Stop Chasing Attention. Start Creating Desire // Lessons from Best Buy, AB InBev and Reckitt

0:00Jim 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.

0:35Jim 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. So desire is something that you want but don't have, right? Well, yeah. Are you one and finally get? Are you one? It's usually scarcity, right? Exactly. So it's out of reach a bit. So there are things I admire, like on running and stuff. But if you ask me for desire, and I love craftsmanship, and I love people that take things personally, and that's why I loved Apple in the early days when Johnny Ive was there and he was there, and you can just see that they loved what they were making.

1:22And when you look at great work, you can always see when someone loves the product that they're advertising and marketing.

1:28Jim Stengel: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.

2:03Jim Stengel:So here we go. To kick off this episode, Matthew Bull of ABNBev shared a simple but powerful thought. Creativity is all about creating desire. This week, we're returning to our conversations captured at the Havas Cafe during the Cannes Lions Festival, this time exploring creativity and desire. That idea became the thread running through the entire conversation as we explored what it really takes to build brands that people genuinely love. I'm joined first by Ryan Dolea, Chief Marketing Officer at Rekit, the global consumer health and hygiene company behind brands including Lysol, Durex, Finish, and Airwick.

2:39Jim Stengel:Ryan has spent more than two decades building global brands, previously holding senior marketing leadership roles at Mars and PepsiCo before joining Rekit. Next is Jenny Weber, former chief marketing officer of Best Buy. During her time with the company, Jenny led marketing for one of the world's most recognized consumer electronics retailers, serving millions of customers across North America. And before becoming CMO, she held leadership roles across marketing, customer experience, and retail strategy, helping transform Best Buy into a modern omnichannel brand. And finally, Matthew Bull, Chief Creative Advisor at AP InBev, the world's largest brewer and home to brands including Budweiser, Michelob Ultra, Corona, and Stella Artois.

3:20Jim Stengel:Matthew has spent his career at the intersection of creativity and business, previously serving as Global Chief Creative Officer at the Mullen Lowe Agency. Together, the four of us explore how leaders create cultures where creativity can thrive, why the best ideas often require permission to fail, how AI is changing the creative process, and why human insight remains the key to building brands people truly desire. Here's my conversation with Ryan, Jenny, and Matthew. All right. Welcome to the CMO Podcast. You're three amazing companies, three amazing leaders in my research. And I want to get you to start, Matthew, to talk about.

3:59Jim Stengel:We're talking about desire and brands today you have won a desirable award in can this year create a market of the year and it's the only company that has ever won it three times three times so tell us a little bit about the journey to win this desirous award i know we could spend the whole show on this but talk a bit about what you think the two or three most important levers or choices or changes you made to earn that award? I think the first thing on the subject of desire is you've got to want it, right? So it all started, I think, 2017. We had a big group marketing leadership meeting. And at the end of the meeting, Miguel Patrizio, the global CMO, and Marcel Marcondas, the US CEO, who's now our global CMO, stood up and said, let's give ourselves a big audacious goal that we want to aim.

4:52Now, remember at the time, we'd grown enormously as a business through acquisition mainly but we had all these precious wonderful brands that consumers loved and we probably were not doing work that they loved they loved our brands and our products but they weren't doing the work we loved so we set an audacious goal a desirable goal for you jim and that was to be the most creative effective marketer in the world and we wanted to brutally you know we as a business we're always a business that likes targets, stretch targets, things that we want to do. We love that sort of thing. So we said we want to win Cannes, we want to win Effie's, we want to just win.

5:30And we knew the way to do that was to create compelling, wonderful creative work. Because to me, creativity is all about creating desire, desire for people to want things, is to do work that people kind of love and react to. And so far, so good. But we've only just

5:47Jim Stengel:started well you won it last year you won it this year and you won it a couple years ago so we won a 22 23 we took last year off and then okay you won okay super okay amazing so before we leave that to win it three times yeah what has been the red thread right so you know in order to get those things done you have to obviously set the ambition out very important then you've got to change the behavior of the team and almost give them permission to to interestingly enough in businesses you've kind of got to give permission to people to be creative because it means taking risks. So it was to create, I guess, a culture that allowed that.

