Natalie Novak
Hi, everyone. My name is Natalie Novak. I'm an agent at UTA. I am going it is my honor to welcome you to ces 2020 and the storytellers stage at sea space. Over the years, CES has become a critical event for executives and companies in the media and marketing worlds. See, space was created to bring together those people and organizations for four days of meetings, programming and events. And its fourth year see space is back and bigger than ever. Over the next three days, the stage will feature many of the most exciting discussions of the show, featuring top executives from many of the most innovative companies, please check the CES app and the programming signage posted here at Aria at all CES menus for the full schedule. Now I'm pleased to introduce our first see space storytellers session of the show featuring CMOS discussing how technology is driving brand transformation. From Forbes please welcome Jenny Rooney editor of the CMO network. Tariq Hassan. Tariq Hassan. I'm sorry guys. my slides are messed up. All right, here we go. Tariq Hassan EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of Petco. Minjae Ormes, CMO of Visible and Dara Tresseder, CMO of Carbon, please welcome panelists.
Jenny Rooney
morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday in Vegas, right? It's a good way to wake up with these wonderful people. So I'm thrilled to be here. I'm Jenny Rooney the editor, the CMO network at Forbes and at the CMO network. We spend a lot of time with CMOS learning about how they're looking at issues from kind of a broad based organized perspective and leadership strategy perspective. And I think we're going to get into that today around this concept of how technology is driving brand transformation for all of you. So, to start, why don't you each just share a little bit about yourselves and your companies and sort of what your mandate is as cmo? So Tariq, I'll let you start.
Tariq Hassan
Okay, so I'm with Petco. We're obviously the pet specialty market, but rapidly moving from how do you think about the transformation of traditional brick and mortar retail to a full service model for pet parents that extends and allows us to compete pretty effectively in the market?
Dara Treseder
Hi, everyone, I'm Dara Treseder. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer at carbon. Carbon is the world's leading digital manufacturing platform for finally fulfilling the promise of 3d printing using 3d printing to manufacture at scale. And I'm in charge of marketing, communications, market development, all the usual suspects.
Jenny Rooney
That's great. MinJae
Minjae Ormes
Hi, everyone. My name is MinJae orms. And I'm the CMO of visible visible is a single line wireless product. And we are a Verizon company. But the promise of our product is that we are keeping it simple. And we are also catching up with our time. So we have no physical storefronts, everything is done through .com and the app and trying to look at ways in which we can improve our relationship with our customers in the wireless industry.
Jenny Rooney
Okay, great. So we're talking about this concept of technology driving brand transformation. But I think a good place to start is to have you all define what you mean or how you regard brand transformation, because that might differ within your organization. So MinJae start with, you know, how do you define brand? What does brand transformation look like for
Minjae Ormes
Sure. So in the context of visible frankly, we've been in business for about 18 months, so we're still in the birthing and toddler stages, but it is a transformation in that visible is a Verizon company. So not only do we have the relationship with their parent company and the knowledge of the infrastructure to leverage and reinvent ourselves from, but also to think about what has been entrenched in traditional in our category and thinking about new ways to improve the ways in which we offer our product. So the brand and how we show up matters, because largely when you think about your relationship as a customer with your cell phone, you love your phone. People don't often say I love my phone service. So it's one of the challenges in which my team and I as marketers get to think about how do we show up in a way that perhaps changes the dynamic and the relationship in the conversation in which we can have a relationship with our customers. That is the brand transformation for Visible.
Dara Treseder
And I think a brand transformation essentially as changing how people think and feel about your brand. So I think it's really transforming How your brand shows up for people and how it influences their behavior. And I think every brand is on a journey, you're on a journey somewhere between brand reinforcement and brand transformation. And I would say for us that Carbon, we're very much in the brand reinforcement stage, because we are sort of a seven year old company valued at $2.4 billion. But many times we're working with much larger companies that are in the journey of transformation, right, maybe the brand that they've been sort of the story that they've been telling how people have been thinking and feeling about their brand has gotten a little bit stale, isn't quite resonating with the way things are changing in culture in the market. And so they have to do some work to reinvigorate and change how the perception is in the market. And so that's how I define brand transformation.
Jenny Rooney
And what's interesting about Carmen and we'll get into this obviously, is I mean, you are a b2b company at heart and yet, we're going to talk probably from today, you can bring two perspectives. Not that you guys can't but b2b you're you're thinking about how technology is transforming your, the carbon perhaps a lot lately, and I think we have some great examples of that. But obviously you're thinking about how you can facilitate that for your client.
