Marketing Only Matters When It Works

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 this week is someone whose career path may not be linear, but it's been anything but boring. Jason Shabee started out in some of London's top ad agencies, including Ogilvy, Publix, Jay Walsh, BBDO, where he worked alongside CMOs and future CMOs at brands like Shell, Unilever, Dyson, Mars, and Ford.

0:48Then came a pivot from creating campaigns to teaching the science behind them. Jason traveled the world, training the next generation of marketers in what actually works when it comes to growing brands. Now, eventually, he jumped back into the deep end. I love that. This time, client side at Diageo, first in Amsterdam working on global strategy for Johnny Walker. and then in New York as head of planning for Diageo North America. He shaped the future of brands like Smirnoff, Bailey's, Guinness, and Captain Morgan. Now, home-rooted in the U.S., Jason's worn many hats, from advising agencies to serving as committee chair of agency relations at the ANA and co-chair of the marketing society in New York.

1:29He brings the kind of perspective that only comes from being deep in the trenches, agency, client, strategy, research, and education. And while he's not one to chase titles, let's just say his next chapter is wide open and any brand would be lucky to have him. I am proud to call him my friend, my confidant, my mentor. Jason Shabee, welcome to the CMO Whisperer Show. Steve, thank you so much. It's amazing to be on the show. I was there when the show was born and I feel a great affinity for it. I also want to hire you as my PR person, by the way. In fact, I think everybody should hire their PR person because the way you summarize a career is so impressive that I'm not really sure who that person is.

2:12But thank you very much anyway. Well, you know, I keep telling people I have like a burgeoning career. It's just like announcing or introducing people at events. Exactly right. That would be perfect. All right. We have a lot to cover, my friend. Yes. We do. And I cannot wait for my listeners and audience to really get to know you like I do. because as you know, as you all find out at the end of this episode, you're going to see how brilliant Jason is and you're going to want to reach out to him. So I want to jump in at a high level to start with. And that is that kind of age-old conundrum, if you will, is marketing a science or is marketing an art or is it a little bit of both?

2:48And you've been on every side of that coin. Where do you think it falls? I mean, thanks for going in with the killer question. Why not? It's funny, actually. You can still find, without looking very hard on LinkedIn and other forums, this debate being played out today. And it strikes me as curious that people seem to have learned so little about how marketing really works, that they can still be debating whether marketing is an art or a science. And of course, you hit the nail on the head by saying that it's essentially both. And I think one of the best analogies for it is something like architecture, you know, the common perception of architecture, like the common perception of marketing, is that it's essentially quite artistic, quite expressive, can be playing on the emotions, and therefore involves a degree of artistry that reflects what we call art.

3:45But of course, anybody who knows anything about architecture knows that the underpinnings of building a building are incredibly concrete, pun intended, and have to be adhered to in order to create something. In other words, to go from an idea to the incarnation of an idea from fantasy to reality, if you like, creating a building, creating a brand communications campaign, creating a piece of music, creating a movie and getting it out there. All these things that are apparently art are, of course, underpinned by the most concrete of scientific principles. Otherwise, nobody will see your movie, but the building you build will fall down.

4:26And that's, you know, you want to build something that's suitable to live in, but is also an architectural expression of something artistic. So there is a relationship between the underpinning principles, which need to be scientific in the popular meaning of the word, and then what is built on top of that, which can be extremely artistic. Okay, so I got to ask then, in light of all that, which was very, very well concise and brilliant, where does AI fit? I think it's early to tell. And I slightly bristle when people talk about AI in that way, because by which I mean, they talk about it as a kind of special subset of its own, you know, which is kind of has no precedent in the past, you know, and I'm not sure that's how I really see it.

5:19And certainly today and for the foreseeable future, AI is an incredibly useful tool to do certain things more easily and more quickly and more cheaply. Beyond that, I don't see it as any more revolutionary than, say, programmatic media buying or the internet per se, which brought new channels and new methods and required quite big implementational changes, but don't fundamentally change the principles of marketing. AI will not fundamentally change the principles of marketing because the principles of marketing are tens of thousands of years old. It's about us as a specialized species selling the things that we make to other people in return for other things and services.

