Disrupting beliefs and breaking inertia (with Lucinda Barlow)

There's a story the fashion entrepreneur Kenneth Cole tells about the early days of his business that I've always loved The very start of his business his new company was just making shoes and a key to success at that time in the US shoe business Was a trade fair called the New York shoe fair They take over hotel in New York and all the shoe brands would take a room of some kind and Retail buyers would come around and visit all the rooms and decided what shoes they wanted to take and how many of them to order and Kind of the colors of challenger he knew he had to be at the shoe fair, but he thought it's gonna be a bit dull if he just showed up with his shoes in a hotel room Like everyone else But what could he do that would be more interesting and position is brand as having a little more to it So he has this idea He'll hire one of those big haulage trucks and park it outside the New York hotel And he'll have his new range of shoes in the back of the truck and that'll be his room It'll really stand out. It'll create a bit of buzz amongst the buyers And so he rings up a friend of his who's in the haulage business and explain what he's trying to do and asks Figuimborra a truck for a couple of days. Well, since the friend you can have the truck but good luck with the parking What do you mean Kenneth Cole says? Well, just bring out the mayor's office and you'll soon find out, says his friend So Kenneth Cole rings out the mayor's office to get permission to park his truck outside the hotel for the two days of the shoe fair And they say you must be joking New York is a major innovation. We can't just have people parking trucks outside hotels in the daytime. It would cause chaos. Well, says Kenneth Cole It must be some exceptions. No, none that apply to you. They say well, just humor me. He says what are those exceptions? Well, they say the only real exceptions of a people filming full length movies in the city of New York. So the next day Kenneth Cole changes the name of his company from Kenneth Cole ink to Kenneth Cole production zinc And he applies for a license to shoot a film called the birth of a shoe company coincidentally the exact two days the New York Shoe Fair. The mayor's office gives him a license for his truck and actually gives him a police escort for it. He has a film crew of sorts. He says that sometimes film the camera sometimes isn't always shoes in the back of the truck buyers come to truck. He takes orders for 40,000 pairs of shoes And Kenneth Cole's shoe brand is often running and the part of the story I like most is that Kenneth Cole says that internally at least He never changed the name of the company back again because anyone can have an idea. He said it's actually making it happen that counts. So welcome back to let's make this more interesting for me big fish. And what the key theme throughout their exploration about how to make something more interesting is that As Matt has fairly said in episode two of the first season, you have to produce it. It's very rarely just naturally interesting. You have to produce it to be or interesting. And I love that idea of Kenneth Cole is about putting productions at the end of our company name to really champion that encouragement to make more interesting ideas genuinely happen in the business in our lives all the time. But that's comparatively easy when it's our own company isn't it? But what if it isn't? What does that look like to be a leader in a large company, a large tech company for instance when you really want to push your team and the company to make producing bolder more arresting ideas a part of everyday culture. What does that take? Today's guest offers a fascinating perspective on that. Lucinda Barlow heads Ubers International Marketing team overseeing strategy and marketing across 60 countries in Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Before Uber she did global consumer product marketing and YouTube part of the team that grew its user base to 2 billion daily. And she also spent seven years at Google shaping its brand and marketing across Australia and New Zealand. Lucinda, as we'll hear, is a real champion of bringing a challenger mindset to how her team approaches the growth opportunities even in an enormous company like Uber. And her recent experience across a range of different communication campaigns at the brand around the world has given a very clear perspective on what one has to really do today to gain and hold attention. And why in her words we'll see that the middle is not enough. I found it's a really absorbing conversation. Lucinda is a fascinating thinker and marketer and as I say through this body of 19 different ad campaigns through Uber around the world has arrived at I think some really important conclusions for us about what it takes to genuinely break through and engage people. So we're going to start with Lucinda talking about the trends that she sees in corporate life that fuel mediocrity and dullness within but also beyond tech companies. Trends of mindset, trends of language, trends of behavior. And then she explores why if you really want to break in great habits, you have to start by shocking people and disrupting beliefs. Such an intriguing word for us that shocking isn't it? Let's meet Lucinda. Thank you so much, Lucinda for coming on and there's so much we can talk about. I'm really excited to have this. It's wonderful to be here. We've talked for a while actually a moment in general things about the sort of the prelude to this is that you keep sending me more and more interesting parts of our conversations and my my list of things to talk about is that longer and longer and longer and sort of splendidly you know armed and sets it goes out in different directions. So let's start with this. What does dull look like in your world? I think dull in my world would be whatever is expected not surprising safe maybe monochrome maybe very rational maybe something that doesn't move the you know doesn't get the heart pumping it doesn't inspire some kind of like ooo in tree or it doesn't get the brain going like what's that? Oh I you know I've got to take notice of that that sounds exciting that sounds distracting. So there's this dull I guess all around us in the world and I work in a category one two categories actually that you could say a dull so Uber going places that's an everyday thing that everyone does every day maybe that's dull and then getting things. You know going with a shop sort of getting stuff delivered or getting your cabab delivery on a Friday night so you could say that's kind of mundane and every day and so in order to change behavior within dull worlds expected worlds. You've got to do the opposite right you've got to break in your show you've got to do different things so yeah I think there is there is probably I think dull probably serves a purpose right you can't have the new all the time. Well is you know there are those there are those people that I'm always you always hear about many of barmer's one or there's you know very sort of imminent people who will say things like they wear the same clothes every day. Yes so that they can reduce decisions in their life they can focus on doing something truly important I always think about that they think okay they've chosen dullness in a certain part of their life for a purpose. To allow them to be more interesting in other means presumably as a kind of a thing right yes exactly to not distract but if you're in the business of needing to