Dara Treseder
Exactly as an ingredient brand for helping our customers also with their journey of brand transformation or reinforcement. Yeah, depending on where they are,
Tariq Hassan
ironically, will also have a similar conversation because as we pivot in our transformation, it's really focused around purpose. And the role that we play in, in parent parents lives, moving from just simply being a distributor of retail products to actually being directly linked to the life stages of that pet and the services we provide. And that's actually moved us from not only from b2c but also now b2b Yeah, as we launch new services around wellness and insurance direct to benefit managers and companies. So it completely shifts how you think about your model.
Jenny Rooney
Amazing. So we're living this time obviously, where we're trying to get away from like silo thinking, you know, one offs unrelated, you know, Lack of collaboration. So that setup goes to my question around technology, right? I mean, how do you This is how technology is driving brand transformation? Well, obviously, so many things drive brand transformation. I mean, there's a ton to how do you regard technology? You know, and how do you get away from just thinking is this sort of like separate entity? I mean, I would imagine it needs to be completely infused without all of the customer experience, the brand engagement that you're working to develop. So Tariq, talk a little bit about how, as CMO, you're regarding that, and then we'll get into more detail.
Tariq Hassan
Sure. I mean, for us, it's the critical enabler. It's 85% of our transactions currently take place on on our rewards program. So that's data that's been sitting in the organization for quite some time but has not been unleashed, in a way forgive the pun in a way that can actually allow us to support our customers in a very different way. The enablement for that is all around this technology infrastructure you then have to put in place to You know, to release that into your benefit. And so for us to be able to be in a position where we're taking that data, not only on the customer, but now increasingly on the pet itself, and establishing a lifelong understanding of the of the stages that pet goes through and how we can engage that customer is exactly how we started differentiate ourselves going forward.
Jenny Rooney
Yeah. Yeah.
Dara Treseder
And I would say I think technology really influences brand transformation in three key ways. I think the first is you how do you utilize data? Because we've been, I would say the past decade has been the decade of building really impressive tech stacks and having what I call data swamps, because you have all this data sitting somewhere on some server that you're not actually utilizing or employing in a way that can actually surprise and delight your customers. Yeah, thank me the first things around data utilization, how are you utilizing data to really reach a connect with your customers in unique ways that you can couldn't do any other way. How are you leveraging the technology that at your fingertips to really bring things like personalization into the era that we've been? We've been talking a lot about it. But how do we start to actually get there? The second thing that I think is really important in terms of the ways technology can transform brand brands is around product innovation. Yeah. Again, drawing on that data drawing on different new technology capabilities, whether it's in new types of materials, new types of packaging, push to sustainability or advanced manufacturing. How are you leveraging new technology to create new products that really differentiate you and make you stand out in the market in a way that no one else can compete? Right? It gives you that first mover advantage that allows you to really begin that journey of changing how people think and feel about your brand. Yeah, and then I do the third way that technology can really transform your business. This is helping you with accountability and and showing up in the right way as a as a business leader. So I think sometimes, you know, there's sort of the narrative around CMOS, right. There's this whole narrative around marketers in general, and CMOS, especially around how we really driving business results, I think the more that we can leverage data to create transparency into what we're doing, and take more accountability and ownership for the business decisions and the revenue side of the house, I think that can really help with transforming the brand because it allows you to have a lot more credibility, and and gives the CMO and the marketers more risk, even within the company that allows them to step out on really important cultural issues.
Jenny Rooney
And we're going to talk more about sort of those conversations that are happening internally to sort of facilitate your goals MinJae. With visible being a younger company, you sort of have an opportunity to sort of start from from scratch and think about how technology is truly integrated into the brand and business.
Minjae Ormes
Yeah, I mean, I was actually thinking about this topic last night, like what smart things can I say. But really what it comes down to, for me and my 18 year journey at visible has been very foundational stuff. And that has been the bread and butter and the soul of how we're building the company, and therefore, how I, as a marketer get to have influence over how we use technology, whether it's in product or the channels that we use to promote our product, meaning, we get to make decisions right now at the same time and building the product, promoting the product, but also the pipeline that we get to build to determine what data do we care about, and how are they actually connected? Should we choose one data platform over another? What is the CRM mechanism that we should use to really prepare ourselves for the now as well as the future so it's been a really interesting journey to literally build a car at the same time as driving it. And a lot of that is going to enable us to therefore the business to think about what is it that we can really start in the tightest, simplest way that our employees themselves can also interact with our own technology in the simplest way possible so that we can ultimately free ourselves of the stuff that we're going to build in two to five to 10 years from now to continue to keep that as tight a journey as possible for our consumers.
