Behind Latin America's $90 Billion Marketing Success with Sean Summers (Mercado Libre)

If you were a chief marketing officer in consumer products, I want you to think about something for a moment. You have creative that works. You have campaigns that capture attention. But somewhere between that moment and the register, the signal gets lost. You cannot see what actually drove the sale. You are making optimization decisions on inference, not truth. Well, that changed in February. Infillion acquired Catalina. Four decades of deterministic purchase intelligence, 130 million US households, 70 retail banners, $600 billion in verified annual consumer spending. And here is what really matters. Over 90% of consumable purchases still happen in store. Infillion and Catalina together can close the loop from digital advertising to in-lane purchase and incentivize the next one. This is not a measurement tool you consult after the campaign. This is a live signal that runs through your media while the campaign is in flight. You can now optimize from attention to action in real time against people who's actual purchase behavior you know. A consumer product's brand needs return on ad spending. It needs foot traffic. Infillion now delivers all of it. Not as separate vendors you reconcile later as one connected platform. That is what closing the gap looks like. Sean, as you think about your childhood, what's the first brand you remember making impact on you? Two brands actually charged with Fisher price. Obviously, you know my parents, they were very generous. But as a teenager and you know at the beginning of this process that I told you when my dad went bankrupt, the one brand that broke that I remember, Levi's high full one. That's first Levi's 501 that I got. He made so much social confidence at the time where maybe I wasn't so Levi's 501 definitely. Hi, I'm Jim Stangle. I've helped hundreds of major brands discover and activate their purpose. Because when a brand's purpose is clear, compelling and authentic, profit naturally follows. Each week I welcome the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of your favorite brands to speak to how their job is so much more than marketing. These leaders share their inspiration and challenges along with how they try to build a full, healthy and happy life in and out of the office. And it's that energy that reaches everyone they touch. And we're glad you're here to feel that energy and to learn from these remarkable leaders. So here we go. A few weeks ago in Cannes, I found myself overlooking the beautiful Mediterranean Sea from Mercado Lebris Cannes Lions meeting space. And I was surrounded by some of Latin America's most influential marketing leaders. We spent the lovely afternoon talking about where marketing has headed from AI and creativity, to leadership growth and the evolving role of the modern CMO. Today I'm excited to continue that conversation with an executive in Latin America helping lead it all. Sean Summers is executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Mercado Lebris. Latin America's largest e-commerce and FinTech ecosystem. Some describe the company as a blend of Amazon, eBay, PayPal and Shopify. Founded just 27 years ago in Argentina, Mercado Lebris operates in 18 countries, generates nearly $29 billion in annual revenue and has grown into one of the region's most valuable publicly traded companies with a market cap north of $90 billion. Since joining Mercado Lebris in 2012, Sean has helped the company grow far beyond an online marketplace into a platform connecting millions of consumers, merchants and businesses through commerce, payments, logistics, lending and advertising. And before joining the company, Sean earned his MBA at Stanford and held leadership roles at PepsiCo and the Twinings T Company in the UK. We'll talk all about his amazing career path. This is my conversation with a remarkable leader who had a great time at the World Cup this year and at Cam Lions. Here's Sean. Sean, welcome to the CMO podcast. We are recording this show about a week after the World Cup ended. Your home country of Argentina had a great run. How are you feeling this week? I'm feeling actually really really good about the World Cup. Actually it's a fun. I wasn't that excited coming into the tournament, maybe because of the new format, but the moment that the ball started rolling, wow, you know, I was crazy. And then, you know, as an official partner for FIFA, which is something that we had been talking with FIFA for a while, but you know, trying to find a way of working together in the region. And we at the last minute, like three minutes or three days after the beginning of the World Cup, we found an agreement that we were able to execute on these great sponsorships. So, you know, it was interesting to leave this World Cup as a fun, as a very engaged fan, but also as a sponsor. It's fantastic. Where did you watch the final? So I watched it at home in Mexico City. There was a promise that I made to my wife and my children. And I didn't have any slack there. So I watched the live games against England, against Switzerland, against Capoe Verde. So it was a wonderful World Cup, the football, the environment, in the stadium, in social media, how the fans engage. I was amazed about this World Cup. Yeah, it was fantastic. I watched, I put all the games on my schedule, so I didn't, I didn't get meetings booked around them. So I spent so much time watching football in the last month. It was awesome. It never got stale. It was all, it was so good. Now, it was, it was amazing. It's incredible how the world stops. It's really one of those events. And not just for the big matches, even for the supposedly smaller matches. So it was great to get down into business, fully focused on business. And interestingly, you know, I was working to the office this morning. And today, it's 30 years to the day that I enter the world of marketing. My first day in PepsiCo Argentina was 30 years ago. Wow. Congratulations. Yeah, incredible. We're coming full circle. What do you remember about that first day? Just excited. I was 20 years old. I got to Pepsi in Argentina at the bottom of the market in the department. Actually, I think I really find the bottom like three layers, three of the both. But I was just excited that these guys have given me an opportunity and, you know, just such an iconic brand like Pepsi. So, over the last 30 years, I made really good friends in the world of marketing, the world of PepsiCo. And yeah, it's so it was good prepared for these podcasts because it allowed me to reflect on the last 30 years of career. But we'll talk about that. I remember my first day at PNG. September 20, 1983. I walked in. Everyone was friendly. I had a suit on. I had a briefcase. And they gave me a dick the phone. And they told me to sit on a desk and write a market share summary of a test market brand. I had no idea. I had no idea. I felt so inept, incompetent, lost. But obviously, I turned around at some point. Exactly. And for me, they would see me really well. And I'm sure that they knew what they wanted to do with, you know, with these three needs. That was what was coming in. I got sort of involved in some of the promotion activities that we were doing. We still had the Pepsi challenge going on in Argentina at the time. So I did a little bit of that. But I remember it was a tough six months, the first six months. Why? Because Pepsi was going through some bad investments that he did internationally. At the end of the last year, I always remember November the 4th, 1996. They had a massive restructuring. I think Antonio Luzio mentioned in his interview with you. So everyone was like, you know, frozen. So for the first six months, I was like, yeah, I'm really a little bit bad. Not that much. And actually, I think that they're not getting a great value for money. So I remember