Transcript

Bennie F Johnson 

Hello, and thank you for joining us for this episode of AMA’s Marketing / And. I’m your host, Bennie F. Johnson, AMA CEO. In our episodes, we explore life through a marketing lens, delving into conversations with individuals that flourish at the intersection of marketing and the unexpected. We’ll introduce you on our show to visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know. Through thought-provoking conversations, will unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. 

Today, our special guest coming straight from London is none other than Paul Frampton. With over two decades of experience as a leader in marketing and the hospitality industries, Paul is a customer and people-focused leader who drives growth through excellence and innovation for brands. As the global president of Control vs. Exposed, and marketing growth consultancy, he leads a team of consultants globally that helps advise and implement roadmaps for brands that are looking to build best in class marketing capabilities. Paul is passionate about helping brands navigate the complex and dynamic marketing landscape, leveraging his expertise and strategy and transformation in digital. He is the host of Time for Reset, a podcast, and MadFest where he shares insights on best practices of marketing as a growth engine and how to lead through change. Paul, welcome to the podcast.

Paul Frampton Calero

Thank you very much, Bennie. Lovely to be here.

Bennie 

How are you doing? I’m calling out your London base today because your guest gave me bit of news that you’re going to be going through your own change in moving to the States for work.

Paul

I am indeed. I am indeed. So I am heading within the next 60 days to Miami to warmer climbs. So rather looking forward to that.

Bennie 

Yes. As we think about the work, it creates an incredible backdrop. You were talking about how you’re thinking about the business in a really global sense and how marketing, the nuance of marketing changes from location. How do you think going from London to Miami as a base of operations will change your vantage point?

Paul 

Yeah, so as we were talking about before we started, I think marketing at its heart is people, it’s humanity and how people behave. Obviously our job as marketers or advertisers is to try and get people to do things slightly differently and respond to things. I think that, so my wife’s Colombian, so my full name is Paul Frampton Calero, but I always shorten it to Paul Frampton. So I do have a Latin connection.

Bennie

Yes. Right.

Paul 

Fortunately, that’s probably going to help me a little bit in Miami because I understand it’s a tad Latin, tad Spanish. So I think that will help me. But look, I think the way that marketing and kind of commerciality entertainment is in North America and is in Miami or LA or DC and Chicago is very different to London and very different to Dubai, where I just spent the weekend.

I think our job as marketers is to really deeply understand why people do what they do and what their motivations are. And culture, I think, is a huge part of that. Like where you grow up, whether you’ve transversed different cultures and lived in different parts of the world. I hold myself very fortunate that at a very young age, when I worked for Havas, I got to travel the world as part of a global digital team. 

Bennie 

Right.

Paul 

So spent time in Mumbai and Bogota, all different parts of the world. And I think that exposure, that broadening of my horizons just meant that I developed this fascination with why people do what they do and culture. And I think if you don’t understand that, then you’re never going to get marketing right.

Bennie 

It’s so true. So let’s talk, let’s delve a little bit into that. I’d love to know your background. Like what brought you into marketing?

Paul 

Good question. So I always thought I wanted to be a journalist. So I did an English degree and I love words. So I love writing and I thought I wanted to be a journalist. And then I started on in the UK, what’s called an NUJ. So then the Journalist Union course. And only a few months in, I kind of decided that I wasn’t quite sure it was the right thing for me. And I started to get interested in, cause someone told me about media.

Bennie 

Right.

Paul 

And I always thought about media as like you’re a journalist, you’re behind, you’re an anchor or you’re on the radio talking, that must be media. But then it turned out that there was another part of media, which is in the advertising world, you’ve got the media and the creatives. And someone told me, and look at a media agency. And I was like, what’s a media agency? Is that like CNN or the BBC? And it turns out, no, there’s lots of people that plan and buy where you target people.

Bennie

Mm.

