CMO masterclass & how to grow billion dollar brands with PepsiCo CMO Jane Wakely and Neil Barrie

0:06Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. Now what does it take to be a truly brilliant CMO. My next two guests have got the answer to that question. Jane Wakeley is the global CMO for PepsiCo and has previous to that worked at Mars for many years and has got huge amounts of experience. And I'm also joined by Neil Barry from 21st Century Brands, who's written a guide to how CMOs can thrive in their roles, having researched and interviewed lots and lots of CMOs and pulled out the consistent themes. So in this episode, we're bringing together Jane's practical experience and Neil's research on the topic to find out what makes a great CMO.

0:42So any aspiring CMOs out there or existing CMOs that want to get better, this is the one to listen to. Here we go. Jane and Neil, welcome to the show. Great to have you both. Thank you so much for having us. Honored to be here. Now, it's great that we can talk about being CMOs, right? So Jane, we've got you in the room. You know, you have an illustrious career at Mars and you've been at PepsiCo, I think almost four years now. That's gone really quickly because I remember when you joined yeah i mean it's been amazing it's been an incredible adventure i must admit time flies it does doesn't it you know and i'm happy to see you break the cmo tenure or whatever the the you know the average cmo tenure is these days so you're safe thank you you've made it um but talking about being a cmo you've obviously had a you know a big career in mars and now at pepsico um what would you say are the main attributes of a successful cmo like yourself Yeah, I've been thinking about that question.

1:36And the way I like to think of the most inspirational and effective CMOs, they see themselves as architects of growth. And I know there's a lot of industry noise about what a CMO should be called. It's not about what you're called, it's what about what you do and how you impact. And I think as an architect of growth, what does that mean? I think your accountability at the board is to bridge the consumer, the human growth opportunity together with the commercial growth opportunity and to be the bridge that spans those two. and as an architect of growth you know if you think of the role of architects what do they do they bring the science of architecture together with incredible art and creativity uh you know i remember if you think of a bridge building you know bridge building hasn't hasn't changed in terms of the physics the laws of physics that keep a bridge up that's been consistent over years and yet the creativity the ingenuity uh the beauty um the insight that goes into incredible architecture that is what lifts it and that's the creativity so i like to think about it as the science and art of growth i like the framing there because i think so many marketers probably focused on painting the finished thing rather than actually deciding what they're going to build aren't they and and often i think in marketing we forget that actually we are there to build the plans and create the vision and and you know I think really of all the c-suite roles probably it's got the biggest impact on company growth of all of them really well I mean I think you know any uh CMO needs to be obsessed about organic growth that is the key the key value that you bring I think there's a lot about the how as a CMO as well and again if I use architects as an analogy I think you've got to bring three assets you've got to bring a spark you've got to bring like a roadmap, a structure, and then you've got to create the right culture, which I think of as like safety net for people to thrive in.

3:35And my daughter, she's traveling in Barcelona at the moment. She just sent me a snap this morning from Barcelona, and she's visiting Gaudí's Sagrada Familia, you know. And that is, he was an incredible architect that used the science to build an incredible cathedral. But, oh my goodness, when you see those winding spires, the sort of organic nature that he built into architecture like no one else has done, I think that's a beautiful illustration of the art and the science. And, you know, what struck me seeing that picture again, and I've used this analogy before, but it just happened that it came into my feed this morning, was, you know, he died more than about 100 years ago, I think.

4:17but his vision for that cathedral was so incredible that others have taken that vision on and have dedicated their lives to bringing that vision to life he created a roadmap you know for the engineers the builders on how to do it and of course you know the culture that you create and and the team that you build and the ability that you give people to learn you know fail learn um agilely evolve that's all the role of a CMO today and you want to paint a vision so bright for growth so human-centered that it's not your vision it's the company vision that's that's but it's you that needs to lead and inspire that together with your team and I think that is essentially you know how the most inspirational and effective CMOs equip themselves.