create distraction if you're in the business of needing to sort of jump start people to needing to them to pay attention. You probably don't have the luxury of doing anything that is anything less than very exciting and not dull so you don't have the option of doing that and yet. I've only worked in a few tech companies and not as much as yours there was a sense when the company is run by engineers who are really smart well intention people that actually that's not what you need to do actually you know you look at near Dyson who just continually puts up here so I've had a cumcleaner works you know let me show you a 3d cut a bit of that kind of stuff there's a sense that actually we don't need to do that we knew something else what's the particular pressures around. Yeah I think it's a really good it's a good observation I actually think I can talk about tech as I've spent the last 25 years of my career in tech companies I love tech you know I do think there is something about the tech world that inspires dreamers you know inspires people who think oh we can make the world better and we can solve re big hard problems. And so in order for tech to succeed it does have to have at the heart of it imagination and vision and risk and creativity and there are plenty of deeply creative people who thrive in that space or who are mavericks in that space but there are for sure massive forces at play in both tech companies and and probably in the wider world I think tech is probably had a lot of work. And so in the world I think tech is probably had an outsized impact on the world and on culture over the last at least 25 years more 50 years. So if we sort of break down what are these being forces I think one is a macro trend in the world that's probably been going on since the industrial revolution which is a macro trend towards rationalization towards you know mechanical thinking towards left brain dominance you know how do we make things more productive how do we I think we we also sort of we use the language of machines frameworks blueprints. It's interesting it's interesting yeah we bring some of this to describe humans you know if you think who who is an imminent person they have executive presence or they have this even the word executive it feels probably more machine like right. That romantic the poetic than emotional so I think there has been just a big shift towards more mechanistic thinking I think tech companies have probably accelerated and fueled that through the ability scale yeah it's like you know fastest better the slope agility you know it's very data driven. You know, focus on the metrics that matter, you know, whatever gets measured gets managed. This kind of language, this is part of a big macro trend. I think within corporate culture, there are forces of bureaucracy and a productivity trap, which are absolutely fuel, fuel, fuel, dullness, right? They fuel meat, rockety. I mean, bureaucracy just through the very depressing, soul destroying, you know, lack of risk taking, just it has so many bad impacts. And then the productivity trap is where you start to measure success by output produced time saved. And you don't measure what really matters, which is better than anyone else. It, you know, it changed behaviors. It did something extraordinary. It had a massive extraordinary outsized impact. So I think if I start with sort of this macro thing that's happening in the world, there's then bureaucracy happening in corporations, not just in tech but everywhere. And then I think within individuals, I think probably the biggest factor that is destroying or that is sort of fueling dull is and destroying creativity is fear. Right. It's a fear of risk. It's a fear of doing something sort of stepping outside the box. It's a fear of maybe looking stupid. You know, it's a fear of, yeah, it's taking that risk to do something that perhaps feels like it. I don't know. It's not right for business or, you know, it's not as, you know, it's something maybe that is more human in its nature. It is not able to be measured or it is not able to, you know, to be sold in in a way that fits the blueprint so the framework's. That's really interesting. I was reading the other day. I've got very interested in the Second World War again as a minute of my agent in the UK do. And bombers in the Second World War was this certain bomber, like as to how to crew of seven people. But they called fear the AIDS passenger. That it was a presence there with them for the 40 hour flight to a world. And it may be think wouldn't it be interesting to, you know, you're in a meeting room just at an empty chair and that's fear's chair. And let's just recognize that it's there. That's not pretended isn't there. Let's discuss what shape and form it takes in this meeting. Oh, I think that's a wonderful idea. Yeah. Fantastic. And it's fine for it to be there. But I love that you put it in the chair. It is there. Yeah. Recognize it. Maybe that's stopping us somewhere. But we're together and we're going to, we're going to do it anyway. You know, we're going to face it. We're going to bypass it. I love it. Exactly. I'm going to invite it to lunch afterwards. So you've done this fascinating, you call it an experiment because it's, you know, very sort of successful marketing campaign in the last 18 months. Tell us a little bit about, you know, the extent of that, the objectives of it and what you found out from doing it. I mentioned before we at Uber, we're in the business of changing behavior. On the Uber Eats side, it's saying, we want to be top of mind so that when you think of what do you need on Friday night, that you'll think of Uber Eats, you know, as you're eating, you're watching football and you need a pizza, right? For Uber, it is about being top of mind when people want to move. You can't actually make people move more. Right. Right. There's only certain number of trips you're going to do per day or per week. You can make people eat more. You know, you can say you want to, you need that bubble tea at 3pm, but you can't make people move more. And so there's a set number of trips that people will have in their day or their life. And what we found is that it is a deeply entrenched behavior. In fact, it is inherited. How you get around a city is something that you have lived with every day of your life. It's, you're probably influenced by how your parents got around that may have changed, but it's largely something you don't really think much about at all. You have options. It could be that you are, you know, you get it, you get a taxi or you take a talk talk if you're in India, you get on the back of a motorbike. Maybe you take your private car, you do not think about it. And you're pretty happy with your transport options. You also perhaps, I mean, if you sort of rationalize it a bit, you'll have some answers as to why you, why it's actually put, you're perfectly happy with them. You can sort of think, oh, actually, you're unhappy with them after you've taken them. You get to your night out and it turns out actually you spent the whole time trying to find a park and then you end up spending $25 on parking, you know, or you got terribly stressed out because actually you were very late and you couldn't hail that taxi that you needed. So our job with Uber is, it's all people actually know the brand. They might have downloaded it in many markets they haven't still. And so we have got to break this entrenched inertia to make someone firstly think, oh, maybe there's a better way for how I get around. And enough for them to either download and then tap a button, get a ride or to perhaps reuse the app but use it for a different occasion that they hadn't even thought about before. And I, in my, probably my naivety thought, okay, here, Uber's an operations driven companies. It is a tech company but its superpower is really the ability to execute really well, right? Like set up a marketplace and rule India in a few days and create an experience with a marketplace to connect drivers and writers. And we've had a lot of success in building very strong growth and driving behaviour change with Uber Eats brand marketing. And I can talk about that but it's very focused on not being dull. It's about salience and fame and entertainment and just being so entrenched in people's memories that, you know, whenever they need arrives, we must be there. So how do we apply that same knowledge to Uber? And it hasn't been done before. So instead of sort of systematically figuring out how to do this, I said about doing it at first of all, it started out with 15 and it ended up being 19 different campaigns. 