January 14, 2025 • 46 mins
Short-term gains often tempt businesses to cut corners—but at what cost? Christine Alemany joins The Unicorny Podcast to discuss balancing immediate profit demands with building long-term trust and authenticity. From high-profile corporate missteps to cautionary tales like Boeing and WeWork, Christine reveals why credibility matters and how sustainable growth stems from consistency.
What you'll learn:
- The risks of prioritising short-term gains over trust-building
- Key lessons from brands like Microsoft, Coinbase, and Liquid Death
- Christine’s 4-step process for maintaining credibility and consistency
- How businesses can align short-term performance with long-term growth
Don’t let the profit trap hold you back—discover how authenticity can be your strongest growth strategy.
About Christine Alemany
Christine Alemany is an engineer and revenue generator who is passionate about leading late-stage SaaS companies through growth. From the coding trenches to the executive boardroom, she brings over 20 years of experience across product, marketing, and sales to drive exponential growth for emerging growth and Fortune 100 companies, including Dell, Citi, and IBM.
Christine is recognised for innovation, content, and customer experience, being named a LinkedIn Top Voice and one of the Top 30 Most Influential Fintech Marketers.
Links
Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk
Watch the episode: https://youtu.be/RRidTMrDwVo
LinkedIn: Christine Alemany | Dom Hawes
Websites: Most-Loved Workplace®
Sponsor: Selbey Anderson
Other items referenced in this episode:
Bud Light reveals cost of sales hit after trans influencer backlash
23. Value innovation in action: (Part 2) Promotion and place with Maja Gedosev, JetBlue
Can anyone fix Boeing? By Claire Bushey and Philip Georgiadis, FT
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
The larger you get and themore visibility you get is going
to catapult you to morecustomers, bigger product sets, more
investors, or it could biteyou. Just be open and honest about
it. Talk about the issue, talkabout what caused it and talked about
how they're going to fix itand then they fixed it. It gives
(00:31):
you higher conversion rates.People are more likely to buy from
you. It compresses salescycles that people spend less time
deliberating on whether or notthey want to buy from you because
they trust you.
Hello you, I am Dom Hawes andyou are tuned in to the Unicorny
marketing show. Welcome to youToday we welcome from across the
(00:54):
pond Christine Alemany who isgoing to talk to us about a very
important subject. Probablysomething close to all of our hearts
but not something I think thatwe think about within the terms that
she is going to discuss itwith us today. And that thing is
authenticity, particularly howyou manage the short term profit
imperative that we are allliving with now with the long term
(01:18):
need to build trust over time.The profit trap. What's it all about?
Let's go find out withChristine Alemany in the studio right
now.
Hi, how are you?
I'm really well, thank youvery much. I'm delighted to be talking
to you because I've had adreadful day but I have a feeling
it's going to look up,hopefully. Why don't you start off
today by introducing yourselfand your work to our audience?
(01:40):
Well, I like to say that I aman engineer by training and a revenue
generator at heart. My careerhas been broad. I started off as
a coder during the startstartup boom and quickly moved into
product and marketing andsales roles for across Fortune 500
(02:02):
and startups alike.
And you have a PhD?
No, no, I have a couple ofmasters though. I have.
Oh, okay. Talk to me about those.
I'm a little over educated soI undergrad in architectural engineering
specializing in structuralengineering. My master's was in construction
(02:23):
management and my research wasin workforce automation.
Wow.
I eventually got an MBA fromColumbia Business School. So I'm
all over the place.
You have everything.
I have a lot of interests.
Well, I often think actuallythat sort of background in engineering
is really useful for marketersor those that create value because
(02:46):
I think that questioning aninterrogative mind really helps if
you're the person that isresponsible for delivering sustainable
growth or value. Which ofcourse is what we're going to talk
about today.
Absolutely.
But what I'm excited about,before every show we meet our guests
to try and identify subjects.And when we met Christine, authenticity
(03:06):
and trust came straight out ofthe starting gates. And we all know
that authenticity and trustare very important, of course, a
business. But one of thethings you said really interested
me, which was you talked alittle bit about the competing imperatives
executives have between theneed for short term delivery and
(03:27):
long term, effectively brandtrust. And that sometimes those conflicts
can lead to behavior thateffectively erodes authenticity and
therefore loses trust. Andwe're going to dive into those in
a minute. But should we startjust by defining what we mean by
authenticity, what we mean bytrust and sustainable growth?
Maybe whenever I talk abouttrust and authenticity, it's really
(03:53):
about, you know, even when youthink about people, you know, do
they walk the talk? Are youmaking claims that are credible,
that are true, and are youfollowing through on those claims?
Can you deliver on thoseclaims? And so that's what authenticity
is, that's what builds trust,whether you're a human being or a
(04:18):
business. And whenever I talkabout sustainable growth, a lot of
startups or emerging growthcompanies, they're having to strike
a balance between growth oruser acquisition and long term sustainability
or profitability, and makingsure that the company can make it
(04:39):
for the next 15, 20, 30 years, often.
In startup and scale up aswell. The truth often trails slightly
behind the communication tothe market, and it has to be that
way. Do you think that's arisk to authenticity or do you think
people accept that? Sometimesthe truth is overhyped a bit.
As long as you frame itcorrectly. You know, whenever you
(05:01):
think about what my goals are,what we're going to be, what we're
building, as long as you'reframing it that way, rather than
saying this exists, this worksperfectly. Right? So it's striking,
that balance. And usually,especially if you're early on in
your journey, your first fewcustomers want you to succeed. So
(05:27):
the more honest you are andopen about where you are, especially
in your roadmap, the more thatthey're going to want to help you.
They're going to give youfeedback and help you navigate. Because
where you want to be and whatyou envision when you first create
your company is not whereyou're going to end up.
(05:48):
Yeah, that's true.
And so you have to be open.And if you're open with your customers,
they'll help you succeed muchfaster than you could on your own.
I think early stage customers,often they'll buy into a vision.
They'll buy from a visionactually, because they are by nature
probably more innovative andentrepreneurial that's why they're
(06:08):
shopping at the early stage.But you know, as soon as you then
start getting to more towardsmajority markets, you know, I think
the number one most importantthing often is momentum because you
know, people like to buy fromcompanies other people are buying
from and success breeds success.
Yeah.
Is that when it's mosttempting, do you think, to start
to cut corners or maybe focuson short term gains at the expense
(06:31):
of long term credibility?
I think it happens throughoutthe journey. I think at the very
beginning, beginning you'rereally focused on getting your first
customers. So you may makebold claims, you may over promise
and sometimes it's because outof naivety you don't know what you
can and can't do and you'repretty bullish. Right. I think it's
(06:53):
important that when you start,you make those bold claims, you try
to follow through on thosebold claims and you're open about
the challenges that you'rehaving. I think once you're in the
market, any inconsistency thatyou have can be found. Right. You
know, we all have Google,whatever your search engine of choice
(07:15):
is and you can figure out, youknow, what are they saying, what
are they doing. You can talkto other customers, you can complain
about services. And thatinconsistency, the larger you get
and the more visibility youget is going to come back to you
(07:38):
and either it'll help youcatapult you to, you know, hire or
more customers, bigger productsets, more investors, or it could
bite you. So you have to bevery, very careful.
We've talked about makingclaims, you know, businesses that
are making claims that theycan do things maybe that they can't,
(07:59):
but what other ways are that?You've seen businesses who are eager
to get that momentum to thatacceleration, what are the ways you've
seen them cut, cut corners ormaybe risk reputation in order to
make short term gains?
All kinds of things. Sowhether it's, you know, exaggerating
their metrics, which isunfortunately can be common.
(08:22):
We'D never do that on thispodcast by the way.
Unfortunately it happens. Sowe can think about maybe a company
like WeWork where they did alot of over promising and eventually
it did bite them. But untilthen they got a ton of press, a ton
(08:48):
of customers, a lot ofinvestors, very high profile investors
and very good interest rates.Right. So it allowed them to, you
know, maybe inflate yourgrowth, inflate your profitability,
creates a picture of rapidexpansion, strong financial performance
(09:13):
which attracts everybody andunfortunately it came to life and
now they're.