6:27We obviously put lots of systems in place. We have very interesting systems. We have the CreativeX system, which is teaching, Brains Trust internal, where we really interrogate the work. So before we put work out there in the world, it's gone through a lot of interrogation internally. We have creative counsel. We have outside people that are not associated with the company need to look at the work that we put out there and they go and they're honest with us this is where you are this is where you aren't and then we have an internal awards thing as well which also as an extra external jury and they really look at at um you know how good it is so all those parts and then what that does is it drives healthy internal competition regional competition but the most important thing is to turn around and and give permission to people and so the ceo has got to say i believe in the power of creativity to transform fortunes in brands and we installed all their systems and um and then really importantly we picked great creative partners across the board we are really really lucky and in fairness they're also lucky yeah yeah for sure

7:30Jim Stengel:i'm going to come back to the culture piece and hear from you two on that but i want to keep in the introduction phase here about desire so i want each of you in this podcast panel to talk about one brand for you that compels you, it creates desire within you and not one of your own. So Ryan, you're smiling. I had one of my own as a leader of a house of brands. It's very hard not to pick one. What's the one in your portfolio? The one I would pick in our portfolio, ironically enough, is a brand called vanish. If you live in Europe or other parts of the world, you recognize it. If you're from the U S you might not recognize the brand, but it's basically a stain fighter.

8:10When I joined Wreck-It, I actually moved to the UK. And as part of moving to the UK, my kids played cricket for the first time, which looks really nice when you get dressed in the all-whites and you get ready to go out there on the field and play. When they come back after rolling around in the grass, it's three hours. It is a serious amount of grass stains and mud laid in. I was still in the trial phase of some of our products because I was new at Wreck-It. So I was like, oh, what the heck? I'll give this a try. There's no way this is going to work, but I'll put some vanishing in. We'll let it soak for a few hours and see what happens.

8:38Amazingly enough, it came totally clean. And while that's an incredibly functional experience, that magic before your eyes just completely shocked me and changed the way I actually thought about even taking care or doing laundry. Yeah. Simplified things for us dramatically. So that's one that stood out as me as soon as you had said desired. I'm glad I asked. Now, an external brand. Yeah. External brand for me, I've always been a passionate football slash soccer player. I can never just say one word or the other living in the UK now, because if I say soccer, I get corrected and told it's football.

9:07If I say football, the first thing people ask me is American football. So that's what I played my whole sport growing up. So Adidas has always kind of been near and dear to my heart. And some of the early advertising components of that, I honestly can't put on a pair of football boots or a pair of running shoes that's not Adidas. So it's just stayed close to me because of everything that I've meant through my life and wearing that brand through playing as a child and up through adolescence and through some of my adult years. Great new work, by the way. I mean, the latest one is just a brilliant World Cup is brilliant.

9:37Do you still play? Occasionally with the kids. I've left most of the playing now to my children, who are doing a better job of it, being trained on the European side of the... Yeah. That's good. Jenny, how about yourself? I was thinking about this. I think I love CorePower,

9:52Jim Stengel:and it's interesting. It's such an interesting brand. I love the experience. I go often... Say what the brand is in case some of our listeners... CorePower Yoga. They do hot yoga, sculpt classes. I think the reason I love it is because the instructors love it. And so they create this incredibly welcoming experience. They are very passionate about it. And the instructors, you know, it's not their full-time gig for the most part. Most of them are doing this on top of something else. But they love yoga and they love the Core Power brand. And I think their enthusiasm and love of the brand that they work for just comes into every single class.

10:30They treat every single class like a unique moment. And then I love the other people that go. No, it is, I think, truly a very open and well, it kind of is. It is kind of a cult. But they're like neighborhood spots. Like I go to a couple, there's a few in Minneapolis that I go to. And so I think they probably have kind of neighborhood feels to them to some degree. But it's a fantastic experience. And you can go, I can go to a core power in Denver or in California or in Minnesota. And they all feel very similar, kind of have their own like nuance to them. But you know what you're getting. You know what to expect.

11:04You know you're going to get an excellent class and you sweat like you're in the middle of France.