5:12I love the time horizon you're picking there as well because I think it's very easy isn't it as a marketer to get sucked into the execution of that quarter right yes we've got our quarterly results to hit we've got our targets how do you balance the long-term vision and building you know the magnificent architecture versus the getting the first floor put in place yeah well that is that that is walking the tightrope isn't it and it's always a balance it's always a balance and quite often as you're walking any tightrope, you feel a bit off balance sometimes. So I think it's you've got to have the two horizons in mind.

5:48And one of the points about, you know, creating a vision so aspirational that it's not just yours, it's the company wide. One is that you need to bring the outside in and the future back as a CMO from a human centric perspective. Where are people's lives going? What are the changes, the macro trends, the foresights that are going to change and shape the way people think about your category? How do you lead and shape your category? How do you be a market maker, not a market follower? And I think, you know, that is a deeply human-centric approach to growth that is based in consumer behavior. And I know we're going to talk about how do you make human-centric decisions.

6:29But I think part of the magic of that is you've got to think in very human terms. What is organic growth? At its core, it's about recruiting more people in more occasions. You then have the benefit of premiumization and pricing and other levers, but fundamentally as marketeers, especially on big brands that have lasted multiple decades, sometimes hundreds of years, you know, we are mere guardians in a short period of time on these big brands. and we stand on the shoulders of those that go before us and ultimately I think our value should be measured have we driven human behavioral growth of those brands not just benefited from the pricing value that our brands have through the decades of incredible marketing and brand building that others have built and so I think you know that's that's how I think about it you've got to leave brands better than you found them and you've got to use the science of growth which means you've got to aspire to lead and shape category growth not just drive brand share both are important to a competitive position but 70 of all growth comes from leading and shaping categories so you've got to have your eye on the main task in hand that's very it's a very interesting perspective isn't it actually think about how you grow the pie overall particularly when you have it i guess in your situations where you have lots of distributors bottlers retailers you know you need to everyone needs to be successful don't it's a growing the pie then everyone wins don't they absolutely well neil i should bring you in as well because you've uh launched the cmo thrive guide by the way congratulations on the name i love that because it would have been easy to do the cmo survival guide yeah which would have been probably my default you know having been fired twice from the role but um i'll do the i'll do the opposite of your book here's what not to do it could be the companion to yours well that was very intentional because i think one of the things we wanted to do for the industry is just try and counter the narrative.

8:25There's so much talk around, as you're saying, what's the role? Should we changing the role? The CMOs have never been vulnerable. And our position is great CMOs, they've never been more valuable. And we should stop talking about the vulnerability, but take action to strengthen them. And so that was really part of the impetus for the guide. And immediately, I mean, we started with Sir Thrival Guide, which would have been terrible. So we ended up on Thrive Guy, thank goodness. But for me, I could never be a world-class CMO, but I think have become a very good CMO whisperer over the, I'd say in the last 10 years, 21st century brand, I've probably worked with 100 of the world's leading CMOs and tend to be at quite pivotal moments.

9:09And so I've had a, whether it's the sort of rising stars like the Airbnbs or the Pinterest or the legacy leader brands that are constantly reinventing like the PepsiCo's, there are patterns. and you start to recognize them about what works and what doesn't. And the two things, epiphanies that I had from that was, one, the role is probably, other than CEO, the most varied, complex, almost sort of record scratch in terms of any day you could be, you know, you're deep in the sort of MarTech stack, deep in performance marketing machine, then talking about a serious corporate reputation, purpose, potential challenge or opportunity.

9:47and then you're also obviously talking about the details of growth or judging creativity so i think it's such a range um and so i think the architect piece works really well so that was the the first thing and then the second thing was that the onboarding uh is the first six months are so critical and and we help a lot of onboarding but to be honest we were using things like the first 90 days which was written 30 years ago not for cmos and so the thrive guide was like the first year is critical let's create the playbook for uh ambitious cmos to maximize their impact and so we we went out and really went to town on it i think we got a great panel of jane and her peers about 25 cmos cfos ceos all all really asking the exam question of like what do you need from cmos in their first year to be successful what were the most surprising things you discovered in in in the process of doing that because he was bowie just it resonates for me a lot in terms of the breadth of the role.

