Kellyn Smith Kenny (AT&T) | Reinventing and Redefining Trust in Telecom

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Because a brain campaign still has to travel through an ad stack, through data, through decisioning, through supply, through measurement, and every hop in that journey is a place where value leaks out. Most platforms saw one piece of that, a data company, a DSP, a measurement vendor, used it's them together and pay a fragmentation tax and performance in speed and in accountability. Infillian built something very different, demand, supply, data, measurement and creative, connected in a single, composable platform. The highest performing opt-in attention formats via Infillian's proprietary check in the industry, agnostic identity resolution solutions, and now Catalina, 130 million US households of verified purchase truth running as live signal through every campaign they execute. No black boxes, no hops, no fragmented vendor relationships to manage, the only company I know of that can take you from the first moment of attention to the final proof of action for any vertical on any screen without leaving the platform open, composable, agentic, that is Infillian. I spent years at Proctor and Gamble trying to answer that question. We had the creative, we had the reach, we had campaigns that genuinely stop people. And then we watched that value quietly disappear somewhere between the moment of engagement and the proof of the business result. That gap between attention and action is where most media budgets go to die. And most digital media platforms have been content to live inside it just a little upstream from accountability. Infillian is the company that decided to close it. They started as the original attention company built on the idea that a consumer choosing to engage with an ad is worth more that one who ignores it. But they did not stop there. They have built the infrastructure to connect the moment of attention to the proof of action across every screen, every format, every vertical. That is not a feature that is a fundamentally different idea of what an ad platform should be. And it is the one brands have been waiting for. Learn more in the show notes. If you were a chief marketing officer in consumer products, I want you to think about something for a moment. You have creative that works. You have campaigns that capture attention. But somewhere between that moment and the register, the signal gets lost. You cannot see what actually drove the sale. You are making optimization decisions on inference, not truth. Well, that changed in February. Infillian acquired Catalina. Four decades of deterministic purchase intelligence. 130 million US households, 70 retail banners, $600 billion in verified annual consumer spending. And here is what really matters. Over 90% of consumable purchases still happen in store. Infillian and Catalina together can close the loop from digital advertising to in-line purchase and incentivize the next one. This is not a measurement tool you consult after the campaign. This is a live signal that runs through your media while the campaign is in flight. You can now optimize from attention to action in real time against people whose actual purchase behavior you know. A consumer product's brand needs return on ad spending. It needs foot traffic. Infillian now delivers all of it, not as separate vendors you reconcile later as one connected platform. That is what closing the gap looks like. What's the first brand you remember as a child as a young girl making an impact on you? So as a little kid, my family was super into the holidays. And when I was young, probably six or eight years old, AT&T had this commercial where the grandparent was on one end of the phone. And the grandchild was on the other end of the phone in the lap of their parent. And the grandfather's reading, "Twas the night before Christmas." And at the very end, of course, it's the AT&T jingle reach out and touch someone. But I genuinely think if it wasn't for that commercial, I would not be in this job. - Hi, I'm Jim Stangle. I've helped hundreds of major brands discover and activate their purpose. Because when a brand's purpose is clear, compelling and authentic profit naturally follows. Each week, I welcome the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of your favorite brands to speak to how their job is so much more than marketing. These leaders share their inspiration and challenges along with how they try to build a full, healthy, and happy life in and out of the office. And it's that energy that reaches everyone they touch. And we're glad you're here to feel that energy and to learn from these remarkable leaders. So here we go. A few brands define connection quite like AT&T, not just through technology, but through trust. And that is not a word historically associated with the telecom companies. At the center of AT&T's transformation into a trusted brand is my guest, Kellyn Smith-Kennie, the company's first ever chief marketing and growth officer. Since stepping into the seat in 2020, Kellyn has been a key player in what she calls AT&T's accountability era. A big part of this new era has been an ambitious, multi-year reinvention with more than $145 billion invested in reliability, transparency, and customer trust. AT&T is a household name and for good reason. Revenue succeed $120 billion with a customer base of 100 million consumers and 2.5 million businesses. Under Kellyn's leadership, AT&T has become known for both its marketing prowess and its humanity. From launching the AT&T guarantee to pioneering a pragmatic approach to AI, which we'll talk about to building powerful partnerships with the likes of Formula 1 and Hello Sunshine. Kellyn's career spans some of the world's most respected brands with early years at Accenture, to time in Hilton, Uber, Capital One, and Microsoft. And she brings a unique blend of economic, rigor, analytical horsepower, and a creative heart to every role. So here's my conversation with the marketing leader who's journey from Division 1 athlete to C-suite leader, has always been about challenging the status quo and about the head and the heart. - Kellyn, welcome finally to the CMO podcast. We've been dying to get you on. So here we are. Thanks for joining us. - I am so happy to be here. It's been a long time in the making. Thanks for having me, Jim. - Well, listen, it's early winter, and I think you're a big skier, right? Sort of a lifelong skier. So will you get out on the slopes this season or have you been out yet? - Oh gosh, no. So my first trip is scheduled for winter break. I'm heading out to Beaver Creek on December 27th, and I'll spend a whole week there with my family, including my cousin and her husband and their kids. Plus we've got friends from DC who are gonna be there. It's gonna be epic. - Wow, I love Beaver Creek. I've been many times with my family. It's fantastic. - Tushje. - You were competitive skier. We're gonna talk about that in a bit, but how do you ski now? You're still super aggressive. Do you do races or do you just like have fun? - My racing days are over, but it was absolutely one of the highlights of my college career and high school career being able to ski competitively. In fact, my youngest daughter actually, when she was five, we had her competing. And at five, this was during COVID. She ended up being first in the nation, in Slalom in her age, and then she came in second in Giants Lalom, and she and the little girl who beat her, ended up beating all of the boys. So, but when she was also ended her ski racing career because