Soyoung Kang on the Architecture of Value Creation

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Somebody else comes along, and they're not just thinking good enough. They're thinking light years better, and then it completely disrupts the entire category. (upbeat music) My guest this week called to BS an architecture from MIT, a dual MBA in marketing and finance from the Wharton School. She was a full bright scholar, and no doubt did better on her SATs than I did. Today, so Young Kang is president of EOS products. The iconic Gen Z focus beauty brand, a position that she's had for almost a year after being promoted from chief marketing and innovation officer last August. With a career that includes time as a BCG consultant, director of strategy for L Brands and senior brand merchandising roles at both Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works. So Young was named the first CMO at EOS, a role created because the company's growth trajectory had slowed, and she was brought in for a turnaround in reboot. And so Young, the company hired someone who thinks in structures and systems, and she's rebuilt the business from the inside out, growing it into one of Gen Z's most beloved brands, and one of marketing's most effective brands. Amongst other things, she and I talk about how her architect's mind sees how value gets built, and where it breaks down in ways that maybe a CMO with a more conventional marketing background might not. Your background's so fascinating, especially for somebody who's doing what you're doing, and who's had the career that you've had. Because you actually began studying architecture at MIT, got an MBA in finance from Wharton, started consulting at BCG, and then you spent 15 years, 15 years, I think? - Around, yeah. - In retail operations before you became a CMO, and I'm pretty sure all this means you did better on your SATs than me. So I'm wondering what this path, in particular, at the beginning, right? In particular, like the architectural construction, the architectural construct and brain that you have. How that shaped your thinking and taught you about value creation and/or destruction? Like what's your lens on it? - But first of all, I love the question around value creation versus destruction, because I think that's the right question to ask, not a marketing question, but just more of a broad philosophy on what we're all doing here, because I think that when you really think about the way that people approach their functions, the folks who I'm always inspired by are the ones who take up broader lens. So they're applying a philosophy to a function, rather than just kind of, - Enzyme for the function. - By the playbook on the function. And for me, it is very similar to, like, the earlier part of my life. I would say that when you're an architecture, and I actually didn't know this until I started studying architecture, architecture isn't about buildings, it's about systems. And I think that's what's really fascinating about the study of it. And by the way, I would have been a terrible architect. I know that because I don't think that I have the thing in me that kind of drives me to necessarily be like innately creative. But I love to understand systems, and I love to break down systems and figure out how they all fit together. When I first started studying architecture, I really thought it was about, it's about making buildings. And when I ended my education, the last class that I took when I think I was a senior and I was in studio, I had a professor who was really fascinating, and my final project was one that was like, they create these hypothetical projects, and this one I think was like a create an art center and an abandoned dock in some country. And he said to me, 'cause he challenged me all through this. But you're creating an abandoned dock. Sorry. Creating an art center that uses an abandoned dock. I see, okay, all right, because that's like just negative from the outset. You're like, that seems pretty easy, 'cause just empty space, abandoned, there you go. No, in this case, he challenged me the entire time to think about the way that people move through the space. Yeah. And that's what I, it wasn't about the space, it wasn't about the structure. It was about the use and the experience and the human engagement of how you flow through space. And actually, when I ended that studio, I remember he specifically said to me, he said, "Of all the students in my class," by the way, like I said, "I was not cut out to be an architect." "Of all the students in my class, the compliment that he paid me was, you are the person who thought the most about how people move through your space." And I think that that, thinking about human engagement and human interaction with systems, that is a huge part of how you think about not just marketing, but about business and business creation and value creation. Putting yourself back in that, what were you, 21 or something? Yeah. That 21-year-old, you mindset, how would you go about thinking about how people were gonna move through that space? And then, then let's fast forward to how you think about how people move through the spaces you create as a branding company now. So, I thought it's thought about this a lot because I think that, first of all, your prompts are really thought-provoking and it made me sort of like dig pretty deep to think about what-- Smash that subscribe button, people. How do I want to. How am I gonna dig deeper and actually answer this, not just from what I'm doing today, but actually go further back? In the case what I realized was that the study of architecture, like becoming a management consultant afterwards, like even marketing today, like the through line across all of it, is I actually think a lot about from the outside in, and I think a lot about how my constituent is experiencing things and how they're, what's their motivation, what is it that they desire? If you think about your target constituent, your target audience and think backwards from how you can better service them, it's always gonna make you a better. - Anything, yeah. -. filming the architect, business person, marketer, whatever it is. And in a weird way, I thought of it all, this is gonna sound kind of like dorky, but I was like, I've always been in client services then. You know, like if you think about architecture, you're trying to service the users of your space. If you think about consulting, it's all client services. You're always thinking about things from the perspective of what is my client need, and how can I help make things better? And I think that the best marketers think that way too. - Why do you think that some business people, CEO, CFO, product person, engineer, tech person who don't think of themselves as marketers, don't think that way? Maybe in particular, the product people. And I'm painting with a broad brush. There are plenty of product people who of course put the user or the perspective user front and center, but there are a lot of products that seem not to, and a lot of experiences that don't seem to have that consideration at their center. - Truly, I actually think that the reason why you end up in that position, like let's say as a product person, is because you are too busy obsessing about your competitors, and not busy enough obsessing about your customer. - There's that what famous, and I don't really like quoting him, given who he's become, but that famous Jeff Bezos quote, which is I don't think about my competitors, I think about my consumers. - That's exactly right. I think that if you are trained as somebody who is obsessed with your customer, your consumer, whoever's like sort of like the end user of whatever it is that you're creating, and approach it with a great deal of empathy, putting yourself in their shoes, you're always gonna end up in a better position. I'll tell you, 'cause I haven't mentioned my time in retail, but in my almost 15 years in retail, I would say not a month went by when I didn't spend a significant amount of time working in stores, like working in stores, not just kind of visiting