19 different campaigns. Across many markets. Now we were building a lot of learnings in parallel. It would have been really nice to have done one market and then still shared all of the learnings but instead we had 19 different campaigns going up. But what we got back was this extraordinary wealth of learnings and of results. What we found was that when you want to drive behaviour change, you want to break really entrenched inertia, you have got to firstly, you've got to shock people. Shock people. You break the inertia and there's many ways to do it. But you have to disrupt beliefs. You can't just say, hey, here's a use case of, I don't know, someone missing a bus or you get an Uber. No, that is not enough. It is not, it's too familiar. A use case, it's very literal. No one cares. No one's actually watching ads. You must disrupt beliefs. And I can talk about. Actually, why don't I just give you some examples and then Adam maybe I can, yeah, I can hear some of the like the learnings I took from you with on challenge of, challenge of mindset. Fantastic. And that's why, you know, a massive thank you to you for writing the book and making this sort of part of business vernacular because we've certainly benefited hugely from it. So firstly, what you're wanting to do is find a attention which resonates emotionally. It's got to be something that will make people, that, you know, people will notice, but they also get that feeling, you know, the hairs on your arms need to stand up on end. It's got to be something that's like deeply familiar. It is, it is feel response. So one of the campaigns that I think worked, one of the best was the Northerners UK work, which I think I know you're familiar with that ran in your market. This was something was very simple. It was, but it had it at its heart, a deeply local human truth. So it had, you know, some very stoic Northerners, right, who we very quickly wanted to, we wanted to tap into the insight that they were not Londoners and that they were very stoic and that they would, you know, that Uber was not for them. They're not one of those people. And so we showed them not what, you know, in very familiar setting, stumbling on cobble stones in the rain, the freezing cold without a coat, stumbling, but refusing to take an Uber, right? And so this worked because it was deeply familiar. So it was a very familiar use case, but the details mattered. the deeply local insights that we localize, the voiceover was localized for every different, you know, in the first wave for 14 different locations across the UK. - 14 different locations. - 14, yeah. - So just within the UK, you didn't treat UK as one country, you treated it as 14 different places, okay? - We then rolled it out in the second wave in the south and it worked in the south and again, we rolled it out. I don't know the number, but again, it was another, it was around 14 as well. We did the same. We, you know, lots of different accents. So deeply local. - Yeah. - And in terms of accents and we had the same on Spotify, you know, very like through the line work as well was deeply localized with sort, you know, very local slang. So, you know, that is one where again, it was a very familiar use case, but it was done in a way that was sort of unmissable and like everyone could go, "Oh, that's me," or "I know someone like that because of the details." And so, yeah, that one actually ended up getting in the first wave, the first wave of the campaign drove two points of availability awareness, but 12 percentage increase in right of first tricks. So I forgot. - Right. - Which is extraordinary. And then when we rolled it out again, the baseline was higher and we saw an even bigger increase. So really strong. So I'll give you some examples of good and then I'm gonna give you the bad. - Just before that, I'm just noting your point about productivity, right? Because in a sense, that's superficially quite an inefficient thing to do, to do 28 different versions of an ad. - Yes. - And the different slang and different accents and different local observations is quite an inefficient way to produce advertising. Why did you feel you need to go that far? - Actually, the way that it was done was very efficient because the visual was all the same, but the voiceover was changed. - Right. - So the voiceover, you can do in a pretty efficient way. - Okay, okay. - But the reason that we did do that was, if we had just had a generic English accent with this use case, it would not have performed. It would not have been as funny. It would not have been as locally resonant. - And this is interesting, because one of your themes is, the middle is not enough, right? - Yeah. - So they understand it. Showing that you understand the problem, you've got a solution is not enough. So this is one way of really pushing beyond the middle. And saying, no, no, I see you. I understand you. I know your life. And therefore connecting with the mutt-much deeper ways, that one of the ways in which you broke through was that, right? Yeah. - Yeah. - Exactly right. Another way on another extreme is to go very mass, but to dramatize the enemy. - What? - So if you have an enemy like street hailing a taxi, which we have in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, in Japan, you, and again, this is where there is a huge amount of inertia, people are growing up with taxis that are very iconic on their streets. And they won't, they will say, oh look, I, you know, they'll feel quite productive in putting their hand out, taking a taxi in that you, especially in Hong Kong in Taiwan. The streets are chaotic. And you can spend a lot of time, like trying to find, trying to hail that taxi, it feels productive, but it's not. And so, because you might miss one, or you know, you're in Pekau, you can't get one. So we wanted to shine a light on the enemy in a really fun and engaging dramatic way. And in the case of Hong Kong, we created a whole trope around Kung Fu. Kung Fu means effort. And so we wanted to say skip the Kung Fu, where, you know, you going up and holding up your arm for, and I'm holding up my arm right now. I'm really sorry, I've got a small, I'm going to get quite hard. I'm going to get a lot more effort than it should be. We found, anyway, so we created basically a short Kung Fu film, featuring a Kung Fu star. - All right. - Louis Cô, yeah, who actually came out with a teaser to say he would not be doing any more Kung Fu movies with his career. So that was