How Pinterest grew to 640 million monthly users by doing the opposite of social media

So marketers are making more and more ads, but measuring their effectiveness becomes harder and harder. Now this is where system ones test your ad screen can help. It's a new AI tool enabling brands to quickly and affordably screen multiple creatives at scale. Emotion of courses at the heart of the platform, which was trained on system ones database of more than 120,000 ads, which by the way is 18 million emotional responses. Now this means that you can constantly predict the commercial outcome of your advertising and make better informed decisions. Now all you have to do to find out more about test your ad screen is go over to system1group.com or check it out in the show notes below. I think attention's gotten so cheap and it's a race to the bottom. It's not about how many followers an influencer has or a creator has, it's about the quality of their content. We all get tired of our marketing much quicker than customers do and it takes longer for things to wear in. And it's a little hard for our egos to think that maybe nobody noticed it the first time. We are willing to take a stand on things like social media and young people for example. So we went under 16 private mandatory on our own. There's been this sort of trend of CMO you should be building your own brand and I just think the brand is the star. Claude is great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. Good to see you. Yeah you too. Now you've recently moved from Amazon over to Pinterest. So I thought I would start with your 10 years Amazon as well. They're one of those companies that everyone admires and looks up to and there's lots of myths about what it's like to work there. What's been your experience of working Amazon? Well it's a tech company it moves fast but I think one of the things that is the secret sauce there is actually the culture and so I think a lot of people think oh you've got all this shopper data and all that is really good. I think the real success is a very consistent culture and everyone knows how to deliver an ambiguity and there's a ton of ambiguity in most of our jobs and so when you all know what to deliver just have great ownership and everyone behaves consistently and there's just kind of everyone knows how to play how to play the rules of the game. So I think that's the real secret sauce there. Is there anything you've had to unlearn as you've left that you sort of now don't do? Well I think at Amazon we were so focused on removing all friction from the buying process. How quickly can we get you that one click buying and in a lot of ways the internet has fixed buying but it's kind of ruined shopping. So at Pinterest it really is about that joy of shopping digitally and so really rethinking what it means shopping is not buying, buying is shopping it's both of those things. So I think that's really been a real shift is you know our platform you use actually a system two thinking you're involved you're taking a journey you're discovering and so it's not about removing all the friction it's about having wonderful creative friction. So it's just been a reorientation by mental model. And I suppose in the real world when you go into a shop you are browsing. Yeah sometimes if you know exactly what you want you go straight in I'm going to get the thing and go asking but actually the joy of shopping is sometimes being inspired by something you weren't expecting. Exactly exactly. That's fun of it. So as you look back what would be your highlights in your 10 years what are you most proud of? I absolutely know what I'm most proud of is a holiday ad and the team was so incredible they were so talented it was an in-house creative team actually they won ad agency and house agency of the year and they always produced this unbelievably wonderful holiday ad. We sort of thought of it as our holiday card to the world. We did one one year that was a story of three old ladies and they they were missing sledding and so one of the old ladies bought cushions and they all went on sleds and remember their childhood and it was a beautiful ad scored very well one of our best performing ads and my most problem was two years later I told the senior management that we didn't need production money because we were going to run the ad again and everyone thought we were crazy like you can't do that and it performed better the second time because people don't either they don't remember it or if they did remember it it was like oh I loved the sad so it all said this a little nostalgic effect so we all get tired of our marketing much quicker than customers do and it takes longer for things to wear in and it's a little hard for our egos to think that maybe nobody noticed it the first time but that's actually a really great thing it's just let stuff breathe let it wear in run it twice you know so I think that's one of my proudest moments. Well and the data backs it up as well. I mean I remember I was at system one at the time when that ad came out in one Christmas holiday season both in the US and UK in a way it talked it out and a maximum score of 5.9 and Christmas is the most competitive advertising moment of the year isn't it because then everyone's trying to you know peak at the same time. Everyone's trying to break through and every year the ads get better and better which is just fun right like bring it on you know. Yeah massive congratulations. What was the most challenging time that you had at Amazon if you have to look back and go what was the biggest challenge you faced. I think it was getting getting one getting primed together into being one brand you know and there was prime video and it was that there was just a very diverse offering and um and trying to really help the organizations simplify that into one brand and it worked really well when we all kind of got our ducts aligned