Transcript

Bennie F Johnson 

Hello, and thank you for joining us for this very special episode of AMA’s Marketing And. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F. Johnson. 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 hope to introduce you to visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know.

Through our thought-provoking conversations, we’ll unravel the challenges, triumphs, and private moments that have been shaped by marketing. Today, on our Purpose episode, my very special guest is none other than Lola Bakri. Lola is an Anthem Award-winning CMO advisor and inclusive marketing specialist. She is founder of BCO, a boutique consultancy, that empowers brands and marketing leaders with strategic guidance, coaching, training, and workshops that unleash levels of success. Her experience is a wealth of marketing leadership roles at companies and organizations that we know, like PepsiCo, The New World Pasta, Diageo, and other companies. She has an incredibly uniquely empathetic approach when it comes to strategy and marketing. Today, I’d to welcome to our podcast, Lola.

Lola Bakare

Thank you so much, Bennie. I just love that introduction. It was so thoughtful. I appreciate it. I’m so, so happy to be here.

Bennie

My goodness, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you being here. And it’s so fitting to have you here as a part of our series and season on purpose. I know, purpose is definitely it’s had a moment. But, you know, one of the things that I love in this moment is leaders who’ve been able to dig into what’s the real story strategic approach. And value in purpose. And that’s something you’ve been able to do not only in your work, but also in the new book that you released, Responsible Marketing.

Lola 

Yes. Thank you. And I mean, it’s all the same. Like I’ve come to this point in my career right now where the work and the quote unquote, everyone’s favorite hybrid of words, thought leadership around my writing has become part and parcel of, of how I generate revenue, you know, going on speaking engagements and last week speaking with the hottest pharma company, which has the two hottest products. won’t say the name because it’s a confidential engagement, you know, the few hottest pharma products out there right now that are owned by the same brand. It was that company and talk to them about responsible marketing, like, right? That strategy. So yeah, it feels really good for the work to kind of becoming into this place where it really is that one thing.

Bennie 

Right. We know them. Right, right. Right. So, you know, I’m going to delve into your background first, right? We’ll talk about the book a little later, but it’s just interesting when you talked about these spaces combining. Now, tell me a bit about, you know, Lola becoming a marketing leader. What were those early thoughts?

Lola 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It was an early dive in head first, not knowing how to swim because how cool, I didn’t even know this existed and now they want to hire me. That was literally my beginning. So I was an English major at Penn. A typical, know, boarding school kid, not career driven at all, but super activity driven, you know, I’m in this club, I’m in that club doing that activity, I’m writing this column. 

And then after I graduate, I’m just gonna move to New York and like do awesome stuff like everybody else. Like, I don’t know, whatever, like get an awesome job and we’ll figure that out when we graduate. That was my mindset.

Bennie

I love that kind of fearlessness of we’re going to figure it out when we get there.

Lola

Fearlessness, privilege, naivete, all of it put together, sure, yes. But that was everyone who was around. That was the liberal arts major circa early 2000s. We hadn’t had the big recession yet. We hadn’t had a lot of the things, the AI shift as far as entry-level jobs.

Bennie 

Yes. So. Right.

Lola 

You could still move to New York and be poor for a few years and do something cool and start your career that way. Back then, if you will. However, I tend to make friends all over. And I’ll never forget, one of my friends was not so, she was more like, I’m a history major, but we gotta get these jobs. We’re going over to Wilton and we’re gonna apply for those jobs. I’m like, we are? She’s like, yeah, and don’t worry, Lola, there’s a cocktail party with every job you apply to. I was like, okay.

So I go to the Gatorade Quaker Tropicana, that office, the PepsiCo Chicago cocktail party, and there’s a presentation about what brand marketing is and how they’re hiring, you know, one or two undergrads to be a part of their MBA training class. And that night, that was when my world opened up. I was like, I want to do this. This looks like fun. This looks like me. Like storytelling, first of all, moving to a cool city, being around a brand that’s advertisements make me want to cry every time I watch them. And I didn’t even know I was going to get placed on Gatorade then that was just sheer dumb luck. But like, yeah, why would, like this just seems cool. And I didn’t even know what marketing was. So I literally asked a friend how I should prepare for the interview. It was in Wharton.

And he said, here’s the five P’s, this is all you need to know. And then just like, just answer the questions logically. And I ended up being one of the two people of everyone, including all the Wharton marketing students who got a job offer that year.

Bennie

Wow, it’s amazing when we all have these stories, not just when we find marketing, but we find marketing within ourselves, right? Right.