our launch moment. Very generous of him. And then he featured in the campaign, and it was this extraordinary amazing Kung Fu very entertaining film, 32nd spot, which showed everybody else's trope who was hailing a taxi, was doing Kung Fu moves. You know, like it would like brilliantly done. And flying sources across streets and, you know, back flips on the streets and so forth. And then Louis comes, the hero comes through and just orders you, and it's actually that we do have taxis on the platform. Or does his Uber taxi on the Uber app get him very cool and calm, skip the Kung Fu. Similar with Taiwan, where we showed that ordering a taxi is drama. And so we worked with the APM soap operas, which are very popular in TV dramas. And we dramatized this whole idea with all the tropes of a soap opera. Like, you know, a baby with, that has, you know, with a, a father's discovered, you know, then, you know, the second wife comes in and all this stuff. So we used all of the tropes of a TV soap opera and it starred the very famous and loved soap opera characters. And so for both of these campaigns again, we saw increase in top of mind awareness in the case of Hong Kong. It was four points at off on mind awareness, seven team point increase in taxi trips, in Taiwan, five point increase in top of mind awareness, 53% increase in first trips, huge growth in both of those markets. - Very impressive, yeah. That's some of your 19 conveys, right? Tell us about the ones that didn't generate that degree of impact and why. Let me tell you what goes on here. All right, on the opposite extreme. So we have, and I wanna say, you know, big thank you to my teams around the world who have generously, you know, willing to share both the good and the bad. - Yeah, absolutely. That's a big deal. So yes, please thank the friends. - Yeah, we'll do. And, you know, and with each of these also, they have gone on to optimize or to learn from each other. So we've been able to scale a lot of learnings from across markets around the world. All right, in the case of Germany, we have a campaign called Binglickta, which means I'll be there. And it launched a few years ago, driving availability awareness, and it was incredibly loved, beautifully emotional campaign. The first, what or one of the first phases of it, showed a couple, was a divorced parents there. One of the parents had a, was, had the child, and the child needed its teddy bear. And so they got the teddy bear delivered by an owner. So it was sort of a modern story and a very unexpected use of Uber, but a touching story and that actually performed very well. So they wanted to leverage that same formula of an emotional campaign. However, we also have a job to do around some education in, in Germany. People are very attached to their cars. And so we wanted to show a pretty literal use case around what Uber could be used for it, to actually show the downside of, of taking your car. And so one of the pain points of taking your own car is parking and trying to find a park in a busy city. And so the campaign showed a very literal use case of trying to, getting parked in, getting parked in so your car, you, you then can't make your daughter's recital. Now when you think about it, it's kind of a little bit obvious and, and, and yet also, how many times has that actually happened? And then the way that the story was told was not with the depth of insight of the Northerners campaign in the UK. You couldn't say, I know those people deeply. And I know how they're feeling and I have seen them. So they, I think if you were going to be as literal a use case as that, you have to work so hard to, to make the story really familiar, interesting, really sort of very real details. And we didn't, we missed that. So we aimed for something emotional, but it wasn't based on reality. And then brought to that a pretty literal use case. And so we didn't see any lift, any brand lift, right? It was sort of forgettable and boring. So smart, well-intentioned group, doing something that apparently makes sense. And yet is not enough in the current world to really make the shift that you need. That's right. That's right. Tick tick, you know. showed a use case, showed how the product overcame that barrier. There was an emotional ending to the story. It was wonderful. There was a moment where the parents got to see the child's rehearsal. And yet that is not enough. There was another one in Argentina, our campaign's called Yendol, which means let's go. Argentina is going through a very interesting time in culture. There's a rise in libertarianism. And so there's a rise in being through a huge amount of inflation. And there's a rise in a feeling of independence. And there's also been a lack of subsidies on public transport. And so people are needing to have the independence of taking an over. And so we had a strong insight, which was people don't want to be dependent on other people to get around. They actually really crave independence. And so we have a number of use cases which showed that independence. For instance, a friend is dancing wildly in a nightclub. And his friend doesn't want to wait for him to finish dancing. And so he escapes. He leaves in an Uber. And we actually even had the song, you know, you're free to do what you want. Because I'm free. I'm free to do what you want. Amazing soundtrack. The people did know not enough, did not perform enough. And I think there was a couple of things in here. I think that the use case was not funny enough. Again, it wasn't or entertaining enough. It's a bit of humor in the way that the guy was dancing. But it wasn't a, there wasn't emotional resonance in this. It was a bit like, yeah, whatever. I don't know if person deeply or it's not as wild enough for me to pay, and dramatic enough for me to pay attention. It was in the middle. So I see you're saying that what you've learned is you have to one or the other, right? You know, I have to be really emotionally resistant, really digging and really understandable that is. Or you have to be very dramatic. And actually that drama has its own emotional resonance. The pun on kung fu, the fact it's a local artist, the fact that there is clearly an emotional resonance just in that. But in that case, the drama is a thing that you read out. And essentially you've learned from this experiment that you need to one or those, one of those two things. Anything in the middle is just not going to be good enough. Yep. Yes. That is right. Fascinating. And I think that peace on attention, attention is just non-negotiable. I think because people don't watch ads anymore, you've got to break through. And there are lots of ways to do it. So, you know, I think humor is really powerful. But you've got to trust yourself that that humor is really breaking through. Trust your local team. Then it is truly funny. And that the humor ideally is throughout the ad. You can't just have one joke. It's got to be little bit throughout the end. It's got to keep you engaged. I personally also really love working with entertainment tropes like kung fu, sitcoms. What else have we done? Some musicals. There's lots of tropes that are a shortcut to fame and attention because people already know the trope. So, it's kind of like using a celebrity. But you play into worlds that people understand and you have your take on it. Troops, they already really care about or join them. Especially if you can subvert it or you can be self-deprecating in your approach to it. You've got to have your expression of that trope. And it could help that