108. Break trust? Break the business. Why brand is your most valuable asset with Christine Alemany

Christine Alemany
00:00:00

The larger you get and the more visibility you get is going to catapult you to more customers, bigger product sets, more investors, or it could bite you. Just be open and honest about it. Talk about the issue, talk about what caused it and talked about how they're going to fix it and then they fixed it.

It gives you higher conversion rates. People are more likely to buy from you.

It compresses sales cycles that people spend less time deliberating on whether or not they want to buy from you because they trust you.

Dom Hawes
00:00:45

Hello you, I am Dom Hawes and you are tuned in to the Unicorny marketing show. Welcome to you Today we welcome from across the pond Christine Alemany who is going to talk to us about a very important subject.

Probably something close to all of our hearts but not something I think that we think about within the terms that she is going to discuss it with us today.

And that thing is authenticity, particularly how you manage the short term profit imperative that we are all living with now with the long term need to build trust over time. The profit trap. What's it all about? Let's go find out with Christine Alemany in the studio right now.

Christine Alemany
00:01:27

Hi, how are you?

Dom Hawes
00:01:28

I'm really well, thank you very much. I'm delighted to be talking to you because I've had a dreadful day but I have a feeling it's going to look up, hopefully.

Why don't you start off today by introducing yourself and your work to our audience?

Christine Alemany
00:01:40

Well, I like to say that I am an engineer by training and a revenue generator at heart. My career has been broad.

I started off as a coder during the start startup boom and quickly moved into product and marketing and sales roles for across Fortune 500 and startups alike.

Dom Hawes
00:02:04

And you have a PhD?

Christine Alemany
00:02:05

No, no, I have a couple of masters though. I have.

Dom Hawes
00:02:09

Oh, okay. Talk to me about those.

Christine Alemany
00:02:11

I'm a little over educated so I undergrad in architectural engineering specializing in structural engineering. My master's was in construction management and my research was in workforce automation.

Dom Hawes
00:02:28

Wow.

Christine Alemany
00:02:29

I eventually got an MBA from Columbia Business School. So I'm all over the place.

Dom Hawes
00:02:35

You have everything.

Christine Alemany
00:02:36

I have a lot of interests.

Dom Hawes
00:02:38

Well, I often think actually that sort of background in engineering is really useful for marketers or those that create value because I think that questioning an interrogative mind really helps if you're the person that is responsible for delivering sustainable growth or value. Which of course is what we're going to talk about today.

Christine Alemany
00:02:57

Absolutely.

Dom Hawes
00:02:58

But what I'm excited about, before every show we meet our guests to try and identify subjects. And when we met Christine, authenticity and trust came straight out of the starting gates.

And we all know that authenticity and trust are very important, of course, a business.

But one of the things you said really interested me, which was you talked a little bit about the competing imperatives executives have between the need for short term delivery and long term, effectively brand trust. And that sometimes those conflicts can lead to behavior that effectively erodes authenticity and therefore loses trust.

And we're going to dive into those in a minute. But should we start just by defining what we mean by authenticity, what we mean by trust and sustainable growth?

Christine Alemany
00:03:47

Maybe whenever I talk about trust and authenticity, it's really about, you know, even when you think about people, you know, do they walk the talk? Are you making claims that are credible, that are true, and are you following through on those claims? Can you deliver on those claims?

And so that's what authenticity is, that's what builds trust, whether you're a human being or a business.

And whenever I talk about sustainable growth, a lot of startups or emerging growth companies, they're having to strike a balance between growth or user acquisition and long term sustainability or profitability, and making sure that the company can make it for the next 15, 20, 30 years, often.

Dom Hawes
00:04:42

In startup and scale up as well. The truth often trails slightly behind the communication to the market, and it has to be that way.

Do you think that's a risk to authenticity or do you think people accept that? Sometimes the truth is overhyped a bit.

Christine Alemany
00:04:58

As long as you frame it correctly.

You know, whenever you think about what my goals are, what we're going to be, what we're building, as long as you're framing it that way, rather than saying this exists, this works perfectly. Right? So it's striking, that balance. And usually, especially if you're early on in your journey, your first few customers want you to succeed.

So the more honest you are and open about where you are, especially in your roadmap, the more that they're going to want to help you. They're going to give you feedback and help you navigate.

Because where you want to be and what you envision when you first create your company is not where you're going to end up.