and observing and being in executive who like parachutes in. I'm talking about put on the uniform, get out on the floor, where your comfy shoes and sell some product. And when you're in that position and you sit face to face, you stand face to face with your consumer, and you listen to them, and you truly listen to them, and you're trying to help them see the value in the thing that you're putting out there. Not only do you have this unbelievable amount of empathy for what it is that they're looking for, what they desire, what gets them excited, what, you know, they're not as excited about, but you also, you know, I'm gonna say, I think you gain an unbelievable and humbling sense of appreciation for where your success comes from. Not a day goes by even today, and you know, now I'm in a business that's wholesale. So you're sort of like a little bit one step removed at end consumer, but not a day goes by that I don't feel immensely appreciative for every person who spends a hard earned dollar on the thing that I put out there in the world. For them to be able to say yes to something that helps drive my success and my business's success, it's something to be immensely grateful for. - Yeah, I think, I mean, a thousand percent, what I wanna do though is take a step back to the retail floor for a second, because I think the person who's on that floor, who's working at who's wearing that uniform every single day, is oftentimes, I could be wrong, but oftentimes underappreciated for the impact they have on a business, right? And you know, if you go to the premise of the show, it's that every decision a business makes, either contributes to value creation or destruction. It's also any decision and any action rather that a company makes, and a lot of those actions take place on that retail floor, metaphorical or literal. And I'm wondering if you've seen moments, either as a customer or as an operator, where you're like, yeah, you just fucked up, and that just really is value deleterious. - I think that value creation is the ability to make things better, make decisions and take actions to make things better for one of three groups that you're serving in the business, without making things worse for any of them. And that is the trade-off that happens. So the three groups that I think about, like all the time are number one, would be my customer or my consumer. - Right. - Number two, it's my organizational community. So it's the team that I'm working with, it might even be like you might go like one hour ring and say it's my suppliers and everyone that I'm partnering with as well. And then number three, owners, shareholders, investors. So those are sort of like the three constituent groups that I'm thinking about. A lot of times businesses make decisions that are better for one and worse for the other. - Yeah, it's such a good point. Right? And so, you know, if I, so as an example, if I am a come, and we've seen this a lot, especially in the last few years, 'cause it's been very like a very unpredictable world, these last few years, but there are, - You've noticed that. - In case nobody told you. For example, businesses that disproportionately, like race pricing in order to maintain profit, but then at the expense of the consumer. You know, these are all decisions that businesses make all the time, but thinking about how do you maintain like the consistency so that you're making things better or at least not worse. - Yeah. - For all three of those groups, that's how you create value and how you destroy value. And ultimately, when you destroy value, it comes back to your own business. And eventually you're gonna have to pay that bill. - Yeah. - Which actually, I'm sorry to interrupt. Go on, keep going. - No, no, go ahead. - 'Cause it's a perfect segue to what I wanted to ask you about next, which is, you've talked before about how the level of resilience a brand has, right? When things go wrong, it's entirely dependent on how much brand equity that you've deposited over time. So it's like life, like any relationship, like a partnership or a marriage to keep it. Right? Really everything except being apparent, I think, or a dog owner, it's about deposits and withdrawals. - Yeah. - Right? Your parent or your dog owner, it's all withdrawals and it's fine. way it works. That lots of deposits. Kids, if you're listening, more deposits, dead requests. So in talking about resilience, deposits, and withdrawals, one sentence, you've gotten from my perspective to both this notion of value creation, the deposits and destruction and the withdrawals, and the depth of destruction is really just the simple math of what kind of a balance are you running? What kind of a deficit are you running? So to keep, or perhaps butcher the financial metaphor, if this is about deposit, some withdrawals, who within the organization from your perspective is responsible for ensuring the account is always running a surplus? I think that everybody is responsible for it. And I think that everybody is responsible ultimately for, I mean, to say this, but I think everybody is responsible for marketing in a business. And I don't mean I'm talking about lowercase m marketing, not uppercase. Right? Uppercase m is a different story. But lowercase m to me is when you are I'm sorry, just for the audience, because I want to make sure that my interpretation is it should uppercase m is the function lowercase m is the mindset. That's how I'm thinking about it. So like, you know, lowercase m marketing to me is all about how am I going to propel and grow my organization's reputation? And how am I recruiting? Always recruiting, whether it's customers, suppliers, talent, you know, just how am I attracting more people to my organization? Yeah. Over somebody else's. And I think that belongs to everybody. What I mean by that is I think everybody has a hand in that sort of net positive into the account. I think that marketing now uppercase m marketing the function oftentimes is in the position to actually not necessarily be the only ones accountable, but be the accountants of it if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well said. I think that everybody is accountable, but I think uppercase m marketing the function can can do the best job of keeping the rest of the organization honest about what that hopefully net positive balance is. I really love the distinction between the accountability and the accountant, right? And it brings me back to the very one of the very first things you said, which is you talked about how people move through space going back to your days as a student of architecture and it which is to say you're bringing a customer human consumer centrity to the to the experience, right? Capital E or lower KC and not not being flippant about that. That is fun. I mean, it's so much it's kind of tried to say it. The CMOS job is to be the voice of the end user inside the enterprise marketing's job is to understand the end user and translate that inside the enterprise so that product can create better products for the end user for the perspective end user. And so it all makes a great deal of sense. And I'm wondering at the risk of this being a little bit more marketing tactical than I want the conversation to go, but why do you think looking broadly kind of across across industry, right? Within some of the biggest companies in the world and some of the smaller ones, why do you think that role seem to me? It seems that role has been lost. Do you agree? The marketing role. The marketing role and the role of marketing as the voice of the end user inside the enterprise. Yeah. Okay. So I'm following. So I'm going to challenge you because I actually think that the best organizations. I'm going to say that the best organizations that I've ever had the privilege to be a part of are ones where everybody is bringing the external perspective inside and where there is a shared accountability for bringing those insights and that truth in the decision making that you do whether your decision making is around products, supply chain, finance, or marketing. And I also think