but it was sort of and you know tech companies more is more you know we want to give people more features more things but actually sometimes if you give people too many benefits in a program they wonder they're paying for too much and so I think you know that was really such an honor to work on but also it's it's a bit of a beast you know it's incredibly successful program but there's just a lot of complexity to it so that was definitely one of the most challenging things but also one of the most but most fun things because people love their prime membership. Yeah they can't live without it yeah absolutely that is one of the things that Amazon's most well-known for isn't it yeah yeah it's been huge and I thought it'd be fun actually just to um throw a few quick questions at you just in terms of uh kind of marketing to see how you react so agree or disagree and tell me why. Now Jeff Bezos famously said or rumoured to have said so I want to check this with you. Advertising is a tax on a mediocre products. Did he actually say that? Do you happen to know? I don't know but that is the mythology. It is mythology and I did check with Google and it said he's often misattributed with the quote and it said um something else coming. The quote that came back with is advertising is the price you pay for unremarkable thinking. That's different isn't it? That is different. Agreed or disagree with that. I would say advertising that hasn't had remarkable thinking behind it is probably not going to be very good. Yeah. So I would say that in general yeah unremarkable thinking will lead to bad advertising and bad products. But I will tell you a story we had all team meetings and there would be questions that the CEO would answer and on one of them he there was an index card that said I've heard you once said advertising is you know is a you know a tax you pay on a unremarkable product. Have you changed your mind? And he said yes and then just put the index card and kept on going. So that was quite a good moment. Well that was suggest that yeah yeah no that's good because of course I think I'm saying Amazon is now the world's largest advertiser. I yeah I don't know but I believe so yeah yeah certainly a large company with with a lot to advertise. Brand versus performance if you had to only spend your money on one which would it be? Brand. Yeah I agree. Okay I'm there with you. And what's the most widely held marketing belief that you would disagree with? Attention it's the attention economy. I think that's I think attention's gotten so cheap and it's a race to the bottom so that's something I'd love to shift thinking on. Interesting just expand that a little bit more so your challenge would be that attention thinking is overrated or underrated. It's overrated and I think it's really about and we'll get into this we talk about Pinterest but it's about intention and you've kind of seen that you know it's not about how many followers an influencer has or a creator has it's about the quality of their content so I think there's a bit of a backlash going against attention and I think we all move from reaching frequency to attention the attention economy and if you look at what media channels get the highest attention it's unskippable ads so what does that tell you? You know it's where we're just forcing things on people so I I'm hoping we can move beyond the attention economy. Oh see so because we force the five seconds that you have to watch therefore we assume that the attention is there yeah exactly yeah skip bottom okay that makes sense and what's the most underrated marketing practice? Uh wallowing in the ambiguity I think the ambiguity is really important I think rushing to solve a brief too quickly can actually lead you to sort of pat solutions or the obvious solutions versus letting things letting things marinate now that that can be very tough but I really like having time to wallow and things and not trying to solve a problem too quickly because you'll just get to a more remarkable answer. We actually had a thing at Amazon and Pinterest the team doesn't already get this in-house creative team is so strong we we had a thing I called the wallow and we would do it after the big after the holiday campaign after it wrapped and then we would right away do a wallow for next year where you just sort of talked about what do we do good what do we do wrong you know and I found that because it's such a creative company they're always like they're always inspiring they're always sending me ideas so they kind of do that but at Amazon it was just ship ship ship ship it was really hard to get to allow them to just just roll around in it a little bit because the campaigns can get quite you know quite a sort of perfunctory if you just like are moving through it too quickly so I think this is one of the dangers of AI yeah because what AI is doing is getting you straight to the answer But sometimes the answer happens through the struggle of the brain. - Your curiosity-- - Reiterate, going back and forward, it's racing and so on. - 100%, 100%. And sometimes the strategy gets you to the tactics, so then your tactics are not right, and so you go back to strategy. - Yes. - So maybe that's another underrated thing is actually rework, that it's sometimes not rework, sometimes it's actually, it's really good to do rework sometimes. - I like that. I think it worked with two of the price on there. If you could ban a marketing words, what would you, which one would you ban? - Relevancy. - Ooh, okay. - Why did we add a Y? I don't know, it's relevance. - Is that a tech company thing, but it's like relevancy? - That sounds like a tech company. - It's like relevance. Can we stop like making them longer? - It's a bit like those company names, where they've just changed one letter. - Yeah. - You know, from an eye to a wire something, or they've taken a letter off the end, you know. - We know what you're doing. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, we see it. - It's like, we see through this, it's fairly obvious. If you could kill off one thing, what would you kill off? - Reviews with people who can only say no and not yes. - Okay, go on, say more. - Doing, you know, like lots of reviews with lots of people who have lots of opinions about marketing, but they're not actually going to be the person who is the final approver. And so I think if you can say no to something, but you can't say yes, you don't get to have a voice. That's sort of provocative maybe, but. - I was chatting to Greg Hong other day, and he, I said, you know, you're pitching some wild-be creative ideas to your customers. What's one bit of advice you'd give in that moment? He said, always play the angel's advocate. - Oh, I love that. - 'Cause he said everyone in a room thinks that being clever means picking a hole in it in a graceful idea. And he said, it's easy in the early stage to kill an idea because of that. And he said, instead, I want you to go around the table again and this time, play the angel's advocate and let's see where it takes us. - Yeah, if you don't want to say yes, how can you help the team get to yes? And so I just think having input from people who pursue no is like, let's just not have them at the table anymore. - I like this. This is great. We're going to ban anyone who says no. This is a good way of doing it. Let's move on to Pinterest and what attracted you to Pinterest in this role? - Well, I love brands that are highly differentiated. I think Pinterest is one of the most differentiated brands out there and it just punches above its weight. But also, I truly believe it's a company that has created a product that's additive to people's lives. And I think you don't get many chances in your career to make that kind of a move. So for me, those two things combined a kind of made it a no-brainer. - Now, something that really caught my eye when I was looking at Pinterest, I haven't used Pinterest for a while, so I was getting back into it again. I used to have an account, I don't know, but I was getting back into it and I noticed something about your positioning which really caught my attention. So your positioning, the best thing you can find online is a reason to be offline. Now, that struck me as very contrarian, right? Because every social media platform is designed to keep you interested. It's literally, we talked about attention earlier. - Yeah, exactly. It's designed to hold your attention and to keep you in feed and particularly keep you in their feed, not other people's feed. So why have a positioning which is to encourage people to leave the platform? - It's actually how Pinterest is designed. It's how the algorithm is tuned. We want you to have what we call time well spent, not time spent. And it is counterintuitive because, you know, right now, all the CMOs are seeing the trends, the IRL, the touch grass, dinner parties with no phones and those are cute, but 75% of budgets are spent digitally. So how am I supposed to do that? It's really about building the bridge from online to offline. It's about going with intent and saying, I am now about to discover something new. I'm here to figure out what to try by or do next and then go do it and then go off and live your life. And so that really creates a very productive experience and it really makes people feel positive. And actually when they're positive, they tend to make more confident purchases. And so it really is a very commercial proposition and you just have to make sure you're part of that bridge from online to offline and you really stop building your media plan around hijacking attention. So again, it gets back to that shift we were talking about earlier. - It does, isn't it? - Yeah. So you're wanting to help people find the thing they're looking for quicker so that they get to the end result rather than be dragged down a rabbit hole of other things. - In fact, 96% of our 80 billion searches a month are unbranded. So actually when people come to interest, they're looking for brands and brands or content because you're looking to plan an outfurt or plan a meal or a vacation. So you want brands, you want to get the stuff. My husband and I share boards and they're very productive like new Adirondack shares. And so he can't wait to just go buy them, you know, 'cause we've agreed. I think it saved our marriage. - I really, okay. I've not heard that before. - Yeah, we agree. - We can figure out all of our design disputes amicably. - That's brilliant. Now you've got a campaign around this idea as well that came out this year. Tell me a little bit about that. - This campaign was really a bold counter positioning against what social media has kind of been doing to young people, what it's been doing to all of us and our search to define our own identity or use to define our own taste to decide who we want to be and not who the internet tells us to be. And so we deliberately made the campaign, kind of really take almost like an emotional stand against it. And it's not a happy jumpy up and down. It really is around, it's sort of what's happened. What has happened to all of us and then really positions Pinterest as this place where you can get what you need and get offline, you know? And with anything about that line, the best thing you can find online is a reason to go offline is when the team, you know, I was very new in the role and I said, oh, you guys, that's really long for a tagline. It's a lot of cognitive load. There's too many words, you know? And they were really pushed back and said, we really think this is the right line. And in fact, when we did testing, we found it really explained to people. And that's been the best thing about it is, you know, it's not don't go online, but when you're online, find reasons. Find reasons to build your tastes. Find