Dom Hawes
00:05:48

Yeah, that's true.

Christine Alemany
00:05:49

And so you have to be open. And if you're open with your customers, they'll help you succeed much faster than you could on your own.

Dom Hawes
00:05:57

I think early stage customers, often they'll buy into a vision.

They'll buy from a vision actually, because they are by nature probably more innovative and entrepreneurial that's why they're shopping at the early stage.

But you know, as soon as you then start getting to more towards majority markets, you know, I think the number one most important thing often is momentum because you know, people like to buy from companies other people are buying from and success breeds success.

Christine Alemany
00:06:23

Yeah.

Dom Hawes
00:06:24

Is that when it's most tempting, do you think, to start to cut corners or maybe focus on short term gains at the expense of long term credibility?

Christine Alemany
00:06:33

I think it happens throughout the journey. I think at the very beginning, beginning you're really focused on getting your first customers.

So you may make bold claims, you may over promise and sometimes it's because out of naivety you don't know what you can and can't do and you're pretty bullish. Right.

I think it's important that when you start, you make those bold claims, you try to follow through on those bold claims and you're open about the challenges that you're having. I think once you're in the market, any inconsistency that you have can be found. Right.

You know, we all have Google, whatever your search engine of choice is and you can figure out, you know, what are they saying, what are they doing. You can talk to other customers, you can complain about services.

And that inconsistency, the larger you get and the more visibility you get is going to come back to you and either it'll help you catapult you to, you know, hire or more customers, bigger product sets, more investors, or it could bite you. So you have to be very, very careful.

Dom Hawes
00:07:53

We've talked about making claims, you know, businesses that are making claims that they can do things maybe that they can't, but what other ways are that?

You've seen businesses who are eager to get that momentum to that acceleration, what are the ways you've seen them cut, cut corners or maybe risk reputation in order to make short term gains?

Christine Alemany
00:08:12

All kinds of things. So whether it's, you know, exaggerating their metrics, which is unfortunately can be common.

Dom Hawes
00:08:22

We'D never do that on this podcast by the way.

Christine Alemany
00:08:26

Unfortunately it happens. So we can think about maybe a company like WeWork where they did a lot of over promising and eventually it did bite them.

But until then they got a ton of press, a ton of customers, a lot of investors, very high profile investors and very good interest rates. Right.

So it allowed them to, you know, maybe inflate your growth, inflate your profitability, creates a picture of rapid expansion, strong financial performance which attracts everybody and unfortunately it came to life and now they're.

Dom Hawes
00:09:20

Struggling when the market's on the up. Right.

You know, when the tide is rising, it's, it's a lot easier to make those sorts of bold claims and, and, and the market can quite often give you the momentum you need and help validate them. But I think in the case of WeWork and I think of a, I can think of a couple of other big ones.

We're going to talk specifically about some case studies a little bit later. But in the case of WeWork, they were promising a lifestyle, not a serviced office.

And I think their claim was so lofty, their vision was so big, I, unless you were drinking the Kool Aid and totally getting carried away with the market, it was quite hard to see how that was ever going to be delivered.

Christine Alemany
00:09:57

It's so interesting the quality of investors they had. Right.

Dom Hawes
00:10:02

Amazing, isn't it? I know, I know.

Christine Alemany
00:10:04

It's a power of a good story.

And investors, VCs, they love good stories because when they're investing, they're investing in the person and the founder and being very charismatic, being a good salesperson is important to building a solid business. So they love good stories, they love even more good metrics, good financial performance. That's what made them so successful.

I think, you know, that lifestyle didn't translate into, you know, maybe some of the ancillary services that they offered and they went well beyond their initial mandate in terms of product and I think they just went outside of their knowledge and capabilities.

Dom Hawes
00:10:55

We may come back to capability or understanding one's capabilities later. We might, we might do. I want to talk very specifically because this isn't just an entrepreneur story.

This is like if you're in a department or you are in a medium sized business, the concept of having a Runway, I think that's one of, to me that's one of the catalysts and certainly in the startup environment when you raise, you know, because that, that the process by which companies like WeWork, the hyperscalers fund themselves almost encourages them to overhype the short term claims because they're always trying to look for the next raise and they have to tell a big story. Right. But it's the same in any department.