now we live in Dallas, but when we go out there, we just go out and try to have fun recreationally. I'm probably more aggressive than I should be. I blew out my knee a few years ago, but I'm back on the slopes with a big ol' brace and having fun. - Now, what was your initial catalyst to get you into skiing? Was it a friend, a parent, a coach? - It was definitely my parents. They had met in Boston, and they both had ski houses in New Hampshire, and they just loved it from a social perspective, and just being outside, right? It's so invigorating. Now, I think I was the one that actually chose ski racing. They just wanted me to be a competent skier so I could go out and have fun with family. - Yeah, right. Well, let's move from a winter sport to a spring, summer, early fall sport, baseball. So I think you have a story about baseball in your family. Your dad, I think, was kind of a significant player at one point. - Wow, you nailed it. Yes, I was down to research. - We do our research. I'm blown away. - We're gonna stay with athletics. - We'll get to the marketing stuff later. (laughs) - These are some of my favorite topics. So yes, my father was a major league baseball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, which was a pretty special life long dream that he had because he grew up in Nadek, Massachusetts. So being able to play for the hometown team, getting to throw out a pitch at Fenway Park, definitely leaves a deliable mark on him and our entire family. - How did he get involved at baseball? - I mean, that's playing at the highest level. What was his catalyst? - So he had an older brother, my uncle Terry, who was a catcher. And my father always looked up to his older brother. He always wanted to be hanging around him and his friends and that really pushed him athletically. My uncle was also a very gifted athlete, played multiple sports in college, as did my father. He actually ran cross country, played basketball, and played baseball at a division. one level, which now they don't really have you do anymore. But it was his brother that really inspired him to get in the game. And he was very talented from an early age, but he always said, "No one will ever outwork me. I am going to practice and practice and practice so that I can be the very best and do the very best possible with the gifts that were that were given to me." And one of the things about my father that always inspired me is the extent to which he is coachable. So at a young age, he was just coming out of Little League. He was 14 years old and a professional baseball scout came to watch him play. And my dad had this wicked, or he's from Boston wicked, curveball. And the scout said, "Wow, son, you really do have an incredible gift. Let me give you a tip. You're tipping off your curveball every time you pitch it. And it's not going to be as effective if everybody knows it's coming." So that was a really important moment for him, where he got this great piece of advice and he completely transformed how he delivered that pitch. Then when he was about 18, he had another tryout with a professional scout. And the guy told him, "Yeah, you've got a lot of heat on your fastball, but you're not pitching off the mound in a way that maximizes velocity." And again, he took that tip and he changed the way he pushed off the mound. And he added, you know, five to seven, maybe even 10 miles per hour behind his fastball. And then when he was in college, when he sort of had his final tryout before getting drafted, the scout told him, "Hey, look, I want you to hold your fastball differently and I want you to throw this four-seam fastball, you're going to get more movement on the pitch." And once again, my dad being very coachable, he totally adapted how he threw that pitch. And if it hadn't been for those pro tips from literally some of the best people out there and his willingness to adapt, he never would have made it to the big leagues. So were you a coachable athlete? I like to think I was a coachable athlete. Now, my dad was my coach most of the time. He would probably tell you I was a very obstinate kid. But no, that's actually one of the things I pride myself on most. I have such a growth mindset and I try to be extraordinarily humble and curious and ask people, "What can I be doing better and really observing both from others, but also in myself where I need to be pushed?" Okay, we should probably move on and talk a bit about AT&T and about your role there. So, Kellyn, you've just had your five-year anniversary, I think, at AT&T. That's right. It went five in a flash. And it's a consequential five years. And I've heard you describe it as the accountability era at AT&T the last five years. So is that a good summation of the last five years? And what do you mean by that? I think it's an excellent summation of the last five years. When I think about what we have been on a mission to do ever since I got here is we wanted to reinvigorate this brand. And when I arrived, it truly felt like a privilege. I felt like I was having the opportunity to work with one of the most iconic brands in the nation. Our founder story is truly incredible. Alexander Graham Bell, the most celebrated inventor of all time, made the very first phone call nearly 150 years ago. And everybody here at AT&T feels an obligation to really live up to that legacy and care for what's going to happen over the course of the next 150 years. But in the spirit of accountability, we have to make sure that we are delivering for our customers and for our employees. When I first got here, I did these deep dive immersion sessions with some of our super fans. They had been customers of AT&T for decades. Right? There's somebody who's been our customer for 60 years. When I met with employees, some of the members of my team described themselves as fourth generation AT&Ters, their parents, their grandparents, and their great-grandparents worked at this company. I've never been inside an organization where that was the case before. And so when I arrived, I found that we were in this enviable position in some regards where we had the sky high awareness of our brand, very high customer brand trust. But we also had a lot of room for improvement in really creating emotional relevance in the hearts of customers. And that's one of the things we're holding ourselves accountable to. Are we both delivering the connectivity experience our customers want need? But are we striking an emotional chord and really living up to an aspirational brand that is deserving of these super fans and these multi-generational families that have worked at this company? And I'm sure we'll get into it later, but when we think about accountability, it's accountability for everything. It's accountability for how people perceive our brand. It's for customer satisfaction. It's for NPS. It's for brand love. It's for the stock price. And it really has been a reset over the past five years and a journey I am incredibly, incredibly grateful for. Now, could you talk a bit more about as you reflect in these five years, you talked about building more an emotional chord with a brand and leveraging the super users? What would you say the pillars of this accountability era have been? What were your strategies? What did you do? How is the company different now than it was five, six years ago? So when I arrived, we all agreed, hey, this is a mature, highly saturated and fiercely competitive industry. Sure is. And the best way to win and deliver durable economic growth for the company is with sustainable differentiation. And that's tricky when the company