Rah Mahtani (Alibaba.com) | Making It Easy to Do Business Anywhere

0:00Hi, everyone. It's Jim. I have Matt Spiegel of TransUnion with me. Matt, I want to start with what do you love about your job? Yeah, it's a great question, Jim. You know what? I love the fact that I get to be out at events and conferences and working with clients to really think about how marketers solve problems that matter at scale. The job of a marketer is as challenging as ever, and we get to do some interesting things to make their job easier. When you work with a client, where do you get the most satisfaction? You know what? I think seeing ideas come to reality. We ultimately are an enable of great marketing.

0:28So we don't do creative. We don't do media planning. We provide the data, the identity insights, the measurement tools that make great marketing possible. So when we get to see the end product, sometimes later, it's really cool to see. Well, super to have you here. Super to be a partner. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you, Jim. So if you want to turn data into understanding and understanding into growth, visit transunion.com slash clarity. Hi, everyone. It's Jim. I'm here with Matt Spiegel, EVP of True Audience Growth Strategy at TransUnion. Matt, you've spent your career helping marketers understand people through data, and that's harder and more important now than ever.

1:01It really is, Jim. There's really just so much information out there, and unfortunately, it's often disconnected. Marketers typically see fragments, maybe a purchase here or a click there. But what they really need is clarity, true full picture of who their customers are, and ultimately how to reach them. Well, tell me how your solution strategy comes in and helps CMOs and their teams bring clarity to chaos. Well, Jim, we ultimately do that with a 360 view of the customer. And so it's about ultimately combining data, truly trusted data, identity resolution, which is a deep analytical problem, and measurement that actually helps understand performance.

1:36So ultimately, we work hard to help marketers move faster, to deepen their insights, and to ultimately make every dollar work harder. We believe strongly that when you truly understand your audience, you can build a real brand and real relationships with customers that last. Where were you when I was a CMO? I don't know how to answer that. Learn more at transunion.com slash clarity. That's transunion.com slash clarity. What if the smartest marketing play is not to move forward, but to zoom out? Deloitte believes the most powerful move a CMO can make is to look beyond the next step and see the broader perspective.

2:09That's what the Deloitte CMO program is for, a place to gain fresh perspective and connect with leaders who've stood where you stand. Together, Deloitte will help you see the bigger picture so your next move isn't just fast, but right. Learn more about the CMO program at cmo.deloitte.com. So who has been the most inspiring person in your life? You know, I watched my wife be a business owner, and she's a business owner. She's a mom. She's consulting on the side. as important or maybe self-important as I think I've gotten in my career. I can always look over there and immediately get humbled by how much she can do every single day and keep a smile on her face and keep our house project managed better than I could ever hope to.

2:55That's pretty inspiring, to be honest. Hi, I'm Jim Stengel. I've helped hundreds of major brands discover and activate their purpose. Because when a brand's purpose is clear, compelling, and authentic, profit naturally follows. Each week, I welcome the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of your favorite brands, to speak to how their job is so much more than marketing. These leaders share their inspiration and challenges, along with how they try to build a full, healthy, and happy life in and out of the office. And it's that energy that reaches everyone they touch. And we're glad you're here to feel that energy and to learn from these remarkable leaders.

3:34So here we go. My guest today in the CMO podcast is Ra Matani, the head of Commercial Strategy US for Alibaba.com, the Chinese multinational technology company founded in 1999 by Jack Ma and 18 colleagues. Alibaba Group operates as a holding company for a wide array of businesses, including online retail, wholesale through Alibaba.com, logistics, cloud computing, and financial services. Alibaba.com is the world's largest B2B business-to-business platform. Global revenue is about$130 billion US dollars and its market cap is about$330 billion. The stock is up about 45 % year-to-date. My guest Ra has been at Alibaba for about two and a half years.

