PepsiCo's Formula for Building Enduring Brands with Mark Kirkham

19:49So discoverability, thinking about how we market to audiences and agents at the same time, like we've done tons of work to understand the behaviors of people. Now we need to understand the behaviors of large language models. And that is not the sexy side of AI, but that's actually the most powerful. So for me, that disruption, the disruption in the media landscape, the shift from upfront to organic, it's all happening really quick. And for us as leaders, we also got to admit we don't know everything. We have got to be out front and learning again. You know, I literally do like bi-week AI with a friend of mine's alpha company, like just learn a lot about what's happening in the industry.

20:31Why? Because it's important. Because I can't ask people to go do something I don't understand. So, yeah, it's probably the most dynamic, I mean, in my last 30 years, but I think it's the most dynamic probably in the last hundred.

20:42Jim Stengel:Yeah, yeah. So how do you think about, again, you're a university company, you hire people, you train them. How is that shifting? The kind of people you bring in and how you think about training and capability building now? I'm a big believer in learning by doing. PepsiCo is not a training company like a P &G. We're getting better at capability building versus training. And I think a lot of it's learning by doing. I think a lot of times senior leaders, and I would even say middle management leaders, need to spend more time showing the work, giving the case studies. Actually, next week I have a bunch of bottlers in the U.S.

21:22coming in, and we're going to share case studies, both of us. Stories, case studies. I mean, I've got a bottle in Ohio, G &J. They're killing it. I'm like, I want to show the rest of the world the work you're doing. So there's so much of that kind of learning that needs to happen. But I think there's also a lot more online learning, less structured learning. But, and you know this because, you know, Mark Ritson's done all his studies, there are some basic gaps in fundamentals. And I'm a big believer in fundamentals. I strongly believe that the what of marketing has not changed. You know, and you could go four Ps, four Cs, insert framework here, but it's the how.

21:56The how is super complex, but we got to make sure people understand the what. And if we can continue to do that, that will make doing the how a little bit easier.

22:06Jim Stengel:What do you think? I love your point. And actually, we should put a pin in that. When you talk about bringing your bottlers in and telling stories and showing cases, you are leveraging the scale of the company because you are full of stories. And in some part of the company, there's excellence happening in everything. And finding that and sharing it and learning from it, I mean, that's low-hanging fruit, but we don't often do that. We don't. And we have this - It takes time, some planning, and some open-mindedness. Well, I think culture sometimes gets in the way. The not-invented-here syndrome.

22:36You know, going back to Greg, it's funny. He created Do Us a Flavor in the UK. And it's still to this day, and there's a few others, including ones I've worked on, one of the few case studies of where the US took an idea from another market. And that's got to change. We actually just did. We took something from the UK. And of course, a lot of international markets take work we do. But I think this idea of non-invented here syndrome, it's just got to go away. And when I say non-invented here, it could be a bottling partner, agency partner. It could be anyone. So that open-mindedness has to, especially in today's world.

23:07Jim Stengel:Now, speaking about cases, I was reading about the Pepsi prebiotic cola through Walmart Connect that you did late last year. That seems to be an interesting new thoughts about brand building and testing and learning. So talk about that and what you learned. You know, it's really interesting. We were working on this project for a while. Obviously, we brought Poppy in the midst of it as well. And, you know, only 8 % of Poppy's mix is cola. So it wasn't really an issue, but we wanted to make sure we did it different. And I'm not kidding. We were literally at our sales meeting last August in Orlando.

23:38Everyone loved it so much. We decided we're going to launch this in three months. We were going to wait till February. Like, no, we're launching. So we announced it literally three days later. We worked over the weekend, created some assets, got it out the door, did a online only launch on Black Friday across Amazon Kroger and Walmart and actually used it a way to test and learn. You know, I was talking to Kyle who runs Walmart Connect. You know, we put in different messages. because when you go out there with a functional benefit that also has natural sweeteners and that also has only five grams of sugar and all of these things, you got a lot to educate, you know, because consumers know what Pepsi is, but what is Pepsi prebiotic?

