Building Better CMOs
Jonnie Cahill (Heineken USA) Transcript, Part 1
Jonnie Cahill: What people don't get is that it's balance. It's not one or the other. It's not this or that. It's not upper or lower. It's not performance or brand. It's all of it, all the time. And you have to be brilliant and insightful, and you have to be disciplined and driven.
Greg Stuart: Welcome to Building Better CMOs, a podcast about how marketers can get smarter and stronger. I'm Greg Stuart, the CEO of nonprofit MMA Global. We have three goals: to change how we think about marketing, to understand the challenges CMOs face, and to unlock the true power that marketing can have. Now, this podcast is not a place for hero worship or how great CMOs are. There's lots of places for that. Instead, we're going to talk about real leadership in marketing and what it takes to drive growth today. Today's guest is Jonnie Cahill, the CMO of Heineken USA. He's been with the company since 2018 and oversees the marketing for some of the world's biggest beer brands, including Heineken, Dos Equis, and Tecate. He also worked on their alcohol-free beer, Heineken 0.0. We'll talk about all of that and also why Jonnie believes that live experiences are super underrated. And he's going to give us what should be really the first commandment of marketing: buy the idea, not the execution.
You can find a full transcript of this interview and more at bettercmos.com. And if you like the podcast, do me a favor and leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you don't like the podcast, email me. Seriously, I'm greg@mmaglobal.com. I'd love to hear from you.
But now, let's get to my conversation with Jonnie Cahill.
Jonnie Cahill, great to have you here with us today.
JC: Hi, Greg. Nice to see you again.
GS: Where are you today?
JC: I'm in Greenwich, Connecticut. So happy to be on and looking forward to meeting in person. I always say, Greg, the upside of meeting the CMO of Heineken is when we meet for a beer, it's technically work, right? So we must get that on the books.
GS: Expensing beer is a life strategy. I'd not thought that through before. Okay, good. So obviously from the accent, you're not originally from Connecticut, we're going to guess. I think I knew that, outside of Dublin. But you're probably the most global of all people on the global board that I'm aware of. So what are all the cities you've worked in?
JC: Yeah, you're right, Greg. Home is Dublin, Ireland, so what a fantastic city to grow up in. Started the career there at Diageo, actually, and had the privilege to work on the Guinness brand, which is from the city. And so for an Irish guy working on Guinness, I guess it was like an Italian working on Ferrari.
GS: You never had to pay for anything. You got carried around the streets of Dublin on a carriage of some kind. You were the life of luxury. It had to be.
JC: It was a lot of fun, I must say. I had the privilege to work in the bedroom of Arthur Guinness' home, which was 250 years prior, which puts some pressure on when you're approving a script, when the old boss is actually looking down at you. And managed to move from there through Telefonica into telco, from Diageo to Telefonica, big European telco. I was CMO of O2.
GS: Were you in Madrid for that, then? Were you at headquarters or where'd you work?
JC: I was still in Dublin for that actually.
GS: Okay, Dublin. Okay, got it.
JC: Yeah, and then joined Heineken, and my first posting was to Moscow, Russia. So I spent almost four years there. An amazing experience. Really loved it. Just to be outside your comfort zone and to have to learn to operate differently. Your playbook goes out the window a little bit. And went from there to Amsterdam. And then from Amsterdam to here almost five years ago. So people often say, what's the plan? And I've learned to accept that there probably isn't a plan. You go and you do the best you can and something will pop up. And what a brilliant experience to... I feel very privileged to have lived in the United States and in Russia. When you see what's going on in the world, to have had the privilege to live in both of these places.
GS: I've done a lot of work for the Russians over the years, or at least did in the early days of digital. And listen, there's a real cultural difference there that you've got to learn to adjust to. I mean, not everybody looks at the world in the same way, not everybody acts the same way. It's complicated.
JC: Exactly. And it's everything from the climate. My first day in Russia was January the 13th, which was a strategic error because it was like minus 30 degrees when I arrived. It was a really interesting thing to get to do because the fundamentals of brand building are actually very similar globally, especially when you're lucky enough to be on a global brand like Heineken. Really great winding path, I would say, but have felt very lucky to have lived in all these different places.
GS: Does brand have the same orientation in Russian and to Russians? It's a universal concept. It doesn't deviate by culture per se, except for the nuance of the culture.