4:16He joined as head of North America marketing for Alibaba.com and was promoted to head of commercial strategy about two months ago. Before Alibaba, Ra had a career deeply grounded in social media and digital communications with time at Volvo, Jack in the Box, and BMW's mini brand. A graduate of Syracuse University where he studied industrial design, Ra is a self-described lover of dogs, kids, and candy. You got to love them and you will. Here's my conversation with a marketer in the middle of the changing global trade landscape. Here's Ra. Ra, welcome to the CMO Podcast. It's a very super interesting time to be talking with you and we'll get to that in a few moments.

4:56But first things first, we need to start our talk about dogs, kids, and candy, three passions of yours from what I've gathered. So I kind of get kids and dogs, but you can talk about that if you'd like. But this love of candy, what's the origin story there? When I was a kid, my mom has always had a sweet tooth. And I got introduced to things like Twizzlers and Kit Kats and things that I probably shouldn't have been introduced to as a kid, but man, it sticks with me. I love me some candy. I'm a candy connoisseur, if you will. What are your favorite brands? So I love UK chocolates, like flake bars are phenomenal.

5:35And when you go to the UK, you order some ice cream and they usually stick a flake bar right in the ice cream. A funny anecdote. We had a dog when I was a child and his dad's name was Snowball. so I being a huge lover of flake bars decide to name him flake or for snowflake well I'm okay my dad had a sweet tooth so I've inherited that and I grew up near Hershey like about 20 miles away so it was kind of a ritual to go tour the factory as a kid and go to the park and all that kind of stuff we always had Hershey kisses around we always had Hershey bars in fact I went to Hershey to speak after I left P &G years ago.

6:15And it was such a beautiful moment because I was reflecting on my childhood and it was such chemistry with the group. And they gave me like a 10 pound Hershey bar as a gift. That's amazing. Which I carried on the plane very proudly. I love that. Yeah. How long did it take you to eat it? Or do you still have it? I actually shared it. You shared it. See, I would have eaten the whole thing by myself. Probably could have. Anyway, I've graduated the M &M's. I'm now, I have lots of them. In fact, I have a big jar in my study here. My wife just came in before we started talking to grab a few. Yeah, I love that.

6:47If you have a jar of any candy, whatever, Tic Tacs, Mentos, M &Ms, whatever, you got to grab a handful. Now, listen, you have a new job as of about two months ago, going from head of marketing in the US to head of commercial strategy. So tell us about that. What was that all about? Why that new role? And how's the transition going? Yeah. We're looking at the shifting dynamics within the US market. And we've positioned ourselves, I guess, in our opinion, we positioned ourselves quite well to service small business owners. We think about the products that we need to bring to market, the understanding of our buyers and things like that.

7:25We wanted to put some pieces together inside our walls. So we created a new role, head of commercial strategy, which my team looks after now. So what's your scope now versus when you were head of marketing? How much bigger is it? Just a bit. We're looking at specifically a lot more buyer research than I had done in the marketing space where it was all external facing comms. I still have all the marketing things that I love and I'm passionate about, but just being able to connect the dots between the buyer research and the product we're putting into marketplace, that's what we built in the new role.

7:56Now we're going to return to Alibaba in a few minutes and get into that in a lot more detail, but I first want to look back on your career path, which is super interesting. You have a degree in industrial design from Syracuse. You started a clothing company, then went on to roles in social media and digital communication with Volvo, with Jack in the Box, and the mini brand with MBMW, and then Alibaba about two and a half years ago. So we're going to talk about all that, but I'd like to start with a clothing company, right? You had a startup. It lasted about four years. So tell us that story. What was the catalyst for it?

8:32And what did you learn in the development of that brand, which may or may not be out there, but you'll tell us. Yeah, it is one of those things where I kind of fell on my face at the end of that journey, which is excellent because I learned a whole lot in it. And it allows me to relate to business owners very differently in my current role. But what the catalyst was for that was one of my industrial design professors and I felt that there was a gap in the marketplace, like research driven, design oriented clothing, really street wear, graphic design t-shirts, which were starting to become really trendy at that point, like 2009 ish.