and the sector is so mature. So it's no secret that if we can truly differentiate, we'd be in a better position. Number one, to generate demand more efficiently. Number two, to retain customers more effectively. And then of course, we'd be enjoying better core economics. So when I when I arrived, I looked at the lay of the land and I noted that we had an opportunity to clarify some really important components of how we went to market. The first was the company's purpose. We needed to build an appealing brand. And when I got here, I'll be honest, as a company, we were a little confused. We still owned Warner Media at the time. We still own Direct TV. Where we had connectivity company, where we had entertainment company. So we had work to do over the course of the first two years, I was here to really make sure that we had that purpose clarified for every single one of our employees and our customers. The second thing that I observed was that the business unit value propositions were also a little murky. And we needed to make sure that we were creating compelling products and services that all laddered up again to a very clear valve prop. And then finally, I knew that to break out in this industry, we needed to have some bold moves and they all needed to be grounded in our customer opportunity maps. So all three of those things purpose value proposition, bold moves associated with customer opportunity maps, all of those needed quite a bit of refinement and clarifying. And we we started with purpose. As you would expect, we really made that our center. And we said, we're here to connect people to greater possibility. And how are we going to do it? We're going to do it with expertise because everybody knows AT&T engineers are the foremost experts in the category. We're going to do it by trying to simplify all of the complexity and confusion that exists within the category. And we're going to try and do it in a way that's truly inspiring. So those three pillars, I think you call them, were how we thought about communicating both to our employees and our customers. Simplicity, inspiring, and expertise. Those are powerful points of difference, if you will. So how did you go about building that in to how you communicate, how you behave, how your leadership team works? So how did you bring it to life inside and outside the company? So from the beginning, I had my 90 day plan and I was 45 days in and I met with John Stanky, our CEO, and he said, how's it going? At 45 days in, I said, okay, so this is going to take a lot longer than I thought. And he just, he burst out laughing. He's like, I was wondering how long I was going to take you to figure that out. So when I was in about month four, I met with our Board of Directors, who is an incredibly impressive group of individuals and really a very impressive team and how they work together. But we acknowledge from the beginning, this is going to be a multi-year journey. And we had lots of heads nodding. We set our expectations that there was no sugar high coming. There was real work, substantive innovation, and customer care improvements that we needed to make if we were going to be famous for simplicity, if we were going to be famous for our expertise. And if we could deliver all of those things in an inspiring way. And so the Board nodded and they said, we want to do this right. We don't want to just put a bandaid on an issue where we could really create something remarkable if we invested the time. So kudos to them. And then I took that feedback and that guidance to heart. Over the course of nearly two years, we did 28 different studies. We surveyed over 200,000 customers, prospects. We had employees that were part of our, you know, wind up to how we were going to solve this problem. We interviewed external experts, futurists, technologists. We hosted listening sessions and co-creation sessions and agile sprint teams using our high potential team members from all corners of this company so that they could feel that they were a part of it. And then we had to make sure that we were honoring AT&T's origin story, right? We've got this incredible visionary founder. We needed to make sure that it resonated both with the roots of the company, but also reflected who are we on our best day and is it future proof. The other thing I did Jim and I may have gotten this tip from you was I studied companies who had successfully attempted to reposition their brands as well as the companies who were unsuccessful in their attempts. It was very clear to me that if you didn't have the buy-in of the employees first, if we weren't living it before we launched it, that would be a failure. If we were proposing to do something that was so aspirational and so far off in the future that it felt disconnected, then where we were today, I also knew that wasn't going to work. So we ultimately concluded we are going to get our employees incredibly inspired first and foremost. So we launched it with them in the back part of 2022 and we launched it with our customers. That's three to six months later. And that ended up being a major catalyst in how the company embraced it and rallied around it. Hi everybody, I'm Andrea Sullivan, the CEO of Vive and we have produced the CMO podcast with Jim Stangle for many years and I'm sitting in his seat right now. It's so exciting. I wanted to tell you a little bit about one of our programs that's called Vive Vive Vainer. It's a 12 month program that's designed for C-sweaters and founders and we want to help people to grow their businesses but also to grow themselves. And so we bring in people from Shark Tank to talk to our founders, but we also focus on wellness. We want to make sure that people are leaning into becoming their best selves, their best and happiest selves. So if you are someone that wants to learn how to grow your business and grow yourself, check us out at Vive.co. That's V-Y-V-E-DOT-CO. We'd love to talk to you. You know, Kellyn, if I didn't know you were a CMO, I'm not sure I would have deduced that from our discussion so far. I think that's a positive thing. Everything you're saying is about the company. It's a perspective about what's good for the company. How do we respect our organization or history? So very CEO, leadership team, board like. So could you talk about that for a minute? So when I think about what I've been hired to do, it's to make an impact on the company. And if the right way to do that in some CMO roles is by product innovation, then that's where you lean in. If the right way to do that in some CMO roles is to update the advertising, then that's where you lean in. But if we really want to reinvigorate the AT&T brand and we want to restore it to that iconic nature that it had been, then the only way to do that is to rally the entire organization. And so I very quickly, upon arrival, realized that if I didn't make this about everyone and I didn't enlist the masses, we wouldn't be successful because I also knew that people before me had tried that before. And I'll give an example of where I think the company had a breakthrough and then it just reinforced my commitment that this is a team sport and we need everyone to be a part of this. I was about six months into the job. And we gathered 40 of the senior most executives in the company for our workshop just to gain buy-in. Even if I thought, oh, marketing will have to carry the water. Let's get everybody committed and interested. And we did something before the workshop that was probably the most important thing that we could have done. We asked everybody to spend five minutes telling