reasons to take that vacation. Don't just, you know, look at, you know, baby penguin videos for two hours, you know? And that's really our point of view. And we wanted to make it very provocatively. And we wanted to be bold about it. So I love that the team did that. We did that in-house, our in-house called house of creative. And, you know, it's done really well for us. - And I think sometimes the best positionings juxtapose you with the competition very clearly. And that does it brilliantly. - Yeah, and the competition is, you know, this kind of, our CEO likes to call it a social experiment that none of us really signed up for. (laughs) - That's a good way of putting it. I love that a lot. And also congratulations. I did jump into the system one day space and have a quick look before we did this recording and 4.2 stars. - Hey, that's good. - So well done. - Yeah, well done. - Three or four percent of the day. - My team will be delighted. - Do congratulate them on a job well done. And when, so when I first came across Pinterest, one of the things I loved was user experience. So it's designed to be beautiful. It's designed to be orientated around what I needed in terms of getting things together in a beautiful way. How important is the design to the experience and its success? - Yeah, it's really, really important in so many ways because as I mentioned earlier, people are in system two thinking. So they're leaning forward, they're choosing things. And it's really a visual search platform. And so what's great about the visual search is, actually your mind processes information visually much more quickly than it does verbally. And so you're able to find things. And you know, if you know exactly what you want, you know, you can go to a search engine, but so many times you don't quite have the words for it, but it's more of a feeling. And so it's really, really good at drawing you into that and helping you find what you want visually. And that's where we get the reaction from our users of like, oh my God, I didn't even know I loved that. Pinterest really gets me, and we do hear that from our users. So that's really that visual search. And so it's very important that that be really relevant and beautiful and seamless and smooth. So it's very core to our experience. - Yeah, visual search makes a lot of sense as a framing. Now I used to use it, but if I had to paint a picture of who I think uses Pinterest, I would probably go younger, female, maybe into fashion, that kind of thing. That's my stereotype of who I think would use it. Who actually does, who's the main Pinterest user? - 640 million global users. So it's a lot of people. And it's really anyone who's trying to figure out what they want to try by or do next. It's really about that forward motion. That said, more than 50% of our users are Gen Z and they're growing quickly. So they're really defining their taste. If you see one black t-shirt, you don't really know what kind of black t-shirt you like, but when you see 1,000 of them, you know exactly what kind of black t-shirt. And so they're really identifying who they are and defining their taste. So that's I think one of the things it really attracts our younger users. But men use it. We just released our tread report, the intentional man, and really seeing signals from how men use Pinterest to talk about, to deal with our, to plan grooming, vacations, trips. My husband does a trip with all of his friends, guys need trees and they plan where they're going to go, you know, what kind of Airbnb they're going to get, and all of that. So, you know, men really lean into the platform for that kind of more productivity and planning. - Interesting. I wasn't expecting that. - Yeah. - Yeah. And you must have a lot of insight into what people are looking for and kind of trends that are out there. What insight do you have on what's trending? - It's really one of our greatest assets, I think, and it's sort of called Pinterest Intelligence. And it really is all those signals we're getting from what you claim. click on what you save, and as you're building your taste, and as those 640 million users are building taste, there's just this incredible rich data of all this human taste. And it's also, you're because you're doing this over time, like you'll have projects, and you're not going to maybe buy everything the first visit, you're going to come back, and you're going to work on it, and you're going to add things to it. So there's this enduring quality to that data as well. So we're able to collate these trends that actually, they're not flashing the pan, they actually tend to endure over time. We can also predict the colors that are going to be popular, that are going to be really lasting in both, not only in fashion, but in home, paint colors, things like that. So we have our Pinterest predicts, which is sort of the crown and the jewel trends. But then we also have just more quick trends, parenting trends, you know, this last year it was throwback kid, which was kind of this idea of retro kids' rooms, right? And so we'll look across all of those areas and really set information. So, because people are doing such a wide range of projects on the platform. And is that something that as a brand, you can tap into, say, if you're planning, like to say you're a paint brand, you could use the platform to unstand, let you say where the color is. Absolutely a paint brand, a beauty brand, a fashion brand, yeah, and we actually do partnerships with brands on some of our trends. We had a trend this year, Gimme Gummy, which was kind of jelly, candy, jelly nails, and we partnered with Nix, which is a kind of a youth brand in the L'Oreal portfolio. They had just launched Jelly Job, which was a lip gloss, and they're wonderful. And so we did a partnership and did a pop-up. So we'll partner with brands on the trends, and it's really one of my favorite parts of my