Tariq Hassan
But I think, you know, MinJae brings up a really important point, which is that data she's talking about, you know, we all have the oil deposits, if you will, how do you start to refine it in a way that has value attached to it right? And what MinJae is talking about is, we may want that data, but we now have to put ourselves in a position where the customer is going to see value in giving us that data, right? And, obviously, increasingly, as we move towards some of these privacy issues, that's gonna become even more critical, but unless that customer sees value in it, that critical data you require, they're not necessarily willing to give you you've got to demonstrate where they need to give it.
Jenny Rooney
So how are you doing that? I mean, that is a huge opportunity. But it's it's incredibly challenging.
Tariq Hassan
Well, we actually we think we're positioned uniquely, ironically, that becomes sort of our, our defense mechanism against the How do you out Amazon? Amazon? Yeah. So the data, we're looking for the data, we're engaging our customers in our eyes about data they care about, which is if you help us get smarter about understanding what's going on with your pet, whether that's medical data, nutrition data, you know, breed, etc. And we become more intuitive about thinking about how we, you know, understand how to help you as a customer pre pre issue. We're starting to see an absolute immediate reaction and whether that's in the data they're willing to give us or whether that's what we're starting to see in terms of signing up for subscription models and membership models, where we can combine benefits based on a unique understanding of your pet specifically and start to get to a customer live
Jenny Rooney
I mean the data strategy becomes the brands right. Absolutely.
Tariq Hassan
Absolutely.
Jenny Rooney
Let's continue with this privacy, the privacy issue and just prior to this, I interviewed Deb Wallet at GM and the concept of their everybody talks about privacy is a bad thing. And yet it can very much become a positive for marketers if they take a thought leadership position around it. respective to their brands, thoughts around this issue?
Dara Treseder
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Because for us, for example, at Carbon, you know, we, when our customers are using our machines to design our platform to design create different types of products, we actually made a business decision not to know what our customers are designing. And I remember our CEO, he always tells the story about how, you know, there was an executive from certain social media company that, you know, some of the investors had brought to talk to him and the investor had the, the this executive had said to him, you know, why would you want to know that you need to get all that data information, because then you can sell that data and monetize that data. And he sort of made that decision and said, "No, we're not going to do that." And "that's what our business model is going to be based around." And that's been really transformational for us. Because then our customers know that they can trust us. They know that they can rely on us. And so I agree with you, I do think it becomes a almost becomes a part of your brand strategy because it plays into your purpose. It plays into how you show up as a company, and also plays into what issues are you able to take a stance on in an authentic way, you know, if you're a company, for example, that's monetizing data, you can't then come out and have a have a have an opinion when you know, Twitter or another social media platform decides not to or to take a stance on different cultural issues. So I just think that it's really authenticity is so key and so important. And when it comes to data and privacy, you have to really think about your business model. You have to think about the decisions you're choosing to make or not to make and how that ultimately influences your brand, the loyalty you have with your customers and the trust that you build. Which I think is most important.
Jenny Rooney
I know, I've imagined you'd have to make very pointed decisions around what narrative you want to put out there. And literally what words you want to put out there around this topic. I mean, obviously, we see companies like Apple makes it part of their narrative. They're using the words privacy, they're using the words, you know, data transparency. But that's a very pointed decision that CMOs I would imagine have to make.
Minjae Ormes
So I mean, to build upon that, I think, who are you partnering with is incredibly important, because we are a company for instance, not in the data business, but we need to know a certain level of information from you so that we can serve you best. And so similar to the examples mentioned already, some of the examples that some of the decisions that we made as a company was we partner with a firm and assurance to offer both a credit check and they insurance and financing product that we're not necessarily experts, or nor do we want to own that type of a relationship when it comes to data pieces. But the reason that consumers choose us over other Our choices is because we are partnering with credible partners who are already doing this well, and therefore we're able to offer our products. Without the barriers, we do not do credit checks ourselves, we go through it with a firm to have a really easy and simple financing flow, same for the insurance with assurance. So these are the places in which we are able to offer a more full suite of experience and products in which we don't necessarily have to or want to take on the burden both on the consumer parts as as the businesses part to necessarily get into that by leveraging the strengths of the partners who are already doing this really well.