at the end of December, I went to resign to buy both. I said, guys, I love the company. But you know, I'm not having a lot of value and probably, someone else can do this job. And he told me like, no, don't worry. We went through a very, very difficult phase. But now, you know, early 1987, we have first funds. We have a very clear mandate, you know, stay with us. And it was fantastic because then in 1987, we started with the football platform. You know, with all the players, which started in Argentina. And Antonio took it, you know, he had time. Antonio was the vice president of marketing for Latin America. He took that platform first to the region, then to the world. So I'm happy that I stayed at that point. Hey, it's a, it's an Academy company. A lot of leaders came out of Pepsi and they're still coming out of Pepsi. It's one of the few in the world, I think, has generated so many leaders. PNG's one of them as well, of course. But it's a great place to start. Hey, listen, we're flashing back 30 years. And I went to flashback one month. You were at the Cann Festival this year and Lions, 2026. And you did something for the first time. You were on a jury for a brand new category at Cann Lions. That's a pretty special experience. And the category is to create a brand category. And it's kind of about companies that build internal capabilities really well, right? So I think it's a fabulous space. So tell us about that experience. Year one, new category, jury experience. What was it like? Actually, it was awesome. I was in Canterals, you were when Simon and the team invited me because it's a lot of time, particularly not just on the event, but you know, on the weeks before the event. And you know, I heard some stories about, you know, some of the juries becoming, you know, too heated and you know, too political. And I said, you know, let's do it. And actually, it was an amazing, amazing experience. First, because, you know, the quality of the jury was out of this world, Marcel, Marcond, you know, was the jury president, you know, everyone around me. It was like, you know, the whole fame of rock stars in I felt like an imposter. But then the human quality and the and the quality of the conversations, everyone will see. super hambo pushy so we push each other like a lot but in a very respectful way. I truly enjoyed the whole experience and being a new one, there was a lot of emphasis on, you know, we're doing this for the industry and what's the message that we want to send. And this was about, as you mentioned, critical capabilities. It's more about the input that allows a brand company to deliver over time great creative work that is recognized by peers and my consumers that delivers business results over a low period of time. And, you know, we put the bar really high to the point where we had a lot of candidates, but only two brands, you know, or two companies, a VBEB and a Mastercard, you know, managed to pass, you know, the test. And I think I took a lot of learnings as to what I need to bring back to Marcaro Liure in order to be a brand that can develop those capabilities. I think we have many of the ingredients, but it was really useful for me to understand how you standardize how you create the processes and the systems to make sure that these last years capable, this ability to do great creative last over time and, you know, beyond, you know, different teams. So it doesn't depend on me or my current team, but, you know, that the next generation of leaders in Marcaro Liure can continue to do great creative. Now, when you came back, what did you, I'm sure you gathered your team together. And I, know, Mastercard and ABEB, you know, won big awards, but what did you say to them? What was your message when you came back and you assembled your team after that experience? Look, I took a small part of my team there. So we used this gathering to have our annual meeting with GATS, our creative agency where, you know, they have the global leadership. So we had always, you know, a session at the beginning of the week. And even though, you know, our brand, you know, the company has been very successful over the last few years. Now, we've had 53 lions over the last five years, four grand prix, you know, just to put in perspective. And that was useful. ABEBB, who are great at doing this creative marketing of the year for, you know, third time, they had, I saw Marcel's presentation, 183 can liars over five years. So I said, okay, that's the bar. Now, we are regional brand. It's only one or two brands, you know, we're not multi country. But the message to the team was, look, we're doing great stuff, but we're not fulfilling our potential. It's always, you know, how can we become better? I think it's part of the, how we run the business and how we try to run the marketing is no matter how successful we are in social business results or awards is what else? What are we missing? And even if everything is working, my assumption is that whatever made a successful last year is not going to make a successful this year. Why? Because, you know, we have a really good competition. And they also, you know, raised the game. So the message was, guys, I'm happy with the kind of work that we're doing. But I'm not that excited. And people in the Asian, you know, some of the junior people in God, we're like, is this guy crazy? He's like, does he know that, you know, he won another Grand Prix? And I don't know how many liars. I said, yes, it's great. But I know that this team can deliver even better work. And it's more fun to, you know, try to deliver that great work. So the message was, let's keep pushing the boundaries. You know, let's not get comfortable. I'm super happy about the wherever successes we had in the past. You know, I know that the team on the agency, we can deliver more and better graded work. So that was the message. A little bit of celebration, but also like, you know, raising the bar, say, no, let's look at the future. What else can we achieve? Now you talk about MasterCard and Aby and Bev. What, if you can talk about it, what other companies impress you with what they're doing with the inputs to achieve great output? I really like what Elf is doing in beauty. I think again, it's similar to us. They have a lot of ingredients, maybe the, the processes are not that clear, but I really like what, what they're doing in beauty. I bet you such a dynamic category. So I think that, you know, we can learn so much. In our case, we operate in multiple categories, but you know, beauty is one of those categories that I, I really look because of the dynamism and how things change. So we were talking a moment ago, about 30 years ago, well, 14 years ago, you joined Mercado Libre. Can you guess, or do you remember what the market cap was of the company when you joined? Oh, I, I, I, it's a reminder, it was insane. So the market cap was around $3 billion. Yeah. It's right. It had been, it had been a public company since 2007. So it was a successful company. The revenues they have before joined $300 million. Last year, almost 30 billion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I just celebrate. It's the only company to my knowledge, the only company in the world in the history of the world that has grown about 30% year over year for 29 consecutive quarters and counting. So the ambition is there. And that's an output method. It is not that we do it because of that. It tells you something about the size of the opportunity and how we'd be able to tackle it and think advantage. So the journey has been amazing. Well, the market cap now is about 92 billion from three when you joined and you said you talk about the revenue. What do you, I mean, it's an amazing story, by the way, and we're going to talk about that. I spent years at Proctor and Gamble trying to answer that question. We had the creative, we had the reach, we had campaigns