BONUS: Brand Building Live at Cannes Lions

What does it take to successfully market a brand today? Last month, Guy sat down with marketing expert Jim Stengel to find out. Jim spent more than two decades at Procter & Gamble, where he managed international brands like Jif and Pampers. He spent seven years as P&G’s Global Marketing Officer. Today, he consults with businesses large and small, and interviews marketing leaders on his show, The CMO Podcast https://www.jimstengel.com/the-cmo-podcast/. This interview was recorded in front of a live audience on the Amazon stage at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, and was supported by Wondery. This episode was produced by John Isabella with music by Sam Paulson. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our audio engineers were Cena Loffredo and Debbie Daughtry. You can follow HIBT on X https://x.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. And sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com http://guyraz.com/. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  We get support from US Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't. Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems.

• 0:45Guy Raz?

  But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands, on the table in rewards you never earned, money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes

• 1:30Guy Raz?

  based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2:00 AM kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people?

• 2:14Guy Raz?

  So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan, build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea. What separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer.

• 2:58Guy Raz?

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• 3:40Guy Raz?

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• 4:23Guy Raz?

  And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile regular gas in port fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary.

• 5:07Guy Raz?

  Visit mobili fuels.com for details.

• 5:18Guy Raz?

  Hello and welcome to a special bonus episode of How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So last month, I had the chance to attend the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which brings together marketing and advertising professionals and creatives from all over the world. While I was there, I was able to sit down with Jim Stengel, who's one of the most seasoned and knowledgeable brand builders out there. Jim spent more than 25 years at Procter & Gamble, where he eventually served as its global marketing officer. He basically helped establish P&G as one of the world's leading brand builders. Now, today, Jim runs his own consulting firm, where he works with a bunch of different leading brands. And he also has his own podcast.

• 6:00Guy Raz?

  It's a show, not surprisingly, about branding and marketing. Our conversation was recorded in front of a live audience at Amazon's stage at Cannes and was supported by Wondery. And it was filled with insights on what it takes to build a world-class brand today. So I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed being there. And let's get on to the show.

• 6:23Guy Raz?

  So Jim, welcome. It's great to have you. And thank you, everybody, for joining us. Jim, let me start by asking you about P&G. From what I've read, you were actually rejected as an intern, right? Like, you tried to get into P&G pretty early on, and you didn't get in.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  That's good homework, guy. That's nowhere on the Internet to be found, by the way. No, I did not get in as an intern. But I was sort of relentless. I had a great counselor at Penn State, where I was in school, who was an advocate. And I went for the interview. You had to have a unanimous vote. And I remember the smoky rooms, interviewing, behind closed doors, doing case studies. And then they made a job offer to me. The guy pulled a bag of cookies out of his desk, and he said, "This is a secret. No one knows about it. You can come here and work on it."

• 7:14Guy Raz?

  Wow. All right. So you eventually get into P&G as sort of a trainee, early on, very junior. And one of the first products that you work on, and this is really interesting. It's much more interesting than it sounds, was Duncan Hines cookies. P&G owned Duncan Hines at the time. They don't own food brands anymore today. But your job was to introduce this brand to America. Why was it special? Why was it a different product at the time?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Well, Duncan Hines was a brand that had cake mixes primarily, and brownie mixes. This was a baked cookie, a ready-to-serve cookie, if you will. So we were taking on Nabisco, and Keebler, and Frito-Lay. And we thought we had a better product. And it was crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. We spent a lot of money on advertising and sampling. We put it in test market, got to a 25 share, and then decided to go national.

• 8:06Guy Raz?

  What's interesting about it at the time was that the cookies that you bought at the grocery store, this is in the early 80s, they were like hard, crispy cookies. Here, you had, it was designed to taste like a fresh-baked cookie.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Correct. And it did.

• 8:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And you had, basically, a budget to get this in the hands of every person in the United States?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was a kid. I mean, I was 28 years old. I came into P&G, and they said, "Here's $60 million. We want you to put this cookie in the hands of every person in America over the summer." So I had to work at the post office, refrigerate at truck companies, and design a program where every person in America tried them.

• 8:43Guy Raz?

  And how did they do? I mean, your biggest competitor at the time was Keebler, right there doing soft batch cookies. I remember those as a kid. I loved all the... Any cookie I could get my hands on. How did you do against your competitors?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  You know, we got off to a really fast start. We built out a national expansion. We built a factory.

