The Death of Average: What Jumeirah Knows About Luxury That AI Doesn't

0:00If everybody does everything the same, then we'll just become a sea of sameness and no one is going to stand out, but also the consumer is going to be getting an experience they don't want. They want different. The constraints of that system have been completely collapsed and the potential of what the technology can do is amazing. We've all been given keys to this car and said, drive like a race car driver. And in reality, it takes a lot of time, practice, effort, learning, research in terms of actually becoming really good and really competent. I think the generative engine optimization is right now the biggest BS pitch.

0:32If you could start at this conversation and said to me, what are the three most important components for any brand moving forward, especially in this future state world that we're living in, in terms of AI and brand building, I would say, number one, it's does your brand have a point of view or a really strong perspective on who the brand is? I think that for the first time in a long time, marketing has the opportunity to be the seat at the table. I'm Eric Fulweiler, and this is Scratch, bringing you marketing lessons from the leading brands and brains, rewriting the rulebook from scratch for the world of today.

1:09Hey, everyone. My guest today here in person in the rival office in London is Alex Robertson. He is the vice president of global marketing and digital at Jumeirah. out of Dubai. Came all the way to London just to come on the podcast. Now, Alex is someone that I've known and respected for a long time. He's been at various roles in Dubai, although of course, British originally, Etihad, Dubai tourism, and particularly at Jumeirah. He talks a little bit about how he pushed the organization to restructure his role, which I think really set them up to take advantage of this kind of AI era that we're going into.

1:45And Alex is at the forefront of that. So he talks a lot about how he and his team are adopting and implementing AI, not just in terms of what it can do, but also where they need to think really carefully about the experience that it is delivering for their end customer. And he talks a bit about his, call it philosophy on luxury marketing. It's the first thing we talk about. So have a listen, you'll know what I mean, which is a little bit different, a little bit challenger, let's say, within the industry. But of course, with AI brings its own set of complications and risks with how you apply technology to a luxury and in many ways human experience.

2:25One of the amazing stats that he mentioned is that on average, a guest who stays at a Jumeirah property has 7 ,000 interactions with an employee or the hotel in some way. And so when you think about the opportunity of technology in a business where the experience is largely analog and essentially and quintessentially human, what does that mean in terms of how you adopt it? So there's some amazing conversations that we had both while we were recording and also before and after we were recording that unfortunately you might not get to see. But a great conversation with Alex. I would definitely recommend you listen to this if you are anywhere in or around the luxury space or are building a brand where you want prestige and you want a certain level of premium to go along with it.

3:15And certainly if you were thinking about how and where AI applies, not just within your marketing ecosystem, but where it enables you to be more authentic and actually more human in the type of marketing work that you do. So I will leave it there. That's going to be my seat actually for the interview. Without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Alex Robertson of Jumeirah. Okay, should be fine. Thank you.

3:39Alexander Robertson:I've been doing it now because they can't eat this first for you. Okay, great. This is like that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hot mic situation. Hot mic situation. Say nothing. Say nothing now and wait until we've followed that piece. There's a few podcasts that start like that though. I like those, yeah. That sort of just start as if you've missed the start of the conversation. And I think that's kind of cool. The New York Times does that. New York Times does it. What's his name? Modern Wisdom. Like, I'm just listening to so much like AI podcasts. It's just like, oh, AI. Really? Tech podcasts, yeah.

4:12So basically what? They're taking like articles that have been pre-written? Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm listening to podcasts that are talking about AI. Ah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean. Just like deep, deep down, deep down the rabbit hole. anything you have listened to recently that you're like you need to listen to that yeah um i'm actually i think i'm gonna start a sub stack um but i mean yeah it'd be great if people read it but obviously there's so many newsletters out there about this stuff but i do think there's something interesting about like because i'm like building a business around this stuff like the big thing for us this year is like what does it look like to completely rethink how an agency you know functions around ai like what's possible but also the constraints so i'm like building it but then i'm also working with like blue chip cmos like big brands on how they're adopting ai um and then i'm also on this journey of kind of like learning it from like the bottom up you know not just the headlines but how to actually build stuff so there's maybe something interesting in there but um it's also just it's a forcing function to make me kind of really digest and learn this stuff like in order to write about it like what i learn every week i have to like sit down and really let it synthesize in my brain but that i also want just a way to kind of store it all because i'm listening to podcasts i'm watching youtube videos i'm reading newsletters links conversations yep so basically got a system set up with claude that kind of pulls all that stuff together every week and then i'll like write i think it'll be like like i think it'll be focused on like how to think differently as an operator from like a systems design standpoint and like one thing every week just based on everything.

