Speaker 1: Welcome back to Possible Now. Today, we have the incredible
Speaker 1: opportunity to sit down with one of the most visionary
Speaker 1: and influential leaders in marketing, Karla Hassan, Chief Marketing Officer of.
Speaker 2: JP Morgan Chase.
Speaker 1: Carla is a trailblazer in the industry, known for her
Speaker 1: ability to seamlessly blend creativity, data driven insights, and purpose
Speaker 1: to build brands that truly connect with people. She has
Speaker 1: led marketing for some of the world's most iconic companies
Speaker 1: like City, PepsiCo, Callogs, and toy Surs, driving impactful campaigns
Speaker 1: and fostering a culture of inclusivity and innovation. At JP
Speaker 1: Morgan Chase, Carla is redefining what it means to be
Speaker 1: a financial brand, ensuring that marketing doesn't just sell products,
Speaker 1: but also drives meaningful change for customers and communities. And
Speaker 1: in today's conversation, we will die into Carla's leadership journey
Speaker 1: as well as the evolving role of marketing, but also
Speaker 1: how AI, innovation and purpose are shaping the future of
Speaker 1: the industry, and of course, the person behind the title,
Speaker 1: what inspires her, her leadership philosophy and the advice she
Speaker 1: has for aspiring marketers. So this is going to be
Speaker 1: a very insightful and inspiring discussion with one of the
Speaker 1: most dynamic cemos in the industry. So let's get it
Speaker 1: right into and please join me in welcoming Karla Hassan.
Speaker 2: Welcome Karla.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, what an introduction. Thank you so so
Speaker 3: so much. I'm so excited to be here and it's
Speaker 3: been a long time coming, so thanks for having.
Speaker 2: Me, great, great Cala.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of our podcast, I start normally with
Speaker 1: a question about your personally and if there is, for example,
Speaker 1: something about you that most of the people don't know yet.
Speaker 1: So if you are willing maybe to share something about
Speaker 1: a hidden talent or maybe an unexpected hobby, or maybe
Speaker 1: even a childhood dream that had nothing to do with marketing,
Speaker 1: Is there anything you know you can you're willing to
Speaker 1: share with us?
Speaker 3: Oh, lots of things, but I think probably one that
Speaker 3: most people would be surprised about or to learn is
Speaker 3: that I absolutely love to build legos and puzzles. That's
Speaker 3: the thing that takes me away from all the stress
Speaker 3: of day to day life, of work, of family, of motherhood,
Speaker 3: of parenting, about the only thing that actually makes me
Speaker 3: put my phone down and not think about anything else
Speaker 3: and just focus.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: I love it, in fact, in right now doing a
Speaker 3: lego typewriter, which is quite the challenge.
Speaker 1: So it means if we would see your home, there
Speaker 1: would be a collection of these kind of different structures.
Speaker 2: Right Know.
Speaker 3: What's odd about it is the legos. When I make them,
Speaker 3: if they are pretty intricate, I give them away. So
Speaker 3: the typewriter, I know exactly who I'm going to give
Speaker 3: it away to. And then the puzzles, sadly, we break
Speaker 3: them apart. So I enjoyed them for the moment and
Speaker 3: then break them apart. And I do give the puzzle
Speaker 3: away to people, to whoever else likes puzzles. I've been
Speaker 3: actually during COVID, I used to send puzzles when I
Speaker 3: was finished with them to other people and get some
Speaker 3: from others.
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome, that's awesome. That's a great insight. Thank
Speaker 1: you for sharing this with us. Okay, so let's start
Speaker 1: a bit about you know, of course, your leadership, your
Speaker 1: style of leadership, and also authenticity, which is very important.
Speaker 1: And I hear this word a lot from many leaders,
Speaker 1: but what does it truly mean to you as a leader?
Speaker 1: And how do we ensure authenticity in your leadership style
Speaker 1: while balancing the many demands of such a high profile
Speaker 1: corporate role.
Speaker 3: Look, it's a great question, and it's a great question
Speaker 3: for several reasons, because our teams look at us as
Speaker 3: leaders to get all of their inspiration, to get their direction,
Speaker 3: to get knowledge, and we set the tone, and in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways, they see us some times kind
Speaker 3: of like our children see us as as you know,
Speaker 3: unbreakable and perfect, or they expect us to be. And
Speaker 3: I think, you know, to me, authenticity is building trust
Speaker 3: with them, and that means even if it means I'm
Speaker 3: vulnerable sometimes and I think some leaders are afraid of that,
Speaker 3: but I feel for me, it's really really important. The
Speaker 3: minute that you are authentic or you show up as
Speaker 3: who you are, I believe it builds a connection, a trust,
Speaker 3: not only with your own team, but with your partners,
Speaker 3: with your colleagues. You know, being able to say that
Speaker 3: you don't know something when you don't know it, being
Speaker 3: able to, you know, to ask questions. I think that
Speaker 3: really just builds community. Builds community with you again your
Speaker 3: own team, it builds community with people around you. And
Speaker 3: so I think that's why For me, authenticity is really important.
Speaker 3: It's the only way I know how to show up.
Speaker 3: And I've tried in the past to look around and
Speaker 3: see who else was successful, and I would try to
Speaker 3: emulate them, but it was so different than who I was,
Speaker 3: and I realized that in those moments, I just I
Speaker 3: just wasn't as effective as I could be. And so
Speaker 3: the more authentic I believe that you are to yourself,
Speaker 3: the more power you have, and I think the more
Speaker 3: confident you become, and that builds a certain level of trust.
Speaker 3: And so authenticity comes in so many different forms. Do
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? It doesn't mean you have
Speaker 3: to be nice to everybody. It just means you have
Speaker 3: to be exactly who you are, and I think people
Speaker 3: really appreciate that.