• 9:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  And we expanded, and honestly, we were crushed, Guy. It was my first big failure at P&G. We underestimated our competition, and we underestimated the consumer's desire for massive variety in cookies. And we had like five flavors of chocolate chip. So we ended up exiting the business. And we just... It was not our specialty. Thinking we could come in there and these established baking companies and take away 25 share? Forget it.

• 9:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You've written a few books, and one of the things that you write about is something that you really got into early in your career, which was immersion research. And we're going to talk a little bit more about this over the course of our conversation, because I think it's critical. And one of the first places that you sort of tried this out was with peanut butter. You were assigned Jif.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Jif Peanut Butter.

• 9:51Guy Raz?

  Jif Peanut Butter.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Assistant Brand Manager.

• 9:52Guy Raz?

  And so, tell me what you did. How did you learn about consumer behavior at that time? This is like 1985, 86.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Well, we were kind of pioneers within P&G. We kind of had a staff meeting. We said, you know, if we just try to sell peanut butter, we're going to trade share with Peter Pan and Skippy. Remember them?

• 10:11Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  And so we said, we've got to go deeper, and we've got to be sort of a parenting advocate. And we've got to talk about nutrition and lunches. And we have to think about other flavors and make it even more nutritional. We have to talk to our farmers. So we did a lot of immersive research.

• 10:27Guy Raz?

  Did you actually spend time with like, parents, moms in particular?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  We spent time with moms. We spent time with teachers.

• 10:32Guy Raz?

  What were you asking them?

• 10:34Speaker 01

  What's important in their life, and how can we help?

• 10:36Guy Raz?

  Not, what do you want in your peanut butter?

• 10:38Speaker 01

  No. And you know what we heard? You would hear today, education, our schools. So we formed an alliance with parent-teacher organizations around the country, and we aligned our sales with funds that we would give them to improve their schools. And it was a massively successful program.

• 10:53Guy Raz?

  And at the time, I think right before, Jif had a slogan, and it was something kind of, you know... Not particularly exciting. It was like Jif peanut butter is healthy or something like that, right? But they had had another slogan, choosy mothers choose Jif, and they dropped that. But essentially, you said, let's bring that back.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  We brought it back. You want me to sing the jingle?

• 11:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  No, no. There was no jingle. It was a declarative statement.

• 11:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  No, we brought it back. And it says, and they ran with that for decades.

• 11:23Guy Raz?

  And what, I mean, what happened? I mean, was, I'm assuming Skippy, Peter Pan are the competitors. You've got Jif and this campaign. What was the result?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Well, Guy, I mean, we still made a better product. I mean, that's a very P and G value. You always want to take, have a demonstrably better product than your competitive set. So we still have a great product, but we thought if we could align with their values, and if we could help in things that mothers and fathers and parents care about, we would have higher awareness, higher loyalty, and a stronger brand. And that's what happened.

• 11:52Guy Raz?

  And what, I mean, so what did it, what did it do? I mean, did you see the needle moving?

• 11:57Speaker 01

  We had record share, record sales, record profit. In fact, the company had an annual meeting every November with thousands of people gathered in the Coliseum in downtown Cincinnati. People came from around the world. They asked me and my team to go on stage at that meeting and tell our story about how we immersed ourselves with consumers, changed our plans, and designed a program that resonated emotionally and built a share to record levels. And it's actually a lesson I've never forgotten.

• 12:22Guy Raz?

  All right. So another product that you work on, this is again, another example of immersion research, which is, this time it's in Europe, I think it begins in Europe. This was in the late 90s. Set the stage for us. Pampers was a leading diaper brand and a huge business for P and G. It's getting its butt kicked by Huggies, right?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:45Guy Raz?

  You've got a rescue, a task to rescue Pampers to figure out what's going on. Huggies is just in the ascendant, and Pampers is in the decline.

• 12:55Guy Raz?

  What did you start to do? How did you start to learn about what you needed to do?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Well, Guy, I was working in the Czech Republic at the time. And my boss's boss called me one day at work and said, "I want you to be at the Lufthansa Lounge in the Frankfurt Airport that night." So I met him in the Lufthansa Lounge about 9 o'clock at night, and he said, "Pampers is a bit of a shitshow, and I'd like you to leave the Czech Republic and come here sort of immediately. And I want you to unite our team internally." Because Western Europe and North America were fighting each other. And I'd like you to unite the team and figure out a way to stand for something more meaningful for our parents and to try to reinvigorate this brand. By the way, Huggies had just entered Europe, and we're gaining a lot of market share, and that was just not acceptable.