Paul

and where you put adverts, which is obviously the bit that Mad Men doesn’t focus particularly on. But there’s a whole industry that sits alongside the creatives called the media industry. And I saw a very small ad in the Guardian newspaper, one of the broadsheets here in the UK, and it said they were looking for a graduate media planner. So I went to the first first interview and turned up and it was quite Mad Men-esque.

Bennie 

Right.

Paul

 The guy that was interviewing me was smoking, drinking, drinking, drinking something. Well, I think it was alcohol, but he was drinking and just firing questions at me. And I was like, this is a rather strange industry. Didn’t get that job, but went to another three letter acronym agency where they did kind of decide to, decide to hire me. So I kind of stumbled into it purely because I was really interested in people and writing and kind of storytelling. 

Bennie 

Yeah. Right.

Paul

And then I found myself in a media agency and then I found myself trying to have to understand like where do people spend their time? Where will you find people and how do you get a message in front of people? And then I fell in love with media and fell in love with advertising, I guess, and the rest is history.

Bennie 

Wow. So, you know, when you think about when you first started and you fell in love, are there things today that still remind you of that moment? We talk about how so much has changed. But I’d love to ask you, for you, what’s still the same?

Paul 

What’s still the same is telling stories actually. So really, whether it’s a beautiful TV ad or it’s a tiny little bit of copy on Google when you’re searching for something, I think the choice of words and knowing something about the intent behind why someone is where they are at that point and the way that you can then bring them into a story and encourage them to do something, I don’t think that’s changed at all. And…

Bennie

Right.

Paul 

Even in, I’m sure we’ll talk about AI at some point today, even in a world of AI, really we’re still, we’re still thinking about how do you tell stories that kind of engage and motivate and inspire. I think what AI enables us to do is obviously to think about how we get the more mundane pedestrian parts of marketing done more quickly and in a more automated fashion so that we can focus on the strategic. 

Bennie 

Mm.

Paul 

So we can actually focus on delivering against consumers’ expectations, because I’ll be a little bit provocative in saying that think there’s a lot of really bad marketing and there’s too much marketing a lot of the time. And I hope that AI, if harnessed in the right way, can help us level the bar, actually raise the bar when it comes to the quality of relevance, the personalization of advertising, because we talked about it at conferences for years about the customer and how important they are…

Bennie 

Right.

Paul 

And then all of us have got stories about the same company and having a really bad experience in a call center or in the way that they’ve been communicated to over email. I think what we want marketing to be and what it actually is outside of marketing conferences isn’t always quite the same thing.

Bennie

Right. Well, you know, it’s so true when we think about access to resource and opportunity, because we want to believe that all of the marketing we see is great and good and awesome. But if we’re self-reflective, we talk about some of the stuff that we see coming out that we’re guilty of ourselves. Not that great. Not our best selves, right, in terms of marketing. But, you know, early on, I got a chance to see a conduction of AI tools that just helped elevate the world for really small businesses. And in that space, it took the marketing that many of us would cringe over and elevated it in such a way that drove direct impact results and opportunities for smaller businesses. And I thought about what you talked about, the great leveling of the space, because not everybody’s going to have a large agency and team to work.

Paul 

No, I think you’re right. AI can be a great level for businesses to be able to get their message in front of the right people and to use what will probably be, finite amount of investment to grow their business in the best possible way. Like really, the slightly strange thing about marketing, which I often debate with colleagues is there is no, it’s a profession, yet it’s not one with lots of certification.

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Paul 

It’s not like, you can walk in and start doing it and you can appoint an agency and that agency doesn’t have to have kind of gone through certain levels of kind of validation or certification like if an accountant or a tax advisor came through the door. And I think that sometimes does hurt our profession a little bit because how we kind of value and evaluate what really is good quality and what isn’t is really in the eye of the beholder.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Right.

Paul 

And it comes down to the quality of the CMO or the quality of the person running the agency or the creative director, rather than there being these benchmarks or standards that we have in industry. And look, I’d also say that actually not having some of those standards is part of why the industry is so wonderful and so creative. But I do often wonder whether that hurts our industry because we don’t turn up in quite the same way as a profession.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Paul 

When we walk into a business as maybe other kind of professions or disciplines do.

