Create the Demand to Collect the Demand: Jenny Wall on Marketing That Moves People

0:00Hey, welcome to the CMO Whisper Show. I'm your host, Steve Olensky. Part marketing practitioner, part ad agency veteran, part journalist. I was a writer for Forbes for 10 years. I've had so many insightful conversations over the years with business leaders, to athletes, to celebrities, to, of course, CMOs. The only difference now is instead of sharing those insights through written form, I'm doing it this way. My guest this week is Jenny Wall, CMO at Video Amp, a company that's transforming the world of media measurement and advertising performance. With more than 20 years of experience leading marketing at iconic brands like Netflix, HBO, and Hulu, Jenny is known for crafting bold, innovative campaigns that drive real results.

0:48She's also been named one of Adweek's most influential women in all of advertising. Jenny Wall, my long-lost friend, my newfound friend, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Steve. I'm excited to be here. I hope you say that at the end, but let's go and just have some fun. I'm sure I will. If our conversation is anything like our first conversation, the listeners are in for track. Let's have some fun. All right. So I want to jump in with your career. Needless to say, a lot of different brands, iconic, different platforms. You've been in agencies, the streaming giants, and now you're at what I call a media measurement disruptor, right?

1:26So you've worn a lot of hats, a lot of different points, you know, a lot of different stops along the way. Is there one or 100 or anywhere between a through line, anything that connects the chapters or you've taken from one to the other kind of thing as you look back on your career? Yeah, I mean, I think some of them were accidental and some of them were an attempt to try to learn something new. But I guess I've been lucky enough also to happen to land at places where the disruption was just happening. And I was able to help, I think, learn from that and also try new things and then mold to that experience.

2:03I also think that throughout my career, again, whether accidental or purposeful, there's always been a through line of change. And I think helping people through that change, whether that's being at HBO in the 90s and working on its TV as HBO, as well as, you know, the first, you know, you're trying to get people to pay for TV and then launching, you know, Sex and the City, Sopranos, etc. etc. Things that redefine television from there. And I also worked on the Laramie project there, which was extremely important to me in regard to Matthew Shepard's death and work with Moises Kaufman, which really changed the trajectory of where I went from there.

2:39Because I then I decided that I felt that gays and lesbians really needed to see themselves on television in order to help, you know, suicide rates. Young kids commit suicide, unfortunately, four times more when they're not supported. And I just felt an opportunity to help use entertainment to I really think and this is a through line to entertainment and advertising to help change the world, which seems dramatic, but I truly, truly believe that it can. And so I opened my own gay and lesbian marketing agency. And then I was on the very, very beginning of the digital front, making like the first dynamic manner for E!

3:12News. So just kind of experimenting and being at that forefront. And then the next through line is jumping into Netflix, which, you know, I thought I knew what I was doing, but I had absolutely zero clue when I got there in 2012. And I had to learn pretty quickly from all the PhDs what actually the bottom of the funnel was. So learning and then learning international and then being lucky enough to launch a new behavior on television. So I was head of creative there and launched House of Cards, Orges the New Black, Arrested Development, one of my favorite shows of all time, A big highlight for me, but really just redefining like when you drop all episodes at once, what does that mean?

3:51And then working with David Fincher and arguing with him about what you should call it. And what that allowed me to do this then take the larger job at Hulu, where I was overseeing all of marketing. So acquisition, retention, publicity, audience insights. And again, I just felt I like to be the underdog there. I feel like I've been the underdog everywhere. And now let's try to take on Netflix, launched live TV there and also just was a proud hooligan my whole time. That's probably one of the best culture experiences I've ever had. And some of my closest friends come from there. But getting the opportunity to work on Handmaid's Tale, I feel like this stuff is just handed to me in regards to how we can use entertainment to help.

4:32You know, at the time, women's rights were being challenged. And we all saw that as, you know, potentially like, oh, this is in the future. and then all of a sudden had to pivot and say, you know, this is right now. And so using that campaign to one, sell entertainment, but also show the world that this could happen. And that's when we addressed the women in the white or the red robes and the hats and the bonnets at South by Southwest. And I think I was on a panel there with Gwen Throckmorton from Facebook. And all of a sudden, all these headlines came out that said, Hulu is freaking the shit out of people, which was pretty much the goal to do that is to say, yeah, this is a future where women may not be able to speak and may get their rights taken away.