• 13:44Guy Raz?

  I mean, what was the problem? Pampers was, I mean, the assumption is it's diapers, right? And so what do diapers do? They keep babies dry. Like, that's how you would market that product. But that wasn't what was resonating with parents?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  We spent a lot of time with parents, a lot of time with parents. And about what's important to them, it's the same as the Jif peanut butter lesson. And obviously, what's important to a parent is their physical, social, psychological development of their babies. So we said, "What if we can be a help to that?" Because, by the way, we had people in almost every hospital in the world sampling Pampers when a baby is born. Often, it was the mother's first conversation, which was with one of our samplers. We were doing nothing with that. So we said, "What if we could be the parents' advocate for baby's development, and we could stand for that?" And what happened is, I mean, to make a very long story short, that idea caught fire around the world. We united the Pampers global team.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  And within about 12 years, this was a big brand when we started, PNG's biggest brand, we tripled our revenue. And improve the profitability and set an example frankly for P and G corporately.

• 14:51Guy Raz?

  Essentially, you introduced this Pampers phases product line. And so as a parent, you go to the grocery store and you see zero to three months, three to six.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Correct, correct.

• 15:01Guy Raz?

  And that's a game changer.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and all specially designed for that stage of development in a way that was better than our competitive set.

• 15:06Guy Raz?

  All right, I want to ask you about one more case study before we move on to how this applies to today, which it does in many ways, but Downy Fabric Softener, I mean, it's amazing how many iconic products P and G owns and has put out into the world. Downy Fabric Softener, particularly in Latin America, was in decline. And you wanted to figure out what was going on. And so presumably, you start to talk to the people who use it most.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, this is a good example of immersion research, getting out there and spending time in people's homes and in their lives. By the way, our executive team at P and G, we met quarterly, this is the top management, before our quarterly meeting, we would always do an immersion. We'd go spend time with people who are not like us.

• 15:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  And so we spent time with very low-income parents in Latin America. We spread out, did this in various neighborhoods. And what came out of that, and some great research by R and D people, is a new product that took the suds away after you did your wash. Now, that sounds like it's maybe silly, but these people are carrying water sometimes a mile, two miles, three miles to do their laundry. So if we can have them do laundry in one load of water and take the suds away quickly and have the clothes clean, fresh, and not soapy, it was an enormous benefit. So that came out of the immersion research. We acted on it, we developed it, and it became a huge product around the world.

• 16:31Guy Raz?

  You essentially reformulate the product, so it's not as sudsy, it doesn't require as much rinsing.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 16:37Guy Raz?

  And you basically have a new product.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 16:39Guy Raz?

  Okay. So now, we've heard about these three case studies, all the results of real, like, ground research, right? And so now, let's bring it to the present day and the present moment, right? We are in an era of massive data, and it's just growing. I mean, you can measure everything now, and increasingly, everything more. In your view, do you feel like brands today rely too much on statistics and not enough on ground-truth fact-finding?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  It's an Ann guy. I mean, honestly, there's a lot of talk here in Cannes this week about this. I was a, in fact, I had a nickname when I was an assistant brand manager at Jiff of Data Man. So I spent my time in the brand group just scouring the data about the brand, the competitive set, distribution, what's happening. And I would spend a lot of immersion time in stores with mothers, with parents. You've got to do them both because insights will pop out when you're using both sides of your brain. So I'm an advocate for both. But if you do one without the other, you will not be a world-class marketer or a world-class brand builder.

• 17:49Guy Raz?

  We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, more from my conversation with Jim Stengel, live at Cannes Lions. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 18:06Guy Raz?

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• 18:48Guy Raz?

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• 19:32Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new, expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it.

• 20:17Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built.

• 20:45Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to this special bonus edition of How I Built This. Here's more from my conversation with Jim Stengel, live on the Amazon stage and supported by Wondery and Cannes Lions. So Jim, what is a marketing campaign that you've seen in recent years that you've really loved, that's really impressed you?

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Well, I can talk about things that affect my behavior.

• 21:09Guy Raz?

  Please.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Because then it gets very personal. I mean, I love that you've had this brand on your show. I love the brand Viori coming out of Encinitas. I almost, my wife will laugh, I almost only wear that now.

