October 23, 2025 • 29 mins
Buckle up.
Formula 1’s popularity is surging among women, which is no surprise considering gals like Mercedes-Benz Chief Marketing Officer Melody Lee are at the helm. Lee visited The GIST to chat all things F1, from innovation in the sports space to bringing F1: The Movie to life and of course, who Lee’s all-time heroes are. Lights out, and away she goes.
Psst — you can listen to more inspiring interviews like this one by subscribing to The GIST Plus, our membership platform that’s creating the healthiest, most supportive community on the Internet.
This episode was brought to you by Amazon Business, the ultimate partner for smart business buying. Amazon Business offers a one-stop shop for all of your business needs, helping companies of all shapes and sizes simplify their purchasing process. Learn more by checking out business.amazon.com today.
Show notes:
Join The GIST Plus today
More on The GIST:
☎️ Leave us a voicemail! Call us at 1-437-564-5579 or hold down on this link
🎧 Subscribe: thegistsports.com/subscribepod
✉️ Email: pod@thegistsports.com
📷 Instagram: @thegistca @thegistusa
🐦 X: @thegistpod
Formula 1’s popularity is surging among women, which is no surprise considering gals like Mercedes-Benz Chief Marketing Officer Melody Lee are at the helm. Lee visited The GIST to chat all things F1, from innovation in the sports space to bringing F1: The Movie to life and of course, who Lee’s all-time heroes are. Lights out, and away she goes.
Psst — you can listen to more inspiring interviews like this one by subscribing to The GIST Plus, our membership platform that’s creating the healthiest, most supportive community on the Internet.
This episode was brought to you by Amazon Business, the ultimate partner for smart business buying. Amazon Business offers a one-stop shop for all of your business needs, helping companies of all shapes and sizes simplify their purchasing process. Learn more by checking out business.amazon.com today.
Show notes:
Join The GIST Plus today
More on The GIST:
☎️ Leave us a voicemail! Call us at 1-437-564-5579 or hold down on this link
🎧 Subscribe: thegistsports.com/subscribepod
✉️ Email: pod@thegistsports.com
📷 Instagram: @thegistca @thegistusa
🐦 X: @thegistpod
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks to our pals at Amazon Business for supporting The
Gist of It. As we celebrate five hundred episodes of
the podcast, I'm reminiscing about the good old days, like
when me and Sef taught ourselves how to edit a podcast,
or that time I recorded an entire episode on a
very tiny mic equipment. Emergencies happen, but when you have
the support of Amazon Business, a solution is never far away.
(00:23):
Thanks to Amazon Business and they're fast free shipping. I
had a new podcast mic and a matter of days,
make the right investment for your company. Check out everything
Amazon Business has to offer by visiting Business dot Amazon
dot com today one more time. That's Business dot Amazon
dot com. What's up, y'all? Welcome or welcome back to
(00:51):
another episode of the Gist of It. We have missed
you so much since last week. Today's Thursday, October twenty third,
and today you're stuck with me only I'm your host,
Ellen Hislob. This week we are hosting our team in
Toronto for an off site and they're always so much
fun to get together in person, especially because we're a
(01:11):
remote team. And because of that, we like to give
our team arrest from actually producing the newsletter and the podcast.
So this is a pre recorded show, but we wanted
to make sure we came into your feed at least
once while we were away. It's also just me today
because of another little secret. So two weeks ago, in
(01:33):
case you missed it, we launched the Just Plus. It's
a brand new membership community for our gisters, providing them
a safe place to chat about sports, find each other
IRLR online, get exclusive content from the Gist, get discounts
from different sports bars and teams, and all of that
(01:53):
sort of stuff. And it's been really cool to see
all of the conversation on the Just Plus. And I
think if you're a podcast listener, honestly, well obviously you
are because you're listening right now, so you are our
podcast listener, You're gonna love the just Plus. So go
to our website and check it out and learn more
and hopefully you join the community. Another huge perk of
(02:14):
the Just Plus so there's two tiers, the Rookie Tier
and the All Star Tier. But in the All Star
Tier that's just ten dollars a month or one hundred
dollars a year, you get a lot of exclusive content
and offerings and some of that content offering is two
additional podcasts every single month, and these podcasts are a
little bit more on the interview side of things, athletes
(02:36):
side of things, deep diving into topics, working off of
topics that we're chatting about in the discord for the
just Plus and they're really fun. And so today we're
sharing an episode that actually members of the just plus
received yesterday. We want to share it with you all
to just give you a taste of the type of
premium content that we're sharing on the Just Plus and
(02:58):
what everyone over there is interact with. So today's episode
features an interview with probably one of I don't know,
one of the favorite people who I've had the opportunity
to chat with at the Gist, and that is Marcedes
Benz's chief marketing officer, Melody Lee. Like, yes, the gist
of it is chatting to powerhouse women like cmos of
(03:20):
mega automotive brands. It's so cool and this wouldn't be
able to happen without this amazing community that we have.
Part of the reason why we wanted to chat with
Melody Lee is because she is a powerful woman in
a male dominated field. Sports are a male dominated field.
There's so many parallels to the automotive industry. She is
(03:41):
such a genius marketer and on top of everything that
she has to handle for Marcedes Benz, Formula one is
a big part of her purview of how it actually
impacts Marcedes as a brand, and so we got kind
of an inside scoop as to how she approaches is
Mercedes as a brand altogether, but also how again F
(04:05):
one and this new F one, the movie and how
Drive to Survive and everything like that has really impacted.
So it's just such a cool conversation. We also talked
about sexism in the workplace and all that sort of
stuff that I think anyone can really resonate with. I
really hope you'll love this conversation. I could have sat
(04:26):
and chatted with Melody for hours, honestly, And if you're
interested in more content like this, you could go to
the link in our show notes or just go to
our website, the Just sports dot com and sign up
for the Just Plus. We'd love to have you as
part of our community. But with that and with all
of that background, here is our fabulous conversation with the
(04:47):
one and only Melody Lee. Melody, thanks so much, for coming.