Lola 

Yes, because it was there. I was always the one galvanizing people to think away or do a thing. As an English major, that’s you persuading whoever, that audience of your papers, to understand an argument. And then you’re giving the backup, the data essentially. May not have been numbers then, but there’s still data to substantiate your point. Like I understood that way of… Being so intuitively and then just as someone who’d always been like heavy on brands, which again, I didn’t know. I never made this connection before your show, Benny, the one I’m about to make. I’m gonna go there, wow. So I was a boarding school kid. I went to Lawrenceville school in New Jersey and I was Stanley house president, which is a big deal because everyone knows it’s the superior girl’s house at Lawrenceville. Everyone listening to Lawrenceville will know.

Like it’s just three other houses, but Stanley is the best one forever. And so I took that so seriously. And that was just always me. Like if I was doing a thing, I was gonna be the one championing the thing. Making it a better thing by me being there. And just really getting into it. Like I would never, my way of living is that I never wanna go through or be a part of anything for any particular moment, even quite frankly, even this show, I wanna leave it better than I found it through my involvement. So it’s never like, let’s just get through this. It’s like, how do we put our all into it? That’s just how I’m wired. I don’t know if it’s a Nigerian first gen thing or just in my DNA or just how lucky I was lucky to be wired, but it definitely fits the mindset of a brand marketer.

Bennie 

Right, and it fits the mindset of an impact-driven progressive brand marketer as well, right? When you think about it, if you promote products that destroy your audience, you have no audience for your product.

Lola 

Very much so.

Bennie 

You know, so let’s talk about, yeah, right.

Lola 

And I’ve been there too, and then that’s very demoralizing. I’ve been in a job where my job was to market alcoholic sugar water to people in corner store as an alternative to 40 ounce beer.

Like that was, and of course that was the multicultural project they put the only black intern on.

Bennie 

So talk a bit about that in terms of, you know, I had a chance once to speak to our collegiate group and it was 2000 of the most dynamic young marketing students. And I tell people all the time that adjectives and descriptions matter. And I used to always say future leaders, but when I spent time with the students, you have to drop future off that list.

Lola

Yes.

Bennie

And call leaders in the space in there. Remember having the conversation about early career and choices and having those spaces and being blown away how empowered and purpose driven they were that they didn’t have to make some of the choices that we had to make early on in marketing. We all have products and campaigns that we went on that were at the time we started marketing. This is what you had to work on.

Lola 

Yes. You’re still, yeah. It’s just, it’s… 

Bennie

Yeah, versus now, to your point, being able to be more proactive in making decisions as to the work you do and how you do the work.

Lola 

Yes, and that does give me a little bit of pause though. I see the right balance of somewhere in the middle. I’m so glad we’re talking about this because anybody who has early career marketing aspirants in their life was listening. I want them to send this to them. Here’s my advice. You’ve got to find the middle between the two guardrails in your early career.

Because again, and you’ll find if you read the book, like I am very objective driven. Every project I work on, every initiative I start, everything I think about is turned on. What do we want to accomplish? And that early career marketing aspirin job is to set themselves up for long-term success. So what does that mean? Learning the trade, learning the craft, learning from the smartest people.

So that doesn’t necessarily need to be, I think when you’re 21, 22, 23, on the brand that feels most aligned with you as a human. Like that, now, of course, if it feels so misaligned that you don’t feel good showing up, that’s not going to work. But like, it doesn’t have to be the perfect favorite brand to be the right training space.

Bennie 

I think that’s a great example, right? We’re not talking about a one-to-one fit, right? This is different than doing something that you feel morally or ethically opposed to versus can I have a playground to learn and build and grow that’s gonna push me in other ways, right? That then gives you an account.

Lola 

No, never! Exactly. And then I want the tools to like, whether I want to go create the thing I think needs to exist in the world, or work on that thing because I’m the best of the best and they’re gonna hire me, I’ll be ready.

Bennie 

I love that notion of, I’m going to do the work, so I’ll be ready to do the space, so I’ll be ready in there. When you think about your book, you didn’t just write a book on responsible marketing. In general, this is a guide and a strategy formation for people to read and walk through. How does this show up effectively in your lives and career?

Lola 

Yes. Absolutely, I mean, it was such a labor of love. It was such a journey to get to a point where I was writing it. And it was such a combination of grit and climbing, and then also just like manifesting, and then the universe just gifting me the opportunity. All of those things going on at once.

That I just, it really swells my heart to think about the process because I couldn’t have controlled it, but also it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t go so hard after what I wanted. So that kind of the origin story that’s interesting to hear and then I think will be instructive for people who, cause people ask me all the time, how did you like to come to a place where you knew what you wanted put in the world? And I’m like, hold up. I was like in my mid thirties when this all started crystallizing, like the book launched, Toni Morrison was kind of my spirit guide on this. Now, her first book came out when she was 39. I missed 39. I hit 40. I was 40 when it finally came out. I was crafting it for two years prior to that. So this is not like something that like I, this was a long journey of getting to the point where

I was ready to put this thing into the world and it took a lot of mid-career self-examination, investing in guidance and coaching. Halfway through my journey as an independent consultant, post my corporate jobs of like, like that my marketing career has been almost in two chunks, my corporate jobs on the brand side and then going into.