us about a brand they loved and why. And we heard amazing, literally, would give you chills stories about how product innovation from their favorite brand had changed their life. Or how a brand had demonstrated such incredible customer service that they believed deeply in their heart. This company cares about me. Or they talked about how there were companies that anticipated their needs and proactively updated the technology so that they were on the cutting edge. Or they even talked about how they'd read some of the policies, some of the terms and conditions and how it was clear that the lawyers at this organization cared about them as a person or cared about customers. And so what was amazing as we had this collection of stories is it was obvious there were technologists behind some of these innovations. There were digital leaders. There were legal team members. There was customer support. There was operations. And ironically, or maybe Jim, not so ironically, not a single person said, the reason I love this company is because of an ad. And the reason that was so important is it helps people understand, oh, Kellen and her team aren't going to reinvigorate the brand with a piece of marketing communication or a single customer insight. It takes every single one of us. And when we were closing out that first day of the workshop and the chief technology officer for AT&T said, my big aha coming out of today is that every single thing that every single one of us does that's customer facing is either going to polish or tarnish this brand. That was when I knew it was working. And I would underscore, you made this very personal. You went around with 40 people about what brand is impacted their life and put it in their words. And then you hold the mirror up and say, are we doing this ourselves, right? That is exactly right. What do we need to do to be the favorite brand of a lot of people? And so it's very powerful. What you just said and what you did. And when you hold that mirror up, people were honest. They said, we have room to be better. Are we living up to the standard of the brand they love the most? And that created a restlessness and a hunger and a commitment across the board of, we're in, we're with you. We want to build a famous brand that people love and connect with emotionally the way I connect with whatever brand that they had supplied in that pre-survey. When was your aha that your role should be and needs to be that big and that broad and that wide? Was it a, was it a previous experience years ago? Was it a boss that moral model that so when was your you know aha that being a CMO a successful leader by the way in any organization, it really demands that point of view, that attitude, that outlook because I think if you don't have it, you're not going to succeed. Correct. You're not going to succeed if you don't have a truly enterprise mindset and don't understand the core economics of the business and how you help the company grow and be successful. You know, there were probably a lot of moments along the way where I had this wake up call. I would say a recent one was when I was at Hilton, I was talking to our CEO, Chris Nassetta and he made a comment about me, I don't want you to refer to yourself as a marketer. You're a business person and I thought, well, that's interesting and I know he meant it as a compliment. So I took it as such but I thought, why is there a stigma in certain industries that a marketing person isn't a business person and so I reflected quite a bit on that and certainly from industry to industry, it changes. But you have to know whatever company you go into and I've been inside a handful of companies and I've worked inside different industries, there always is an artisan class and what he was signaling to me is you can fit in with the artisan class even though people historically inside this company might actually be thinking of marketing as more of the pretty picture group or as the communications group, they're not actually fully appreciating how full some you need to be as a marketer. And so it was probably before them but that that really was sort of a wake up call of people don't always associate marketers with having a mindset of caring for the total business, the total customer base and I knew that how I approached the role could impact how I was perceived and that it would be very important in terms of the ultimate success of the company and the individuals that worked for me for me to position myself in that way. You work with a lot of partners, right? Every CMO does. How did you get all of them on board that this is the way that we're going to work together because if your media agencies, your design agencies, your ad agencies, and on and on and on, they have to be with you on this, right? That's right. How did you do that? How's your role model that? Great question. One of the things that we've done that has been very effective is we've brought people in as far upstream as possible and painted the vision. When people see the vision and the ambition of what we're trying to accomplish, it is extremely motivating. And we've seen that they are delivering idea after idea after idea. And it's almost as if it's become contagious. Instead of it being this thing that is sit again, pockets or cold asacks, it's actually been extraordinarily motivating across the board as we're leveling up, as we're really aspiring to greatness and excellence. People want to be a part of that. So bringing them in early, keeping them updated along the way and then sharing the wins. One of the things that I probably need to get better at as a leader is celebrating the small wins. Because we have had so many moments throughout the past five years, especially in this last year, where we have done extraordinary things that people maybe didn't think was possible 10 years ago, or five years ago, or even three years ago. And so actually leaning into those moments and having people feel as though this wouldn't have happened without me, we've seen that that really sustains the motivation. >> I'll frequently ask question I get is how to think about the organization of the future with all the things that are changing in our work, especially AI. You've been in the job now five years. I bet your approach to work and organization is different now than it was when you walked in the door. So could you talk about some of your learning, your insights, maybe successes and failures as you've thought about evolving your organization to win going forward with the right capabilities as well as all the right attitudes which you've been talking about. >> Since you mentioned AI, I'll start there. This was actually something I discovered after I had joined AT&T, but AT&T was really at the forefront of artificial intelligence back in 1955. One of AT&T's R&D researchers from Bell Labs, a very famous inventor by the name of Claude Shannon, was one of the four individuals that actually coined the phrase. So we take AI very seriously inside this company. At the time, he was already famous for creating information theory, which still today is the mathematical foundation for modern digital communication, computing, and ultimately AI. But we've taken this to heart and we are applying AI across the customer experiences and definitely marking strategy and execution. We have really been encouraging all of the marketers, all of the growth managers inside the company to embrace it with enthusiasm, to improve the customer experience and ensure that they always have the best connectivity available. Because if the customer has an exceptional