On the gist of it, we are so excited to
have you here.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I'm so pleased to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Oh my gosh. Of course I can probably pick your
brain for an hour, but we only have twenty minutes
or so, and I know that our audience is so
excited to learn from you today. I want to start
off by setting the scene a little bit and starting
things at a very high level with your role as
the CMO at Mercedes. What are your goals? What does
(05:19):
your day to day look like? Can you paint the
picture for us a little bit more broadly before we
dive into the conversation.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Our two main goals at Mercedes Benz in the marketing
department are to drive growth and demand for the brand
that ultimately results in the sale of a vehicle, and secondly,
to build long term growth for the brand itself, so
long term equity. We are one hundred and forty years
old next year. We were bounded in eighteen eighty six,
(05:49):
which means that it's incumbent upon us to do both
at the same time and is kind of a constant balance.
So we have to be focused on how we move
the metal as we like to say in this intry,
but we also have to think about how we preserve
the brand for the next one hundred and forty years and.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
For Mercedes, and as you're thinking about that growth in
terms of the longevity of people who are buying Mercedes
vehicles when you're thinking about setting up the brand. This
is a sports podcast, so I have to talk to
you about sports. How do you think about sports playing
into your marketing mix and how sports help hit those goals.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Sports are a huge part of our marketing strategy, and
I will happily tell you about all the different ways
in which we're involved. But sports is a place where
the audience is united in a sense, it's still one
of the best places to get live eyeballs. Right in
this advent of technology and how much it's shifted in
(06:47):
terms of the way that people consume media, we know
sports is still a place that they're tuning in live
and that they're continuing to pay attention throughout the broadcast.
So it's a really good way to get eyeballs on
the Mercedes Benz brand. At the same time, but we
also think about it from the aspect of the experiential perspective, right,
So how do. We also provide an experience at an event,
(07:11):
which I'll tell you a little bit about that brings
people into the Mercedes Benz brand by association, by lending
its prestige, by allowing us to host customers, dealers, our
other partners that are really important in this journey for
Mercedes Benz. So we think about it. I hate using cliches, marketing,
jargoning cliches, but we really try to think about it
(07:33):
holistically and from a three hundred and sixty degree angle.
We don't just think about being on air. We think
about being on ground, and we think about how we
can utilize sports in a way that brings more and
more prestige and awareness and a great association to the
Mercedes Benz brand.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Sports really are all about connection, I feel like too,
and so leveraging sports as a way to use their
fandom to connect to your brand just feels so smart.
I'm really curious about a personal angle, Melody, what is
your relationship with sports, and looking back to you see
a through line between your relationship with sports and Mercedes
Benz and everything that we're seeing in F one, for example,
(08:13):
with Mercedes.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It's really funny, Ellen, Actually I was raised in a
household where I played piano, violin, went to church and
mid straight a's. I did not have room for sports.
There was no room for sports. We didn't watch it,
consume it, play it. Nothing in my household, right, So
when I got to college, I became a voracious consumer
of sports, as if I was trying to catch up
(08:37):
for everything that I had lost for the first eighteen
years of my life. I went to my first baseball game.
I went to school here in Atlanta, Georgia Tech. So
now I'm still a brave stand sports school exactly. Well,
we're you know, we're the ACC but we're doing pretty well.
We're number seventeen and AP top twenty five right now
for football and not so bad. I went to my
first football game while I was at Georgia Tech, and
(08:58):
then caught the college football bug while I was there.
So it's really funny, you know, for the first eighteen years,
I had almost no exposure to it, and then since
then it feels as if I'd been trying to catch
up and make up in that world, and I love it.
We're a huge sports family. I've got two boys now
who play sports. We're into baseball, golf, tennis, and we
(09:20):
watch a ton of football. So personally, I love sport.
I love what it stands for, that idea of connection,
of unification. I love the emotion that comes with it.
I love that the Super Bowl is the most watched
event in all of the world. I mean, there are
just not that many events that get one hundred and
(09:40):
twenty eight million viewers, right, So I just love all
of the excitement that comes with it. And now, you know,
working at a brand that has one hundred and thirty
year history. So I told you a little earlier that
we're one hundred and forty years old, but we have
one hundred and thirty of those one hundred and forty
in motorsports. So with this long legacy of racing, A
lot of people may know us for our more recent
(10:03):
era of success and motorsports, but the truth has been
in it for one hundred and thirty years. That's in
our DNA, it's in our blood, it's in our products
that we sell and that we bring to market today.
So there's just it's a really fun place to be.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I'm really excited to chat with you about the innovation
in the sportspace and how it plays into marketing to
particularly as more men's sports shift their focus towards attracting women.
And that's a big thing that we focus on at
the GISTs and that we speak about at the gist
of it, but also what we've seen a lot in
Formula one, especially coming off of Netflix's Drive to Survive
(10:39):
series and how successful that's been. Nowadays, forty one percent
of Formula One's fan base is women, which is so
cool and remarkable and I think a real testament to
how the space has grown in the storytelling around the
sport as well. How how do women kind of play
into your mix as a marketer and how you think
(10:59):
about that? And twofold if we can, how has this
Drive to Survive series also impacted Mercedes as a brand too?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
So let me start with a hot take first, which
is I really resent putting women into a subgroup or
a like a minority target. And sometimes I hear that
they're like, what's your you know, what is your strategy
for women? Let me just give you two facts. The
first is that of our buyers, and we know this
(11:29):
from registration data on vehicles of our buyers, forty six
percent our female, So we know that nearly half of
the people who actually hold the paperwork and own our
cars are women. That's huge, and that actually beats the
average of the top twenty five luxury brands in the
United States. The average female share across the top twenty
five brands is about forty two percent, so we outperform
(11:52):
at Mercedes Benz. We have a huge female share that
we need to hang on to and quite frankly, we
need to grow even further. So that's a big statistic.