Tariq Hassan
Yeah. But if you if you bring it back to the privacy question, there's a fundamental strategic decision you have to make as an organization, are you prepared to give away your sign in value? And so I talked to my team about like, how do we create sign in value? Otherwise, I'm just going to use my apple sign in my LinkedIn sign in Facebook sign in, etc, right. That's a big giveaway, if you're not maintaining that, and particularly if you start to move towards the importance of first party as we continue to move forward in the challenge of third party, you better have a value where I actually want to sign in and engage with you in a data infrastructure, or you're giving away you're gonna be blind to that customer. Yeah.
Dara Treseder
I always say the first part, the first party data, the first data party is a party you don't want to miss. You have to absolutely be thinking about how do I you know, incentivize right? And keep prospects and customers engaged in such a way that they want to stay at my party? They want to continue to give me that data. And I think if you if you always think about how am I utilizing the data that I collect to surprise and delight my customers? So instead of just collecting data for the sake of collecting data, really, I'm always working with my team to say, Okay, what does that journey look like? If we collect that information? What does that person get in return? For this give, what is for this for this give, what do they get? We're always mapping out the give and the get and mapping out that journey and I think that allows us to have and create an environment that customers want to give us that first, that first party data
Jenny Rooney
very nuanced, though. I mean, it's going to be very, very interesting. You can't get there without knowing a lot about your customers to begin with.
Minjae Ormes
So but there's also the difference between the implicit versus explicit information and data, right. So what we found really interesting is that I know it sounds really simple, but just ask like when we first launched our product, we deliberately wanted to keep it simple. So it was literally single line $40 a month taxes and fees all included, and that's the only thing we had to offer. But from there on, as we expanded our portfolio of the technology that comes with your wireless service plus the phone that is compatible, we just ask people like what is it that you want in your phone service that you want with you still keeping this price point? And I was so surprised we got hundreds of thousands of responses essay length answers that became our product roadmap. So it gave me really interesting then thought starters as to all right, like we're thinking a lot about, yes, the stuff that people do on our side, and what is the information exchange when they at the time of the signup and so forth? But what happens when you ask? And what are the ways in which we can continue to have that relationship to have the direct feedback from our membership base to continue to improve on the product innovation piece?
Dara Treseder
I love that point you made because I'm always thinking, the market backed insights are so powerful, because it's really interesting what people say. But it's also interesting when you start to analyze what did they not say that you expected them to say? And I think that rich information that can really help to shape your product roadmap, but even how you go to market as a company, I think can be really powerful. And we found that to be the case for us as well.
Jenny Rooney
So really briefly, let's touch on. Obviously, I have to ask the talent question and just organizationally, what the implications have been, what resources what kinds of people what aptitudes? What skills Are you really prioritizing now to to meet many of these goals?
Jenny Rooney
Okay, anybody?
Dara Treseder
Haha I know, I'll take it. So I have data scientists on my team. I think it was really especially because of what we're doing with helping companies accelerate product and innovation, really being able to understand the data in a very concrete way that allows us to engage with the engineering and product teams at that level, I thought was critical. And so it's not obviously as big as the engineering team, or some of the other technical teams. But having people on my team that can help me get smarter because I'm not a data scientist, I went to a liberal arts college get smarter about the implications of the data that we're collecting the implications of the analysis that we're conducting I really understanding at a fundamental level so that I can engage at the strategic and the business level with depth and with confidence has been hugely transformational for me. And this is a The first time in a CMO role that I've had a data science as part of my organization. And I think it's been it's been really transformational for me.
Tariq Hassan
The core focus for us, in fact, we completely repositioned. We looked at all of our open spots versus where we needed to go as an organization and did a full, we organizational shift. And it's all been in a couple core areas CRM, analytics, data science, and then I've actually taken on our call centers, and how do you start to shift that more to be part of your customer experience model? And using those direct lines is what you would have seen is traditionally transactional resolutions, that should be coming customer satisfaction insights, and how do you start to leverage that but bringing that data intersection together? It's amazing and that's been hard the talents been hard to get right you're competing against a whole nother you know, the Walmart's and the Amazons of the world that are hiring 15-20,000 you know, analysts at a time and yeah, you're trying to find your shit. It's challenging.
Jenny Rooney
Yeah, that's, that's gonna be a whole conversation right there for sure. Minjae, any thoughts on this? Are you got your team?
Minjae Ormes
Let me talk about there's a couple different ways. One, one is general curiosity, because, again, we've been only been in business for 18 months, but every six months we changed. So the roles that we had specifically within some of these departments evolved, both in scope as well as the exact type of tasks that people were doing. So now it's become a practice of the company level. Whenever we have conversations with prospect candidates, we say, look, we know at this point, we have about 80% of what we need to get done and what we need this role to contribute to the business objectives. But the either side of the 20% is going to be squishy, it's going to revolve, it's going to be gray area. But that's also an area for us to therefore talk to people about how do they feel about change and ambiguity and, frankly, the resilience of that one that is required of one and the organization to continue to evolve and not be beaten down by like, "how do you stay resilient?" has been the big question for all of us as an organization as individuals also.
