Ep #502: Melody Lee is driving luxury in Formula 1

Thanks to our pals at Amazon Business for supporting the "Just of It." As we celebrate 500 episodes of the podcast, I'm reminiscing about the good old days like when me and Seth taught ourselves how to edit a podcast, or that time I recorded an entire episode on a very tiny mic. Equipment emergencies happen, but when you have the support of Amazon Business, a solution is never far away. Thanks to Amazon Business and their fast, free shipping, I had a new podcast mic in a matter of days. Make the right investment for your company. Check out everything Amazon Business has to offer by visiting business.amazon.com today. One more time, that's business.amazon.com. What's up, y'all? Welcome or welcome back to another episode of the "Just of It." We have missed you so much since last week, today's Thursday, October 23rd. Today, you're stuck with me only. I'm your host, Ellen Hyslop. This week, we are hosting our team in Toronto for an offsite. They're always so much fun to get together in person, especially because we're a remote team. Because of that, we like to give our team a rest from actually producing the newsletter and the podcast. So this is a pre-recorded show, but we wanted to make sure we came into your feed at least once while we were away. It's also just me today because of another little secret. So two weeks ago, in case you missed it, we launched the Just Plus. It's a brand new membership community for our jisters, providing them a safe place to chat about sports, find each other, IRL or online, get exclusive content from the GIST, get discounts from different sports bars and teams and all of that sort of stuff. And it's been really cool to see all of the conversation on the Just Plus. And I think if you're a podcast listener, honestly, well, obviously you are because you're listening right now. So you're our podcast listener. You're going to love the Just Plus. So go to our website and check it out and learn more and hopefully you join the community. Another huge perk of the Just Plus, so there's two tiers, the rookie tier and the all star tier, but in the all star tier, that's just $10 a month or $100 a year. You get a lot of exclusive content and offerings. And some of that content offering is two additional podcasts every single month. And these podcasts are a little bit more on the interview side of things, athlete side of things, deep diving into topics, working off of topics that we're chatting about in the Discord for the Just Plus. And they're really fun. And so today we're sharing an episode that actually members of the Just Plus received yesterday. We want to share it with you all to just give you a taste of the type of premium content that we're sharing on the Just Plus and what everyone over there is interacting with. So today's episode features an interview with probably one of, I don't know, one of the favorite people who I've had the opportunity to chat with at the Just and that is Mercedes-Benz's chief marketing officer, Melody Lee. Like yes, the Just of It is chatting to powerhouse women like CMOs of mega automotive brands. It's so cool. And this wouldn't be able to happen without this amazing community that we have. Part of the reason why we wanted to chat with Melody Lee is because she is a powerful woman in a male dominated field. Sports are a male dominated field. There's so many parallels to the automotive industry. She is such a genius marketer. And on top of everything that she has to handle for Mercedes-Benz, Formula One is a big part of her purview of how it actually impacts Mercedes as a brand. And so we got kind of an inside scoop as to how she approaches Mercedes as a brand altogether, but also how again, F1 and this new F1, the movie and how drive to survive and everything like that has really impacted. So it's just such a cool conversation. We also talked about sexism in the workplace and all of that sort of stuff that I think anyone can really resonate with. I really hope you'll love this conversation. I could have sat and chatted with Melody for hours, honestly. And if you're interested in more content like this, you could go to the link in our show notes or just go to our website, thejustsports.com and sign up for the Just Plus. We'd love to have you as part of our community. But with that and with all of that background, here is our fabulous conversation with the one and only Melody Lee. Melody, thanks so much for coming on The Just of It. We are so excited to have you here. I'm so pleased to be here. Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, of course. I could probably pick your brain for an hour, but we only have 20 minutes or so. And I know that our audience is so excited to learn from you today. I want to start off by setting the scene a little bit and starting things at a very high level with your role as the CMO at Mercedes. What are your goals? What does your day to day look like? Can you paint the picture for us a little bit more broadly before we dive into the conversation? Our two main goals at Mercedes Benz in the marketing department are to drive growth and demand for the brand that ultimately results in the sale of a vehicle. And secondly, to build long-term growth for the brand itself, so long-term equity. We are 140 years old next year. We were founded in 1886, which means that it's incumbent upon us to do both at the same time and it's kind of a constant balance. So we have to be focused on how we move the metal, as we like to say in this industry, but we also have to think about how we preserve the brand for the next 140 years. And for Mercedes, and as you're thinking about that growth in terms of the longevity of people who are buying Mercedes vehicles when you're thinking about setting up the brand, this is a sports podcast. So I have to talk to you about sports. How do you think about sports playing into your marketing mix and how sports help hit those goals? Sports are a huge part of our marketing strategy. And I will happily tell you about all the different ways in which we're involved. But sports is a place where the audience is united, in a sense. It's still one of the best places to get live eyeballs, right? In this advent of technology and how much it's shifted in terms of the way that people consume media, we know sports is still a place that they're tuning in live and that they're continuing to pay attention throughout the broadcast. So it's a really good way to get eyeballs on the Mercedes Benz brand at the same time. But we also think about it from the aspect of the experiential perspective, right? So how do we also provide an experience at an event, which I'll tell you a little bit about, that brings people into the Mercedes Benz brand by association, by lending its prestige, by allowing us to host customers, dealers, our other partners that are really important in this journey for Mercedes Benz. So we think about it, I hate using cliches, marketing jargoning cliches, but we really try to think about it holistically and from a 360 degree angle. We don't just think about being on air, we think about being on ground, and we think about how we can utilize sports in a way that brings more and more prestige and awareness and a great association to the Mercedes Benz brand. Sports really are all about connection, I feel like too. And so leveraging sports as a way to use their fandom to connect to your brand just feels so smart. I'm really curious on a personal angle, Melody, what is your relationship with sports? And looking back, do you see a through line between your relationship with sports and Mercedes Benz and everything that we're seeing in F1, for example, with Mercedes? It's really funny, Ellen. Actually, I was raised in a household where I played piano, violin, went to church and made straight A's. I did not have room for sports. There was no room for sports. We didn't watch it, consume it, play it, nothing in my household, right? So when I got to college, I became a voracious consumer of sports as if I was trying to catch up for everything that I had lost for the first 18 years of my life. I went to my first baseball game. I went to school here in Atlanta at Georgia Tech. So now I'm still a brave fan. Big sports school. Yeah, exactly. Well, we're in the ACC, but we're doing pretty well. We're number 17 in the AP Top 25 right now for football, and that's so bad. I went to my first football game while I was at Georgia Tech and then caught the college football bug while I was there. So it's really funny. For the first 18 years, I'd almost no exposure to it. And then since then, it feels as if I'd been trying to catch up and make up in that world, and I love it. We're a huge sports family. I've got two boys now who play sports. We're into baseball, golf, tennis, and we watch a ton of football. So personally, I love sport. I love what it stands for, that idea of connection, of unification. I love the emotion that comes with it. I love that the Super Bowl is the most watched event in all of the world. I mean, there are just not that many events that get 128 million viewers, right? So I just love all of the excitement that comes with it. And now, you know, working at a brand that has 130 year history. So I told you a little earlier that we're 140 years old, but we have 130 of those 140 in motorsports with this long legacy of racing. Like a lot of people may know us for our more recent era of success in motorsports, but the truth is we've been in it for 130 years. That's in our DNA. It's in our blood. It's in our products that we sell and that we bring to market today. So it's a really fun place to be. I'm really excited to chat with you about the innovation in the sports place and how it plays into marketing too, particularly as more men's sports shift their focus towards attracting women. And that's a big thing that we focus on at the gist and that we speak about at the gist of it. But also what we've seen a lot in Formula One, especially coming off of Netflix's Drive to Survive series and how successful that's been. Nowadays, 41% of Formula One's fan base is women, which is so cool and remarkable. And I think a real testament to how the space has grown and the storytelling around the sport as well. How do women kind of play into your mix as a marketer and how you think about that? And twofold, if we can, how has this Drive to Survive series also impacted Mercedes as a brand too? So let me start with a hot take first, which is I really resent putting women into a subgroup or a like a minority target. And sometimes I hear that they're like, what's your, you