Bennie 

I was gonna ask you about that, kind of that breakthrough, right? Because you were at big story brands and then having this seismic shift as an independent.

Lola

Yeah. It was so interesting because I never expected it to go on for as long as it has. It just kept working every year and it’s been working every year better than the year before. So I just keep working it. Now, every so often I’ll get tapped to go apply for a job. I think I’ve applied for maybe three interesting jobs in like the last, quite frankly, like seriously pursued potentially considering going in house again.

Last decade, right? And I think I’ll continue to do that. Like if the right thing crosses my desk, that’s still a consideration, but my impact has become so much more self-actualized as an independent. And it just also was during this magical time where so much more collaborative work became possible. So it just, so I’ve been kind of running with it and I didn’t realize this, but again, that getting ready. Part of why I’m able to do what I do is because I put so much blood, sweat and tears and effort into building my network since I was a teenager. Like connect with everyone on LinkedIn, follow up with everyone. Lola knows everyone, knows everyone. And not just know, like really relate to. I’m just gonna ask them for something, but like bring everybody into your camp. Like that’s just who I’ve always been. And so, doing that and having a tool like LinkedIn to systematize that allowed me to be visible even when I was in a company of one and it does to this day. And so that’s part of the magic of it. It’s just like this convergence of tools and opportunity and then native skills to sort of be able to join a team, whether I’m there for a day or whether I’m there for three months or whether I’m there with my longest term client is like a big

Bennie 

Right. Right, which is root?

Lola 

Know, behemoth and real estate, which people wouldn’t expect. but they own pretty much all of Orange County. won’t say more because again, they’re private, but if you know real estate, you’ll know I’m talking about. I’ve been with them since the beginning because one of my mentors went to become CMO of their office division. And even after she’s left, I’ve stayed with all of their divisions because you know, we meld well, they’re a great client. They’re great to me. I’m great to them.

And so that also is very sustaining to have an anchor point who kind of is like, as much work as you need, we got it all the time. So there’s all those things that kind of work in the way that I have developed my sort of approach to independent consulting. But I knew in the middle of it, when I was just kind of taking whatever project I could get, even if it’s super lucrative, like I did start to feel like I didn’t have a direction. Like what is Lola about? Like, why do you call her? And it started like, well, she’s a fixer. Like she can help you solve problems as a CMO or a marketing leader. Like if your team needs a direction on a thing, she’ll help you fix it and sort through it. And that’s all still true. But I did start to notice that there’s this other thing that I care about, which is the intersection of social impact and commercial impact. Because I’ve always seen it. And I’ve always seen how we under utilize its power. Since the very beginning of my marketing career. I mean, it’s all of the same sorts of like, uh-oh moments that happen, that still happen. And how those could have been easily avoided. I’ve seen that since day one, there was a… If anyone knows back to like literally six Gatorade, there was an incident that happened with a milkman ad and that’s all I’ll say. And it wasn’t that big of a faux pas and we didn’t have all the social media dramas that we do now. So it just kind of blew over, but like I, in my head it was like, this would have been so easy to not do it that way. Like it’s, I’ve always seen that. And also, okay, when you get it right, like you get the wins.

Bennie 

Right.

Lola

It’s just so obvious the connection point. So why can’t we engineer this into something that’s a system people can learn? At the same time, I was trying to do all my coaching to like crystallize and productize my consulting mission. I realized that that was part of it. Then boom, 2020 happens in the middle of that searching for a narrative moment. And it all just came together. Cause it was like, now I have, it’s people who want to learn what I have to teach and are begging for it. So I’m going to just go.

Bennie 

So I’m gonna ask this question. I know you are a fan of words and stories, and I’m listening to you tell the kind of back and forth consideration between in-house and what you do today. And you had one word, you described it, you said, if it were interesting. And it struck me for that space in there because I think the word stays static and stays the same, but your view.

Of what’s interesting for you evolves. So what if you think about it today, what would have to be interesting for you to pivot for where you are now? I thought it was so interesting the way your language was it was like.

Lola 

Yes. And then, Bennie films the pre-job interview. Bennie’s pitching me out today, I like this. No, that’s an interesting question. And I love it because I know the answer in a nutshell. It is someone who wants me to do the job, all of me. They don’t want a shrunken version of Lola or a quieter version or a less convicted version.

Or a less anything version, like they want the fullest version. And I know that those opportunities exist because I see other people are in them. And when you get it an opportunity that wants the fullest version of yourself, because it knows, again, this is what responsible marketing is, right? You know that if you are going to do the right thing, you’re going to get the best out of it for all of your stakeholders, for all of your metrics.