JC: The nuance of the culture changes. But if you go, I guess, right back to Marketing 101, what is a brand? It's a collection of values that is a shortcut for people, and that's needed arguably in more complex environments even more. Because if you take, for example, society there, trust is a big issue in corporations, in government, and a brand is a great way to communicate to people that you can be trusted. And so actually how it shows up might be different and the tone could be different, but the brand and what brands do for you as a business is crucial. And I think I've worked with many other colleagues in multinationals while we were there, whether it was Pepsi or Coke or Michelin. The guy from Greenville, South Carolina was my neighbor, and he was trying to build a Michelin brand, which is about trust and care and performance. And those things were exactly the same whether you were selling Michelin tires in Greenville, South Carolina or in Yekaterinburg. So it was fascinating to see that. And I guess as a marketeer, you're always curious about those things, and I guess living in different countries and different cultures is a very rich experience. Things show up differently, but some things are very fundamental.
GS: We might spend a little time with that trust. I think you're right, essentially you position that dynamic as a part of, in particular, Russia. It's funny, I worked a lot with the Walmart people a lot of years ago, and you always see them as sort of everyday savings. I mean, they have done an amazing job of communicating that value with their thing. What they told me their biggest issue, though, was trust. And you kind of go, "Oh, of course, I have to believe that it's everyday savings in order for that promise to really flow through." I hadn't really thought that through, but that was their big challenge. So I guess that's pretty much true universally.
JC: I can imagine that as well. That's such a compelling proposition. But it's really, if you think about it logically, it's a very high bar because they've inserted the word "everyday." So if you fail once, you break the promise.
GS: And am I going to go out of my way to fulfill on that brand promise that they've made? Because that's what they need. They need me to drive an extra some number of miles to be able to participate there versus maybe a closer alternative, which is what they're up against, right?
JC: Yeah. I think when you commit outwardly to something like that, you create expectation. Now that's a good thing. So for example, if I take our most iconic brand, Heineken. When people see it, they expect a certain standard. If they look over at an event or at an engagement and see us, there's a certain expectation of how it is going to be. And that means you have to deliver against that all the time. You see brands like Amex doing that. You see brands like Mastercard trying to do that. It is really about communicating that promise to people, and they know it. The beauty of owning or having dominance in a position, in a marketing position, makes you very compelling, but you better deliver against that. Because once you break it, it's broken. If Volvos aren't safe, there's going to be a problem.
GS: Yeah, if you set yourself up for failure, if you cross that line, I totally get that. Okay. Listen. So here you were just speaking about events, too. I mean, listen, Heineken's a pretty event-oriented brand, and aren't you in kind of a special season right now at some level? I mean, Formula One's coming up in a couple of different cities in America. Coachella just finished, depending on when people are listening. Soccer's big right now. You're prepping for US Open tennis.
JC: That's right.
GS: Where are you? Where aren't you? How do you look at this time of year for you all? Is this the busiest time of year?
JC: Yeah, you know what? It's the best time of year. I mean, again, to be the CMO of a beer company and a globally iconic beer brand, I mean, you do pinch yourself. And maybe we'll talk about it later, how lucky we are to work on these amazing brands. This brand's 150 years old, and I get to help it and have a tiny fingerprint on it. But yeah, it's peak season. We just got back from Coachella. Next week is Miami Formula One, which around the Hard Rock Stadium, cars doing 220 miles an hour, where we bring Heineken 0.0 very much to the fore. Planning for US Open. We've got the New York Islanders, one of our local partnerships here in the tri-state area, on playoff duty tonight. It is full on. And so I guess it's the most fun time of year. Sure, it's busy and you're kind of burning the candle at both ends. People can't see us. You can see the bags under my eyes right now... Maybe everyone can see that.
GS: You look good, Jon. You're okay.
JC: Again, stop and think, what are we working on at the moment? We just finished Coachella this morning. We just did the final walkthrough for Miami F1, one of the most iconic events you'll see. We're preparing for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, where you're going to see Formula One go down the strip through the city week before Thanksgiving. And it's a crucial part of our strategy as a brand because we have that premium positioning. And the challenge in a premium position brand is you have to do things that justify the premium positioning. And consumers, who we frequently call people, they know what they expect and they know how we should show up. So we're not in the business of plastering our logo on sports events. We have 90-plus percent spontaneous awareness. I don't know who the other people are who don't know us, but they're out there somewhere.