that oftentimes marketing is in the best position that that the function is the best trained to have that sort of perspective of what the outside world is thinking at all times. Just because it's maybe a more explicit part of your KPIs when you're within marketing. I think that the challenge with it and kind of getting it to actually like let's say that, you know, insights that that perspective comes in through marketing and you want that to actually permeate throughout the rest of your organization. The challenge is that most organizations today are incredibly siloed. Right. And so it's very, very hard to get that information to permeate in the way that you wanted to get to supply chain and to, you know, product innovation. I happen to be in a very fortunate position where when I came in as CMO originally at EOS, I came in as overseeing marketing and product. And I think that a large part of not only, frankly, my career journey success at EOS, but frankly, the success that we've seen at EOS and it's been tremendous, is driven by the fact that we've been able to better connect the dots across both sides of those areas between product and marketing to make sure that everything that we're doing is in lockstep with what our external constituent would want and would help reward us for. It's done to me that more CEOs, CEOs in particular don't understand the negative impact of their org design on their results because everything connects, but everything isn't connected. I mean, it's fucking common sense and I'm wondering as a systems thinker, right? Again, back to the beginning, as you watch people move through organizations, not necessarily your own, are there things that you think, you know, some of the most lauded or not executives in the world are getting wrong and kind of inevitably contributing. Well, they're definitely getting things wrong. That's inevitable. But the things that are evidentable, right? The things that are preventable, the things that would help them get out of the way of value creation. Do you see any kind of inherent system flaws? You're right that the interconnectivity is not as prevalent in today's organizations as you would hope. I do think that some of that is the trade-off between having predictable outcomes versus having outsized outcomes, outsized positive outcomes, right? Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of like that upside in order to have an organization that sort of, you know, where people kind of know what they're doing, know what their job is and can execute against those sort of like very well articulated goals and roles and responsibilities. Where I think that then as an organization that is, you know, disruptor, scrappy, lean for a very long time, but now gaining some scale, my job is to figure out how do I, you know, maintain some degree of that structure and order so that people have, you know, have comfort that they know how to succeed in their roles. And not losing the spark of the entrepreneurial spirit and it's a hard balance. It really is. It's super hard and it only gets harder as you grow bigger. Yes. And you know, I'm reminded of something David Droga said to me on my podcast I had when I was at Forbes, which is complexity is attacks that enterprises pay on success, right? Which is, which really goes back to exactly to what you were saying, which is the more successful you are typically the bigger you grow, which stifles the entrepreneurial spirit that got you going in the beginning. That's right. And it's why companies like a Microsoft, for example, an apple, for example, an Nvidia, you know, are so wildly impressive, a Google not just because of their results, but because they've obviously maintained some of that. From, you know, the proverbial literal garage to trillions of dollars and equity, which is super hard. Thanks to Canva Enterprise for supporting the show. You may have the perfect product or service, the one that can solve all your customers problems seamlessly. But you can't just tell them that you have to show them that canva enterprise brings design, content data and AI into one seamless, pluggable platform because visual communication is table stakes. It's no longer just about a thousand words and it's no longer a value ad, but an expectation across roles and disciplines. 265 million people design on Canva every month. 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They build a plan, pull from secure data sources, run sub agents in parallel, and draft the work product ready for your review. So you delegate the work and on the judgment. Trusted by more than 60% of the AMLA 100 and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey AI tailored for law. Learn more at harvey.ai I want to ask you a quick question and follow up to something you said before, which is the trade off. You were talking about the trade off. Sometimes you have to make for certainty. I'm wondering if you have a perspective on incrementalism, which is all sacrifice potential upside for certain upside. Incremental growth that I know I can bank with the street or my investor if I'm not a publicly traded enterprise versus yeah, you know, 2% nice, but 10% nicer. But 10% requires risk. What's your take on that? So I feel like increasingly in today's world, the phrase that you just the certain upside is like an oxymoron. Yeah, fair. It's just it's really hard to predict anymore. And in some cases following the same playbook is actually what erodes and destroys value. Because the playbook stays the same, but the world doesn't. The world is constantly changing. Your consumer is constantly changing in their relationship with your organization, your brand, your products, it's constantly changing. And if you are not open to a certain amount of evolution. Every single day, then you're basically getting left behind as a business. And I think that, you know, how do you know when side in tripping how do you as a leader right now in your president's role, which you've been in since August, right. How do you know kind of what you need to evolve today if not tomorrow and when right based on those changes. I think I wish that I had a very smart and certain answer for you, but I think that they do too, because I got not against a feed. The only thing that I would say is to is, you know, it's something that I think that I've always believed in, which is that we always need to be learning no matter how whether you're the most junior person on the team or you're the most senior person on the team. Everyone should have an appetite for learning. For me, that appetite for learning, you know, in my in my in my prior role when I was overseeing marketing and product, it was a lot of being fed by you know, I literally read and reviewed and watched everything that was being said about our brand and just the category in general. And so any signal that I could get from the external market, because it now in this wholesale role, like I said, I, it's a little bit harder for me to talk directly to the end consumer. So I personally was reading ingesting, digesting, trying to sort of like pull the patterns out and find insights from like direct from the source, like social media commentary product ratings and reviews, all of those things. And so that was my form of kind of like staying educated and started to get again, but as you as you looked for signal amongst noise, what value did you put on kind of your ability to consume things as an individual right and then the value of all your data, gathering and synthesis and analysis to look at it. Yeah, you need the at scale gives you the sort of like the macro view, but to be honest, it you miss all of like the beauty of the the the individual flavor of what does this really mean and how much do you know just just to use it. And so we have we have an amazing product line of body body care products. We actually happen to be the number one brand and body lotion across America. We have been for many years running and we We launched it with a product like pump. Do you know, if you pump it, the product comes out. - I think are you talking about what