job. That's very cool, isn't it? I'm interested to know what the role of a creator would be on Pinterest. I mean, is it the same as other Instagram, for example, where you kind of show off your lifestyle and what you're thinking about? How to create this world? Yeah. It's probably a little bit different where it's creators who, you know, we like to say it's not content with personalities, delivering content. It's content with personality. So it's creators in the true sense of the word in that they're developing ideas, they're creating things, and they are offering, showing how to share in that, how to do it. And so you know, you think of someone like Emma Chamberlain, who we partner with, truly is a creative person who builds partnerships and builds brands. And so, you know, those are the kind of the creators that do very well on Pinterest. And it's not about how many followers you have, it's about how many times your board gets saved and gets repeated. So it's, is this content I'm creating, you know, spreading and getting more popular, and it's not so much about the personal brand of the person, right? It's really about the content. Yeah. Now you've said that, that makes sense, isn't it, because on other platforms, it really is about their life and what they're doing and what they're wearing, whereas actually this is about what they've created. Absolutely. And there's a board behind everything. Yeah. You know, there's a Pinterest board behind so many things, you know, it's such a great platform for those true creators. Yeah. And how's AI changing the platform, or do you see AI as a threat, so if you look at LLMs, are they able to replicate what you're doing, or how do you deal with that? Well, I think, you know, AI has been central to Pinterest for a very long time. Because it's really taking all of those signals and the AI is enabling them by finding similar things through that sort of human taste intelligence. And so, but the AI is really in service of human taste. It's not trying to, you think of what the transformer did. It kind of took all of these words and thoughts and turned it into math. So it really is a compression that happens there. Yeah. It's kind of what we were talking about with the loss of curiosity earlier. So you're a quirky taste, that's never going to come through, you know, when it's being compressed like that. But Pinterest, it really is about your very personal taste. You know, so you might design, maybe, you know, me and, let's say your wife might be exactly the same pair of jeans, but we're going to have a completely different outfit that we're going to design around them because of our personal taste. And that's how the AI works. It's this really lovely dance between human taste and AI enablement. So we really have seen it and continue to see it as a huge part of how the platform works. That's interesting because the danger of AI when you use it as often is it's averaging, isn't it? Yeah, 100%. And therefore it's making things darker. That's great for some things. Yeah. It's great for some things. But, you know, aggregate something, lots of complex data and get the aggregate and do it. But when the point of Pinterest is that you get to your own passion and it's really kind of, you know, detailed, isn't it? Yeah. And you can build on your passion not to reduce it. 100%. Yeah. That's very interesting. You've got the job. Thank you. I look forward to starting. One thing I noticed about looking at your financial results, I think I'm right in saying you've had 11 consecutive courses of growth now, which is very impressive. And I was not that I wasn't expecting to do well, but it's, apart from one blit, there's a pretty consistent growth and as you taught us about 600 million, is that monthly active users? Again, monthly active users, 640 million pounds. There's a lot of people. Yes, it is. And it's quite, you know, it's probably, I mean, certainly punching above my expectations of where I thought you'd be, what's been the driver of that sustained growth? Because I think getting growth for two, three, four quarters is impressive. But to repeat it that many times is quite unusual. What's the secrets of that? Well, that platform, that sort of Pinterest intelligence is very dynamic. So there's always new things to see. And also the projects, you know, we've kind of gone from being the place where you would, we can still, you still can do a kitchen renovation or plan your bridal shower or a big vacation. But also we are getting so much better at the small C creativity, you notice like an outfit, a cheese board, you know, so those smaller projects really create much, many more use cases for users. So there's just a lot more reasons to come back. Yeah. And additionally, you know, the Gen Z, you know, for most platforms as their users get older, they're losing them, our users were pulling in the next generation. And so actually we're just getting this nice continual feed of these younger users who are coming in because they really, you know, for them, it's like there's, it's their safe place in the internet is this place where they can be themselves and they can turn off the noise. And so that's just been one of the biggest drivers of our growth. And then internationally, you know, we're still expanding and still setting up the proposition internationally. And so we really see some growth coming from, from international as well. Yeah. And before Marx and point of view, how are you winning 17 new customers to the platform? Well, you know, we're not, it's actually, in all honesty, the marketing does help. One of the things I was delighted to see was that our brand campaign drove both monthly active users, but it also drove weekly active users. So it was driving engagement frequency as well as new users. But the platform also does a really good job of sending out notifications and reminding you of, you know, so, you know, if