Better Marketing Pod 2023 key learnings

This year we talked again to some of the brightest minds in the industry for our WFA podcast, bringing you tips and insights for better global marketing. As the year draws to a close, host David Wheldon gives his 2023 podcast highlights.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

There's no interesting measure. I mean, most people's performance reviews. But if you don't have that, I think it's almost impossible to be the brand manager is the gym manager of the brand.

David Wheldon (Host) 0:23

I was just this fat unit, you know what I mean, in a in a in a suit. And it was clear that I was not I was not the same as the others. Hello everybody and welcome to uh the end of the year for WFA Better Marketing. And it is that time of year when we get to review and reflect. And I thought we'd give you a quick highlight reel from the eight fabulous interviews I've had the privilege of doing this year and to pluck out some really key learning. So here we go. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

They always looked at it and think, you know, let's not waste a crisis and find ways to continue serving the people and finding ways to make sure that our brand is relevant and we can connect with people as well, which is one of the most important things for us. So having said that, um we essentially started looking into ways of connecting them through things that were relevant to people at at that time, especially during during the pandemic when there was the lockdown. Um we started looking to ways we could support people through food delivery, for example. And you know, we even had our cabin crew and our pilots kind of pivoting and changing their job roles for a while to do this, um, to really support the community in the region and to support people in Malaysia and other parts of the country as well. Um but then from there, we've always been on this path of I wouldn't say pivoting the brand, but really evolving the brand. Um you know, being an airline was was really the start of our entire journey. Um at the end of the day, it ties back to the brand purpose of Air Asia, which is about connecting people and transforming lives. So really the airline was the start of the whole journey. And the pandemic just essentially accelerated everything else that we intended to do from the get-go.

SPEAKER_04 2:14

Journalism is important to all of our democracies and support for journalism is historically uh been driven to some large degree by advertising. And yet there are now thousands of high-quality uh news sites that are getting no programmatic advertising. We encourage CMOs to preempt the question from the CEO of wait a second, don't we look at all the news and information sites where our ads are appearing? CEOs still believe that the CMO has vetted where the brands appear. And it's the nature of programmatic advertising, and that is simply not true. So our encouragement to CMOs is um even with programmatic advertising, there's now the opportunity to use exclusion lists and inclusion lists to make sure that the brand is only appearing on the highest quality uh news and information sources, but also that it's supporting uh local news and news serving underrepresented communities and meeting the obligations that so many companies have taken on to support those efforts. So at NewsGuard, we we hope that the ability now for brands to say, I want to support these high-quality sites, I do not want to support the thousands and thousands of low-quality sites, hoaxed sites in many cases. Um and I will do that by enabling advertising onto those high-quality sites and keep them off the others. It would make for a much healthier source of revenue for journalism and it would end what has essentially been an unintended boycott of high-quality sites, even as through programmatic advertising, so billions of dollars have ended up supporting terrible websites.

SPEAKER_08 4:19

You you rightly say that, you know, a lot of the work that I've done over the years has been around sustainability strategy, and of course, you need to have targets uh uh for that. When I another piece of work that was going on when I came in was that we had a whole series of 2020 CSV targets, and I think if I remember correctly, it was about 39 distinct 2020 targets that we we we were living with, and we were coming to the end of that phase. So we needed to replace them. It was the post-2020 targets project, and and chief amongst the the objectives in all of that was how do we have fewer but more meaningful targets? So strip them right down. And we've done it's been quite an evolutionary product project, but we've done quite a lot of work to figure out okay, so what are the things that matter most and just zero in on those? So fewer but more meaningful.

David Wheldon (Host) 5:15

And and in terms of I see you're wearing the badge there aligning with Paris and the sustainable development goals. Uh how have you done that? How have you simplified against the development goals?

SPEAKER_08 5:26

But we look at the SDGs through the lens of okay, so which are the ones that matter most to us? How can we be in service of them? How are we already in service of them? And you know, we identified obviously um you know uh the the poverty goal I think is really important, two on on nutrition food, of course, important, um, you know, that that the health goal is really important. So, you know, we look at the first three uh especially, but not exclusively so. Um I I would I would be honest and say that we haven't said right, in order to support the goals, we've got to have targets specifically in those areas. We've kind of looked at it a little bit more the other way around. Business mapping back to the SDGs. One thing I do feel very strongly about, though, with SDGs is goals 16 and 17. 17 being collaboration. Uh, and I really wish they would have put that first because I don't think any of us, I mean, governments are really the the goals are really uh uh oriented towards member states, but governments are grappling with this. And so it they really need NGOs, civil society, campaigning groups, and of course the private sector uh to come together on this. So I I really regret that they didn't say, look, this starts with collaboration, let's put that top. Uh, 16 is important to us as well, and I think it's a much overlooked goal, um, peace, security, and uh strong institutions. Um, and I I think it's an area that really deserves further exploration. Of course, you know, climate matters, nature and biodiversity matters, water matters, all of the goals really matter. But I do feel that the role of business in society as we look ahead the next 20, 30 years, what is the role of business in preserving and enhancing secure, decent uh social systems, preserving and enhancing democratic institutions and people's rights? Um, what is the role of business in areas of conflict to try and either prevent conflict from occurring or restore uh decent institutions and stability? And there's a lot of things that business can do in that space as well. So, yeah, it's a broad topic.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