Struggling when the market'son the up. Right. You know, when
the tide is rising, it's, it'sa lot easier to make those sorts
of bold claims and, and, andthe market can quite often give you
the momentum you need and helpvalidate them. But I think in the
(09:35):
case of WeWork and I think ofa, I can think of a couple of other
big ones. We're going to talkspecifically about some case studies
a little bit later. But in thecase of WeWork, they were promising
a lifestyle, not a servicedoffice. And I think their claim was
so lofty, their vision was sobig, I, unless you were drinking
the Kool Aid and totallygetting carried away with the market,
it was quite hard to see howthat was ever going to be delivered.
(09:57):
It's so interesting thequality of investors they had. Right.
Amazing, isn't it? I know, I know.
It's a power of a good story.And investors, VCs, they love good
stories because when they'reinvesting, they're investing in the
person and the founder andbeing very charismatic, being a good
(10:19):
salesperson is important tobuilding a solid business. So they
love good stories, they loveeven more good metrics, good financial
performance. That's what madethem so successful. I think, you
know, that lifestyle didn'ttranslate into, you know, maybe some
(10:39):
of the ancillary services thatthey offered and they went well beyond
their initial mandate in termsof product and I think they just
went outside of theirknowledge and capabilities.
We may come back to capabilityor understanding one's capabilities
later. We might, we might do.I want to talk very specifically
(11:00):
because this isn't just anentrepreneur story. This is like
if you're in a department oryou are in a medium sized business,
the concept of having aRunway, I think that's one of, to
me that's one of the catalystsand certainly in the startup environment
when you raise, you know,because that, that the process by
which companies like WeWork,the hyperscalers fund themselves
(11:21):
almost encourages them tooverhype the short term claims because
they're always trying to lookfor the next raise and they have
to tell a big story. Right.But it's the same in any department.
If you're running a campaign,particularly at the beginning of
it and you've got a Runway,you're almost incentivized to be
over optimistic about the results.
Whenever you're trying to getbudgets to do all of the things that
(11:44):
you want to do. Right. I thinkthat's a double edged sword. You
know, you could go of theunder promise, over deliver or over
promise? Under deliver. Ithink it depends on where they're
again, you're looking longterm or short term? Short term if
you want to over promise underdeliver. That'll work a couple of
(12:05):
times because of course, youknow, testing things, there's going
to be failures, but if you areconsistently doing the same thing,
that's. That tactic won't workanymore. Yeah. So you know, it's
the same whether you're inmarket or internal to your company.
You have to think of both thebrand of your company, but your own
(12:29):
personal brand about what youcan deliver, whether you're trustworthy,
whether your claims aretrustworthy as well.
Yeah, especially pertinence, Ithink for an individual because once
your reputation gets burned ina company, that's it, you're done
pretty much.
It would be years of builtrebuilding just with a brand, just
(12:50):
like with the brand.
No one's got years these days.You just quit and move on. It's just
not the same as it used to be.When we, when we met for our, for
our chat before the call, youmentioned Coinbase to me and it's
not a business that I knew ahuge amount about, but you referred
to them as a business maybethat had done things in the right
way. Can you just tell me alittle bit about Coinbase?
(13:12):
They're a fintech company inthe crypto world. I like to think
of them as a company that hasdone it well. The balance between
rapid growth and long termsustainability. You know, in the
beginning they focused onexpanding their user base, they focused
(13:34):
on expanding their productsets and they used some aggressive
marketing tactics to do so.Everything from maybe questionable
influencer partnerships,limited time offers that use scarcity
tactics and overly promotionaleducational content, especially to
(13:58):
a new monetary instrument likecrypto. As they started getting bigger,
they started getting morescrutiny, not only from educators,
but the media to regulators.They really had to think about what
they needed to do. And so theyshifted from growth to advocacy and
(14:25):
started advocating for clear,consistent regulation, started emphasizing
transparency with theircustomers and investors and regulators
about how they safeguardedassets, which, you know, in financial
services that's base. Right.So I think that they did that really
(14:49):
well and they're still around.They've weathered the storm and they're
growing.
There's kind of a forgivenessamong startups because I think everybody
knows that is vision led.There's a point in the evolution
of a business probably whereyou need to start becoming a little
bit more aware of risk andreputation. Do you think there's
(15:12):
a Lot of forgiveness early on,isn't there?
There is a lot of forgiveness.I think the one thing that you can't
leave out of the equation isthe competition. Right. There will
be no forgiveness with yourcompetition, and they will use everything
that they can to attractcustomers away from you or keep customers
(15:33):
away from you. Right?
Yeah.
So whenever you have to thinkabout, okay, where am I gonna put
all of my focus and when do Ineed a transition? Hopefully you
do that before there's a newspaper article or a media article
(15:54):
or expose about what you'redoing to grow your company. One of
the things that I think wetalked about last time was Liquid
Death.
Yes, yes.
Hopefully you can do somethinglike Liquid Death has done, which
is a water company, essentially.
(16:14):
Yeah. Tinned water.
Yeah, they're water. And sowhat they did was really thought
about why is the healthindustry, you know, filled with exaggerated
claims and fads. And theyreally poked fun at it. And everything
that they did was around, youknow, pushing back on some of the,
(16:41):
I would say, fluff that's outthere in wellness and everything.
From their name, Liquid Death,it's water. To their packaging, which
looks, you know, it could be alarge can of beer.
Yeah, it's very beer like,isn't it? Yeah.
It took me a while to figureout it was water. And their campaigns,
(17:04):
which are, you know,provocative, they're funny, they're
irreverent, and they mock alot of the exaggerated claims or
the overspend that they see inthe marketplace. And I think one
of the most interesting thingsthat they did was actually put water
in a recyclable aluminum can,which water companies tend not to
(17:28):
do because the plastic showsthe purity or glass shows the purity
of the water. But they made alot of very deliberate decisions
in their branding from name,packaging, messaging, and it's continuing
to propel them.
Yeah, they did their 4Psreally well, those guys. I mean,
(17:50):
really well, as you wouldexpect, because they're marketers.
Right. I mean, they'remarketers to their core.
Hopefully, you know, they'll.They'll stick to it. And, you know,
I don't see their trajectorychanging. But, you know, once you
hit a certain record ofgrowth, it stalls.
It comes down to distributionas well at that stage. And there's
(18:10):
some physical things that arequite hard to get yourself around.
But before. Before we move on,we're going to look at some answers,
and you've got a phraseframework, I think, to talk to us
about, you know, that helpsdeal with lack of trust or, you know
or the risk of inauthenticity.Before we do that, I just want to
understand the stakes ofgetting it wrong. Talk to me about
the risks for businesses thatcut corners and risk long term reputation
(18:34):
for like making the quarter.
One of the things that being acredible, trustworthy brand gives
you, it gives you higherconversion rates. People are more
likely to buy from you. Itcompresses sales cycles. People spend
less time deliberating onwhether or not they want to buy from
you because they trust you.And once you start degrading that
(19:01):
trust, once that trust startsslowly fading away, you can lose
your current customers. Someof them will walk away from you,
others will complain about youin the market, others will, you know,
may sue you or file complaintswith regulatory bodies. Your competition
(19:23):
will swoop in, help spread theword and actually use that in their
pitches. And then regulatorswill start swooping in, investors
will walk away, your cost ofcapital will go up. So it's not,
you know, a pure marketingfluff term. You know, marketers always
(19:46):
talk about authenticity, butthere is a real reason why we worry
about authenticity and brandand values. It's just whenever you
look at it from a purelysuperficial point of view and the
(20:06):
execution isn't there, thefollow through isn't there and the
consistency isn't there,that's where it's not going to work.
All of those things you justmentioned made the hair on the back
of my neck, actually, if I hadany, made the hair on the back of
my neck stand on end. Becauseas a CEO, hearing about things like
cost of capital or delayedsales cycles, these things kill companies.