If you're running a campaign, particularly at the beginning of it and you've got a Runway, you're almost incentivized to be over optimistic about the results.

Christine Alemany
00:11:41

Whenever you're trying to get budgets to do all of the things that you want to do. Right. I think that's a double edged sword. You know, you could go of the under promise, over deliver or over promise? Under deliver.

I think it depends on where they're again, you're looking long term or short term? Short term if you want to over promise under deliver.

That'll work a couple of times because of course, you know, testing things, there's going to be failures, but if you are consistently doing the same thing, that's. That tactic won't work anymore. Yeah. So you know, it's the same whether you're in market or internal to your company.

You have to think of both the brand of your company, but your own personal brand about what you can deliver, whether you're trustworthy, whether your claims are trustworthy as well.

Dom Hawes
00:12:37

Yeah, especially pertinence, I think for an individual because once your reputation gets burned in a company, that's it, you're done pretty much.

Christine Alemany
00:12:44

It would be years of built rebuilding just with a brand, just like with the brand.

Dom Hawes
00:12:51

No one's got years these days. You just quit and move on. It's just not the same as it used to be.

When we, when we met for our, for our chat before the call, you mentioned Coinbase to me and it's not a business that I knew a huge amount about, but you referred to them as a business maybe that had done things in the right way. Can you just tell me a little bit about Coinbase?

Christine Alemany
00:13:12

They're a fintech company in the crypto world. I like to think of them as a company that has done it well. The balance between rapid growth and long term sustainability.

You know, in the beginning they focused on expanding their user base, they focused on expanding their product sets and they used some aggressive marketing tactics to do so.

Everything from maybe questionable influencer partnerships, limited time offers that use scarcity tactics and overly promotional educational content, especially to a new monetary instrument like crypto. As they started getting bigger, they started getting more scrutiny, not only from educators, but the media to regulators.

They really had to think about what they needed to do.

And so they shifted from growth to advocacy and started advocating for clear, consistent regulation, started emphasizing transparency with their customers and investors and regulators about how they safeguarded assets, which, you know, in financial services that's base. Right. So I think that they did that really well and they're still around. They've weathered the storm and they're growing.

Dom Hawes
00:14:55

There's kind of a forgiveness among startups because I think everybody knows that is vision led. There's a point in the evolution of a business probably where you need to start becoming a little bit more aware of risk and reputation.

Do you think there's a Lot of forgiveness early on, isn't there?

Christine Alemany
00:15:14

There is a lot of forgiveness. I think the one thing that you can't leave out of the equation is the competition. Right.

There will be no forgiveness with your competition, and they will use everything that they can to attract customers away from you or keep customers away from you. Right?

Dom Hawes
00:15:35

Yeah.

Christine Alemany
00:15:36

So whenever you have to think about, okay, where am I gonna put all of my focus and when do I need a transition? Hopefully you do that before there's a news paper article or a media article or expose about what you're doing to grow your company.

One of the things that I think we talked about last time was Liquid Death.

Dom Hawes
00:16:03

Yes, yes.

Christine Alemany
00:16:04

Hopefully you can do something like Liquid Death has done, which is a water company, essentially.

Dom Hawes
00:16:14

Yeah. Tinned water.

Christine Alemany
00:16:16

Yeah, they're water. And so what they did was really thought about why is the health industry, you know, filled with exaggerated claims and fads.

And they really poked fun at it. And everything that they did was around, you know, pushing back on some of the, I would say, fluff that's out there in wellness and everything.

From their name, Liquid Death, it's water. To their packaging, which looks, you know, it could be a large can of beer.

Dom Hawes
00:16:57

Yeah, it's very beer like, isn't it? Yeah.

Christine Alemany
00:16:58

It took me a while to figure out it was water.

And their campaigns, which are, you know, provocative, they're funny, they're irreverent, and they mock a lot of the exaggerated claims or the overspend that they see in the marketplace.

And I think one of the most interesting things that they did was actually put water in a recyclable aluminum can, which water companies tend not to do because the plastic shows the purity or glass shows the purity of the water. But they made a lot of very deliberate decisions in their branding from name, packaging, messaging, and it's continuing to propel them.

Dom Hawes
00:17:46

Yeah, they did their 4Ps really well, those guys. I mean, really well, as you would expect, because they're marketers. Right. I mean, they're marketers to their core.