• 21:20Guy Raz?

  Pronounced Viori, by the way.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Viori, okay.

• 21:22Guy Raz?

  But it's okay.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Viori, okay.

• 21:23Guy Raz?

  Spelled Viori.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  But I was an early adopter. My daughter, I don't know, maybe eight years ago, nine years ago, bought me some of her Christmas. And they just had, as you know, had a massive investment a couple of years ago. And they're expanding like mad.

• 21:37Guy Raz?

  You know, and by the way, Viori is an interesting case study because when they started, they really struggled, you know, they had a...

• 21:43Speaker 01

  It's a good show you did with their founder.

• 21:45Guy Raz?

  Thank you.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  It's a really good show.

• 21:46Guy Raz?

  Thank you. Joe Kudla started that brand.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:48Guy Raz?

  They didn't resonate. And the reason why is they tried to sell yoga wear for men.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:53Guy Raz?

  In yoga studios. So they really kind of took the same product and just changed the way they marketed it. They basically said, hey, this is for hiking, it's for hanging out with your kids, it's for surfing, swimming, going to the gym, doing yoga. And somehow that clicked, you know, that started to click with consumers and it became this product and brand that first men and now women, you know, were buying because they saw it as an all-purpose, comfortable activewear brand.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  I'm wearing it now, guy.

• 22:22Guy Raz?

  Those are Viori, yeah. And there was nothing like it. Obviously, the landscape has changed in the time since you've left P&G. Social media marketing has become much, much more important. It basically didn't exist right in 2008. And I wonder if you were still at P&G today, right? Or you were running marketing at a major organization in an era of social media influencers and AI, you know, the potential for AI to write ad copy. What would keep you up at night? Or how would you think about... Positioning brands now.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Well, what would keep me up at night is, is are the brands relevant? Are they in touch? It's easy to be irrelevant today if you're not in touch. I think what I would do, the strategies would be the same, Guy. I mean, where are your consumers spending their time? How are they getting their information? Who's influencing them? And that's easy to see. Then you have to act on it. And you have to leave some of your old paradigms and frameworks behind. Kraft Heinz, who is well represented here at Cannes, I don't know if any of them are in the audience, they're doing some super creative work because they're following the consumer. And by the way, they're unleashing their organization to enjoy the work, to have fun with it, to do things that are entertaining and engaging. And when you do that, good things will happen.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  But the same strategy, be close to your customers, understand where they are. It's just a different tactic today than it was 20 years ago.

• 23:50Guy Raz?

  You know, I'm speaking of Kraft Heinz. I saw an incredible ad campaign, I think they did it a year ago. And it's just images of people in restaurants pouring out ketchup. And in the back of the kitchen, you see somebody pouring an off-brand ketchup into a Heinz bottle. And I think the tagline is like-

• 24:06Speaker 01

  It has to be Heinz.

• 24:07Guy Raz?

  It has to be Heinz.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Has to be Heinz.

• 24:08Guy Raz?

  And it's such a powerful message. And you can, it resonates because everybody's had that experience where you dip a hot french fry into ketchup.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  And it's not Heinz.

• 24:17Guy Raz?

  And most of the time, I mean, Heinz, you know, Malcolm Gladwell has written about this, right? I mean, there's a reason why you come back to that product.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  I think they're going to advertise in this show, Guy.

• 24:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah. If Heinz is here, we'd be happy to have you. You know, there was a panel discussion the other day about the future of advertising. And it's windy here. This is nice, actually. It's very, very pleasant up here on stage. It feels pretty good. And one of the panelists said, it was a younger content creator, and this person said, "Look, I think that the future of advertising is not going to be mass-market TV-type spots. That's dead. It's going to be niche marketing. It's going to be influencer marketing." And I wonder what your take on that is. I mean, do you think there's some credence to that idea?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  I mean Gary Vaynerchuk talks a lot about brands starting on social. That's largely right. I agree with that. That's where the energy is. That's where the people are. So the companies that are adjusting how they have, not their strategy, but how the strategy comes to life are the ones that I think are building big brands that are relevant. We talked about Kraft Heinz a minute ago. Those are big brands. They're in many ways mundane brands, but they are being talked about on social. They're doing things that gets attention and gets engagement. Getting attention today, you can't buy it anymore. You have to earn it. And earning it's a lot more challenging and takes a different kind of team and a different kind of work than in the old days when I was young where you could spend $60 million and pretty much get 90% awareness.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  It's a different world now and the companies that realize that and are acting on it, and thankfully a lot are, are winning.