know, what is your strategy for women? Let me just give you two facts. The first is that of our buyers and we know this from registration data on vehicles of our buyers, 46% are female. So we know that nearly half of the people who actually hold the paperwork and own our cars are women. That's huge. And that actually beats the average of the top 25 luxury brands in the United States. The average female share across the top 25 brands is about 42%. So we outperform at Mercedes-Benz. We have a huge female share that we need to hang on to. And quite frankly, we need to grow even further. So that's a big statistic. The second statistic though that I'll leave with you is that even if only 46% are women holding the registration, we know that women are influencing 80 to 85% of the purchase decisions in a household. So that can be on any item. But if you look at a car, a vehicle, which is generally for people, the second largest purchase they'll ever make after a home, you better believe that women are having an influence on that purchase. Right? So between those two things, talking to women, making sure that they're included in the design of a vehicle, that it's meeting their needs, their lifestyles, and then through marketing, speaking to them where their eyes are, where their time is being spent, it's just good business sense. Right? So that's why it's really important to us that we continue to leverage the properties and the platforms that we do have in sport to reach women at a greater rate. Motorsports is a great example of how we're trying to do that. And you just named that particular number, which is 41% of the fans are now women. And it's just growing at an incredible rate. I think one of the more interesting statistics is if you look at the fastest growing subset of that 41% in motorsports, it's young women aged 16 to 24. So what we're really talking about is your most rabid fans, the fastest growing base for motorsports is young Gen Z women. That's an incredible opportunity for a brand like Mercedes Benz. It's been around for a long time. I want to double click on that for a little bit because my mind thinks of, okay, Gen Z, yes, they have a lot of influence and yes, they're into brand, but they don't have maybe disposable income to purchase a car. So how do you think about that customer path, I guess, from someone being a F1 fan? They really love the Mercedes team. They love Toto. And then how do you get them to then buy a car? And what does that timeline kind of look like for you in that customer journey? Our belief is that a customer has to buy into the brand first before they start to buy one of our vehicles. And that has to start at a young age. And I often talk about how important it is to me and to my team that the 10-year-old have the poster of the Mercedes Benz 300 SL Goldwing as it is the baby boomer who's in a position to purchase his or her next GLE. Those two things are of equal importance. And I'll take you back to my opening remark, which is what do we do here in Mercedes Benz marketing? And that is balancing between selling the car for today and building the brand for tomorrow. So selling the car today means talking to those who have the disposable income to buy our cars. Those are boomers. Those are Gen Xers. It's a portion of millennials as they move into different life stages. But building the brand for the future means we need to talk to Gen Z. We need to talk to Gen Alpha. Both of those generational cohorts are the most diverse and multicultural of any of those that have come before them, which means that our approach has to be as much about reaching women as much as it is multicultural and diverse communities within those generations. So it's a balance between both constantly. That's really interesting. I'm sure that those are a lot of things that keep you up at night. And you're in the team that keep you up at night in balancing that. We were chatting with your team, Melody, before you came onto the pod, and they told us that you were part of bringing the F1, the movie to life. What was that? What was your involvement in that? Well, really, it started with people who are much more important than me. And that's Lewis Hamilton, first of all, and Total Wolf. So Lewis Hamilton had been wanting to make a movie about motorsports for years and worked for many years to get this movie finally made. Because of his background with Mercedes-Benz as one of our winningous drivers of all time, he was able to make sure that Mercedes-Benz had a really big role in it. And it started with the technical aspect of it, which was they needed an advisor on the movie to ensure that their cars really looked like F1 cars. They were actually F2 cars, but they were done so well with Mercedes-Benz's technical support that they look onscreen and sounded like F1 cars. That was a big role that the brand played. But then from there, it became a really great marketing opportunity for us, of course, as well. And so the movie has been a central part of our marketing efforts this year, and it did great. I don't know if you've seen it, Ellen. I've seen it three times. You've got to see it. I need to see it. What I love about the movie is that it's able to teach someone who may not know a lot about Formula One in a way that's not patronizing at all. It can