that genuinely stop people. And then we watched that value quietly disappear somewhere between the moment of engagement and the proof of the business result. That gap between attention and action is where most media budgets go to die. And most digital media platforms have been content to live inside it just a little upstream from accountability. Infillian is the company that decided to close it. They started as the original attention company built on the idea that a consumer choosing to engage with an ad is worth more that one who ignores it, but they did not stop there. They have built the infrastructure to connect the moment of attention to the proof of action across every screen, every format, every vertical. That is not a feature that is a fundamentally different idea of what an ad platform should be. And it is the one brands have been waiting for. Learn more in the show notes. What do you think about the company has not changed since you joined? A lot of things have changed, etc. etc. But what has not changed? I think that the entrepreneurial spirit hasn't changed. We still believe it has our company. And I joined have weight, the company is 27 years old. I joined have weight. But the spirit of we are owners and we have a fulfilled potential of this company. Every day I perceive it. That is why I am so foolish. The focus on the consumer, we win the different battles by how do we make the everyday life of our consumers that will be better by improving our platforms. There is an obsession with the speed to execution, those small improvements every day that compounded. They create a unique experience. I think the ambition is there. We haven't fulfilled the mission. We have a mission to democratize commerce and financial services in Latin America. It has been the same since the moment I joined. And the feeling is that we still have achieved what we can achieve. We have transformed enough lives in the region. So I do think that that bias to action that focus on the consumer. That sense that we are the owners of the destiny that depends on us. You have to build it. It is still there. Other than size, the company is a lot bigger of course. Other than size, what has changed the most since you joined? I think the technology in general, even though we are a technology company, we started with Web 1.0 and it has changed dramatically. Obviously we went through the mobile era. But the last two or three years with everything that is going on in the GNI is the way we build up our products, the way we fulfill our promises with better products. Everything has changed significantly. I think that our ability to compete has changed significantly. Because for the first 15 years of the company, we competed with the local players and that was great that we liked and we learned. But then over the last 11 years, we had to start competing with the big guys. At the beginning, Amazon arrived in Mexico in 2015 and it was a big company. If we keep doing what we are doing, we are not going to win. We had to adapt as a leadership team, as a team overall, and learn how to compete, how to innovate, how to move faster, how to be more aggressive on investment, how to be smart on capital education. We started learning and they are really good. We tend to admire our competitors. And over the years, we have learned how to compete with them and with new banks in financial services and in commerce. I think that we have developed a muscle for competition. Many of us, we love sports. In a sense, we have frustrated sports. It's the closest we are going to get to compete with the best in the world. So we take it away. We thrive under competition. But I think we have kept evolving our ability to compete because our competitors are so good and they keep changing. We have to abort that paybook all the time. It's not the same, you know, how you compete with Amazon or how you compete with the Asian players, how you compete in financial services. So I think that our ability to compete has changed, has improved significantly, and we will have to keep doing it if we want to remain as market leaders. And maybe on the negative side to put it some way, scale has a lot of benefits, but you know, we are a biased interaction company. It's not the same when you have 2000 employees and when you have a hundred and ten thousand. So we are also obsessed with how do we keep this dynamism and all the speed at the decision making, at execution, the ownership. So, but those are interesting leadership challenges, you know, how we pull this organization to keep delivering the results that we're delivering in a very different environment. One more personal note, how are you as a leader different from when you walk through that door 14 years ago? - This has been transformation. So I walked in as a marketing leader. It was interesting because my previous career in PepsiCo was in marketing. But I always said that like business in general. So for me, marketing was a tool, you know, to deliver business results. That's how I saw it. But these guys, when they called me, I was living in London at the time, and they called me and I thought it was a marketing role in Argentina as it, guys, I don't want to go back to Argentina. I'm happy here, not for a marketing role. And they say, no, no, no, no, we want you to come and lead our marketplace, our e-commerce, do you see that's it? That sounds weird. I've never been a line manager. And I have some e-commerce experience, you know, in my last role, in a failed startup that I had back in the late '90s. But I thought that's, I don't think I've the right candidates. And actually, they said, no, let's keep talking. They ended up offering me the job. So I was very clear with them, this is what I bring to the table. This is what I don't bring to the table. And they said, look, we like your experience. You have taken risks. You seem to have the learning agility, the cultural feat. I'm probably the new, have another option. It was like, you have to be, you have to be a little lucky with these things. But I got, I walked into a general management role that I've been preparing myself in my entire life. I was responsible for product management, which in technology, I didn't know anything about it. It's super complicated. I had to build a sales function. The marketing I brought from my previous life wasn't relevant to the new one. So I think that obviously at the beginning, you are like, you feel like an impostor. They say, yeah, they made a mistake. I'm just a physical, the higher you mistake. But then I was starting focusing on the right priorities and trying to make progress slowly but surely, I understood that this was a marathon that has sprinted. So that's how I sort of relax. And as long as you make the right choices in each of these areas of how do you make sure that you're building capability, but also the short-term results and that you're building your confidence. So I think that I have built my confidence significantly in terms of, I didn't understand anything. Probably I still don't understand most of the things. I would say that my style, what helps me evolve, we know at the pace that you know the pace is evolve, is that on the one side, I keep asking the dumb questions, which I think that it's great to be able to say, I don't know, and maybe this is stupid, but what do you think about XY and Z? And then applying a lot of common sense on the decision-making process. And Dr. Stuttraids, which are very simple, as the company has evolved as the challenges have changed massively, they have allowed me or to grow with the company. And obviously, what has helped me over this time is to build a fantastic team. And it took me 14 years, six years, when I was running the marketplace and then when I moved eight years ago to build the marketing function. From day one, I said, look, this is what I know. This is what I don't know. And I