The second statistic, though, that I'll leave with you is
that even if only forty six percent are women holding
the registration, we know that women are influencing eighty to
eighty five percent of the purchase decisions and a household,
(12:14):
so that can be on any item. But if you
look at a car, a vehicle, which is generally for people,
the second largest purchase they'll ever make after a home,
you better believe that women are having an influence on
that purchase. Right. So between those two things, talking to
women making sure that they're included in the design of
a vehicle, that it's meeting their needs, their lifestyles, and
(12:36):
then through marketing, speaking to them where their eyes are,
where their time is being spent. It's just good business sense, right.
So that's why it's really important to us that we
continue to leverage the properties and the platforms that we
do have in sport to reach women at a greater rate.
Motorsports is a great example of how we're trying to
do that, and you just named that part one number,
(12:58):
which is forty one percent of the fans are now women,
and it's just growing at an incredible rate. I think
one of the more interesting statistics is if you look
at the fastest growing subset of that forty one percent
in motorsports, it's young women aged sixteen to twenty four.
So what we're really talking about is your most rabid fans.
(13:21):
The fastest growing base for motorsports is young gen Z women.
That's an incredible opportunity for a brand like Mercedes Benz.
It's been around for a long time.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I want to double click on that for a little
bit because my mind thinks of Okay, gen Z. Yes
they have a lot of influence and yes they're into brand,
but they don't have maybe disposable income to purchase a car.
So how do you think about that customer path? I
guess from someone being a f one fan they really
(13:51):
love the Mercedes team, they love Toto, and then how
do you get them to then buy a car and
what does that timeline kind of look like for you
in that customer journey.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Our belief is that a customer has to buy into
the brand first before they start to buy one of
our vehicles, and that has to start at a young age.
And I often talk about how important it is to
me and to my team that the ten year old
have the poster of the Mercedes Benz three hundred sl goalwing,
(14:26):
as it is the baby boomer who's in a position
to purchase his or her next gl Those two things
are of equal importance. And I'll take you back to
my opening remark, which is is what do we do
here in Mercedes Benz marketing, And that is balancing between
selling the car for today and building the brand for tomorrow.
(14:48):
So selling the car today means talking to those who
have the disposable income to buy our cars. Those are boomers,
those are Gen xers, it's a portion of millennials as
they move into different life stages. But building the brand
for the future means we need to talk to gen Z,
we need to talk to Gen Alpha, both of those
generational cohorts are the most diverse and multicultural of any
(15:11):
of those that have come before them, which means that
our approach has to be as much about reaching women
as much as it is multicultural and diverse communities within
those generations. Right, So it's a balance between both constantly.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
That's really interesting. It's I'm sure that those are a
lot of things that keep you up at night, and
you're in the team that keep you up that night
in balancing that. We were chatting with your team Melody
before you came onto the Pod and nand told us
that you were part of bringing the F one F
one the movie to life. What was that? What was
your involvement in that?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Well, it really it started with people who are much
more important than me, and that's Lewis Hamilton first of
all and total Wolf. So Lewis Hamilton had been wanting
to make a movie about motorsports for years and worked
for many years to get this movie finally made. Because
of his background with Mercedes Benz, as you know, one
of our winningest drivers of all time, he was able
(16:10):
to make sure that Mercedes Benz had a really big
role in it. And it started with the technical aspect
of it, which was, you know, they needed an advisor
on the movie to ensure that their cars really looked
like F one cars. They were actually F two cars,
but they were done so well with Mercedes Benz's technical
support that they look on screen and sounded like F
one cars. That was a big role that the brand played.
(16:32):
But then from there it became a really great marketing
opportunity for us of course as well, and so the
movie has been a central part of our marketing efforts
this year and it did great. I don't know if
you've seen it, Ellen, I've seen it three times. You've
got to see it. What I love about the movie
is that it's able to teach someone who may not
(16:55):
know a lot about Formula one in a way that's
not patronizing at all. It can be a very intimidating
sport to enter. I think you are a fan. Drive
to Survive has definitely been helpful, as you mentioned, right,
and just teaching people about the sport about tire management.
I've never heard so many people talk about tire management, right,
But the movie did the same thing. I think it's
(17:16):
brought an entirely new audience and welcomed them into this
Formula one world and to have Mercedes Benz be able
to play a really central part in it. I mean,
all the vehicles in it featured all the best booking
ones anyway, in my opinion, are Mercedes Benz vehicles, their vintage,
their production vehicles for today. We just got a really
nice platform through that movie. We were able to release
(17:38):
a limited edition GT that is in the livery of
the apex GP team, So we're just able to find
a lot of legs with the movie in a way
that really benefits us in selling a car and the
brand today.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I can't wait to watch it. I love Drive to Survive.
It's what converted me in becoming an F one fan,
and now I watch every single weekend that it's on,
and so you know that's on my list. The sports
industry melody is super male dominated, which is part of
the reason why we launched the GIST to change it
into leveling the playing field.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Thank you for doing that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Oh my gosh, thank you, thank you for that. The
automobile industry is also super male dominated. What has that
looked like for you in terms of experiencing any sexism
in your work and at the very senior position that
you have. Do you have any stories that you can share,
including how you kind of manage that and overcome that
in some of these rooms.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I do have one really good story, and as my
PR team looks at me nervously, it did not have
Cities tends, and I'll share it with you in a moment,
but just I'll talk about a little bit more broadly.
