Culture Is the Currency - Bonin Bough

0:00Hey, welcome to the CMO Whisper Show. I'm your host Steve Olenski. 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 today is Bonin Bao, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Portrait Media Group. He's one of the most awarded marketing leaders on the planet, a rare blend of operator, builder, and boundary pusher, who has reshaped how billion-dollar brands grow.

0:43Bonnet's career reads like a highlight reel of modern marketing. Oreo, Cadbury's, Gatorade, Frito-Lay, PepsiCo, Mondelez. He became one of the youngest Fortune 500 C-suite executives, led transformations that rewired global organizations, and built campaigns that turned beloved brands into cultural heat engines. He's in the Advertising Hall of Achievement. His name shows up on lists like Fortune's 40 Under 40, Fast Company's most creative people in business, Ebony's Power 100. He's an author, a CNBC host, and one of the most dynamic voices in the industry. And he just stepped into a brand new role of dad.

1:19So we're going to start there. How's it going? How much sleep he's getting? From there, we're going to get into the evolution of the CMO role, the rise of multicultural growth, the limits of reach, the power of resonance, and why content, culture, and AI are reshaping the playbook. Bon and Bao, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. I'm excited, my friend. It's good to see you. So as a fellow dad, I got to ask, though. Okay. How's the sleep going? You know, man, look. You know, I feel like I'm a very old dad, and I feel like, you know, it's a young man's game. Either you have to be young or you have to be resourceful.

1:54And so I'll tell you a funny story. I thought I was being so smart. We have an apartment that we've had forever. We rented out, and it's, you know, we rented out to college kids. It's a two-bedroom. cut to three bedroom and but in but you know our home is a one bedroom before you know we had had no kids so i said okay we're gonna usually in the summer it's empty the because the college students are away and we get a new batch they were gonna stay i said hey can we you know so anyway so let's just say i kick them out and the plan was the child was supposed to come in june and so we're ready to move into this in june and of course the baby comes a month early she has to you know anyway It was all fine, but they had to deliver it a month early, him a month early.

2:41And my whole plan was that I was going to fly her mom in. We were all going to live together. Her mom was going to help with the nights. It was going to be one big happy thing. And so, of course, it's a month early, so we can't move in. So here we bring this baby home, and we're in this one-bedroom apartment. I'm sleeping on the couch with my wife and the kid, and we're so nervous, and we're up. and all I can hear is my mother-in-law snoring in the bedroom. And after, I thought it was so brilliant, right? I had it all planned out. And of course, you know, nature has a way of making sure that you remember who's really in charge.

3:16And so after three nights of this, I said, get the baby nurse, get the night nurse, get a night nurse. So we got lucky, you know, we had a night nurse, which definitely made life a lot easier. So I was able to sleep and we could alternate, you know, the nights when she wasn't there. but look it's literally a labor of love and so you know I'm not going to lie my wife is now in Finland with her family so I'm sleeping like a baby unintended

3:51but you know this too shall pass so look hey man I cherish every moment both with him and without him it's the greatest job you'll ever have it really is trust me i know the only thing i i wish my dad would have still been around to see his grandkid but i know he's yeah he's watching so oh yeah so he sees it he's i'm sure he's very proud of you um all right let's let's jump in because i know we're limited on time and there's a ton i want to get to you about i want to start with the cmo role how it's changing i think you described it as it's changing from from managing spend to shaping culture.

4:26So let's start there. What did you mean by, and why is it changing from managing spend to shaping culture? You know, the CMO role is so interesting because it's, you know, we asked the same question for, you know, at least the 30 years I've been here. I'm like, how is a CMO role changing? How's the CMO role changing? I think that in many respects right now, the currency of growth is culture. And as a result, that's the most important thing that a CMO can focus on is how do I tie my brand to either existing culture or how does my brand create culture? And I think that, you know, spend is an artifact of a world where you could push things down a very limited amount of pipes and know that the entire world would see it.