And doing the right thing, obviously, is letting someone be their full self. You take away all the distractions of having to code switch or shrink or conform to certain norms and you’re allowed to be your most sort of impactful. If that involves a little bit of eccentricism, which honestly, I think if you look across every single C-suite, I don’t know who’s not a little bit eccentric.

Because most often people who have that kind of drive and love their work that much are not necessarily quote unquote like everybody else, like normal, whatever you want to call it. It’s different.

Bennie

We’re, we’re, we’re, we’re kind of built different. It’s a different, it’s, it is. And you, you sense that when you connect, you know, we talk about that of having that kindred connection on spaces in there across space and time products and brand. You find like, these are my marketing people. These are my CEO people, right?

Lola 

Yes. These are my people. And I felt that, that bigness in my impact and the way I show up from day one. So what can be challenging for someone experiencing the early to, you know, early mid side of their career with that level of bigness to their personality?

People don’t always dry with it because they’re kind of like,

Bennie 

Well, it’s interesting again, using our phrase there, that we have a quest to win for brands. We have a quest to win in business. And really being authentic and responsible marketing is a direct pathway to win. And we ask ourselves that question with the brands, do you want to win or not? I remember working with an agency and they wanted, you know, they wanted the attention that Nike had.

Lola 

Always.

Bennie

But when you sat down and talked to them, they weren’t willing to take on the risk that brands like Nike would take. And it’s like, do you want to win or not? Right?

Lola 

And if that’s how you win calculated risk. The thing is, and I write about this in the book, businesses know this at some, and in some function of every business, this is known and acted upon. Anybody with an R and D department, anybody with an innovation practice, anybody who’s a startup in any way, or form understands the appetite for risk. The problem becomes when the appetite for risk isn’t understood across all functions as necessary. And so for people who don’t understand marketing and weren’t trained to see it as the hub in the middle of the spokes that drives the wheel, which is classic brand marketers, we all know. Like if your marketer isn’t at some level driving your P and L or in ideally has responsibility for it, right. Then something’s broken. This is not just the person who makes you creative. That’s one of the things. This is a person who’s driving your business fundamentally if they’re doing it right and if you’re letting them do it right. So that has to have the same appetite for risk as any other key business function in that it’s willing to place big bets, mitigate the risk of them and

Bennie

Right, right.

Lola 

You know, win and lose accordingly, but when the wins happen, they happen big.

Bennie 

Right. It’s so interesting in that conversation. I’ve been having a lot of conversations this last month about this notion of playing to win versus playing not to lose. And understanding that in teams and conversations, and we see it, right? You see a space in there and you’ll have half of your enterprise, typically the marketing leaning space is a part of that, aiming for the big wins, aiming for the, we’re going to go big in other parts of the business.

Lola 

Woo! Yes. Mm-hmm.

Bennie 

Pulling back and just being okay.

Lola 

Yep. And I mean, then naturally that tension should exist between certain functions. Like, you know, I expect most CFOs to be a little bit more conservative on their appetite for risk as far as being the decision maker that has to allocate all of the money, right? So you are gonna take, but it’s sort of like, which ones am I taking? Like, it’s the ones where they can prove to me that I might have a shot. And so if I, if I, if a marketer can’t make that argument, then. You know, it’s gotta, it’s gotta still be compelling. But like, if there’s, if there’s no appetite within that marketing department for the most, um, logical risk that is based on your understanding of the environment you’re in, the customer you serve.

Bennie 

Right? Right.

Lola

And your opportunities to grow that pie. Like that’s usually the goal, right? How do you build market share? Whatever your goal is, it has to be within a cultural context to make sense. And where I’m getting at, Bennie, is that what I think you and I both see is that that appetite for risk seems to shift based on how one is personally situated in a cultural context and a societal belief. That’s not where it falls apart, especially we’re seeing this right now. It’s not always grounded in the reality of the consumers that you serve, especially if they’re of a different generation than you.

Bennie 

Right, right, right. And many times, when we have that kind of dichotomy in the space or the different viewpoints, you come to this point where you have to realize that all risks are not risky. And that’s the space. you spoke to this. As we market and handle businesses or teams across four generations at any given time, there’s some things that we know that are going to work.

Lola 

Exactly.

Bennie 

For your marketing for the two younger generations that will be unheard of for the two older generations and vice versa.

Lola 

Exactly. And it’s like, how do you find the ones that achieve the goal for everybody that you care about? And this is what I wanted to create a solution for. And I think that I have in a way that I’ve never presented it and I haven’t gotten, I’m not gonna lie, just quite frankly, ooze and Oz. Because one of the things that’s magical about my book is it’s not just of me. Like, again, I build camps. So I am really proud to say that as far as I have been able to research, and you know I have a lot of books and I’m a big reader and I’m a little…

I look through and look for everything. This is the most diversely sourced in every way imaginable marketing book in the canon that’s ever been created. I’ve not found one that even comes close to the level of diverse, whether, and any aspect of diversity you can think of. You know, I could list them and I’m not going to because everyone knows what I’m talking about.