I think the industry has come a long way. I
think things have shifted a lot since I entered the
industry for the first time back in the mid two thousands,
so it was about twenty twelve when I started at
(18:54):
General Motors working on the Cadillac brand, and I think
things have really progressed and grown in a way that's
very encouraging. And I think it's an acknowledgment of what
I shared earlier, which is that women are buying the cars,
and if they're not buying the cars and putting it
in their name, they're really influencing the purchase of the cars.
So there's a real acknowledgment that we have to build
products that they want that fit their lifestyle. As a marketer,
(19:18):
I have to make sure that I'm meeting them where
they are, where they're consuming media or what they're watching.
It also means making sure that a shopping experience on
a website is the way that a woman would also
like to shop, which could be very different from a man.
I don't want to be gender normative, but it could
be different, and we need to account for those differences.
So I have seen a lot of progress and a
(19:40):
lot of growth. It's for sure still male dominated. It
is for sure a place where if you're not a
natural gear head or a petrol head as we like
to say, there may be a learning curve to entering
the industry. But we have to be representative of our
buyer who is not a gear head, because not everybody
(20:01):
is going to go into a dealership and say I
want a Silver GT with this horsepower and that amount
of torque and this kind of engine in the car.
Not all of us shop that way, male or female, right,
and so we need to be able to accommodate an
account for all those kinds of people. So I will
tell you though, now coming back to the story that
(20:21):
you asked me about, I do remember an experience where
I was on a track in Europe and we were
test driving different vehicles, just getting a sense of what
they were. And we were coming in and out and
rotating the cars, tossing the keys to one another and
doing this test drive. And I saw a Mini that
(20:43):
I really wanted to try on this track, and a
senior male executive was coming out of it, and as
I walked towards him, I said, hey, I'll take that
car next, and he said, I don't think you want
to because it's a stick. And I said, well, I'm
not really sure why you would assume that I can
drive a stick. I can, so give me the key,
(21:03):
you know. So there's is that the worst and most
egregious example of sexism, not at all like, if anything,
that's a microaggression, but as we all know, microaggressions also
add up and can wear you down. But it is
it's an illustration if some of those ingrained biases that
can hurt women. Right. So that is probably one of
(21:24):
the stories that I tell the most because I say
to women, like, let's make sure that we don't let
people get away with assumptions, because assumptions only hurt us.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I really like that. I also like how you touched
on using your perspective as an asset as well, and
as an asset, as you're speaking to all of these
different consumers and as you're thinking about building your brand.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Absolutely, I mean, it's about representing our customer, right. It's
not about me, it's not about my ego. It's not
about whether I'm the only woman there or not, which
I don't accept, But it's about do we represent who
we serve and who we sell to, and if we're
not doing so, we're missing opportunities for the business.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Speaking of opportunities, as you look forward for Mercedes over
the next two to five years or so, what other
sports properties are exciting to you right now? What else
are you looking at?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
We are a longtime champion sponsor of the Masters, and
over eighteen years we have seen an enormous amount of
evolution and growth with that relationship as well. A few
years back, we started sponsoring the Augusta National Women's Amateur,
which is also known as ANWA, and we take the
(22:33):
opportunity not to just show up at the tournament for
these amazing amateur golfers, but we bring about thirty to
forty women that weekend to come together. Some of them
are golf fans, some of them are not, but we
bring them together in the spirit of learning from one another,
of connecting and networking with one another. We've done this
(22:55):
for several years now, so as we think about where
we are and where we participate, we want to also
put more equity back into the world. So Anna is
a great example of how we're doing something like that
through sport and the Masters is a partnership that we're
incredibly proud of. Arguably the most prestigious tournament in all
(23:17):
of sport, definitely golf, but one of the most prestigious
in the world I think for sport as well. So
we've also been a partner of college football college Football's
Playoff since its inception as well. It was important for
us to speak to that customer, which is a very
different customer than the NFL one or the viewer or
(23:38):
fan of that kind of football. It speaks to a
very Mercedes Benz customer. So again it's just a smart
play for us to be able to talk to people
in college football as well. So that's why the Playoff
is also really important to us.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It will be so fun this year seeing that expanded format.
I'm a big golf fan, and so everything that you're
doing with ANUA and how we can build up that
tournament is really exciting to me. We have time for
one more question, even though again I could talk to
you for another forty minutes and ask you a lot
of business questions. Something we've been discussing at the just recently,
and something that our audience is always interested in, is
(24:15):
the concept of heroes. Sports are otherwise and inspiration. What
keeps inspiring you day to day?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, I feel often my husband and I have this
joke whenever we're watching a sports broadcast, we feel like
the word adversity is overused. Right. You hear that a
lot during a broadcast. But some of the stories in sports,
whether it's that of Simone Biles or Sunny Lee from
the Olympic team, the story of any of these w
(24:48):
NBA players and what they're going through right now, the
story of Serena Williams, any of these women who have
truly come through adversity and broken through in sports, and
in certain sports where it's not so easy or the
barrier to entry is very high. That's incredibly inspirational to me.
(25:11):
And those are the stories that I think resonate with
everyone across the board. Right, it doesn't matter if your
your male female or how you identify it. Is those
stories of overcoming true adversity, breaking barriers, breaking through and
then ascending to the pinnacle of the sport that I
(25:33):
find really really incredible, And storytelling is at the core
of what every marketer does, right, So those kinds of
stories and then inspire us to tell the best ones
about our brand and the women behind our brand, like
Susie Wolf who started the F one Academy, who drove
an F one. We need to bring a driver back
to a female driver back to F one right and
(25:55):
F one Academy is a great example of something that
has grown the sport for again. But we need to
do more of that. So there's so much inspiration to
draw from, but some of these women who have truly
overcome is hard to be.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Thank you for sharing that and love that note on storytelling,
especially being in the media space. I resonate with that
so much. Melodie. Thank you again for joining the gist
of it. This has been such a wonderful conversation, and
thanks so much for everything that you're doing with Mercedes
in the sports space and also thinking of women in
your marketing mix too.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Thank you for having me Ellen.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
A big thank you to Amazon Business for their continued
support of this podcast. You hear from me and l
on the mics, but it takes a team to produce
the gist of it, not to mention a ton of equipment.