Speaker 1: And it also brings your team members and potentially also
Speaker 1: your clients or your partners you're doing business with in
Speaker 1: the similar position right to feel that they can do
Speaker 1: it in a similar way. Have you had you mentioned
Speaker 1: a role, Well.
Speaker 3: For sure, I was going to build on that because,
Speaker 3: like I said in the beginning, people are watching you,
Speaker 3: and so the way you behave, they then start to behave.
Speaker 3: And so what's interesting about that is if you yourself
Speaker 3: are authentic and you demand that of the people around you,
Speaker 3: or they become you know, they want to emulate that.
Speaker 3: You build a culture of authenticity, and a culture of
Speaker 3: authenticity is a culture of trust and a culture of connection.
Speaker 3: And who doesn't want a culture of trust and connection
Speaker 3: with you know, with your own team and with your
Speaker 3: colleagues and frankly with your customers and clients.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: No, absolutely, right. Have you had a role model you
Speaker 1: mentioned when you expand this kind of role model? Have
Speaker 1: you had somebody you could use as a role model
Speaker 1: developing into this kind of person?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, I think everything starts at home. And so
Speaker 3: for me, both my parents, my mother who passed away
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago and my father who's thankfully
Speaker 3: still with us and healthy. And they are probably the
Speaker 3: most authentic people I know they have. You know, my
Speaker 3: father is ninety one years old and to this day
Speaker 3: he is who he is from you know, when I
Speaker 3: was born. And so I think for me again, this
Speaker 3: notion of emulating the you know quote leader that is
Speaker 3: in your life, and for so long they have been
Speaker 3: the leaders in my life, and so for me it
Speaker 3: really has always started at home. How they treat others
Speaker 3: how they live their life. So authenticity, kindness, vulnerability, all
Speaker 3: of that has really not just shaped me into the person,
Speaker 3: but frankly into the leader that I am.
Speaker 1: As well as empathy, right, I mean, I think we
Speaker 1: agree that empathy is.
Speaker 2: Also at heart of effective leadership.
Speaker 1: And if so, how do you cultivate a culture of
Speaker 1: empathy within large organizations like JP Morgan Chase. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a massive organization with so many different, you know,
Speaker 1: people and characters and personalities.
Speaker 2: How do you do this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so, you know, Empathy, for the longest time,
Speaker 3: I think was a word that was synonymous with nice
Speaker 3: and being nice, particularly as a woman in corporate America
Speaker 3: right or in the corporate world was not necessarily a
Speaker 3: positive thing if someone said to you, you're too nice.
Speaker 3: But then I think post twenty twenty, you know, when
Speaker 3: people really started having to see what other folks were
Speaker 3: going through each and every single day while they were working,
Speaker 3: I think those that have inherently an empathic nature to
Speaker 3: them as leader were the ones that thrived in the
Speaker 3: hardest times. And I think for me, empathy is very
Speaker 3: simple when you look at sort of how I define it.
Speaker 3: It's actively listening understanding where somebody else is coming from
Speaker 3: and helping then solve solutions for that person, whether again
Speaker 3: in a leadership position or even when we think about
Speaker 3: our clients and our customers. And so for me, it's really, really,
Speaker 3: really important. And interestingly enough, when I came to JP
Speaker 3: morgan Chase, we did an exercise around our values, and
Speaker 3: one of the values we have five values service, heart, curiosity, courage,
Speaker 3: and excellence, and one of those values is heart. And
Speaker 3: we talked a lot about should the word be hard,
Speaker 3: should it be empathy, should it be love? So we
Speaker 3: were dancing around is that what should that value look like?
Speaker 3: We landed on heart. But to me, heart is just
Speaker 3: another way to talk about being an empathic leader. It's
Speaker 3: really about again listening and about understanding what people are
Speaker 3: going through and about solving problems from their vantage point
Speaker 3: as well. And so I think if you can as
Speaker 3: a leader focus on empathy, it drives results. It drives results.
Speaker 3: And so for me it wasn't hard in this corporate
Speaker 3: environment because it is one of our values at JP
Speaker 3: morgan Chase.
Speaker 1: Have you ever experienced pushbacks or challenges in terms of
Speaker 1: doing this bringing your whole selves to work? I mean
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that many leaders have some concerns, you know,
Speaker 1: or are hesitating of it to do this for sure.
Speaker 3: For sure, like I said earlier in my career, I
Speaker 3: was told I was too nice. That that's what it was.
Speaker 3: People would say, like, you know, why aren't be so nice?
Speaker 3: And I'm actually not nice, not that I'm not nice.
Speaker 3: But it's not about being nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually.
Speaker 3: My daughter might tell you sometimes, but it's not about
Speaker 3: being nice. It's literally about understanding what other people are
Speaker 3: going through. And you know where it comes for me.
Speaker 3: It comes from for me when I first moved to
Speaker 3: this country. So I'm an immigrant, and when I first moved,
Speaker 3: I moved during the initial Gulf War when Aida invade
Speaker 3: it Kwait and nobody really liked Arabs at the time.