Christine Alemany
00:17:54

Hopefully, you know, they'll. They'll stick to it. And, you know, I don't see their trajectory changing. But, you know, once you hit a certain record of growth, it stalls.

Dom Hawes
00:18:08

It comes down to distribution as well at that stage. And there's some physical things that are quite hard to get yourself around. But before.

Before we move on, we're going to look at some answers, and you've got a phrase framework, I think, to talk to us about, you know, that helps deal with lack of trust or, you know or the risk of inauthenticity. Before we do that, I just want to understand the stakes of getting it wrong.

Talk to me about the risks for businesses that cut corners and risk long term reputation for like making the quarter.

Christine Alemany
00:18:36

One of the things that being a credible, trustworthy brand gives you, it gives you higher conversion rates. People are more likely to buy from you. It compresses sales cycles.

People spend less time deliberating on whether or not they want to buy from you because they trust you. And once you start degrading that trust, once that trust starts slowly fading away, you can lose your current customers.

Some of them will walk away from you, others will complain about you in the market, others will, you know, may sue you or file complaints with regulatory bodies. Your competition will swoop in, help spread the word and actually use that in their pitches.

And then regulators will start swooping in, investors will walk away, your cost of capital will go up. So it's not, you know, a pure marketing fluff term.

You know, marketers always talk about authenticity, but there is a real reason why we worry about authenticity and brand and values.

It's just whenever you look at it from a purely superficial point of view and the execution isn't there, the follow through isn't there and the consistency isn't there, that's where it's not going to work.

Dom Hawes
00:20:15

All of those things you just mentioned made the hair on the back of my neck, actually, if I had any, made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Because as a CEO, hearing about things like cost of capital or delayed sales cycles, these things kill companies. So a sage warning.

Now you, Christine, have developed a four stage process for building credibility, focusing on truthfulness, following through, listening, keeping a dialogue and stuff.

Can you walk me through that process a little bit and explain how you think this helps us build long term trust with our customers and other stakeholders?

Christine Alemany
00:20:50

Yeah, so I like to think of building trust the same for a business. The same as you would, you know, a human going through life. One of the first things I talk about is being authentic.

That's being true to your brand, your values, your purpose.

Aligning incentives to make sure that you're following through and you can make decisions to stay true to that brand and set boundaries around what your capabilities are and what you can actually push and stick to them. For example, you know, if you are a clothing brand, you may put value on sustainability.

Well, you may focus on the materials that you use in your clothing. You may not be able to solve world hunger. So those are the kinds of things that you can think about when you build boundaries around your brand.

The next step is building credibility. And that goes around when we were talking about what are the bold claims. Try not to overspend, don't tell half truths as much as you can.

And when you do slip up, accept responsibility. It's very important to put yourself out there in an authentic and truthful way. Next step is making sure that you act accordingly.

So you know you're going to say everything that you have to say. You want to say it loud, you want it to go out and have as much reach as possible. But you also have to plan for action.

You have to make sure that you're following through on your claims, that you can deliver on your promises. And once you follow through, remember to continue to follow through, continue doing what you say you're going to do.

It's important to listen and adjust.

Not only are you going to look at the metrics that you your key KPIs that you need to hit, but you're also engaging with your customers, understanding how they're reacting, how sentiment is trending and how are we actually following through on our promises from our customers perspective.

Dom Hawes
00:23:10

Okay, that's pretty comprehensive.

I think it also fits in vogue with kind of some of the latest thinking coming out of Roger Martin, who's my all time strategy guru, who's moved away from that kind of playing to win framework. Not completely moved away from it, but promise to the customer has been his big thing for the last 12 to 18 months.

And it strikes me that your framework really supports that in terms of being authentic, following through, but also listening and ensuring that you are following through on your promise. It seems to me though that being authentic and being truthful and listening to your customers, these are very obvious things.

Why do you think so many people get it wrong?

Christine Alemany
00:23:49

I think it's hard, you know, whether you are an emerging startup or you are a public company, short term results are non negotiables, okay? Both of them will affect your cost of capital, right?

So if you're a public company and you miss your projections, that's a, you know your stock prices will drop and your cost of capital will rise.

If you're a startup and you don't hit your target, you know, you may not get that next raise, you're going to have a lot of scrutiny from your investors and you know you might get replaced. So building authenticity is a long term endeavor. It's not easy and it does require sometimes short term sacrifice to hit those longer term Results.