10:42Yeah. I think that's a really good observation. And what I've also found is that when things are going well, congratulations to the factory and the sales team and everyone else. When things are going bad, marketing, Jane, what are we going to do about this product recall? We don't need it because you've got a lot of responsibility. And because brand can cover pretty much anything, you've got a lot of responsibility to handle. And you've got a lot of opinions to handle and like a lot of areas. And so I think one of the most surprising things was about growth, you know, because I think going into it, I think some of the people who weren't CMOs were really pushing, particularly on the media side.

11:16We need CMOs today to be absolute P &L experts and sort of the granularity of the measurement systems and so on. I think actually when we talked back to the pretty serious CFOs, you know, CFOs, fanatics and so on. Actually, what they really wanted was just have a really clear link between the human growth and the commercial growth. and making those intuitive links between what really drives people's behaviours and what really drives the business. That's what CEOs and CFOs really want from people. It wasn't about the complexity. And so that was almost a lot of CMOs. We had the impression actually maybe needed to simplify their approach to measuring growth and be clearer about it in the moments when it mattered in those killer conversations.

12:01So that was a really surprising thing. I think the second thing that really struck me was the amount of people that said that their role description was wrong. and in terms of like the first 12 months and actually despite all the expensive recruitment and so on that goes into it just a lot of those things one person described it as a suicide note their their role and so the need for in that first year cmos to really assert themselves on the role and sort of rewrite it in real time with people so those are two surprises that how you start is a really good point isn't it i mean i've been fascinated actually i'm fascinated i know how you approach this jane because a lot of cmos i speak to that starting in terms of setting out what you're about, understanding how the business makes decisions, the role of brand, does everyone understand what we're here to do?

12:45How did you approach kind of the first 90 days at Pepsi? Well, look, joining PepsiCo, it is one of the most incredible companies on the planet, right? So the first thing you do is, I think someone told me once you have two eyes, two ears and one mouth for a reason. And you've got to use all your senses and you've got to listen way more than you talk because you've got a lot to learn in a new business. And so I think the first thing I did when I joined PepsiCo was I did a massive listening tour. And actually, as part of my agreement to take the job, I spent a lot of time with the head of HR and the CEO to contract my learning agenda.

13:28Because I was super conscious that to join a company in this seniority of position in that complex a company. You need space to really learn before you're running the operation and getting involved in the day-to-day because if you don't take that opportunity, you'll never be able to add the value. So I really protected that very much. The other thing was, you know, my original onboarding was very headquarters focused and one of the things I quickly decided was that was not going to be a good move and so actually, you know, I traveled to as many business units as I could, met, you know, our frontline associates, you know, walked the stores, did consumer visits, really spent time with on the grounds teams to understand the power of our brand, the power of our portfolio, the culture of the organization.

14:21You know, I've worked for four great organizations in my time. And, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And if you don't understand the how and the beating heart of a business, however smart you are, whatever value you can technically bring, you'll never, you know, be successful. So really listening, understanding the dynamics of the category you're in, learning from as broad, you know, a base as possible, and getting a feel for the culture. And, and from that, deciding where you can make the biggest difference and going back to your key stakeholders, and whatever brief you've been given contracting, look, here's where I think we can add value and testing that.

15:04You know, I was super lucky. I mean, Ramon, our CEO, he's an incredible leader. He gave me time every week for me to test my hypothesis back on. And he gave me that real opportunity to learn. And I think as a result, you know, it really helped me form the right relationships in the business and also test some ideas, some of which turned out to be very good hypothesis and some of which were early hypothesis that as I became more curious and dug more and understand more from the history, actually I could sunset. And I still have my notes from that first six months to a year of learning. And I have to look back at them.

15:45Because the other thing is, as a new leader, you have incredible fresh perspective and you know that is incredibly valuable to to the company so actually I've got some new associates in my team at the moment and I say write it down because it's incredible how you will forget that fresh perspective and going back to it re-looking at okay so have we pivoted that have we really made a difference you know keeps keeps your fresh perspective fresh for longer as well um but yeah I love I love that insight because because you get that intelligent naivety, don't you, where you see everything as it is, almost like you're the consumer.