Speaker 3: I had a very strong accent, and people would say
Speaker 3: really nasty things to me, and I was always hopeful
Speaker 3: that they would just understand who I was, if they
Speaker 3: actually just asked me questions, if they understood who I
Speaker 3: was and where I was coming from, then they actually
Speaker 3: might see me in a very different light than what
Speaker 3: they see on television or whatever. And so for me,
Speaker 3: that's why it's really important But to go back to
Speaker 3: your question, Yes, absolutely, I have struggled with that my
Speaker 3: entire career. Even now. Sometimes I have to think about it,
Speaker 3: you know, and as a leader, you've got to be flexible,
Speaker 3: So you've got to think about where where now do
Speaker 3: I use empathy to listen to what other people, where
Speaker 3: other people are coming from, and where actually do I
Speaker 3: need to be more you know, make the decision on
Speaker 3: my own right right, make the decision on my own,
Speaker 3: be more direct, and not actually bring other people in right,
Speaker 3: which is foreign to me. It's a foreign concept to me.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, I absolutely struggle with it. I would
Speaker 3: suspect that most people do. I mean, in corporate America,
Speaker 3: we want results in corporate in the corporate world, we
Speaker 3: want results. We want people who are decisive. And sometimes
Speaker 3: when you're more empathic, you're more you collaborate more, and
Speaker 3: maybe it takes a little bit of more time to
Speaker 3: get to decisions. And I think that some people don't
Speaker 3: like that, and so but for me, it has been
Speaker 3: so far, very success, you know, a very successful trait
Speaker 3: that I've had as a leader.
Speaker 1: Obviously obviously and a one hundred percent agree what you've
Speaker 1: said You've mentioned before being authentic. You know, you build
Speaker 1: also trust across organizations and within your teams. How do
Speaker 1: you maintain that trust in such a time, you know,
Speaker 1: this kind of rapid transformation, these changes every day at
Speaker 1: a speed we've never experienced before. I can imagine that
Speaker 1: many people, whether in our business and of course outside
Speaker 1: of our business, are sometimes very scared about this. How
Speaker 1: do you maintain the trust in your own organizations? Let's
Speaker 1: call it also confidence. Hard to provide confidence as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very hard. It's very hard because change is hard,
Speaker 3: Innovation is hard. Especially when you're in a business that's
Speaker 3: doing well. People don't want to change necessarily very quickly,
Speaker 3: and so building that trust and building that confidence is important,
Speaker 3: and it is deliberate. So I'm going to use words
Speaker 3: like process over communication. You cannot underestimate in a time
Speaker 3: of extreme change and extreme innovation, the discipline that has
Speaker 3: to go in to managing that. And maybe they're counterintuitive
Speaker 3: because I think most people think innovation fast move, you know,
Speaker 3: just test and learn and just go get it done.
Speaker 3: But the reality is, particularly when you're in a large
Speaker 3: organization and very very matrixed, you have got to be deliberate.
Speaker 3: You've got to be disciplined, and sometimes something might take
Speaker 3: a little bit longer. But when you bring everybody along
Speaker 3: with you, it drives to your question, it drives that trust,
Speaker 3: it drives that confidence. And so I do have people
Speaker 3: though that on my team that do get frustrated. You know,
Speaker 3: they think that, you know, something might take too long
Speaker 3: of time, or you know, they just want to go.
Speaker 3: They have an idea and they just want to go
Speaker 3: do it. The problem is is that if you go
Speaker 3: do something on your own and you don't bring other
Speaker 3: people with you, then back to your point, you don't
Speaker 3: build the trust and the confidence, and that idea stays small.
Speaker 3: It stays your own idea and instead of being able
Speaker 3: to share it across the world organization and to scale
Speaker 3: it across the organization. And so it's the boring stuff.
Speaker 3: It's the process, it's the change management, it's the collaboration.
Speaker 3: It's the stuff that people don't like to do when
Speaker 3: they think about change and they think about innovation.
Speaker 1: Right, and funnily enough, you know it belongs to small
Speaker 1: organizations and of course even more to big organizations like yours.
Speaker 1: When I think I've learned about jpmong chases purpose, which
Speaker 1: is we make dreams possible for.
Speaker 2: Everyone, everywhere, every day.
Speaker 1: And I think you introduced it more as two years
Speaker 1: ago if I'm right, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: I think this is a very powerful purpose obviously, And
Speaker 1: how do you ensure this mission translates into meaningful action
Speaker 1: across marketing, consumer engagement, and also employee experience?
Speaker 2: How do you do this?
Speaker 3: So for me, the way that it works is it
Speaker 3: has to start at the top. And so when we
Speaker 3: reduced the idea of writing the purpose of our organization,
Speaker 3: we were just coming out of a moment in time
Speaker 3: where thirty forty percent of our colleagues were you in
Speaker 3: the last three years to the company. They had really
Speaker 3: only known each other on little squares. They didn't really
Speaker 3: truly understand the magic of the culture of JP Morgan Chase,
Speaker 3: an almost two hundred year old company. But the people
Speaker 3: that had been here a long time knew what that
Speaker 3: magic was. And so we sought to articulate that, to
Speaker 3: codify it, to put it in one piece of language that,
Speaker 3: as you say, was not just important for the outside world,
Speaker 3: our customers and our clients to know what we stood
Speaker 3: for and what our purpose was, but more importantly for
Speaker 3: three hundred thousand people that show up every single day.
Speaker 3: And so it started at the top Jamie, the entire
Speaker 3: operating committee, everybody was involved. We co crafted it together
Speaker 3: and then we had a rollout plan. So you want
Speaker 3: to think about we thought about it exactly as we
Speaker 3: think about any other campaign, and you know, lots at
Speaker 3: stake because it's our internal people and how they feel,
Speaker 3: and so we were deliberate. We we went and did
Speaker 3: research tens of thousands of people around the world. We
Speaker 3: looked at all of our you know, things that we
Speaker 3: had written about our culture, what our people were saying.