5:16Now, in many respects, Like, spend is almost less of a lever than it has been before because the proliferation of channels and platforms is so massive that no matter how much you spend, you can't conquer all. Whereas before, you could. And you felt like you were everywhere because you were everywhere where communications happened at mass and at scale. And look, at the end of the day, I don't actually believe that this game is about how much you spend. I tell my teams all the time, like, we can't outspend them, but we can outsmart them. And I think that, you know, the best things are going to be those that are the most creative, the most unexpected, the most aligned to culture.

5:59And that's what wins. And I remind people, if you look at something like the Jean-Claude Van Damme, two things. One, I think we don't treat B2B marketing like we should. I think we unfortunately believe that it can't be as good as consumer marketing, but this is a case in point for both points I'm trying to make. If you think back to that Jocelyn Van Damme piece that went around the internet like crazy where he was standing on two trucks and then he did the split, right? So that was for Volvo precision steering on trucks, which maybe 0.001 % of the human population actually know what it is or care about it.

6:36So that makes my point around B2B. But my point here is that they didn't spend a lot of money on that in terms of media placement. They just put it in a really intelligent place, which was LinkedIn. And they had a really creative concept and it took off. So I think that when we think about what the role of the CMO is, the role of the CMO is really to understand what their brand is, figure out how it can connect to culture or create culture. and how to do that in a way that's unexpected and generates conversation and excitement so that it lasts beyond those ideas and those brands last beyond just the money that I spend on it.

7:16Let me push back a little. Let me play devil's advocate here. I'm a CMO going, wait a minute, I don't want all that responsibility. I don't want to be responsible for shaping culture. That's a lot. And I have a limited runway anyway because we know my average tenure is three to four years. What do you say to CMO who goes, No, no, no. I don't want to be responsible for shaping culture. I mean, look, the beautiful thing about the business that we're in, which I don't think we realize, is that by nature, brands live in and amongst humans and they do shape culture, regardless of whether we want to or not.

7:47When you think about like Levi's at one point meant freedom to certain people, like Pepsi gave, you know, rise to the choice of a new generation. I mean, like these are the things they literally inspire us, we inspire them and they're part of our life. That's actually the precious thing that you have a chance to do when you're a brand marketer, that you actually have a chance to, and quite frankly, an obligation when you're working on brands that have legacy, an obligation to maintain, you know, the space and place for that brand to exist and be part of culture and part of the human experience.

8:27I mean, if you're not, if that doesn't wake you up in the morning and you're not excited to do that every single day, then you're probably in the wrong job. There's nothing I can tell you that's going to change your mind about it. But I know the people who are the best at it and the people who enjoy it the most are there because they realize that they are sitting in a space where they're actually talking and having a dialogue with the world on so many different levels or with a specific community. I look at the work we just did. You know, it's interesting because everybody's out there talking about AI.

9:01In fact, later today, we have our AI workshops that we do inside the company with all the employees just as a way to just continue to make sure that we're the sharpest. A lot of people talk about AI. This year, there was only a couple of spots that actually employed the use of it. And, you know, I think two or three, a handful. and one of those were a piece that we did for a company called PC Richards. We did it with Stan Smith, probably one of the most iconic, you know, people, the number one selling sneaker in history. It launched right into the middle of the US Open. We launched his documentary as well.

9:38Massive hit. And the reason why I bring that up is because PC Richards is a staple in the tri-state area. Like if you get into an Uber and you ask a guy, where do you get your TV? He says, I got a guy at PC Richards. Like it is a staple here. And so one of the biggest pieces were for us was to maintain how important that brand is to the community. And at the same time, celebrate, you know, all the experiences that those that either knew the brand or, you know, new to the tri-state area would make them curious to want to experience the brand. And so that's like, And the spot has, there's a couple of spots, but the spot, you know, the one that we launched first has Stan smacking mattresses across the city, showcasing the delivery.

10:27And, you know, people smacks it into a window and somebody comes out and says, thank you, Stan. And it's to the Dido song is, thank you for the best day of my life, you know. And it's just like, thank you, PC Richards, for being a staple in the community and always ensuring that you provide the best service, the best price, and all those pieces. But also, thank you for caring about this community and helping to solve the, you know. So all those pieces you think about, and that's what makes it exciting because, you know, this is a 115-year-old family-owned business. You know, not only do they have legacy as a business, but, you know, they're a staple in the community.