But we are in the business of making things better, and that is the philosophical way that we approach events and partnerships: what can we do to make it better? But you mentioned the US Open, Greg, so you pop in there. We want you to look over, see that red star, and know whatever's happening over there, I'm going. And so that's, again, a high bar, but how much fun is that to get to work on those kind of events? It's busy. I've got an amazing sponsorships team who are experts at just delivering it. One of the things we say in partnerships and sponsorships is strategy will get you and the cloak room will get you. So you have to be clear on what you're doing, but you also have to execute it flawlessly. And that's a challenge.
GS: What does it mean the cloak room will get you? I'm sorry, what does that mean?
JC: If the basics don't work. If the beer's not flowing, if the ice machines aren't working, if you've nowhere to put your coat, if the air conditioning's wrong. You have a massive strategic imperative with sponsorships and you have to deliver at a micro level. One of the marketing disciplines that's most unforgiving because if it goes wrong, it goes wrong at scale.
GS: Yeah. Listen, MMA runs 30 conferences in 14 countries around the world, maybe 15 now actually. But conferences, events are about getting a thousand things right, and you're lucky if you don't miss half of them. I mean, that is the dynamic.
JC: Absolutely.
GS: It's a million little details that got to go your way. Hey, Jonnie, I want to get right into just some of your thinking here, but I did want to call out one other thing because I'd seen it and you mentioned it. Heineken 0.0, that actually has been a pretty big success for you guys. I think I saw something like a 30% share against non-alcoholic beer. Is that right? That's amazing.
JC: Yeah. Well around a 25% share in value terms. An amazing success, a beautiful innovation that's been really accretive to the franchise. So it's a very simple strategic premise. I mean, from a corporate perspective, if you think through a value maximization lens, we have breweries, we have sales reps, we have a system, but there are millions of moments when you'd love a beer, but you don't want the alcohol. And that's a different thing.
And so Heineken 0.0 really opens up a huge amount of occasionality. Technology and brewing has enabled us to make a really exceptional beverage, a really exceptional beer. The first thing everyone says when they drink Heineken 0.0 is, "Oh my god, it tastes like beer." And that wasn't always the case in non-alcoholic beers, particularly in the US. And it's a very underdeveloped category in the United States, it's still less than 1% or around 1% of the beer market. If you go to somewhere like Spain, non-alcoholic beer is 16% of the beer market.
GS: Wow, I didn't know that.
JC: So it's an everyday thing. Very underdeveloped here. It's been a remarkable success. It allows us to access occasions and moments that we wouldn't otherwise get to, and it allows us to broaden penetration for the franchise because you might want a Heineken Original on a Friday night, and you might want to Heineken 0.0 on a Monday night. So it's been a terrific success for us.
GS: Was there any challenge to, I don't know, what was the internal discussion on extending the brand to non-alcoholic?
JC: Yeah, it was really, really simple. There's a Heineken family, and we knew that the beer is good enough to put the name over the door and our globally iconic brand, Heineken Original. We simply wouldn't have done Heineken 0.0 if the delivery wasn't good enough, if the beer wasn't good enough. So the conversation was really quick, which is, this is an exceptional beer. Our brewers did some real magic, and we were actually proud to extend the franchise.
GS: Got it.
JC: We're really proud of what we did. And sometimes we get this question: "Yeah, you do that because you have to." We just ran a Super Bowl ad for Heineken 0.0, and people ask us, "Are we serious about non-alcoholic?" I can tell you I'm serious, or I can show you what I did with the Super Bowl where we partnered with Marvel and Antman. You probably want a Heineken 0.0 if you've got to save the world.
GS: You want to be available to save the world.