(20:33):
So a sage warning. Now you,Christine, have developed a four
stage process for buildingcredibility, focusing on truthfulness,
following through, listening,keeping a dialogue and stuff. Can
you walk me through thatprocess a little bit and explain
how you think this helps usbuild long term trust with our customers
and other stakeholders?
Yeah, so I like to think ofbuilding trust the same for a business.
(20:56):
The same as you would, youknow, a human going through life.
One of the first things I talkabout is being authentic. That's
being true to your brand, yourvalues, your purpose. Aligning incentives
to make sure that you'refollowing through and you can make
decisions to stay true to thatbrand and set boundaries around what
(21:19):
your capabilities are and whatyou can actually push and stick to
them. For example, you know,if you are a clothing brand, you
may put value onsustainability. Well, you may focus
on the materials that you usein your clothing. You may not be
(21:44):
able to solve world hunger. Sothose are the kinds of things that
you can think about when youbuild boundaries around your brand.
The next step is buildingcredibility. And that goes around
when we were talking aboutwhat are the bold claims. Try not
to overspend, don't tell halftruths as much as you can. And when
(22:07):
you do slip up, acceptresponsibility. It's very important
to put yourself out there inan authentic and truthful way. Next
step is making sure that youact accordingly. So you know you're
going to say everything thatyou have to say. You want to say
it loud, you want it to go outand have as much reach as possible.
(22:30):
But you also have to plan foraction. You have to make sure that
you're following through onyour claims, that you can deliver
on your promises. And once youfollow through, remember to continue
to follow through, continuedoing what you say you're going to
do. It's important to listenand adjust. Not only are you going
to look at the metrics thatyou your key KPIs that you need to
(22:56):
hit, but you're also engagingwith your customers, understanding
how they're reacting, howsentiment is trending and how are
we actually following throughon our promises from our customers
perspective.
Okay, that's prettycomprehensive. I think it also fits
in vogue with kind of some ofthe latest thinking coming out of
Roger Martin, who's my alltime strategy guru, who's moved away
(23:18):
from that kind of playing towin framework. Not completely moved
away from it, but promise tothe customer has been his big thing
for the last 12 to 18 months.And it strikes me that your framework
really supports that in termsof being authentic, following through,
but also listening andensuring that you are following through
on your promise. It seems tome though that being authentic and
(23:41):
being truthful and listeningto your customers, these are very
obvious things. Why do youthink so many people get it wrong?
I think it's hard, you know,whether you are an emerging startup
or you are a public company,short term results are non negotiables,
(24:03):
okay? Both of them will affectyour cost of capital, right? So if
you're a public company andyou miss your projections, that's
a, you know your stock priceswill drop and your cost of capital
will rise. If you're a startupand you don't hit your target, you
(24:25):
know, you may not get thatnext raise, you're going to have
a lot of scrutiny from yourinvestors and you know you might
get replaced. So buildingauthenticity is a long term endeavor.
It's not easy and it doesrequire sometimes short term sacrifice
(24:51):
to hit those longer termResults. Right. A good example would
be Microsoft. They recentlydid a rebrand where they really went
back to their key focus whichwas openness, transparency and a
(25:14):
customer centric view. Andtheir new CEO did a number of things.
One of the first things thathe did was started engaging directly
with customers, withregulators, with the public on issues
like privacy, security,sustainability. Having a dialogue
(25:38):
back and forth was importantand it also helped create a foster
of accountability. Not onlydid he admit stakes, but you know,
his team internally it's okayto admit mistakes and think about
how you're going to learn forthem. And lastly, you know, he did
(26:01):
make some short termsacrifices which in the end he got,
I would say near term, notlong term benefits. He sacrificed
licensing revenue on the shortterm, simplified pricing, simplified
licensing options. He evencreated custom licensing agreements
(26:25):
for larger companies so theygot exactly what they needed and
didn't have to do a lot of thegymnastics to get what they needed.
So you know, in the short termit did sacrifice some of the revenue
short term, but in the longterm it accelerated the adoption
of Microsoft cloud and theirenterprise products. So whenever
(26:48):
you have a long term visionand your stakeholders, meaning your
customers and your investorsare signed on that journey with you,
you can get much betterresults than if you just purely,
purely follow the short term.
I think the Microsoft story isan extraordinary one actually quite
(27:09):
the impact that SatyaNadella's had. If you think like
think back 10, 15 years,Microsoft was almost the boogeyman,
right? There was all thisantitrust stuff going on. You'd just
about use anything butMicrosoft. And then they came in
and had this new approach anda new attitude as you say. It's like
suddenly there are very, very,very trusted brand providing best
(27:33):
in class product at veryaffordable prices and someone else
is now the boogeyman. Yeah,Microsoft is suddenly okay, but Google
isn't. And they're the onesthat said do no evil.
Yeah, well no longer.
I know.
And so it's one of thosethings where I think Google is the
(27:54):
antithesis of Microsoft today.You know, they grew from an ethos
of do no evil and really hadprinciples of openness. They were
going to make the Internetthis open information database for
everybody and empowering usersto make it easier to find the information
(28:18):
that they wanted. They reallyprioritized growth, especially with
their new leadership. Theyexpanded rapidly into new verticals,
new monetization models andthey weren't really transparent about
the implications to users andthe market at large. They didn't
(28:41):
really address issues arounddata privacy, content moderator and
Other impacts of the platform.There's a perceived arrogance or
dismissiveness in how theyrespond to criticism rather than
genuinely engaging and havingthat two way discussion. I mean,
(29:01):
the recent protests of Googleemployees is another manifestation
of this disconnect.
I mean, it's a shame becauseI'm old enough to remember when they
first appeared and they wereeveryone's darling company. But they've
also made some really weirddecisions with some of the guardrails
(29:23):
they've put on their AI andsome of the coding they've put actually
into the core search productthat will prioritize search results
for those sorts oforganizations who they approve of.
So it's almost like they'reforcing their moral judgment of the
world on us. And that's notthe deal that people like me made
effectively with Google. Whenwe give our data away for free, we
(29:46):
don't expect to be given acurated version of what they think
the world should be. I thinkthat really speaks to trust to me.
And so whenever you thinkabout Google, you know, Google's
also YouTube, Google's alsoGmail. Google's also search. I'm
going to be interested inwatching how quickly people migrate
(30:07):
if they do migrate to newplatforms. You know, more and more
people are migrating fromYouTube into rumble locals on the
video side Now Microsoft haslowered their pricing to compete
with Google on the Gmailcalendars, their business suite.
(30:32):
The pricing's really close.I'm not entirely sure on the Docs
cloud side where these two aregoing to land.
Yeah, I think there's pricingparity there at the moment. One of
the things about Google thoughis they do make really good product
(30:53):
like Chrome. I'm recordingthis right now on Chrome. It's an
amazingly stable, fast browserand I've, I have tried to replace
it with other things, but Ijust keep coming back to Chrome because
the engineering is really good.
The priorities of trust for acustomer base really varies by geography.
(31:14):
So in the US price andquality, that's like king where,
you know, in Asia it may bemore reputation. In Europe it is
more reputation than price andquality. But it's going to be interesting
(31:35):
to see how people startreacting and you know, how much of
a price their privacy isreally worth to them. Right.
We all have an opinion in ourmind because we all grew up with
Google. We have an opinion andan image of what Google is and what
it stands for. And I mean I,I'm aware I'm enormously biased in
(31:57):
this and I literally just saidthat's not the deal. I Made with
Google. I give them my dataand in return I expect like un guardrails
things back.
Right.
But they're not the only ones.You know, the importance of brands
staying in there, in effect,if you like, in their perception
guidelines. There was areally, I mean, you talked to me
(32:18):
about this before when we wereon the call. You know, the Bud Light
and Brian Mulvaney thing likethat was horrendous in case anyone
was in a cave when that wasgoing on. And without getting canceled
or no platformed ourselves.Let's just talk about that very quickly.