24:15And so we would use it as a learning platform. So we sold out in most cases, like, and I think one was 12 hours, the other one was like 26 hours. We, we brought a lot of buzz. We did a lot of social and influential creator, which we've got a lot of learning from. But I think the really most important thing is we got learning about messaging so that when we went to retail in February, we could actually adapt. What I can tell you so far is that we've learned that 50 % of the buyers at Kroger and at Walmart, it's like 48 and 52, are actually new to the Pepsi family. And that doesn't happen very often.

24:45Now, there's also learning about how big you scale, especially in a new... So there's so much learning you can take, but it took literally a lot of excitement at a sales meeting, a conversation with my CEO, Ram, and then ultimately Ramon, and then turning it around in three days. Now, supply chain, had to bring them along, our concentrate teams, all of these guys, this is not normal, but it's good to stretch your muscles. It's good to push the system, and we learned a lot doing it.

25:12Jim Stengel:Yeah, yeah.

25:20Jim Stengel:I spent years at Procter & Gamble trying to answer that question. We had the creative, We had the reach. We had campaigns that genuinely stopped people. And then we watched that value quietly disappear somewhere between the moment of engagement and the proof of a business result. That gap between attention and action is where most media budgets go to die. And most digital media platforms have been content to live inside it just a little upstream from accountability. Infilion is the company that decided to close it. They started as the original attention company built on the idea that a consumer choosing to engage with an ad is worth more than one who ignores it.

25:55Jim Stengel:But they did not stop there. They have built the infrastructure to connect the moment of attention to the proof of action across every screen, every format, every vertical. That is not a feature. That is a fundamentally different idea of what an ad platform should be. And it is the one brands have been waiting for. Learn more in the show notes.

26:17Jim Stengel:I'll talk a bit more about your role. You've been in it 15 months. What do you focus on? I mean, how do you spend your time? You know, I think the hardest part of being a CMO or frankly, just being a senior marketer is you always want to be a doer. You know, you always, because it's the craft, it's the creative, but at the same time, and more importantly, you've got to manage portfolio. You got to manage diverse teams, which for me across the different sub functions is hundreds of people. And you've got to basically build a community. And so I spend most of my time ensuring that I've got great leaders, building great communities, building great brands, and building capabilities.

26:57And when we do that, I think everything else comes together really easily. The other thing is cross-functional. You know, with my operating teams, my XCOMs, there's a lot more that we have to do to connect with finance, connect with supply chain, connect with them. So I do spend probably more time on the operational side than maybe with consumers. But lastly, I think every CMO needs to just spend time getting the market, getting the field, getting the customer, getting the consumer. I mean, I actually took one of my daughters to a concert in Lexington, Kentucky called Railbird to meet real Mountain Dew consumers in a real Mountain Dew moment.

27:34And that really just takes me back and reminds me about why I love what I do.

27:38Jim Stengel:I couldn't agree with you more getting out of the market. You know, there's just nothing like it. I don't care how far technology takes us. You have to get out there and feel, be with people. Now, what do you hope, I know you're only 50 months into this, but what do you hope people will remember you for in this tenure of leading North American marketing for PepsiCo? You know, I, well, first off, I hope it's, you know, I hate reading these stories. Actually, my wife read it the other day about the average tenure of a CMO is like two and a half years. And Greg had it for like six or eight. Like I, I want to do this as long as it makes sense for me and the company.

28:13And I love what I do. So I think the first thing, my legacy should be based on what I leave behind. There's actually a great book called Legacy, which is one of my favorite books. And really, it kind of pulls off of the All Blacks and this whole concept of leave the shirt in a better place than where you found it. The rugby team in New Zealand, right? Exactly. The All Blacks in New Zealand. And it's funny because I'm taking the shirt from a very good friend. And I think there's a couple of things. One, I believe in three things that are principles, which is trust, transparency, and tenacity. I want people to know that I'm super transparent.