9:11And we decided, put our research hats on that we had from the design world. We built a full line of products. And the mistake that we made was we went directly to wholesale. We never spent time at that kind of building a groundswell, building a community around the brand, people that loved it and felt it. We needed to be in JCPenney and Foot Locker and all these different stores. And we did all right in terms of wholesaling products, but we didn't have that love, that community aspect of the brand. And they kind of fell apart after a few years. What was the name of it? Hold Tight Clothing Company.

9:49Is there any of it still out there? I've seen a few shirts with folks, you know, walking around in New York City and stuff like that, but I don't know where they got them. Maybe Goodwill. Yeah. So if you had to do it all over again, how would you approach it? You know, I think it's building a direct to consumer e-commerce, whether it's through, you know, a Wix or a Shopify or something like that to begin building at that individual level. We wanted to have community that loved the brand. We wanted design inspired by community. I would have started in a complete opposite way. Well, tell us about your first job after the startup.

10:23Was it with Volvo? No, I worked in the agency world for about a year. An agency that no longer exists called Big Fuel Communications. And we worked on all the Chevrolet brands. So all their product lines and running their social media. So I was writing copy. I was in the social media war rooms for the Super Bowl and things like that. Wow. And that's how you got into the automotive space and went on to work for Volvo? It is. Yeah. Yeah. I think to be honest with you, Jim, I've been fortunate in my career from that point on that someone somewhere has found me or like the work I've done somewhere and pulled me along to the next step.

11:02So someone at the agency I work for pulled me to Volvo and then the story went on from there. You have about as strong a background in social media as I've seen in senior marketers with experiences at Volvo, Mini, Jack in the Box. So could you reflect on that a little bit? You're already talking about it in a way, but how that influences your whole approach to branding, marketing strategy today. Yeah. I mean, honestly, Jim, it's like, it basically social inspires every bit of work that I do, whether it's above the line or it's day-to-day stuff. If I look all the way back to like 2005, this is when I first went into university and, you know, like four square had just become a thing.

11:47Twitter and Facebook were like budding enterprises. And I remember as I got my first few jobs, I was just fighting for a seat at the table. Like how can social influence the campaigns that we were seeing on TV or the radio campaigns we were producing all this traditional work. And, you know, the, the more that I learned about social media, I was able to say, here, we can pull like cultural nuances. We can use social listening. We can use all these learnings that we have from our fan base to apply them to other campaigns. So that was the way I kind of worked myself into digital communications, running websites to building above the line work and, and taking over marketing teams.

12:31You've gotten more seniors since those days. How do you stay in touch with social now? I love to, I don't know if my team likes this. I have some folks that are, you know, Gen Z or really young millennials that are running social today, but I like to poke my head into the tools that they're using to run the platforms. And I'm looking at the daily comments. I'm always trying to figure out what the latest trends are. So I don't know if my team loves it, but I'm always there and social every day. Now, what do you think as you look at other brands, not just your own with your background and experience, what do you think brands are getting right these days in social and what do you think they're getting wrong?

13:07So there's so many brands, Jim, that are bringing what I'd call like overproduced campaigns to social media. You know, it's like, let me use the most advanced camera equipment. Let me put in lighting. Let me stage and script all the shots. And it's just like nobody in social media cares about that level of production. It's the natural, the organic conversations, the real moments, and like underproduced content that's really flying. So I think all these brands that are thinking really traditional and then cutting it for social are missing the mark real bad right now. Who do you admire these days?

13:46I mean, when you look at brands, you think are getting it right, that you're like, oh, I wish I did that. I wish I thought of that. Who comes to mind? It's funny. There's actually one campaign that I swear, ever since it came out a couple of weeks ago, I've been thinking about it pretty much every day in the copywriting. There's a dog food brand called the Honest Kitchen. They released a brand campaign where they basically said, like, feed them the best, whether they deserve it or not, based on the insight that, like, you know, you love your dog. They're probably a good girl or a good boy, but they're not always a good girl or good boy.