11:10Jim Stengel:Now, you have a lot of brand partners in your stores. Yes. And in e-commerce. Of those, which one do you admire, Creating Desire? I know you'd hate to single one out, but is there one in the— They're asking for a discount. Yeah, they will, for sure. I don't know. It'd be hard to single out one. I think Apple does an incredible job. Yeah, sure. And not, I mean, just they really understand consumers and they don't ever put anything out until it's 100 % ready. And you see that in all the products they do. They're also, they always are raising the bar with us and require us to do our best. I think Meta is doing some really interesting things.

11:50We have an incredible partnership with them where they now have store within a store experience with us, which is something we can uniquely do. but they are also bar raising partner that is on the edge. I think they're a little different. If you compared them to Apple, like they're sort of anticipating, I think where customers are going to go and are bringing product to market maybe before everyone is there. And I think that's great. Like it's like an interesting, you know, they're pushing innovation in our environment and getting customers there. So it's fun. I work with some, I mean, I work with a lot of amazing brands all the time.

12:23Exactly. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mention you. No, I mean, I could list a lot of them, but those two are really interesting brands to work with. Yeah. Matthew. So desire is something that you want but don't have, right? Well, yeah. Are you one and finally get? Or are you one? So I would say. It's usually scarcity, right? Yeah, exactly. So it's out of reach a bit. So there are things I admire, like, you know, on running and stuff. But if you ask me for desire, and I love craftsmanship, and I love people that take things personally. And that's why I loved Apple in the early days when Johnny Ive was there and Jobs was there.

12:58And you can just see that they loved what they were making. And when you look at great work, you can always see when someone loves the product that they're advertising and marketing. So I love Patek Philippe. Because I think they have, you know, we had Malcolm Gladwell with us. And he has said an amazing thing. He said, hold your principles tight, but your ideas loosely. And I thought, that's so great. And what they do is they hold their principles so tightly. They are so passionate about the craft and what they build and what they make. And you see it in every watch. And of course, to me, one of the greatest advertising lines of all time.

13:35You never really own one. You merely keep it for the next generation. So that's mine. That's good. Do you have one?

13:44Jim Stengel:Oh. Oh, we stopped him. You know, here, I'll keep it close to home. I find France desirable, and I find can desirable. I mean, I love coming here. When did you first come here? 2003. I came to France before that, of course. But France to me is always something I don't fully understand it. And I wander around thinking, how? And, you know, it's just, to me, it's a beguiling country. When we lived in Europe, the last three weeks, we stayed here before we moved back to the States. And we were here five years. We took a station wagon and drove through France for three weeks. Yeah, that's great. And just stopped in different places, met different people, went to small towns.

14:30Jim Stengel:I mean, it was magical. Well, they're living. Out of house near Bordeaux. Yeah. And what you find about people in France, not everywhere, right? So the South France is a little different. They know how to live. That's what you feel. Yeah, that's right. For sure. I also, I'll keep it more. Alfa Romeo to me is full of desire. The dad of one of my close friends and childhood had one around the time The Graduate came out. And I have one now. Oh, wow. I have a 1963 2600. And it is beautiful. And my wife's on my case to get rid of it because it sits in that garage, doesn't get driven much. And when I do drive it, it breaks down silver.

15:12Oh, sexy.

15:13Jim Stengel:You can see the tie to the Ferrari in the look of it. There weren't many made, so it's rare. But that to me is… Oh, that's lovely. That's a lovely, passionate brand. Yes, it is. That's great. Okay, let's get back to… So, one answered your own question. You answered very well, Jim. Well done. Thank you. Nicely done. Put them on the spot. Keep it coming. Keep it coming. You got it. You got it.

15:39Jim Stengel:One of the things I have learned from years of talking to the best CMOs, the world is this. The question is never just whether your creative is working. The question is whether your infrastructure can keep up with it. Because a brilliant campaign still has to travel through an ad stack, through data, through decisioning, through supply, through measurement. And every hop in that journey is a place where value leaks out. Most platforms solve one piece of that, a data company, a DSP, a measurement vendor. You stitch them together and pay a fragmentation tax in performance, in speed, and in accountability.