28:47Sometimes wear stuff on my sleeve, sometimes transparent to a point that make people feel a little uncomfortable. But I think transparency is so important these days so that people know who you are, why we're doing things, and more importantly, why it matters. Trust is kind of interrelated in the sense of I love to communicate. I write an email every Thursday called Thursday Thoughts to all the marketing department that I talk about the people. I talk about programs. And then I also give a perspectives piece, which could be about anything. It could be about a cause that I'm into. It could be about fandom and sports.

29:19But I think there's this trust that you build by getting to know someone and believing in their word. And that's really important. And then tenacity is just like, don't give up. Like, you know, there are days where things are tough. You just got to push yourself hard. And if I can leave that as a legacy, that would be really, really meaningful to me, that people would remember that I was that kind of person and maybe they become better marketers and ideally better leaders because of it. And then the last thing I'll say is I also believe in this principle of making simple special. And simplicity is the most underrated idea in the world.

29:58The greatest campaigns are the simplest. the greatest benefits are the simplest greatest products are the simplest yeah ivory so dove you can go through all these examples in the world and just say wow really simple ideas made special through creativity through marketing leadership through technology in some cases that is the point and we really need to simplify how we do things and that concludes prioritization but i don't want people to over complicate you know marketers by our nature we over complicate we Get bored of our ideas. And so if I can leave that legacy, I will be super happy.

30:34Jim Stengel:Now, of the Thursday letters that you've written and sent out, what has resonated with your people? You know, it's funny. I ask people sometimes to give feedback on them. There's a few people who always respond and just write stuff. I'm very transparent about business performance in them. I'm always celebrating people. So anyone who's been promoted is in there. Even if we have a separate thing, I just acknowledge them. I always ask the team to send me good examples of work. and I acknowledge the teams and showcase it. And it's like, my comms team doesn't write it. I write it. A few of my team kind of helped me pull it together, but it's from me.

31:07And I think the perspectives piece, which is very personal, sometimes I talked about moving my daughter into college and put a picture of Kylie in there. And I think being a bit vulnerable and sharing your personal side connects you a lot more with your teams. So I think that's probably one of the big things that people just appreciate. The other thing is, I sometimes don't get them out on every Thursday. so I send them the Friday edition. The Friday edition. Thursdays thought sounds catchy, but there's been probably 20 % not on Thursdays, but it's important. And I'll continue to do it as long as people are interested in receiving it.

31:40I've done almost 60 now. And I think it's... I actually enjoy doing it because it forces me to reflect on the week in the past and the week ahead as well.

31:52Jim Stengel:Your company's famous for its creativity, right? That's part of your equity as a company. How do you think AI is going to help you further that? I mean, you're learning, we're all learning, but are there early signs of how this will help you enhance your creativity? Yeah, I think the first thing is insights and the way AI is making gathering and identifying and just mining insights quicker and easier is probably one of the most underrated, most powerful tools right now. And we've used various different tools that help us do that. And so that's like the quick hit stuff that then evolves into concept development.

32:28And I don't mean simply prompting a concept, which you can all do. But I think it's that process of developing ideas from insights using AI to actually streamline and make it a bit more efficient. You may see something that you wouldn't see anytime because it does it more quickly. Where I think is kind of the debatable one is generative and how much AI is kind of involved in the creative process. Like any tool before it, AI is a partner along the journey. Last year, I was here with Seal and we were talking about our SuperLad last year. And he talked about how he uses AI like he used to use a buddy that he'd be like riffing a new song with.

33:06And so instead of like asking his buddy, what do you think of that riff? What do you think about that chord progression? he now uses tools that kind of give him feedback. So it's not writing the song for him. It's not the creative inspiration, but it's just a tool to bounce ideas off of. And I think all creatives have used lots of different things. You know, I mean, they're using Google. All you're doing now is using something that's a little bit more powerful, maybe a little bit more insightful. So I do think AI will continue to be, you know, a partner in crime along the journey, but I do not believe in any way, shape or form that AI will completely take over the creative process.