• 25:58Guy Raz?

  Do you see influencer marketing as sort of the future of where this?

• 26:04Speaker 01

  If it's authentic. If it's authentic. I mean, we did a little workshop this morning with CMOs and that we talked about that guy and, I mean influencer marketing was here when I started my career.

• 26:15Guy Raz?

  What was it, and what did it look like?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  It looked like finding somebody who was an expert.

• 26:20Guy Raz?

  Or a celebrity.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  A celebrity, committing into your company, learning about your brand, honestly believing in it, and then advocating in their circles. So the strategy is no different. It's just it happens right now at scale more quickly because of the platforms and it's changing. Someone who's an influencer today may not be next month.

• 26:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  And that's why you have to be very, very in touch.

• 26:43Guy Raz?

  You know, Mike Cesario is at this conference, the founder of Liquid Death, and we had him on the show.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  I was with him yesterday.

• 26:49Guy Raz?

  And we had him on the show a few months ago.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:51Guy Raz?

  And I think a lot of people went to his presentation and were blown away, but also feeling a little bit like, well, how can I do that in my company? Because essentially what he did was, he took a tired, staid category, bottled water, and he turned it on his head. You know, he turned it into a purple cow, what Seth Godin calls purple cows. He was, it was so weird. Like you have to go into the grocery store and pick it up because you're looking at this can with a fiery skull and these old English lettering and it says Liquid Death and you're like, what is that? Is that malt liquor? Why is it at Whole Foods? It's so weird that you're compelled to pick it up, but for a variety of reasons, big brands...

• 27:34Guy Raz?

  Weren't or aren't doing that. And it's not that they can't do that. So why, you know, what is your, when you talk to big, big brands and they want to be scrappy, but they can't, how do you advise them to think about taking risks?

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Well, I think what Mike shared yesterday was it's about entertainment, right? And that's a different process than the kind of advertising. So he's nailed that. I mean, there are brands like High Noon, which went from nothing to the leading brand in canned alcoholic beverages. You know, they're a gigantic brand and they have a great product, interesting packaging, great distribution. So they just did the fundamentals extremely well with a pretty simple insight. People want something that tastes really great, that's light, that's a daytime drink. And, but I think with Liquid Death, one thing I would add to that, we don't maybe talk about this enough. They came out with a can because they're anti-plastic. So that was a big point of difference. And they came out with, they want water, which is healthy, and they want to take business from the sugared

• 28:34Speaker 01

  sodas. So they had, you know, P and G like points of difference in their brand. And I think that's, that's a really big reason why he's been successful.

• 28:44Guy Raz?

  You know, it's interesting because for the past, I don't know, 20 years or so, and we've had many of these brands on How I Built This, we've seen lots of brands position themselves as social enterprises, right? Do good and do well, you know, or a version of that, almost downplaying the business side, almost downplaying the capitalism side. And I wonder whether, let's put aside the sort of the, let's say, moral correctness or whatever you want to say about it. Do you think consumers care?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I think most do. I think, I think they want a brand, I mean, I've done a lot of research on this, I think they want a brand that, that they are proud of, that is doing things that align with their values, that they respect. That they trust.

• 29:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  I think it's important for brands to have a meaning and have a purpose. It needs to be consistent with who you are, your company's values, your heritage, what your customers care about.

• 29:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  And when all that checks in, then I think you'll be making the right choices.

• 29:42Guy Raz?

  Well, let's, let's talk about politics for a moment. Nobody likes to talk about that, but I think it's, it's important to talk about it. And I think probably a lot of people here have had conversations around, around politics. Many brands in recent years have tried to be responsive to the political climate. Mm-hmm. Sometimes driven by employees at the companies. In some or even many cases, it has backfired. Now, you are seeing more and more brands just say, you know, look, our job is to provide the best possible product and experience to consumers. We're going to stay away from issues or politics. But that can also be a challenge. It can also be problematic. How do you navigate that?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  I think you have to keep your employees involved. And I think those people who make decisions without consulting deeply and frequently with their employees make bad calls. You have to stay, it gets back to our immersion research comment. You have to stay close to your customers. What's important to them? What do they value? I mean, many big brands appeal to all sorts of people and you can't forget that. And so what you choose to get involved with needs to be a strategic choice in terms of what your employees and, and, and customers care about. And then stay with it, guys. Stay with it for years and don't wobble. I mean, we, we talked about Pampers earlier. They had a program to get rid of tetanus in developing markets by partnering with UNICEF. The partnership went like 20 years. And it was fabulous for the brand, fabulous for the world.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  And I think they made the decisions against using the right criteria and it was, it worked very well.