the trope is something that is already in culture or not. Like the Taiwan APM dramas. Kind of an older audience that watches those APM dramas. But it was also something that there's a bit of nostalgia. A lot of people still have watched them. They're very well known. But they weren't like trending in culture. Anyway, so I do think those I think tropes, trends also or you go really hyper with your hyper local, hyper local. And I think where this can work is if it's hard to get hyper local, you find real stories. And you can dramatize them. But if it's something that's so unusual, but it's real, then you're probably on tour winner. And where's it now you've got this fantastic body of evidence, not simply non-existent evidence. How do you as the international CMO, I love your listening about it's not enough. How do you bring not enough into the conversation into the bar that you set for your teams, the reviews that you have for the conversation. How does not enough come into that conversation? Because clearly it's fundamentally learned that actually it's no good just being there. It's actually good that you've got to take a whole level further. As it changes the way you have those conversations. Yes, absolutely. So we talk about it. Why will anyone care? Why would anybody watch this? Why will it break through? Why does it matter? And so that's for attention. We're very clear on it. We do some we do test as well. I don't want to always rely on testing. I don't want it to be a crutch. You've got to have strong gut as well. But you know, testing can be very clear. We use it's us testing. I mean, it is night and day when you have attention and you don't. Right? It's super clear. So it's probably the thing that I have said so over the most. I mean, I care I care deeply, obviously, about the goals that we're achieving and how the brand shows up. But attention is really important. And then with brand linkage, I do think this is another critical one. You can get attention, but you do have to have a role for the brand. And I think it's not enough for the brand to just be a reveal at the end. Yeah, I was at a conference the other day, a really good conference actually in London. And they asked somebody's on stage. It was a CEO who had been a CMO. He's definition of brand. And he said brand is your role in the consumers life and your plan for delivering that. And I thought it was very nice and elegant way to just sum up in many ways what you've just been talking about. And that's the same kind of deal. And I clarify it's so important. Yeah, it's really important. I think I give you an example. We had a really audacious idea for Australia. And Australia is a pretty mature market in that many people have already used. Who about it's very well known. So there's very high penetration. So we're not trying to drive new user acquisition. We're trying to get people to use us for more occasions. One of the early concepts that we had was, okay, let's identify an enemy. Actually, the enemy is staying in the enemy is being on social media. The enemy is this sort of insular life that we're leading. And what if Uber could be your vehicle to actually getting out into the world, showing out to seeing things from places. And I'll, overall, Uber brand is about a core DNA is on our way. We are there. We will show up for you so you show up for others. So it is core to our brand. But for getting people to use the app more, if we highlight it, the enemy, and I'll give you the concept, which was just hilariously funny, they had this whole conspiracy around the world is trying to keep you in. And so there you are with all your comforts, including Uber Eats, you know, it included your scrolling on your phone all the time. And it's this big conspiracy to keep you in. And so Uber comes in and so we will come in sort of sabotage it. It was the most audacious, hilarious, very funny script. And we tested it. And then we was like, what? I know I haven't described it well out of it. It's a funny idea. It's a funny idea. Yeah. But consumers like, no, I don't get the role of the brand. Like, yeah, I know that I'm on social media too much. That's my problem. That's not Uber's problem to solve. So the role of the brand was too far removed, too long of walk. And where we ended up was actually a fantastic campaign that's launched in Australia, super entertaining, called Can't Do That if you're driving, where we just said, actually, we're going to tackle this driving in your private car. It's the eye, you know, there is this ultimate freedom of having your own car driving anywhere you want to go. But actually the reality of it is you, there's a whole lot of stuff you can't do. And so we ended up with a very fun, entertaining spot. The hero film was a collaboration between Chennai Atwain and Tom Cardi, who's a creator and very funny music musician. He's Australian singing a song about all things you can't do. If you're driving like you can't do the word along your phone and you can't play the trombone and you can't do it. So it was a gay, like, unbelievable engagement around that. Very good. And much closer, you know, a very believable role for the brand. I found this so interesting. such clear evidence from those range of results across those 19 different campaigns in different parts of the world that in her words the middle is not enough. Showing you understand the problem and you've got a solution just doesn't move the needle anymore. How they found that to really engage people in rethinking in grain habits they had to push to one of two extremes. Either showing they really saw their audience treating the UK as 14 different regions for instance to drive a deeper level of human connection or really dialing up the drama and plugging into the cultural tropes that their locals really loved. And we heard that in doing so she and her team have become very clear about what is not enough to engage their audience and keep them engaged. And I wonder whether that's a conversation many companies or indeed many of us as individuals are really having sufficiently at all. What an important foundation that would be to setting the real bar for breaking through an attention engagement. What's not enough for us here if we really want to succeed. And I'm not forgetting the first part of the conversation too which is equally interesting about how the frameworks and language we increasingly use in corporate life reflect a trend towards the rational. We'll pick that up a little later on when we hear from Lucinda how this becomes particularly pronounced within a business at a certain time of the year. But let's now come to how and why although Uber is clearly an enormous company. Lucinda encourages her team to bring a challenger mindset to everything they do and what the benefit of that is. And I have to declare very personal interest in this in that researching, writing about and working with challenges. It's been at the heart of what I and my colleagues lead big fish have done for about 25 years now and one of my frustrations in the work that I do is people associating the concept of challenger just with smaller brands in early stages of growth. And that's not what it's about at all. Challenges fundamentally about a mindset rather than the state of market. A mindset that's powerful whatever your size. And in this next section we're going to hear Lucinda lay out why she feels adopting that mindset has been and is so important to them from helping them identify the next source of growth to identifying what they're really competing against in