33:43And I believe that because there's been many an innovation in the past that have helped us, but we still, the power of human creativity will always be at the center.

33:53Jim Stengel:You, like P &G, are a company that has worked closely and deeply with agencies, partners in creativity. How is that shifting for you at the company? I think it's shifting. No, it's shifting. And I think we have to be honest that it's shifting. I think the days of the traditional AOR are pretty much gone. And I don't mean that like we don't have agencies with long-term relationships, but I think we look at those relationships through a bit more project-based, you know, and it's hard because agency models need to adapt to that. But the reality is we've built internal capabilities with our content studios that we can do certain things ourselves.

34:31They have evolved in technologies and in creative platforms and things like that that we can continue to use. but for different things. So the typical AOR relationship, I don't think is going to be here the way it used to be in the years to come, but the relationship will continue. And so what we've got to find a way is having those discussions about how your relationship evolves. How does the chains in the agency landscape affect the kind of work you do? How does your own capabilities affect the kind of work you do? You know, we've actually taken production out of some of our and we're doing ourselves.

35:07Now, the creative teams are on board, but we're not actually duplicating these efforts anymore. So for me, I think the AOR relationships evolve. I think some of the media relationships evolve, whether it's through technology or change in buying behaviors, but everyone's just got to be open to it and openly talk about it because kind of pretending it's not happening, it doesn't work. Having those open discussions, I think will create more opportunities for agents, agencies, and clients to work together even deeper.

35:34Jim Stengel:I want to talk about your career path for a minute. Cool. You, I mean, you seem to have a tailor-made career path for a CMO in 2026. You worked in research at Forrester, data and analytics at Nielsen, brand management at P &G, then loads of roles, nine of them, as we said before, at Pepsi. Is there anything else you would have done looking back on to better prepare you for this role? You know, it's interesting. I probably should have worked at a creative agency. You know, like I actually, my first job was a PR agency. So the communication side, the writing side, that was, I was a comms guy and a psychology guy in college, but I never worked at a creative agency.

36:10And I've always felt myself a bit of a hybrid. You know, some people you know are just like super creative. Some people you know are just super business. And I'm definitely more of a hybrid, but I, and I love the creative process. And some of my best friends are creative. So I think if I would have cut my teeth at an agency or two, maybe I would have learned something more. You kind of do as a client. So maybe I didn't have to. It's kind of like that. I never lived in New York City, but I spent a lot of time there. So, you know, did I have to live there? But that would probably be the one type of experience that would have been different.

36:41But I'm a big believer in getting lots of different experiences. If you can do that, and that's why P &G was always kind of the MBA academy, you know, like you would always get those experiences versus a lot of places you have to get them outside and then bring it in. And I take my insights, my analysis, my consulting skills, all those experiences were additive. And I use them to actually be the foundation of who I am as a marketer, who I am a leader. If I hadn't done them, I would have gaps. And I'm still learning. I got a ton of learn and I'm going to continue to learn. And how I learn might be different and where I learn might be different.

37:19But I would just challenge people, just keep trying to get those experiences. is when someone tells you to take a lateral move for a new experience, do it. That will make you stronger in the long run.

37:38Jim Stengel:If you were a chief marketing officer in consumer products, I want you to think about something for a moment. You have creative that works. You have campaigns that capture attention, but somewhere between that moment and the register, the signal gets lost. You cannot see what actually drove the sale. You are making optimization decisions on inference, not truth. Well, that changed in February. Infilion acquired Catalina, four decades of deterministic purchase intelligence, 130 million U.S. households, 70 retail banners, $600 billion in verified annual consumer spending. And here is what really matters.

38:13Jim Stengel:Over 90 % of consumable purchases still happen in-store. Infillion and Catalina together can close the loop from digital advertising to in-lane purchase and incentivize the next one. This is not a measurement tool you consult after the campaign. This is a live signal that runs through your media while the campaign is in flight. You can now optimize from attention to action in real time against people whose actual purchase behavior you know. A consumer products brand needs return on ad spending. It needs foot traffic. Infillion now delivers all of it. Not as separate vendors you reconcile later as one connected platform.