11:05And that's the puzzle, which is how do you bring them? How do you continue continuity? How do you make sure that you stand for what the brand stands for? How do you tie it to culture? And how do you excite people and remind them? And then we brought the whistle. When I grew up, the jingle was, you got to buy a PC at PC Richards. And so at the end of all this, we brought the whistle back and a couple of spots, he whistles. And so that's the beauty. And so, look, if you don't find excitement in that and what you're worried about is I'm only going to be here for three years. I look at it as I'll tell you a different last story.

11:41We were with I one of the I was at an event and one of the president's former president for speaking and talking to a CEO. and the CEO said, hey, don't you ever feel that four years just isn't enough to kind of drive change? And he said, well, how long have you been a CEO? And the CEO said something that was a long time. And he said, well, first of all, I'm sure there's a lot of people who wish you weren't. You left after four years as a joke. But what he said, which was interesting is that sometimes constraints force you to focus on the most important things. And so, okay, fine. If you believe you're only there for three years, then do the single best amount of work that you can do in those three years and have the largest amount of impact you can.

12:24And that's what I would focus on if that was where I'm constraining myself. But I don't see the world that way. Well, before I go on, thank you. Now I have that earworm in my head of that PC Richards jingle. So thank you for that. I'll be complaining about you the rest of the day. But I digress. I want to switch to multicultural and get your thoughts on that. But before I do, because my audience are primarily CMOs, what do they need to know, learn, do over the next one, three, five years, in your opinion? I used to get yelled at. And I was always told, if you're not in these four walls, you're not working.

12:59And my response was, if I'm in these four walls, I'm not working. Because the world doesn't exist inside of the headquarters of Mondelez. Let me just be very honest with you. It's, you know, and I'm not saying that they're not amazing thoughts and ideas that come out of that. but you're still within a bubble. And so being out in the world and touching the consumer and seeing how the consumer's operating and talking to consumers, it's so funny because we were, one of the big things when I joined Mondelez was to make sure that we were the number one mobile marketer in the world. And everybody had been talking about mobile marketing.

13:33And I was so tired of hearing about it. I said, we're just going to set our sights on doing it. We dedicated spending 10 % of our total global budget on that. A number one mobile marketer of the year, four years in a row. I mean, just a litany of mobile. I mean, what people don't realize is that in our mobile futures program, which was our bringing mobile startups and brands together, forcing them to come up with a project in 90 days that was launched with guaranteed financing and all this stuff like that to make sure that we actually got tests. And we would do nine tests in 90 days, 10 tests in 90 days in markets all around the world.

14:08No company was doing that at that kind of scale, but that meant we were building a real muscle memory of how to win. And we have so many projects that can win. If you use Waze and you see all those little advertisements that pop up, the reason why those ads are there is because of us. So, you know, one of the brand marketers went to work, you know, chose Waze, worked on the Waze partnership, and we had 7-Eleven as our partner. And we, that was what said, hey, wouldn't it be amazing if we could tell people she ran Stridecom? wouldn't it be amazing if we could tell people that stride gum was available at 7-eleven just a mile away from here and that's how that little ad unit became built and so i think that you know the thing for cmos is many times we get caught up in the the theoretical and in the powerpoints and sometimes we don't actually go and play with the tools or you know the the pieces that are new and available to us.

15:08And so like even now, one of the challenges I've been giving myself is use AI to create anything in four hours. So whether it is a table that I can literally have shipped to me, whether it is a product that you can swipe a credit card and you can actually buy, you'll see a little series that I'm dropping. But for me, what was most important was not to play around on the edges of like chat GPT, but what was important was to use all of the programs that I could to expand my mind about really truly understanding what was going to be humanly possible. And, you know, and, you know, the pace and change is amazing.