Most marketing books you pick up, it’s going to be white men and maybe a few white women as the sources. I set out to do something vastly different than that. And a few of my colleagues in the current thought leadership space, like Dr. Anastasia Gabriel, like Dr. Marcus Collins, like my competitors I was already friends with. And they were doing different work as PhDs. than me as a non-PhD who’s literally giving voice to people who are doing the work. So there was a lot more lending of voice in my book just naturally based on what I was set up to do. And when I say competitors, I mean, they’re the only ones who would have the diverse level of sourcing that would even come close to what I was trying to do. And so that makes it really special because it’s sort of like, it’s automatically mitigating of risk to have that many viewpoints, right? I mean, this is, if you wanna talk about evolution, American Eagle Outfitters, like this is the way we actually need to be thinking about it. Diversity is what creates success evolutionarily, not sameness. Hello, did anybody listen when Darwin was actually talking? Some people kind of listened and then they took away a lesson that was actually not what he was saying.

Bennie 

Right. You know. People get cliff notes and out of context, right? And it comes to space near.

Lola 

Yeah, I mean, they forgot that Darwin and, you know, World War II Germany leadership were two different things. That’s what we won’t get into that. But I get a little annoyed when people conflate the two because I’m like, no, no. One actually in the theory stated that diversity is the thing that creates success.

Bennie

Yes. what I love is you as a classic marketer, you immediately establish a competition set. That’s not competitive set. But reality is, I think to your point, I see it as, and you experience it as a continuation of this robust conversation. Both have been guest on our podcast. It is kind of this conversation that…

Lola 

Obviously.

Lola 

Because I’m reading my book too. And they’re my good friends. Like, yeah, it’s like, it’s sort of like, but we were, we were, the work is the same and that it’s achieving this goal. And I love that, but in such novel ways and my way, you know, getting back to that was like, let me gather as much of the camp as I can and use their thinking to create some very simple frameworks of decision-making for people. One of those, and this is again, like when I say the thing that mitigates risk is this, goal of doing four things in a real way. And if you achieve these four things, all of, or at least one of in any given marketing initiative that you feel might be risky, you de-risk it. So you solve a real problem. You create real opportunity. You tell real stories.

Bennie 

Right. Right. Okay, yes. Yes? Yes?

Lola 

And or you influence real policy. Those are the things that are gonna get you buy-in even if it feels risky because people know that real people are getting impacted. And that’s what matters to people across the board.

Bennie 

Hmm. Which, which…Right. It really does. And impact is what keeps us moving forward. Right. Right.

Lola 

Yes, exactly. Exactly. I mean, that’s so that’s the, so that’s one key framework and each of those things solve your problems is like, that’s a chapter of the book. The flywheel framework that I created is very simple. goes from social impact to reputation impact to commercial impact. And then commercial impact unlocks more social impact, unlocks more reputation impact, unlocks more commercial impact. And so that’s the, that’s sort of like the engine that drives this sort of four real things ways of making decisions, right? You have to do each of those things in a way that possibly in fact impacts the next and when you do we move beyond the performative and You know and it’s funny one of the first times I presented this even before I’d finished writing the book it was with dr Marcus Collins and he brought in a word that he uses in his book that I love using now when I talk about it, which is it shows conviction. He talks about being convicted. That’s the unlocker of trust. So you can de-risk or decide against a thing if it’s not going to achieve the things we just talked about. And if you maximize the extent to which a thing achieves one or more of those, you get there.

Bennie

Right. Right.

Lola 

MasterCard True Name is my favorite example. Hands down. You’re aware of that. mean, if you haven’t heard about it, you must be living under a rock, but I’ll tell you, it was this very powerful catalyst level, and that’s another of the frameworks, industry shifting work that came out of MasterCard where now,

Bennie

Okay. Yeah, tell our audience about that a bit.

Lola

Somebody who is transgender and non-binary can change the name on their credit card without the bureaucracy for it to be there.

Like that is what I love about that is it’s something that only that brand could do because it had the combination of the willingness to risk and the brand relevancy, quite frankly. Like, when they came to me, they knew that. So sincere.

Bennie

Right, right. And the insight, right? Because that is a sincere insight to know that here is a real world challenge that may be a small thing, right? It’s a small action, but has such outweighed impact.

Lola 

Exactly.

Impact. Such impact. This literally keeps people safe. That’s how deep the research goes. There can be violence issues at the point of sale if someone’s confronted with somebody who has a mindset that isn’t accepting to who they are.