38:50Jim Stengel:That is what closing the gap looks like.

38:56Jim Stengel:I want to flip into the creative brief. You are very active in teaching. Yes, I love teaching. I can already tell from this conversation you're a good teacher. But you teach at Boston College, Georgetown, Wisconsin, Trinity College, Dublin, when you lived in Europe, I assume. How do you approach that? What do you teach? What do you love doing with the students? You know what's funny? It started back 15, 16 years ago. it was a recruiting trip and we went to Georgetown to do some recruiting. I didn't go to Georgetown, but I was like, yeah, sure, I'll go. And the professor, Professor Pashant, who's now one of their deans, was like, hey, could you stick around tomorrow and just give a lecture?

39:28And I was like, yeah. And that was the start of it and literally been doing with them and actually stayed close with them. So I tied it a little bit in recruiting. But what I'll talk about is it really depends. I've probably got like five or six kind of canned presentations, but it's not really canned. It's discussion. I talk about global marketing. I use CAN case studies and tell stories. I use some of our own internal work. I like to probe the students. Like I learned so much by teaching, like Marcus Collins is a very good friend of mine. And he's someone, yes, yeah. Dr. Marcus Collins. And he is one of those guys who just, you take a lot and he, you know, he's a practitioner, you know, he worked at agencies, he worked in the client side.

40:10And when I actually went out and did Michigan with him. And it was so funny because he was in the class. He's like, I get to be a student and I got to also sit and watch him teach prior to that. And it's just so much you can learn. And so I go in there maybe with some ideas. I do like to talk about this concept, you know, make simple specialist summary and really focus on how the fundamentals of marketing are true every day. I talk a lot about because when I was an undergrad, I took a lot of evening classes. Why? So I could have practitioners like Jack Fallow, writer for Sports Illustrated, Lynn Ketelson, the former publicist for Ted Kennedy.

40:44I learned from these guys. And that like, it's kind of a pay it forward thing. So for me to go back and spend time with young aspiring marketers, and let them know that, hey, that Kotler book is real. And you're going to actually apply that in your day to day as a marketer. I think that's, that's a bit of an obligation. And then but bring it to life in fun ways. Like I love to bring in like case studies. One of my favorite questions is I ask students things like, hey, how many of you people listen to radio? You get like five people raise a hand. And I say, how many listen to podcasts? They all raise a hand.

41:16And then I remind them they all listen to radio because that's the case. Things may evolve, but they're not thinking that way. And so when you start to break it down to these very simple things, I think even students get inspired. And I get a lot out of it. So I think someday when I figure out what I wanna do when I grow up, I'll probably teach. Super.

41:36Jim Stengel:what's the most significant and meaningful initiative or campaign you've worked on in your career for you personally oh so there's there's two answers the first one is actually not a pepsico campaign and it was an ad council campaign that i got to work on called love has no labels and honestly and i tell lisa sherman who runs the ad council it's still to this day at the time brad jakeman uh asked me to work on it and i was like what is this thing man I mean the moment that first piece of work that was shot in Santa Monica which if you can go look at it was you know they basically put people behind x-ray machines and they're all skeletons but they happen to be from different face and different genders and and different races and it really established this really great conversation about bias and it done it it did in a way and brands did it so us and coke we swapped labels you know we took away our branding for a couple of days.

42:33It created a great conversation and it also introduced me the first to the Ad Council early in my career. On the Pepsi side, I would actually say bringing back the Taste Challenge has been both a joy and a passion project. To be honest, it is one of the greatest campaigns in the history of marketing. You can read all about what Roger Enrico did and everything else. At its core, it's a sampling activation. But what's even better about it, it gives the brand the right to be what it stands for, a challenger. And so I did it for almost a decade overseas. We did it in Eastern Europe, Western Europe.