5:11And so I try not to be political at all in what I do. But in the end, I think that entertainment is, you know, here to help us. You know, I use the analogy of I think entertainment is like a dog, like it's always happy to see you when you come. No matter how long you've been gone, it's happy to see you again. If you want to cry, it'll lick your tears. And so you can find something to make you feel comfort. You can find something to connect with somebody like my Arrested Development. When I find another fan that has that or strangers with candy, like we just go in a rabbit hole of a bunch of inside jokes that really connect people.

5:46And, and so I think that is a big through line. And then the last, you know, I was at Nickelodeon for three years, which was incredible to be there when I had a five-year-old son and to figure out like, what, what does this mean to kids now, especially during, you know, COVID, during George Floyd, there was just a lot of interesting things to do while we were there. And we actually went dark on George Floyd on Nickelodeon, which got a lot, a lot of backlash from parents. But in the end, you know, we created Nick Stans and it was called Nick Stans for you, by you and with you for kids. And so a lot of good came out of that.

6:23And then now I'm at this crazy place where, you know, I'm with my boss from HBO, Peter Liguori, the legend. And, you know, he and I, he's a marketer at heart. And we both want to, you know, provide change and provide choice for people. We've had the same industry of measurement with Nielsen for 100 years. And it's, it's, I don't think fair to the industry for innovation, nor price flexibility to actually not provide choice in regards to, you know, we use big data, but like to provide choice, especially when people are trying to find efficiencies across the board, all the big networks. So I think that we provide that.

6:58I also think our data is better, but in the same sense, like this is a David and Goliath like story. And I love, love, love the challenge. Really? I couldn't tell. I love all those challenges. Okay. So as you're saying all that amazing stories, three words kept coming into my mind as you're talking. Number one, responsibility. I'd love that you acknowledge the fact that marketers and advertisers and brands, pick one, whatever, have an undeniable responsibility when it comes to culture at large, children, just really everybody. And I can remember when I first started more than five, less than a hundred years ago, it was more marketing ever was just like fluffy.

7:44You make commercials and you don't really have much impact. At least that was what I was told. And I never bought into that. I thought all along that, wait a minute, the messaging that's coming out from brands is extremely powerful and influential. So that's the first word I thought of. And I want to allow you to respond to these three words that when I heard you talking is responsibility. Yeah. So I'll jump on the first words. I do want to go back to the years. And I'm glad you said I was only in the business 20 years. I was 30 years. I'll just clarify. So So responsibility. Yeah. I never really felt that when I worked at HBO, I felt it was more fun.

8:20Right. And we're making trailers and we're making we get to work with Annie Leibovitz. And it was insane. And it really wasn't until I like I said, Laramie Project, where I saw the impact, I think that that it can have and the responsibility that we need to do it right. And we need to do it with respect. And we also believe that we can help, you know, people that might feel marginalized or people that might not feel connected. and that weighed heavily, I think, on me when I left. And then responsibility, I think, just goes with like, I think connecting people is one of the most wonderful things you can do in life.

8:56And I think there's nothing better than movies or entertainment documentaries, whether that's to educate, whether that's to spark conversation, whether, you know, people like Sue Young over at EOS, the CMO, I love her Effie winning campaign. You should look it up. It's not about kind of reinventing the shaving cream. Like she just went out there. I've also a bunch of stuff and this is totally off topic, but I, you know, menopause, I think is not talked about with women. And I've just, I'm really proud and proud and proud of the work that's coming out, the brave work that's coming out, especially for women.

9:32And so that's with all the way, all the way from products to, to entertainment, et cetera. So yeah, I think I do feel a bit of responsibility and also to get it right. Because sometimes people do not like what you do. And it's like you have to stand by what you believe in. And I think that's also important in this day and age is not just delivering what everybody wants or thinks you should, but do something that actually makes visible change and someone's life better. So I was going to go to the second of my three words, but you just said something. Now I'm going to go to the third word. And that's uncomfortable.