better surround myself with people that complement me, who are better. And yeah, that's where I am today. In a much better position, still handles, still ignorance on a lot of things. But you know what's very curious, very, very curious. I love this about this job, that the learning curve is 90 degrees, and it's been 90 degrees for the last 14 years. And if you get excited about learning, this is the place to be. The people around you want you to succeed. They're open here to give you any feedback, to give you the input, and you can ask whatever you want. And somewhat it's gonna help you with the thinking process. - I've read a lot of people describe your company. So blame the Amazon, eBay, PayPal, and Shopify rolled into one. How do you react to that? - Yeah, it's hard to describe. We started as the eBay of Latin America. And eBay was a shareholder for many years. But we were very quickly to adapt to consumer behaviors. So early on, options never took off. So we moved into use products, by the off-ex price. And then use products, you know, I'm sorry, from individuals, so C2C. But then we realized that, you know, we had to bring small-a-bid event surprises and start working on new products. So we, the company has always been evolving. And at some point, we became the Amazon plus PayPal. Then I said, look, probably the best analogy is Alibaba and Alipay in China. If they had decided to work as integrated as we worked, but they decided not to do it. So it's quite unique. The way I think about the opportunity, thinking about the opportunity, because 27 years on, I still think that the next 10 years are gonna be fantastic. I think that this is a company that could be the biggest retailer in every market where we operate. Retailer, not a retailer. We're in the biggest retailer in Brazil and Argentina. So we can be the biggest retailer. I think that Mercado Pado, our FinTech business, will be a top five bug in every market where we operate over the next five years. And we have a fair chance of being a top one over the following three to five years. We're gonna be a top three media company in the region in the next three years. We're now top five. We are gonna be one of the top players in that query. And in the process over the next 10 years, I guess that we are gonna find other problems. People are problems, you know, to solve. So it's very hard to describe what this ecosystem is. But the thing that unites, everything is that we have a huge consumer base, over 120 million people buying our blood from every year, growing 20%. Over 80 million monthly active users in our FinTech business. So you have a consumer base that is highly demanding that, you know, trust our brands and our platforms. And that is constantly asking for, okay, what else are you gonna solve for us? So who knows, it's hard to describe what the business is today. And I don't know what the business is gonna be in five or 10 years time. I can tell you it's gonna be very different. I've seen in my 14 years, at least four versions of this company. It's like a live-elow organization that is constantly evolving and allows you to evolve with it. So that's what makes my day today so exciting. - I mean, that's a tricky leadership challenge, right? People don't generally like change. And you're a company that has been thriving on change. And you have a great culture. You have a great employee base, a great customer base. What is it about the leadership team that keeps people with you, employees, customers? I think that there's a sense of the mission that we do have an impact in the left of people. Each of us has so many stories of people that tell you, look, I built my business around your platform, all your payments, a system has allowed me to access a new market and tap market. Or finally, I can use financial services and I can start going up the ladder in terms of getting access to credit. Or even the basic thing, when we live in big cities, we are used to having access to a great selection, a great prices with a lot of convenience. And we assume that that happens all over the place. And the reality, at least in Latin America, go 50 miles away from the big cities and the reality is totally different. So we have given access to communities very, very far away from the big cities to the same products. So I think that is a mission component. There's an element of, I think we are building something that is different. And nobody wants to be part of something that is different. I always tell my children that I think that, let's say that I stay here for another 10 years. And I'm pretty sure that we're building the most consequential company in the history of Latin America. And being part of that, in terms of impact, in terms of how we're changing the lives of people around the region, and being part of that is like, wow, it gives me goosebumps. There's an element of this company is always looking for more. So you're always going to be challenged. Through your point, we thrive on change. We're static. I think that we would die. So if you're looking for the next challenge, if you're looking for a place where you can make decisions and be accountable for the outcomes, the positives of the negatives, this is the place to be. We are in a very good position completely. And everyone wants to be part of a winning team. So the whole package is like, if you're intellectually curious, this is the place to be. Now, if you are used to operating in an environment where you know which is the direction and what's the play, what can everything, this is not the place. Because you have to be very comfortable with not knowing a lot of stuff. I say, what I've had to do the last 14 years is to learn and unlearn. Learn and learn. Learn and learn. It's a whole process which yeah, it's tiring. For the last 14 years, I've spent at least two hours every night reading about what's going on in my industry and different industries. Two hours per night for 14 years, seven days a week, just to keep updated with what's going on with the world. So you have to be curious, you have to put the hours. But if you like that, I knew working with really smart colleagues who push you in the right way. So we create a lot of friction, it's not that we are band of brothers. Now we're not a family, we are high performance team. So we like challenging ourselves a lot, but we are united by a common goal and by this desire to learn and just to great stuff. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work, but in general, this feeling that, wow, let's keep moving forward. It's fantastic. Now listen, about four years ago, you took on retail media responsibility, right? On top of your CMO. And I want to talk about that. I mean, you're a top five media company. So that's a big deal to put that on top of your CMO job. What about that has made you a better CMO and vice versa? What about being a CMO has made you an effective head of retail media? Well, that's interesting. Sorry. When I took on the CMO role, I created the function. Until that moment, marketing was part of each business unit. At some point in early 2018, we realized that, probably it made more sense to create an organization that served all the business units. And I came up with sort of the idea because I was asked for a point of view. And I thought that I would keep running near the marketplace. And I would help them recruit a CMO. At some point in the process, I realized, oh, this is an internal job. I have to do it. I came back to marketing without wanting to do marketing. And that's why I called myself the Reluctant CMO. I didn't want to come back to marketing. I was really happy writing a business. It took me two weeks to tell my wife that I had made that recommendation. She almost healed me. I'm like, this plan turned to you straight. Become a general manager. But look, but the one thing I told Markus, you know, at the time I had my boss