Where Brand Meets Revenue - Maxime Guirauton

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 Maxime Giroton, Vice President and Global Head of Marketing and Sales Development at Visa, where he's helping power the engine behind Visa Direct and driving demand across markets, regions, and time zones.

0:41Before Visa, Maxime was the CMO at CurrencyCloud, the cross-border payments platform that Visa acquired. And earlier in his career, he led major brand and growth work at Samsung Electronics and JLL. Translation, he's lived inside global enterprises, high-growth tech, and complex B2B ecosystems. And he knows what it takes to build brands that actually move revenue. new. He's also the co-host of Visa's Money Travels podcast, where he sits down with industry leaders to unpack the future of money movement and marketing innovation. My new found friend, Maxime Giroton, said that right. Welcome to the show.

1:22Maxime Guirauton:Amazing. So well done. I don't know how long you practiced the surname, but very well done. Sorry for the French surname. Not an easy one. No, no, no. Listen, I told you off air, I practiced for 15 minutes before this recording. So if you You ever need me to announce you at an event, I got you. Can't wait. Okay. I'm going on the list now. Exactly. All right, we're going to have fun. So you've built your career across global brands, high growth fintech, and now you're one of the most powerful payments platforms in the world. You've seen marketing from the inside of scale, speed, and serious complexity.

1:57First question is when you look back across that journey, and it's been crazy and wild, what's the biggest shift you've seen and how marketing is expected to drive business today?

2:08Maxime Guirauton:Yeah, really, really good question. I think there are a few things that we've seen. Seismic changes from the role of marketing in the organization and the role of brands and the role of marketing sometimes are opposed. And people are looking at that at two different things. And really, it's between what the brand side of marketing is and what the commercial side of marketing is. And we're seeing a lot of changes and a lot of back and forth on these questions, which are really, really interesting, but also really confusing, if I'm honest. And I think for me, it's part of the same equation. You have to be really strong on building the brand, because the brand is what's going to open the door, as well as building the commercial side, because the commercial side is what's going to generate the revenue for you.

2:58Maxime Guirauton:And I think the combination of these two actually make marketing powerful. The other thing that I've seen, and also because I've worked across different industries, is the role of product marketing in marketing. And this is a function that keeps moving between product, go to market sometimes, marketing. Yet it is core. When you want to go to market, your product, being a product like a physical hardware product or a solution or a service It's core to the story you're going to tell to the world and what you sell. And I think that's a, for me, it's a part, a complete part of what marketing is in the organization.

3:39Yeah. The shift is really, and that shift connects directly to something that you said that really stuck with me. And you said brands tell people who we are. Commercial shows and why it matters today. So why do companies still get this wrong?

3:53Maxime Guirauton:Well, I think, as you know, it's one of the topics that you covered multiple times on your show. There is a lot of work that has been done by a lot of people to demonstrate the importance of brands and the brand economics. And sometimes people want to decouple the two. Brand also is seen as cool and as a thing that everyone wants to work on. The commercial side is probably harder in a way, in a different way. But also the return on investment is easier. I say easier because it's not always easy depending on the product you sell, but it's easier to demonstrate, right? And then you had that split, right?

4:30Maxime Guirauton:I want commercial marketing day in, day out because that's the today economics. That's what people look at is what's happening right now in my pipeline that I can touch. That's a tangible side of things. The brands will create the value for today and tomorrow. It creates, you know, it will generate your pipeline in two, three, five years down the line. But it is hard to touch right now. So the money you invest today, it's hard to deliver return on investment straight away. And I think that's the reason why so many people are focusing on today and not necessarily looking at the long term and the big picture.

5:13it's i'm chuckling because it sounds so simplistic but that's kind of the point right yeah that's the

5:19Maxime Guirauton:thing is you need to be able to no let me take a step back it's just like when you join a new a new company a new company you're in a new role right we're going to ask you to do your 90 days and what you want to do during your 90 days is you want quick wins you want to demonstrate you're the guy for the role you want to make sure that there are things that straight away you can deliver have an impact over right for me that in a way is your commercial marketing right that's that's what we're going to deliver because straight away you're going to have things that you can tangibly you know touch but you also want to be the guy that is here to share vision of where we're going what we're going to do and how we're going to deliver moving forward and how we're going to evolve and help the brands and the company if you don't want to use brand as a term but the company to be successful, not just now, but in five years.