you guys did like a year ago with the lock? - We did. No, actually this is different. This is different. So we had a pump and the entire category has, every brand out there has a pump. So if you look at your competition, you're like, that's how I'm gonna do it. That's how I'm gonna package my product. The challenge is that consumers were having a harder time actually getting the product out. And this wasn't like widespread data. This wasn't like massive insight that was coming. - What could be the same as one, which is your consumer and you know how hard it is. - And yes, it can be your own experience. And you certainly, if you see something that somebody is saying about your product or your service, you better believe you should be out there actually trying it for yourself to make sure that you understand directly from their perspective what the experience is like. And in our case, it was only a handful of people, but those handful of people, we were like, you know what, they really have a point. And so we were actually developing a prototype for essentially what's not a pump, but like a cap that just opens up for a totally different product. But it happened to fit the bottle. And we had like 20 pieces of this prototype on hand in the office and we said, you know what, these like, I can't remember how many it was, like 10 to 20 people who have said something on social media, we're just gonna send them the prototype and just ask for their feedback. Rather than going through the entire multiple years of R&D, we're not gonna vet this sort of through the official processes and run focus. - Any informal beta. Just send it to them, see what they say. The reaction was so positive. And it was because their feedback was, you're actually listening to me. And I can't believe that I complained about you and you didn't like, you know, cease and desist or whatever. But instead you sent me product and you told me that my opinion matters. And that to me is the difference between scaled data and individual insight. Now fast forward earlier this year, we actually, this is a massive endeavor. I shift your entire supply chain to basically all of the production now had, because we decided at that time, let's just do this. 'Cause we're getting this overwhelming positive feedback. So we switched over to the packaging design. It took us about a year and a half to get the entire supply chain basically now oriented towards using this type of packaging. - And I'm imagining that grade expense both economic and time. - Economic and time. Now talk about value creation though. Better experience for the consumer. From a business perspective, obviously, like the goal is for us to continue to win and continue to be number one with our consumer and within the category. But also there were other things too. We actually saved plastic when we switched over. So there were things that were helping us to meet our sustainability goals as a company. And just a significant win also internally with our community because everyone felt like we were working directly with and engaging directly with our consumer and it was actually a very positive sort of like, you know, just motivate or internally within the teams too. We actually launched this earlier this year and it became our, I think it still is, our most engaged, most popular sort of like message that we've put out there as a brand. Now this isn't the type of thing that we've put out there as a campaign to win awards or anything like that. But for us, the fact that we were looking for that signal within the noise, the fact that we're putting our consumer-centric hat on and trying to make things better for our consumer, the fact that it became a win-win across all of our sort of three constituent groups, makes it a big win for us. And I think we really believe that we've generated a significant amount of value there. - I wanna get actually two awards, and very specifically about one that you've won two years in a row actually. But before I do, I wanna spend a second on the internal conversations as you made this shift because I think one of the challenges that faces a lot of businesses of every size is the good enough. Most outside of beauty for this, most products and services are good enough. They get the job done, right? Whether it's a cloud computing construct, an AI relationship or your paper towels, right? There's a lot of good enough out there. And I have to imagine in many companies, the conversation to incur the expense you had to incur to change that packaging would have been greeted with, why, what value are we creating for this incremental expense that we're incurring, and is it really worth it? I'm wondering how you would go through making the case for that investment, for value creation that might have seemed, who the fuck knows at the time? - I mean, first of all, I feel incredibly fortunate to work in an organization where keeping our consumer and our customer happy is probably the number one mission, the number one objective that we have, and it's a shared goal across the entire C suite and my CEO. And so, just to kind of put a finer point on that. - Jonathan's a good one. - And he gets it. So, we even reviewed the timeline for this change. We reviewed the timeline and we, at the risk of getting in trouble for talking about the inner workings at EOS, but we reviewed the timeline and we had to evaluate, are we gonna wait on this, and basically have to figure out what to do with millions of pieces of componentry? Or are we gonna go earlier and basically make our consumers happy earlier, and it was a no-brainer choice. So, we're sacrificing all of this production capacity and inventory that we had in order to be able to get something out there that we felt was gonna fundamentally make our consumers more satisfied with our product. - It seems to me that inside this story is a very simple truth that applies to every business in the history of the world, past, present, and future, which is the surest path, it's not certain, but surest path to value creation for the enterprise is being valuable to your end user. - Absolutely. - Because when you're valuable to them, value accrues back to you and that's what you're monetizing. You're monetizing that value. And yet, I think it's been kind of an undercurrent theme in our conversation, I don't think people understand that. I don't think that enough enterprises, product, service, large, small understand, they are, we are all in the quality of life business, for somebody else. Jamie Dimons in the quality of life business for his board and institutional and individual investors, and his employees, to of course, we're all in that business, but we're all in the business fundamentally of quality of life for the people we're selling to, which I think again brings me back to the very beginning and what you said, which is that's how they move through the experience we provide them. And if we put up roadblocks that, a road that experience, well, that's where destruction begins. So I said I wanted to get back to awards. You have one, along with your partners, your agency partners, Miss Jeff, no fixed address, the second year in a row from, remind me which organization was it the FIs? - FIs. - Yeah, the FIs, who for those who don't know are all about effectiveness. You have been named the most effective marketer in the world two years in a row, right? Which is like Bravo, Brava, Brava, Brava, Brava, whatever. Well done. What makes your work so effective? Like from a framework perspective, a systems perspective, what can, you know, if you guys got to become a case study soon, what's the case study? - So you said it. You said a systems perspective. To me, the reason why the work is so effective is because the entire system is effective. And, you know, as you mentioned earlier, I am not a marketer by training. I am a, I don't know, am I an architect, a consultant, a retailer, business person? - Well, you make a career in an architecture. You would have been a bad one. I could have been one, just a bad one. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Me too. - Don't trust me with your house. But I think that, you know, I'm not a marketer by training, that's for sure. And while I have a tremendous amount of and a deep respect for what the function does, but I also have a deep respect for what supply chain does and what product does. And frankly, what finance does to keep, you know, keep all of that going. So I do believe that when all of the systems are working in concert to deliver the best possible solution for your external constituent for your consumer, that you drive and deliver outsize performance. So in this case, we have, yes, thank you. We had the, for a second year in a row, most effective marketing campaign in the world, right? And we don't take that honor lightly. And it was, it was because we were firing on all cylinders us and our partners across the entire thing, really, really deep understanding of our consumer and what it was that they were looking for. And an understanding of how they talk about things within our category that's different than the way that maybe the category speaks to them. So they talk amongst themselves in a way, the category, business brands talk to them in a certain way, there's a disconnect happening there. So any disconnect offers opportunity. And that was really the, that sort of like the creative-- - And it is connect offers opportunity. I love that line. - Yeah, so good. - In this case, that offered us a creative way in that was unique. So, strategy and idea, firing on all cylinders. Creativity, the willingness to go there and be bold and put things out there that maybe nobody else was willing to do because we felt like there was that truth at the heart of it, right? So like if consumers are speaking about shaving their private parts, then we wanna talk about shaving private parts because we wanna be the product that you think of when you're talking about shaving your private parts. - But and not but or shaving your butt. And you chose to do it with the language of one of your customers. - Yeah. - And you-- - That was the disconnect, right? So just fill people in here. - Yeah, so in this case, I've said this to you before, this is what's gonna go on my like, that's the one I die. I'm gonna be the lady who put that Eo Shave Cream as a secret to bless your fucking coach on our product and sold it because that's how people talk and that's the disconnect that I'm talking about. Is it the disconnect was that brands were speaking in these sanitized, proper corporate terms. People are speaking to each other and saying words like coach and dropping F-bombs and saying who-ha. When they were talking about a very real, very normal behavior which is grooming yourself, the way that you wanna groom yourself. And we saw the opportunity to be able to use, you know, to partner with somebody who's using that language and putting it more directly on our products that we're the brand that you think of when you're doing this, you know, everyday self-care routine. And it worked. And by the way, when I say we're firing on all cylinders and we believe we have a superior product on the market and we also worked to get it to an affordable price point through our supply chain. And you know, there are all these different ways in which we were, you know, using the system to our advantage. And as a result, now we have over a quarter of the market. You know, that's our market share. And that's an incredible thing to go from being a challenger in the industry to being the dominant number one player. And so essentially that is why we are the most effective marketer in the world. - Do you know my first, my first, and I think perhaps only play experience I was in the sound of music, which is, you know, in camp, these are a few of my favorite things. So a few of my favorite things amongst them and amongst the amazing work you guys have done. And I kind of thought this is where you were gonna go when you were talking about the package. I think I'm right in that maybe it's just a campaign and not in fact a product or a post, but did you guys put a lock on the top of the lotion to keep boyfriends away? - Yes, so we. - It was so fun. - So this was another, this was another, it was called the lotion lock. - Yes. - Yeah, and this was another great, I think a really great example man, the EOS team, they're just like constantly like just killing it with like the consumer insight. But this was another example where, you know, I don't know if you know, our product is like pink and purple. It's got like a big pink logo on it. It smells like vanilla cupcakes. Like, you know, it's not necessarily something that you would look at and go, ah, I bet that's for a man or even it's for like, you know, it's for anyone. I think it kind of projects very sort of like stereotypically, you know, girly. And you know, we randomly caught this guy, you know, posting about his experience and he was like, he was like, yo, I don't know if this stuff is just for the girl. He's like, and my homie said, what are you wearing? You smell so good. - You smell delicious. - It was like, it was amazing. It was like the best piece of kind of, but the better part of it was how pissed women got. Like this, it was like-- - As if it was their secret now. - Because they were like, you are going to ruin this for all of us women who already are having a hard time finding the products, it was selling very well. It was like, you know, it was like hard to keep them safe. - Yeah, I think that's what I'm saying. - I think that's what I'm saying. - Well, it was like hard to keep them stock. And they're like, if you, I will come and f you up. If you sell out my favorite product, - You better get these shit. - Exactly. So it was all about, so this was our response, our response was, and it was a prototype. It turns out it was very expensive to actually produce this thing. But the idea was that we would prototype a lock that would keep your man out of your lotion so that it would just be all for you. But it's just another fun way of, you know, looking at what are consumers saying, how are they feeling? And rather than sort of like ignoring things that are happening out there in culture, really sort of leaning into them by having appreciation for where they're coming from and how they're feeling about it. In this case, it was really leaning into the fear, the annoyance, a little bit of the anger. - You know, it reminds me of talking about less your coach, that it takes a brand that has earned its place in people's lives, the permission, to be given the permission to say that, and it not just being like nails on a chalkboard. - Yes. - Right? Because, you know, so many products and services try and speak in the language of their end user of the humans who they're selling to, and it's just like, dude, you are trying way too hard. - Yeah, I definitely, and I very much respect that distinction as somebody who is not of the generation that is necessarily our core target audience. And so we always have to be really thoughtful about getting it right and making sure that we're leaning into moments that feel like true. I do think that one of the things that we do very well is to kind of leverage our audience's language, instead of putting words in number one, and putting words in the mouth. But like, you know, or trying to create something out of thin air, we're not like trying to invent some sort of really like cool, like, you know, communication platform, we're just amplifying the words that are already being said. - I mean, but hearing you say it that way, it's like, it's so much easier to do it that way, right? And I don't mean that it's easy or simple, but it's like, why aren't we all doing that? Like, you know, we live in a world where anybody with a keyboard and that's everybody I'm pretty sure can influence the true directory of a brand or a business and yet we're not, we're too often not letting them influence it for the better. - Well, I think that it goes back to this perspective of like, if you're having the perspective of looking outside and figuring out how to bring that in versus looking inside and trying