and the founder of the company was Markus. You like that? I'm going to do this for because this is where I can add a lot of values. It's going to be a good learning experience. And I can build capability for a company. But I would love to go back to running a business whenever the opportunity arises. Three and a half years later. So the three years later, late 2021, Markus tells me that his co-founder, Stelio, was retiring. He was a CEO of the company. He got a very big remit. And then he told me, Markus, as you think about the new structure, Stelio has, you know, an annual replacement. Ariel replaced Stelio. Ariel's the new CEO. He's a brilliant guy. I said, look, Ariel's going to have a lot of challenges on the commerce side. Let me give you a point of view. I think I would love to lead the retail media. This is why I see marketing and retail media as highly complimentary and how we could leverage each other. I think it looked at me, except I like the idea. Let's do it. So I committed to Himia. This is my vision. This is how we're going to do it. So from a retail media point of view, we have multiplied the business by 10X in that period of time. And we're still growing north of 50%. I think that understanding how my marketing team works and operates, and particularly my performance marketing team, they're super sophisticated, super demanding with the biggest client for Google and Metapinter's TikTok in the region. So I said, you know, whatever you demand from the big platforms, I want you guys to demand it for the retail media guys. So I think that they raised the game even though they weren't internal clients. I want you to operate as an internal client and tell me if these retail media solutions that we have are goods or not. So the first piece was that. So that significantly raised the bar for the product team in retail media. Then the second element I started thinking a few years ago about, well, I have all these capabilities in marketing, which are really good. What if I turn them into products? And we've been turning all of those capabilities. And now I'm making them available to our retail media customers. I call it marketing as a service. Maybe I should call it marketing or operating model. But those are, that's an idea that I could only think and execute because both teams are reporting to me. And I make sure that there's a lot of cross-fertilization. So I think that all the strengths that we have in the market in team are being reflected in a much more powerful and full funnel program range in retail media. And you can see that in the results. And then as a marketee, I will, as I told you before, I'm a business guy. I'm not an expert. Not the best guy doing branding. I'm not the best guy doing performance marketing on the data side. But I'm a really good generalist. And having both hats and having the customer face in, I really like the customer face interactions with the retail media. I think that I come back to my marketing team with first perspectives and new ideas and new capabilities. We're now building a whole suite of solutions around social commerce. We've had to create our own affiliate program that already has millions of affiliate. We're creating our creators program. I will let you shop in our program. So there's a lot of back and forth. And so I think that the marketing team has become better because they're close to retail media. And retail media has a much stronger understanding of what good marketeers need. But also a much stronger product suite. One of the things I have learned from years of talking to the best CMOSLA world is this. The question is never just whether your creative is working. The question is whether your infrastructure can keep up with it. Because a brain campaign still has to travel through an ad stack, through data, through decisioning, through supply, through measurement. And every hop in that journey is a place where value leaks out. Most platforms saw one piece of that, a data company, a DSP, a measurement vendor, used it's them together and pay a fragmentation tax in performance, in speed and in accountability. Infillian built something very different. Demand, supply, data, measurement and creative, connect it in a single, composable platform. The highest performing opt-in attention formats via Infillian's proprietary tech in the industry. Agnostic identity resolution solutions. And now Catalina, 130 million US households of verified purchase truth, running his live signal through every campaign they execute. No black boxes, no hops, no fragmented vendor relationships to manage. The only company I know of that can take you from the first moment of attention to the final proof of action for any vertical on any screen without leaving the platform. Open, composable, agentic. That is Infillian. [Music] Could you go a little bit deeper on how your marketing group is stronger since you took on regional media. They started working together. You're taking your marketing capabilities outside the company in some ways with your partners. So when you step back over the last four years, what do you think has really strengthened what muscle in your marketing group has strengthened? So I think that we added new things to the toolkit. So historically for the first almost 20 years of the company, marketing was performance marketing for us. So we were the first ones to knock on the door of Google back in 2002, even before the new world Latin America was someone in our team. No, to take us, we would like to be a client. So for the first 30 years, it was all about performance marketing. You know, let's operate in the only world. And let's make sure that we are capturing whatever transactions or buyers are available there with a very short term ROI kind of mindset. It's a transaction that is profitable though. Great. And that worked really well for us. Actually, I'm a big fan of we have a ball that significantly. So our toolkit is very sophisticated. We have our own measurement systems, our attributes, sharing, and mentality. So that works really well. And by the way, everyone calls that performance marketing. I call that its performance, but it's also the first line of defense or branding. Because it truly believes that the product is great. Every single interaction with your product, with your platform, is a brand-new building. Excessive. Parts for us. Where my e-commerce app or my Fintech services app evolves that it proves there every day. So every time I bring in someone, they're having a new and different experience. So it's an opportunity to surprise. So performance, but also thought as a branding exercise. Then over the last 10 years, we added a second layer, which we call it brand performance, which is operating 52 with IEA calendar, promotion activities. We call it brand performance-wide, because on the one side, it has a performance site, which is creating short-term spikes in demand. But also, it plays a branding exercise because it allows us to create consideration, maybe in categories where consumers wouldn't think about us. Grocer is here or there. So that second layer built on top of the performance marketing, and with the same tools and with the same analytical rigor. And over the last seven years, in particular, communications, we have taken our communications in a different direction. We didn't use to focus on communication. And I think we have evolved significantly. No surprise that we've been participating in CASA, our communications, our deep-pot-pay attention. But it's interesting because our community, we have won Grand Prix on promotional initiatives. It's not just on the very crazy idea, it's stuff that delivers afterwards. So, and there our framework is, you know, we call it, you know, the "do think feel framework" which is at the social tier, you know, let's make sure that we have a very clear and solid set of communications where we want