That's why small businesses like ourselves love Amazon Business. With
Amazon Business, it's easy to keep employees stocked with all
the supplies they need, from second screens to sticky notes.
Check out business dot Amazon dot com today to see
(26:54):
how Amazon Business can transform your companies purchasing.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And so. That marks the end of today's episode. We
hope that you all really enjoyed that conversation. Thank you
so much for tuning in, and if you liked it,
sign up for the Just Plus use the link in
our show notes and you'll be getting another exclusive podcast
in a couple of weeks that only members from the
Just Plus have. As per usual, we would love for
you to rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast has been
(27:24):
edited by Savannah Helds and produced by Alexandra Puccio and
Lauren Tuscala. The next Formula one race is next weekend.
It's the Mexican and Grand Prix. Probably one of my
favorite tracks and I think one of my favorite tracks,
mostly because the fans there are so much fun. It
is such a cool place to be able to drive.
(27:44):
At least I can imagine that it's such a cool
place to be able to drive. So we hope that
you enjoy all of the high speed action and Steph
and I will be back in your feed next Tuesday.
Bye yoa
Thanks to our pals at Amazon Business for supporting The
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dot com. What's up, y'all? Welcome or welcome back to
(00:51):
another episode of the Gist of It. We have missed
you so much since last week. Today's Thursday, October twenty third,
and today you're stuck with me only I'm your host,
Ellen Hislob. This week we are hosting our team in
Toronto for an off site and they're always so much
fun to get together in person, especially because we're a
(01:11):
remote team. And because of that, we like to give
our team arrest from actually producing the newsletter and the podcast.
So this is a pre recorded show, but we wanted
to make sure we came into your feed at least
once while we were away. It's also just me today
because of another little secret. So two weeks ago, in
(01:33):
case you missed it, we launched the Just Plus. It's
a brand new membership community for our gisters, providing them
a safe place to chat about sports, find each other
IRLR online, get exclusive content from the Gist, get discounts
from different sports bars and teams, and all of that
(01:53):
sort of stuff. And it's been really cool to see
all of the conversation on the Just Plus. And I
think if you're a podcast listener, honestly, well obviously you
are because you're listening right now, so you are our
podcast listener, You're gonna love the just Plus. So go
to our website and check it out and learn more
and hopefully you join the community. Another huge perk of
(02:14):
the Just Plus so there's two tiers, the Rookie Tier
and the All Star Tier. But in the All Star
Tier that's just ten dollars a month or one hundred
dollars a year, you get a lot of exclusive content
and offerings and some of that content offering is two
additional podcasts every single month, and these podcasts are a
little bit more on the interview side of things, athletes
(02:36):
side of things, deep diving into topics, working off of
topics that we're chatting about in the discord for the
just Plus and they're really fun. And so today we're
sharing an episode that actually members of the just plus
received yesterday. We want to share it with you all
to just give you a taste of the type of
premium content that we're sharing on the Just Plus and
(02:58):
what everyone over there is interact with. So today's episode
features an interview with probably one of I don't know,
one of the favorite people who I've had the opportunity
to chat with at the Gist, and that is Marcedes
Benz's chief marketing officer, Melody Lee. Like, yes, the gist
of it is chatting to powerhouse women like cmos of
(03:20):
mega automotive brands. It's so cool and this wouldn't be
able to happen without this amazing community that we have.
Part of the reason why we wanted to chat with
Melody Lee is because she is a powerful woman in
a male dominated field. Sports are a male dominated field.
There's so many parallels to the automotive industry. She is
(03:41):
such a genius marketer and on top of everything that
she has to handle for Marcedes Benz, Formula one is
a big part of her purview of how it actually
impacts Marcedes as a brand, and so we got kind
of an inside scoop as to how she approaches is
Mercedes as a brand altogether, but also how again F
(04:05):
one and this new F one, the movie and how
Drive to Survive and everything like that has really impacted.
So it's just such a cool conversation. We also talked
about sexism in the workplace and all that sort of
stuff that I think anyone can really resonate with. I
really hope you'll love this conversation. I could have sat
(04:26):
and chatted with Melody for hours, honestly, And if you're
interested in more content like this, you could go to
the link in our show notes or just go to
our website, the Just sports dot com and sign up
for the Just Plus. We'd love to have you as
part of our community. But with that and with all
of that background, here is our fabulous conversation with the
(04:47):
one and only Melody Lee. Melody, thanks so much, for coming.
On the gist of it, we are so excited to
have you here.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I'm so pleased to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Oh my gosh. Of course I can probably pick your
brain for an hour, but we only have twenty minutes
or so, and I know that our audience is so
excited to learn from you today. I want to start
off by setting the scene a little bit and starting
things at a very high level with your role as
the CMO at Mercedes. What are your goals? What does
(05:19):
your day to day look like? Can you paint the
picture for us a little bit more broadly before we
dive into the conversation.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Our two main goals at Mercedes Benz in the marketing
department are to drive growth and demand for the brand
that ultimately results in the sale of a vehicle, and secondly,
to build long term growth for the brand itself, so
long term equity. We are one hundred and forty years
old next year. We were bounded in eighteen eighty six,
(05:49):
which means that it's incumbent upon us to do both
at the same time and is kind of a constant balance.