5:51I think it goes down to what we were saying before, the framework and the perspective that you need to have within the context of the tools and the way the AI is going versus what are you actually doing with AI. Yeah. Alex, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. We've taken the long road to get here. Yeah. We've known each other for a long time. Yes. We've worked together a little bit, actually have interviewed you before at this point, but now you're finally coming on Scratch. Very, very, very happy to be here. All right. I'm looking forward to it. So before we get into the conversation, tell us about a challenger brand that you're passionate about right now and why.

6:24I know it's the opener and the icebreaker, so I prepped. I've got two. I'm going to go to my personal challenger brand that I really like, Buck Mason. They're a clothing brand. They're out of the US. It's one of my brother's favorite brands. Is it really? Yeah. I love their brand. My wife says that I should buy more clothes like him. Well, there you go. Look at this. Certainly not what I'm wearing today. Great challenger brand, in my opinion, really kind of went away from where American fashion was heading and really just focused on high quality product, staples, more of a sort of, I would say, the foundations and fundamentals of fashion.

7:03And from that, they built up a really big following and dynamic analysis, sudden branch out. But for the purposes of this conversation today, and probably in my business, the biggest challenger brand that I'm probably interested in and have looked at for a very long time is Airbnb. And I think one of the things that you talk about a lot, and we've talked about a lot, is the idea of, are you a challenger brand because you want to challenge something? Or are you a challenger brand because what you do is different to the industry? And when Airbnb first came out, it was very, very different to what the industry was doing.

7:37It found a way to basically give people the opportunity to live within cities, live within locations and feel like they could find their home away from home versus selling beds, which is ultimately what we do in hospitality. And now Airbnb is enormous. Everybody knows Airbnb. There's many different variations of Airbnb. You know, are they still a challenger brand or have they become the incumbent? and some of the things that they're doing now and what they've been doing starting last year, private chefs, massage, experience design, those are some of the fundamentals of hospitality and hotels that are being pulled into their business model.

8:15So are they now becoming what they tried to change at the very beginning? Who knows? It's an interesting one to point. Yeah, I mean, they're an example that we use all the time talking about kind of the methodology that we've developed around brand positioning, looking at what challenger brands do so well to create that point of difference which is it's not just who you serve it's not just what you offer but it's what different about what you're doing how you're challenging the convention of the category so just like you said airbnb helps people find a place to stay it gives them a place you know better room or whatever but it brings you into the community as opposed to the convention of the category which is you stay at most mainstream hotels they could be the same no matter which city you're actually in um yeah super interesting and a really good one and i would imagine i mean that must be i mean to your point of like are they the challenger are they not it's interesting because you know we have this kind of i guess philosophical debate about like can you be a challenger when you are a marriott when you are a uni or when you are kind of one of the biggest brands in the world and i fundamentally do believe and all of the research that we've done to date makes me think that it really is about the playbook that you bring to marketing, right?

9:32It's not about the size of the stage. It's about the mindset, the mentality and all that stuff. But I do think that businesses that get to a certain scale, and actually I'd be curious how you think about this at Jumeirah, obviously like in the Gulf for luxury hotels, you are not a challenger. But, and I'm thinking of a conversation that we had with a very big consuming package goods company recently that I may or may not have just named in that list that I gave earlier, where they were like, look, in some markets, you know, we have 80 % market share. Like we're absolutely not a challenger. It's a different playbook for us.

10:01Fine. But in many other markets, we're absolutely the challenger brand, or we have these challenger brands that are really causing problems for us. And we need to be able to kind of like fight them in the way that they're fighting us. But do you, do you think of Jumeirah as a challenger brand either overall or in certain markets and certain offerings. How do you think about that? I don't think I'd ever put the terminology challenger on Jumeirah as a brand. I think that we absolutely are true to who we are as an organization. And in terms of the brand evolution journey that we've been on, going back to what's really authentic about our brand, our roots, somewhat distinguishes us within the space effectively makes us one.