be a very intimidating sport to enter. I think you are a fan. Drive to Survive has definitely been helpful, as you mentioned, right, in just teaching people about the sport, about tire management. I've never heard so many people talk about tire management, right? But the movie did the same thing. I think it's brought an entirely new audience and welcomed them into this Formula One world. And to have Mercedes-Benz be able to play a really central part in it. I mean, all the vehicles in it featured all the best looking ones anyway, in my opinion, are Mercedes-Benz vehicles. They're vintage, they're production vehicles for today. We just got a really nice platform through that movie. We were able to release a limited edition GT that is in the livery of the Apex GP team. So we were just able to find a lot of legs with the movie in a way that really benefits us in selling a car in the brand today. I can't wait to watch it. I love Drive to Survive. It's what converted me in becoming an F1 fan. And now I watch every single weekend that it's on. And so you know that's on my list. The sports industry melody is super male dominated, which is part of the reason why we launched the GIST to change it into leveling the playing field. Thank you for doing that. Oh my gosh. Thank you. Thank you for that. The automobile industry is also super male dominated. What has that looked like for you in terms of experiencing any sexism in your work and at the very senior position that you have? Do you have any stories that you can share, including how you kind of manage that and overcome that in some of these rooms? I do have one really good story. And as my PR team looks at me nervously, it did not happen there at Mercedes-Benz. And I'll share it with you in a moment. But just I'll talk about a little bit more broadly. I think the industry has come a long way. I think things have shifted a lot since I entered the industry for the first time back in the mid-2000s. So it was about 2012 when I started at General Motors working on the Cadillac brand. And I think things have really progressed and grown in a way that's very encouraging. And I think it's an acknowledgement of what I shared earlier, which is that women are buying the cars and if they're not buying the cars and putting it in their name, they're really influencing the purchase of the cars. So there's a real acknowledgement that we have to build products that they want that fit their lifestyle. As a marketer, I have to make sure that I'm meeting them where they are, where they're consuming media or what they're watching. It also means making sure that a shopping experience on a website is the way that a woman would also like to shop, which could be very different from a man. I don't want to be gender normative, but it could be different and we need to account for those differences. So I have seen a lot of progress and a lot of growth. It's for sure still male dominated. It is for sure a place where if you're not a natural gearhead or a petrolhead, as we like to say, there may be a learning curve to entering the industry, but we have to be representative of our buyer who is not a gearhead because not everybody is going to go into a dealership and say, I want a silver GT with this horsepower and that amount of torque and this kind of engine in the car. Not all of us shop that way, male or female. And so we need to be able to accommodate and account for all those kinds of people. So I will tell you though now coming back to the story that you asked me about. I do remember an experience where I was on a track in Europe and we were test driving different vehicles, just getting a sense of what they were and we were coming in and out and rotating the cars, tossing the keys to one another and doing this test drive. And I saw a mini that I really wanted to try on this track and a senior male executive was coming out of it. And as I walked towards him, I said, hey, I'll take that car next. And he said, I don't think you want to because it's a stick. And I said, well, I'm not really sure why you would assume that I can't drive a stick. I can. So give me the key. So is that the worst and most egregious example of sexism? Not at all. Like if anything, that's a microaggression. But as we all know, microaggressions also add up and can wear you down. But it is an illustration of some of those ingrained biases that can hurt women. So that is probably one of the stories that I tell the most because I say to women, let's make sure that we don't let people get away with assumptions because assumptions only hurt us. I really like that. I also like how you touched on using your perspective as an asset as well and as an asset as you're speaking to all of these different consumers and as you're thinking about building your brand. Absolutely. I mean, it's about representing our customer. It's not about me. It's not about my ego. It's not about whether I'm the only woman there or not, which I don't accept. But it's about, do we represent who we serve and who we sell to? And if we're not doing so, we're missing opportunities for the business. Speaking of opportunities, as you look forward for Mercedes over the next two to five years or so, what other sports properties are exciting to you right now? What else are you looking at? We are a longtime