to push it out, which I do think that there are, you know, no one on the EOS marketing team, but, you know, I've definitely heard of marketers who are like, just we're gonna create something, we're gonna create culture and we're gonna push it out. - That makes me crazy. - And so, you know, for us, it's really all about recognizing, appreciating, and respecting what's already happening in the outside world. And then just being there for the journey and like I said, having a little bit of fun along the way by amplifying it. - Well, I mean, to me, what that brings up, agreeing with you completely and when marketers talk about creating culture, like it is never followed by in order to create more commerce, which makes me insane. It's like an objective in and of itself, but it speaks to the role of the strategist and the strategic, the strategist mind inside the creative process, which, you know, could be its own series, because I think strategists, strategists are in marketing, not inside the agency world, but I think oftentimes inside the client world, they are akin to film editors in motion picture, because once I was in my first edit studio, I couldn't understand how these people were not, like getting Oscars that were, you know, amongst the most cherished of, because they are the storytellers, so they're certainly helping the storyteller. And, you know, people say films at directors medium, sure it is, as opposed to television, which is much less so, it's a showrunner's medium, but yeah, it's an editor's medium, 'cause they can make the whole world go round. - Well, if they don't do a great job, then the product only lives in the director's head, right? So they're actually like turning it into reality. (upbeat music) - Support for this show comes from Wix. You can make a great looking website with Wix, and you can do it your way, whether you want AI to jump in or prefer to do things yourself, get a custom ready to use website in minutes with Wix's AI website builder, or choose from more than 2000 templates. Get built-in solutions tailored to your business and enjoy easy, fuss-free domain registration, web hosting included, Wix powers more than 280 million businesses around the world, because with Wix, you can own your individuality, create freely and scale fearlessly. Ready to create your website? Go to wix.com. That's wix.com. - We all have to drink water, and staying hydrated is one of the simplest ways to feel your best. But come on, how is your relationship with water really? Are you getting enough from it? Is it satisfying you? or is it? is drinking it, becoming a chore. Here's a tip to spice things up. Hint water. With delectable flavors like watermelon, Georgia peach, even lemon zest freeze, hint is water that will make you desire water. No sugar, no sweeteners, no calories. It just goes the show. Sometimes the right hydration partner changes everything. Try Hint, available at drinkhint.com and in stores nationwide. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. Okay. So you're not a traditional marketer, although I really do. Or you don't have a traditional marketing background. That's right. A year ago, almost a year ago, you get promoted from CMO to president. I'm wondering if in the balance between, I got promoted to president because I look at the world as, I look at marketing as a business function, which of course it is. And I was promoted because I did my job so very well that they needed to give me more responsibility. Where is it land for you? If I can ask you to flatter yourself because it's all truth. But to kind of do that diagnostic, and then I'm wondering as follow up, if your perspective has changed, been informed by new things in the last 10 months, eight months, nine months, whatever it is in this president's role. Yeah, I think that I've always been somebody that is, who thinks beyond the direct functional area that I'm in, I mean, frankly, even in the other roles that I was in, if you think about what it means to be, for example, a management consultant, it means that you're thinking about the whole end-to-end picture. And to me, this shift in my role means that I get to officially think about the end-to-end value chain in a way that maybe before I only was officially able to think about one piece of it. Now, unofficially, I've always thought about the entire thing. But as a leader, it's not even something that I'm trying to do to show up as a leader that understands the entire business and our model. That's just the way I think. And that's the way I engage. And so therefore, that's the way that I show up. And so I do think that the move in the role and the promotion was in large part a recognition of a lot of the ways that I was already operating. Now, with that said, I think there are some things that I've learned, many things I've learned in the last lesson a year about how I need to, to understand other areas that are newer to me in the same way that eight years ago when I took on this role as first-time CMO, I had to kind of get up that learning curve really quickly. And that's been so fun for me. What are one or two things you've learned? So I have to understand commercial terms with retailers. I have to like, I have to dig really and understand how that works. I have to understand if I'm responsible for a bigger part of the system, I have to understand how all of the different parts and pieces come together and where we have opportunities to drive closer connection across functions. I mean, going back, sorry, I'm looking, any disconnect offers opportunities. That's the same internally, right? Yes, absolutely. And we are also at a phase in our journey where, as an enterprise, we're trying to get to that next level of growth. And that means that I have to sort of think about what does an organization at this level scale look like? That's different than the organization that I've experienced up until now. And so these are all things that I'm learning and trying things out for the first time. And fortunately, we have a team that is very used to a lot of change and a lot of sort of growing, like talent growing with the organization. We're incredibly proud of the fact that we have very low turnover within the organization. But that means that a lot of people are doing jobs that they've never done before. It means they're either growing into much more senior roles as first time, you know, fill in the blank or they're taking on bigger scope like myself. And so, but we'd rather do that with a team that's been there and understands the history where the brand came from, but also has an appetite to kind of continue to move into the future, then to continue, then to maybe like another organization would do go and find somebody who's already done it somewhere from the outside. Because the reality is that if we were to bring in somebody who's done this from the outside, they probably have their own kind of playbook and history and baggage that comes along with it. And we like our baggage just fine. All right, but actually I want to, I want to, I want to build or get you to build on that by taking you back to 2018. All right, that's when you're joining us, right? Yeah. So not only were you the first CMO for the company, first time CMO, first time marketer, first time marketer, coming into a business that if I'm right and tell me if I'm not and we'll edit it, just kidding, we keep everything in. It was in need of a turnaround, growth had slowed. And I'm wondering what the business, that's a whole bunch of bets, that the business took, first time CMO, first time traditional, in a marketing functional role, in the midst of the urgency of needing a turnaround. What was the hypothesis that the leadership of the company you joined was making about how value would be created? Well, look, I think yes, the business was not in a particularly healthy place. And I was brought in to rejuvenate the, not only the brand, but just also our entire sort of, like our entire growth strategy. And I think that we, as a brand, I think that the leadership has always had a history of doing things in maybe