16:20And then you develop the institutional wisdom that comes later. But keeping those two things is the trick, isn't it? Yeah, that's really, that's really powerful. And something else, actually, I was really pleased you had in the Thrive Guide was relationship with the CFO, because I think externally, everyone thinks, oh, you must be judged on the last campaign. But obviously, really, you're there to drive business performance and results, aren't you? So how do you kind of shape the relationship between the CFO? What came through on that? A bit of advice I always give CMOs in that first three months of relationship forming is I think your posture should be a servant leader.

16:52And so you're here to be assertive and proactive, but ultimately you are really, really clear marketing, brand building, it's here to service the growth agenda and the CFO agenda. And also, you know, those key relationships, whether it's CFO, CTO in tech companies, CIO and so on. If you're showing up, like, how can we get in cahoots together to make your life easier? And just personally as well, what do you personally need to achieve as well? So I think that's the same for CFO. And any sort of peer C-suite role is servant leader. Second thing, understanding their own journey outside of the company.

17:29What do they really need for the next 12 months? so it really feels like you two are sort of plotting together a bit more, I think, can be really useful. And so, you know, sometimes you might end up rooming with them and those types of things. So just getting that informal human basis for a relationship going, absolutely critical for those things. And with the CFO in particular, the advice I've been given is they all know that there's going to be imperfections in your measurement system and don't pretend otherwise. Like, really be clear about what you're sure about and what you're not. Open the box a bit.

18:01don't don't black box it they hate that so much so be more honest and be able to draw it out on a napkin how you're approaching it be honest about what the gaps are and then plot with them how you can fill those gaps and then they feel a lot more um convicted and confident knowing that they're in there helping rather than that you are trying to sort of present that your way through those difficult conversations which again that was surprising to me actually rather than them expecting it to be all pitch perfect and so on they they know that the cmo measurement system is probably never going to be that.

18:28That is such a good one. I remember, I think it was Karen last year, Jen Chase, the CMO at SAS, she had done this project with her CFO. And what she did, I thought, this is a stroke of genius, she got the CFO to present the marketing plan and talk about the marketing plan. And honestly, you could see how nervous this guy Peter was, but he was really enthusiastic about, and he was talking all the marketing language. I'm just like, wow. I'm like, you've done a number, that's really good. Well, actually, that's one of the really interesting, things that I did. In my learning tool, one of the things I did was, what's the philosophy of growth at the company?

19:06And how aligned is the function? But actually, even more importantly, how aligned are we cross-functionally on the drivers of growth, the drivers of our category? And what we found was that there's as many philosophies as there are individual leaders almost. And so it's one of the things, you know, I feel very passionately about both PepsiCo and at Mars, aligning the philosophy of growth, actually aligning the science of growth and aligning what are the least amount, but the important key levers that make a big difference in your organic growth, I think is critical. And as an architect of growth, that's the language you need to talk.

19:46And when you talk that language, whether, you know, that's what transcends the function. And I think in a way, marketing has been way too siloed. You know, yes, communications is, of course, an integral part of our job, and I'm sure we're going to come on to it, given your system one. But you know, it's one part of your job. And you need to understand the end to end commercial growth drivers, how do you generate demand? How do you operationalize your route to market, go to market against about if you don't really command the conversation at that level and look at growth from that level, you only ever show a slice of it and i think that that you know what i see is great cmos you help unite the company behind what's really important and then each function does it you know gives its unique value but but i think that's pretty key and that's easier said than done and one of the things we actually created well stole from one of our cmos was this thing called the kpi tree to take to all those early meetings where you're literally mapping out the the core bits what drives the business and then how marketing can shift the levers of that and ultimately aligning on okay we've got this whole tree here are the three things that are going to move the needle because that i think that's what a lot of c ceos and c foes are really craving from from marketers just tell me the two things that i really need to move so that the kpi tree for that exact same purpose because it's hard yeah to do that no and that's why having consumer behavioral metrics on growth at the heart of the C-suite makes a difference, right?