Around March Madness, which ifyou're not into college basketball,
(32:40):
you know, a collegebasketball, you know, tournament,
Bud Light decided, you know,we're, we want to expand our customer
base from the Spuds McKinseykind of frat boy image to a more
women centric, LGBTQ centricbrand. They did a deal with an influencer
(33:04):
during March Madness. It wasa, I believe a 30 second commercial
or post where Dylan Mulvaneyinvited people to create their own
March Madness video and shareit. And the contest was, you could
(33:27):
win $10,000. The marketingteam at Bud Light thought, you know,
isn't it going to be fun?We're going to get some, some good
press and we're going to showhow diverse our customers are. And
it completely backfired fromit began with, I think it was maybe
Kid Rocket could be a musicianspoke up against it. And then all
(33:53):
of a sudden people wereprotesting in Targets and throughout
the whole crisis for BudLight. They handled it in interesting
ways. The first thing thatthey did is they doubled down. They
(34:15):
said, you know, we stand bythis. Our customers are diverse.
We support a diverse society.And then when it started getting
real, when I mean by real, thecustomer backlash began. Bud Light
was getting boycotted and theyactually lost their number one spot
(34:39):
that they held for since the80s to Modelo. Once that started
happening, they were like,whoa, wait a minute, maybe it was
a mistake. But at that point,you know, they, they pissed off both
their conservative customers,their liberal customers. Everybody
(35:01):
was upset. And instead of justsaying, you know what, we made a
mistake. We didn't realizethat our customers did not like this
program and really focusing.What, what do your customers care
about? And it was having a BudLight and not worrying about politics.
(35:26):
It's really relaxing. Theyenjoyed sports and they enjoyed music,
and so they wanted Bud Lightto play in those areas. They didn't
really need Bud Light to tellthem anything about society at large.
Again, drawing yourboundaries, it's an important.
Lesson, isn't it, thatunderstanding as marketers and communicators,
(35:48):
really understanding what ourcustomers perceptions of us is and
then staying, staying true tothat perception. You can move it,
of course, but it's a verypainful and expensive process.
Yes.
There are two other companiesthat I thought of or we talked about
earlier, both in aviation,actually. One is JetBlue, who did
(36:09):
handle a crisis particularlybad. I think it was quite early in
their evolution. And we spoketo Maya Getceph in an earlier episode
from JetBlue about thatepisode or incident. It was the big
Valentine's Day scandal whenthey stranded people in airports
all over the US but they seemto have recovered particularly well.
(36:30):
I think it's because theyhandled it well, like we were talking
about earlier, the Internet,you can't hide things anymore, or
at least not for long. And sothey could have gone the way of Boeing,
which we can get into laterand try to shift attention to something
(36:53):
else or just flat out minimizethe issue. But you can't stop people
from getting on Twitter,Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and complaining.
And those are viral momentsthat you cannot control. And so I
(37:14):
think what they did was justbe open and honest about it, Talk
about the issue, talk aboutwhat caused it, and talked about
how they're going to fix itand then they fixed it.
That sort of follows yourprocess almost flawlessly, doesn't
it? Right.
Yeah.
Say what you're going to do,be open and honest about it, do it
and then tell everyone you did it.
(37:35):
And keep doing it. Right. Andso that's, you know, when you do
that, just like a human being,you know, if you let a friend down,
you admit it, you say whathappened and then you fix it. Right.
I've been in the servicebusiness for years and years and
years and the strongestrelationships I've had with clients
are not those whereeverything's gone well all the time.
(37:57):
The strongest relationships Ihave with clients are where something's
gone very badly wrong and wehave put it right and we've rebuilt
trust. Because once you'vedone something wrong and you've put
it right, they have a much,much bigger reason to trust you than
if you never did anythingwrong. Yeah, JetBlue maybe experienced
that. You know, if anyonewants to listen to more detail, they
can go back and have a look atthe episode. I want to talk about
(38:18):
Boeing very quickly becausethey're in a world of pain at the
moment and there's notnecessarily an end to it. Talk to
me a little bit about their situation.
Boeing is a cautionary taleof, you know, prioritizing optics
and short term gain oversubstance and long term sustainability.
(38:41):
The company during its mergerreally started focusing on metrics
like stock price, productiontargets and cost cutting. And what
they sacrificed was attentionto what their customers really cared
(39:03):
about, which is safety andquality of their aircraft. Right.
And so in pursuit of, youknow, these faster production times,
more productivity and costcutting measures, Boeing made decisions
that really sacrifice both thesafety and integrity of their 737
(39:26):
Max. And, and this includedeverything from skimping on pilot
training, downplaying knownsoftware issues to the machining
of screws for windows andplanes. And they had some issues,
(39:47):
some plane crashes, somewindows, leaving the aircraft and
flying. What they started todo is rather than really sit down
and fix those issues, theystarted doing PR campaigns around,
you know, feel goodinitiatives, purpose initiatives,
diversity programs that wereoutside of their customers, core
(40:10):
needs. And I would say theircustomers, you know, like all the
airlines, but their customers.Customers, yeah, who are in the planes
and the pilots and thecustomers, employees who are in the
plane that need it to be safe,have integrity. And you know, their
obsession with metrics andoptics rather than the fundamentals
(40:34):
came back to haunt them in amajor way. They can't get out of
their own way.
And it's not done yet.
No. It's been a couple ofchanging of the guards and it's going
to be a huge cultural shiftthat they need to really look at
the brand and then push thebrand sometimes from the bottom up
because it seems like a lot oftheir employees are really wanting
(40:57):
to bring the brand back towhere it used to be.
Let's start to look at someanswers. That's a cautionary tale
there, right? It's acautionary tale of not looking after
the fundamentals. Stewardshipof relationship, stewardship of trust,
stewardship of reputation kindof sits with the CMO that is the
(41:18):
focus of many things. But oneof those things obviously is external
communication. How do CMOS Afind the balance between the two
pressures, the short term, thelong term, but also counsel and bring
in the rest of their team andhelp them understand the importance
of it.
First is making sure that allof their goals are aligned with the
(41:40):
company's visions and targets.So, so that you can both understand
the short term goals and hityour short term targets, but also
be able to align with the longterm vision. Next you have to diversify
your portfolio with short termperformance tactics with longer term
(42:01):
brand building initiatives.And so while you're doing that, you're
testing you're measuring,you're optimizing your portfolio
to find the right balance andso you can both drive immediate results,
which we all have to do. Andat the same time build these longer
lasting customer relationshipsthat you talked about earlier then
(42:23):
is not only focus on yourrevenue generating tactics, but also
invest in understanding yourcustomer and engaging in your customer
through research, throughinsights, direct engagement, so you
can address their needs andnot just chase trends. Not only does
that help you focus yourportfolio and your activities, but
(42:48):
it also fosters accountabilityand transparency. So are we actually
following through on what wesaid we would do from our customers
perspective? From ourperspective. And then lastly, it's
empowering your team to sharetheir challenges, to share their
failings and to share theirlearnings. You set clear KPIs that
(43:13):
balance both short term goalsand long term goals. So not only
are you thinking about how tobalance them, your team is thinking
about balancing them andyou're working with your partners
to make sure that we're alsobalancing them. And then of course
using marketing technology tohelp boost efficiency and personalized
(43:36):
customer experiences to buildmore of that. Yes, we understand
you and we are building arelationship with you.
Circling back to where westarted, then we talked about the
profit trap, we've talkedabout over indexing on the short
term and that's been a featurethroughout our conversation. If there's
(43:57):
one thing, if there's somehomework, for example, for us, our
unicorns to take away, ifthere's one thing that they can focus
on in the next kind of one tothree months to improve authenticity
and trust, what would that be?
I would say consistency. Soyou can apply consistency on your
(44:19):
marketing channels. Makingsure simple things, making sure the
look and feel is the same,making sure that your messaging is
the same across channels,making sure that when you make claims
that you can follow through onit, and making sure that whenever
you tell your customers thatyou're going to do something, you
(44:39):
do it. Making it very easy forthe customer in the marketing to
understand what you do and howyou do it is important. So focusing
on consistency and making surethat you're doing these things every
day, every hour, right? Andthat translates into months and years.