Speaker 3: We went to our EOS results, our employee opinion survey results, everything,
Speaker 3: and we built this framework that articulated what the purpose
Speaker 3: was and what the values were. And if we didn't
Speaker 3: have sponsorship from the top, it would have been really,
Speaker 3: really hard. But so then we just became you know,
Speaker 3: we just managed it stage by stage by stage. So
Speaker 3: first it was you know, Jamie and I talking on
Speaker 3: a stage about it. And again, when you have the
Speaker 3: CEO and chairman of the firm, you know, talking about
Speaker 3: our purpose and our values and why they are important,
Speaker 3: it helps galvanize the senior leaders of the organization. But
Speaker 3: then they started to believe it. And then when they
Speaker 3: believed that language and they thought it was meaningful, they
Speaker 3: then took it to their teams, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: But we have a we have an internal CMO who
Speaker 3: we hired about a year ago, and she is responsible
Speaker 3: for taking all of the great work that we do
Speaker 3: with our purpose, our values, all the things we do
Speaker 3: in our organization, and helping our three hundred and three
Speaker 3: hundred plus thousand employees understand why each and every single
Speaker 3: one of them is here and how they contribute to
Speaker 3: that that that purpose of making dreams possible for everyone, everywhere,
Speaker 3: every day. And so again, we treated it much like
Speaker 3: we treat any other campaign. There was an editorial calendar,
Speaker 3: there still is, and I think very importantly we did
Speaker 3: not treat it as a one year thing. So for us,
Speaker 3: it is important that you know it is a multi
Speaker 3: year journey. And the very beginning people would say, oh,
Speaker 3: I know you, you know you wrote the purpose Carla,
Speaker 3: like it's Carla's purpose because I was standing on the stage,
Speaker 3: you know, telling everybody about it. Today, I am so
Speaker 3: proud that it is everybody else's purpose. Now we get
Speaker 3: emails that show us how people in our branches have
Speaker 3: taken the purpose and you know, made mugs out of
Speaker 3: them or made a poster or something because it's them
Speaker 3: and they love it and they believe in it. And
Speaker 3: I think that's probably what's the most important. But it
Speaker 3: has to start on the top. It has to be
Speaker 3: a deliberate you know, thinking about how we're going to
Speaker 3: roll it out to the organization and then you know,
Speaker 3: externally to our customers and our clients as well, who
Speaker 3: have been very open and welcoming with it because it
Speaker 3: shows that we believe in something and we stand for something.
Speaker 1: And you've mentioned, you know, you developed this, you implemented
Speaker 1: this purpose. You mentioned campaigns. Was there any campaign since
Speaker 1: then or initiative which stands out for you based on
Speaker 1: that purpose where you know people would immediately recognize this
Speaker 1: externally of course, to recognize that purpose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the campaign that we've done externally is under
Speaker 3: the handle of make Happen. So we didn't want to
Speaker 3: take our internal purpose of make dreams possible and make
Speaker 3: that a tagline of a campaign that's internal for us.
Speaker 3: It's a rallying cry and a sort of really nice
Speaker 3: you know why we exist, but it translated into an
Speaker 3: external campaign called make Happen, which is, you know, make
Speaker 3: momentum happen, make you know, whatever it is, make small
Speaker 3: business happen, et cetera. But the idea of that we
Speaker 3: make something happen and help make it happen. And I'll
Speaker 3: tell you one in particular that I really love is
Speaker 3: last year. We have been pushing for an initiative called
Speaker 3: Second Chances for a long time, and that initiative is
Speaker 3: really about going to different states around the nation and
Speaker 3: making sure that we are helping the states give people
Speaker 3: second chances to work, people who have been incarcerated, people
Speaker 3: who have a record, you know, something little something like
Speaker 3: you know, maybe when they were nineteen years old, they
Speaker 3: were smoking marijuana in their college door room and they
Speaker 3: got caught and they got arrested, and now they have
Speaker 3: a record, and to expunge that record, it requires thousands
Speaker 3: and thousands of pieces of paper, thousands and thousands of dollars.
Speaker 3: And so what ends up happening is anytime those people
Speaker 3: want to go for a job, they have to check
Speaker 3: on a piece of paper that they have a record,
Speaker 3: which in a lot of ways stops them a criminal record,
Speaker 3: right which in a lot of ways stops them from
Speaker 3: actually getting a job, and so giving them a second
Speaker 3: chance is really important. So we did a campaign last
Speaker 3: year where we went we did a whole exhibition in
Speaker 3: front of in Philadelphia and then we took video of that.
Speaker 3: We turned that into content. But it wasn't just the
Speaker 3: content that was meaningful for me. It was the moment
Speaker 3: that we did. It was when we were working with
Speaker 3: other governments to try to get them to change their
Speaker 3: second chance laws as well. So it really was an
Speaker 3: entire effort from the organization, not just marketing but also
Speaker 3: government affairs coming together to do greater things in the
Speaker 3: community under the heading of men Happen.
Speaker 1: I've mentioned at the beginning as part of the introduction
Speaker 1: that you worked across you know, very different industries with
Speaker 1: your experience and you know, spanning industries from finance to
Speaker 1: consumer goods. How do you ensure that purpose remains constant
Speaker 1: even as business objectives and also industries shift. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can imagine that not just stepping into a new
Speaker 1: industry and fully understand, you know, everything which belongs to
Speaker 1: the industry, and then in new organization, I can imagine
Speaker 1: there's a super challenging to be very you know, consistent
Speaker 1: with that kind of purpose.
Speaker 2: How do you do this for yourself?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So for for us it's challenging in some ways.
Speaker 3: If you where I think marketers make the mistakes sometimes
Speaker 3: is that they take they think that purpose marketing sits
Speaker 3: on its own, Yeah, and it's only about the brand
Speaker 3: and that everything else is everything else they do, right,
Speaker 3: So they're driving performance through something that's not purposeful or whatever.
Speaker 3: And for us we look at it very differently. And
Speaker 3: for me as a marketer, I look at it very differently.