you've pinned something, we'll send that a notification reminding you of something else that that might be like the thing you pinned. So it kind of picks you back up in your journey. And so that's one thing that we to keep the, the platform top of mind. But you know, I think we've just been doing a really good job of increasing the relevance and, and keeping the categories useful. Yeah. One thing I noticed when I was looking at a bit more about the platform was the high level of trust you have from, you know, from your, your users, which I think was kind of second in the category, what's, how do you establish that level of trust? Well, it's, the first of all, it's just foundational to how the platform is designed. You know, it is really designed for this positive, productive experience. And that's the thing that's going to drive trust more than anything. It's just how we show up, how we behave. And so that's the most, one of the most important things. But also we, we are willing to take a stand on things like, you know, social media and, and young people, for example. So we went under 16 private mandatory, you know, on our own. We have a little notice set up, if you're a teenager in school hours, it says, hey, you know, come back after school, it's time to hit the books. That's not exactly what it says, but that's the general vibe. And so we really do take a stand on these things. And, even though they might seem, you know, counterintuitive to a commercial platform and that it's the right thing to do over time. And so we're willing to really stand by, stand by that position to be a place for, for wellness online. Well, it's the whole point about principles, any principles, if it costs you something, right? Exactly. And it also supports your proposition of the best place to get offline. That's right. That's right. Obviously Pinterest is a big kind of e-commerce platform as well, isn't it? How does that, you know, how does that work in terms of, you know, e-commerce? We don't actually have like the cash register on Pinterest. So it's kind of like what I said earlier, there's so many places to buy. So, you know, we want to generate the clicks out to, to be, to buy the actual item on our partners, websites, but we are generally that shopping and discovery experience. So it's everything up to from discovery, from awareness, discovery, all the way through. So we're actually a really excellent, full funnel platform. And we have the performance marketing. We also have that messy middle, I mean, a middle funnel marketing has always been the hardest part of my career as a CMO is you can be good at the top and good at the bottom of that middle funnel is so tricky. That's what we're so good at, you know, is really that middle funnel. It's funny because that's the discovery, that's the shopping. And again, the internet has kind of ruined shopping. And so it's hard to do middle funnel, but we're really, what do I think the few platforms that is truly, truly full funnel. It makes sense, because I think people forget when you, if you take kind of, you know, last pick attribution. Yeah. The amount of time people spend researching before they buy is immense isn't it, particularly a high involvement category like a new watch or a new car or something like that, right? You'll spend ages looking at the different alternatives and understanding them. So you're providing that, that, you know, that, that bit where you're going through all the considerations. Absolutely. Because in a lot of its visual, you can do it quite quickly and we'll keep serving up new things and we can also serve you things through the Pinterest intelligence in adjacent categories. So, you know, I started a Pinterest board that's called Don't Touch the Coffee Table because I love those pictures of beautiful coffee tables. But there are people in my house and we put things on it. So I have a fantasy world where no one touches it. And it was amazing how quickly it was able to show me then lamps. It started suggesting lamps and it's like, oh, that lamp is amazing, right? So all of those adjacencies, you know, we can get that nice. You know, we used to call it the Amazon Cross GL, you know, getting across to new categories. So because you have this wide, rich intent in the user, the algorithms can really bring a lot of wonderful discovery to serve. I like this insight into your home life. So don't touch the coffee table. Don't touch the coffee table. It's a work of art. Yeah, that's brilliant. It's like, keep off the grass. Let's talk about you as well. So you've just started, so not just started, you meet you a few months in. Seven months. Yeah. What was your advice to anybody that's listening that's about to take on a new kind of CMO role about having a great start to them? Well, I think that the first thing is, you know, there's been this sort of trend of CMO, you should be building your own brand. And I just think the brand is the star. The brand is a North Star. So you come in and you're in service of the brand and you're in service of the business. And also it's really making sure that you remember the emotional equity that you brought with you from your old culture may not translate. And so I think sometimes just making sure you pay attention to those things. But also, you know, really learning the business. I know that's really obvious, but going very, very deep. You know, I still do these 30-minute little learning sessions with, you know, kind of like the senior director level because there's so much to learn about the technology. And I've found that being a marketer or marketer in a tech company, you really have to have the tech fluency. So you've really got to have the credentials of whatever business you're in to really, I think, be a credible CMO. That's a really good point, actually. I've talked to a lot of CPG marketers as well as tech marketers. And the marketing roles