15:44We all know that we all can sit on panels and we can talk about it, but it's not until you challenge yourself to just use as many of the tools as you can to see if you can accomplish something. And it's training you to now begin to step out and say, okay, how do I then change a, my people? So how do I make sure my people have the same equipped knowledge that I have. And then at the same time is how do I change my organization? Like what is really, and you step back from saying, okay, let me get 30 % efficiency. I might even be able to write the program that can reinvent, you know, what I need done with inside the organization, which is the crazy thing about it.

16:24And by the way, all I got to do is talk to it. I think that right now in this moment of change, I think the most important thing is to roll up your sleeves and actually do the doing as much as you can, because it's going to change your mindset of what's the real next wave going to look like and what's truly coming down the pipeline. Because for so many times we rely on our agencies and partners and those things, and we believe that the fundamentals, but the fundamentals are constantly shifting. It's just, we don't realize it. And then finally we get there, but to be ahead, that's where I think, that's what I think you got to do.

16:56You got to spend real time experimenting right now. And you're going to fail. And that's okay. Look, what did Edison say? I didn't fail 10 ,000 times. I just learned 10 ,000 ways not to make a light bulb. Like, I don't even. The funny thing is we talk about failure in the marketing space all the time. And, you know, it must fail. Dude, the bottom line is the walls of these organizations are littered with failures. Crystal Pepsi, that's not around. You know what I mean? But you could name said product. And it's okay for some reason in product innovation and that. But these businesses are built to fail.

17:30They're built to fail a lot, but they're also built to win big on occasion. And, you know, that's what you're hunting for. That's what you're hunting for. Yeah, someone said, I think if you're not making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough. Something like that. Yeah, I am. If you're not trying, you leave. And if you can't act, teach a gym. I'm just kidding. Whatever. All right. You said something to me when we met earlier about multicultural audiences and how they're not a segment. They're the growth story. Elaborate for my audience. Yeah, look, you know, we've been talking about that a lot.

18:04But, you know, look, I make a joke. And I say for Negro, like as my kid. And G-R-O-W, of course. But, you know, what's interesting now is we've always talked about them as being the growth audiences. And now when you actually walk and you interact and just spend time looking around and you'll see it's more than just, first of all, for years we've said multicultural and then we still segment it. So there is, you know, an African-American segment, a Hispanic segment, an Asian. So that is true. But there's a huge layer that legitimately, not legitimate, but that is actually also a mixed race. and so I joke is my son gonna like fried chicken or is he gonna like salted salmon like I don't know where he's gonna my wife is finishing um you know not and I think that we need to instead of looking at when we think about multicultural I think the challenges that we've had is that we purely look at a lot of it through a lens of race for lack of a better term although we might not say that.

19:10We try to get at that in different ways because platforms don't allow us to be explicit, but we try to get at that in different ways. And the reality is, is I think that as we move forward in this space specifically, what's going to be more important are going to be values and belief systems. And we see the power of that in other aspects of our life, primarily politics. Values and beliefs and understanding the values and beliefs and not the demographics or even the psychographics, but the value and belief system is what helps you connect to a person's emotion. And once you connect to a person's emotion, that's how you drive real action.

19:52And that's the difference, right? And I was just watching something and they were just talking about the power of emotion. You can't connect to them that way by just understanding household income. Like it's just not a thing anymore, you know? And I, you know, I talk about some of the stuff that we do on our platforms and, you know, our goal is to have the most sophisticated buying platform for this marketplace and, you know, unique data sets. And I look at some of the data sets and, you know, a great example is credit score. So credit score is a very poor determinant of buying behavior for many communities.

20:27And so you look at the African-American community, for example, you know, credit is not necessarily highest on the agenda, but some of the platforms and partners that we have, instead of looking at credit score, they look at like ACH pool. So they say, okay, you're willing to spend money on gas, which means you're most likely going to pay a car loan. But if you don't keep your electricity bill paid, we're not going to give you a home loan. So, you know, so instead truly understanding, you know, deeper insights into, and the same goes for, you know, when you look at certain, you know, the Hispanic community or when you, and it's not because they don't believe in credit.