6:05That's really essentially what marketing and branding is still all about. And those human needs don't change just because the technology that is used to implement them or work them out changes. Right, exactly. So you mentioned the debate, right? There's seven decades of modern marketing, as you told me, off the air kind of thing. There's so much debate. There's a ton. The debate will never end, first of all. We and I both know that. It's just going to take on different lives of its own kind of thing, right? Yeah. I want to get more into the debate because I get kind of my Irish up, if you will, when when marketers start getting attacked and you hear the classic, well, CMOs have the shortest tenure in the C-suite.

6:57And there's so many reasons that I think are behind that. Yeah. But just marketing in general, I think still to this day doesn't get the respect that it deserves. And I want to get your thoughts on just starting with why does marketing still not get the respect that you and I both know it should. Well, so first of all, actually, the most recent data, which I think was from late in 23, actually shows that the average C-suite tenure in a Fortune 500 company is about five years and the CMO is about four years. So it's not ridiculously different. And given that there aren't that many CMOs in the C-suite, every C-suite has a CFO, for example, and a CEO, and not every Fortune 500 C-suite has a CMO in it.

7:49In fact, I think it's about, I can't remember, it's about 60 % of them have them or something. So yeah, and therefore it's quite likely that the tenure will be a bit shorter. So I don't love painting CMOs as kind of a flighty or a kind of temporary job tenure because it's not really that different. It is very tough being a marketer and particularly a CMO in the C-suite because two things, I think. First of all, the nature of marketing. And in particular, if there's one key issue, I think, that makes it very hard for marketers to justify their existence, justify their budget, that issue is time.

8:31So most of the feedback loops that apply to the other roles in the C-suite are much more time bound, much more kind of gettable as a time frame. The CFO deals in quarters and years, but the marketing director, the CMO, might well be dealing in two different timeframes, one of which is a shorter performance-related marketing feedback loop, by which I mean a data feedback loop. But the other one may be much longer and very much harder to pin down, to identify, to predict, and ultimately, therefore, to quantify. And that, I think, gives marketing an element of perceived uncertainty. And I say that very carefully because marketing is not beyond a certain measure of you can't predict what your competitors will do or how the category will evolve, all of which are true.

9:32Marketing is not as uncertain a pursuit as people tend to paint it, which is not entirely people's fault, because the time required for some of these things to pay back may be very long. So Byron Sharp at the Ehrenberg Bass Institute is fond of saying Coca-Cola sales today are the results of marketing activity they did 15 years ago. And he's absolutely right, of course. And we all have brands that we know, brands with longevity that we know from our own past that we still buy today. And the marketing of those brands today works differently on us than the marketing that worked 15 years ago for very good reasons.

10:10So I think that's the key structural reason why it's so difficult for marketers to sort of present what they do in a really convincing way. And the other element, I think, is that most people, and I'm afraid I have to include a lot of marketers in this, just lack the frameworks to really put around those difficult and even some of the less difficult aspects of marketing because there's so little formal training, there's so little kind of communication of the principles. To go back to your point, this is why we still have these debates. Nobody debates the merits of compound interest. You're going to get a CMO reinventing the wheel, having to come in and sell the concept of compound interest to anybody.

10:58It's well established because people understand how it works. And they understand the underlying principles of it, which is also something that is kind of open-ended for time. But because people are formally trained to understand these financial things, it's much easier for them than trying to operate in marketing, which is complex and complicated and hard to predict and hard to track the effects of, particularly when you don't have any formal training. Right. Yeah, I could not agree more with what you said, Jason, about the training. And I want to get into that because you have, and I'm going to let the tease here before we get to it in a little bit.

11:34Jason's created this amazing masterclass that I want him to tell you all about. But before we get to that, I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the marketing, just the marketing general, from the consumer side, right? And a pet peeve of mine is when I see research that says something to the effect of, well, this is what marketers think consumers want. And instead of just asking the consumer, and it just drives me crazy. And it just seems like that research constantly comes up every now and then. And I pull my hair out. Like, why are we asking marketers what consumers think and want? Talk to me about how do you feel about when you see research like that?