consumers to do. And all of that is about price and selection. And, you know, that's stable stakes if you want to be a retailer. Then on top of that, what we want consumers to think. Let's give the rational reasons why to choose us. If everyone is offering you a price and selection, okay, we give you fast shipping, free shipping, our loyalty program, guarantee returns, you know, free returns. So, let me give you an additional reason why. And once, and the combination of both is where we're delivering on the, on the brand promise. If we deliver on that brand promise, then we earn the right to go to the 30 layer which we call it the "feel". Let's talk to consumers about stuff that is struggling to selling another case of something, has to do with, you know, showing them empathy, showing them that we care about the communities where we operate, that we care about the things that are going on around the world, that we care about their own passion points. And that could be sports, that could be some stuff around the eye or even politics. We've had some communications related in our two politics. But the way the entire stack works is that it works all together. It's performance, plus performance, press branding, in constant interaction, I'm very coordinated. And having the written media and being able to talk with brands and agencies constantly and learning from what others are doing, I think that, you know, we keep feeding back, look guys, here, you know, you're right, here, I think you're wrong. So, there's a retro-freeting system that's almost real time that works really, really well. I read a quote from you, which I love. So, I want to read it aloud for our audience and get you to react to it. I'm not a technical guy. I'm not a great creative. I'm not great at any individual function. But I think I'm really good at setting crazy goals. My role is creating the capabilities, building the talent team, and making sure we have the routines and processes that allow them to excel. That's a pretty good description for a great CMO. So, I'd like you to talk about react to that, but two things in particular, how do you choose the capabilities that you need to build? It sounds like a simple point, but it's not. And how do you build the team to deliver those capabilities? You said a few minutes ago, it's taken 10-plus years to build the team. So, could you talk about both of those that I think would be massively helpful for others? So, I think on the other messages, as you grow in theory, you're becoming more powerful, more important. I really believe it's the opposite. You have to move behind the scenes. Let's go to Filminy. We start our careers as extras, and then we have supporting roles, and then we have leading roles, and then we could become directors. And now, you know, what we are. And all of those are in the limelight, and you get all the awards and everything. We are the executive producers. The executive producer, nobody knows who is the executive producer of a movie, except if something goes really wrong. Okay? So, those are the guys who have to make sure that, you know, they put the right people in place, the right process. I think that, you know, we should be happy with being the executive producers, that nobody knows about us, and we should shine through our teams, and our work. Okay? So, in that context, how do I pick the capabilities? For me, it's always about everything we do has to deliver growth. And when you start with what's the pieces of the objective that we are trying to achieve? What's the contribution that marketing can do? And let's be super clear. Then it's easy to decide, okay, based on that, how to have different strategies that we can use to deliver those results. And I'm going to come back to the short and long term. And let's focus on the short term results. Great. If these are the strategies and these are the channels that could deliver, how do we make sure that we're the best at doing that? And it's identifying by doing, by doing your identify look here, we are okay, here we are not that great. Okay. And then you start listening, okay, what would be best in class? And I link it to, you know, bringing the best team in order for me to identify those problems and those solutions, I had to bring technical people around me. If not, I would have even been able to identify the problem. So I, from the day one, I surrounded myself with technical people who couldn't help me understand, you know, what the issue is about or what the opportunity is about, and how do we start building that capability? The company capability requires a long term vision. There are no silver bullets. These capabilities are always, you know, here long journey. And what you need to have is very clear. Okay, success this year is going to look this and this way is that we're going to organize the data to make sure that we can measure correctly in other results. And then that we can attribute, you know, better. So it's very, be very clear inside the team, but also without us, they hold us. This is the long term goal. These are the milestones for this year. This is how success looks like this is what we're learning is something works well. We're going to be the first ones to tell you this is the work. So it's always that way. And whenever we're executing, we're learning something and we course correct. And but the thing there, the last element is understanding what not to do. Because in terms of opportunities and gaps in capabilities, they are plenty, but it's like understanding what's going to have, you know, what's going to bring you the biggest bang for the back. Because we have to deliver a long term results. We're going to focus on X, Y as yeah, I would have to do all of this. But this is not going to be a priority. And let me give you tangible examples of that. For the first, I got here in 2012 until 2015, I wasn't even thinking about meta. I was only thinking about one channel. It was SEO, Google, search engine marketing and strategy to an email marketing. Yeah, I could share the channels, but we were rubbish. But do it that. So I said, and till we fix this, and we saw that every channel that we fix something, we would deliver the pieces results. So at some point, it's like, this gets, you know, these things running. Then it's okay. Let's move to the next big opportunity. Let's keep optimizing what we have. We move to meta. Then in 2018 or 2019, we moved to TikTok. And then in the last year or 2020, four to Pinterest. So there said, yeah, I would love to tackle everything altogether. It's impossible. I take take a long term view of that from a branding point of view. The moment that we started doing branding, I could attribute the results as, you know, as CC as I could do any performance marketing. I said that with my CFO, I said, at the time was better. Look, we cannot just focus on performance marketing because we're going to be, you know, fishing a small pond. We have to go and create the demand outside of the only world. These are the ways to do it. We're going to have to feel comfortable being uncomfortable with not being able to measure everything. Measurement is going to mean X, Y, and set. I don't have silver bullets. So I was very clear. We're going to build this capability. If we do all these things in three or time, I'm going to be able to do X, Y, and set. I think that being very intentional about what to build, what not to build, explaining how all the pieces fit together. And then you know, managing expectations. Rome wasn't built in one day. But I think that I was giving the leeway to do that because as I always say, 80% of my time and 80% of my budget was spent on staff that deliver a hundred percent of the short term results. So I created the conditions of me and the team created the conditions for us to have that 20% of time. I'm money to invest in longer term capabilities. Hi, everybody. I'm Andrea