Bennie

Right. Think about the gates that enter in terms of legality. Like I can think of times that with my own credit card, with my own name and my own ID, in sense of that, that you get, this, are you real? Is this fraud? And escalating, you know, I don’t want to imagine, I don’t want to imagine that fear, right? Right.

Lola 

Yep. Yes. So imagine, how demoralizing that can be to you as a human, this thing you have to use every day, like is a reminder of how dehumanizing so many of our life experiences have been. It’s just such, it’s that fundamental, it’s a depth of consumer intimacy and achieving and

Bennie 

So true.

Lola 

An understanding of an insight that you can impact that didn’t just change the way they show up. It changed the way the bank show up. It changed everybody, the way everybody shows up, everybody bought in after they initiated the thing. And that’s powerful. So when I think about purpose-driven marketing or call it responsible marketing or inclusive marketing, whatever term you want to use, this is not about necessarily doing something moral or doing something for every historically excluded or culturally relevant social group because people, other people are, it’s sort of like, where can you play to win, to use your term? You find that spot and you exploit it.

Bennie

Right, right. And whereas this is, to your point, take everything else around Wayside. This is good business. Caring about your customer set going back before. If you cease to take care of your customers, you cease to have customers, right? This is saying, here is a segment in which we see the insight that our work can make a difference. And I think that a customer that has the ability to change their name…Is probably a customer for a lot longer than if they did.

Lola 

Yes. And then look at how it impacted just the two of us talking here. Like I became a more interested aspect of MasterCard. Someone who looked at their brand a different way as a potential and current customer in so many different ways. But someone, they built a level of brand preference with me who that…Will never be a problem to solve for me. But my empathy for my fellow humans, like you can actually build brand equity outside of just the problem solving set. That’s the beauty of this sort of work because as human beings, no matter how much you wanna argue with each other, at the end of the day, when we look each other in the eye, we care how each other are. Nobody can tell me anything different. That’s how we’re set up. We are tribal people.

Bennie 

Right, right.

Lola 

And yes, we fight and yes, we disagree. But when we see another human suffering, we want to alleviate that suffering.

Bennie

Right. And it would come up in this case up close and personal in our every day. We all see that. And I think it’s powerful for a brand to have in this space because we know no decision is made in a vacuum and no decision in these big brands are made by itself. That had to be a chain of conviction from the idea and the insight to the execution and implementation to the elevation within the executive format to stand by this product solution and opportunity.

Lola

Yes. Absolutely. And then you see how it mitigates the risks that might keep other people from thinking this big, right? If this were a purely creative campaign, you would have the arguments of, well, who’s it gonna alienate? And then we get these weird arguments about, what about people who hate these people we wanna show in our creative? What about them? And it’s like, why are we worried about what people who hate other humans think? But okay, fine, if that’s where you are, sure.

But this answers those folks, I don’t really care because this solves a problem that’s good for our business. So when you get unemotional about it, even if you’re not emotional about it, even if you’re emotional in the wrong ways about it, it’s a win. So you have to get on board. That silences the haters, if you will, because it’s real.

Bennie 

Right. Right. Right. And it moves the brand and the bottom line forward. Which is part of this conversation, right? With the tension that you talked about before, two things can be true in this moment in this space in there. You can have the critical insights.

Lola 

All the things you care about.

The most, yes, Bennie, the most frustrating conversation that happens in our industry is why are we so worried about purpose when we really need to focus on the business?

Bennie

You know what’s interesting and I was having this conversation as well when you get to the heart of most brands especially brands that have been around for a minute in particular most big brands of space in there They often all start with a human purpose. They’re making something better. They’re solving some solution even in a very intimate way. We see the big representation of the brand today but at its heart, when we get down to the core of brands, they tend to talk about some type of innovation, some type of creative intervention, that at its heart was making things better for their neighbors.

Lola 

Literally from legacy, first CPGs ever, Unilever and Procter & Gamble? Soap. Why soap? So you don’t die.

Bennie 

Yep. Yep. Exactly. Public health intervention.

Lola 

So I laugh when people say, this newfangled thing about businesses having to care. I’m like, huh? Banking. So you don’t lose your money. So you can grow it.

Bennie

Yep. I had as a part of my career, sounds who listen, no, I was head of strategy and chief marketing officer for the better business bureau started to help protect that so that you didn’t drink products and die. Cause that was happening so that you didn’t have it. was this intervention that businesses connected together because good actors together can overcome bad actors in a marketplace. That’s been the thought for a hundred years.

Lola 

Before we had social media, we needed the Better Business Bureau. Who else was gonna tell you?

Bennie

What was happening, how to protect you, your parents, your family, your investment, but also how to model as you grow your business. These are the practices I should have and go on. So we think about truth and advertising. Important.

Lola 

Exactly. It’s all of it. And I mean, it’s not, it’s not different when we get to the modern age of technology driven startups. Like you mean to tell me Salesforce wasn’t founded with a purpose driven mission?