(45:00):
Christine, thank you very muchindeed for your time. It's been really,
really interesting and funtalk to you. And by the way unicorners,
if you do find things havegone wrong and you are in the shit,
give me a call. I'm quite goodat getting people out of it. Christine,
thank you so much for yourtime and well I hope to See you soon.
Thank you.
I want to say a massive thankyou to Christine for coming and spending
(45:23):
time with us on our onlinerecording platform. Thank you. We
really appreciate your time.And by the way, we appreciate your
time too. We know that it isprecious, just like ours is, and
so we appreciate you coming tospend some time with us. Now, if
you've enjoyed today's show,please like and follow us or subscribe
to this podcast on whateverchannel you like to consume it on.
(45:43):
I would be really grateful ifyou would write us a review. Reviews
are very, very hard to comeby, but they do matter. Other people
check them before they come tolisten. And if you enjoy it, you
know what? People like youmight enjoy it too. But for today,
that's all we've got time for.
The larger you get and themore visibility you get is going
to catapult you to morecustomers, bigger product sets, more
investors, or it could biteyou. Just be open and honest about
it. Talk about the issue, talkabout what caused it and talked about
how they're going to fix itand then they fixed it. It gives
(00:31):
you higher conversion rates.People are more likely to buy from
you. It compresses salescycles that people spend less time
deliberating on whether or notthey want to buy from you because
they trust you.
Hello you, I am Dom Hawes andyou are tuned in to the Unicorny
marketing show. Welcome to youToday we welcome from across the
(00:54):
pond Christine Alemany who isgoing to talk to us about a very
important subject. Probablysomething close to all of our hearts
but not something I think thatwe think about within the terms that
she is going to discuss itwith us today. And that thing is
authenticity, particularly howyou manage the short term profit
imperative that we are allliving with now with the long term
(01:18):
need to build trust over time.The profit trap. What's it all about?
Let's go find out withChristine Alemany in the studio right
now.
Hi, how are you?
I'm really well, thank youvery much. I'm delighted to be talking
to you because I've had adreadful day but I have a feeling
it's going to look up,hopefully. Why don't you start off
today by introducing yourselfand your work to our audience?
(01:40):
Well, I like to say that I aman engineer by training and a revenue
generator at heart. My careerhas been broad. I started off as
a coder during the startstartup boom and quickly moved into
product and marketing andsales roles for across Fortune 500
(02:02):
and startups alike.
And you have a PhD?
No, no, I have a couple ofmasters though. I have.
Oh, okay. Talk to me about those.
I'm a little over educated soI undergrad in architectural engineering
specializing in structuralengineering. My master's was in construction
(02:23):
management and my research wasin workforce automation.
Wow.
I eventually got an MBA fromColumbia Business School. So I'm
all over the place.
You have everything.
I have a lot of interests.
Well, I often think actuallythat sort of background in engineering
is really useful for marketersor those that create value because
(02:46):
I think that questioning aninterrogative mind really helps if
you're the person that isresponsible for delivering sustainable
growth or value. Which ofcourse is what we're going to talk
about today.
Absolutely.
But what I'm excited about,before every show we meet our guests
to try and identify subjects.And when we met Christine, authenticity
(03:06):
and trust came straight out ofthe starting gates. And we all know
that authenticity and trustare very important, of course, a
business. But one of thethings you said really interested
me, which was you talked alittle bit about the competing imperatives
executives have between theneed for short term delivery and
(03:27):
long term, effectively brandtrust. And that sometimes those conflicts
can lead to behavior thateffectively erodes authenticity and
therefore loses trust. Andwe're going to dive into those in
a minute. But should we startjust by defining what we mean by
authenticity, what we mean bytrust and sustainable growth?
Maybe whenever I talk abouttrust and authenticity, it's really
(03:53):
about, you know, even when youthink about people, you know, do
they walk the talk? Are youmaking claims that are credible,
that are true, and are youfollowing through on those claims?
Can you deliver on thoseclaims? And so that's what authenticity
is, that's what builds trust,whether you're a human being or a
(04:18):
business. And whenever I talkabout sustainable growth, a lot of
startups or emerging growthcompanies, they're having to strike
a balance between growth oruser acquisition and long term sustainability
or profitability, and makingsure that the company can make it
(04:39):
for the next 15, 20, 30 years, often.
In startup and scale up aswell. The truth often trails slightly
behind the communication tothe market, and it has to be that
way. Do you think that's arisk to authenticity or do you think
people accept that? Sometimesthe truth is overhyped a bit.
As long as you frame itcorrectly. You know, whenever you
(05:01):
think about what my goals are,what we're going to be, what we're
building, as long as you'reframing it that way, rather than
saying this exists, this worksperfectly. Right? So it's striking,
that balance. And usually,especially if you're early on in
your journey, your first fewcustomers want you to succeed. So
(05:27):
the more honest you are andopen about where you are, especially
in your roadmap, the more thatthey're going to want to help you.
They're going to give youfeedback and help you navigate. Because
where you want to be and whatyou envision when you first create
your company is not whereyou're going to end up.
(05:48):
Yeah, that's true.
And so you have to be open.And if you're open with your customers,
they'll help you succeed muchfaster than you could on your own.
I think early stage customers,often they'll buy into a vision.
They'll buy from a visionactually, because they are by nature
probably more innovative andentrepreneurial that's why they're
(06:08):
shopping at the early stage.But you know, as soon as you then
start getting to more towardsmajority markets, you know, I think
the number one most importantthing often is momentum because you
know, people like to buy fromcompanies other people are buying
from and success breeds success.
Yeah.
Is that when it's mosttempting, do you think, to start
to cut corners or maybe focuson short term gains at the expense
(06:31):
of long term credibility?
I think it happens throughoutthe journey. I think at the very
beginning, beginning you'rereally focused on getting your first
customers. So you may makebold claims, you may over promise
and sometimes it's because outof naivety you don't know what you
can and can't do and you'repretty bullish. Right. I think it's
(06:53):
important that when you start,you make those bold claims, you try
to follow through on thosebold claims and you're open about
the challenges that you'rehaving. I think once you're in the
market, any inconsistency thatyou have can be found. Right. You
know, we all have Google,whatever your search engine of choice
(07:15):
is and you can figure out, youknow, what are they saying, what
are they doing. You can talkto other customers, you can complain
about services. And thatinconsistency, the larger you get
and the more visibility youget is going to come back to you
(07:38):
and either it'll help youcatapult you to, you know, hire or
more customers, bigger productsets, more investors, or it could
bite you. So you have to bevery, very careful.
We've talked about makingclaims, you know, businesses that
are making claims that theycan do things maybe that they can't,
(07:59):
but what other ways are that?You've seen businesses who are eager
to get that momentum to thatacceleration, what are the ways you've
seen them cut, cut corners ormaybe risk reputation in order to
make short term gains?
All kinds of things. Sowhether it's, you know, exaggerating
their metrics, which isunfortunately can be common.
(08:22):
We'D never do that on thispodcast by the way.
Unfortunately it happens. Sowe can think about maybe a company
like WeWork where they did alot of over promising and eventually
it did bite them. But untilthen they got a ton of press, a ton
(08:48):
of customers, a lot ofinvestors, very high profile investors
and very good interest rates.Right. So it allowed them to, you
know, maybe inflate yourgrowth, inflate your profitability,
creates a picture of rapidexpansion, strong financial performance
(09:13):
which attracts everybody andunfortunately it came to life and
now they're.
Struggling when the market'son the up. Right. You know, when
the tide is rising, it's, it'sa lot easier to make those sorts
of bold claims and, and, andthe market can quite often give you
the momentum you need and helpvalidate them. But I think in the
(09:35):
case of WeWork and I think ofa, I can think of a couple of other
big ones. We're going to talkspecifically about some case studies
a little bit later. But in thecase of WeWork, they were promising
a lifestyle, not a servicedoffice. And I think their claim was
so lofty, their vision was sobig, I, unless you were drinking
the Kool Aid and totallygetting carried away with the market,
it was quite hard to see howthat was ever going to be delivered.
(09:57):
It's so interesting thequality of investors they had. Right.
Amazing, isn't it? I know, I know.