16:12Jim Stengel:Infilian built something very different. Demand, supply, data, measurement, and creative connected in a single composable platform. The highest performing opt-in attention formats via Infilian's proprietary tech in the industry, agnostic identity resolution solutions, and now Catalina, 130 million U.S. households of verified purchase truth running as live signal through every campaign they execute. No black boxes, no hops, no fragmented vendor relationships to manage. The only company I know of that can take you from the first moment of attention to the final proof of action for any vertical on any screen without leaving the platform.

16:50Jim Stengel:Open, composable, agentic. That is Infillion.

16:58Jim Stengel:Now, you talked about the culture and you talked about all the things that you've done in this journey to be market of the year for the third time at Cannes. I'm going to flip it to you two and talk about what do you do as leaders in your culture to create a culture of creativity that results in creating work and brands that are desirable. So talk about your learning. Talk about your journey on that. Jenny, why don't you start? Okay. Well, first of all, I wish I could have been taking notes while you were talking, Matthew. I think you're creating something special, which is fantastic. And congratulations.

17:32Jim Stengel:We won't edit it all out. Yeah, no. So that I can go back and listen. Okay, right. Just part of one big, great team. Part of one big, great team. Right, yeah. Okay, well, I think that's one thing. Yeah. Giving, lifting the team up and giving them credit, I think, and calling out when you see something that is creative and bold and when you see them pushing the envelope. I think that's one thing that I really try to do. I would say the second thing is really being comfortable with failure. You have to create an environment where it is okay to fail and where ideas can come to the table and maybe not see the light of day for whatever reason.

18:08And I think when you do that, people feel safe and willing to bring their ideas to the table. And that's across the board. We have an internal creative team. But I think you need creativity from all the teams around that creative team. And I think, you know, some psychological safety goes a long way. And making people feel like they're heard and trusted and safe to bring any and all ideas to the table, I think, is very impactful. So, yeah, I think those are some of the things I do.

18:36Jim Stengel:Sorry, no. You're the interviewer. No, no. You're taking it over. I'm okay with that. I can take a break. One of the things which is, you know, giving people permission and part of that is obviously allowing them to feel relatively safe about it is one of the things that we've really been very good at as a business is telling people the importance of positive conflict. So, for example, it's really no fun when everyone's just sitting and agreeing. But it's also no fun when everyone's shouting at each other. So if you walk into something and you go, okay, here's my idea. my job here is to have a conflict with you positive to make the thing better as opposed to tell you how bad you are or how bad the idea is so that's great that you and but you need a leader that's giving people permission to do that to be wrong yeah i agree with you that you don't always have to agree in a conversation and that we can really respectfully push each other to get to better outcomes and i think i have tried to create this um we talk a lot about it's okay to debate.

19:37I've created, I think, an environment where we do have pretty healthy debates and you don't have to be in that functional area to have an opinion on something that you see. And I think that's really helpful too.

19:48Jim Stengel:A question for all of you based on what you just said, Jenny, you had some P &G experience. I do as well. We said at P &G, we want to accept failure as a learning experience. I'm not sure we ever activated it because it was a competitive place. You know, if you didn't get the next role, you might be out. So I think the culture had strong, strong pressure to not make a mistake. And that's a tough one. And I think, you know, they dealt with that, I think, pretty well. But it was a big hurdle. So what have you all done to really walk the talk of failure's okay, stretching is okay, it's all good, it's all part of who we are.

20:32Jim Stengel:Well, I've never failed, so I don't know what you're talking about. No, look, I think for us, and I think about when you reflect on today's landscape in the marketing world between AI and social commerce, the pace of change is incredible. And I think the learning model for us actually changes. You know, back in traditional marketing, you had time to step back, reflect, think about it, create these nice central modules that you could deploy out to teams for them to activate. The pace of learning is just too fast now to do this. You need to be able to give people frameworks that they can operate in, but let them test and learn.

21:02Some of the progress we've made, probably in our understanding of how to reach consumers in the next generation has come because our markets have had the freedom to operate in that area. Been able to go out and do live streaming that we would have never thought of centrally, be on air, you know, 12, 24 hours a day, talking about debt toll to people in China and people buying off of that. Really disruptive changes that we would not have ever deployed from the center. So I think it's required for today's world and everything you do because the pace of change and the pace of learning has gotten so much faster.