Bennie 

You know, that’s one of the areas that’s a big focus for us at the AMA, how to get that right balance between profession as a creative, generous space and profession as a space in which standards protect, reinforce, and advocate. Trying to find that right balance because there things that, yeah, it really isn’t. And we know that there, we do a lot of work on skills frameworks on what it takes kind of core skills to be a marketer.

Paul 

Yeah. It’s hard, right? Yeah.

Bennie 

But we’re also expanding over time and looking at what are the ethical considerations, right? What are, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. And as we look at technology and AI, that becomes more important. But then creating the space for those like you and me to come in and go, okay, yes, we’ve got a framework now of the profession. Where can we innovate and where can we be, where can we be more than what we imagined yesterday?

Paul 

Absolutely. Mm-hmm.

Paul 

Right. No, I like that. I think that’s really important. And you talk about skills, matrices and skills. I think, that is so critical. And I think the organizations or marketing disciplines or agencies that put effort into that and developing those frameworks really do benefit in the long term because they identify where are the gaps in our people? How do we develop and grow them way before AI turns up? And suddenly everyone’s in shock and like, my God, we need to train someone in prompt engineering and in this entire new world.

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Paul 

There should be a constant continuous improvement and learning mindset to move people towards a better place with, because we’ve had technology around in marketing for decades. It’s not like it only just turned up.

Bennie 

Yeah. Well, you know, since we were talking a bit about AI, we’ve done a bit of research and it’s consistent and continually shows that as a profession, marketers are those who are all in, in terms of using AI. We’ve been experimenting and playing more, which is what we’ve encouraged everyone in our community to experiment and play to understand where the opportunities are. But we’re seeing that in the data that’s showing up, that we’ve got that flexibility. 

Paul 

Mm-hmm.

Bennie

You know, our eyes are all set to what the future holds in that, we have that flexibility. You know, one of the things I want to talk to you about is, and it’s been clear in our conversation here and in your bio and the space, we talk a lot about change, but yet you work also in a consultancy space where a lot of the work you’re doing is helping organizations create a roadmap. And so I’d love to get your feedback on this. This is a tension that I am constantly talking to teams and others about the difference between the map and the terrain.

Paul 

Mm. Yeah.

Bennie

Kind of the strategy as an abstract space is a guiding principle. And then being in that moment and understanding the nuances that- where the terrain separates from what you thought was the environment. Talk a bit about.

Paul 

I love that question, Benny. I really love that question because look, 80 plus percent of transformations or whatever you want to call it of change fails. And why does it fail? It fails because of generally people, people in politics, inertia, the fact that it’s a lot of effort, the fact that people maybe have got reactants and don’t really want to go down that path or they have emotion attached to going down that path because…

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right, right.

Paul

They’re only going to be in the job for another five years or whatever it might be. So the same human emotions and reactions that make great advertising succeed are also the same things that stop organizations from changing. We’re in the grand scheme of things, we are not a McKinsey or a Bain or a BCG, but we saw something quite interesting, which is that big management consultants come in and do a phenomenal job identifying the gaps.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Paul

Identifying the need for operating model change, and they get alignment to do something. And they usually get a big number agreed on. But then what rarely happens is that that plan gets understood. The team are enabled to go and deliver it. so we focus our consulting, our consultancy focus all around this area of enablement and adoption. Because you can write…

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul 

I’m not saying writing a new strategy or kind of doing an assessment is easy, but it’s an easier part than getting people to actually change what they’ve been doing for five years and go down a path. So we spend a lot of time in trying to really think about, how do you turn the things that you’ve observed that need to change into the highest priority next actions that need to be taken…

To get an organization to drive greater growth from marketing. Cause we fundamentally believe that marketing is the primary kind of growth engine within any organization. And I think a lot of people talk about it as a growth engine, but they may not talk about it as the primary one, but I think you’ve done well, it can be the primary growth engine, but I think a bad consultant leaves with just putting a PowerPoint on the door on and saying, you need to do these things. But if those things are not understood,

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Paul 

And there’s not understanding of who needs to be involved and how their skills need to be adapted to enable them and give them the possibility of executing that plan. Then it’s just as bad as having not put the plan in the first place. So we, dig very deep into what’s the roadmap. then we chunk things up in our recommendations chunk up into three areas. The third are things that you can do with the team you’ve got. Right. You can do it.