12:13Or just how do you think consumers in general look at marketing? That's a great question, Steve. And I think there is a, I talked before about a sort of dichotomy existing between performance marketing and brand building marketing. And that's a hot, you know, we could have spent the whole time speaking just about that. I think when it comes to innovation and the evolution of products, that there is a limited usefulness in asking consumers what they want in the context of what you're trying to design. or produce or evolve. And I think there are two sort of stages in a process. Well, there are many more than two, but two big ones let's look at.

13:00One is design and innovation and creation. There was a trend a few years back for something that marketers like to call, and marketing and innovation people like to call co-creation. So we're going to co-create this thing with consumers. And UGC, user-generated content, is still quite a big thing in terms of kind of internet content. Actually, the phrase UGC has become, in my mind, completely bastardized because it doesn't apply to most of what is labeled UGC at all. Point is, most of the breakthrough innovation was not co-created with consumers because consumers don't have the reference points or can't break free from the reference points of what they already know in general.

13:53So consumers will always be likely to design a better mousetrap and be less likely to make the kinds of breakthrough innovations that at the start of category killing redefinitions really, really makes a difference. You really do need creative geniuses and innovative geniuses to spark those different ideas that are really not just distinctive, but different. Because difference is very much in the innovation space. And again, we could have spent this whole time talking about the difference between distinctiveness and differentiation, which we're not going to do. But there is a creative process that relies not upon consumers at all, but on the spark of genius that creative people bring to innovation.

14:41That's the first part of it. Then where do consumers fit in, if at all? Once you've had that idea and brought it to life and you have done enough work to make, to set a course for turning it from an idea into a real thing, then I think it's perfectly valid to go to consumers. And there are actually some really rather good methodologies out there in the market, which if anybody wants to discuss with me which ones those are, we can have a chat. You can find me through LinkedIn. I think there's only one Jason should be on LinkedIn. I could be wrong about that. But there are some good methodologies out there for getting consumers to react to innovative ideas, both in product and in comms and so on and so forth.

15:28And I think that's one of the times when they do come at work, when the consumer viewpoint is valuable. Other time, I think, backtracking is in understanding the insights around category usage and product usage. So insights across things like what Ehrenberg calls category entry points, which is kind of use cases, if you like, for different categories. You know, when do people reach for a Coca-Cola? And it could be everything from a kid's birthday party to, you know, you're dying of thirst on a hot day kind of thing. So things like that inform the creative process. But I don't believe in at the heart of the maelstrom that consumers add any value to that spark of genius, because I think that comes from a kind of more sort of Apple 1984 like place of creation that is quite individualistic, for the most part, and not created by committee, and certainly not created by committee with consumers.

16:36consumers on it. Okay, perfect segue. I want you to tell the world, and I've seen it, and I've seen the curriculum behind it, tell the world about the masterclass you created, but first why you created it. Sure. So we talked a little bit before about how frustrated we both get with the debates around marketing in the echo chamber or the vacuum tube of the kind of, well, particularly on places like LinkedIn, but also to some degree in boardrooms and meeting rooms. And I also get a bit frustrated by the nature of what marketing training is out there. And I think without sort of being too critical, a lot of marketing, teaching and training falls into two camps.

17:24The first is kind of much more theoretical and more abstract and is about, if you like, the science such as it is. And marketing science is evolving, as all good science should, by the way. And it kind of pushes everybody into, or pushes marketers rather, into a kind of psychological and emotional place where they start to think of marketing as this series of kind of rules and guidelines for every situation, and doesn't necessarily make it easy for them to translate those into their real jobs, I think you need to understand what it's like to do marketing at the coalface. And there's a reason why you're called the CMO whisperer, Steve, which is that you have this astonishing empathy that I've seen you deploy to great effect for CMOs and for people in marketing, which starts from a position of understanding and empathizing with the nature of their role, the difficulties of their role, the challenges of their role.