Speaker 3: For me, when you articulate what your purpose is and
Speaker 3: what your values are, those permeate everything you do. And
Speaker 3: so when we think about, you know that we are
Speaker 3: a brand that has you know, service and heart and
Speaker 3: curiosity and courage and excellence at the heart of its values.
Speaker 3: That translates into our marketing. That translates into the campaigns
Speaker 3: we do. That translates into how we think about driving
Speaker 3: the business. Look, at the end of the day, purpose
Speaker 3: is not fluffy. It drives business growth. Marketing drives business growth,
Speaker 3: and so for us we don't think about it differently.
Speaker 3: So we just think about who are our customers, who
Speaker 3: are our clients, What are the marketing campaigns and how
Speaker 3: is our purpose permeated into the things we do all
Speaker 3: the way down by the way to you know, an
Speaker 3: article that you might find on our website or on
Speaker 3: our app that's all around financial education. That's still business,
Speaker 3: but it's with a purpose, and so for us that's
Speaker 3: really really important. You know, we have a product called
Speaker 3: Credit Journey that's free to anybody, and it basically tells
Speaker 3: you what your credit score rating is. It tells you
Speaker 3: if it's gone up, it tells you if it's gone down,
Speaker 3: but it also helps you. Now it doesn't introduce our products,
Speaker 3: of course it does, but you don't have to use
Speaker 3: our products. That is purposeful, you know. And so yes,
Speaker 3: so I can tell you that there are real business
Speaker 3: results behind Credit Journey, that's amazing. But I can also
Speaker 3: tell you that it's done with purpose because we want
Speaker 3: to make sure that people have financial health, if you will.
Speaker 3: And so I don't see them as mutually exclusive. And
Speaker 3: I think where we get in trouble sometimes as marketers
Speaker 3: is when we separate. I'm going to do only purpose marketing,
Speaker 3: and then I'm going to do you know, formats marketing
Speaker 3: and to separate those two is actually, I think where
Speaker 3: we make our mistake.
Speaker 1: Let's broaden up the conversation a bit to a topic
Speaker 1: which is absolutely in everybody's mind. I think these days,
Speaker 1: in general, it's for years, because you know, you've been
Speaker 1: a vocal advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, which I
Speaker 1: think you know, and I think not just me, feels
Speaker 1: that this is under fire these days.
Speaker 2: And looking ahet.
Speaker 1: What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges
Speaker 1: for advancing d I within large organizations? And to give
Speaker 1: a bit more context, you know, I've just read an
Speaker 1: article in the New York Times, I think it was
Speaker 1: yesterday or the day before, also with a quote from
Speaker 1: your CEO saying that you know, this company would not
Speaker 1: be away from its DEI efforts in response to activists,
Speaker 1: which I think it's a strong and absolutely clear statement,
Speaker 1: and I highly appreciate this, but not everybody obviously does
Speaker 1: it these days. So let's talk about this for a second,
Speaker 1: because you are and you always was a vocal advocate
Speaker 1: for d I.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I am a vocal advocate, and so is
Speaker 3: our organization. So I think you quoted Jamie, you know,
Speaker 3: we do remain committed to DEI it's a business imperative.
Speaker 3: It's important for us to keep our people at the
Speaker 3: center of everything that we do and do right by them.
Speaker 3: We continue to reach out to communities, the Black community,
Speaker 3: the Hispanic community, LGBTQ, plus the veteran community, because for us,
Speaker 3: it's the it's good for business, and I think when
Speaker 3: you reframe it in that way and you think about
Speaker 3: it as business first, it becomes really really important. So
Speaker 3: when when I think about everything we've done across our
Speaker 3: communities and the people that we serve in those communities,
Speaker 3: we're very proud of it, and I think we we
Speaker 3: just you know, we continue to do this work across
Speaker 3: the communities. We lift up schools, communities, hospitals, small businesses,
Speaker 3: governments in all the communities we serve. And so again,
Speaker 3: I think it's really really, really important that we all
Speaker 3: look at it through the lens of business, whatever whatever
Speaker 3: you decide to call it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Obviously, as a firm, we're actively monitoring the evolving you know,
Speaker 3: legal and the regulatory landscape. We continue to you know,
Speaker 3: to monitor that, but we will always prioritize the well
Speaker 3: being of our employees and our communities, and so we
Speaker 3: you know, we just we we remain committed to that,
Speaker 3: and I think it's again, you know, the only thing
Speaker 3: that I might tell fellow marketers is that if we
Speaker 3: look at it in the context of it's the right
Speaker 3: thing to do for business, and it has always been
Speaker 3: right thing to do, no matter what you call it.
Speaker 1: Exactly well, I mean, luckily you know a lot of
Speaker 1: other leaders, you know, provide very similar quotes.
Speaker 2: I think this is great to see.
Speaker 1: This conversation cannot happen without talking about technology trends and
Speaker 1: specifically about AI in preparation for possible in April in Miami.
Speaker 1: When I'm talking to partners and speakers and specifically to CMOS,
Speaker 1: I get the impression that the time is over that
Speaker 1: everybody tells us, you know, that the world is changing,
Speaker 1: and this is even further going to change. So we
Speaker 1: are we're looking for case studies, you know, learnings what
Speaker 1: happened yesterday, What was you know, the outcome from yesterday's
Speaker 1: efforts and activities, and what are the learnings for today's business.
Speaker 1: Before going further down this way, please give us your
Speaker 1: general perspective where we are. Specifically, you know what it
Speaker 1: means currently for the work as a CMO and for
Speaker 1: marketing in general.
Speaker 2: It took a long did it take us Christian to
Speaker 2: I give you five hours for that answer.