43:12We took it to other countries around the world, including Asia. And then last year for the 50th anniversary, we did it in the US. Two-thirds of consumers chose us over our competition. And that, you know, is a really simple way to tell a compelling story and drive awareness and trial. So the Taste Challenge is one of those that I'm truly passionate about. It's not one film. I mean, what's interesting is we turned the Taste Challenge essentially into the choice, which we ran this year's Super Bowl, which has been a pretty interesting campaign in itself.

43:42Jim Stengel:I thought you'd say this. Good. You did it in a cheeky way. Yeah, I did. It was fun. You had this rallying cry, innovation or die. What's the origin of that belief? Look, I mean, I think it doesn't matter what category you're in. If you're not innovating, you're not going to be around very long. And innovating doesn't have to be a new product, a new liquid, a new physical structure of packaging. It just has to be an idea, a process, a change in behavior. I think too often we focus on the shiny object and not how you got to it. So innovation is a culture. We have an amazing team. We've actually taken innovation out of the brand teams and created a center of excellence, which is under Christina Eisenberg and Lauren Prescott on my team.

44:27And they just make great stuff. I mean, we literally had a billion dollars in innovation that actually was put into our AOP this year. And, you know, whether it all comes through or not, some will work harder than others. But the fact that we're producing as many ideas, we've innovated in our content model. You know, we did a JV with Vayner and Gary and I, we call it a JV. It's not. But we created this thing called the Blender. And it's half of his team, half of my team structurally working together and just creating organic content constantly. And we've seen a five times throughput. We're seeing we had a billion impressions and brand impressions in the past year.

45:04Just out of this group of 40, 50 people working together, Vayner employees are employees, constantly putting out organic social, boosting where it works, taking advantage of all the expertise that Vayner has, but also the understanding my team has. It's been a great success. And then also just thinking differently in how we work. Breaking down silos, breaking down barriers. That's innovation. And if you continue to challenge yourself, I think you'll actually become a better innovator.

45:31Jim Stengel:What's the first brand you remember making an impact on you growing up many years ago, maybe in Lancaster? Tasty Cakes. Oh, God. Tasty. Nobody bakes a cake as tasty as a tasty cake. Oh, my God. That's actually a good one. I hadn't even thought about that, but yet the jingle. I prompted you a bit on that. The jingle is stuck in my head. Remember we saw Barry Manilow at the, he was playing all those little jingles. You know what? All right. I am going to go Lancaster on this. Turkey Hill Orange Tea Cooler. And they don't even make it anymore. And I'm so upset about it. But there are certain brands that resonate with you when you're younger.

46:03And actually, it was a beverage brand. But Lipton's much better now, just to be clear. But yeah, there are certain brands you have, whether it's a Tasty Cake. I think as I've grown older, Apple's probably a brand that is just ubiquitous to me. I think at any given time, I probably have four or five Apple devices on me. I'm not a car guy, so I haven't had those things. But I think brands that have deep stories, sports brands are ones that I have a great affinity for. Obviously, Pepsi. I mean, I lived in New Bern, North Carolina, the home of Pepsi. Of the 330 ,000 of us that work for the company, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that actually lived there.

46:42And the fact that I actually spent a couple of years there as a kid and now get to actually kind of guide that brand, it's pretty damn cool. So yeah, I've kind of had lots of brands throughout my time. But I think the ones that you grow up with are the ones that stick. I mean, I was drinking Mountain Dew as a young kid, you know, doing a country cool in the 1980s in New Bern. And it was funny because a couple of nights ago, I saw Sean White, who was one of our athletes, so the snowboarder. And we started talking about a piece of content he made like 18 years ago that's still flying off the shelves.

47:13And, you know, and whether, you know, you continue to partner some, there's always that legacy. You know, we had Channing Tatum in an ad. We had actually Brad Pitt was water skiing behind a horse in a Mountain Dew ad in the 1980s. So when you start to connect the dots on that stuff, that kind of resonates.