Bennie

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.

Paul 

You just need to reframe things slightly and talk to people in a different way. And we can help you with that behavior change. There’s probably another third, which people in your ecosystem, your suppliers or your partners could do if you change the way that you operated. And then there’s a third, we haven’t seen anybody in your ecosystem that can do the things you need. So you need to bring people in from the outside. You need to bring new ideas in and you need somebody to act as an agent for change, but also an accountability partner.

Bennie

Right. Mm-hmm.

Paul

And I think that’s your point about roadmap and terrain, Benny, is like, this is where we want to go, like getting to that destination is a very long-term journey. And on any journey, I often talk about it a lot of metaphor as a boat sailing from one port to another. In that journey, that boat may come up against storms. They may be attacked by pirates. There may be a hurricane.

Bennie 

Right.

Paul

There could be many things that happen, but the job of the people in charge of the transformation is to keep that boat on course for that destination and to keep coming back to how far away are we from that destination? Do we need to tack in order to get there? Yet I think most of the efforts are put into the first part of what’s the plan, present it to the board, let’s get on with it. 

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Right.

Paul 

And then senior people tend to walk away and middle management are left in this kind of state of confusion and feeling like they’re not enabled to do what needs to get done. So I think there’s a real issue with consultants and actually read quite a lot. I read a good article in the New York Times around, well, if consultants are so good at consulting for other people, why don’t they consult on their own industry and the fact that they don’t seem to be as successful as they used to be.

Bennie 

Right, right, right. Oh my goodness, yes. So you had so many great points in there, but one I want to focus on is marketing as a growth engine. You know, so much of our world now, and as we look at kind of complex, these complex markets, we’re looking for ways to grow. And organizations are, know, boards are asking, stakeholders are asking, marketing professionals themselves are asking, what does growth look like? What advice do you have to a contemporary leader? today on how to harness marketing as a growth.

Paul 

So we come in and we help a brand look at the lens of where their organization is, like their current state is from how well you set up are from a talent and a capability perspective. But then importantly, where you are from a data foundation and understanding your customers and the technology to enable automation and personalization. And interestingly, while the talent and capability bit is always important, and any consultant will talk to you about that, I think the bit that actually is the biggest enabler is very quickly starting to look at the data and understand what that organization really knows about their customers. You talk to most CMOs and immediately they’ll be able to reel off, yes, our customers do this, X percent are kind of repeat customers. But then you go and look at the data and the data doesn’t always agree.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Doesn’t always agree.

Paul 

And the data is often in so many different places. isn’t easily surface to executives to be able to make decisions. So our view of the world is you need to organize and structure your data to generate the right type of insights and then have the right technology so that that can be acted on quickly. Those are the quickest things you can do to enable growth fastest. Do you need to hire new types of people? Yes. Should you possibly consider restructuring the way you’re

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Paul 

Marketing org is designed. Yes. But what’s going to be the quickest kind of three, five X it’s going to be to solve the way your customer data is organized and then enable it to be used to both surface insights of people to act on, but also to do a bunch of things to automate customer experience, media activation, so that that stuff can be done because the data just feeds it. And in a world of AI, that all becomes easier and quicker.

Bennie

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Right.

Bennie

Right. Yeah, you know, it’s and I think when we talk about speed, it’s so important because if you don’t have the automation, you end up with that time gap in data, which, know, it’s one thing in our world when it’s analog and we expect things to be flat and stay true for a period of time. But what happens when the terrain changes? Right. And there is an epic macro shift or there’s an epic shift in consumer behaviors. And because of your lag, you’re still operating over 24 months ago data insights. Yeah.