Jenny Rooney
Yep. How much to spending on technology does your organization account for roughly?
Tariq Hassan
not enough? Hahaha. I mean, in from mark, mark tech, specifically, I think that's an interesting conversation, too, is even the blending line between what we would have traditionally called, you know, media tech to martek and now, really is technology across the organization. My closest alignment is with the CIO and the CTO. Our strategy doesn't work without it. In fact, when we put our budgets together, we're actually doing a blended model now, of total spend. You know, it's increasing. Yeah, obviously, and it's probably one of our most significant spends, but in our case, you're varying that balance between what you enable your technology to do inside the organization. But then how you bring it to life inside the four walls of the store. And that's where the time is going to become incredibly challenging. So partners become critical. This is where payment partners have been incredibly helpful in terms of how you go to market and looking about eWalletand how you bring that technology and what they're willing to bring for you. So it's a it's a real blended conversation.
Jenny Rooney
Yeah. Other thoughts on this?
Dara Treseder
I mean, I think one of the things that is really important, you know, is how marketing is at the forefront of painting that future vision of where the company needs to go. And so I think that there is, you know, I spent a lot of time talking with our CFO, our CEO, our Chief Technology Officer, about spaces, we want to plan, you know, where we want to invest in technology to innovate and to learn, so that we continue to be at the forefront of our industry. And so I think, in addition to investing in technology that allows us to just do our jobs, right it allows us to reach our customers allows us to personalized information for our customers allows us to market and sell to our customers. I think we also need to invest in technology that allows us to be to get smarter. Yeah, and to innovate in a way that really gives us the competitive advantage and allows us to retain and grow and market share.
Jenny Rooney
What consumer engagement technologies are most interesting to you right now? You know, ar VR, machine learn, like what do you what do you what do you think? CTV I mean, what is happening that you think is incredibly fascinating and especially relevant for your brands, or businesses, as the case may be?
Minjae Ormes
So, beyond the foundational building that we've done, really what we're interested in is where where has retail gone, and where is retail going? Because, again, the marriage between an industry and a category that literally all of the choices for you were to go into a store and do the transaction in person. And so all of The things that you are already used to doing on your mobile phones or your laptops, how do you married what you're already used to doing, but not exactly with this product that we're offering. So in thinking about that, right now, it's pretty foundational. We have an e commerce store front like that is literally our storefront and center to build that funnel and the pipe and the technology and the funnel to it has been the journey. So we're thinking a lot about what's the next version of that. And our customer service is also all digital and social. So how do we evolve that but not losing the human touch? is the piece that we think about a lot?
Dara Treseder
I'd say you know, everyone, obviously everyone is thinking about AI and implementing AI in some shape or form. But I think where I get really interested is how do we address bias? And how do we make sure that you know, as we're implementing artificial intelligence, we're doing it in a responsible way ethically and socially, especially for us where we're accelerating product in a How do we make sure that we're designing not just for who used to be at the top of the power structure, but we're designing for everyone. And we're designing for a more inclusive a more equitable world, one that cares for the environment, right. And it's protecting our planet and giving back. So thinking about these things...
Jenny Rooney
Were you telling me about the doors the weight of the door like doors were designed for men?
Dara Treseder
Yeah.
Jenny Rooney
Yeah, the weight of them, just every all kinds of there's every day things like every day things.
Dara Treseder
Everyday experiences, things that you think about the things that you don't think about, that other people have to think about. But you don't have to think about even something as simple as like the camera filter, right? It's always funny, I'm always cracking jokes, because I'm like, Oh, I need to get into the right light. Because this camera wasn't really built for me. And if you take a picture from a certain angle, you only see my teeth. But you know, but in things from as silly as that to like really important things about people's health care and the way different bodies are structured, etc. So I think it's really important for us to think about, you know, as we bring in AI and machine learning, and the and those these techniques, I'll just take a greater role in society, we need to really be thinking about the ethical responsibility of these tools.
Jenny Rooney
Great point. I mean, what is the role of marketers in that, in that, in that reality, you know? what, what opportunities do they have? And how do you think about using technology, not just to further, obviously, but the brand goals, but start to change cultural norms and conversation and eliminate bias? I mean, that that's a huge next level challenge and opportunity.