Speaker 3: So look, there is no doubt about it that you know,
Speaker 3: it is the topic du jour. In fact, I had
Speaker 3: my senior leadership off site not too long ago and
Speaker 3: we talked about it, you know, and as you can imagine,
Speaker 3: every other marketer is talking about it for sure. But
Speaker 3: I would tell you I agree with you at the
Speaker 3: time is now to actually move forward and stop talking
Speaker 3: about the fact that AI is going to come.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: The reality is for us, in a lot of ways
Speaker 3: we have been using AI. It's been you know, and
Speaker 3: large language models in the banking industry and so but
Speaker 3: in marketing we have really on my team. You won't
Speaker 3: be surprised to know that there are about one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty active projects, and every single day there are
Speaker 3: more and more and more. And we are you know,
Speaker 3: four thousand people across the world in different lines of businesses,
Speaker 3: in different marketing functions, and so there always is going
Speaker 3: to be a lot of What I am trying to
Speaker 3: do now, what I would encourage all other leaders to
Speaker 3: do is really think about how to prioritize those things
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of noise out there. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of new platforms. Every day, something's popping up. You
Speaker 3: can't keep track of it. And so I think what
Speaker 3: we are trying to do now, or what we are
Speaker 3: doing now, is prioritizing those and saying, like, across the board,
Speaker 3: across the marketing organization, what is the most important to us?
Speaker 3: Where are we going to lead and lean in and
Speaker 3: where do we need to wait a little bit for
Speaker 3: the technology to advance a little bit further before we
Speaker 3: move forward. And we don't have all the answers to
Speaker 3: those questions yet, but we are definitely experimenting. We actually
Speaker 3: were One of the first use cases in our firm
Speaker 3: was in marketing and it was in search and search
Speaker 3: engine optimization. And so you know, in our world, we
Speaker 3: write a lot of articles, a lot of financial education
Speaker 3: and literacy articles, and those are people writing them, you know,
Speaker 3: and sometimes those take seven days to do. What we
Speaker 3: have done is we've turned our writers into editors and
Speaker 3: so now they are prompt engineers. They you know, prompt
Speaker 3: the internal chat GPT that we have and they now
Speaker 3: you know, the output comes out and they are spending
Speaker 3: maybe two hours now editing instead of you know, seven
Speaker 3: hours or seven days or whatever it is writing. And
Speaker 3: so it's been very good for us from an efficiency standpoint.
Speaker 3: But I wouldn't stop there. I would tell you it's
Speaker 3: actually driven significant effectiveness actually, and we're seeing significant and
Speaker 3: PV results in our search and so we are really
Speaker 3: starting to use the power of gen ai to not
Speaker 3: just you know, talk about the possibility, but to actually
Speaker 3: start seeing it in action. And we're piloting a lot
Speaker 3: of projects. We're piloting, you know, some some interesting things
Speaker 3: on our JP Morgan side of the business, where again
Speaker 3: we go do client events and for the longest time,
Speaker 3: you know, those client events and we would take like
Speaker 3: beautiful nuggets of what people would say on panels and
Speaker 3: package them up and market them to prospects or clients.
Speaker 3: And that takes time. You know, when you can use
Speaker 3: platforms that actually help you now do that in record time.
Speaker 3: You can turn that content around, and you can turn
Speaker 3: that personalized content around in twenty four hours. So one
Speaker 3: client might care about a certain topic, the other client's
Speaker 3: going to care about something totally different that was set
Speaker 3: in an event. And so for us, we're seeing the
Speaker 3: ability to drive a ton of efficiency but also effectiveness.
Speaker 3: And that's just two examples of many others that we
Speaker 3: are piloting. But I do think that it's an exciting time.
Speaker 3: The thing that I would say, Christian, that I am
Speaker 3: thinking about, though, is a couple of things. Number one
Speaker 3: is how do we use it for good? Let's just
Speaker 3: make sure that the AI is being used for good,
Speaker 3: and I think in marketing for the most part it
Speaker 3: will be, so I worry less about that. But I
Speaker 3: do think that as an industry, we tend to get
Speaker 3: excited by the next shiny object, and I think we've
Speaker 3: got to again be deliberate and careful about what we
Speaker 3: are choosing to really lean in on and what we
Speaker 3: are choosing to sort of wait and see. And then
Speaker 3: the last thing I would say is just because AI
Speaker 3: is so powerful does not mean that the art of
Speaker 3: creativity is gone. In fact, I would say to the contrary,
Speaker 3: we now need more creativity because the technology can be
Speaker 3: so powerful, and so the human side working alongside the
Speaker 3: technology is going to be really, really critical. So for me,
Speaker 3: you know, we talk a lot in our teams about
Speaker 3: AI is not going to take your job. The person
Speaker 3: that uses AI is going to take your job, and
Speaker 3: so you've really got to think about how do we
Speaker 3: live alongside this technology and make it work for us
Speaker 3: as opposed to fight it, but even worse, lean so
Speaker 3: much into it that you forget the power of human
Speaker 3: creativity in marketing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting and interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean I can imagine that not just in terms
Speaker 1: of how to execute things and start to INTEGRATEI platforms,
Speaker 1: tool technologies into the daily work is super challenging, but
Speaker 1: also to find the right partners because it feels for me,
Speaker 1: it feels we are overcrowded with you know, as you said,
Speaker 1: every day, new companies, new platforms, new tools, new solutions
Speaker 1: will come up and you can't keep track. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, at some point you have to make
Speaker 1: a decision, right, what is the best one for me today? Yes,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's just for a couple of weeks or whatever.