champion sponsor of the Masters. And over 18 years, we have seen an enormous amount of evolution and growth with that relationship as well. A few years back, we started sponsoring the Augusta National Women's Amateur, which is also known as ANWA. And we take the opportunity not to just show up at the tournament for these amazing amateur golfers, but we bring about 30 to 40 women that weekend to come together. Some of them are golf fans. Some of them are not. But we bring them together in the spirit of learning from one another, of connecting and networking with one another. We've done this for several years now. So as we think about where we are and where we participate, we want to also put more equity back into the world. So ANWA is a great example of how we're doing something like that through sport. And the Masters is a partnership that we're incredibly proud of. Arguably the most prestigious tournament in all of sport, definitely golf, but one of the most prestigious in the world I think for sport as well. So we've also been a partner of college football, college football's playoff since its inception as well. It was important for us to speak to that customer, which is a very different customer than the NFL one, or the viewer or fan of that kind of football. It speaks to a very Mercedes-Benz customer. So again, it's just a smart play for us to be able to talk to people in college football as well. So that's why the playoff is also really important to us. It'll be so fun this year seeing that expanded format. I'm a big golf fan. And so everything that you're doing with ANWA and how we can build up that tournament is really exciting to me. We have time for one more question, even though again, I could talk to you for another 40 minutes and ask you a lot of business questions. Something we've been discussing at the just recently and something that our audience is always interested in is the concept of heroes, sports or otherwise and inspiration. What keeps inspiring you day to day? You know, I feel often, my husband and I have this joke, whenever we're watching a sports broadcast, we feel like the word adversity is overused, right? You hear that a lot during a broadcast. But some of the stories in sports, whether it's that of Simone Biles or Suni Lee from the Olympic team, the story of any of these WNBA players and what they're going through right now, the story of Serena Williams, any of these women who have truly come through adversity and broken through in sports and in certain sports where it's not so easy or the barrier to entry is very high, that's incredibly inspirational to me. And those are the stories that I think resonate with everyone across the board, right? It doesn't matter if you're male, female, or how you identify. It is those stories of overcoming true adversity, breaking barriers, breaking through, and then ascending to the pinnacle of the sport that I find really, really incredible. And storytelling is at the core of what every marketer does, right? So those kinds of stories and then inspire us to tell the best ones about our brand and the women behind our brand, like Susie Wolfe, who started the F1 Academy, who drove an F1. We need to bring a female driver back to F1, right? And F1 Academy is a great example of something that has grown the sport for women again, but we need to do more of that. So there's so much inspiration to draw from, but some of these women who have truly overcome is hard to beat. Thank you for sharing that and love that note on storytelling, especially being in the media space. I resonate with that so much. Melody, thank you again for joining the Gist of It. This has been such a wonderful conversation. And thanks so much for everything that you're doing with Mercedes in the sports space and also thinking of women in your marketing mix, too. Thank you for having me, Ellen. A big thank you to Amazon Business for their continued support of this podcast. You hear from me and Ellen on the mics, but it takes a team to produce the Gist of It, not to mention a ton of equipment. That's why small businesses like ourselves love Amazon Business. With Amazon Business, it's easy to keep employees stocked with all the supplies they need from second screens to sticky notes. Check out business.amazon.com today to see how Amazon Business can transform your company's purchasing. And so that marks the end of today's episode. We hope that you all really enjoyed that conversation. Thank you so much for tuning in. And if you liked it, sign up for the Gist Plus. Use the link in our show notes and you'll be getting another exclusive podcast in a couple of weeks that only members from the Gist Plus have. As per usual, we would love for you to rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast has been edited by Savannah Helds and produced by Alessandro Puccio and Lauren Tuscola. The next Formula One race is next weekend. It's the Mexican Grand Prix. Probably one of my favorite tracks. And I think one of my favorite tracks mostly because the fans there are so much fun. It is such a cool place to be able to drive. At least I can imagine that it's such a cool place to be able to drive. So we hope that you enjoy all of the high speed action. And Steph and I will be back in your feed next Tuesday. Bye, yo! [Music] [Music]