Like that, like making the sales processes of a business more systemized and repeatable, understandable, know, scalable. Like this is all at end of the day to achieve a goal of something that’s good for people. So if we fundamentally can understand that, then we can see where, if we’re willing to focus on what our consumers set really cares about, who our historical debts are to based on our industry and our brand. That’s a term I really love. It’s kind of like looking back to see who can I pay back? That’s a good way to isolate your like MasterCard true name moment. Then you start to see these big opportunities that were always just sitting there. Like how weird should we all feel that flesh toned beyond white beyond beige band-aids are a thing of the 2020s.

Bennie

Exactly.

Lola 

Like we waited way too long. I mean, it answers all of the questions any consumer goods marketer cares about. I instantly get more shelf space for my stuff.

Literally, like it just all of the reasons why you make a new thing, that new thing should have existed for a long time before, but our biases hold us back from seeing the logic.

Bennie 

Do you realize that we had cartoon band-aids before you had band-aids that replicated your skin? You were more likely to get Mickey Mouse on your band-aid than a band-aid that matched your skin.

Lola

We did. Absolutely. And like, that’s not logical. That’s not, the fact that Fenty, it took Fenty existing for all of the other makeup brands to realize that they had to start to play ball with people who are my skin shade and darker. It took Fenty making billions for them to realize that there were also billions in it for them is disgusting. Not even from a moral standpoint, from a business standpoint. Yes, it disgusts me as a human being and a Black woman, but even more so it disgusts me as a capitalist.

Bennie

Speak about that. I’m smiling because I always talk about us having multiple identities and kind of the conversations and embracing that space in there and being in there and how these things will separate the space in there. And I love that in this moment, you proclaimed proudly that you’re a capitalist, that that’s a part of it, that that’s not inconsistent with all the other things you are as well.

Lola 

No, I really don’t believe so. Now, do I believe that capitalism is the perfect economic system? I don’t know, but it’s the only one I’ve ever lived in and it’s the one I’m going to die in. So I’ve accepted it. And so my goal is to use it to its best advantage. I mean, and I quote the father, of that economic system in my book, right? Like we go back to like history, okay? And so when you think about… Self-interest and how that can impact the collective interest if it’s truly served. Things start to get a little bit more interesting. How is my self-interest connected to the collective interest in ways that I didn’t even realize because I was too biased to see beyond sort of like the boundaries of the narratives that I’m told. But who am I told those narratives by?

The people who want to control what we all do. So yes, being disruptive as far as how can we think about our collective gain as humans as part of how we’re also pursuing our individual goals as, you know, families or people, that gets a little bit more interesting when you start to listen and think for yourself.

Bennie 

Well, my friend, I’m going to ask you this question. I hadn’t planned on it, but it’s something that’s been we talked about what’s top of mind. And so I’ve been thinking of this notion of acceleration and travel in time, acceleration to the future. So I’m going to ask you this question. What does marketing look like in 2030?

Which at one point in time that seems so far away, even sounds far when I say it. But from this recording, we’re five years away. are in the past, if we look backwards in travel, it was the start of pandemic was just five years away. So what does five years when we think about acceleration, right? What does responsible marketing look like in the future? And then this future where I struggle with this question, this equation, which keeps me excited about the work we do and the conversations we have. If I acknowledge that the future of business is changing and the future of work is changing, by definition, the future of the profession and the professional is changing. And so I’m curious your thoughts of what does this quick acceleration look like? You know, we’re going to have an audience. I see that.

Lola 

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Bennie 

There was some data that came out the other day and I thought about how mind blowing it was that the rates of adult alcohol consumption have dropped so much in the US, it’s prohibition level. There’s an entire industry, you know, I smile as historically a non-drinker so it made me smile in that kind of conversation. I was like, look, the world has come to me. But to look at that.

Lola 

I saw that too. So I was like, what’s gonna happen? We know what’s gonna happen. Diageo is gonna start making CBD mocktails. If they haven’t already. I should know what have. The market changes and we follow the market. The market changes and we follow the money. So what does that following the market and following the money look like in 2030? Gosh, you know, I’m so comfortable with change that I don’t even tend to think that much about.

Bennie

The market changes.

Lola

The long future because I’m ready for it, whatever it is. But if I had to think about the things that are gonna be fundamentally different, I think how we staff and lead teams is going to be so much more swift and fractional, so much more open to different models of what it looks like to call someone your teammate. I’m seeing it in my career, like, it shouldn’t take six months to onboard a new partner or vendor and we’re getting to even new models of, you know, fixing those broken, the word. I was with the team who leads this last week. It’s the P word. my goodness. I am totally blanking on the word for the people who handle the contracts.

Bennie

Procurement.