47:30Jim Stengel:Turkey Hill, wow. I did asphalt paving as a summer job in Lancaster when I was a teenager, and I drank a half a gallon of Turkey Hill iced tea every day. And then I discovered how much caffeine was in that. That's what kept you going. That's what kept you going. Yeah, I guess so. So, all right. We'll end on a more poignant question. Who's been the most inspiring person in your life? My family, my wife and kids. Mostly because they challenge me to be a better person every single day. And sometimes you don't do the best every time, but they're always there to remind you of who you're supposed to be.

48:06They're always there to encourage you to keep doing stuff. They also are always there to support me. Moving your family around to different countries is not easy. In fact, we even, at one point, my family moved back to the States and I was going back and forth for a year and a half. And that's not easy, but always being there to support, to encourage, to challenge, which is a good thing. But also to watch them grow. I mean, my one daughter is going to be a doctor. I'm not sure where she got it from, but I'm super impressed. My other daughter, incredible athlete, but also super loves marketing and communication and sports.

48:39So anything I can do to help her kind of really, you know, kind of hone her craft and reach her aspirations. And my wife, you know, putting up with me and giving me the chance to do what I love, but also reminding me what I need to do to be the better person, the better father. Those are the people I look up to.

48:58Jim Stengel:That's a good note to end on. This has been great. This has been absolutely wonderful. I knew it would be. You're a great teacher. Thank you. And you should. I learned from some of the best. Come on. When you have your next class at Georgetown or wherever you might be, have them listen to this show before you appear before them. That is a brilliant idea. They'll love it. They'll get to know you. They'll know what questions to ask. So use it as a teaching aid. There you go. So glad we did this. Me too. All right. Thanks, man. That was my conversation with Mark Kirkham. Three takeaways from this one for your business brand and life.

49:31Jim Stengel:And the first one is that great marketing will forever be built on great fundamentals. One thing I really appreciated about this conversation is that Mark never suggests marketing needs to be reinvented. In fact, he argues the opposite. While AI, new channels, and changing consumer behaviors are transforming how we reach people, the fundamentals of great brand building haven't changed. As he puts it, the what of marketing remains remarkably consistent. It's the how that's evolving faster than ever. For marketers, that's an important reminder. Embrace the new tools, but never lose sight of the timeless principles that build enduring brands.

50:06Jim Stengel:Second takeaway, innovation is a mindset. Mark has a phrase that he likes to use with his team, innovate or die. But what's interesting is he doesn't define innovation as simply launching new products. For him, innovation can be a better process, a new partnership, a different way of working, or a smarter way to learn. Whether it's Pepsi's prebioticola launch, rethinking agency relationships, or building an entirely new content model with creators, innovation is about creating a culture that's willing to experiment, adapt, and keep moving forward. And the third takeaway, the best leaders build people who then build the brands.

50:42Jim Stengel:The conversation ultimately became less about Pepsi and more about leadership. Mark talks about teaching at universities, writing a weekly note to his marketing team, and the importance of trust, transparency, and tenacity. He measures success not only by the brands he helps grow, but by the people he develops along the way. I especially loved his belief that leaders should leave the ship in a better place than they found it. That's a philosophy every leader in marketing or otherwise can aspire to. That's it for this week's episode of the CMO Podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends, along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

51:24Jim Stengel:The CMO Podcast is a Vive Original Production. Hi, everybody. I'm Andrea Sullivan, the CEO of Vive, and we have produced the CMO podcast with Jim Stengel for many years. And I'm sitting in his seat right now. It's so exciting. I wanted to tell you a little bit about one of our programs. It's called Vive by Vayner. It's a 12-month program that's designed for C-suiters and founders. And we want to help people to grow their businesses, but also to grow themselves. And so we bring in people from Shark Tank to talk to our founders, but we also focus on wellness. We want to make sure that people are leaning into becoming their best selves, their best and happiest selves.

52:08Jim Stengel:So if you are someone that wants to learn how to grow your business and grow yourself, check us out at vive.co. That's V-Y-V-E dot co. We'd love to talk to you.