10:48And I think that's something that we've talked about in the past, whether it be within the category or within other categories, going out and saying, I am going to be a challenger brand is not the way you start or you become or you are a challenger brand. I think going out and saying, we want to do this thing really, really well, or we want to solve this problem in a very unique way, or we stand for something that we believe or we are or we've come from. And then inherently, your distribution and the market effectively makes you a challenger brand. I feel like that's probably where I see Jameera more.

11:26And so there are going to be markets where we are less established, let's say, than we are in the Gulf. But that's not to say that we can't still compete in those markets and also that doesn't change how we interact or engage with the guests in the markets in the Gulf or markets around the world. Yep. So, Jumeirah, for folks that might not know, can you give us an overview on business? Sure. We're a luxury hospitality brand. We're born from Dubai and we really lean into that ethos of Arabian hospitality, which for those who don't know is this idea that anybody can be welcomed into your home and cared for for three days and three nights.

12:06Doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what your creed or ethos might be. And we take that warm essence of Arabian hospitality into our businesses around the world. We have 29 properties around the world. So we obviously have a heavy market presence in the Gulf, but we have properties here in London, China and the Maldives, and we're continuing to grow. So we're very, very excited about that opportunity to grow. And I've experienced that Arabian and Jumeirah hospitality. It is pretty top-notch. Maybe before we get into the questions that we have, something that I know about, and I think you've talked about publicly before, but I think it's really interesting.

12:43It's like, obviously, Jumeirah's been around for a while. How long have you been there now? I've been with Jumeirah for four years. Okay. So you've been there for a bit, but your role, you kind of restructured your role recently. And I know from talking to you as you were kind of going through that process, you really saw an opportunity to kind of bring what I would call some challenge or thinking to how the organization thought about setting up marketing and your role within that. Can you share a little bit about what you push for and what that's meant in terms of how your role has been restructured and what's that done for the business?

13:11Yeah, so we're a really interesting size organization. We're very established. We've been around for 25 plus years. We have some of the most iconic properties in the world, but we're also entering into new markets and new jurisdictions where we're probably less known in terms of the space or the category. And so in terms of what we were trying to do, and we are trying to do in terms of marketing, is create a hub-and-spoke model where at a corporate level, we really govern the brand. And we really set out the standards, the ways of working, the direction of travel that we as an organization want to take to market.

13:49But we recognize that with hospitality specifically, we are going to be speaking to or we will be in markets that are very different from our home base in Dubai and also are very different to one another. A guest from the GCC looks very different to a guest from the US and guest from China, for example. And so we need to adapt and be very different in the way that our marketing comes to life. And so while we have that corporately led structure and strategy from our marketing teams, we now have really, really strong teams in each of our properties around the world who are bringing to life that direction, whether it be for their property that they're representing and driving guests and pulling guests to that property, or whether it be about communicating the Jumeirah offering, wherever that offering may be around the world, to guests who are potentially originating from that place.

14:42And the marketing that you see then for Chinese guests, for example, and the work that we've been doing on Red as a platform, a great example, where it's been very UGC-led, it's been very content-driven versus potentially more performance-oriented world in the US, is very different. And so those strategies are adaptable and at the same time can be measured in very, very different ways to see our success. So far, it's proving to be successful, but time will tell. Yeah. So let's go back to luxury. So you've been quoted as saying, luxury is madness. What do you mean by that? And how do you bring that philosophy to your role?

15:23To my role, representing a luxury brand. Luxury is madness by the economic definition of luxury. And actually, we were really fortunate at Jumeirah to have a professor of luxury come speak to us in one of our global leadership forums. And he spoke about the economics behind it and how ultimately it fundamentally doesn't work like other normal economics, right? And so the idea of valuing something more than the actual physical product is worth is that idea of madness. But I think that what that gives us is it gives us an excuse and also almost a permission structure to be mad in our thinking. we can think about the most unusual or new or novel ways of entertaining or caring for our guests.

16:22We can think about ways that are different from what people expect. And so that gives us an opportunity to design spaces, to design experiences, to design programs for our guests, wherever they are in the world, that are unlike anything that they may have seen before. And that's a really exciting position to be in while also playing in a category that is fundamentally a madness state. It's interesting because when I think of Jumeron, I know you all went through a rebrand that you helped oversee not that long ago. But I don't like madness is not the term that comes to mind. So I can think of some luxury brands.