It's a power of a good story.And investors, VCs, they love good
stories because when they'reinvesting, they're investing in the
person and the founder andbeing very charismatic, being a good
(10:19):
salesperson is important tobuilding a solid business. So they
love good stories, they loveeven more good metrics, good financial
performance. That's what madethem so successful. I think, you
know, that lifestyle didn'ttranslate into, you know, maybe some
(10:39):
of the ancillary services thatthey offered and they went well beyond
their initial mandate in termsof product and I think they just
went outside of theirknowledge and capabilities.
We may come back to capabilityor understanding one's capabilities
later. We might, we might do.I want to talk very specifically
(11:00):
because this isn't just anentrepreneur story. This is like
if you're in a department oryou are in a medium sized business,
the concept of having aRunway, I think that's one of, to
me that's one of the catalystsand certainly in the startup environment
when you raise, you know,because that, that the process by
which companies like WeWork,the hyperscalers fund themselves
(11:21):
almost encourages them tooverhype the short term claims because
they're always trying to lookfor the next raise and they have
to tell a big story. Right.But it's the same in any department.
If you're running a campaign,particularly at the beginning of
it and you've got a Runway,you're almost incentivized to be
over optimistic about the results.
Whenever you're trying to getbudgets to do all of the things that
(11:44):
you want to do. Right. I thinkthat's a double edged sword. You
know, you could go of theunder promise, over deliver or over
promise? Under deliver. Ithink it depends on where they're
again, you're looking longterm or short term? Short term if
you want to over promise underdeliver. That'll work a couple of
(12:05):
times because of course, youknow, testing things, there's going
to be failures, but if you areconsistently doing the same thing,
that's. That tactic won't workanymore. Yeah. So you know, it's
the same whether you're inmarket or internal to your company.
You have to think of both thebrand of your company, but your own
(12:29):
personal brand about what youcan deliver, whether you're trustworthy,
whether your claims aretrustworthy as well.
Yeah, especially pertinence, Ithink for an individual because once
your reputation gets burned ina company, that's it, you're done
pretty much.
It would be years of builtrebuilding just with a brand, just
(12:50):
like with the brand.
No one's got years these days.You just quit and move on. It's just
not the same as it used to be.When we, when we met for our, for
our chat before the call, youmentioned Coinbase to me and it's
not a business that I knew ahuge amount about, but you referred
to them as a business maybethat had done things in the right
way. Can you just tell me alittle bit about Coinbase?
(13:12):
They're a fintech company inthe crypto world. I like to think
of them as a company that hasdone it well. The balance between
rapid growth and long termsustainability. You know, in the
beginning they focused onexpanding their user base, they focused
(13:34):
on expanding their productsets and they used some aggressive
marketing tactics to do so.Everything from maybe questionable
influencer partnerships,limited time offers that use scarcity
tactics and overly promotionaleducational content, especially to
(13:58):
a new monetary instrument likecrypto. As they started getting bigger,
they started getting morescrutiny, not only from educators,
but the media to regulators.They really had to think about what
they needed to do. And so theyshifted from growth to advocacy and
(14:25):
started advocating for clear,consistent regulation, started emphasizing
transparency with theircustomers and investors and regulators
about how they safeguardedassets, which, you know, in financial
services that's base. Right.So I think that they did that really
(14:49):
well and they're still around.They've weathered the storm and they're
growing.
There's kind of a forgivenessamong startups because I think everybody
knows that is vision led.There's a point in the evolution
of a business probably whereyou need to start becoming a little
bit more aware of risk andreputation. Do you think there's
(15:12):
a Lot of forgiveness early on,isn't there?
There is a lot of forgiveness.I think the one thing that you can't
leave out of the equation isthe competition. Right. There will
be no forgiveness with yourcompetition, and they will use everything
that they can to attractcustomers away from you or keep customers
(15:33):
away from you. Right?
Yeah.
So whenever you have to thinkabout, okay, where am I gonna put
all of my focus and when do Ineed a transition? Hopefully you
do that before there's a newspaper article or a media article
(15:54):
or expose about what you'redoing to grow your company. One of
the things that I think wetalked about last time was Liquid
Death.
Yes, yes.
Hopefully you can do somethinglike Liquid Death has done, which
is a water company, essentially.
(16:14):
Yeah. Tinned water.
Yeah, they're water. And sowhat they did was really thought
about why is the healthindustry, you know, filled with exaggerated
claims and fads. And theyreally poked fun at it. And everything
that they did was around, youknow, pushing back on some of the,
(16:41):
I would say, fluff that's outthere in wellness and everything.
From their name, Liquid Death,it's water. To their packaging, which
looks, you know, it could be alarge can of beer.
Yeah, it's very beer like,isn't it? Yeah.
It took me a while to figureout it was water. And their campaigns,
(17:04):
which are, you know,provocative, they're funny, they're
irreverent, and they mock alot of the exaggerated claims or
the overspend that they see inthe marketplace. And I think one
of the most interesting thingsthat they did was actually put water
in a recyclable aluminum can,which water companies tend not to
(17:28):
do because the plastic showsthe purity or glass shows the purity
of the water. But they made alot of very deliberate decisions
in their branding from name,packaging, messaging, and it's continuing
to propel them.
Yeah, they did their 4Psreally well, those guys. I mean,
(17:50):
really well, as you wouldexpect, because they're marketers.
Right. I mean, they'remarketers to their core.
Hopefully, you know, they'll.They'll stick to it. And, you know,
I don't see their trajectorychanging. But, you know, once you
hit a certain record ofgrowth, it stalls.
It comes down to distributionas well at that stage. And there's
(18:10):
some physical things that arequite hard to get yourself around.
But before. Before we move on,we're going to look at some answers,
and you've got a phraseframework, I think, to talk to us
about, you know, that helpsdeal with lack of trust or, you know
or the risk of inauthenticity.Before we do that, I just want to
understand the stakes ofgetting it wrong. Talk to me about
the risks for businesses thatcut corners and risk long term reputation
(18:34):
for like making the quarter.
One of the things that being acredible, trustworthy brand gives
you, it gives you higherconversion rates. People are more
likely to buy from you. Itcompresses sales cycles. People spend
less time deliberating onwhether or not they want to buy from
you because they trust you.And once you start degrading that
(19:01):
trust, once that trust startsslowly fading away, you can lose
your current customers. Someof them will walk away from you,
others will complain about youin the market, others will, you know,
may sue you or file complaintswith regulatory bodies. Your competition
(19:23):
will swoop in, help spread theword and actually use that in their
pitches. And then regulatorswill start swooping in, investors
will walk away, your cost ofcapital will go up. So it's not,
you know, a pure marketingfluff term. You know, marketers always
(19:46):
talk about authenticity, butthere is a real reason why we worry
about authenticity and brandand values. It's just whenever you
look at it from a purelysuperficial point of view and the
(20:06):
execution isn't there, thefollow through isn't there and the
consistency isn't there,that's where it's not going to work.
All of those things you justmentioned made the hair on the back
of my neck, actually, if I hadany, made the hair on the back of
my neck stand on end. Becauseas a CEO, hearing about things like
cost of capital or delayedsales cycles, these things kill companies.
(20:33):
So a sage warning. Now you,Christine, have developed a four
stage process for buildingcredibility, focusing on truthfulness,
following through, listening,keeping a dialogue and stuff. Can
you walk me through thatprocess a little bit and explain
how you think this helps usbuild long term trust with our customers
and other stakeholders?
Yeah, so I like to think ofbuilding trust the same for a business.
(20:56):
The same as you would, youknow, a human going through life.
One of the first things I talkabout is being authentic. That's
being true to your brand, yourvalues, your purpose. Aligning incentives
to make sure that you'refollowing through and you can make
decisions to stay true to thatbrand and set boundaries around what
(21:19):
your capabilities are and whatyou can actually push and stick to
them. For example, you know,if you are a clothing brand, you
may put value onsustainability. Well, you may focus
on the materials that you usein your clothing. You may not be
(21:44):
able to solve world hunger. Sothose are the kinds of things that
you can think about when youbuild boundaries around your brand.