Paul

Right! And I think there’s another really interesting thing about that because what happens when the terrain changes is often the data you had before isn’t very useful because it only tells you about the past. It doesn’t tell you about what’s going to happen in the future. But the organizations that have their data well structured are a better place to be able to do some predictive analysis because they can go, when did we last see behaviors similar to this? It’s unlikely it was the same.

Bennie

Right, right, right. Mm-hmm. Right.

Paul

But when did we see trends that were in the same kind of vicinity? Let’s go back and look at what happened then, and then try and scenario out that. And then I think if your data is in the right place, you’ve got better automation and let’s imagine a world where AI is doing more of that for you. Then your team can spend a lot more time scenario modeling and strategizing. Because really growth comes from going, am I better to go with this scenario or this scenario?

Bennie

Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul 

And to your point that you made earlier, Benny, that’s not a, shall we go for this scenario in 2025? And then we’ll look at a new scenario in 2026. You’re now looking at, okay, we might need to run two different scenarios this week for us to make the most of the share of market in retail for the next three days, around Black Friday or Cyber Monday. If you don’t act quickly enough, you lose. 

Bennie

You lose.

Paul 

And that’s really where I think…the interesting conversation about growth is, is you can spot those five, 10 % growth increments quite easily with data. The ability to act on them fast is where most organizations fall down.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bennie 

Right, right, that ability in the space. 

BREAK

Bennie

We talk about organizations and organizations are much like our consumer base, made up of people and the roles and interactions. I want to ask a personal question for you. What inspires you to lead through change as a personal, as a leader?

Paul 

Good question. So I think my personal motivation about change has a few different aspects to it. I think I saw early on when I was in the media agency, I was very junior and I kind of liked what I was doing, but I didn’t like the culture, if I’m honest, Benny. was back in like 20, 25 years ago. It was quite adversarial.

Bennie

Mm-hmm. Right, right.

Paul 

It was quite patriarchal, if I’m honest. It was dog eat dog. And I didn’t love it. And I was like, I really feel like I need to get into a position where I have more authority to be able to try and change the culture. And I found myself, I mean, now I look back at that and I probably identify as that as having a purpose. But at the time I didn’t know what having a purpose meant, if I’m honest.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.

Paul 

But I was like, well, I need to get into a position to be able to change this. And then I just kept going and kept going until I ended up being the CEO of Havas Media Group in the UK, where I could start to steer the culture. And because I always believed that an advertising or marketing culture should be one where you can be the best you can be, where people have space to actually think and be creative, rather than be forced to get things out the door. So that’s one area that it came from in leading change in that…

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Paul 

I saw a personal opportunity to change an organization that I was part of, not just for myself, but for some others. And then the other aspect of it actually is a more recent one in the last 18 months for various reasons. I’ve ended up in a place where I was like, actually I need to do some growth myself, personal growth myself, and thought I had everything kind of buttoned down and then realized that I didn’t really, didn’t.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Paul 

There was no self care for myself. I was just focusing on other people, pleasing people. I wasn’t really focusing on being in the present either with my family or my kids. I was so busy trying to do so many things for so many people and be successful at work that I was kind of missing the point. So I guess I’m inspired by having found something myself, then trying to help others see the light and see that there’s a better way to do things. And that only comes through change, frankly, whether that’s a change in your own personal kind of circumstances or a change in an organization.

Bennie 

Right

Paul 

And I think the other really important thing is I believe that changes can happen only where people have psychological safety and they believe that they’re believed in. And a lot of the time we push change down from the top and we tell everyone that they’re not great at doing what they’re doing and they need to improve.

Bennie

Right.

Paul

And I think we’re humans, right? And humans want to believe they can be better and that they have opportunity and that they can get there. So psychologically, I think there’s a huge amount of change which comes down to how much you care about the other person or the people are involved. And I think the best leaders are really good at showing that they care whilst being very clear that the business needs to change. And if they can’t get there.