Lola 

Yes, thank you. Literally I was with a procurement team last week and just left my head. Yeah. Thank you. I love it. So the way that those sorts of older school archaic systems that hold us back from moving faster are gonna work, I think is changing and will continue to change to accommodate a future where you can bring in someone that you need.

For a month or two months or three months for a particular project fast. And I think that as career driven marketers, we’re all going to have a hybrid between the sort of brands that we steward from an FTE basis, if that’s what we’re doing in our careers and our individual profile of here’s the value I as a leader create and I can create it anywhere.

And they were gonna continue to see more sort of like hybridizing of the two. Like right now you see a lot of CMOs that have their own very lucrative speaking careers on the side. I think that kind of fluidity is gonna continue to develop. Because the creator economy is one of the things that’s also forcing that, right? Like we’re starting to see that people can exist in more than one swim lane and also maybe people are their best when they do. So if I let my CMO go out and do their thing and be a speaker and if I let a creator be in the room when we’re crafting strategy, again, I’m diversifying the inputs and I’m getting to that evolution.

Bennie

Right. I think it’s so true. had one of our guests in one of our earlier seasons, Radhika, who’s CMO of Major League Soccer. I’ll never forget. She told me she teaches at your alma mater at NYU Stern, and she’s the CMO of Major League Soccer. And she talked about the fact that her practice as a for-profit CMO, right, informs her teaching. And her practice as a teacher informs her work as a CMO.

Lola 

Absolutely.

Bennie 

And there’s not a distinction between them. They’re productive and generative to the leader that she is.

Lola

Absolutely, absolutely. She’s worth more to her brand as a teacher, 100%. I’m worth more to my consulting clients as someone who’s involved in thought leadership as a writer, 1000%. Even when the topics don’t always overlap, it’s the mindset. It’s the expansiveness, it’s the flexibility, it’s the lack of rigidity and the lack of, if I didn’t say this word, fragility, because that’s one of the things that like, when you’re fragile, when you’re too worried about breaking, you can’t bend, you can’t expand as a leader, as a leadership, as a team that’s ready for new ideas. That’s when you start to see those behaviors that limit innovation, because people are just so worried about their own stuff.

Bennie 

Which is playing not to lose, you know?

Lola 

That’s playing not to lose. And that is not about winning. And that’s what 2030 is gonna be about winning. I think it’s gonna be a lot more logical too. I think we’re gonna have gotten over, no, I’m gonna speak it into existence. I know we’re going to have gotten over what I call the Maga American era, where we convince ourselves that the things that a few people think are the things that most people think.

Bennie

About winning.

Lola 

Even when we know that’s not the case. Even when some of those people happen to hold immense power at the moment.

Bennie

Right. Right.

Lola 

You know, we need to disabuse ourselves of any notion that fringe ideas and mainstream ideas can’t coalesce in a way that can confuse the mind if you’re not being smart about where you’re looking for information. And where you nurture your stable definition of the word truth.

Don’t trust someone who would have you add syllables to create a phrase called alternative facts to obfuscate the reality of truth. It’s a red flag for me. At that moment I was like, I don’t know about these folks. And it’s not about Republicans. Gosh, I miss Republicans. Love me a Republican now. I’m like, George Bush, where you at? But, but, but Maga Americans, that’s not related to anything that’s good for our soul. And so that’s not about long-term impact and that’s not about collective benefit. So I don’t subscribe to anything along those lines. It’s not even a capitalist system because it’s not designed to serve anyone but a few individuals and not those who are the greatest. Sorry to go on a tangent, but in any true capitalist system, we allow the cream to rise to the top. Mediocre people don’t get to control where the cream stops rising in a true capitalist system, not the kind of Adam Smith would have had us create.

A true capitalist system has to control for stymieing opportunity so that the best ideas can come to the top, wherever they’re from. So whatever this is, I’m not familiar with it. And I think it’ll be gone by 2030.

Bennie 

And I think that’s a wonderful way, my friend, to close out our podcast. I am so thankful for that reception that got you to walk into marketing all those years ago that realized that allowed you to realize that marketing was in you. I never thought that in our purpose series, we’d have a conversation that talked about capitalism and such depth and creativity and space. And so those who are listening to this are going to have a ball when we talk about why purpose is important. And so my friend Lola, I appreciate you being here on purpose and with intention. Appreciate the work that you’ve done. I encourage all who are listening to check out Responsible Marketing, how to create an authentic and inclusive marketing strategy. I will tell you that I have it on my desk in my office in Chicago and here at home. I want to encourage you to be a part of these conversations in your own career and space that these things can be true at the same time. That building good business, as we’ve learned, is about responsible marketing. Building impact is about responsible marketing. Lola, I thank you for Plan to Win 2030, and I thank you all for joining us for this episode of AMA’s Marketing And. Thank you.

Lola 

What a magical way to end. Thank you, Bennie.