Right. A good example would be Microsoft.

They recently did a rebrand where they really went back to their key focus which was openness, transparency and a customer centric view. And their new CEO did a number of things.

One of the first things that he did was started engaging directly with customers, with regulators, with the public on issues like privacy, security, sustainability. Having a dialogue back and forth was important and it also helped create a foster of accountability.

Not only did he admit stakes, but you know, his team internally it's okay to admit mistakes and think about how you're going to learn for them. And lastly, you know, he did make some short term sacrifices which in the end he got, I would say near term, not long term benefits.

He sacrificed licensing revenue on the short term, simplified pricing, simplified licensing options.

He even created custom licensing agreements for larger companies so they got exactly what they needed and didn't have to do a lot of the gymnastics to get what they needed.

So you know, in the short term it did sacrifice some of the revenue short term, but in the long term it accelerated the adoption of Microsoft cloud and their enterprise products.

So whenever you have a long term vision and your stakeholders, meaning your customers and your investors are signed on that journey with you, you can get much better results than if you just purely, purely follow the short term.

Dom Hawes
00:27:06

I think the Microsoft story is an extraordinary one actually quite the impact that Satya Nadella's had. If you think like think back 10, 15 years, Microsoft was almost the boogeyman, right? There was all this antitrust stuff going on.

You'd just about use anything but Microsoft. And then they came in and had this new approach and a new attitude as you say.

It's like suddenly there are very, very, very trusted brand providing best in class product at very affordable prices and someone else is now the boogeyman. Yeah, Microsoft is suddenly okay, but Google isn't. And they're the ones that said do no evil.

Christine Alemany
00:27:46

Yeah, well no longer.

Dom Hawes
00:27:48

I know.

Christine Alemany
00:27:49

And so it's one of those things where I think Google is the antithesis of Microsoft today. You know, they grew from an ethos of do no evil and really had principles of openness.

They were going to make the Internet this open information database for everybody and empowering users to make it easier to find the information that they wanted. They really prioritized growth, especially with their new leadership.

They expanded rapidly into new verticals, new monetization models and they weren't really transparent about the implications to users and the market at large. They didn't really address issues around data privacy, content moderator and Other impacts of the platform.

There's a perceived arrogance or dismissiveness in how they respond to criticism rather than genuinely engaging and having that two way discussion. I mean, the recent protests of Google employees is another manifestation of this disconnect.

Dom Hawes
00:29:11

I mean, it's a shame because I'm old enough to remember when they first appeared and they were everyone's darling company.

But they've also made some really weird decisions with some of the guardrails they've put on their AI and some of the coding they've put actually into the core search product that will prioritize search results for those sorts of organizations who they approve of. So it's almost like they're forcing their moral judgment of the world on us. And that's not the deal that people like me made effectively with Google.

When we give our data away for free, we don't expect to be given a curated version of what they think the world should be. I think that really speaks to trust to me.

Christine Alemany
00:29:54

And so whenever you think about Google, you know, Google's also YouTube, Google's also Gmail. Google's also search. I'm going to be interested in watching how quickly people migrate if they do migrate to new platforms.

You know, more and more people are migrating from YouTube into rumble locals on the video side Now Microsoft has lowered their pricing to compete with Google on the Gmail calendars, their business suite. The pricing's really close. I'm not entirely sure on the Docs cloud side where these two are going to land.

Dom Hawes
00:30:47

Yeah, I think there's pricing parity there at the moment. One of the things about Google though is they do make really good product like Chrome. I'm recording this right now on Chrome.

It's an amazingly stable, fast browser and I've, I have tried to replace it with other things, but I just keep coming back to Chrome because the engineering is really good.

Christine Alemany
00:31:04

The priorities of trust for a customer base really varies by geography. So in the US price and quality, that's like king where, you know, in Asia it may be more reputation.

In Europe it is more reputation than price and quality. But it's going to be interesting to see how people start reacting and you know, how much of a price their privacy is really worth to them. Right.

Dom Hawes
00:31:46

We all have an opinion in our mind because we all grew up with Google. We have an opinion and an image of what Google is and what it stands for.

And I mean I, I'm aware I'm enormously biased in this and I literally just said that's not the deal. I Made with Google. I give them my data and in return I expect like un guardrails things back.