14:20And I just love it. Like, I literally think about that copyright in every day. Yeah, so good.

14:31Everyone seems to be chasing the next big thing, the fastest answer, the quickest win. But great CMOs believe the real power isn't in the speed, it's in stepping back to see the bigger picture. That's why everything Deloitte does in their CMO program, from their industry-leading capabilities to their connected network of CMOs, is designed to help you zoom out and gain fresh perspective. Deloitte will help you see the bigger picture together. Learn more about the CMO program at cmo.deloitte.com.

15:27of resonance. So I'd like you to talk about that. What could others learn by how you come into a job, come into a team and bring creative thought, creative spark, a sense of fun, a sense of levity? Tell us a little bit about how you engender that, you know, in yourself and also with the people you work with. It all for me begins with that social upbringing, but also, you know, the way I think about and approach brands is always, pardon my language, but I ask my team this every single day. Why should people give a shit about the work that we're producing? That's a question that I ask myself all the time.

16:03You're scrolling through a feed or you're watching something on Hulu or Netflix. The thing that you're chasing is that moment of euphoria, the feeling of happiness, the laughter, or the sadness. So we need to make sure that every campaign we produce, every bit of creative is really pushing that. So I genuinely ask my team that all the time. Why should people give a shit about what we're making? So how do you ensure that people are making stuff that people give a shit about? Because I've heard comments a bit like that from some of the other guests. And it's about standards, right? And putting stuff out there that we enjoy, that we think will give someone a laugh, a smile, influence maybe how they think about something differently.

16:45So how do you take that thought and ensure that the standards raise? Philosophically, I kind of look at everything as not customer first, but everything is people first. So if we're developing insights for a campaign, it's kind of easy to identify pain points that people have around products. What's not easy is identifying or digging into the relationship that they have with that problem. So I spend a ton of time talking to customers. If I was at mini, I'm sitting down talking to the mini acts, the biggest fans of the brand and understanding, why do you care about this brand? Is it the bright colors or is it the fun design?

17:30And when we dug in and asked those questions, we started to understand so much about the brand, what made them tick. I carry that philosophy everywhere. And, you know, I also listen to a lot of standup comedy. And I think there's so much magic in standup comedy when a comedian can pick up on something that feels so, so relatable. You can carry those things into marketing campaigns to make them better, to make them more emotionally resonant. You do comedy yourself? Oh, God, no. Nobody wants to listen to these. Okay, just checking. So who do you like? Who inspires you in comedy? There's so many.

18:06I love, there's a comedian Mo right now. He has a show on Netflix. He infuses these like really deep, deep cultural topics with incredible humor. Like, I can't believe this just happened in your life, but wow. It's like a really resonant moment that he brings up. I think Mo is fantastic. Now though, you've done a lot of crazy stuff in your career, right? Trying to get people to give a shit about what you're doing. So what's the craziest thing you've done so far in your career, an initiative, a campaign, a stunt that actually really helped the business? Oh gosh. Yeah. I had this bet when marijuana was legalized in California, January, 2015, 16, something like that.

18:55The people that were going to Jack in the Box late at night were almost certainly the same people that cared about this new legal position. And I figured, Hey, let's contact someone that's a huge fan of the brand, but also somebody that resonates with the community. And that person was quite obvious. It was Snoop Dogg. He loved Jack in the Box. He was also kind of the face of the stoner community. So we reached out to his team and we partnered on creating a special box meal. We called it the Mary Munchie meal after Mary Jane, and we priced it at$4.20. And honestly, I got fired over that because there were some franchisees that believed that that was something we should not be doing, something we shouldn't be catering to.

19:41And I really pushed it because I believed in it. I knew social media believed in it, and I knew it could drive buzz for the brand. So after some back and forth, we agreed that only Long Beach and Los Angeles area franchisees would take it on. They did. We launched same store sales went up over 70 % for that specific product. They're making more product, even though we priced the box at a lower cost because they were selling more units. And then it became the biggest PR story in Jack in the Box history at that point. I don't know if that's still true, but at that point it was the biggest story.