Tariq Hassan
I think this is go back to our purpose. And what is the experience you're actually trying to create, and you can't do those things with an effect without an authentic relationship and authentic point of view on those, right, and increasingly, brands that you would have traditionally thought could stay out of the fray and those things can no longer do that you have to participate in the cultural implications of some of these things. Go back to your question around some of the technology. You know, for us, it's it's embracing some of what MinJae is talking about, which is where do you meet the customer where they want to be met? Yeah. How do you let them shop the way that they want to shop and engage with them in a way that they want to? If you have a look at our ecommerce sales roughly 70% of our ecommerce sales are actually buy online pick up in store. 70% of our total ecommerce sales. So which is telling you that there is a direct relationship between the usage of that product and the needs date of I need it now. Yeah, until we're in a literally the same day delivery situation. there's still a relationship between I just need to know the products there and I can get it because my pet needs that situation. Yeah. You've got to embrace those things and build out accordingly. We're doing a lot of work around what does next you know, what started as a journey around what does next gen store look like? is now a journey around what is next gen customer experience, right? And not assuming that it's built around a brick and mortar solution. And actually helping a customer understand when you don't want them to come in the store because it's not to their benefit, like how do you start to really push against? What are your traditional retail norms based on what your customer needs, not based on what the transactional models we built in the past event?
Jenny Rooney
So what are some examples of how you could even if you're not doing it now, but how that can play out in the future as far as like the multiple platforms of engagement. For one of your customers, I mean, you can imagine somebody driving their pet to the groomers...
Tariq Hassan
Well, I think for us, it's it's around this is where it becomes really critical. Yeah, moving towards client telling. And not only what we're doing in store with each of our partners are able to not only look at you came in the store for this, but based on the information we have on you, you're actually missing something you've either haven't done a flea treatment or a vaccination or
Jenny Rooney
it's addressing the whole lifestyle
Tariq Hassan
but that will lifestyle and engaging you as as a value add not just as a take it as $1 take. And we're starting to see the difference on that.
Jenny Rooney
We're going to open it up to questions in just a minute. So I'm just prepping you. So think about some questions, you might want to ask the panelists in a couple minutes. Talk a little bit about any kind of pushback, you're getting we we talked about C suite alignment, but especially when you're thinking about investing in new technologies, things that perhaps are not maybe, you know, certainly test phase that's not as much of an issue but if you want to sort of scale something or you're really interested in making A huge shift or investment, what kind of challenges exist for you? What kind of conversations obviously do you need to have to make that happen?
Dara Treseder
So one that's top of mind for me now, you know, our company's changing the way things are made, right? We're changing the way companies create design engineer manufacture products, as sustainability is something that's really important to us as a company. But sustainability requires a lot of investment across the board, everything from new materials, that to to even the processes of how you make things in a more sustainable way. We think about sustainability from a 360 degree angle. And so as we started to think about our sustainability agenda and what it means for our brand, I was very upfront and I said, not going to market a wonderful story unless there's a great authentic plan, right, that we're marching down towards. Of course, I know Rome is not built in a day but it's really important to me that if we're talking about this, we have we are putting into The work right to get there. And you know, was it was interesting because the discussion I was actually having was with our CFO, right and our CFO. So we had, we had a lot of discussion, I brought in a lot of market back insights. But as she started to understand that we are now in the age of the conscious consumer, right, we're in the age where consumers deeply care about cultural issues, they care about the environment. I mean, like gretta was no time Person of the Year, like climate change, these things are so real, the Australian fires that are happening, we are seeing the impact of what has happened for decades of not thinking about our environment. And so never before we're at a time when, you know, for a long time, it seemed like the environment was something that no one really thought about, except for, you know, a really nice small group of people, but it's now gone mainstream and helping her understand that she's actually the one not championing her sustainability agenda. And, and because she understands that it's not just about the ROI today and tomorrow, but it's about the medium term ROI, the long term ROI and more important, and which again, helps us with that brand reinforcement, right? That journey that we're on from brand reinforcement to brand transformation, it helps us do that. And it also helps us provide a unique value to our customers. Because we have many customers who are on trying to transform their brands, because of things they've done, you know, older brands that have been around for longer, who have histories of things that they've done to the environment that maybe haven't been as kind, they want to start to take a more innovative cutting edge approach in terms of how they're caring for the environment. And so by investing in sustainability, we enable them to deliver on their own stories of brand transformation. So as she's able to see that the ROI across the board throughout the entire stage of our life cycle from prospect to customer retention, it makes it huge.
Jenny Rooney
Yeah. Other thoughts?