experience with us, they are going to advocate for the brand. They're going to be more satisfied and they're going to stay longer. And so today we're using AI and synthetic models to predict storm impacts. We can literally dynamically reroute traffic across the network. We can adjust antennas on the top of cell phone towers and manage power to protect the performance that our customers have. So much of how a customer views your brand and your company is based on the experience they have with your products and services. So that has been hugely impactful. And then we relate that to how we communicate with customers and notify them, "Hey, a storm may be coming in in your area." Here's what we are doing to ensure you always stay connected. We've also integrated AI into our advanced data analytics to improve customer experience in terms of diagnosing network repairs. So making sure that we send the right experts to the right jobs, making sure that we're using AI in the field to help guide how our technicians promptly and accurately resolve issues. We've been able to cut down on the amount of time it takes to get repairs complete thanks to the use of AI. And then of course we use it with customer support, whether it's digital self-service and they're engaging with an agent or if they're interacting with us when they make a call in. What we've seen is a 50% reduction in the number of people that a customer needs to talk to to get their issue resolved, which as you can imagine makes customers satisfaction, increase significantly, and the 33% reduction in the time to actually resolve their issues. One of that would have been possible without AI. And so we as marketers are very inspired by those improvements to the customer service experience. And then from of course a marketing and strategy and execution perspective, it's changed how we spend our time, how we manage our meetings, how we manage our inboxes, how we actually prioritize the initiatives that we're going to deploy and invest our resources in. We use AI to analyze and synthesize our data and research to diagnose market opportunities. And then as there are pocket of customers over here where we're under penetrated and by shifting our message to this population of customers and reaching them when they give us a signal that they're in the market could that actually improve acquisition effectiveness. And then of course how we communicate with them, we did an experiment earlier this year where we were using AI to personalize and optimize the content that went in front of every single perspective and we saw a massive improvement in effectiveness of those ads. How did you get your organization to really become super users? I mean I love how you said you started with the customer experience, we can make it better. And let's use that as our rallying cry or focus. Obviously there's lots of applications for AI but when you can make the customer more delighted, you know, that's wonderful and it leads to great brands and great companies. So how did you really get your company, the organization to lean into the platforms you're experimenting with and the use cases that you were piloting? This is a great question and one that I'm still frankly spending quite a bit of my time on because as you would expect with most technology adoption cycles, we had our early adopters who raced toward this, they saw that it was part of the future and they were energized about how they could use this tool to make themselves more efficient, more effective. Then you had the fast followers on the heels of the early adopters and what we're seeing from employees and team members is this really is saving me time. This is making me better at what I do. It's helping me collaborate more effectively. I understand the customers better. But honestly Jim, I've still got a population within the organization that we're trying to bring along. And so we have an individual on our team who is incredible at change management and he is tasked with making sure that the AT&T marketing and growth organization is adopting all of the tools and making use of it. And that's from trainings to heroine's contests. He has opportunities for them to get involved and win prizes and we're starting to see things take off. But as with anything and we're marketers, so we know this, you almost need to have a campaign because it's not everybody's natural instinct to jump in. Even when they see some of their colleagues experiencing impressive results, they're still reticent. They're still nervous. Maybe they're even a little bit in fear. And so we actually needed to have an absolute pro at change management and he's been in the role for a couple of months. He is so fired up and we're starting to see the traction. You talked about differentiation and I really wanted to talk about that because I love the air of accountability. But as I was doing my home, I knew your brand pretty well but I did a lot of homework getting ready for this. I would say another summation of last five years has been breaking through and differentiating. So I'm glad you took us there, but I want to go there a bit more deeply because if I look at your background, you work for Hilton, Capital One, Accenture early in your career. Those are tough brands to set apart. For sure. I also work for Microsoft and Uber, which have set themselves apart very well over a long period of time. So I'd like you to talk about this. I mean, if you can't differentiate yourself, if you can't be distinctive, if you can't be relevant, you don't have a brand and you've had a lot of experiences in trying to do that. So if you had to boil it down to how you approach a challenge like this, which you've done at AT&T over the last five years, how do you approach building a differentiated, distinctive, meaningful brand? What have you learned about that with all the experiences that you have had? Well, first of all, thank you for the incredible compliment because for Jim Stangle to say that we've done a great job differentiating that really lands on my heart. So thank you. In a tough category, by the way. That is an ultimate compliment. Thank you. No, honestly, Kellan, it's about the toughest category I can imagine. It is tough. It is really tough, but you hit on it. What we started by doing was stripping away all of the device promotions, stripping away, all of the flash, all of the competitive advertising, and we tried to get really to the core, the simplest component parts of what customers want and need from a communications provider. And it really isn't a big mystery. They've said it for years. What I want is a network connectivity. I can depend on. I want prompt and friendly service if there's ever an issue. And I want the deals to be fair. And by that, in our category, our category was plagued with existing customers feeling resentful, almost a level of righteous indignation of why does the new customer get the free phone? Why doesn't the customer who's been loyal to you for decades? Why don't I get a free phone? We really changed the game and we brought that all to life at the beginning of this year with the AT&T guarantee. And we remain not just the first, but now the only connectivity provider that says we will guarantee the network, the deals, and the service. And if we ever let you down, we're going to make it right. And we're going to make it right proactively. And that pro activity piece is so important because customers don't want to have to harass you and call you to get you to make it right for them. And when we, again, you asked, how did we actually get to the analysis, the