10:04and I'm personally a massive believer in being comfortable, being uncomfortable, if that makes sense. And what you just said about 10 seconds ago, some people are not going to, some people, they're always going to be people who don't like what you do and say. And I don't mean you necessarily, you euphemistically, right? But it being out of that comfort zone, like a handmaid's tale, like, you know, I'm sure. And that's one example. I think you have to be open, right? Is that the word or accepting of, I'm not, we're not just, we're not going to just to status quo here. Yeah, no, no, I completely believe that.

10:36But then I also think you have to deal with, and this is more of a business lesson is like, there are people that disagree with you that you work for or with. And I'll give a good example of this that, you know, I was working on a Handmaid's Tale poster. It's the one that says we will bear no more, which is pretty much a double play on the words there. And it had Lizzie Moss standing sideways against the like blood soaked wall. And someone told me that I needed to make it appeal to men. And my first reaction was, why? I mean, like, if I got every woman in the world to watch this, we would have subscribers out the roof.

11:11But I got a lot of pushback. And so I said, you know what, I'm going to add a guy with a machine gun to the corner. And guess what? That got it through. And guess what? It made the poster better, because it didn't look like an Amish show. Like some people that weren't familiar with it. and the way they dress didn't really realize it was a future show. So I do think there's, there's times when you, you need to potentially, you deal with politics. But there's ways to do it in a creative way that I think sometimes actually will surprise you. But also I'm just, I am really comfortable being uncomfortable.

11:43I think I forgot one stop on my career. And that was a couple of years at Gimlet when I, when I became CMO of the podcasting company. And like, again, I didn't know the ear and I really was like, well, I kind of want to know the ear. And I want to know why the eye is so much more important and expensive than the ear when it's such an intimate medium, which obviously you're using very well. And I also took on all the advertising clients because nobody wanted to do that because it wasn't real journalism. I'm going to put in quotes. And so, you know, I was working with like Ancestry.com, making like a 12 episode, you know, kind of podcast that didn't sound like it was from Ancestry, but was about this mental hospital.

12:20And we found some DNA of Sylvia Plath, I think. And it was like a really good murder mystery. And so then I learned to make podcasts and I'm like, again, accidentally like feeling uncomfortable and doing something that I don't know how to do is sort of a through line that that and also this is the first time I've ever been in ad tech. A lot to learn. It's very, very complicated. So you embrace that difference. Yeah, I don't I don't think I could work in a job where I didn't embrace that difference. Right. The last word, if I may. Yeah. And some leaders are are humble when I say this word. They rather just stay in the background.

12:57But that's legacy. And you're leaving behind a legacy. And I think we all have that. It comes back to responsibility as well. But again, as you were talking earlier, I'm thinking about responsibility, uncomfortable and legacy. And the legacy you're leaving behind is very, very strong, to say the least, right? And very impactful. And again, some leaders are uncomfortable. Humility prevents them from, I'm not asking you to boast. I'm saying it for you. You're leaving behind a tremendous legacy. Yeah, I'm embarrassed by that. And I don't know what to say, but I'm going to just going to say thank you very much.

13:30I hope I'm leaving something behind for people. And I think especially women, women about executives and hopefully good advice and good role modeling. And I really, really appreciate that. I hope this last legacy is that we can give an option to Nielsen and we actually can provide measurement, like our numbers are 10 to 20 % higher, like the value of content. Because content and advertising is the only thing that's going to keep this ecosystem going. And if we don't have the money to make the content and we don't value the content correctly, correctly, then we're going to go in a downward spiral of we can't afford it anymore.

14:08And then the world suffers for that. And so advertising, you know, I say it dramatically sometimes that I also think not just content, but advertising can save the world. It really can if we get it right. So I'm hoping to leave that as this last gig. So it's a good segue. I really want to get your thoughts on what do you think most marketers still misunderstand about measurement? We can touch on what video amp does that is changing that narrative, but agnostically of even a video amp, what are things marketers just don't get about measurement? Well, there's too many tools. That's one thing. And you have an agency that's trying to work with their tools as well as outside tools.