18:30And one of those difficulties, as we've already touched on, is translating the best of marketing science into a specific situation in a specific company that's facing a specific business growth opportunity or business growth challenge. So I've been in and around marketing training now for, oh, about 17 years or more. And I never saw enough of bridge being built between the kind of how to do, how to build brands and how to do marketing. So what the course, what the masterclass kind of sets out to try and do is to make it simple to take the principles of marketing science, data driven, grounded in proven database marketing science, but then use the course not to kind of score those into people's brains, but actually to say, how does this work in your business?

19:32How does this actually come to life? How is it implemented? And get people engaged rather than sort of feeding them the science, if you like. And I know because I know most of kind of what's out there that that doesn't yet really exist. And that, if you like, was the gap that we were trying to fill. I talked about two buckets of sort of training approaches. I think the other one is much more anecdotal. And you see this a lot. actually some of the business books that have garnered more respect are actually surprisingly anecdotal in their structure and their approach and some time ago i kind of swore many years ago actually i sort of swore off reading any more of those because the value of them is so limited and it's even much more limited than doing martin science in a vacuum or in isolation because Because people are literally just telling you what they did and why it worked.

20:32And I got pretty sick of that quite quickly. I think that Baz Luhrmann song, one of the lyrics of the song is, advice is only other people's nostalgia. And to my mind, that applies massively to business, many business books that you read. Don't get me wrong. It's great fun to read about the successes and failures, especially if somebody is a good writer that they've had in their career. But don't treat it, even though it pretends to be, don't treat it as a marketing tome. Right. Because it's not teaching you anything. It's just stories. And that's fine, but it's not training you to be a great marketing.

21:08Don't position it as something it's not. Exactly. So where can people learn? Where can they reach you about the masterclass? Oh, just contact me on LinkedIn. Jason should be C-H-E-V-I-V. There you go. That's all you need to know. and you want to chat about the opportunities that we're creating. And I have a couple of really awesome partners with me as well to talk more about the creative side of things, which I know extremely well, but they have much more recent experience in it. I left the agency world, the creative agency world, oh, back in the early 2000s or late 2000s. And so I wanted people who were really kind of current and knew what they were talking about with recent credibility, which honored to give them the floor to do.

21:57Well, I highly recommend reaching out to Jason on LinkedIn, or you can reach out to me and I will gladly connect you with Jason. Thank you. You will be very, very appreciative. Trust me, even just to talk to this man, because he's absolutely brilliant. Okay. I want to pivot now to some fun. At the end of every episode, I do this thing called the Random Five, as you know. I ask five very random questions. I don't pre-select them. I have this big Rolodex database of questions. Give me five for Jason. Here we go. Pick a card, any card, right? Pick a card, any card. Number one. If you were to give a TED Talk on something outside of your activities, what would it be?

22:34Outside of my activities? Correct. I think it would be something on the power of music. I'm a huge music fan and music means an astonishing amount to me. And in a funny way, I'm cheating here because you said outside of your activities. In a funny way, music is also a bit like marketing and communications. You know, the Beatles wouldn't have been the phenomenon that they were without the ability to distribute their music and get it heard by a lot of people. None of that affects the sound that comes out of your radio or the sound that accompanies a video on YouTube, you know. But you need both parts of it to really kind of make it work.

23:22And how to unleash the power of music, it would probably be something I would, they couldn't shut me up about. I was going to say TED Talks are only like 15 minutes. That may be a problem. I know, that's nowhere near enough. okay next question put you on the spot these are all putting on the spot but this one think about okay if you could swap lives with any fictional character for a day who and why this is kind of a weird one but when i was young i read uh an amazing book which has been made into a film at least twice um called papillon uh by henry chariot and many of you will know it's the story of a French prisoner who gets shipped off to the penal colonies of South America or Central South America and everything that happens to him.

24:11And of course, a lot of it is utterly horrific in the book. I don't know how many times I've read the book and there's been some very good adaptations made into movies as well. Why would I want to be such an unfortunate character? Because I think what he epitomizes and what comes through over the course of this long book is his incredible, irrepressible spirit that he never gives up hope, ever, no matter how grim and dark the situation gets, of things becoming better and of having a solution to the problem and of getting back to France one day, despite the fact that it's a long time before air travel and even getting off the penal island was its own challenge, never mind getting back to France from a place you have no idea and you have to avoid everybody in authority.