unconventional ways. And I genuinely think that taking risk didn't scare this leadership team. Yeah, obviously. So taking a risk, bringing me in was taking a risk. I understood sort of the product side of the business very well based on my experience. But like you said, first time CMO, first time marketer, and they were entrusting me with this brand, this precious thing that they had created. Great, terrified. I was terrified. I don't know what's fear and what's excitement. I don't know, it gets, becomes all jumbled and. I think that when I announced that I was leaving Forbes, you sent me a note that said, "Are you the appropriate amount of excited and terrified?" Or something like that, to your point, right? There's like, yeah, I was kind of scared, but I was super excited. And that's all healthy. That's when you know you're making a good move. The worst thing is to go in kind of feeling like, here we go again. Who wants that in their career, especially at this stage, like time is too precious for that. So, you know, I. And there were so many days when I would walk in and think like, "Whoo, I have no idea what's going on around me, but I'm just going to dive in." And I might look stupid to the rest of this team, because I've never done whatever this is before, but we're going to figure it out, and we're going to do it together. And I do think that there is. I'm always grateful for the fact that Jonathan, my boss, was he had an appetite for just like trying new things and doing things differently. And it's like if the last few. It had been about a year and a half, that they knew they needed this kind of jolt of something new and fresh. And if that didn't work, then what the hell? How much worse could it be? Yeah, I mean, actually, a fair amount, I suppose. But let me digress for a second, and ask you to offer some counsel maybe to the non-C-Sweet folks in our audience who, regardless of where they are in their careers, maybe in this moment or the next, are going to be in a position where they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Not that you didn't know to that degree, but how did you gain enough confidence to be like, "I don't know it, but I'll figure it out." What advice can you offer them? I mentioned that I did come in with very, very deep understanding of category strategy, product strategy. And so I think that having. Let's call it 50/50. 50% of my job that I understood to my core. And then 50% where I literally was like, "I don't know what work you just said. What was that word?" It was media. Something like that, right? I think that balance is. is very helpful. Now, I always encourage people to take on roles that scare them where they're gonna do something they've never done before, 'cause how else do we grow? None of us wanna be doing the same thing for 20, 30 years, right? We all are going to reach these inflection points in your career where you're doing something you've never done before, every single one of us, whether you're at my stage, like right now, right now, I'm doing it, right? Or earlier on in your career. And the way that you can help sort of, you know, the way that I did kind of protect my fragile ego and also protect my maybe safe face to the broader team was to ensure that I had moments where I could shine and the things that I knew what I was talking about and things that I knew how to do very well and then balance with the areas where maybe I was sort of, like, over my skis on the content. - Yeah, yeah, it is that balance to borrow word between the protection that lets you be resilient in the face of not knowing, right? - Yeah, for sure. - And feeling vulnerable and unprotected. All right, I got two more questions for you. What do you think matters most, broad brush for value creation and what do you think contributes most to value destruction? - So I think that for value creation, I think that I'll probably go back to another word that I, a word that I used, which is empathy. And I say that because, you know, that's not just me sort of, you know, deflecting on the hard answer. But it is actually very hard in your day to day when your head's down in your job to remember that you have to actually put on somebody else's hat and think about something from their perspective. Whether that is your consumer, 'cause we talked a lot about empathy and perspective of the consumer, or just frankly internally as well. Because I think that when you think about how to best orchestrate, if you're able to orchestrate a systemic solution that helps to create value, I think that the best way to do that is by creating the empathy internally so that you have the ability to kind of connect the dots across functions. It's not an easy thing to do. It's much easier to just sort of like stay in your own swim lane. And so getting everybody on board with a vision that you believe is going to ultimately be the right thing 'cause it's coming from an understanding of the consumer. But then getting that like through and getting it, like we said, to permeate throughout the organization, that requires empathy too internally. And so I really think that having that perspective and that way of thinking about like who you're speaking to is incredibly important. I often think, you know, to dig a little deeper on this one again. I think for me, and I've talked about this publicly before, but like I think that being an outsider, my whole life, has created an ability for me to sort of like look at situations and people and try to understand things from their perspective 'cause I literally did not speak English till I was five. Right? And so when you are always thinking about what is this person trying to tell me and what am I picking up from signals and cues? When you grow up that way, as the outsider, you get very attuned to being perceptive about kind of putting on somebody else's hat 'cause you're literally trying to understand and communicate with another person. There's not enough of that in today's business world. - Let me play armchair or shrink for a second, which is to say there's a part of that, especially as a five year old, but I don't know that it changes as we get older. Where I have to imagine, back to your use of the word protection, you were trying to protect yourself and what does a five year old want to fit in? - Yeah. - Right? And I'm wondering if the notion, the framing rather of fitting in, right? Brands, businesses, product services are all intended or all trying to fit into the lives, the needs dates, the one states of the end user. - Yeah. - And I'm wondering if you, is that just saying what you said differently or is that just again, the framing of fit in, bring us somewhere else? - I think it's actually, it's similar to a couple words that I used before 'cause I think about, I use these words a lot. I bet about reputation and recruitment. It's all about like, what do I want to be known for? And how do I get people on my side? And if you're a difference between known for and known as, I think so, right? I'm known for doing X, but I'm known as somebody who can do X. - It's like more identity-driven. - Yeah. - I would agree with that. So maybe known as, it would be the better way to frame it because I think of reputation as being, identity but externally communicated. What do you wanna be known for versus what do you wanna be known as? Yeah, I think it is the latter. - Yeah. - I think it is the latter. But I also think it is the, it's the recruitment piece as well, which is how am I going to bring people over to my side? How am I going to get people? How do I get people to like me? - Yes, yes, yes. - This is all like, talk about like a therapy session. But like, no, it is actually true. And I think that even within businesses, a lot of what we think about not just in marketing, but across different functions is, how do you get people on your side? How am I gonna get my retail partners on my side? How am I going to get my organization, my team on my side? And that to me is really fundamental to, you know, being the type of leader who can hopefully create that shared vision that ultimately