I must say that WFA really, really did some yeoman work, uh, whether it is in the areas of sustainability and environment, brilliant work, uh, whether it is moving along the agenda on GARM, which is our global alliance for responsible uh media, that was something which was really, really uh valuable contribution to the industry as a whole. Uh, and we had taken a lot of playbooks, you know, in terms of whether it is for brand safety and security, where we were a part of uh in a global alliance uh which was driving privacy uh first kind of areas. And we also have had uh a ton of areas around the media, part of it, around uh talent development. So there were so many areas that we had focused on over this last four years, it's been very fulfilling, very gratifying. And WFA itself has had tremendous support uh across multiple initiatives. And just to give one example, uh, when we had launched something called Planet Pledge. So Planet Pledge was basically about saying that we understand what is happening in the environment. We as marketers have a responsibility to fulfill. And here is a playbook of how you can do it and take a pledge that we are going to commit to. Uh, and that's something which really uh has done very well already. We have got 32 major companies which have uh participated in it. Uh, and we have recently done a pilot, which also is going to be very, very big for the next uh couple of years. I think it's going to give us a lot of impetus to see how we can actually pluck some of the low-hanging fruit to decarbonize the digital advertising ecosystem. And uh, you know, MasterCard has been one of those uh uh pilot partners. So I feel very good about it and uh the kind of momentum that's happening under Stefan Larque's uh uh leadership. And for those of uh the folks who don't know, Stefan is the CEO of WFA and he has been at it for 25 years and doing a marvelous job. So I'm very pleased. Last four years I've been telling you.

SPEAKER_09 9:32

There is this there is a bit of a sort of hype cycle at the moment around generative AI and particularly fears around generative AI. It is worth remembering that AI is a it's a weapon to actually deal with bad stuff as much as it is a generator of the bad stuff. Um and I think what will happen over the next two or three years, I predict, is that in many respects people will look back and realise that these advances in AI actually equip us to deal with some of this bad stuff and and outpace um the the the the you know the creation of this bad content as much as it it it it is the origin of it in the first place.

David Wheldon (Host) 10:11

Brand safety. Uh could can you just talk to the data on that? Because I think the data shift is impressive, you know, the lack of hate speech and so on, the what you've done in the background with AI to improve this.

SPEAKER_09 10:22

I mean, I can't talk to because it's just not what I do day to day, and you can talk, and and and uh other colleagues of mine could talk with greater proficiency about some of the tools that we've unveiled in in in sort of hand in glove with GAM and others to ensure that there are proper tools for advertisers so that they have some control about where their content appears. I think that has been transformational in in certainly since I came to the company four and a half years ago, but I think that's been accompanied by um and and it's in a sense two sides of the same coin, which on the one hand you want to give advertisers greater control about where their ads show up, but on the other side of the equation, you just want to make sure that there's just less undesirable content which could be adjacent to an ad. And and on that, uh I I do, and you know, there's a great raging debate about AI and particularly generative AI, which we may want to turn to, but um, I do think it's striking how effective AI has been deployed at scale by a company like Meta in dealing with some of the, you know, we we segment this in, I think there's 2021 categories of content that we either try and remove or deprecate or label uh from hate speech, obviously terrorist content we remove, uh, bullying, harassment, IP fraud, and so on. And we publish, we're now by far the most transparent uh company, I think, in the industry on this again, under pressure from many state stakeholders. It's something I certainly um pushed and shoved on a lot when I arrived at the company. So every 12 weeks alongside our financial reporting, we now report in a it's audited in a by a third party by EY. We report all the content that we find under those different categories. Are we getting better or worse at identifying it? Are we getting better or worse at removing it? How much is it stuff that's reported to us by users? How much is it that is actually identified by our own systems? And you mentioned hate speech, it's a very good example. The prevalence of hate speech, because that's the best statistical method that we have alighted upon to be able to illustrate uh the quantum, if you like, of the of this kind of content. So, in other words, how much or that category of content uh exists as a proportion of the total content on Facebook, the prevalence of hate speech today stands at around 0.02%. So for every 10,000 bits of content that you that you might find on Facebook, if you're infinitely scrolling, you'll find two bits of hate speech.

