Now, that’s really reassuring to hear. And actually, interestingly, when I was in Cannes for the Cannes Lion Festival a few weeks ago, I caught up with Lars Silberbauer, who’s the CMO of Nokia. And obviously, Nokia has been on quite some journey. I’m sure you and I remember the first dominance of Nokia in the mobile industry and now taking a somewhat different approach. But a couple of the things that stood out for me in the Nokia strategy is, one, the focus on sustainability and trying to almost change the way that subscription works along with the purchase of the handset so that you deal with that and then playing around with battery life. And giving more sustainability to the longevity of the phone, but also bringing the 3210 back. 32 or 33. But bringing that back. And what Lars talked about was as a antidote to the fact that sounds like your children, your girls are the same as mine, that they’re constantly on their phones and that antidote, almost like a digital detox antidote, that you don’t need always all of these apps and all of the notifications on the whole time. And it struck me that they were trying to connect into two thematics. One, this need for disconnection from technology sometimes and being in the present. And secondly, trying to innovate in the space of sustainability. I just wondered if you had any thoughts or comments on that.
Lara – 00:30:20:
Nokia is a brand that I really admire. First of all, let me say that in 2023, they launched their new brand at MWC. And again, as a marketer, I have a lot of respect for people who do brand well, and I think they just nail it. We’ve also enjoyed Pekka’s thought leadership from our keynote stage a number of times in recent years. He’s talked a few times about climate and their commitment to it. I think that as an organization, Nokia, like others, have created significant and aggressive targets for themselves. And I just really admire leaders that have the courage to do that. So I think what they’re doing, in addition with the phone device that you mentioned, is responding really beautifully to a current concern of parents. So I have to applaud a brand that goes and does something really practical about it. It’s a very tricky subject, that one, but it’s a pervasive issue in society. And I think you’re going to hear more from the GSMA on it in future. And I really admire Nokia as an organization. I think they’re doing a lot of things right.
Paul – 00:31:22:
Interesting. Yeah, no, I think when brands Cannes connect to culture and topicality as well as stay true to themselves, I think magical things happen, don’t they? And Nokia has done very well in the past and I think is finding its feet in the right space to do that again today, particularly in developing markets where I think that the evolution of feature phone to smartphone is only just happening for a lot of the population.
Lara – 00:31:45:
There’s some other interesting things happening. There’s a mobile operator called KPN, and they just in the last year or two have done a wonderful campaign on what is referred to as sharenting. You’ve probably heard of this. So parents sharing details of their children’s lives on social media. The campaign is beautifully done, really well executed. I think it was also talked about at Cannes this year. And I’d encourage you to check that out because there’s mobile operators doing all of these things where they think where they’re, to your point, addressing or responding to societal concerns. Then we’ve got people like VEON and Beeline who have just signed on to a project with the GSMA Foundry, which is all about taking minority languages and using AI and a supercomputer out of Barcelona, to ensure that these languages aren’t lost. Which is amazing. So the breadth and spread of societal issues being addressed by various people in the mobile ecosystem is really interesting. We could talk all day about really cool things that are going on.
Paul – 00:32:52:
That’s great to hear because we can’t hide from a lot of these challenges, can we? Let’s be honest. We can’t continue on this march of continuing to consume and create heat and not do anything about it. So it’s great to hear that. Lara, we’re moving towards the end of the interview, and I wanted to just change tact a little bit and come back to marketing and the CMO. You obviously fulfill that role today, but you’ve played it in other organizations as well as a member organization. And I’m just interested in what you think the main or most important attributes of a CMO of the future will be, bearing in mind some of the topics we talked about.
Lara – 00:33:28:
I think that a CMO more than ever today needs to be strategic and visionary. I think they really do need to be able to create followership in their organizations. Their teams fulfill a breadth of activities, services, and tactics across organizations. And they’ve got to be able to create a meaningful North Star for their teams. I think that CMOs also have to have, frankly, a lot of grit. They’re getting into areas where they previously haven’t had to play, whether it’s digital transformation, where it’s responsibility for commercial line items, or whether it’s proving the value that they’re adding in addition to the money that they spend in organizations. And I think that takes grit. And with grit, some perseverance, but also the ability to know when to pivot and, frankly, when not to pivot. And then in my own life, I’m taking time right now to find spaces to be creative. Sometimes I find my job is very busy. It involves a lot of travel. And I never want the business of marketing to rob myself or my teams of being creative. Because, again, we serve other people. And so there’s a lot of really good work that goes on relative to data management and contributing to growth. And really important things. But we also have to, in the midst of that, bring the creative element to an organization. And I’m hoping from time to time that that looks a little weird to the people that are my peers. Because if I don’t, from time to time, bring a weird idea to the table, who is? And then if no one’s bringing weird to the table, what happens? And so leaning into creativity, I think, a little bit is important.
Paul – 00:35:22:
I thought there were some really wonderful insights there, Lara. Thank you. And I often talk about the importance of bringing the outside in. And I think I really like your language about bringing weird to the table because weird and wonderful sparks different thinking and breaks the norm, doesn’t it? And there are many things that marketing has to do, but actually being creative about how to solve a problem, I think is a really important one. And that’s not just about a creative output. It’s about creative problem solving. And I think sometimes we mistake creativity for creative problem solving, or we just think it’s about a great piece of advertising or a great idea. And yes, we all love seeing that at Cannes Lion, but I think you just gave us a great reminder of the importance of solving, and we’ve talked about a few of them, solving big global geopolitical problems does require some creative problem solving in different perspective.