• 31:16Guy Raz?

  But that wasn't political. I mean, that's about public health.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 31:19Guy Raz?

  Right? You know, and when we're talking about, let's, let's pick some examples. I mean, Nike famously partnered with Colin Kaepernick.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 31:26Guy Raz?

  The, it led to a 3% dip in their stock price. But then within a-

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Short term.

• 31:32Guy Raz?

  Right. Then within a month-

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Short term.

• 31:33Guy Raz?

  The stock rebounded and really skyrocketed. And they increased their social media following.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  But it's consistent with how Nike sees the world. That was not a surprise. I don't think to anyone what Nike did. And they didn't back down. They stayed consistent with it. So I think if you're going to take a stand like that, which I think was right for them and right for their brand and right for their values, it worked. If they had wobbled, it would have been a very different story.

• 31:58Guy Raz?

  Do you think that younger consumers, do they punish brands that are culturally or socially or politically neutral?

• 32:06Speaker 01

  I don't, I think they punish brands when they don't do what they say they're going to do and that they're not relevant to them. I think it's a bit category, company, founder specific in terms of how people take a point of view on this. I think it's more complicated for Tide to take a point of view than it is for Fure. And I think that's just the reality and you have to understand that when you're managing a business like that. You, at the end of the day, have a responsibility to your shareholders, your communities, your people, your employees, your customers, and you've got to balance all of that and that is the beauty and the complexity of leadership.

• 32:43Guy Raz?

  You know, we have a new sort of Thursday episode called The Advice Line where I bring on past guests, founders, to give advice to very, very early startup founders. People who are, you know, selling trucker hats or, you know, starting their own cookie business. And the question we get again and again and again is, how do we break through? Social media advertising is tougher, it's tougher to break through buying ads on Meta and, you know, TikTok. It's just getting harder to reach people. And so, obviously, you've worked with massive brands, but most businesses in the United States are small companies. They're small businesses, they're small startups. And so, when somebody asks that question, how do I break through?

• 33:26Guy Raz?

  How do I get the attention of consumers?

• 33:31Guy Raz?

  Where do you start? I mean, do you, do you?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  I think you have to start with a really, really interesting question that a lot of people don't start with and don't have a great answer to, and that is, who is that group of people who you want your brand to be relevant and important to? Exactly who are they? And you just can't say, people 18 plus. Get much more specific about who you think you have a special product or service for and go after them. And it has to be big enough for you to at least meet your early business goals. But once you get that group to be aware of you, to get their attention, to buy you, to be an advocate.

• 34:07Guy Raz?

  It's what the military calls force multipliers. You essentially find your... I mean, there's a theory around 1,000 fans. And 1,000 fans can really blow up a brand, right?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  I mean, you go back to an old P&G lesson. Febreeze, which is now a multi-billion dollar brand, wasn't always that. They made a choice about what kind of people would find the most benefit. And they started with cigarette smoking people.

• 34:30Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  And then they went from there. And they kept experimenting with different groups. Smelly teenagers.

• 34:36Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  You know, so it starts there. And that's where you begin your marketing. And then you... It's a force multiplier.

• 34:42Guy Raz?

  Jim Stengel, thank you so much for being here. And thank you all so much for coming to the show.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Guy, I'm a big fan. It's an honor to be with you. Thank you for the invite.

• 34:56Guy Raz?

  That's Jim Stengel, former Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble and host of the CMO Podcast. And thanks to Amazon and to Wondery for hosting our conversation live at Cannes Lions. And before you go, please don't forget to sign up for my newsletter. It's filled with insights and ideas from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs. You can sign up at guyraz.com. This episode was produced by John Isabella with music composed by Sam Paulson. It was edited by Niba Grant. Our audio engineers were Debbie Dottry and Isina LaFredo. Our production team at How I Built This also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Elaine Coats, J.C. Howard, Catherine Seifer, and Carrie Thompson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.