Minjae Ormes
I find that often My role at the company's Well, one, I've never worked in telco business. So I'm usually the person who's asking all the crazy, like stupid questions. But I tried to think about it as I'm trying to represent the consumer. Like if I were really the person who doesn't understand any of this, like, why does it work like this? And how can we potentially do things differently? The other thing is, keeping that focus around the value of simplicity is really hard, especially when you're trying to get out the door in an incredibly crowded category. We want to add all the bells and whistles and hoping that will be the answer to faster growth. But if we really believe in this business and why visible exists in the first place, I believe that we have to stick to simplicity and everything from pricing to our technology, infrastructure, how we talk to people, and that that is a healthy tension that we have at the business level also on behalf of consumers.
Jenny Rooney
Yeah, I mean, you're almost you're you're arguing for the opposite. I mean, you're late. You're asking for alignment around paring down. Yeah. posted ramping up,
Minjae Ormes
I'm like I want to just sell one really well done organic cotton hundred percent, you know, I caught a T shirt. And that's all we're selling, instead of having a bunch of different skews. But we'll see.
Jenny Rooney
That's the challenge in and of itself. Yeah.
Tariq Hassan
I mean, similar thing minja is talking about, which is how do you if you're going to get to that purpose? How do you make it stand up? Yeah. So our first step was the move that we made to remove all preservatives and artificials from the store. That was 100 million dollar removal from the shelf. Right? So how you then that's a great cause. It's a great point of view. It's a great purpose, how you can replace the revenue. Right? And so having a strategy, be able to do that and follow through it, which we've done and now it gives you the confidence to go to the next in the next the next, but simple focus and keep driving your purpose.
Jenny Rooney
Any questions that are out there? Yes right there? I think we have a mic. Yep.
Speaker
Thank you. I think Tariq, you mentioned the alignment with the CIO and CTO as far as technology investment, not only for martech, but across the different parts of the division. Could you explain that a little bit more, as far as how do you get alignment across that C suite, but then enroll the organization more holistically to go on that transformation? I think it also leads into the the perception of marketing invest the value returned in marketing, but competing against some of those different broader technology investments and then cascading that message down the organization. So everybody's rowing in the same direction. So your endpoint is actually the point which is do you have a leadership that's aligned on what you're actually doing as a corporate strategy, and and we are aligned top to bottom. The second piece is that I'm incredibly fortunate. I have a CIO and CTO that frankly, he's someone that is probably one of the most customer minded people in the organization, which is just a blessing for me.
Tariq Hassan
But then we also get into very clear alignment around what are the roles and responsibilities that we that will then ultimately drive that roadmap. And so for, for me as the as the head of marketing, it's really simple it goes, it goes back some of these folks remember, which is, I represent that point of view of what is the customer experience we want to create. If you understand what that experience is, then you understand the product you have to create, and then you actually understand the technology to support that. So we've, we've developed a really simple sort of marketing, you own that view, e commerce innovation, you own the understanding what the, the product that would be required to deliver against that is, and then technology, you then have to enable that and bring that to life. It sounds really, really simple, and rudimentary, and it kind of is. But we've been focused on that. And then we prioritize against that. And that becomes that becomes the process for defining how we defined our budgets against that as well. Right? Because eventually that you know, something falls below the line. But if you're prioritized against what we think the value return on that will be and by the way, sometimes that value for the customer is not the highest ROI. But when you look at the long term corporate strategy and the evaluation you're trying to drive, you have to do it right. So for us Getting to the Golden Record on the pen itself knowing all that data, the immediate ROI is not there. It is the absolute critical element to growing the valuation of our business and allowing us to differentiate and exist.
Jenny Rooney
Other questions? Over there?
Speaker
Hello, I wonder what do you do in house and what do you outsource for, you know, making this success.
Minjae Ormes
So I have a team who look after. Let's see a whole suite of brands strategy, creative and advertising more day to day. So less on like a quarterly brand campaign type of things which we partner with the creative agency, CRM to martech analytics, we partner with us cross functional partners, social press influencers, member experience and relationships, partnerships. So most of those suite of marketing functions sit within in house. And one of the things that I really bullish on wanting to invest more in both Talon and the organization is content. Before visible, I spent seven years at YouTube and really saw the power of the storytelling platform, which is sort of why I ended up becoming a market in the first place. But really to understand that this category, were reporting activations, SIM cards, everything is really complicated and different in every specific instance. We're thinking a lot about how do we make that simpler and perhaps actually fun to be able to engage with this content and help our customers in the journey that exists in our category.