21:17Net revenue, profit, those are the financial rewards that, of course, we're all measured on. That goes without saying. However, as marketeers, you've got to drive what are the consumer metrics you're looking at that are the lead indicators of that long-term growth. Because only if you're driving consumer behavior growth do you have a really long-term trajectory to fantastic returns in terms of organic growth. You touched on something there, actually. A quote in your report, which is, silos are the enemy of execution. And I remember, because I spent 13 years at the Pepsi Co. Bottler in the UK, Britvick.

21:50We loved the word bottler, by the way. Oh, okay. I like to think of it. He says, ironically. Strategic partners, I would like. I know. We were always having a joke at the annual bottler conference where we'd go and present it. We do a little bit more than just putting it in the bottle, everybody. Of course. But I worked out that there were seven departments between the idea and the customer. Seven departments. You had to get seven departments to agree to do the thing before it actually happened. And therefore, that alignment across the organization, and marketing's got the responsibility to align the organization around the goals and the vision and all that sort of thing.

22:19So that kind of communication and engaging everybody is so important, isn't it? Yeah, for sure. Jane, I want to ask you one more question as well, just while we're on this topic before we move on. You, of course, used to be an NED, didn't you, as well? which I just I was fascinating though what's your perspective as somebody that sat on a board looking into an organization about the role of marketing because my experience of boards is there aren't many marketers on boards these days I don't know whether it ever used to be but certainly my perception so what I guess I was interested to know what did you learn kind of being an NED and any advice for aspiring marketers who are kind of wanting to influence the boardroom So look, as an NED, I think, you know, you've been hired to bring both your functional expertise, your leadership expertise, and your perspective.

23:04And some of the lessons in marketing on the levers of growth, how to be a great architect of growth, apply to any business. Thinking about your audience, thinking about their needs rather than the product you have to sell. Putting, you know, studying who you are trying to serve and putting that right at the heart of the opportunity. I mean, it is a marketing 101, if you like, but actually I think most businesses can really accelerate their growth if they put a deeply human-centric lens onto growth. I mean, that's huge, keeping a board honest to that truth as well, because often the board's full of sort of operational people, finance people, legal people, doing the due diligence on the company and the reports, and that kind of thing.

23:47It's great to have that voice in the room. I think the other thing is you've got to bring the outside in and the future back. So I think, you know, that's part of our jobs. And any business can really benefit from that horizon thinking. Because in any business, you get sucked into managing the day to day. But actually, if you really want to create performance that really is best in class, you have to create those horizons of growth and opportunity. So that's another thing that I think, you know, any CMO can bring fantastic perspective onto the board they serve. Love that phrase, by the way. Future back, outside in.

24:23That's great. One thing I'd add from my experience, because we tend to deal with the boards a lot when we're doing the foundational brand strategy for clients, is just that the brand itself is a board level concern. And I think most boards would agree with that. And so CMOs are often the custodian of the brand. because whatever your sort of five-year agenda is with the business whether it's a if it's an IPO if it's a sale if it's an M &A and so on the brand is going to have a big influence on that like your category multiple your brand really influences that total addressable market your ability to attract the best talent so brand is is and it's just literally your narrative I mean the the S1 you know if you're going to an IP and say so many times what my company's been involved in in those narratives because ultimately you're telling the story of the company and so and the cmo should step up and and own that who better than them so that the brand is a real route as well as marketing you're right ironically that i've i've never talked about brand more than when i was in private equity which i was kind of i was surprised i was expecting i'd be trading every day kind of thing but they really know what they bought the asset is the brand and that's what they're buying and that's what they're selling and so there's so much obsession in the in the brand now the budget it didn't necessarily match the aspiration, which makes you think.