Then they might need to switch you out. But they do, they still get the welfare and the care bit right, I believe.

Bennie 

Right, and I think to your point, these are things that you’re building the relationship, you’re building the credibility before you even need it in the moment, right? Because if you’re committed to the change you’re going into and you’re doing the analysis, it doesn’t just happen the first day, right? You’re coming in and building the rapport and then saying, okay, we’ve all agreed that this is where we wanna be. And the ways we’re gonna do it require us to approach it differently, right?

Paul 

Right. Yeah. One of my coaches about 10 years ago, my exec coach taught me this phrase, tough empathy, which has really stood with me for my whole career. I kind of think about it as the other way around. Be empathetic, then be tough as a leader because if people haven’t done stuff, they still haven’t done stuff. They still haven’t done what the organization needs. And you can choose to deal with that in two ways. 

Bennie 

Mm. Huh.

Paul 

So I come down hard on someone straight away or trying to genuinely understand what got in the way of them getting there. And look, some people may use that as an excuse and I hear that, but equally, I think you have to start by asking curious questions and understanding where the blockers came. And then you can go, okay, I think we’ve established that you needed some more support. You didn’t have the clearest brief or so someone in another department didn’t do their bit. 

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Paul 

However, I think we’ve also established that you personally probably could have done something differently in this scenario. And I’m going to have to hold you accountable for your side of this. So that, tough empathy is really kind of stood with me because I don’t, think most people do one or the other. No, I understand you can get it done. Don’t worry about it. It’s, it’s the business is the business is hard right now and you’re under pressure. Don’t worry. Or you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re just not good enough. You’re a failure. You’re never going to get promoted.

Bennie 

Right.

Paul 

The world isn’t that binary.

Bennie 

Right. Well, I’m going to ask you this question. We’re going to practice some tough empathy on our, on ourself and our industry space. 

Paul 

Go for it.

Bennie

So what happens when good old marketing gets in the way of new market opportunity?

Paul 

Wow, that’s a good question, Bennie. That’s a good question.

Bennie 

Yeah, and we’re gonna work through it ourselves, my friend. We’re gonna work together. We’re gonna work together. 

Paul 

We might need to work through this because I don’t think I have a perfect answer. My brain is whirring.

Bennie

This is a good one, you know, because we’re in this space, and I remember having this conversation, it like a year or so ago, and talking to a team, and they were very wed to what they had structured seven years ago. And I remember having this moment and just pausing and going, just simply. So nothing’s changed in the past seven years. 

Paul 

Mm-hmm. Right.

Bennie

And just that kind of phrase, opening it up, allowed us to kind of rethink, like, yeah, we had locked into these things, and the complete world had turned upside down. And our realities, our customer needs, our businesses, our opportunities had all evolved, but we were still held onto an old, tried approach.

Paul

No, I think your suggestion is a really good one. I think there are always some very open-ended questions that, I mean, the five whys approach, I think is a really interesting one, isn’t it? It’s like, well, why do we still do this same? And then just keep digging, digging further until people start to realize that maybe there is an alternative way. But, I also think there’s a cultural kind of thing there is almost like, collectively trying to question ourselves as to is this as brilliant as it could be? Could we potentially be doing any better? And making that a collective ask rather than pointing at a particular department or a particular individual. And I also think the other thing is probably a bit like Jeff Bezos does is taking it back to the customer or the consumer and going, could our marketing be serving our customer base?

Bennie

Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Paul 

In a better way than it is today. I think then you start having some slight different conversations. It’s like, well, that’s not pointed directly at me. And it’s also slightly more kind of broad and elevated away from the day to day that it allows me to step in without feeling admonished to start to contribute.

Bennie

Right? No, so true. And you really think about it. We get there, honestly, right? You think of the pace of change now. So, you know, when we were having those conversations 25 years ago, the pace of change was very different. So you could run similar things through four and five cycles and have a longer view of, it performing well and timing there? And the market didn’t penalize and the business rewarded that.