Speaker 1: I think this is extremely challenging. So hopefully we can
Speaker 1: provide also some kind of clarity and some kind of transparency,
Speaker 1: you know, when we bring hopefully the right people on
Speaker 1: our stage in a couple of weeks time. But coming
Speaker 1: back to my previous point that the biggest challenge I
Speaker 1: also can see that to find the right partner and
Speaker 1: to be able to make some decisions from time to time,
Speaker 1: because at the end, you need to work with solutions
Speaker 1: and platforms, right you.
Speaker 3: Do, and I think that what you guys are going
Speaker 3: to do in a few weeks is going to be very,
Speaker 3: very helpful because you have to somehow cut through the
Speaker 3: noise and the reality is, at least for organizations like
Speaker 3: my own, it's not easy to just say, oh, we're
Speaker 3: going to use you know this platform and test it
Speaker 3: for two weeks and then if it doesn't work, we
Speaker 3: move on. Right Like with you know, with You've got
Speaker 3: to bring it into your organization. You've got to make
Speaker 3: sure that it's a viable proposition. You've got to make
Speaker 3: sure that it's safe for your organization and your ecosystem.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of work that goes into even
Speaker 3: just setting up some of these partners internally and then
Speaker 3: and so you're right, you've got to make sure you're
Speaker 3: choosing the right ones, the ones that have long term viability,
Speaker 3: the ones that so it is I think as marketers
Speaker 3: it's a big challenge from that perspective, and anything you
Speaker 3: can do that you guys are going to do to
Speaker 3: help sort of bring some clarity to that I think
Speaker 3: will be very valuable.
Speaker 1: So let's see, I'm really excited about, you know, knowing
Speaker 1: a bit more about what's what's coming up there, and
Speaker 1: I'm really here is to see, you know, how our
Speaker 1: audience will react to this in general, but of course,
Speaker 1: considering tech trends and what we just recently talked about,
Speaker 1: what is a bold prediction you have for the future
Speaker 1: of marketing and brand strategy?
Speaker 3: Old prediction? Hmmm, I don't know that they're bold, but
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that a few things that are on
Speaker 3: my mind. I would say one is, you know, I
Speaker 3: think in the conversations about AI, because they are so
Speaker 3: consuming everything we talk about, I want us to not
Speaker 3: lose sight of the basics of the things that we
Speaker 3: do that as marketers that are really, really, really important,
Speaker 3: and some things that are that are at least you know,
Speaker 3: percolating in my head, in my team's head. I think
Speaker 3: we cannot ignore and look, AI will be an enabler
Speaker 3: to this for sure, but we cannot ignore the importance
Speaker 3: of personalization and engagement with our customers and with our clients,
Speaker 3: and so you know, increasingly that is a demand that
Speaker 3: they have. I am giving you my data. I am
Speaker 3: allowing you access to my data. You should know who
Speaker 3: I am, and shame on you if you don't. And
Speaker 3: I'm going to vote with my wallet if you don't, right,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go somewhere else that does. And so
Speaker 3: for us it is really important. And I think marketers
Speaker 3: have to really think about how they harness their data,
Speaker 3: how they harness the knowledge they have about their customers,
Speaker 3: and marry that with technology that is available to be
Speaker 3: able to really create impactful, tailored experiences and products for customers.
Speaker 3: I don't think we can ignore that in all the
Speaker 3: conversation about you know, what's new, et cetera. The end
Speaker 3: of the day, we have to remember as marketers, we
Speaker 3: are serving our clients and our customers to drive meaningful
Speaker 3: business growth. Number one. The other thing I would say
Speaker 3: is I think that again in the sort of blocking
Speaker 3: and tackling place, I think that, you know, the advent
Speaker 3: of all of this technology is really going to, I believe,
Speaker 3: allow us to have much greater efficiency, you know, streamline
Speaker 3: all our processes, improve all our measures so that we
Speaker 3: can really start to free up our people for the
Speaker 3: things that actually are meaningful at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: For me, when a lot of the technology commoditizes the
Speaker 3: basic things that we do, what's left brand. What's left
Speaker 3: It's the feeling that people have about your brand. It's
Speaker 3: the values of your brand. It's what your brand does,
Speaker 3: It's what your brand is saying and how people are
Speaker 3: reacting to that, the value that you are giving to
Speaker 3: your customers and clients. And I don't think we can
Speaker 3: forget that. And so I think for we always talk
Speaker 3: about it's either the brand or the performance. And for me,
Speaker 3: I'm a broken record, and I think that you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know bold prediction. But for me, as I
Speaker 3: think about the future, those things have to continue to
Speaker 3: come together. I talk a lot with my team about
Speaker 3: heart and science, and we are blessed with a lot
Speaker 3: of science here. We have eighty million active customers digitally,
Speaker 3: we are you know, we have so much data. But
Speaker 3: what we need to always have is heart, because at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, you are marketing to a person.
Speaker 3: You're not marketing to an IP address, You're not marketing
Speaker 3: to a robot. You're marketing to a person. That person
Speaker 3: has needs and dreams and fears, and we have to
Speaker 3: think about that. So with all the data that we have,
Speaker 3: we can build better brands, We can build better experiences,
Speaker 3: and we should and that, to me, I think is
Speaker 3: a big piece of it. And then the last thing
Speaker 3: I would say is experience I think is going to
Speaker 3: be a big like real life experiences, I think are
Speaker 3: going to be a big thing that we are seeing
Speaker 3: more and more brands do. We certainly are doing that
Speaker 3: with all of our lounges. But the access to things
Speaker 3: that being a part of your brand gets your customer
Speaker 3: and your client, I think is going to be increasingly important.
Speaker 3: What will be most important from a marketing perspective is
Speaker 3: how do we turn those experiences that might be for
Speaker 3: twenty five people into things that millions of people see
Speaker 3: and millions of people feel, And so how do we
Speaker 3: create the content around those experiences will become really really important.