diagnosis of what was needed, that part was easy. Figuring out what we were going to do about it was hard. And over the course of the past five years, no one has invested more in connectivity, infrastructure in the United States than AT&T. And I'm about to share a staggering number, $145 billion in the past five years. That is staggering. That is staggering. And that still wasn't enough because that was only one of the three pillars. The second thing we did was we had to make sure that the customer care experience, the service experience, was bulletproof. So we invested nearly a billion dollars in the past few years. improving that. And then we said we're going to acknowledge that customers feel this righteous indignation around the deals and we're going to say everybody gets our best deals whether you're a new or an existing customer. So you never need to feel as an existing customer an obligation to shop around we're going to take care of you. And again the the insight around those three pillars was not new. My competitors know that we just decided as AT&T we're going to step up and meet customers where they are. And the reason it's so important that I point out these things happened over years is because the AT&T guarantee was something we had planned and worked to deliver literally years in the making. And when we launched it we wanted to be in that rarefied air. We wanted people to think about the AT&T guarantee the way they think about Nordstrom's return policy or the way Patagonia handles any bag any jacket any piece of equipment that you've had where they will repair or replace it. And we thought the one thing we can do that Nordstrom and Patagonia can't do is we can know if you've had a network challenge we can know if you had to wait more than five minutes to talk to somebody from customer service. We can know if it took us longer than 24 hours to fix fix and repair your issue. And based on that we will proactively credit people. And our policy became even Jim if you experience a 20 minute interruption we know that that can impact your whole day. And so we're going to credit you for a full day of service. That I even get chills as I'm telling you that that was hugely differentiating and our customers have loved it. It's such a good story. And congratulations to you and your team. I mean that's heavy lifting and you've done it and you've done it with conviction and you've done it with working in the things that matter to the customer. You know what the story reminds me of we had George Felix from Chili's on our show. I listened to that podcast. He was he blew me away. I actually was nervous to come on after I listened to George. No, it's the same story. It honestly and Chili's is crushing it under last quarter like 20% growth on top line. And that's also a pretty competitive category. But it was getting down to what do customers really care about in a fast casual restaurant. It's like four things he outlined them. We're going to do them super well. We're going to get the entire organization excited by that. We're going to communicate just that and look at what's happening to the business and the organization. It was so invigorating to hear him speak because I also noticed the similarities. And when we look at AT&T's performance over the past five years and even over the past years since we've launched the guarantee customer MPS scores are up customer satisfaction scores are up. We have lower turn. We actually see our customers recommending to friends and family and adding line at a faster clip than they've done before. They're more confident in our product services and customer experience, which is an interesting point. And they have higher LTV. People were worried if you tell them proactively, Hey, we noticed that you experienced an interruption service. But what if what if they wouldn't have noticed that the service was interrupted? And now we told them, are they going to feel less confident? It turns out they're more confident. They think AT&T is on top of it. And you know, we'd like to say that that the stock price, not maybe day to day, but over a period of years is a pretty good scorecard. And if you look at how our stock is done in the past five years, we're up 71% and even in the first eight months of launching the guarantee, it was up 32%. It's working. Yeah, it's working. Your leadership style. I've heard you talk about it as equal parts, head and heart. And I love that. I think this whole discussion has been full of that. I would like you to talk a bit about what happens when it gets out of tilt. What happens when you get too much head or too much heart? And I think about this my own experience because it sometimes does. And sometimes others have to sort of say to me, think about the emotions a bit more in what we're doing here or analyze this a little bit more deeply. So how do you keep that equal in how you manage day to day? That is such a great question. And it's one I try to challenge myself to consider one of the things that I am so fortunate to have is I am surrounded by a very diverse set of leaders within the marketing and growth organization. They are deep subject matter experts, but their skills allow them to also balance me out. So we've got a head of marketing planning, who also is very analytical, but also very heart driven and and focuses on customer emotion. We've got ahead of advertising and retail experiences. We've got ahead of media and sponsorships who's very analytical, but also wanting to make sure that we leverage the media and the sponsorships in a way that pull on the heartstrings. We've got ahead of brand strategy, again, both very analytical, but wanting to produce brand elements that really move you and speak to the heart and strike an emotional cord. Then we've got our head of marketing technology. We've got our head of digital. And because each one of them has such unique strengths and differences, that right there is almost an automatic instant way to just rebalance. And then as a team, as a leadership team, not even just with my direct reports, but how we talk to our directors and our associate vice presidents in the company or in the organization, we talk about, are you a thermometer or are you a thermostat? That famous line from Martin Luther King's letter from a Birmingham jail. Are you going to walk into a room and just be the same temperatures, the people who are being all analytical or when when people are going, you know, really deep on the, you know, the math camp, can you bring them out of that and share a customer insight that really evokes critical thinking, strategic problem solving? Can you be the thermostat that regulates? Same thing if you're in a room filled with creative masterminds. Can you introduce a salient piece of data that helps people reorient around the thing that we need to do that's going to be most effective for the business? So I constantly try to think about am I a thermostat in the room for others? Am I bringing balance? And then when I find myself off center, I will actually try to go and have a conversation. You know, maybe it's my head of research, analytics and insight and he's giving me more information to just ground me when I get too excited about an idea that's creative. You've done something a lot of CMOs would like to do and that's joined a public board and you've done that in the last year. So I was on two public boards when I was CMO one when I was at PNG and one after I left. They were both incredible experiences, but I get this question a lot. How do I join a board? And what process should I go through? How should I