SPEAKER_05 12:51

As uh big companies, we have big responsibility tool, and we really need uh to be facing the biggest challenge of mankind, of humanity, and work in our of course a smaller area compared to the challenge of humanity. But uh, by bringing this value uh that we can have, I think that if we inspire other organizations encourage them to come, try to join, and if they ever have any doubts, please uh come with me because I will try to help on that. Because at the end, it's something that will have a positive feedback in all your stakeholders, you know, not just in terms of winning money, but it's winning credibility. You you said it very well. What about the brand? You know, it is um increasing the consideration you can have toward your brand because you are doing something very relevant for humanity and and maybe imagine for the younger targets. I always say that the younger in terms of sustainability is not even a chance, an opportunity, or uh challenge, you know, it's a must you have it, or you are not even considered to be there. That's why this moment is small um companies doing great things locally, learning from them because we are not just helping them, they are helping us a lot too, because they are bringing a lot of value in the thinking, in the way of in the way they operate, in the way they they bring things to the market really, really fast. You know, we we are very big and sometimes um we we need to be more agile. We are working a lot on these two, no, in order uh to be able to deliver concepts as fast as we can, not losing time because trends change very, very fast.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

And really, we coined this term creativity with precision very purposefully, because you know that and and I see that in many of my colleagues in other companies as well. To me, this is a perfect combination and one that cannot be kind of dismissed or taken for granted at all. Uh, and sometimes uh come I've seen even ourselves really focus a lot on the creative aspect of things, uh, which is wonderful and you know I'm full of admiration for creative minds. Uh, but at the same time, we need to make sure that we convince our executive teams and our boards uh that we need to invest in the brands, and and the way in which you convince people is by you know proving the case. So that's the piece that we call precision, and we've invested a lot in tools and capabilities, etc. And so creativity with precision was kind of, you know, when I took on the role, we as I said, I coined these works with the team in a real attempt to be super clear. You know, this is our going to be our North Star. We're going to be our brands are amazing, phenomenal, you know, hundreds of years, some of them, and we will conquer hearts and minds, but always surprising, always delighting, and creativity does that for us. However, we need to be precise as well because you know the world has gotten a lot more fragmented, you could get lost in many consumer touch points, and also frankly, I wanted us to invest more behind our brands in advertising and promotion, and and we got it. And the way in which we got it was through real, very grounded uh articulation of what return investment our investment actually does provide. But having said all of that, um, if you remember, you mentioned when I took on the role, I took on the role just as the pandemic kicked off. It was quite challenging. It was challenging for everybody, of course. Um but in I think in our industry, the particular challenge came from the fact that almost half of our business is in the world that I just described earlier: bartenders, bars, restaurants, events, uh, you know, festivals, and having all of that be closed from one day to the next. Well, it was like a huge setback, you know. Um, but in that context, I think we said, look, the truth is we see the nice I call it, you know, a mindset of possibility. There's so much that can happen, will happen. We've just been surprised by the circumstances in a way that was totally unimaginable. And for that reason, the totally unimaginable can happen now, and we can hopefully channel to really achieve what we've always said we want to do. That is the core of our business is celebration. And so if if you believe that whatever the circumstances, people will want to celebrate whatever's happening, small celebrations, big celebrations, and if you remember, now it feels almost like science fiction to me, even uh, when I think back, you know, those days, um, you know, we were having all these Zoom events, even with our families. I was seeing my brothers, I had the baptism of my nephew on Zoom, and we prepare our cocktails. And of course, we we were able to figure out very quickly through understanding search, etc., that cocktail making was in the right and it was uh really pivoting towards at home. Uh, we did a lot more work in that space. In fact, we did leverage some of our bartender uh community to create possibilities for them, but also engagement for consumers. So I think this, you know, at the end of the day, this notion of humanity, David, that you've mentioned, you know, for me, certainly in our industry, it's all about human connections, right? That's what celebration is all about. It could be that today is Friday afternoon and we want to celebrate the end of the week, or the weather in London is amazing, and why don't we all go to the beach somewhere? Um, you know, whatever it might be. It's a birthday or a big anniversary, or just you know, you feel a bit tired and you want to go out and see some friends. So, whichever the reason, uh, and we we articulate all of the things that I just talked about in the context of we call them occasions. You know, what is what are the occasions, what's the value pool within that occasion, and how do we best respond to that occasion through our brands and our and the cocktails or the serves that happen through the brands.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Unilever, Procter Gamble, I've I've both worked for, I've also worked for Mars, and now I work for PepsiCo. All four companies are incredible. What what what you know what my experience of all four has been is they're all very values-driven companies that try to do the right thing and that you know, whose people put a lot of effort into the how, not just the what. And um honestly, I'm proud to work for PepsiCo. PepsiCo has diversity and inclusion at the heart of our aspirations, and and you know, um, I think all of all four companies are judged by their actions, not just their words. And and I'm proud to have a diverse team where we're really you know working on harnessing that diversity uh for better performance. I think there's so much industry evidence that diversity brings better performance. I think in certainly all the global companies I've worked for, that that it's not it's not in debate that it drives performance, it's just about how you cultivate a diverse and importantly an inclusive um um culture so that really people can bring their full selves to work and and deliver extraordinary things.

David Wheldon (Host) 20:44

Wow. Weren't they amazing? And wasn't there so much to pick out and learn there? But uh the couple of things I I will really ponder as I sit and reflect on the year is how can we drive more uncommon collaboration to achieve more effective results? And what can I do to help drive that? Because what we should all be thinking about is what can each of us do to make a real difference in the world through better marketing. And with that, I'll wish you a very happy holidays. Enjoy