The next step is buildingcredibility. And that goes around
when we were talking aboutwhat are the bold claims. Try not
to overspend, don't tell halftruths as much as you can. And when
(22:07):
you do slip up, acceptresponsibility. It's very important
to put yourself out there inan authentic and truthful way. Next
step is making sure that youact accordingly. So you know you're
going to say everything thatyou have to say. You want to say
it loud, you want it to go outand have as much reach as possible.
(22:30):
But you also have to plan foraction. You have to make sure that
you're following through onyour claims, that you can deliver
on your promises. And once youfollow through, remember to continue
to follow through, continuedoing what you say you're going to
do. It's important to listenand adjust. Not only are you going
to look at the metrics thatyou your key KPIs that you need to
(22:56):
hit, but you're also engagingwith your customers, understanding
how they're reacting, howsentiment is trending and how are
we actually following throughon our promises from our customers
perspective.
Okay, that's prettycomprehensive. I think it also fits
in vogue with kind of some ofthe latest thinking coming out of
Roger Martin, who's my alltime strategy guru, who's moved away
(23:18):
from that kind of playing towin framework. Not completely moved
away from it, but promise tothe customer has been his big thing
for the last 12 to 18 months.And it strikes me that your framework
really supports that in termsof being authentic, following through,
but also listening andensuring that you are following through
on your promise. It seems tome though that being authentic and
(23:41):
being truthful and listeningto your customers, these are very
obvious things. Why do youthink so many people get it wrong?
I think it's hard, you know,whether you are an emerging startup
or you are a public company,short term results are non negotiables,
(24:03):
okay? Both of them will affectyour cost of capital, right? So if
you're a public company andyou miss your projections, that's
a, you know your stock priceswill drop and your cost of capital
will rise. If you're a startupand you don't hit your target, you
(24:25):
know, you may not get thatnext raise, you're going to have
a lot of scrutiny from yourinvestors and you know you might
get replaced. So buildingauthenticity is a long term endeavor.
It's not easy and it doesrequire sometimes short term sacrifice
(24:51):
to hit those longer termResults. Right. A good example would
be Microsoft. They recentlydid a rebrand where they really went
back to their key focus whichwas openness, transparency and a
(25:14):
customer centric view. Andtheir new CEO did a number of things.
One of the first things thathe did was started engaging directly
with customers, withregulators, with the public on issues
like privacy, security,sustainability. Having a dialogue
(25:38):
back and forth was importantand it also helped create a foster
of accountability. Not onlydid he admit stakes, but you know,
his team internally it's okayto admit mistakes and think about
how you're going to learn forthem. And lastly, you know, he did
(26:01):
make some short termsacrifices which in the end he got,
I would say near term, notlong term benefits. He sacrificed
licensing revenue on the shortterm, simplified pricing, simplified
licensing options. He evencreated custom licensing agreements
(26:25):
for larger companies so theygot exactly what they needed and
didn't have to do a lot of thegymnastics to get what they needed.
So you know, in the short termit did sacrifice some of the revenue
short term, but in the longterm it accelerated the adoption
of Microsoft cloud and theirenterprise products. So whenever
(26:48):
you have a long term visionand your stakeholders, meaning your
customers and your investorsare signed on that journey with you,
you can get much betterresults than if you just purely,
purely follow the short term.
I think the Microsoft story isan extraordinary one actually quite
(27:09):
the impact that SatyaNadella's had. If you think like
think back 10, 15 years,Microsoft was almost the boogeyman,
right? There was all thisantitrust stuff going on. You'd just
about use anything butMicrosoft. And then they came in
and had this new approach anda new attitude as you say. It's like
suddenly there are very, very,very trusted brand providing best
(27:33):
in class product at veryaffordable prices and someone else
is now the boogeyman. Yeah,Microsoft is suddenly okay, but Google
isn't. And they're the onesthat said do no evil.
Yeah, well no longer.
I know.
And so it's one of thosethings where I think Google is the
(27:54):
antithesis of Microsoft today.You know, they grew from an ethos
of do no evil and really hadprinciples of openness. They were
going to make the Internetthis open information database for
everybody and empowering usersto make it easier to find the information
(28:18):
that they wanted. They reallyprioritized growth, especially with
their new leadership. Theyexpanded rapidly into new verticals,
new monetization models andthey weren't really transparent about
the implications to users andthe market at large. They didn't
(28:41):
really address issues arounddata privacy, content moderator and
Other impacts of the platform.There's a perceived arrogance or
dismissiveness in how theyrespond to criticism rather than
genuinely engaging and havingthat two way discussion. I mean,
(29:01):
the recent protests of Googleemployees is another manifestation
of this disconnect.
I mean, it's a shame becauseI'm old enough to remember when they
first appeared and they wereeveryone's darling company. But they've
also made some really weirddecisions with some of the guardrails
(29:23):
they've put on their AI andsome of the coding they've put actually
into the core search productthat will prioritize search results
for those sorts oforganizations who they approve of.
So it's almost like they'reforcing their moral judgment of the
world on us. And that's notthe deal that people like me made
effectively with Google. Whenwe give our data away for free, we
(29:46):
don't expect to be given acurated version of what they think
the world should be. I thinkthat really speaks to trust to me.
And so whenever you thinkabout Google, you know, Google's
also YouTube, Google's alsoGmail. Google's also search. I'm
going to be interested inwatching how quickly people migrate
(30:07):
if they do migrate to newplatforms. You know, more and more
people are migrating fromYouTube into rumble locals on the
video side Now Microsoft haslowered their pricing to compete
with Google on the Gmailcalendars, their business suite.
(30:32):
The pricing's really close.I'm not entirely sure on the Docs
cloud side where these two aregoing to land.
Yeah, I think there's pricingparity there at the moment. One of
the things about Google thoughis they do make really good product
(30:53):
like Chrome. I'm recordingthis right now on Chrome. It's an
amazingly stable, fast browserand I've, I have tried to replace
it with other things, but Ijust keep coming back to Chrome because
the engineering is really good.
The priorities of trust for acustomer base really varies by geography.
(31:14):
So in the US price andquality, that's like king where,
you know, in Asia it may bemore reputation. In Europe it is
more reputation than price andquality. But it's going to be interesting
(31:35):
to see how people startreacting and you know, how much of
a price their privacy isreally worth to them. Right.
We all have an opinion in ourmind because we all grew up with
Google. We have an opinion andan image of what Google is and what
it stands for. And I mean I,I'm aware I'm enormously biased in
(31:57):
this and I literally just saidthat's not the deal. I Made with
Google. I give them my dataand in return I expect like un guardrails
things back.
Right.
But they're not the only ones.You know, the importance of brands
staying in there, in effect,if you like, in their perception
guidelines. There was areally, I mean, you talked to me
(32:18):
about this before when we wereon the call. You know, the Bud Light
and Brian Mulvaney thing likethat was horrendous in case anyone
was in a cave when that wasgoing on. And without getting canceled
or no platformed ourselves.Let's just talk about that very quickly.
Around March Madness, which ifyou're not into college basketball,
(32:40):
you know, a collegebasketball, you know, tournament,
Bud Light decided, you know,we're, we want to expand our customer
base from the Spuds McKinseykind of frat boy image to a more
women centric, LGBTQ centricbrand. They did a deal with an influencer
(33:04):
during March Madness. It wasa, I believe a 30 second commercial
or post where Dylan Mulvaneyinvited people to create their own
March Madness video and shareit. And the contest was, you could
(33:27):
win $10,000. The marketingteam at Bud Light thought, you know,
isn't it going to be fun?We're going to get some, some good
press and we're going to showhow diverse our customers are. And
it completely backfired fromit began with, I think it was maybe
Kid Rocket could be a musicianspoke up against it. And then all
(33:53):
of a sudden people wereprotesting in Targets and throughout
the whole crisis for BudLight. They handled it in interesting
ways. The first thing thatthey did is they doubled down. They
(34:15):
said, you know, we stand bythis. Our customers are diverse.