6:08Maxime Guirauton:Right. And that is probably more where the brand plays a big role. And I think, and today that's the way I like to compare it is like you newbie, that's what you have to do. You build your 90 days and you build with your vision and separating the two is, is a recipe for failure because you might be successful like short term, but your pipeline at some point would dry out because you haven't looked at where you want to be and what your audience wants you to be and why why your product matter is not only what you're selling today is also what you're going to be able to deliver tomorrow it's it's no more complicated complicated than that i don't i don't sound like patronizing and it's not like it's not that no you know it's not patronizing well put it this way anybody hearing that if they take that as patronizing then they have other issues i'll just leave it at that because it's not patronizing it's the truth but Let's pull back the curtain a little bit.

7:00Go within Visa. How does it look when brand and commercial work together, you know, where you're at now? How does it work? How does that look successfully?

7:08Maxime Guirauton:Yeah, absolutely. So, look, I look after Visa Direct, which is the money movement platform for Visa. So, really, when you want to think about it, we help companies, individuals as well, to move money from one point to another point, right? And sending money across the globe, for example, if you want to help a friend in another country or as a business owner, if you want to get paid, you want the money to come your way. 18 months ago now, almost two years ago now, we actually decided to bring a lot of different business lines and acquisitions together under the Visa Direct umbrella, which is not a brand.

7:47Maxime Guirauton:I'm going to be honest. It's a name. Our brand, our master brand is Visa. And we're benefiting massively from that brand. which is one of the most powerful brands on the planet. And Frank, our CMO, and the leadership team are doing an amazing job to take that brand to another level to be relevant. And I think that's a key word, is to be relevant. Our job as Visa Direct has been to create a name that resonates with the particular audience we're going to. The people in financial institutions, the banks, and also the fintechs to actually buy the platform that they need to move money simply across the globe and benefit from that powerful brand that we have and the powerful platform that Visa is.

8:27Maxime Guirauton:We spend a lot of time and of course money to actually explain or re-explain what this new, what we like to call supercharged Visa Direct is and how it's going to help them to move faster is going to give them an edge on the market. And so we spend basically, and probably the math are not necessarily right, but we spend a lot of time and probably 50 % of our budget to go after rebuilding that presence to the market and telling our story holistically to everyone that we're engaging with. In parallel, we continued all the hard work of creating demand and even lead generation, like very B2B here, lead generation, being present at events, etc., to actually find those opportunities, find those clients and prospects that today are not satisfied by what they have or don't know where to start because the payment industry is very complex.

9:28Maxime Guirauton:There are lots of players. Finding your way in, it can be very, very hard. And I think that's what we did. We spent a lot of time doing this. So probably 50%, 50-50. 50 % rebuilding the presence of Visa Direct and simplifying. And we're still on this journey. It's not complete to simplify who we are. And then the other 50 % to actually create a pipeline for our salespeople to find new opportunities and new clients out there. Yeah. So if brand and commercial finally stop acting like rivals, right, and start acting like teammates, then the question is, what role does marketing actually play or what should it play?

10:06So I think for me, there is a big danger is if you start splitting these two things.

10:10Maxime Guirauton:And I'm going to give you a different example and a parallel. What I'd like to talk about is how do you communicate externally and how do you communicate internally? If your communication internally to, you know, your employees and stakeholders is different than the one you give externally, then you've got a problem. Because it means that who you are externally is not necessarily who you are. And at some point it's going to show up. And I think it's the same between the brand and the commercial side. Marketing is a whole. I think we need to stop splitting it in two. Both of them feed each other.

10:44Maxime Guirauton:And, you know, back to my example on communication, you should have something that is consistent that starts from the top of the funnel all the way. It goes from the left-hand side to the right-hand side. Your messaging, your communication, what you deliver for your client has to be consistent. Brand or commercial is the same thing, right? It's two sides of the same coin. I think that's the way we need to treat it if we want to be successful. Yeah, yeah, I know. Now you've talked about using a loop, right? You've talked to me off air about narrative to experience to proof to demand, right? Walk us through how does that show up in a real campaign or a launch?

11:21Maxime Guirauton:Yeah. So let me give you an example. Today, we have the largest and probably the robust, the most robust platform on the planet, right? And network, right? To make sure that we can move money, as I said, from A to B. A lot of the work that has been done at the beginning has been to reestablish that. And we're still like, we're working on this, like establishing that presence, explaining what it is to our audience. But it is also giving tangible, tangible proof point along the way. Right. And one of the things that is, you know, there are a few things that are very important, but it's talking about the speed of that network and delivering this.

11:59Maxime Guirauton:It's not only saying that we can do it, it's also proving that we can do it. And so we're demonstrating that through, you know, various different campaigns that go at the top of the funnel. really, you know, the traditional, I would say, advertising, digital, et cetera, to events where people can actually tangibly see and, you know, play with what we do. So they can do it and they can see it for real, but also getting experience with our existing clients, right? And getting our clients to tell their story to the world, right? And say, this is not just a narrative that they have built, you know, to convince you.