quite different between the two isn't it? Because in tech, obviously you're led by the products a lot and then have to market it, whereas in CPG often the marketer is creating the products in terms of innovation and so on. So what's the secrets being a great tech CMO? I think definitely being the voice of the customer in the room, you know, one of our principles is put-penders first. And so it's really about that core user. Because if the experience is not relevant to them, if the ads aren't relevant to them, you know, again, like they're paying attention, they're not just sitting back and scrolling. And, you know, if I'm in the feed, I can just skip the ad. You know, I'll just scroll about in Pinterest an ad that's not relevant, might stick out a little bit more. I think really being the voice of the customer and really making sure that we understand how the brand comes to life. But then also, you know, thinking about how to remind people all the usual rules apply, you need top of mind awareness, you know, you need to shift perceptions. And so making sure that you educate the company and you educate the partners that you work with, your cross functional partners on the role of marketing. I feel like every CMO's job, part and parcel of the job is education. And you do have to kind of become that person who is to continue your mind people of what the job is and what you need to do. And I welcome that, but you know, it is not every function that has to do that. It's just part of being a good CMO. It is. Alright, so give us the top three tips for educating a company on the importance of marketing. Be open about what works and what doesn't work, you know, about what you can measure and what you can't measure. Be very on apologetic about neuroscience and how it works. You know, I think being an armchair neuroscientist is really important because it's kind of common sense, if you think about it, people are not always thinking about the brand. That's actually a great argument for not doing only performance marketing is there's a percentage of time in which people are actually triggered to buy something or take an action or visit a platform. And all the other time they're not, you don't want to talk to them. You don't want to do anything there. So I think some of those wonderful neuroscience arguments are such common sense. So I think it's your job to be amateur neuroscientist. And then I think the third thing is to be a good operator tech companies are move fast. They don't wait around. They don't always understand that paid media sometimes needs planning. If you're going to run TV spots, you need to buy them ahead of time. So I think being an operator is really important. It's your job to get your voice in the room, to get a seat at the table when you know you need to get it because you may not always be invited in. So I think that's a really big part of being a CMO, I think. I love your point on behavioral science. I love having behavioral scientists on this show, actually, because understanding how a consumer makes decisions is basically what we're here to do. 100%. And if you can reveal the science, it just gives you so much more credibility to explain to people this is why they make decisions and this is how this is what we're going to do. It's such common sense. It's pretty hard to argue with. Unless you have economists. That's true. But it also just helps having the credibility of the science behind. It's not what I think. Here's all the science. So let's round up with one. I love to ask people this question because it always elicits a really interesting response. But tell me what the best single piece of advice you've ever been given. If you don't know, say you don't know. It takes courage, doesn't it? I was trying to Sophie Niery at Google recently and she uses phrase I've never heard before called Hippo, the highest paid person's opinion. Her point was we need to start killing off Hippos. It's not about the highest paid person's opinion being the one that matters. And actually having the confidence to say, if you're the most senior person, I don't know. But I'm going to find out or I'm going to ask the room to see who is the best person to answer the question. Yeah, I'll give you another one. Do you want another two for ask more questions than answering them? Yes. That's another good piece of advice, isn't it? Yeah. Because I think I think having spoken to so many CMS, I often get asked actually like, you know, you've spoken to 250 of the best CMS in the world. What's the one thing that unites them? And the answer to that question I find is quite unusual because I say either humility or curiosity or a combination of both. Because you expect the best CMS to have all the answers, but that is the opposite. They're the best at knowing the right question and to have the curiosity to find the answer rather than pretend that they know. Yeah, absolutely. Love that. Claudia, it's great to chat to you. Thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, I enjoyed this. Congratulations on the new job as well. Thank you. Thank you. Sounds very exciting in your way. That's great. Brilliant. Thank you very much. So I hope you enjoy that episode of Uncensored CMO as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, by the way, I've got a new newsletter. So if you'd like to get my thoughts on the one thing that I take out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the One Thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast just launched Uncensored. Renegades with the fabulous Corey Marchesotto. She is one of the world's best CMOs. And actually Rockstar, every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that. It's in your feed Uncensored Renegades. And finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast, it would not happen without them. It's a big thanks and lots of love to System One. I'll see you next time.