a market. And in doing so helping them create a much more engaging narrative around their role in people's lives. Let's come back to something you were talking about earlier on about it's linked to a challenger mindset because you are one of these makes it fact you're such a fascinating leader is you know, Uber's doing very well, you know, clearly in all this growth. And yet you are very clear to your team that you all need to have a challenger mindset. So why is that what does it mean to you and how does that show up? The option is in Uber's DNA. We were a very disruptive company when we when we launched and then we were with the sort of the bell weather of the mobility era where you know it was tap a button get a ride and it was a disruptive proposition. And it would be if we we didn't keep some level of that we can't be as disruptive as we were when we pre IPO and as a small startup. But we are constantly just be under threat of being disrupted ourselves. We are moving from a mobility era to an AI agentic era where you can imagine in in a year or two, depending on who you believe and when this will happen. But it could be very easy for our consumers to say, hey, Gemini, I get you a car. Hey Siri is my you know, I'm a grocery stock. Right. So you know we there is on the one hand, there is disruption from agents, but there's also disruption today from you know from closer competitors, whether we are a market leader in a market or we are not. And I think the the always taking the stance that we are a challenger because even if you are a market leader in your immediate category, you are not in the next one and your role is to always be looking for the next source of growth. So you know the next source of penetration. So in the case of mobility, you know, we don't want to just look at right here. We want to look at, okay, what about the next you know, p to p travel or what about new modes of travel or what about actually we're a tiny proportion of total trips. And so in each of those growth curves, we are a challenger. So it helps us be a challenger in our existing category. And the way that you know again, I talked to my team about challenger branding is is it's something a game we share as a cultural truth is something that we acknowledge this is what we are bring the challenger spirit act like a challenger. So in different ways, it can show up in who you choose your competitor is. Right. Like in the case of Australia, our competitor is private car driving. It's not private car ownership. We tried to tackle it at one point is so hard. It's so entrenched a little bit closer is just the trips that you take in a private car in night time social and going to the airport in, I don't know in your commute. But it's still a pretty audacious competitor. You know, same thing on the agreed side, it is like like you know your top up shop. Yes, you are very big habit is getting your groceries every day, you know, getting the milk and bread and so forth that you need not the emergency use case, but the sort of the top up that you do once a week. And that's a pretty entrenched habit, but it's a great knob. We that's so that's an important competitor for us. An opportunity for us. So that's in who you choose. I think the next is the actions that you take. And I think just I mean challenges are so creative and nimble in how they act. And we have things called attention spikes and we aim for a kind of one or quarter. And give or take. But that's where with a lot of freedom and they can be from they can be as simple and I know these things are probably still quite hard to execute, but as simple as Lewis Coe, Coe from Hong Kong turning up on the red carpet in a taxi. So hijacking at a red car end. That's like a big wonderful moment that breaks through in PR drives a lot of bars tons of social engagement can be from that through to in Argentina. We partnered with a rock concert. We had Uber branded Kimmer's beer cans and so favorite beer. And so you know, if so you don't drink and drive. You can take an Uber after you've been here. Brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah. So it can be really cool activations. And then it can be just PR moments that break through or another really fun one is busy promos. You know, when you've got a promo for something that you want to go viral and sometimes that goes that can be, you know, to be to the detrimental to the horror of the ads things you don't want these things to go to be too successful, but they break through. The challenge of mindset is just bringing a drum beat of creativity. I think it helps the team feel like, you know, take risks, do things that are very different. Try to or you know, know that they want to be you've got to be in culture you've got to be talked about and some of them fail. And then we had a pet button in in Japan with a national pet day. We had this little button that we launched where like cats could press it to ask their, their owner to order them Uber Eats that didn't that didn't. Yeah, I can see why you approved it. That's a fantastic idea. It's really interesting. It is because very often you see people on the client side talking about challenges as a particular face relatively small, you know, you know, having to do more or less. But actually, if you you're a big kind of a doctor as a market market shape. Actually, this is about ambition really in challenging mindset and how you deliver against that ambition. It's much more about that isn't it? Yes, yes, yes, it is and a game it's like, why would anyone care? You know why is anybody going to care about your brand or your ads? Unless you give them a gift, unless you give them something so wonderful, so engaging, unmissable, so exciting, you know, it's got to be a gift. And and that can be done through really good campaign work. But you know, a lot of people aren't watching ads and so you've got to find other ways. I love that thought that no one will care about your brand or your ad, unless you bring them some kind of wonderful, unmissable gift. What a lovely way to think about one's communication, one's engagement. And although I might be a little biased here, I equally love to perspective on why it's so important to bring a challenger mindset, the growth and paradise for a team, for all that as I say, Uber is a big global company. And how behaving as a challenger is, in her words, a cultural truth for her and them that shows up in a range of different ways from who you choose as a competitor to the actions you want to be. take and the risks you accept if you're really trying to do something different. And how leaning into being a more interesting challenger in those growth categories in turn helps them be a challenger even in their existing category because as she insistently reminds us, nobody out there really cares. So now let's come back to the final part of the interview and return to the wins of mechanistic thinking and rationality in business. And she talks about the time of your particularly encourages that very mechanistic and rational approach. What are the qualities of good leadership if you really want to help elevate your teams outputs even here? When we were talking in the lead up to this conversation, they said that you made it really interesting point in terms of culture sticking with that thing about sometimes cultural forces kind of encouraged on this entirely unintentionally. Maybe it's probably about planning process. Now the planning process was a very particular kind of mental and emotional engagement that sometimes could