12:35Maxime Guirauton:That's the truth because this is what I'm experiencing every day. And we do that with them. This is more valuable than anything that we can do. And that then generates the right opportunities for us to basically like, you know, build on. I think the other thing as well, and that I think is truly what I think makes us unique. We tailor everything to every single individual, every single, you know, clients we're working with, right? It's every client has a specific need, a specific implementation. And we really make sure that what we deliver is the best for our clients in, you know, for all our clients.

13:11Maxime Guirauton:And if you need a little bit of more of salt or a little bit more of pepper or a little bit more of this and that, we will make that happen. So you have what you need for your, for your challenges, your opportunities and the clients you serve. So you have the loop, the narrative to experience, to prove to demand, right? Where does CMOs or marketers, where does this loop get broken the most? And what can, what can CMOs do to avoid that breaking the loop kind of thing? I think the biggest challenge is to make sure that you don't oversell or overpromise, right? And when you look at right at the beginning, we mark tears, right?

13:46Maxime Guirauton:So what we love is having a very big claim, something that everyone will, wow, I wish I thought about that. Or I wish I would have said it this way. Or it sounds amazing. And then, you know, but it's not the reality. And the clients will, you know, the people will want to engage. But the minute they're going to start like working with you, they will be very disappointed. And we talk as Mark's here a lot about the cost of acquisition versus the cost of retention. If you spend all that money to bring that, you know, that prospect into your pipeline, but actually you create a big dissatisfaction because what you, you know, you have a promise basically at the beginning of the journey, you will never get that person back.

14:29Maxime Guirauton:And in today's world, especially with social media, et cetera, you're probably going to do more damage to your brand than anything else. And I think that's the big danger is overselling at the beginning. Yeah, I agree. All right, let's get this more granular into your specific world because you're not just marketing a product. You're helping shape how money moves globally, right? And you said money movement is becoming an experience category. Very interesting. So what does that shift mean for fintech marketing? So what it means, and this is weird, what I'm going to say is weird. But what it means is that when you buy something, you don't want to buy something.

15:02Maxime Guirauton:You don't want to feel that you're actually paying for something. It has to be very, very seamless, right? And the fintech and the banks, you know, but also all the merchants around the world being digital or not, what they want is for that to, you know, to be as less clicks as possible, as less almost interaction as possible, but also to feel very natural. I'll give you an example, but this is not the only one. But even if you are in a retail store today, there is one thing you always have with you all the time and probably in your hands most of the time is your phone. Paying with your phone doesn't become a payment, you know, you don't feel like I am paying, right?

15:45Maxime Guirauton:It's just the experience of acquiring whatever you wanted to acquire. And it's natural, you have it in your hand and you put it down. And now with the rings, with the watch, et cetera, even more so, you don't need anything in your hand. You can just, you know, put your watch or put your ring on the, you know, on the terminal and that's it. You got what you want. What matters is not the fact that you paid. What matters is the fact that you get what you want. And so you have countries in the world where it's voice recognition, right? And they know who you are. If you go to India, you know, there are lots of innovation around the world that are making this completely frictionless and almost remove the payment from the experience.

16:23Maxime Guirauton:It's actually there, but you don't see it. That's the biggest challenge. And look, the shift, it doesn't just impact consumers. It's completely changing how creators and digital businesses operate, right? And I know you've said before, creators are businesses, not influencers. So how should brands rethink their partnerships because of that? Yeah, I mean, we did an amazing podcast episode with Samia and Colin on our Money Travels podcast. And they were giving a really concrete example, right? They started their business without necessarily knowing everything about the business. As a lot of entrepreneurs do, you start a business and there was a lot that you learned along the way.

17:02Maxime Guirauton:And they were really struggling to get paid, really struggling to get paid. And they were producing all this amazing content and really creating value for the brands that were leveraging their services, etc. But really struggling to get paid. And that is something that has affected the creator economy overall at the beginning. I think now the platform have made that much simpler, smoother. It's part of your contract straight at the beginning. But it is, you know, other industries will probably suffer that as well. So I think part of what we do, we need to do and continue doing is making sure it's integrated.

17:39Maxime Guirauton:The other thing, just to build on what you said, that is important is the financial literacy. And this is for us as an industry, but this is also for us as, you know, mother and fathers and, you know, and whatever, uncle, nieces, grandfather, grandparents, whatever, to actually educate, you know, the young generation about the money. Because at some point they go, you know, they're going to be, they're going to run the business and they run businesses now younger and younger and younger, especially in the creative world. If they don't know how to manage the money, how to get paid, how to pay, but also how to invest, how to save the money, right?