So we have to be focused on how we move
the metal as we like to say in this intry,
but we also have to think about how we preserve
the brand for the next one hundred and forty years and.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
For Mercedes, and as you're thinking about that growth in
terms of the longevity of people who are buying Mercedes
vehicles when you're thinking about setting up the brand. This
is a sports podcast, so I have to talk to
you about sports. How do you think about sports playing
into your marketing mix and how sports help hit those goals.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Sports are a huge part of our marketing strategy, and
I will happily tell you about all the different ways
in which we're involved. But sports is a place where
the audience is united in a sense, it's still one
of the best places to get live eyeballs. Right in
this advent of technology and how much it's shifted in
(06:47):
terms of the way that people consume media, we know
sports is still a place that they're tuning in live
and that they're continuing to pay attention throughout the broadcast.
So it's a really good way to get eyeballs on
the Mercedes Benz brand. At the same time, but we
also think about it from the aspect of the experiential perspective, right,
So how do. We also provide an experience at an event,
(07:11):
which I'll tell you a little bit about that brings
people into the Mercedes Benz brand by association, by lending
its prestige, by allowing us to host customers, dealers, our
other partners that are really important in this journey for
Mercedes Benz. So we think about it. I hate using cliches, marketing,
jargoning cliches, but we really try to think about it
(07:33):
holistically and from a three hundred and sixty degree angle.
We don't just think about being on air. We think
about being on ground, and we think about how we
can utilize sports in a way that brings more and
more prestige and awareness and a great association to the
Mercedes Benz brand.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Sports really are all about connection, I feel like too,
and so leveraging sports as a way to use their
fandom to connect to your brand just feels so smart.
I'm really curious about a personal angle, Melody, what is
your relationship with sports, and looking back to you see
a through line between your relationship with sports and Mercedes
Benz and everything that we're seeing in F one, for example,
(08:13):
with Mercedes.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It's really funny, Ellen, Actually I was raised in a
household where I played piano, violin, went to church and
mid straight a's. I did not have room for sports.
There was no room for sports. We didn't watch it,
consume it, play it. Nothing in my household, right, So
when I got to college, I became a voracious consumer
of sports, as if I was trying to catch up
(08:37):
for everything that I had lost for the first eighteen
years of my life. I went to my first baseball game.
I went to school here in Atlanta, Georgia Tech. So
now I'm still a brave stand sports school exactly. Well,
we're you know, we're the ACC but we're doing pretty well.
We're number seventeen and AP top twenty five right now
for football and not so bad. I went to my
first football game while I was at Georgia Tech, and
(08:58):
then caught the college football bug while I was there.
So it's really funny, you know, for the first eighteen years,
I had almost no exposure to it, and then since
then it feels as if I'd been trying to catch
up and make up in that world, and I love it.
We're a huge sports family. I've got two boys now
who play sports. We're into baseball, golf, tennis, and we
(09:20):
watch a ton of football. So personally, I love sport.
I love what it stands for, that idea of connection,
of unification. I love the emotion that comes with it.
I love that the Super Bowl is the most watched
event in all of the world. I mean, there are
just not that many events that get one hundred and
(09:40):
twenty eight million viewers, right, So I just love all
of the excitement that comes with it. And now, you know,
working at a brand that has one hundred and thirty
year history. So I told you a little earlier that
we're one hundred and forty years old, but we have
one hundred and thirty of those one hundred and forty
in motorsports. So with this long legacy of racing, A
lot of people may know us for our more recent
(10:03):
era of success and motorsports, but the truth has been
in it for one hundred and thirty years. That's in
our DNA, it's in our blood, it's in our products
that we sell and that we bring to market today.
So there's just it's a really fun place to be.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I'm really excited to chat with you about the innovation
in the sportspace and how it plays into marketing to
particularly as more men's sports shift their focus towards attracting women.
And that's a big thing that we focus on at
the GISTs and that we speak about at the gist
of it, but also what we've seen a lot in
Formula one, especially coming off of Netflix's Drive to Survive
(10:39):
series and how successful that's been. Nowadays, forty one percent
of Formula One's fan base is women, which is so
cool and remarkable and I think a real testament to
how the space has grown in the storytelling around the
sport as well. How how do women kind of play
into your mix as a marketer and how you think
(10:59):
about that? And twofold if we can, how has this
Drive to Survive series also impacted Mercedes as a brand too?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
So let me start with a hot take first, which
is I really resent putting women into a subgroup or
a like a minority target. And sometimes I hear that
they're like, what's your you know, what is your strategy
for women? Let me just give you two facts. The
first is that of our buyers, and we know this
(11:29):
from registration data on vehicles of our buyers, forty six
percent our female, So we know that nearly half of
the people who actually hold the paperwork and own our
cars are women. That's huge, and that actually beats the
average of the top twenty five luxury brands in the
United States. The average female share across the top twenty
five brands is about forty two percent, so we outperform
(11:52):
at Mercedes Benz. We have a huge female share that
we need to hang on to and quite frankly, we
need to grow even further. So that's a big statistic.
The second statistic, though, that I'll leave with you is
that even if only forty six percent are women holding
the registration, we know that women are influencing eighty to
eighty five percent of the purchase decisions and a household,
(12:14):
so that can be on any item. But if you
look at a car, a vehicle, which is generally for people,
the second largest purchase they'll ever make after a home,
you better believe that women are having an influence on
that purchase. Right. So between those two things, talking to
women making sure that they're included in the design of
a vehicle, that it's meeting their needs, their lifestyles, and
(12:36):
then through marketing, speaking to them where their eyes are,
where their time is being spent. It's just good business sense, right.
So that's why it's really important to us that we
continue to leverage the properties and the platforms that we
do have in sport to reach women at a greater rate.
Motorsports is a great example of how we're trying to
do that, and you just named that part one number,
(12:58):
which is forty one percent of the fans are now women,
and it's just growing at an incredible rate. I think
one of the more interesting statistics is if you look
at the fastest growing subset of that forty one percent
in motorsports, it's young women aged sixteen to twenty four.
So what we're really talking about is your most rabid fans.
(13:21):
The fastest growing base for motorsports is young gen Z women.