16:59What's that eyeglasses company? Little Monsters? Yeah. So like I think of them as like madness, right? Like you look at their stores and it's like crazy eight foot statues and like people on stilts and just like random shit. But Jumeirah doesn't feel like madness. So how did this idea of like it's irrational in a way or you're kind of taking people out of their world and almost into a dream world. How do you translate that philosophy of madness to something that can be actionable for a consistent premium brand experience? Yeah. So what I mean by the madness is potentially the permission to think in different ways.

17:34and irrationals, actually a really good terminology there. So when we are walking into a room thinking about experience design, no idea is quite literally a definition of a brainstorm. There is no such thing as a bad idea. But when we went through our brand evolution, it was really about going back to what separates us as a brand. And so we went into those areas of Arabian hospitality, which we touched on earlier. We did a lot of research and what consistently came back to us was this warmth feeling that you get, which isn't the stuck up, maybe more pretentious experience you might get from other luxury brands.

18:11But certainly it's a luxury experience that is warm, inviting, and welcoming, joyful, as it were. And so everything that we think of in terms of guest experience design has to ladder back into those foundations. And that's almost the test, the barometer that we look at for everything that we're doing. So while it might not feel like a madness design structure that you might get from a little monster. That's probably a very apt description of their brand. I think we have a really strong way of bringing to life that guest experience and that guest journey in ways that haven't necessarily been thought of before.

18:45So something else that you've been talking a lot about is the rise of average brand building, particularly in this kind of AI world that we're going into. How do you think about that overall, all just in terms of advice for marketers out there and then specifically within luxury because i remember you know what almost 20 years ago now kind of at vayner media i remember specific meeting with cartier about like trying to get them to go on social media and they were like no we do not go on social media or something like that so you know it's an anecdotal experience but i think in general luxury brands tend to not necessarily be the first and early adopters of new technology and kind of see traditional channels as more premium.

19:28So what does average brand building mean? What are the risks, but also what are the opportunities within that for marketers? What I think that AI is doing, or at least has done over the last, let's say, 18 months has increased the commoditization of this sort of generic, relatively good category, let's call it, right where you're not necessarily seeing things truly exceptional but you're also not seeing anything too bad and and so you're seeing this midpoint become much easier to get to and essentially therefore the idea that being able to is essentially become accessible to everybody and very very quickly whether that be identity development whether that be design whether that be content creation, whether that be scale and personalization.

20:23And so I think more and more brands are doing this effectively. The problem with that is obviously if everybody does it to the same effectiveness level, that essentially flattens out the entire market and we lose differentiation and we lose distinctiveness. And in luxury, I think one of the biggest things that's important is having a point of view and being distinct and taste. So my advice, I guess, to marketeers, whether it be in luxury or within the category or whether it be within, I guess, other categories as well, would be to really think about how the tools and technologies that are becoming more prevalent with AI can take away the components of your role that require or effectively could be automated, free up the time, free up the perspective, and then lean it into and actually have a human judgment on what is taste?

21:20What does your brand stand for? What is a point of view that you might have when it comes to content creation and content development? How do you view personalization and audience segmentation? And then use that human judgment to define what your brand is going to be moving forward. Whether or not you then apply AI to take that to market, I think it's a different conversation altogether. But if everybody does everything the same, then we'll just become a sea of sameness and no one is going to stand out. But also the consumer is going to get an experience they don't want. They want different. I know you've been kind of on the front foot, particularly in the region and within kind of the luxury and hospitality industry with your adoption of AI.

22:01What does that look like in terms of how that has changed your role, how you work over the last, let's say, two years? I mean, we've talked about it. The funny thing is we've been talking about AI probably since we've known each other, right? And I think that most people in the industry have been talking about AI for, gosh, 15 years or so, but they might not have been calling it AI. We might have been calling it optimization. We might have been calling it machine learning. We might have been calling it dynamic creative optimization. And all those things have been things that you and I have talked about implementing segmentation work that we talked about a couple of months ago now.

22:40But in terms of the last two years, I think that the biggest thing that AI is doing for our business is allowing us to both optimize much more efficiently. So from a media buying perspective, our distribution of media is much more effective. And then the second thing is our reporting and analysis. And the amount of information analysis that we can conduct now in a much more real-time manner, I think is allowing us to become smarter and more decisive about our distribution strategies. And so what I foresee in sort of the next, I'd say, six months, I think that's probably the only timeline that we can look at for AI in terms of the technology right now, is I think the next six months are going to be around building the tools, the dashboards to give that really robust and rich data insight piece versus using AI from a creative perspective, which is already being done.