We support a diverse society.And then when it started getting
real, when I mean by real, thecustomer backlash began. Bud Light
was getting boycotted and theyactually lost their number one spot
(34:39):
that they held for since the80s to Modelo. Once that started
happening, they were like,whoa, wait a minute, maybe it was
a mistake. But at that point,you know, they, they pissed off both
their conservative customers,their liberal customers. Everybody
(35:01):
was upset. And instead of justsaying, you know what, we made a
mistake. We didn't realizethat our customers did not like this
program and really focusing.What, what do your customers care
about? And it was having a BudLight and not worrying about politics.
(35:26):
It's really relaxing. Theyenjoyed sports and they enjoyed music,
and so they wanted Bud Lightto play in those areas. They didn't
really need Bud Light to tellthem anything about society at large.
Again, drawing yourboundaries, it's an important.
Lesson, isn't it, thatunderstanding as marketers and communicators,
(35:48):
really understanding what ourcustomers perceptions of us is and
then staying, staying true tothat perception. You can move it,
of course, but it's a verypainful and expensive process.
Yes.
There are two other companiesthat I thought of or we talked about
earlier, both in aviation,actually. One is JetBlue, who did
(36:09):
handle a crisis particularlybad. I think it was quite early in
their evolution. And we spoketo Maya Getceph in an earlier episode
from JetBlue about thatepisode or incident. It was the big
Valentine's Day scandal whenthey stranded people in airports
all over the US but they seemto have recovered particularly well.
(36:30):
I think it's because theyhandled it well, like we were talking
about earlier, the Internet,you can't hide things anymore, or
at least not for long. And sothey could have gone the way of Boeing,
which we can get into laterand try to shift attention to something
(36:53):
else or just flat out minimizethe issue. But you can't stop people
from getting on Twitter,Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and complaining.
And those are viral momentsthat you cannot control. And so I
(37:14):
think what they did was justbe open and honest about it, Talk
about the issue, talk aboutwhat caused it, and talked about
how they're going to fix itand then they fixed it.
That sort of follows yourprocess almost flawlessly, doesn't
it? Right.
Yeah.
Say what you're going to do,be open and honest about it, do it
and then tell everyone you did it.
(37:35):
And keep doing it. Right. Andso that's, you know, when you do
that, just like a human being,you know, if you let a friend down,
you admit it, you say whathappened and then you fix it. Right.
I've been in the servicebusiness for years and years and
years and the strongestrelationships I've had with clients
are not those whereeverything's gone well all the time.
(37:57):
The strongest relationships Ihave with clients are where something's
gone very badly wrong and wehave put it right and we've rebuilt
trust. Because once you'vedone something wrong and you've put
it right, they have a much,much bigger reason to trust you than
if you never did anythingwrong. Yeah, JetBlue maybe experienced
that. You know, if anyonewants to listen to more detail, they
can go back and have a look atthe episode. I want to talk about
(38:18):
Boeing very quickly becausethey're in a world of pain at the
moment and there's notnecessarily an end to it. Talk to
me a little bit about their situation.
Boeing is a cautionary taleof, you know, prioritizing optics
and short term gain oversubstance and long term sustainability.
(38:41):
The company during its mergerreally started focusing on metrics
like stock price, productiontargets and cost cutting. And what
they sacrificed was attentionto what their customers really cared
(39:03):
about, which is safety andquality of their aircraft. Right.
And so in pursuit of, youknow, these faster production times,
more productivity and costcutting measures, Boeing made decisions
that really sacrifice both thesafety and integrity of their 737
(39:26):
Max. And, and this includedeverything from skimping on pilot
training, downplaying knownsoftware issues to the machining
of screws for windows andplanes. And they had some issues,
(39:47):
some plane crashes, somewindows, leaving the aircraft and
flying. What they started todo is rather than really sit down
and fix those issues, theystarted doing PR campaigns around,
you know, feel goodinitiatives, purpose initiatives,
diversity programs that wereoutside of their customers, core
(40:10):
needs. And I would say theircustomers, you know, like all the
airlines, but their customers.Customers, yeah, who are in the planes
and the pilots and thecustomers, employees who are in the
plane that need it to be safe,have integrity. And you know, their
obsession with metrics andoptics rather than the fundamentals
(40:34):
came back to haunt them in amajor way. They can't get out of
their own way.
And it's not done yet.
No. It's been a couple ofchanging of the guards and it's going
to be a huge cultural shiftthat they need to really look at
the brand and then push thebrand sometimes from the bottom up
because it seems like a lot oftheir employees are really wanting
(40:57):
to bring the brand back towhere it used to be.
Let's start to look at someanswers. That's a cautionary tale
there, right? It's acautionary tale of not looking after
the fundamentals. Stewardshipof relationship, stewardship of trust,
stewardship of reputation kindof sits with the CMO that is the
(41:18):
focus of many things. But oneof those things obviously is external
communication. How do CMOS Afind the balance between the two
pressures, the short term, thelong term, but also counsel and bring
in the rest of their team andhelp them understand the importance
of it.
First is making sure that allof their goals are aligned with the
(41:40):
company's visions and targets.So, so that you can both understand
the short term goals and hityour short term targets, but also
be able to align with the longterm vision. Next you have to diversify
your portfolio with short termperformance tactics with longer term
(42:01):
brand building initiatives.And so while you're doing that, you're
testing you're measuring,you're optimizing your portfolio
to find the right balance andso you can both drive immediate results,
which we all have to do. Andat the same time build these longer
lasting customer relationshipsthat you talked about earlier then
(42:23):
is not only focus on yourrevenue generating tactics, but also
invest in understanding yourcustomer and engaging in your customer
through research, throughinsights, direct engagement, so you
can address their needs andnot just chase trends. Not only does
that help you focus yourportfolio and your activities, but
(42:48):
it also fosters accountabilityand transparency. So are we actually
following through on what wesaid we would do from our customers
perspective? From ourperspective. And then lastly, it's
empowering your team to sharetheir challenges, to share their
failings and to share theirlearnings. You set clear KPIs that
(43:13):
balance both short term goalsand long term goals. So not only
are you thinking about how tobalance them, your team is thinking
about balancing them andyou're working with your partners
to make sure that we're alsobalancing them. And then of course
using marketing technology tohelp boost efficiency and personalized
(43:36):
customer experiences to buildmore of that. Yes, we understand
you and we are building arelationship with you.
Circling back to where westarted, then we talked about the
profit trap, we've talkedabout over indexing on the short
term and that's been a featurethroughout our conversation. If there's
(43:57):
one thing, if there's somehomework, for example, for us, our
unicorns to take away, ifthere's one thing that they can focus
on in the next kind of one tothree months to improve authenticity
and trust, what would that be?
I would say consistency. Soyou can apply consistency on your
(44:19):
marketing channels. Makingsure simple things, making sure the
look and feel is the same,making sure that your messaging is
the same across channels,making sure that when you make claims
that you can follow through onit, and making sure that whenever
you tell your customers thatyou're going to do something, you
(44:39):
do it. Making it very easy forthe customer in the marketing to
understand what you do and howyou do it is important. So focusing
on consistency and making surethat you're doing these things every
day, every hour, right? Andthat translates into months and years.
(45:00):
Christine, thank you very muchindeed for your time. It's been really,
really interesting and funtalk to you. And by the way unicorners,
if you do find things havegone wrong and you are in the shit,
give me a call. I'm quite goodat getting people out of it. Christine,
thank you so much for yourtime and well I hope to See you soon.
Thank you.
I want to say a massive thankyou to Christine for coming and spending
(45:23):
time with us on our onlinerecording platform. Thank you. We
really appreciate your time.And by the way, we appreciate your
time too. We know that it isprecious, just like ours is, and
so we appreciate you coming tospend some time with us. Now, if
you've enjoyed today's show,please like and follow us or subscribe
to this podcast on whateverchannel you like to consume it on.
(45:43):
I would be really grateful ifyou would write us a review. Reviews
are very, very hard to comeby, but they do matter. Other people
check them before they come tolisten. And if you enjoy it, you
know what? People like youmight enjoy it too. But for today,
that's all we've got time for.
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