Christine Alemany
00:32:06

Right.

Dom Hawes
00:32:07

But they're not the only ones. You know, the importance of brands staying in there, in effect, if you like, in their perception guidelines.

There was a really, I mean, you talked to me about this before when we were on the call. You know, the Bud Light and Brian Mulvaney thing like that was horrendous in case anyone was in a cave when that was going on.

And without getting canceled or no platformed ourselves. Let's just talk about that very quickly.

Christine Alemany
00:32:34

Around March Madness, which if you're not into college basketball, you know, a college basketball, you know, tournament, Bud Light decided, you know, we're, we want to expand our customer base from the Spuds McKinsey kind of frat boy image to a more women centric, LGBTQ centric brand. They did a deal with an influencer during March Madness.

It was a, I believe a 30 second commercial or post where Dylan Mulvaney invited people to create their own March Madness video and share it. And the contest was, you could win $10,000. The marketing team at Bud Light thought, you know, isn't it going to be fun?

We're going to get some, some good press and we're going to show how diverse our customers are. And it completely backfired from it began with, I think it was maybe Kid Rocket could be a musician spoke up against it.

And then all of a sudden people were protesting in Targets and throughout the whole crisis for Bud Light. They handled it in interesting ways. The first thing that they did is they doubled down. They said, you know, we stand by this.

Our customers are diverse. We support a diverse society. And then when it started getting real, when I mean by real, the customer backlash began.

Bud Light was getting boycotted and they actually lost their number one spot that they held for since the 80s to Modelo. Once that started happening, they were like, whoa, wait a minute, maybe it was a mistake.

But at that point, you know, they, they pissed off both their conservative customers, their liberal customers. Everybody was upset. And instead of just saying, you know what, we made a mistake.

We didn't realize that our customers did not like this program and really focusing. What, what do your customers care about? And it was having a Bud Light and not worrying about politics. It's really relaxing.

They enjoyed sports and they enjoyed music, and so they wanted Bud Light to play in those areas. They didn't really need Bud Light to tell them anything about society at large. Again, drawing your boundaries, it's an important.

Dom Hawes
00:35:44

Lesson, isn't it, that understanding as marketers and communicators, really understanding what our customers perceptions of us is and then staying, staying true to that perception. You can move it, of course, but it's a very painful and expensive process.

Christine Alemany
00:36:00

Yes.

Dom Hawes
00:36:00

There are two other companies that I thought of or we talked about earlier, both in aviation, actually. One is JetBlue, who did handle a crisis particularly bad. I think it was quite early in their evolution.

And we spoke to Maya Getceph in an earlier episode from JetBlue about that episode or incident. It was the big Valentine's Day scandal when they stranded people in airports all over the US but they seem to have recovered particularly well.

Christine Alemany
00:36:30

I think it's because they handled it well, like we were talking about earlier, the Internet, you can't hide things anymore, or at least not for long.

And so they could have gone the way of Boeing, which we can get into later and try to shift attention to something else or just flat out minimize the issue. But you can't stop people from getting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and complaining. And those are viral moments that you cannot control.

And so I think what they did was just be open and honest about it, Talk about the issue, talk about what caused it, and talked about how they're going to fix it and then they fixed it.

Dom Hawes
00:37:25

That sort of follows your process almost flawlessly, doesn't it? Right.

Christine Alemany
00:37:28

Yeah.

Dom Hawes
00:37:29

Say what you're going to do, be open and honest about it, do it and then tell everyone you did it.

Christine Alemany
00:37:35

And keep doing it. Right.

And so that's, you know, when you do that, just like a human being, you know, if you let a friend down, you admit it, you say what happened and then you fix it. Right.

Dom Hawes
00:37:49

I've been in the service business for years and years and years and the strongest relationships I've had with clients are not those where everything's gone well all the time. The strongest relationships I have with clients are where something's gone very badly wrong and we have put it right and we've rebuilt trust.

Because once you've done something wrong and you've put it right, they have a much, much bigger reason to trust you than if you never did anything wrong. Yeah, JetBlue maybe experienced that. You know, if anyone wants to listen to more detail, they can go back and have a look at the episode.

I want to talk about Boeing very quickly because they're in a world of pain at the moment and there's not necessarily an end to it. Talk to me a little bit about their situation.