Speaker 3: So many other things, but those are probably the three
Speaker 3: that are top of my mind.
Speaker 1: Which, by the way, I think it is a bold prediction.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's definitely a bold one. Cala let
Speaker 1: me come back, let me come back to you know
Speaker 1: how we kicked off kicked off our coganization today? Is
Speaker 1: there you know a failure, or let's call it more
Speaker 1: a challenge that shape your perspective and approach as a leader.
Speaker 1: You want to share with our audience. I mean, you
Speaker 1: are so experienced, you know there must be something.
Speaker 3: Here's come on, there's many. There's many. Every single day
Speaker 3: I have failures. I really do. Every single day there
Speaker 3: are failures. I'm going to give you the big one
Speaker 3: because that one, I think shaped me in a way
Speaker 3: that's probably surprising to people. So I left PepsiCo at
Speaker 3: the top of my game. Anyone would tell you she
Speaker 3: was at the top of her game. Why would she
Speaker 3: want to go to Toys r Us a company that was,
Speaker 3: you know, in bad shape for a long time, and
Speaker 3: why would she want to do that? Like that's the
Speaker 3: death of her career? And for me, there were many
Speaker 3: reasons why I did it, which was which is another
Speaker 3: podcast in and of itself, so another episode of your podcast.
Speaker 3: But you know, everyone knows the story of Toys r Us.
Speaker 3: I arrived there, and you know, about six months later,
Speaker 3: we decided that we were going to declare bankruptcy as
Speaker 3: a company. And you know the first thing that sets
Speaker 3: into your mind there is the ego as if I'm
Speaker 3: being honest, it's the first thing that sets in, Oh
Speaker 3: my god, what are people going to say. They're going
Speaker 3: to say, I told you so, you never should have
Speaker 3: done that, et cetera, et cetera. Once you put that aside, right,
Speaker 3: once you put that aside, then you get into the
Speaker 3: you know, the the nitty gritty of like what you
Speaker 3: are doing day to day. And I will tell you
Speaker 3: that I learned so much about that experience, so much
Speaker 3: I learned about how to be a leader during the
Speaker 3: most diverse moments of life. You know, people myself included
Speaker 3: one day, We're no longer going to have a paycheck.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: The door was going to close and you had nothing,
Speaker 3: you know. But I had to lead people through that.
Speaker 3: And so the learning of back to the empathy point,
Speaker 3: leading with empathy, leading with vulnerability, leading with authenticity was very, very,
Speaker 3: very important, and I think a masterclass in that. The
Speaker 3: other thing is, you know, how do you pick yourself
Speaker 3: back up from that because that's so public, and how
Speaker 3: do you build the confidence again to go do something else?
Speaker 3: You know. But I look back on that experience and
Speaker 3: you know, leaving consumer package goods to go into retail
Speaker 3: where at a moment in time in the marketing industry,
Speaker 3: eCOM was really important, becoming really important, digital marketing becoming
Speaker 3: really important, loyalty programs, owning your own data, all the
Speaker 3: things that have set me up to be where I
Speaker 3: am today. It was such an important part of my
Speaker 3: you know, career progression. And so even though yes, it
Speaker 3: was a moment, it was sad, it was public, it
Speaker 3: was you know, very very hard. Today, I look back
Speaker 3: at that experience and I'm like, oh my gosh, even
Speaker 3: though it ended way too quick, it actually gave me
Speaker 3: all the things that I needed to continue to set
Speaker 3: me up for success here. And I think that's the
Speaker 3: way we should think about it. I don't think we
Speaker 3: should think about as hard as the failures are. And
Speaker 3: trust me, I'm making it sound like it's this beautiful
Speaker 3: story of like ultimate success, but you know it's it
Speaker 3: was hard. It was hard for me. It was hard
Speaker 3: at home. It was hard in the industry. You know,
Speaker 3: you realize who your friends are, you realize, you know,
Speaker 3: when you don't have a checkbook and a marketer who's
Speaker 3: still there for you. All of those things, right, those
Speaker 3: are really important lessons I think for marketers to remember.
Speaker 3: But it was an incredible, incredible learning, and I would
Speaker 3: not be where I am today if it was not
Speaker 3: for that experience. So I'm grateful for it, and I
Speaker 3: can say that today several years in the later, I
Speaker 3: couldn't have told you that in the beginning.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for sharing this.
Speaker 1: I think that was very powerful and it's such a
Speaker 1: pleasure talking to you about your insights and your experiences.
Speaker 2: And I feel it could go on and go on
Speaker 2: and go on.
Speaker 1: I remember my offer to you, you know, to give
Speaker 1: you a couple of hours to force some specific answers,
Speaker 1: you know, to dig in more details. So I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to do this at some time for sure. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being on our show. With your
Speaker 1: insights and your passion you're shown in this conversation, I
Speaker 1: think our listeners have a lot to take away and
Speaker 1: to think about it. Kyla, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being with us today.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you so much for having me Christian, thank.
Speaker 2: You, thanks for tuning in everyone.
Speaker 1: Once again, I'm your host, Christian moh If you have
Speaker 1: a question or suggestion to me, reach out send me
Speaker 1: DM on LinkedIn. If you're curious to learn more about
Speaker 1: possible sign up for our newsletter, or if you want
Speaker 1: to join us at the Possible Show in Miami, visit
Speaker 1: Possible event dot com. Possible Now is a co production
Speaker 1: of iHeartMedia and Possible. Our executive producers are Ryan Martz
Speaker 1: and Yasmin Melandez. Our supervising producer is Meredith Barnes. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Colleen Lawrence Mack from our programming team. Our
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