Paul 

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Bennie

But in our space today, there’s both a penalty on both the market and the business that happens if we’re not responsive.

Paul 

Right. Right. Yeah, no, it’s true, isn’t it? And I think that leads to the, a bit like you were talking earlier about the balance between kind of the standards and creating creativity. think the same thing is true about short and long-term in that you’re right, that the opportunity is only there for a period of time. And if you’re not agile or data-driven enough, you may lose it. But at the same time, there are some companies that optimize to the back, to the bottom of the barrel and there’s nothing left to focus on. 

Bennie 

Right, right.

Paul 

It was like we ran some activity, it didn’t work within four days. We pulled it and we stopped, we stopped it. You kind of have to commit with certain marketing that it’s there for a longer term goal of building brand affinity or kind of building kind of brand value or brand love rather than it all having to be about driving sales. But I think these

Bennie 

Right. Right. Mm-hmm.

Paul 

The industry that we’re talking about is wonderful, but it really struggles when it comes to balance. When one person argues one thing, that it’s all about sales or digital, someone else will argue the other thing. It’s all about art. It’s all about science. It’s all about data. It’s all about creative. 

Bennie

Right. Right. Right.

Paul

It’s like, how about we have some more conversations around how do these things work in harmony and how do the different tribes of people that are great in different pockets of the industry learn better to collaborate with each other so that a data scientist can work with a creative director and a copywriter can work with an AI engineer and not feel threatened or that they are in completely different fields.

Bennie 

Right. And I think, you know, I’ve always believed that’s the moment of magic, right? That’s the spark in which you’re able to balance and feed off and amplify all of those concerns, opportunities and lenses, right? Cause it’s going back into, you know, having more than one thing be true at the same time to impact your outcome and really helping us create the strategic advantage. If you know, you had mentioned AI before and we’d be remiss if we didn’t have an AI section because we’re supposed to do that, right? No, but I want to ask this question. So if we use AI to deploy, to take care of the repetitive work, the structural work, the kind of rote work, and everyone has that ability, where does your strategic advantage come in?

Paul

Yeah. Hmm.

Paul 

Yeah, I think that is a great question. think if, let’s say there’s a level playing field where everyone’s using the same AI to do all of that, then I think your strategic advantage comes from deploying strategic experiments and using the technology to actually facilitate them.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

Paul

 I guess what I mean by that is having squads of people focused at different opportunities coming up with what I would call a hypothesis or a series of hypotheses and then going to deploy them very quickly and using the technology to do that in a swifter, kind of more automated fashion. I think if those that can create cross-functional kind of squads of people that can jump on those opportunities will be the ones that can really, really succeed.

Because the industry is really bad at cross-functional, it’s really bad at collaboration. You can imagine that you could teach a model to go and do the same thing again and again quite easily. That’s not a hard thing to achieve. But can you systematically get a team of people to mobilize and coalesce about a particular challenge that AI has identified or an insight or a pocket of opportunity? And then jump on it and very quickly push back into the technology, how that should be tested with some more human kind of thought and strategic thinking.

Bennie 

I think that’s powerful way of thinking about it. Yeah, where do we have that strategic advantage? I know for many of our listeners, they’re thinking about that. Everybody’s tumping in and using the same tools, but how do we break through? When you think about what’s ahead for brands in this new year, where do you think the big opportunities are for brands to break through?

Paul

Well, look, I think it’s important to say that everything changes, but nothing changes. I’m a big proponent of technology, data, new ways of doing things digital. However, in my career, I think I’ve learned that there are certain things that stay true. 

Bennie 

Right.

Paul

And, we must remember that there are certain kind of strategic frameworks that are there for good purpose in marketing. So really thinking about kind of people, place, product, price, all of those things remain important. But if I take your question at face value, I think brands need to think about, and I wouldn’t call this brand and performance, which I think is a little overly tactical…

But how do they think about the long-term behavioral connectivity and value that they provide back to their consumer base and to society at large? And then how do they leverage data technology insight to generate kind of short-term growth, bringing those two worlds together. I think AI can begin to help us do that a bit better. I think that…

I saw another stat actually the other day that suggested that AI isn’t reducing the number of managers needing one of the business that actually they’ve gone up by two and a half to seven percent the number of managers required for this exact reason that you can identify a tool to do something or to optimize a task or a part of it, but not to not to take over the entirety of it. So I think there’s brand performance long, the long and long kind of versus short term.