Dara Treseder
Yeah, I think the way I always think about it is the things that are core to my business. I want to keep those things in House, right the things that my business absolutely rely on. To me, it's important that people that are driving and working on those strategies and the execution of living and breathing a daily and can also interact cross functionally. Because one of the things I think we don't do a good enough job of in marketing, I think to the question that someone had asked earlier about how does it cascade down, you have to market the mission, you have to market the transformation. And you have to actually market the journey that you're on, you have to tell people the story, hey, this is where we're going. This is where we are at today. And so I think keeping some of the capabilities in house, like I have, you know, all of my demand Gen Product Marketing brand. Basic advertising for larger media buys, we do work with agencies, because I think that's the most efficient way to actually get bang for your buck on ROI. And I do think agencies can play a good role in things that are not your core things that you want to try or something new that you want to do, because guess what agencies do? They span the spectrum of things. So they think things that are happening in other industries, they can help you think about things that you're not going to think about. Because you're just not in those spaces. You're not in those rooms, you're not living and breathing those things. So I think it's great to interact with agencies for bringing in fresh ideas, fresh thinking and fresh perspectives. But the things that are core to your business, I think it's important to keep that in house and develop the talent in house so that you can be that voice of the customer. And you can influence all the different touch points, not just operate in silos,
Tariq Hassan
Similar blended model. We do have a large content studio capability as well.
Jenny Rooney
Maybe one last question. Anybody?
Jenny Rooney
What I wanted to ask, each of you is you're all relatively new in your roles, relatively. Within the last two years? Yes? So that's sort of a unique position to be in as well. Obviously, we hear so much about CMO tenure but what advice would you give or what has been your experience around, you know, first 100 days visa v the technology investment strategy and the technology in forming brand growth, transformation, evolution etc, specific to a new cmo coming in what do you think he or she needs to think about? And what have you made a priority when you first came in?
Minjae Ormes
I just like to build upon the idea of telling that story and selling that mission and all of us really believing in why we do what we do. Because especially building a whole new brand, it's not about my team going out there and making pretty pictures and putting it up on advertising somewhere. But it's about building the promise of our brand into the product experience. So a lot of that has been there for sitting down together with the entire company to really think about why do we do it? What do we do and how do we actually do this? That actually translates into the decisions that I may not necessarily even be in the room but I trust my partners and the teams who then Stand and are buying into the same mission that we're trying to drive into the decisions that we're making, and what code are we writing? What is the technology we're building ourselves in? versus Who are we partnering with? That every single decision point becomes a brand decision is is that's sort of been the journey that we've been on so that everyone is empowered, and everybody has the trust to be able to make those decisions together.
Jenny Rooney
Huge cultural leader. Yes, opportunity there.
Dara Treseder
Yeah, I think that what I did in my first hundred days was, first of all, paint the vision, help people understand why I think a lot of times we talk about the what and the how, when it comes to technology, driving brand transformation, we don't spend enough time talking about the why. So starting with the why in my first week there I spoke to the entire company shared with them, what the vision is what we're trying to accomplish. And then my first hundred days, I made sure I had a big win. So I said, you know, this is what we're going after rallied my team, we, we hit our goals and we hit it out of the park. And so the We initially built instant credibility that allowed us to then do some of the more medium term and long term things. So I think, you know, painting that future vision, market, the mission, market, the transformation, market the journey, tell that story, share your big wins, and then help everyone understand that the other things will come. I think that's critical, because not all transformation is going to happen instantly. There are things you can get immediately and things that you have to wait and sow the seeds that you'll reap later on.
Tariq Hassan
And then we're running short on time, but I would just add, you got to reposition marketing. We as leaders, as marketers have got to get to do all the brand new we've got to the story we've talked about, but my first hundred days was how we're going to drive the business, what's going on with the business? What are the actual things that we can contribute? And then the enablers to the investment we're talking around data technology first understand what what you have what you don't have, then the conversation on investment is no longer a conversation simply about brand small, be brand capital be moving across the culture. What's implication on resource people? Yes, the story, but what's the implication and accountability in terms of your results that you're driving? And so do you even have the ability to measure those in our case, we didn't have some of those things stood up. So we couldn't even say what the value was that we were providing. Yeah. So understand what that value equation is for your organization. Because your service model at the end of the day, and then build the model around knowing how you're gonna deliver against that will get those wins and they win for that group. You get confidence to win and do the other things you then want to go do.
Jenny Rooney
Awesome, incredible insights. Thank you all so much for joining me. Thanks, everybody for being here.
Dara Treseder
Thank you.