Greg Stuart: Welcome to Building Better CMOs, a podcast about how marketers can get smarter and stronger. I'm Greg Stuart, the CEO of nonprofit MMA Global. We have three goals: to change how we think about marketing, to understand the challenges CMOs face, and to unlock the true power that marketing can have. Now, this podcast is not a place for hero worship or how great CMOs are. There's lots of places for that. Instead, we're going to talk about real leadership in marketing and what it takes to drive growth today. Today's guest is Jonnie Cahill, the CMO of Heineken USA. He's been with the company since 2018 and oversees the marketing for some of the world's biggest beer brands, including Heineken, Dos Equis, and Tecate. He also worked on their alcohol-free beer, Heineken 0.0. We'll talk about all of that and also why Jonnie believes that live experiences are super underrated. And he's going to give us what should be really the first commandment of marketing: buy the idea, not the execution.
You can find a full transcript of this interview and more at bettercmos.com. And if you like the podcast, do me a favor and leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. If you don't like the podcast, email me. Seriously, I'm greg@mmaglobal.com. I'd love to hear from you.
But now, let's get to my conversation with Jonnie Cahill.
Jonnie Cahill, great to have you here with us today.
JC: Hi, Greg. Nice to see you again.
GS: Where are you today?
JC: I'm in Greenwich, Connecticut. So happy to be on and looking forward to meeting in person. I always say, Greg, the upside of meeting the CMO of Heineken is when we meet for a beer, it's technically work, right? So we must get that on the books.
GS: Expensing beer is a life strategy. I'd not thought that through before. Okay, good. So obviously from the accent, you're not originally from Connecticut, we're going to guess. I think I knew that, outside of Dublin. But you're probably the most global of all people on the global board that I'm aware of. So what are all the cities you've worked in?
JC: Yeah, you're right, Greg. Home is Dublin, Ireland, so what a fantastic city to grow up in. Started the career there at Diageo, actually, and had the privilege to work on the Guinness brand, which is from the city. And so for an Irish guy working on Guinness, I guess it was like an Italian working on Ferrari.
GS: You never had to pay for anything. You got carried around the streets of Dublin on a carriage of some kind. You were the life of luxury. It had to be.
JC: It was a lot of fun, I must say. I had the privilege to work in the bedroom of Arthur Guinness' home, which was 250 years prior, which puts some pressure on when you're approving a script, when the old boss is actually looking down at you. And managed to move from there through Telefonica into telco, from Diageo to Telefonica, big European telco. I was CMO of O2.
GS: Were you in Madrid for that, then? Were you at headquarters or where'd you work?
JC: I was still in Dublin for that actually.
GS: Okay, Dublin. Okay, got it.
JC: Yeah, and then joined Heineken, and my first posting was to Moscow, Russia. So I spent almost four years there. An amazing experience. Really loved it. Just to be outside your comfort zone and to have to learn to operate differently. Your playbook goes out the window a little bit. And went from there to Amsterdam. And then from Amsterdam to here almost five years ago. So people often say, what's the plan? And I've learned to accept that there probably isn't a plan. You go and you do the best you can and something will pop up. And what a brilliant experience to... I feel very privileged to have lived in the United States and in Russia. When you see what's going on in the world, to have had the privilege to live in both of these places.
GS: I've done a lot of work for the Russians over the years, or at least did in the early days of digital. And listen, there's a real cultural difference there that you've got to learn to adjust to. I mean, not everybody looks at the world in the same way, not everybody acts the same way. It's complicated.
JC: Exactly. And it's everything from the climate. My first day in Russia was January the 13th, which was a strategic error because it was like minus 30 degrees when I arrived. It was a really interesting thing to get to do because the fundamentals of brand building are actually very similar globally, especially when you're lucky enough to be on a global brand like Heineken. Really great winding path, I would say, but have felt very lucky to have lived in all these different places.
GS: Does brand have the same orientation in Russian and to Russians? It's a universal concept. It doesn't deviate by culture per se, except for the nuance of the culture.
JC: The nuance of the culture changes. But if you go, I guess, right back to Marketing 101, what is a brand? It's a collection of values that is a shortcut for people, and that's needed arguably in more complex environments even more. Because if you take, for example, society there, trust is a big issue in corporations, in government, and a brand is a great way to communicate to people that you can be trusted. And so actually how it shows up might be different and the tone could be different, but the brand and what brands do for you as a business is crucial. And I think I've worked with many other colleagues in multinationals while we were there, whether it was Pepsi or Coke or Michelin. The guy from Greenville, South Carolina was my neighbor, and he was trying to build a Michelin brand, which is about trust and care and performance. And those things were exactly the same whether you were selling Michelin tires in Greenville, South Carolina or in Yekaterinburg. So it was fascinating to see that. And I guess as a marketeer, you're always curious about those things, and I guess living in different countries and different cultures is a very rich experience. Things show up differently, but some things are very fundamental.