perhaps precipitate a greater degree of dominance than was quite right for the company. Tell us a bit about that. Yeah, planning process is a process that every organization has to go through. It's the time where you dive into data, you look at every kind of vector, every sort of analysis to see how the company is performing, where you should invest, what should be your priorities. It is necessary. I can't imagine not doing it. But as I went through it quite recently, I reflected that it has its unintended consequences. The planning process is a time where you go deep on detail. And at Uber we have this value which is see the forest and the trees. And planning is actually heads down in the trees. It's where you go really deep. And I find actually it is quite hard to zoom back out because zooming out requires incomplete information. It requires sort of maybe a little bit more imagination, context, nuance and meaning. And planning is the time where actually you don't have any space for anything that doesn't fit into a box. And in fact, when the data is not available, maybe you recut it another way. Or maybe you focus on something else that does have the data. And so I felt like planning is kind of a metaphor for what is happening in the broader world. Into a move towards rationalization, a move towards more mechanistic mechanical thinking, more proceduralization process. And what we can see too with AI, like AI and machines go deep on trees. AI is extraordinary at looking at a huge number of trees. But it has no sense whatsoever of the meaning. Why are we doing this? What's happening? There's no connection. And I actually, the midst of planning, it reinforced to me this question that I've been asking myself. And I asked my teams. And as we are faced with AI, I think you've got to regularly ask yourself, what is it that humans do better than machines? What can machines do better than humans? And why do we as humans keep trying to emulate machines? So with that in mind, I think, I mean, obviously planning is necessary. As much as possible, use machines to shortcut planning. But your human understanding of what are the risks we need to take? What are the bets we need to take? Where do we need to galvanize people? Where do we need to focus and inspire people? That is something I do not want to lose. Well, this leads to a really nice graphic into the conversation about as a leader. So one of the things that you are very passionate about, hence our conversation, is not being done and not sticking with just enough because you're an ambition person in an ambitious company and really want to make the impact for the company and your team that it deserves. But you don't hear marketing leaders a whole lot talking about, dull very much, or indeed, the kind of impetus to really push ourselves to rise up up it all. How did you learn how to do this in effect? Because I bet you weren't taught it in any kind of way because that wasn't the kinds of things that was taught to market people. How did you come to be that kind of leader? And what are two or three things that you do, that you think are at the heart of helping your team really elevate the quality and the outputs of what they do? Well, thanks Adam, that's very nice of you to say. I think marketers have an extraordinary superpower within organizations, within tech organizations, engineering organizations, but I'm sure in all, which is to bring something different. It is to bring this deep connection with humans, and that is what motivates human consumers, human people within the team. I think if we go to our jobs, we have an intuitive understanding of that. There is something we have brought with us through our marketing careers. I think we deeply, we've built that muscle of understanding humans and bringing attention to them and understanding what moves them. And so, I think a deep understanding of humans is one thing that is very important for leaders and marketing leaders, particularly to keep front and center within organizations. I think also bringing a either bringing creativity and ideas, or but marketers should never be the only ones that bring that, or bring the courage, the encouragement, the courage to believe in ideas, to ask for them, to take risks and to be imaginative. And I think that's actually a role I find myself playing in organizations because in a marketing, it's in a cross-functional team, where there are plenty of unbelievably smart strategic thinkers and operational thinkers at a company like Uber, and I'm sure many organizations. I mean, I've long to be an extraordinarily strategic operational leader, but you've got to be able to bring something different. And Uber has another value which is great, mine's don't think alike. And so bring a different strength. But maybe that you need to flex, if there is a very sort of operational tone to a meeting, but it's a different challenge mentality or a different way of looking at something, then you may need to flex to bring a different way of looking at something. And to do that in a way that is, do it in a way that feels safe and fun and playful and like, oh, you know, this is something if you can bring with some conviction or ask them questions and encourage a different way of doing things. But there may be other times where you then you yourself need to flex into more of an operational mode. Someone else has come up with a great idea. Okay, we can make it work. Let's do it. So yeah, I guess if I can summarize, I think marketing leaders are often pretty good generalists with a deep understanding of human nature, what it takes to move people, and that is often completely irrational and a way to either come up with great ideas of creativity and innovative thinking or to encourage others to do that, to build the culture and the mindset that encourages that kind of thinking. Yes, fabulous. And to just, let me ask a question a slightly different way, which is, so how does a marketer with a challenge of mindset like yourself resist the increasing pressure towards rationality and efficiency? Those pressures are there. I am constantly needing to evangelize the power of marketing and to show the wonderful results that it drives, the outsize growth that it drives. And of course, measurement is not complete. Measurement is never perfect in this space. And if someone doesn't believe, there will be many ways that they will find that per calls in why they don't believe something. So there's a couple of ways that have been successful. One is you find Mavericks and you find champions. You find those who have put their own, their own PNL and budgets on the line. And they are the heroes, the GMs who, you know, without having perfect information, did invest early and often. And I have plenty of markets around the world to show that those who have invested, early, who have invested consistently, I mean, the results I are a night and day better. It is not the marketing team that's the hero there. It is the GM that believed in it. You know, and there's amazing leaders, not just general managers, I think about Sunda, their CEO of Google. Years ago, I worked at Google very early on in doing Chrome marketing. And it was the time when Google did not really believe in brand marketing at all. Sunda had this little product. He was the product manager for Chrome, the browser, knowing about browsers, deeply unsexy. And he was the number four player. And he came to marketing and he said, "I've got this product. It's a browser. I need your help." No one cares. How do we get consumers using this? And, you