start? How should I think about it? Would I like it? So talk a bit about your journey to being appointed on the board of a public company. Is it something was very intentional? Did it happen serendipitously? Talk about that. It was something that I had spent a lot of time thinking about. I wanted to make sure that if I joined a board that I could truly be additive, that I could contribute in a way and bring a unique perspective that they would value, but also that I would be in a position to learn a tremendous amount. And so I had been approached to join boards many times over the past, I don't know, five to seven years. And what made invitation homes the right fit for me was it really is a company that deeply cares about their residents. They have a hundred, a hundred and ten thousand homes around the US where they have residents and they wanted to improve the customer experience. I thought I definitely know a thing or two about that. They wanted to make sure that they had a very healthy brand that could be reinvigorated. I thought I knew a thing or two about that. But above all, the CEO is actually a friend of mine. He's somebody that I'm a fellow with as part of our Henry Crown Fellowship in part of the Aspen Institute. And so I knew he was an individual who had tremendous integrity and that he would run his company in a manner that number one would be well run. Number two, involve the highest values and standards. And number three, that he was hungry to have somebody who could be a real partner to him. So it's still fairly early days for me on this board. It's not even been a full year yet. But I have been so blown away by the caliber of the other board members. I'm learning from them and the quality of his management team is really top notch. The other thing that's nice when you're at a big hundred and thirty five thousand employee, hundred and fifty year old company is it's nice to be with a company that's a little bit scrapier. Yeah, that doesn't have a hundred and forty five billion dollars to deploy in their network. And because of that, I'm also really enjoying the pace and the entrepreneurial nature of that company. [Music] Catlin, let's flip into the creative brief. Now the first question is I look at your education, I look at your career and it's clear and also from this interview. You're motivated, you're creative, you're inspiring, you're successful. Have you had any major missteps? And if you did, how did you handle those? Oh, definitely. That's a missteps. Definitely along the way. So I started my career as a technology consultant, literally hands on a keyboard coding. And what I loved about it was how intellectually rigorous it was, how challenging it was. But Jim, I'm not embarrassed to admit this now, but despite being a team athlete, I had played softball for even in college in addition to skiing. I did not approach that job as being part of a team. I thought I was this hired gun to go out there and code. And I wanted to have the best code. I wanted to have the most bug free code, but I was approaching everything like an individual contributor. I didn't fully recognize that I could be part of something grander. And I remember I was working on a project for a bank and I had been asked to help convert these emerging market debt instruments in their new system. And I called a professor at NYU who happened to be the one person I could find and knew anything about these debt instruments. I got in his coaching, I built the code, and I rolled it out and I thought, ta-da, everyone's gonna love it. Everyone's gonna be so blown away by me. And it was, again, it was barely a micro, it was such an important lesson. People were not blown away. They were underwhelmed to say the least. Like congratulations, you just, you know, accomplished the freckle on the backside of a net. You know that this is part of an entire initiative, right? And I really had missed the point. I thought that looking good meant that I had to do it by myself. And that has been one of the most galvanizing learning lessons throughout my whole career. Now my entire MO is how do we harness the collective expertise of everyone we have the good fortune of working with? How do we make sure that as a team, we have full end to end visibility into what people are doing so that we're contributing to something truly masterful. We're painting a Picasso, not just a bunch of random shapes on various different pages. And so I mean, I could give you failure after failure, but that's probably the most seminal one for me where I realized, man, you just didn't get it. You missed it and I did miss it. Luckily I picked up the clue phone and figured it out. But- - But thank you, I guess it was Accenture. You're working at the time. - Accenture, that's right. - Thank you Accenture, right? - Thank you Accenture. - Those are pivotal lessons. - Absolutely. I then went to business school and while I was in business school again, I had the incredible good fortune. I was assigned to a case team. We had an entrepreneur, investment banker. I was the software consultant. We had somebody who'd worked at Disney. We had somebody who'd been a brand manager. And I remember thinking, okay, we have to crack this case and we had all these questions we need to answer. So I came to the first meeting and I had all my answers sketched out on the page and I thought I had it all figured out. And within the first, I had written paragraphs and paragraphs. And within the first five minutes, I folded up my paper and I pushed it off to the side because the perspectives that I had the opportunity to listen and learn from in that environment helped me realize I can get maybe 50% of the way there on my own. My job is to be an incredible facilitator and to make sure that the very best that everyone has to offer in this case study team is being brought to the fore. - Is your spirit animal really a blue bird? - Gosh, I love the blue bird. Part of it is AT&T is blue. Hilton was blue. I had a farm blue in my career, but I love the notion of you have done your homework. I love the notion of spreading your wings and flying and getting higher and higher. And I tried to aspirationally be that for myself and also encourage my daughters, my 10 and 13 year old daughters to spread their wings and reach new heights every year. - I went to a session with my wife, another company and they did a whole analysis of what's our spirit animal is. So they did a personality test and then it popped out with your spirit animal. And mine's a hummingbird. Yours is a blue bird. So we can go on and then my wife is an owl. - Oh, she's wise. - She's a silly one. - We have the owl and the hummingbird. So it's a good match. - So the hummingbird, isn't that the one bird that can fly backwards? - Yes, and it moves around a lot. It tries a lot of different things. - That's such a great compliment. - Yeah, I think it's accurate. It's accurate. - And you can go deep, right? It expands the network, which is a big part of what you're doing on this podcast. - Oh, I love it. I love it. That's a good spelling. - You're a hummingbird. (laughing) - And you're the blue bird. Okay, what's the first brand you remember as a child as a young girl making an impact on you? - Okay, I knew you were gonna ask me this and I'm like, he's gonna say BS, but I swear, hand over my heart, this is true. - AT&T. - It was AT&T. And you've done so much research. You probably know what I'm about to say. You know what I'm just for that? - So as a little kid, my family was super into the holidays and one of my favorite stories at Christmas time was the