21:00It's just, that's just not central to how they operate. And even, you know, in certain areas in the Asian community, cash is king. And so there's just, you know, and so the point here is, is that at the end of the day, when we think about multicultural, we have to begin to really understand the belief systems and the values that drive how they see the world so that we can connect to them emotionally and actually drive real action. And that's the thing that I think we forget about. And look, not to say that that's a unique thing just to multicultural, but the reality is that level of sophistication and knowledge and insight and understanding hasn't been deployed.

21:40And so that's where we're excited about. And it's not this, you know, go ahead. It's a good segue into the next thing I want to talk about, which is reach versus resonance, right? And really understanding that reach just isn't enough anymore, right? How do you define the difference between reach and resonance? It's funny because you got to reach a lot of people to have impact. But if you reach them with something that doesn't resonate, it's meaningless. But at the same time, even if you reach a few people with something that resonate, you might actually have a bigger impact than reaching a lot of people with something that doesn't resonate.

22:14So resonance is definitely is definitely the most important aspect of any type of marketing or advertising. But you have to first understand what you're trying to resonate with. By the way, I'm talking about beliefs and I'm talking about values, but there are some tried and true stuff that works. There's a common denominator around comedy, and people from all aspects laugh, regardless of your belief system. But I do think that identifying what am I trying to resonate with and then developing the campaigns, messages, brand behaviors that resonate with that belief system that you're targeting is probably one of the most important things.

22:57At the end of the day, I think that residents, you feel it, you understand it. It's just like when you look at the work that we did on Honeymade or you look at the work that Unilever did on Real Beauty, that stuff just has, you know, emotional resonance. It's, you know, it touches you and you think about it and you're reminded. Or even, which was bam, but, you know, ship my pants. You know, like it just, it was smart. You know, it was just smart. And so it was smart. And so, you know, you, you know, it's, it's, but it, but it has resonance, you know, and the best stuff does, or, or it's inspiring, just do it, you know, but that's the thing is that you see so much stuff that is not even striving to find that higher connectivity that feels like they just mailed it in.

23:48And you're like, what are we doing here, man? What are we doing? I've long held the belief that marketers in general don't give consumers enough credit, meaning I think consumers know, like you know about me, like if I'm talking to you like you're a brand. So you know enough about me. Don't put something in front of me that doesn't resonate or is relevant to me. The other thing for me is change the narrative and the nature of the conversation of the world. like you guys we're sitting on the you know again i hate to bring it back to politics but when you look at the kind of money that politicians spend right it's big but they're changing an entire narrative yeah of the way a country sees the themselves but they don't spend the kind of money that brands spend i mean you know on a global basis so like let's kind of have you know create stuff that actually moves the world forward and changes the conversation and create something that is a shared experience or any of those kind of things, man.

24:46And I think that, again, we don't hold ourselves up to a high enough standard to appreciate the importance. And more than that is how lucky we should be and the opportunity that we have to work on in this business and do what we get to do. It's, to me, it's pretty, you know, I'm always in awe and I, you know, I could not love anything more. No, no, no. You have to love it. Like you said, otherwise get another job. Yeah. You know? You brought up AI not long ago. I got to touch. I got to get your thoughts on. Where does AI right now, in your opinion, truly move the needle for CMOs? Everywhere. Every single place.

25:22Now, look, I'm not bandwagon like that. I believe that it's not about product, but it's people, process, and prompts. And I'm very clear with everybody. I'm not worried about AI taking your job. I'm worried about somebody who understands how to utilize AI taking your job. That's what I'm worried about. And for me, that's why I keep saying the most important thing is to spend time actually using it, not seeing a demo, not seeing slides, not seeing theoreticals around what it can do and da-da-da-da-da, but actually using it. because it's only until your mind, you know, is unlocked because you have really true base level.

25:59I don't need you to even be expert, but just experience and seeing and experiencing across a vast majority. That's why, you know, I'm creating product. I'm managing my life. I'm just going through all the things. Now, look, a lot of that stuff I'm never going to use, but reality is that it continues to shape how you now see what the world is about to look like. And I think one of the biggest things for me is challenging ourselves to say, okay, what do we do today? What is a process that we do today? Now, what if we just told, hey, I want to give you this and I want this to happen? What would come out of that?