That's an incredible opportunity for a brand like Mercedes Benz.
It's been around for a long time.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I want to double click on that for a little
bit because my mind thinks of Okay, gen Z. Yes
they have a lot of influence and yes they're into brand,
but they don't have maybe disposable income to purchase a car.
So how do you think about that customer path? I
guess from someone being a f one fan they really
(13:51):
love the Mercedes team, they love Toto, and then how
do you get them to then buy a car and
what does that timeline kind of look like for you
in that customer journey.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Our belief is that a customer has to buy into
the brand first before they start to buy one of
our vehicles, and that has to start at a young age.
And I often talk about how important it is to
me and to my team that the ten year old
have the poster of the Mercedes Benz three hundred sl goalwing,
(14:26):
as it is the baby boomer who's in a position
to purchase his or her next gl Those two things
are of equal importance. And I'll take you back to
my opening remark, which is is what do we do
here in Mercedes Benz marketing, And that is balancing between
selling the car for today and building the brand for tomorrow.
(14:48):
So selling the car today means talking to those who
have the disposable income to buy our cars. Those are boomers,
those are Gen xers, it's a portion of millennials as
they move into different life stages. But building the brand
for the future means we need to talk to gen Z,
we need to talk to Gen Alpha, both of those
generational cohorts are the most diverse and multicultural of any
(15:11):
of those that have come before them, which means that
our approach has to be as much about reaching women
as much as it is multicultural and diverse communities within
those generations. Right, So it's a balance between both constantly.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
That's really interesting. It's I'm sure that those are a
lot of things that keep you up at night, and
you're in the team that keep you up that night
in balancing that. We were chatting with your team Melody
before you came onto the Pod and nand told us
that you were part of bringing the F one F
one the movie to life. What was that? What was
your involvement in that?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Well, it really it started with people who are much
more important than me, and that's Lewis Hamilton first of
all and total Wolf. So Lewis Hamilton had been wanting
to make a movie about motorsports for years and worked
for many years to get this movie finally made. Because
of his background with Mercedes Benz, as you know, one
of our winningest drivers of all time, he was able
(16:10):
to make sure that Mercedes Benz had a really big
role in it. And it started with the technical aspect
of it, which was, you know, they needed an advisor
on the movie to ensure that their cars really looked
like F one cars. They were actually F two cars,
but they were done so well with Mercedes Benz's technical
support that they look on screen and sounded like F
one cars. That was a big role that the brand played.
(16:32):
But then from there it became a really great marketing
opportunity for us of course as well, and so the
movie has been a central part of our marketing efforts
this year and it did great. I don't know if
you've seen it, Ellen, I've seen it three times. You've
got to see it. What I love about the movie
is that it's able to teach someone who may not
(16:55):
know a lot about Formula one in a way that's
not patronizing at all. It can be a very intimidating
sport to enter. I think you are a fan. Drive
to Survive has definitely been helpful, as you mentioned, right,
and just teaching people about the sport about tire management.
I've never heard so many people talk about tire management, right,
But the movie did the same thing. I think it's
(17:16):
brought an entirely new audience and welcomed them into this
Formula one world and to have Mercedes Benz be able
to play a really central part in it. I mean,
all the vehicles in it featured all the best booking
ones anyway, in my opinion, are Mercedes Benz vehicles, their vintage,
their production vehicles for today. We just got a really
nice platform through that movie. We were able to release
(17:38):
a limited edition GT that is in the livery of
the apex GP team, So we're just able to find
a lot of legs with the movie in a way
that really benefits us in selling a car and the
brand today.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I can't wait to watch it. I love Drive to Survive.
It's what converted me in becoming an F one fan,
and now I watch every single weekend that it's on,
and so you know that's on my list. The sports
industry melody is super male dominated, which is part of
the reason why we launched the GIST to change it
into leveling the playing field.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Thank you for doing that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Oh my gosh, thank you, thank you for that. The
automobile industry is also super male dominated. What has that
looked like for you in terms of experiencing any sexism
in your work and at the very senior position that
you have. Do you have any stories that you can share,
including how you kind of manage that and overcome that
in some of these rooms.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I do have one really good story, and as my
PR team looks at me nervously, it did not have
Cities tends, and I'll share it with you in a moment,
but just I'll talk about a little bit more broadly.
I think the industry has come a long way. I
think things have shifted a lot since I entered the
industry for the first time back in the mid two thousands,
so it was about twenty twelve when I started at
(18:54):
General Motors working on the Cadillac brand, and I think
things have really progressed and grown in a way that's
very encouraging. And I think it's an acknowledgment of what
I shared earlier, which is that women are buying the cars,
and if they're not buying the cars and putting it
in their name, they're really influencing the purchase of the cars.
So there's a real acknowledgment that we have to build
products that they want that fit their lifestyle. As a marketer,
(19:18):
I have to make sure that I'm meeting them where
they are, where they're consuming media or what they're watching.
It also means making sure that a shopping experience on
a website is the way that a woman would also
like to shop, which could be very different from a man.
I don't want to be gender normative, but it could
be different, and we need to account for those differences.
So I have seen a lot of progress and a
(19:40):
lot of growth. It's for sure still male dominated. It
is for sure a place where if you're not a
natural gear head or a petrol head as we like
to say, there may be a learning curve to entering
the industry. But we have to be representative of our
buyer who is not a gear head, because not everybody
(20:01):
is going to go into a dealership and say I
want a Silver GT with this horsepower and that amount
of torque and this kind of engine in the car.