Bennie

Mm-hmm.

Paul 

I think data strategies is still kind of underutilized. I think the retail market with retail media is probably leveraging that most right now. I mean, look at the size of the industry that’s been built out of suddenly realizing the data that they sat on and how valuable that is to CPGs and brands. And I think there’s a really interesting space there.

Bennie

Right.

Paul 

I think you’re going to see change on the CPG brand side in how they structure themselves to be able to work in a different way. Cause they used to, they used to just buy one used to buy and one used to sell. Now that they’re selling and buying to each other, which completely changes everything.

Bennie 

Right.

Paul

 I think the ability to launch a new product and new services, the drive towards things like how does your brand provide value back to your consumer brace and do it in a sustainable way? I think it means that we’ll see brands move into new spaces that they can potentially monetize or like Albertsons, like moving into kind of actually having the app that helps you kind of with your health and lifestyle and provides that kind of value. I think we’re going to see pockets of places where it’s no longer difficult to create a digital product.

Bennie 

Right. Right.

Paul 

Because you can code using AI or you can launch an agent very quickly to jump into a new market without needing to pay for a call center. So I hope that the AI age will also bring some innovation in new products and services that provide better value to customers rather than it all just being about efficiency in customer service and content generation and workflow.

Bennie 

I think that’s the exciting part, No one, except for you, no, no one gets excited about the efficiency in supply chain, right? No, we’re not excited about that yet. But as marketers, you know, the opportunity once again for marketing and creativity be a growth driver. Where do we fill in that sticky space in between that has us thinking about businesses that, you know, weren’t an idea 10 years ago, weren’t a possibility five years ago, but now…

Paul 

Mm-mm.

Bennie

We are empowered to be able to create that opportunity.

Paul 

I- And now I agree.

Bennie 

So, so I’m going to ask the personal question before. So I want to close on this personal question. What meal are you going to miss the most in London and what meal are you looking most forward to in Miami?

Paul 

That’s a good question. So I think I’ll miss my Sunday roast dinner, to be honest most. I mean, going to, in the winter where the months were in at the moment, where it’s a little cold, there’s a fire on, maybe gone out for a walk just before lunch, turn up at the pub, the fires on, blazing. There’s roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and lashings of gravy and vegetables and roast potatoes sat there and the dogs asleep under the table. I think I’m going to miss that. I think that’s a very British experience.

Bennie 

Yeah. My goodness. It is and I feel warm and I feel like a roast is a nice hug right there for me. Yes. Okay. I got that.

Paul 

It is. It is a nice hug. look, I think I’ve got like, I haven’t really tasted much Cuban food. So I hear there are some pretty spectacular Cuban restaurants in Miami. So I look forward to trying some of those.

Bennie

I, and I am open for recommendations with you, my friend. 

Paul 

Brilliant. I will come your way, sir. 

Bennie

So we will continue this conversation over, over incredible Cuban food in Miami and Justin. Incredible space in there.

Paul

I look forward to that.

Bennie 

Thank you, my friend for joining us, you know, to really talk about this nexus of balance of change and change balance of creativity and innovation balance of self and team. And really how we think about the world around you. 

Thank you for being such a thoughtful leader and strategist. It’s been a pleasure to have this conversation. And I thank you all for joining us for this episode of AMAs Marketing And. Once again, I’m your host, Bennie F. Johnson, and we invite you to explore the AMA as we look at things in skills development, frameworks, ways to build both the discipline and the creativity and ultimately the magic of marketing. Paul, my friend, thank you for joining us.

Paul 

Thank you, I absolutely loved it. Thank you, Bennie.