know, with the help of Lorraine, who was the CMO there and is now, you know, we built something amazing. We built an extraordinary set of, like incredible campaigns around Chrome. Were you the one who did the graphic novel around it? No, I did it, but I did do a Lego set in Chrome called "Build with Chrome" and like, Lady Gaga campaign. It was went on for quite a few years, but it was, I remember it because Sunda was quite unusual in as a PM who courted marketing, who said in a world that, you know, a tech world that did not at that time, the Leab and Brown marketing were very much second-class citizens. He said, "I need your help." And it's the same in an operations company like Uber, where you have GMs who say, "I really need your help to grow this business and to do it in the long term." So I am often needing to evangelize the power of, and the wonderful impact of Brown. I use a huge amount of the wonderful Brown science that's been done by so many people like you. And then, of course, all of our own results that we share. And also, there's always the cautionary tales of what happens when you go dark. So I think we've got three cautionary tales now, Adam, which is one, you can, like, the ways to ruin your brand. One is, you don't show up, right? You go dark. Another is that you don't really know who you are. You keep changing things around, you're inconsistent. And the third, which you've no identified, is you are dull. That is how you kill your brand. - One of the things I love obviously about what you're saying, is that you've introduced off the DC challenge very much as a mindset rather than state of market. Why is that? - Yeah, and Adam, I've got to say thank you to you for the pioneering work that you have done to shine a light on the importance of Challenger mindset. I mean, you've, you know, we've read your books, we've listened to your podcasts and it has definitely informed how we think about the work that we do and how we act. Uber has disruption in its DNA. It was born out of this, out of the mobile era and it was highly disruptive early on. And that was pre IPO. We could not be that disruptive startup forever. And today as a very large company, it would be a large and successful company. If you could see that you could sort of fall into being okay with sort of your existing categories that you operate in and sort of pottering along, right? That is not okay for the aspirations that we have and for the growth company that we want to be and in order to thrive in the next era, which we are hitting, which is the AI agentech era. And so, you know, we're in many markets around the world over 60 year, like that I cover. In each of these markets, we're at a different market stage. - Yep. - And we might be market leaders in some of those markets and many of those markets in fact, but not in all. And so some we are a real like career mobility. We are the challenger brand. But that mindset of act like a challenger relates to all of these markets. Because you know, Nomato sort of where you're at, here is always a new frontier. There is always a, and there is always a competitor coming for you. And there is always a new frontier of penetration and growth for you to cross. And often this will take, well, I think probably always, takes a challenger mindset to break inertia, to change habits, to disrupt beliefs. Sometimes they're actually in your own beliefs. And so we also sort of apply that challenger mindset to our own assumptions. One of the limiting beliefs that we have at the moment could it be that we believe, you know, AI is not gonna drive, is not gonna shape a motion. So even some of those kind of beliefs, we have to challenge all the time. So it's part of our culture. It's something we talk about a lot. We champion the work of when we share the work, we'll do like all hands where we share our challenger, act like a challenger work that we've done. You know, I like to have each star market having at least one sort of challenger mindset moment per quarter. But it's really, it comes in a lot of forms. I think it comes in firstly, thinking about who you're going after. What is the category that you're going after? What's the next front? Yeah, you're going after. Who is your enemy? Who is your competitor? You know, is it private car use? And you are a challenger within that category as the first stage. The next is thinking about different tactics and executing tactics, which do the job of disrupting beliefs of evolving expectations and changing habits, signaling, hey, there's something new to see here. You know, we're going to show you a different thing. It could be sort of commercial entertainment. It could be reinventing the way that we do things. So there's this mindset is how can we think beyond just a traditional I am see and really get outsized bars, talkability, get attention, get people knowing that there is something new here. Do you think it's fair to say that unless you know what you're challenging or you're and who indeed who you are challenging, you don't have a great strategy? Yes. I do. You have to be very clear about it. Razor Sharp on who it is. So put it all together for us. We send a wonderful free ranging conversation. But let's focus on what would your three bits of advice be? Frame marketer who never wanted to be dull every again. What a great brief. Embrace the challenge of being anti-dull. Firstly, just appreciate that you do not have the luxury of being anything less than extraordinarily engaging because nobody cares. Nobody cares about your brand. Nobody is watching your ads. Nobody actually really wants to change the behaviors and do something different. Secondly, you've got to go further than the middle, than mediocrity. Good enough is not good enough. And two things have worked really well in my experience. One is extraordinary entertainment, extreme drama, entertainment, attention, humor, celebrity, passion points, go all in. That's one. The other extreme is deep emotional resonance that feels incredibly local, familiar. This is where creators actually excel. They do it so brilliantly and naturally. That's true. I don't know. That's very interesting. Yeah. Okay. And number three. And number three is take that risk, smart risk taking plunge diving. It is a muscle. A muscle for you. And you will roll model that with your teams. Maybe even in your life. But play, have fun, take the risk, do something different, show up in a different way. It helps build the muscle of just trying new things. You will, you know, in the sort of pursuit of antidull, there will be mistakes and that's totally fine. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Lizinda. I really love the conversation. It's so interesting. Her idea of risk as a muscle, isn't it? Building the muscle of trying new things, showing yourself and those around you that you accept the degree of risk in doing so, because in her words, you appreciate that you don't have the luxury of being anything other than extraordinarily engaging, because no one cares, no one's watching. No one really wants to change their behaviors, unless you do something extraordinary. And in all of this to go back to the very beginning of the conversation, as with any time you look to something different or take a risk, acknowledge that they may be a way to be fear in the room. Of course, that's natural. Just don't invite it out to lunch with you. Thanks for listening to Let's Make This More Interesting for Mootigfish, and a big thanks to Ruth Mayer Ditter and Rachel Mayer producer. See you next time.