Lara – 00:36:15:
Yes. And I think like if we’re not uncomfortable ourselves from time to time, we’re definitely not growing. And if we aren’t as leaders asking uncomfortable questions or bringing ideas to the table that make people slightly uncomfortable, then we’re just not doing our jobs. And that probably starts with curiosity and asking interesting questions. But it’s also about just on a practical level, exposing ourselves to things way outside our own comfort zone and outside our industry, certainly, so that we are inspired ourselves.
Paul – 00:36:47:
Absolutely. And you just gave a wonderful segue into my final question, which is when people hear the guests I interview on this podcast, they think everyone’s got everything together. But of course, we all know that we’re all a work in progress and all of us are working on different things. I remember on your LinkedIn, you beautifully put your two kids are your best teachers. And I feel from talking to you and hearing you talk about followership and taking insight from different parts of the world that you very much think about how you can be curious and how you can improve yourself. So share with us maybe a few things that you’re focused on right now, if you don’t mind.
Lara – 00:37:22:
Yeah, what a great question. Because what a shame if everybody thought that we all have to have it together, because that is really not the truth. I assure anyone who’s listening, I think, I guess a long time ago, I decided that I was just going to be a lifelong learner. And I don’t ever think that I have anything quite nailed. I’m probably quite hard on myself in that regard, but it works to my benefit. I am constantly learning as a parent. That’s one of my big challenges. I think as your kids get older, they need you more, but less somehow. There’s like a delicate balance that you need to learn to play. Decisions have greater consequence, but they want more liberty and freedom and autonomy, obviously. So on a parental level, I’m learning all the time. On a corporate level, when I entered this organization a few years ago, what I get reminded of all the time is how I’m not a technologist. And so I am all the time learning to come up to speed on my own technology knowledge. I’m learning new acronyms. My goodness, this industry has a lot of acronyms. So that technical knowledge, I’m still coming up to speed on. And the travel that I do and going and seeing our members is all about how do I fill that gap and become comfortable? I don’t need to be the CTO. We have a wonderful CTO who knows everything about technology. But I need to know enough to be credible and to also understand what it is we’re trying ultimately to communicate and solve. And so for me, that takes up a lot of time and space intellectually and from a business perspective, learning that. And then also because I’m newish to an industry, I’m still working on my network. I’m still working to get connected to the right people. I’m meeting new people all the time who are, again, contributing and helping to fill in those gaps. And so networking, we all talk about it like we do it. I don’t know about you, Paul, but I find it hard. Like walking into a room where you don’t know people and they don’t know you is not easy. You have to have a game face. On and put your best foot forward and have a few things at hand and at the ready to talk about. And so I feel like I’m putting myself out there in all of the very social things that we do as an organization all the time, just to be connected to people and learn from them.
Paul – 00:39:39:
Wonderful. And thank you for that vulnerability. I have to say, I share the same, which, and I think listeners hearing that from you or me might be surprised, but walking into a room of people you don’t know is not easy for anybody. And I often, when I mentor people, say to them, you realize the value of a network when you need one. And when you need one, you’ve already built it. And often people don’t think about that too late in their career. So it’s a massively important part of anybody’s career journey, but you’re right. You have to get comfortable with how you do it. I remember once reading that Marissa Mayer had this plan because she didn’t like enjoy social company of going and thinking she’s only going for 20 minutes. So if it does feel uncomfortable or not of value, she would leave. And if she was still there 45 minutes, she would determine that that was actually a really valuable time to be in. She was being in the present. So I think whatever your way of navigating it, I think that’s, that’s really good advice for people to think about. How do you get comfortable with something that’s really important if you want to progress in your career?
Lara – 00:40:42:
I really like that framing. I’m going to definitely borrow that. And I will say more often than not, once you get across the threshold of the room, everything gets better. It’s the threshold moment. So I guess, you know, when you’re entering a room, if it scares you a little bit, you’re probably entering the right room, by the way. And the second thing is get yourself across the threshold. Don’t give up. Don’t give up. But I love that expression of time and then considering something a win beyond 20 minutes. I’m definitely going to do that.
Paul – 00:41:12:
Well, look, Lara, thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing your insights. I mean, you’ve taken us all the way from the importance of marketing being a strategic force inside business and the importance of how marketing drives reputation, purpose, impact, through to how issues of AI and, well, not issues, but challenges and new emergence of new technology, AI, and the challenges of consumption and sustainability are being thought about from a GSMA perspective, but also from some of how your members are thinking about problem solving it for, and then taking us through to conversation about vulnerability, followership, which I love, and the importance of building a network. So I think there’s a huge amount of nuggets in this conversation. So all that remains is to thank you for your time.
Lara – 00:41:57:
My pleasure. Thanks again for having me. It’s been a real treat to talk about marketing. Thank you.
Paul – 00:42:03:
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.