23:33And then we can think about how AI could build out some of those other areas of marketing. Yeah. So it's more kind of on the media, data, technology performance side of things than the creative side of things. I think it's more on things that are the mechanics and the levers that you then build from. I'm sure you talk, I'm really curious to hear what you said, without disclosing anything, some of your partners that you're working with. But I think people who are using AI effectively are using it to effectively manage all of that back end fundamentals and foundations. so that you can have a really strong point of view on direction of travel versus using AI to create more content and distribute to everybody, but not really having a perspective on direction.

24:17I mean, the way that I'm thinking about it, but it's all changing so quickly. But I think that there is the capabilities of the technology. I haven't just come back from CAN. Last year when we were there together, I feel like so much of the conversation was about, look at all this cool stuff that the technology can do. Yeah. But this year it was like, all right, it's doing all this stuff, but actually it's not necessarily moving the needle. Or like, I feel like we're just kind of doing the old thing, but with new tools. And so the thing that we've really been focused on for Rival and with the clients that we're working with is how do you take kind of a systems-based approach to it as opposed to a task-based approach.

24:55So I think a lot of the industry is still, and by the way, this is the same way that any new technology gets adopted, right? It's the same cycle over and over. It's like the internet in 1999. You look at the tasks within the existing model. what can technology do faster or do cheaper? And there's a lot of that happening. Certainly on kind of like the backend infrastructure and everything around media and data and performance and technology, that's what a lot of the technology is really good at just in terms of what can it do versus what can a human do within the existing system. But what we've been spending a lot of time on and what I think six months is very hard to predict, but even further, if we think about what is five years from now, because I do believe in that quote, I think it was Bill Gates of the, we overestimate what's going to happen in a year, we underestimate what's going to happen in 10.

25:42There are such big businesses in this industry that have little vested interest in changing the way that things are. Going from, we have 20 ,000 people that were basically our business model is charging for their time to all of a sudden, there's technology that can do a lot of what they had done before. There's a lot of vested interest. There's a lot of friction. It's not just about what the technology can do. It's about everything else that goes into changing an economy, changing a market, changing an industry. So I think it's going to take longer than we actually think. But I think, you know, another great quote, the future is already here.

26:15It's just not evenly distributed yet. I think in bits and pieces, and hopefully Rival can be part of this conversation, you know, by the end of the year is kind of our goal to have a working model and offering of what is the marketing solution system. Because I don't even like using the word agency because it's like when I worked in FinTech up the road here, you know, 2019 and 2020, we say people don't need banks, they need banking. I think CMOs, you know, need help delivering growth results for the business. I don't necessarily need agencies, you know, agencies, just a concept and a construct around the system of marketing, as we have known it up until now.

26:52But the constraints of that system have been completely collapsed. And the potential of what the technology can do is amazing. How do you actually put that together and think about it fundamentally differently. And I think that should apply to everything. It's much harder to see. And we just had a call earlier today with one of our clients where we're kicking off a campaign and, you know, constraints force innovation. We have to get a full brand campaign cross channel in market in like, you know, we said six weeks and they were like, we want to do it faster. This is like research, strategy, creative brief, concept, production media plan in market, right?

27:33Good timeline. So it's like the old model does not work. No. White to slay clean. You know nothing about how the traditional agency process works. You have all of the capabilities of technology and AI. And by the way, another kind of like big, you know, soapbox that I'm standing on right now is like, it's one thing to know, like, yeah i use claude yeah of like my team has done a video in hagsfield the depth of technical fluency is such a huge differentiator and constraint for teams and businesses right now right and so you get somebody like yudi who's one of our uh editors in a room who like has spent the last three years down a deep dark rabbit rabbit hole with video production capabilities and ai versus pull somebody out of the crowd at mad fest what he is able to do with the technology is very different than what they are so technical fluency is a whole part of it but you put this team in a room which by the way for us always includes an engineer yeah an engineer is always part of every integrated squad that we put forward now and say here's the objective how do we do it you know time is not a constraint with ai you can argue the taste is and i do think that it is yeah volume is not a constraint AI, even basic expertise of what are the cultural trends in Poland and how should a brand position itself against that market?