14:46You have, you know, the old MMM is still alive and kicking. And I was using that like in 2014. And it's basically, it's a good, it's a good piece of information to have that You can look backwards and try to figure out predictability. But again, it's looking backwards. And so if you look back on the last quarter, why would Q4 be able to tell you what you should do in Q1? It's a good indicator. But again, if your MTA model, your multi-touch attribution, part of the problem also is people can't stitch together cross-channel marketing. So they don't necessarily know how to tie an upper funnel linear to a lower funnel, let's say, search and CTV, etc.

15:25etc. And by doing that, they overweight, I think, the last click or the more bottom of the funnel. And I always say, well, you have to... People's brands are getting... Brand dollars are getting cut all the time. And I'm like, well, you have to create the demand to collect the demand. And if you don't create the demand, then there will be nothing to pay at the bottom of the funnel because no one's looking for you. So I think the balance of brands and performance is what a lot lot of people are missing and a lot of people are shoving their, you know, they'll separate even their teams into performance marketing.

15:58And it's optimizing toward, I think, the wrong thing is what a big thing I think people are missing. I can't remember the name of the company. And maybe you do when I say this. Maybe five years ago, it was a big brand. And I think, you know, the whole headline was so-and-so brand basically is going to roll everything up into one saying, we don't care where the league comes from. And for some reason, I think it was a retail brand. And they just said, we don't care. We're just going to attribute it to the brand. We don't care if it was email, direct mail, social, blah, blah. It was really kind of different at the time to just do that kind of radical roll it all up into just measurement into one.

16:34I'm vaguely, I don't know if you remember that, but I'm vaguely remembering that. I don't remember that. But I mean, that's scary too, because then, you know, this is like CMOs get fired every three years. And part of the reason is because they can't show ROI or ROAS. And if you can't say that because I spent this much in TV, this much in CTV, this much in digital, this much in Facebook, TikTok, and search or retail media, if you can't attribute at least some sort of a portion or a consumer journey and an attribution window, then you can't justify your budget and you become a cost center and you don't become a revenue center.

17:10I think that's the other big thing is you need as a marketer, you need to show that you are a revenue generator. So by doing that, you need to use the tools available to help brands tell the best story for the best outcome. And that's usually higher sales for lower costs. And that's usually, I think, because of something that we do, which is advanced targeting with these infinite pods. Why would you buy demo all the time when you can actually target someone that wants to buy a razor? And it's just kind of mind-boggling to me that people are still just sitting back and saying, well, I'll just use this old way.

17:46But there's tools, not only ours, but there are tools out there that can help you look way smarter and also optimize your media. And guess what? When you do that and you show higher sales for more efficient spend, you will get more money. It won't get cut. So it's just simple and mind-boggling to me that people still are either too scared, they don't want to learn or they don't want to go out of the comfort zone they think they may be fired if they do something that's crazy and it's like i'll just i'll just go with this other thing that it's a black box and and actually costs more money i'll just do that i never understood that i know i wrote something gosh a while ago many maybe back to my forbes days and it was something like these are the most seven seven most dangerous words in history and it was something like that's the way it's always been done or something like that and that's like that default right of well Oh, we'll just stick with this.

18:38What? Especially in, forget about the digital age, the AI age. Well, that's going to change everything as well. So yeah, you must be open to change. And if you're not, you really probably may not have a job soon if you actually are constantly looking at how do I do better? Correct. Correct. So you touched on something that's a big nerve center for me, and that's brain versus performance. it's a big one for me too oh my god well let's make plans to do a part two just on that topic we can we can do a full hour on that topic clips notes on that right here because i get asked all the time because i consult and people you know cmos and they're asking steve i got to do brand over a point i got to do performance over why what why are you picking one right so in your history your opinion your experience and you're a great one to ask i'm a cmo and i'm challenging and let's role play.

19:32How do you, Steve, here's how you balance brand and performance. Well, one, you have to have some sort of a metric. And I think I told you this, like I was looking for a brand love metric because I was trying to prove that if you spent at the upper part of the funnel and built people and brand love that I say, and I stole this from, I think, Rich Kim is brand love is loyalty beyond reason. If I go for loyalty beyond reason, and even though that's hugely unattainable, unless you're like an Apple or a Nike or, you know, even just some of these like Aloe, these small brands that are really killing it for loyalty.