18:15Maxime Guirauton:And really understand what is a good investment versus a bad investment. We will create a generation of young individuals as talented as they can that will be bankrupt before they know it. That is financial literacy is a battle we should all like seriously take on and really put on top of our agenda. Because today, and this is I think also where the school systems is probably in most of the countries in the world is failing in a way or need to catch up with is money is not a bad thing. It's a really important thing we need to talk about. And this is something that we need to talk about at a young age.

18:53Maxime Guirauton:And how do you manage that money is critical because that's going to help you moving forward. Can I connect you with my two kids? Can you talk to them offline? Anytime, anytime, my friend. Are you kidding? I'm not sure I'm the best teacher of theirs, but I try every day. Yeah, but I'm their parent, so I know nothing. But you see, you're an entrepreneur, right? At the beginning, I'm sure you felt that pain, right? Exactly. What do I do? Why do I go? How do I manage this? And all of a sudden, it never goes, it never goes away. And I don't think it should, right? It should always be that, be there like, oh, wait a minute.

19:32I have to think about not just future, but long-term. But anyway, enough about my own. So another thing I want to ask you about is you've talked about liquidity fueling creativity. I love that. So what actually changes in your mind when payouts get faster and friction disappears?

19:48Maxime Guirauton:So the liquidity, the reason why it creates creativity is because the minute you start having enough money, right? You're going to tell me what enough is. I think it depends, right? Everyone is different. But when you have that, when you have enough money, then you start thinking of what you're going to do next, right? What is the next thing that you're going to create that will probably like help you keep growing? Because you don't have to, you're not scared anymore because you have that liquidity. you can start create, you can start think, innovate, go beyond. The liquidity also allows you to invest in something that will help you to go to the next level.

20:27Maxime Guirauton:Basic thing in your world, you start maybe at the beginning, you don't have much, you have the equipment you've got and a lot of people started with a phone. Then you start like having revenue coming in and you buy one of the fancy mic and a fancy camera. The content is much more relevant. it's you know it's much more professional and you start getting additional calls you have more views you create more liquidity that liquidity will help you to invest in a studio and then we you're going to start working with brands doing more things and etc etc right and you can and you can continue your journey and continue to create new thing adding new thing to arsenal because that liquidity is not a problem anymore for you right it's not a matter of being rich i just want to be clear with this, but maybe I hope you can be, everyone can be rich, but it is a matter of creating that amount of money that will help you going to the next level without you being scared that you can't eat tomorrow.

21:20Maxime Guirauton:And that is true for anything, right? Yeah, yeah, totally. It removes that barrier or that problem from your head and it helps you, basically it frees up your mind, it frees up your creativity. Without question. Listen, we can't talk about scale or anything really today while we're talking about AI, right? And whether people love it, fear it, whatever. Now you've said something I completely agree with. You said AI won't replace marketers, but will replace marketers who don't use AI, right? I could not agree more. So first question, where do you see the biggest advantage today when it comes to AI and marketing and those who use it?

21:52Maxime Guirauton:Yeah. So, I mean, I use it every day. I think we need to embrace it big time for a lot of what we do. Where do I use it? And we use it today a lot. We have copywriters in the team. They use it. They use it a lot to look at, to validate sometimes, you know, the quality of what they what they write. They use it also as a source of inspiration sometimes. And most of the time, if you ask them, they're like, well, this is not completely right, but at least it gives me, you know, another angle, something I didn't think of. And it helps actually the copywriters to create better content. We use it, we use it for creatives, creating video, creating assets.

22:28Maxime Guirauton:We don't always need like a big creative concept. Sometimes we need, you know, we need something that would be good, but that doesn't have to be, you know, a breakthrough. And we need speed because we've got something that has been launched. We need something very quickly. We didn't, you know, it was, you know, we didn't know it was unplanned, whatever. We need something quickly. We use it there. And today people don't see the difference. Sometimes we actually have some of them are performing better than the one that are supposed to be like a big creative thing. And I think we also use it a lot for efficiencies, right?

23:00Maxime Guirauton:Internally, we've got AI, we've got access to all the platforms. Visa is doing an amazing job with this and giving us employees a lot of the platforms, you know, that exist out there. And they help us every day. They help us with your emails. You start creating like, you know, robots that will help you basically throughout your day to, you know, so you don't have to read everything. You just have to read what's important. You can focus on what's important in a period of time. You have all the reminders you want, et cetera. And we use that. And then where it helps as well, when you look at, especially on the B2B side, when you look at demand generation and those kind of things, we have people in my team, sales development representatives, very core to generate opportunities for our clients.