20:14But that was like a moment, Jim, where I found amazing success, but I almost lost my job over So it's like a win and a loss at the same time. So listen, I want to get back to talking about Alibaba and your role there. You know, the world, since you joined the company, you know, back in what, early 2023, obviously the world economic, political, geopolitical situations, way different. How's this, if in any way, changed your work and your team's work? Basically, my entire career was consumer focused work. And what we're doing today is talking to business owners. Now, I think any good marketer is going to tell you that the emotional triggers in B2B and B2C are very similar.

20:59People are people. They're still going to care and resonate with the work. But the need to get a lot more serious in the talking points, the things that matter to business owners, like cash flows, margins, where in the world are they sourcing products from? They're not sexy things, but we have to find a way to make them sexy. So my approach in that first required me to drink from the fire hose. I need to understand what's happening in a business owner's mind, but then I need to understand what are those real triggers? What are the things that are bothering them every day? And then how are they either positively or negatively impacted by the things that are happening at that geopolitical level or in macroeconomics?

21:45So I think my approach in seriousness, where you referenced fun work in the past, has definitely changed. How do you go about that, Raul? For me, it's really sitting down and talking to those business owners a lot, a lot. More than any role I've ever had, I'm talking to business owners every day. The question I asked myself when I started was, how do I tap into these closed room communities, the places where the seven, eight, nine figure Amazon sellers are hanging out? And it's not just an Instagram feed or a TikTok feed. These are places where you have to earn the trust of that community. So it's going in and speaking at their closed events, bringing value, not a sales pitch.

22:29They don't want that. They want the value. So going in and doing a lot of that and then building those relationships over time where now we're WhatsApp messaging each other all the time or I'm giving them a tip on what can they do to best optimize their sourcing strategy. But that earned trust is what really builds my ability to do my job every day. What are you hearing? I'm sure you're hearing the stuff we see in the news all the time, but are there any non-obvious things or interesting things that you're hearing as you're getting close to these small business owners, which is where most of the economy is after all?

23:04It's so true. They're the driving force of the economy. So I definitely hear a lot of interesting things and nuance that we can leverage in creative work. But even more than that, it's like, I am seeing live the thought process of these business owners. So as an announcement that say the stock market might be overly positive about, you get a sense of like cautious optimism from business owners in, I understand that we have call it a 90 day runway right now around current situation. What does that mean for me in 90 days? And if I have 90 days right now, my immediate thought is how can I stock up on goods to keep my prices as low as possible for the next 90 days?

23:50So, you know, I'm seeing all of this happen in real time. And it's just understanding with my team, how do we adjust and adapt to that? How do we give them the information they need on the outside? And then on the inside, how are we providing them the resources they need to move those elements forward as fast as possible? So, Rob, you seem to be a person who enjoys getting close to customers, asking questions, being curious, figuring out how you can help them build a better business and bring value to them using your words. How do you be sure that your whole team mirrors that and that's a value that you have in your department and in your company at large?

24:28Because it's all about that, right? When you have cultures that have that characteristic of curiosity, customer centricity, act on it, those are the ones that win. So how do you build that broadly at scale? I think there's several factors, Jim, that play into that. One is I'm very particular in hiring. I'm hiring for a deep curiosity. I'm hiring for someone that I know is proactive in things. I need people around me that are seeing opportunities through their curiosity and then proactively trying to tackle them. Whether the answer is right or not, we're still needing to make decisions on an hourly basis.

25:09So that's one component of it. I think the other part is the corporate culture has to be keyed in as well. It's not just one leader or a couple leaders driving the way, it's the corporate culture. If I just take Alibaba as an example, Jack Ma's teachings, he was a teacher, but his teachings within the company still hold true today. He'll ask questions like, If you put in a phenomenal effort today, is that the baseline for your effort tomorrow? It's a rhetorical question, but the answer is, yeah, that is my new baseline. So driving that culture from top, top level is also really, really important.