25:02But just the nature of his astonishing spirit. There are times when I want to be able to call on that. Just a drop of that in my own kind of DNA would. I'd love to feel how it feels to have that much of that in you. I think you have it more than you realize, my friend. I think I do. And I'll leave it at that. I'll move on to the next question. What's the most used app on your phone? The most used app on my phone? Well, in reality, sorry, this is really boring. In reality, it's probably WhatsApp because all my family live in the UK. So it's just me and Andy here. And so WhatsApp, the ability to message and send photos and texts and stuff for free over the Wi-Fi was revolutionary.

25:54I think people forget how revolutionary it was when it came out because it's now so commonplace and there are so many. But that's probably the most used because my family's across the ocean and I'm keeping in touch with them. What's one thing you think people misunderstand about you? Wow. Gosh. Wow. That's a heck of a question. I think, so I'll be honest. One of the words that people have used about me much more than I'm comfortable with over many years. and it pains me even to say this out loud is i can be intimidating and and and i if i tell you if there's a spectrum with intimidating down one end and whatever the opposite of intimidating is down the other end i always feel like i'm just at the furthest non-intimidating end of the spectrum and i'm and i've thought about it and talked about it quite a lot and i still don't really know why I present like that sometimes.

26:53I think it's an unfortunate combination of kind of a certain type of energy and passion. It is. I never, it always pains me when people say it because it's the last thing I would ever want to be. So as one who gets accused of that as well and labeled as well. Oh my God, a fellow sufferer. Oh my gosh, yes. And I get it for my size, my voice. what someone enlightened me to was, it's not a reflection on you or me. It's a reflection on the person, meaning it's how they're interpreting. You're just you. I'm just me. And I don't want to get on this whole soapbox here, but you can't ever change how someone's going to look at you or perceive you.

27:34You can just be you. Now, I know you personally. I can tell anybody listening, Jason's the most approachable person on the planet. So am I. But we both get that label of, You know what I think part of it is too, Jason, is we carry ourselves with a certain air of confidence and that gets misconstrued. Well, I like your analysis of it. And I've lost count now probably over the years, Steve, of the number of mentees I've had, because I absolutely love mentoring people. You know, it's such a privilege and an honor that somebody would come to you and ask for your viewpoint on something or consider that you have something worth saying that they can extract some value from.

28:16And many of the mentees I've had over the years are still in touch, are even still friends. And so thanks for saying about coachability. It's really something that matters to me. Of course. Yeah, absolutely. Final question. Yes. What's something you're really good at that has nothing to do with your career? Gosh, there's so many things I wish I could say. What I'm really good with is kids. I love kids. I have a son and daughter of my own. Raising them was the biggest honor and pleasure and privilege of my life. I have a huge, I would say tolerance for, I think it's tolerance in a lot of people.

28:56I have a huge acceptance for the nature of kids and the potential and the value of kids. And one of the things I particularly love about kids is their honesty. A little kid is incapable of lying to you beyond a certain level. Yeah. Oh, they can do it, but it's bad, right? You know it and you can laugh along with them. But actually, a little kid who tells you that something is almost always being crazy honest. And I think there's part of me that never kind of really grew up beyond being a kid. So there's a level on which I can really empathize with kids. And I think that is something where has nothing to do with my career, but it's something I really...

29:42I'm really good at it and really love it. And I'm not surprised knowing you the way I do. Listen, what a great conversation. Wow. Is it that time already? It is that time already. It's nearly as bad, nearly as short as a TED tool. Exactly. By all means, anyone out there who wants to understand marketing and be trained in the ways of marketing, find Jason on LinkedIn. It's Shabib, C-H-E-B-I-B, or hit me up, and I will connect you with Jason. And Jason, my friend, my brother, thank you so much for your time. Steve, thank you for yours and for making this so much fun. Keep whispering and we'll talk very soon.

30:20Well, that wraps up another episode of the CMO Whisperer Show. I hope you shared this episode with your friends. And if you have not already, please subscribe to be kept up to date on all the latest episodes. And if you're so inclined, leave me a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you. you