Sullivan, the CEO of Vive. And we have produced the CMO podcast with Jim Stangle for many years. And I'm sitting in his seat right now. It's so exciting. I wanted to tell you a little bit about one of our programs. It's called Vive by Vayner. It's a 12 month program that's designed for C-suiteers and founders. And we want to help people to grow their businesses, but also to grow themselves. And so we bring in people from Shark Tank to talk to our founders. But we also focus on wellness. We want to make sure that people are leaning into becoming their best selves, their best and happiest selves. So if you are someone that wants to learn how to grow your business and grow yourself, check us out at Vive.co. That's vi, vi.co. We'd love to talk to you. I've heard you say there are three factors that have to find your career. People helping you being open to serendipity and willingness to take risks. So I'd like to talk about each one for a moment as we get toward the end of this great chat. When people helping you, what person or two come to mind when you think about that? I've been lucky. I've had eight or nine bosses here across my career. All of them, great, great. I could give you the least. I know them by memory. All of them, very good friends. Two people have had a significant impact on my career, particularly the first 20 years. of Latin America for his dear other he was the marketing director in Argentina 30 years ago who hired me he took me to Mexico he's his Mexican he offered me my first international assignment in 2002 and he then left Mexico and he went to Nike and to model it and every time he moved he would call me like sure what do you do it do what to come back at me oh let's say go back to so Roberto has been a massive friend and sponsor and then the other one is Antonio Lucio I made Antonio three months after I met Roberto because as I told you Antonio was the vice president of marketing for beverages in Latin America and he was very generous from the first moment you know we were a small team Roberto was generous that he would show us and they would take us out for dinner and Antonio just got to know you know an ambitious young guy coming from Argentina and over the next 15 years he helped me a lot but the funny thing is that I never knew that he was helping me I found out that many years later through a third party you know yeah yeah we offered you a job an internship you know in your summer job of the NBA because Antonio said you guys have to hire Sean and he then called the president of UK to say you you have to hire you or Sean coming out of the NBA so I never had a conversation a former conversation with Antonio about that he was incredibly generous in that sense and I know over the last 10 years we have become very good friends and he has been a mentor so in terms of sponsors definitely Roberto and Antonio but you know Sergio Algocio Luis San Quochi Manquillo many many good friends and bosses for my mentor point of view my dad I have to say he we started being tennis together when I was eight he taught me how to play tennis so we came very good friends I started working with him when I was 12 you know he had a very successful business career and suddenly you know he decided to get out of the corporate life and he best all his savings in Argentina in the 80s and that went really bad it was not really he went from 20 years of fact this to be in back reps and I I found out about that at 12 and so I worked all my summers with him and my first two or a half years after high school I worked full time with him he was an incredible mentor we became incredible friends but you know he shared all his wisdom on you know from a business point of view from a strategy point of view from a leadership point of view and also about his failures look and I feel here here here and there so my toolkit when I enter Pepsi 30 years ago my soft kills toolkit was super strong I would argue that most of the stuff that I have accomplished over the last 30 years from a leadership point of view they come back to all my learnings working with my father between the age of 12 and 20 so I and that's a guy who did the belief that he had of me sorry I get emotional now Sean what was his business you he went to Argentina invested well what what was it that he brought you into he worked a British to my script for many years and he had a very successful career he decided to get into the distribution business that didn't work out and he reinvented himself as a consultant in the 80s as a constant business consultant of many things and then he came out as a very successful executive research consultant a headhunter in the 90s so I was you know coming out of high school I was his researcher from the age of 18 to until I joined that Pepsi so I learned about career paths I learned about industries I learned about challenges he gave me a framework when I was young he always thought with Sean you have to think always to life you know 10 years from now where you want to be 10 years from now professionally okay now and now you want to be I mean if you want to be in 10 years there what are the stepping stones where should you be in five years where should you be in three years and which are the different paths that can take you there and it was in an exercise you know that I was supposed to get you fixing a locked in in a direction it was to give you an idea of you making the pros that you make to need to make to know that if you're on a track or not or if you need to course correct or to identify alternative career paths and then the second column was from a personal point of view what do you want to do you want to marry do you want to have children what do you want to live yeah and that was pretty and he said both have to be compatible you want to live abroad make sure that you get married to someone who's willing to live abroad I've been living abroad for 25 years I mean it's my country a lot but you know I got married to my parents you know who has been my cornstone through this journey and but I was here I talk her in the first day look I don't know if this is gonna go somewhere but I'm gonna live abroad I'm gonna do this so just to make sure that professional personal life are compatible so definitely you know my dad has been my my my hearing that sends my my mentor and in terms of serendipity look on the one side because of world experiences that my father had I think I came into the professional world being a living conservative and I'm gonna do my passing in the next year and everything but then you know the best career choices that I've done in my life have been linked to because I had this framework being able to you know seek whenever one's sag so let me tell you six moments in my life that helped me get where I am or restaking at 23 I left Pepsi for the first time for the first time to launch my own startup it was a B2B marketplace in Argentina back in 1999 first wave of internet I raised the money I built a team I launched the business I couldn't get to break here and I closed the business okay great experience Pepsi took me back second that risk Roberto offers me you know 2002 you know lead Pepsi or Argentina come to Mexico it's on a local package we don't do now you're you know to be young gonna there's no expert package here I said I'm going after the protein I've always gone after the opportunity not the money I said Roberto where do you want me and where do you want me there I'm gonna be there then 2005 I go to start for doing my MBA at the time I was 30 it didn't make any sense economically to go I do my MBA I was offered being offered a promotion to director in Pepsi which you know money wise it didn't I said this is a personal objective I want to do it for me it's about investing in myself and I'm gonna take a long-term view my father was also an MBA from Stanford I knew that long term that was you know the right