results in value creation. - And then what's the flip side, what are the contributing factors to destruction? - I'm guessing that most of the answers have been like literally the opposite. - Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Yeah. - That's my guess. But going back to the, something that we talked about earlier, I do think that a lot of businesses are way more concerned about looking at the competition than looking at like ultimately who they're trying to service. And I feel like that has led to a lot of value destruction across many different categories in business models. - You know, I've not thought about it this way before, but as I heard you say that, if we look at the competition, it can become like a game of telephone. If the competition isn't looking at the end user, and I'm looking at the competition, I'm looking at somebody who isn't looking at the end user, and so we get further and further away. - We see a sea of mediocrity. This is what drives that good enough mentality that you were just referring to earlier because everyone's just like, "I only need to be good enough to be better than this person." But guess what, this is how all massive disruptions have happened. Somebody else comes along and they're not just thinking good enough, they're thinking light years better, and then it completely disrupts the entire category. - Yeah, I'm reminded of what do they say, like if you're in the woods with somebody and you come across a bear. - Was that a bear? - Yeah, exactly. You don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the next person. - Oh, I thought it was the other bear and the woods thing you're gonna talk about. - The one like the Pope. All right. I mean, actually my feed has been filled with bear encounters lately. I don't know why. - You're interesting. - Yeah. Fortunately, they've all worked out well for the people who've encountered them. Last question and it's the last question we ask everyone. You do not have to answer it wearing a business hat, but you have to answer it thinking about tomorrow and tomorrow only literally within 24 hours from now. If you had all the power in the world and you could create anything tomorrow, what would it be? And then the follow-up is of course, what would you destroy tomorrow? - And not business-related? It doesn't have to be. You can make a business-related. But I wanna let you open the aperture if you choose to. - Yeah, I can. - Choose your own adventure. - I would say if I had all the power in the world to destroy something, it would be probably divisions and silos. I think that there's a lot of-- - Organizationally and/ors. - That's what I'd say. I think you can think about it in business, but you can think about it just related to humans and the world. And like I said, I'm sure most people are doing the flip but I'll give you a saying that one of my former CEOs once told me and I've always really liked this, which is perspective because his thing was that he said fresh perspective is worth 60 IQ points. - And that's wisdom. - Yeah, and so I have always loved that because I do think that that's very, very tightly intertwined with this empathy kind of conversation that we've had. But it's something that I really believe in and I think that sometimes it means like putting yourself out of your day to day, like just break your routine, get away from something, walk away from our problems and then come back to it. And so I think that it would be great to be able to give the world or at least my organization, the fresh perspective. - And your kids. - And my kids. And myself. - Yeah. - I mean, look, the definition of wisdom is that I offer for those interested in a one page website, it was dimis.ltd. Is it the plural of perspective? 'Cause I've always had this perspective that it's the most important thing in the world. And yet so often it's just a silver lining in a cloud of tragedy, right? We don't really get perspective from good things. things by and large. And it's so fleeting, right? But it's like, oh, we get perspective if we've been fired or somebody got sick or we got sick or something, you know, we got into an accident. And that silver lining matters a lot. And I've always sought to figure out a way to literally bottle it. I obviously have not decided, which is why I'm doing a podcast with you. But wouldn't it be wonderful if like if it didn't come through tragedy? But if it's something that, you know, I think a lot of us don't think to search for the meaning when good things happen to you. You just think good things happen. So like, let's search for it. I was just saying this to somebody the other day, which is we get a bad diagnosis and we go for a second opinion. We get a good diagnosis. We're like, that's it. I'm done. I don't know. I think we might want to get a second opinion on that just to make sure it's like, how many anyway. So, young, thank you so much. Thank you. Really appreciate it. To bring the show to an end, consider this. If I asked you what a diamond means, you'd probably say love, commitment, forever. And you'd be right in the sense that meaning is whatever enough people believe for long enough. But that meaning is relates to diamonds as synthetic as a cubic zirconia because before 1947, proposing what the diamond wasn't the standard, there were engagement rings, but they were as likely to have sapphires, rubies, and sometimes no stone at all until a copyrighter named Francis Garriety working at the agency NWA or may it rest in peace wrote four words for her client debiers. A diamond is forever. And from here and from then diamonds and love became inextricable. And within a decade, diamond and gaugetrent rings went from optional to all but obligatory. Garriety and debiers didn't discover that diamonds mean love in some mind somewhere. They created it and then communicated that decision so consistently across so many touch points for so many decades that today the connection feels inevitable rather than invented, which is exactly how meaning accretes and works when it's built well. It accretes slowly through accumulated acts of association and reinforcement until what began as deliberate and chosen feels to the market and to the people in it implicit. And this isn't just marketing or at least not just what we call marketing. It's the deliberate sustained construction of meaning across every touch point over time. This of course is what marketing actually is whether you're a diamond company, a software company or the grocer down the street, every business and every brand is either building meaning and the value it creates in turn with this kind of intention and consistency or they're watching it erode and destroy through the absence of both the companies that understand this create value while the ones that don't keep wondering while they're pricing power competitive advantage and share shrink a little bit more each year. That's something to consider. Today's episode was produced by Art Chung, Julian Vellar, Jim McEl Manolo Marano, Brandon McFarland and Ashley Fuderman from the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdoms Company. Thanks to Canva for supporting Creator Destroy. The best marketing organizations move fast and stay consistent. But most tools force you to choose between the two. Canva Enterprises, the platform where large teams come to create, collaborate and publish its scale, that sacrificing speed or brand. One platform built for the way modern marketing teams actually work. Learn more at canva.com/enterprise. That's canva.com/enterprise. This show is supported by Atio, the AI CRM. Atio is the AI CRM that turns every customer signal into contacts you can act on. Connect your email, calendar and product data and Atio instantly builds your CRM with enriched data and a complete picture of every deal. Then you can ask Atio anything. Spot a deal at risk, draft outreach, uncover new prospects. So you can spend less time in your CRM and more time building relationships. Ask more from your CRM. Ask Atio. You can go to atio.com/vox and you'll get 15% off your first year. That's atti.com/vox.