Not all of us shop that way, male or female, right,
and so we need to be able to accommodate an
account for all those kinds of people. So I will
tell you though, now coming back to the story that
(20:21):
you asked me about, I do remember an experience where
I was on a track in Europe and we were
test driving different vehicles, just getting a sense of what
they were. And we were coming in and out and
rotating the cars, tossing the keys to one another and
doing this test drive. And I saw a Mini that
(20:43):
I really wanted to try on this track, and a
senior male executive was coming out of it, and as
I walked towards him, I said, hey, I'll take that
car next, and he said, I don't think you want
to because it's a stick. And I said, well, I'm
not really sure why you would assume that I can
drive a stick. I can, so give me the key,
(21:03):
you know. So there's is that the worst and most
egregious example of sexism, not at all like, if anything,
that's a microaggression, but as we all know, microaggressions also
add up and can wear you down. But it is
it's an illustration if some of those ingrained biases that
can hurt women. Right. So that is probably one of
(21:24):
the stories that I tell the most because I say
to women, like, let's make sure that we don't let
people get away with assumptions, because assumptions only hurt us.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I really like that. I also like how you touched
on using your perspective as an asset as well, and
as an asset, as you're speaking to all of these
different consumers and as you're thinking about building your brand.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Absolutely, I mean, it's about representing our customer, right. It's
not about me, it's not about my ego. It's not
about whether I'm the only woman there or not, which
I don't accept, But it's about do we represent who
we serve and who we sell to, and if we're
not doing so, we're missing opportunities for the business.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Speaking of opportunities, as you look forward for Mercedes over
the next two to five years or so, what other
sports properties are exciting to you right now? What else
are you looking at?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
We are a longtime champion sponsor of the Masters, and
over eighteen years we have seen an enormous amount of
evolution and growth with that relationship as well. A few
years back, we started sponsoring the Augusta National Women's Amateur,
which is also known as ANWA, and we take the
(22:33):
opportunity not to just show up at the tournament for
these amazing amateur golfers, but we bring about thirty to
forty women that weekend to come together. Some of them
are golf fans, some of them are not, but we
bring them together in the spirit of learning from one another,
of connecting and networking with one another. We've done this
(22:55):
for several years now, so as we think about where
we are and where we participate, we want to also
put more equity back into the world. So Anna is
a great example of how we're doing something like that
through sport and the Masters is a partnership that we're
incredibly proud of. Arguably the most prestigious tournament in all
(23:17):
of sport, definitely golf, but one of the most prestigious
in the world I think for sport as well. So
we've also been a partner of college football college Football's
Playoff since its inception as well. It was important for
us to speak to that customer, which is a very
different customer than the NFL one or the viewer or
(23:38):
fan of that kind of football. It speaks to a
very Mercedes Benz customer. So again it's just a smart
play for us to be able to talk to people
in college football as well. So that's why the Playoff
is also really important to us.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It will be so fun this year seeing that expanded format.
I'm a big golf fan, and so everything that you're
doing with ANUA and how we can build up that
tournament is really exciting to me. We have time for
one more question, even though again I could talk to
you for another forty minutes and ask you a lot
of business questions. Something we've been discussing at the just recently,
and something that our audience is always interested in, is
(24:15):
the concept of heroes. Sports are otherwise and inspiration. What
keeps inspiring you day to day?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, I feel often my husband and I have this
joke whenever we're watching a sports broadcast, we feel like
the word adversity is overused. Right. You hear that a
lot during a broadcast. But some of the stories in sports,
whether it's that of Simone Biles or Sunny Lee from
the Olympic team, the story of any of these w
(24:48):
NBA players and what they're going through right now, the
story of Serena Williams, any of these women who have
truly come through adversity and broken through in sports, and
in certain sports where it's not so easy or the
barrier to entry is very high. That's incredibly inspirational to me.
(25:11):
And those are the stories that I think resonate with
everyone across the board. Right, it doesn't matter if your
your male female or how you identify it. Is those
stories of overcoming true adversity, breaking barriers, breaking through and
then ascending to the pinnacle of the sport that I
(25:33):
find really really incredible, And storytelling is at the core
of what every marketer does, right, So those kinds of
stories and then inspire us to tell the best ones
about our brand and the women behind our brand, like
Susie Wolf who started the F one Academy, who drove
an F one. We need to bring a driver back
to a female driver back to F one right and
(25:55):
F one Academy is a great example of something that
has grown the sport for again. But we need to
do more of that. So there's so much inspiration to
draw from, but some of these women who have truly
overcome is hard to be.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Thank you for sharing that and love that note on storytelling,
especially being in the media space. I resonate with that
so much. Melodie. Thank you again for joining the gist
of it. This has been such a wonderful conversation, and
thanks so much for everything that you're doing with Mercedes
in the sports space and also thinking of women in
your marketing mix too.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Thank you for having me Ellen.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
A big thank you to Amazon Business for their continued
support of this podcast. You hear from me and l
on the mics, but it takes a team to produce
the gist of it, not to mention a ton of equipment.
That's why small businesses like ourselves love Amazon Business. With
Amazon Business, it's easy to keep employees stocked with all
the supplies they need, from second screens to sticky notes.
Check out business dot Amazon dot com today to see
(26:54):
how Amazon Business can transform your companies purchasing.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And so. That marks the end of today's episode. We
hope that you all really enjoyed that conversation. Thank you
so much for tuning in, and if you liked it,
sign up for the Just Plus use the link in
our show notes and you'll be getting another exclusive podcast
in a couple of weeks that only members from the
Just Plus have. As per usual, we would love for
you to rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast has been
(27:24):
edited by Savannah Helds and produced by Alexandra Puccio and
Lauren Tuscala. The next Formula one race is next weekend.
It's the Mexican and Grand Prix. Probably one of my
favorite tracks and I think one of my favorite tracks,
mostly because the fans there are so much fun. It
is such a cool place to be able to drive.
(27:44):
At least I can imagine that it's such a cool
place to be able to drive. So we hope that
you enjoy all of the high speed action and Steph
and I will be back in your feed next Tuesday.
Bye yoa
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!