20:05Like if you can somehow show a tie from brand love as well as exposure to a sale, then you shouldn't look at it as versus. It should always be looked at as what journey did the customer take in order to fall in love with your brand? And so I made up and this, again, is another thing I just encourage people to do. I just took a bunch of insights and just made up a brand love index and set it at zero, a hundred. And I said, okay, it's 20 % affinity, you know, you know, it's, it's, you know, 50 % engagement, whatever it was, I just followed it over a year. And I was able to show I got up to like a 170 index.

20:42And I was able to see like, when you raised affinity or raised favorability, or recommendations that you would see something happen like three months later. And so it allows you to sort of use data to justify, you know, that this works. And then I just think the cross measurement, you know, now we're in the digital big data age, you can see if somebody saw, again, PII, all privacy, all clean rooms from an identity perspective, like we have six different inputs in our identity spine, which is patented clean room. And you can actually see if that person, what their journey was over, let's say, a 3 or 4-week period to a sale.

21:19And you can go all the way down to the sale. And so I don't think it ever should be a versus. I think it should be an and. And then what you do is I used to just shift the money. I'd go like 60 % top of the funnel, see what happened, see how much demand I could create. Then I'd shift 60 % to the bottom, collect the demand while still taking 40 % to creating more at the top. And so it's just willingness to like move your money up and down in almost real time, but then use as many inputs as you can. You know, MMM is great. We're great. Like MTA is great. Like use as many inputs as you can to try to consolidate them into a dashboard that shows you pretty quickly, you know, what is working and what's not working.

22:03And adjust accordingly. And adjust accordingly. And don't be afraid to try things like I did something horrible at once. because someone told me to turn off television at Hulu for the summer. And they said, no one watches in the summer. So turn television off. I'm sorry, turn the upper funnel off, the brand spend. And I said, OK, I'll do it as a test. And it took me six months to recover from that. Wow. Yeah. Because what happens is that when you're not out there, you're not relevant. Nobody knows and cares about you. And so if you don't continue reminding people that you're here and why you're here and the purpose of you being here in their lives and how you can make it better, then you have a lot of ground to make up.

22:46And I started way lower in regards to being able to collect demand because I wasn't creating it. And so that was a good, you know, it was a scary time, especially for my six months to try to build that back up. But I said to, you know, the person that asked me to do this, like we tried it and it didn't work. So now we can move forward. So don't be afraid to try things. You know, again, I think people are so afraid And it's like, well, do I need TV? And I realized, yeah, we did. We absolutely did. We need a TV to sell TV, especially when we were considering that we were a TV. I consider Hulu TV.

23:19Right. But you tried it. Didn't work. Didn't work. OK. Not everything's going to work. Guess what? But you tried it. Yeah. And then the other thing, too, is just when you're in entertainment, it's also in brands. Is it the product that you want to sell or is it the experience? And finding what that balance is. is is there a product that can drive the overall halo effects of the brand, like a handmade cell? And then when you don't have a handmade cell, what is it about your brand that makes you different? Because the same is not going to work. Like when you're going against the Netflix, because I came from Netflix and then I'm to Hulu.

23:53I'm like, okay, well, we have Next Day Air and we have Seinfeld. And we like to trying to figure out what makes us different, that it's not saying you should get rid of Netflix. You should add Hulu because we provide a more rich experience. And it's really not downplaying the other players. It's, you know, it's how do we all work together? In the end, I really think there's probably going to be like five players, if that. So I don't know how you're doing this. You're leading me right to my next question again. It's perfect. I knew we were symbiotic, but so when it comes to media and the proliferation and there's no shortage, I'm sure as we're recording this five new platforms launched kind of thing.

24:28What are some trends that you're watching? And also, what advice would you give to CMOs who are thinking of advertising or ad sponsored on streaming? Well, I would just say I would put a bunch of money in streaming. If you look at Disney, I mean, that's where all their growth is. They just they came their earnings just came out. All their earnings are in streaming and sports. And so, you know, Amazon and Netflix are coming in hard with the sports. So sports is going to be a huge, huge piece. Look at what Disney just acquiring parts of Fubo. Yep. And I think what's going to happen there where the tea leaves that people are reading is they're going to merge Fubo into Hulu.