investment I left Pepsi I went to Pepsi go UK and then in 2010 I left Pepsi go for the third time I said look I need a different challenge I want to be the owner of my career you know I I don't think that I love this company but this is not going in the direction that I want to be I went to Twining in the UK smaller one third of the size smaller team you know on paper I just am making a sense is the culture intuitive move I I wanted to go to a place where nobody knew me a different culture where I had to prove myself where I had no brand equity and no support network and I fell in love with the people and the project and that was one of the best professional experiences that I've had I came to Mark Galilee in 2012 it was a public company but you know it wasn't this success my friends told me like you know you're going to a Turkish bus or what are you doing I you're crazy and then you know the six one you know 2018 I did this move you know a lot of time to move to be the CMO of the company because I felt that it was right thing for for Mark Galilee unit I thought that it would be a good learning experience and I trusted the system each one of those have allowed me all of those where I call it calculated risk but you know you have to take risk if you want to do something different you know in your life in your career you know interesting your career path is a bit like Antonios right he went to different categories he was open to serendipity and also Fernando Machado who has a very deliberate framework to go to the next every time he goes to another assignment he wants it to be something he hasn't learned yet so very intentional about the leaps he has made and he's jumped around as you know the beauties that I don't need to jump around because I operate I have the luxury of operating a business that changes so much I can get all those experience I don't know where you know my role is going to be you know let's assume that I keep the same dual role if first time the nature of both rows is going to be significantly different I don't know exactly how but that's what makes it you're super excited hey by the way my granddaughter's name Desperanza this is your wife's name yes yes yeah yeah yeah yeah no it many many times we talk about our professional successes yeah and I've heard you talk about your wife and your daughters it's like the reality is that impossible to achieve all of this without them now in terms of the support in terms of when you taking this crazy risk you know the trust that they put on you be the wise they are the words of wisdom you know she she was a kindergarten teacher so she doesn't come from the world business but always having the wise you know advice and those moments of truth and then holding the forward home all these professional success is worthless you know the things are home and up there I have full wonderful children you know she has led you know all the work on raising them and so I always joke if she ever divorces me which I hope she doesn't I'm not gonna do it she deserves 50% or more of everything that we have generated make sure she puts it here and you know what you know just They don't get it. I think that we give them the credits, but in public, they don't get the credits. They are more than 50 percent of, you know, whatever success, so-called success we have. Two brands. Actually, childhood, Fisher Price. Yeah, obviously, you know, my parents, you know, they were very generous. But as a teenager and, you know, as at the beginning of this process, I told you when my dad went bankrupt, the one brand that I remember, Levi's 5'1, that's first Levi's 5'1 that I got. He made so much social confidence at the time when maybe I wasn't, so Levi's 5'1 definitely. Did you ever visit Levi's when you were at Stanford? Yeah, actually, yes. Yeah, another dimension, I did a company visit. It's a fantastic company. Yeah, it is. They have a great archives. The history of the company. It's fantastic. Sean, this has been an amazing conversation. It went to so many places I didn't expect and I love that. I love the serendipity of it. So many lessons. You're an amazing leader. We didn't even talk about gut, which I think is one of the most amazing agencies and a friend of mine is a yes. Amazing partners. Yeah, we put us through the limit and we pushed them and we were meant to each other and we didn't know we never worked in the past. Talking about serendipity. Yeah, super. Well, do we talk about everything you want to talk about? Yeah, I think so. I mean, a very reflective face of Laj, last year I turned 50. I was as I was telling my wife and my friends, I made a stage of I am happy every day. I'm thankful for everyone who has helped me. So yeah, I think we could keep talking for another two hours. But you still play tennis. By the way, speaking of being 50 and healthy. No, no, I'm doing a lot of running, a lot of training. I think I'm going to try to pick up golf. I'm going to try to pick up golf. You know, this makes all these something that I always want to do with my wife. So I'll see. But no, and I will try to go back to tennis. Although I'm playing a little bit of paddle, but I'll tennis is maybe a little easier. Maybe one last message. I'm very optimistic about the future of marketing in general. I think that after a phase where we became a little bit of big teams, we lost the seat on the table. I see more of, okay, let's regain it by doing stuff. Let's own our future. Let's make the right calls. Let's take some risks. So I have no doubts. Marketing and growth are exactly the same thing. Growth is the main mandate of marketing. I see it across. We have so many colleagues who are taking control of that growth agenda. Businesses without growth have no future. So we play a central role. So I think as long as we reinvent ourselves, we are self-critical. Maybe we must have critical. We talk more of the business language. We should keep delivering good results for all the companies. Well, Sean, thanks again, man. This was so good. I went on so many levels. Have a great rest of the summer. Make sure your wife listens to this. Your mentor has listened to this. It's a fabulous episode and I thank you for your generosity. Thank you, Gene, for everything that you do for the industry. That was my conversation with Sean Summers. Three lessons from this one for your business brand of life. The first one I just loved is metaphor as the CMO as an executive producer. He talked about how we start at the bottom and we're kind of extras and we work away up. But he said a great CMO is behind the scenes amplifying others, building a team and putting in the capabilities for the company to reach its growth goals. I love that analogy. Second take away. Sean has a beautiful framework to guide his life. The career side of his life, the business side of his life, and the personal side. He's very intentional. He's very explicit. He writes it down. When things happen and opportunities come to him, he has a way to filter them and think them through on both the personal and professional side. I thought the story he told about that I thought was beautiful. In the last one, we talked a lot about curiosity on this show. Sean is one curious CMO. He's actively learning about his categories. He's actively learning from his bosses. He talked beautifully about mentorship's head and bosses he sat. He looks for coaching and role models very actively. The fact that he reads every night in about two hours to learn more about the categories and the business and the areas the company is moving into, I think is just an incredible demonstration of his insatiable curiosity. That's it for this week's episode of the CMO podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends. Along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts Spotify or wherever you listen, the CMO podcast is a vibe original production. [BLANK_AUDIO]