25:40But I love that kind of like real kind of value of the brand. I wanted to, well, recording this in the office of Poppy, of course, I should first of all say congratulations on acquiring a pretty cool brand that's been going places. And I just, one question to ask you really is how, obviously we talk a lot about startups, about scaling up. And I know you've been getting your heads around what does it mean to stay up as well, which I hadn't come across that kind of framing before. But with legacy brands like you have, I mean, I can't remember this to see, but how many billion dollar brands in the PepsiCo family?

26:13Well, yes, we have 23, which are way above a billion. Yeah. And we serve a billion consumers a day just as a I mean, that's wild, isn't it? Just process that in your head. It is so exciting, but it's also a deep responsibility. So absolutely. So you're managing a portfolio of brands and to manage growth. Like, you know, our big brands, I mean, Lays is, I thought, the biggest food brand in the world, for example. We've got four brands in the top 10 food and beverage brands in the world in terms of brand cantile value. Those are brands that have been around for generations. And as you say, you need to manage a portfolio differently.

26:51You've got the startup phase, the incubate phase. I love the framing that you've put on it. You've got the scale up phrase and obviously poppy is incredibly exciting. It's creating a new category within what we call liquid refreshment beverages. And it's a new category that's bringing new users, new occasions, really fresh perspective. And then you've got your big legacy brands like Lay's, Pepsi, Gatorade, Doritos, which require enormous scale to keep growing at the rate that they've been growing. I mean, when you're growing, you know, a brand of 10 billion plus, you know, you've got to grow at the size of many, many even scale up brands every year.

27:32And that takes enormous art and science. It takes enormous discipline on the science front, but it takes enormous creativity. And those skills are different. You need a fantastic portfolio management strategy, of course, but you also need to really understand the growth model that you're applying at the different stages of development of per capita and brand development. Now, I've seen this up close and personal because I launched Lipton IST, Mountain Dew and Gatorade in the UK. Amazing. All of which are in those billion dollar category brands, right? They're all fantastic. Not in the UK, of course.

28:04So I was at the shop, I remember on Mountain Dew, probably the most successful product launch I've been involved in, in terms of beating expectation. It was wildly successful. But I remember at the time, the American strategy was consolidating down to the core green flavor, stripping out all the variants. And I was just trying to build the brand. So I was like, hang on, I need more. I can't just do one. You know, I need the red one, the blue one, whatever else. So I remember that big debate having about kind of portfolio strategy and lifecycle. How do you make those decisions? Because obviously you oversee an enormous portfolio, brands in different stages, cultural barrier, of course, won't it, in terms of, you know, the legacy, you know, in one country compared to another.

28:42How do you kind of like navigate all that complexity? Look, the answer is we develop a very compelling category vision based in the human future, the consumer needs and the consumer foresight into the future. And we do have the main thing you need to break through on is focus. Because at PepsiCo, you could grow any of our brands, honestly. We have an incredible portfolio of brands. It's just you have limited resources. So you have to focus the organization on the biggest bets. And you have to balance that horizon planning of how are you servicing the needs of today, the channels of today, but also shifting resources and pivoting resources towards the future.

29:28And I've never met a CMO yet that said, oh, I shifted resource too fast. You know, normally it's very difficult to shift resources to the future. But you have to be, I think, very decisive and focused. And a good example at the moment is the brand Pepsi team across the world. You know, they've made a very, very decisive move towards betting behind Pepsi, behind food deserves Pepsi. Food occasions and Pepsi with food is our biggest growth bet. And it's not just, you know, 10 % of our investment. We're shifting significant investment to it. and we're putting creativity at the service of that job to be done end to end.

30:12So yes, in comms, you'll see fantastic and creative comms that really cuts through and grabs your attention. But it's also about our way from home strategy, for example. How do we secure, you know, more distribution of particularly Pepsi Zero, which we're super proud of. It is, you know, winning the Pepsi Taste Challenge all over the world. You know, so how do we shift our resources to ensure that the consumer gets to try, you know, our crown jewels like Pepsi, Pepsi. I love that campaign, by the way, because I'm old enough to remember the first one, like the first Pepsi challenge. And even when I was at BritVic, I started my career at BritVic in 97.