night before Christmas. And when I was young, probably six or eight years old, AT&T had this commercial where the grandparent was on one end of the phone and the grandchild was on the other end of the phone in the lap of their parent and the grandfather's reading "Twas the night before Christmas." And at the very end, of course, it's the AT&T jingle reach out and touch someone. And you're gonna think I'm crazy for saying this. I am the daughter of a mathematician, so this is not gonna compute, but I genuinely think if it wasn't for that commercial, I would not be in this job. I genuinely believe it. I don't think I would have moved from the Northeast to Dallas. There was something about that left this truly indelible mark on me. And when I got the phone call about this role and this opportunity, I didn't hesitate. And if any other brand, and there's amazing brands in Dallas, if any other brand had reached out and said, we've got this opportunity in Dallas, I really think I would have said, thanks for considering me, but no thanks. So I think that commercial is literally why I'm here today. - I remember that commercial. - Yes. - It beautiful. - So beautiful. So think about bringing that back somehow. - I know. - The spirit of it. - Everything's giving. I'm like, do we have a spot? Was the night before Christmas? Maybe my team will listen to this and do something about it. - Very sweet. Very powerful insight under it. - If Jim Stangle recommends it, it seems like something we should do. - Who has been the most inspiring person in your life? - Hmm. So we talked about my dad. I'm now gonna talk about my mom. She is a force. Her passion for excellence in everything she does, even as a retiree, she pursues excellence. But she was a registered nurse. She then moved on up at the hospital that she worked at and became a hospital administrator. And she ran the second largest outpatient services division for the entire state of New York. She was in Southern Westchester County. She served the Bronx and Harlem and Westchester. And she had a massive staff. There's at least 1,000 people that worked for her. And she think is actually one of the main driving forces why I get so focused and obsessed with the customers. Her focus on patient outcomes. When you think about really the difference between life and death, that was what she worked on. And she tried to extend people's life. She tried to make sure that when they were exiting the hospital, they had good days, weeks, months, years ahead. And her passion for her people, her work ethic, was just second to none. I used to call her when I was growing up that she was a workaholic. And the other day, the word workaholic was in a book that my 10 year old was reading. And I said, "Do you know what that word is?" And she goes, "Yeah, you are one." And I thought, "Oh, oh." But if you can inherit workaholism, I haven't heard of that from my mom. She also sounds like she was head and heart. Oh, absolutely. The level of empathy and compassion that she has for people is second to none. She also is truly an expert. Even though she's been retired for many, many years, she is still the first phone call that not just me, my husband, my kids, my in-laws make, all of her friends. Today, she's still the first phone call because she is so calm in the eye of chaos as well. So my mom, for sure, composed her up the wazoo. Yeah, I have a daughter who's an ICU nurse at UCSD, Cardio ICU. You must be so proud. Yeah, yeah, she's amazing. And as are her colleagues, I mean, it's the best group of people. They're just incredible. Well, thank her for me. I will. No, she'll love the story, by the way. Okay, let's get back to Christmas. We're deep in the holiday season, you know, as this is released. So do you have a Christmas wish you want to share with our audience? Hmm. So I would say, I know we've just had Thanksgiving. My favorite, favorite holiday of the year is Thanksgiving. I love taking time to give gratitude, to really extend deep thanks and appreciation to everybody in your life that has made an impact. I try to do that here at AT&T. I try to do that in my personal life with my friends and family. But one of the things I guess if I sort of blend my Christmas wish and my reflection around the Thanksgiving holiday is really reject apathy, reject complacency, find a charitable organization that you want to donate your time to or donate your money to. When my 13-year-old, she's currently 13, when she was 10 years old, she said she didn't want any holiday gift she wanted everything to go to donations. That really touched my heart. And I thought, man, the generosity of a 10-year-old girl, I wish all of us had that mindset. And so I guess for the holiday, I just hope that everybody reflects on what they're grateful for and gives back. - I love that. That's a beautiful place to end, Kellyn. This was so good. By the way, you're a great CMO. You don't need to hear that from me, but you are a great CMO. This is full of lessons. Your spirit's wonderful. No mystery why the company in brand is doing so well. So it's been a great conversation. Congratulations. And the best to your team and the best for you for Christmas and the New Year. - Thank you so much. Thanks to you. I'm so honored to have been included on your podcast. How many hundreds of these do you have now? - We're coming up on 400. So yeah. - Yeah. - Wow. - And they're all different and they're all wonderful. - Oh my gosh. - Oh my gosh. That's why I love doing it. Talking to people like yourself, it's just endlessly fun and interesting. - Thank you. You have done such a service for the entire sector as marketers, as brand leaders. We are incredibly lucky to have an icon, speaking of icons to have an icon. Like Jim Stangle ushering in the next great wave of growth and marketing insight. So thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here. - I'm blushing. We better end it. Thank you, Kelly. - Thank you. - That was my conversation with Kelly. Three takeaways from this one, where your business brand and life, first one is be coachable. We started and we kind of ended on that. She says one of her strengths and one of her dad's strengths was to be coachable. And that means being flexible, being agile and being open to others' points of view. The second takeaway, lead with your head and your heart. Kellyn obviously does that. It was evident in the interview, but I loved her stories about when she gets a bit off track, how she builds her team to be sure that the entire team approaches their work, their customer, their organization with head and heart. And the third takeaway, this was a beautiful case of how to build a differentiated distinctive brand. She has done that with her team at AT&T. It's tough to do in a category like this, but she talked about thinking about, in a simple way, the things that set you apart that are meaningful to your customers, double down on that and bring that to life. It's actually that simple. And I think the last bonus lesson is, I loved her thoughts about generosity and gratitude in the holiday season. I echo that. Let's all be a bit more grateful, a bit more generous, and let's all have a wonderful holiday season. That's it for this week's episode of The CMO Podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends. Along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts Spotify, or wherever you listen, The CMO Podcast is a vibe, original production. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of our sponsors or its personnel, nor do our sponsors advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.