Christine Alemany
00:38:27

Boeing is a cautionary tale of, you know, prioritizing optics and short term gain over substance and long term sustainability. The company during its merger really started focusing on metrics like stock price, production targets and cost cutting.

And what they sacrificed was attention to what their customers really cared about, which is safety and quality of their aircraft. Right.

And so in pursuit of, you know, these faster production times, more productivity and cost cutting measures, Boeing made decisions that really sacrifice both the safety and integrity of their 737 Max.

And, and this included everything from skimping on pilot training, downplaying known software issues to the machining of screws for windows and planes. And they had some issues, some plane crashes, some windows, leaving the aircraft and flying.

What they started to do is rather than really sit down and fix those issues, they started doing PR campaigns around, you know, feel good initiatives, purpose initiatives, diversity programs that were outside of their customers, core needs. And I would say their customers, you know, like all the airlines, but their customers.

Customers, yeah, who are in the planes and the pilots and the customers, employees who are in the plane that need it to be safe, have integrity. And you know, their obsession with metrics and optics rather than the fundamentals came back to haunt them in a major way.

They can't get out of their own way.

Dom Hawes
00:40:38

And it's not done yet.

Christine Alemany
00:40:39

No.

It's been a couple of changing of the guards and it's going to be a huge cultural shift that they need to really look at the brand and then push the brand sometimes from the bottom up because it seems like a lot of their employees are really wanting to bring the brand back to where it used to be.

Dom Hawes
00:40:59

Let's start to look at some answers. That's a cautionary tale there, right? It's a cautionary tale of not looking after the fundamentals.

Stewardship of relationship, stewardship of trust, stewardship of reputation kind of sits with the CMO that is the focus of many things. But one of those things obviously is external communication.

How do CMOS A find the balance between the two pressures, the short term, the long term, but also counsel and bring in the rest of their team and help them understand the importance of it.

Christine Alemany
00:41:34

First is making sure that all of their goals are aligned with the company's visions and targets. So, so that you can both understand the short term goals and hit your short term targets, but also be able to align with the long term vision.

Next you have to diversify your portfolio with short term performance tactics with longer term brand building initiatives.

And so while you're doing that, you're testing you're measuring, you're optimizing your portfolio to find the right balance and so you can both drive immediate results, which we all have to do.

And at the same time build these longer lasting customer relationships that you talked about earlier then is not only focus on your revenue generating tactics, but also invest in understanding your customer and engaging in your customer through research, through insights, direct engagement, so you can address their needs and not just chase trends. Not only does that help you focus your portfolio and your activities, but it also fosters accountability and transparency.

So are we actually following through on what we said we would do from our customers perspective? From our perspective. And then lastly, it's empowering your team to share their challenges, to share their failings and to share their learnings.

You set clear KPIs that balance both short term goals and long term goals.

So not only are you thinking about how to balance them, your team is thinking about balancing them and you're working with your partners to make sure that we're also balancing them. And then of course using marketing technology to help boost efficiency and personalized customer experiences to build more of that.

Yes, we understand you and we are building a relationship with you.

Dom Hawes
00:43:45

Circling back to where we started, then we talked about the profit trap, we've talked about over indexing on the short term and that's been a feature throughout our conversation.

If there's one thing, if there's some homework, for example, for us, our unicorns to take away, if there's one thing that they can focus on in the next kind of one to three months to improve authenticity and trust, what would that be?

Christine Alemany
00:44:13

I would say consistency. So you can apply consistency on your marketing channels.

Making sure simple things, making sure the look and feel is the same, making sure that your messaging is the same across channels, making sure that when you make claims that you can follow through on it, and making sure that whenever you tell your customers that you're going to do something, you do it. Making it very easy for the customer in the marketing to understand what you do and how you do it is important.

So focusing on consistency and making sure that you're doing these things every day, every hour, right? And that translates into months and years.

Dom Hawes
00:45:00

Christine, thank you very much indeed for your time. It's been really, really interesting and fun talk to you.

And by the way unicorners, if you do find things have gone wrong and you are in the shit, give me a call. I'm quite good at getting people out of it. Christine, thank you so much for your time and well I hope to See you soon.

Christine Alemany
00:45:18

Thank you.

Dom Hawes
00:45:19

I want to say a massive thank you to Christine for coming and spending time with us on our online recording platform. Thank you. We really appreciate your time. And by the way, we appreciate your time too.

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