GS: We might spend a little time with that trust. I think you're right, essentially you position that dynamic as a part of, in particular, Russia. It's funny, I worked a lot with the Walmart people a lot of years ago, and you always see them as sort of everyday savings. I mean, they have done an amazing job of communicating that value with their thing. What they told me their biggest issue, though, was trust. And you kind of go, "Oh, of course, I have to believe that it's everyday savings in order for that promise to really flow through." I hadn't really thought that through, but that was their big challenge. So I guess that's pretty much true universally.
JC: I can imagine that as well. That's such a compelling proposition. But it's really, if you think about it logically, it's a very high bar because they've inserted the word "everyday." So if you fail once, you break the promise.
GS: And am I going to go out of my way to fulfill on that brand promise that they've made? Because that's what they need. They need me to drive an extra some number of miles to be able to participate there versus maybe a closer alternative, which is what they're up against, right?
JC: Yeah. I think when you commit outwardly to something like that, you create expectation. Now that's a good thing. So for example, if I take our most iconic brand, Heineken. When people see it, they expect a certain standard. If they look over at an event or at an engagement and see us, there's a certain expectation of how it is going to be. And that means you have to deliver against that all the time. You see brands like Amex doing that. You see brands like Mastercard trying to do that. It is really about communicating that promise to people, and they know it. The beauty of owning or having dominance in a position, in a marketing position, makes you very compelling, but you better deliver against that. Because once you break it, it's broken. If Volvos aren't safe, there's going to be a problem.
GS: Yeah, if you set yourself up for failure, if you cross that line, I totally get that. Okay. Listen. So here you were just speaking about events, too. I mean, listen, Heineken's a pretty event-oriented brand, and aren't you in kind of a special season right now at some level? I mean, Formula One's coming up in a couple of different cities in America. Coachella just finished, depending on when people are listening. Soccer's big right now. You're prepping for US Open tennis.
JC: That's right.
GS: Where are you? Where aren't you? How do you look at this time of year for you all? Is this the busiest time of year?
JC: Yeah, you know what? It's the best time of year. I mean, again, to be the CMO of a beer company and a globally iconic beer brand, I mean, you do pinch yourself. And maybe we'll talk about it later, how lucky we are to work on these amazing brands. This brand's 150 years old, and I get to help it and have a tiny fingerprint on it. But yeah, it's peak season. We just got back from Coachella. Next week is Miami Formula One, which around the Hard Rock Stadium, cars doing 220 miles an hour, where we bring Heineken 0.0 very much to the fore. Planning for US Open. We've got the New York Islanders, one of our local partnerships here in the tri-state area, on playoff duty tonight. It is full on. And so I guess it's the most fun time of year. Sure, it's busy and you're kind of burning the candle at both ends. People can't see us. You can see the bags under my eyes right now... Maybe everyone can see that.
GS: You look good, Jon. You're okay.
JC: Again, stop and think, what are we working on at the moment? We just finished Coachella this morning. We just did the final walkthrough for Miami F1, one of the most iconic events you'll see. We're preparing for the Las Vegas Grand Prix, where you're going to see Formula One go down the strip through the city week before Thanksgiving. And it's a crucial part of our strategy as a brand because we have that premium positioning. And the challenge in a premium position brand is you have to do things that justify the premium positioning. And consumers, who we frequently call people, they know what they expect and they know how we should show up. So we're not in the business of plastering our logo on sports events. We have 90-plus percent spontaneous awareness. I don't know who the other people are who don't know us, but they're out there somewhere.
But we are in the business of making things better, and that is the philosophical way that we approach events and partnerships: what can we do to make it better? But you mentioned the US Open, Greg, so you pop in there. We want you to look over, see that red star, and know whatever's happening over there, I'm going. And so that's, again, a high bar, but how much fun is that to get to work on those kind of events? It's busy. I've got an amazing sponsorships team who are experts at just delivering it. One of the things we say in partnerships and sponsorships is strategy will get you and the cloak room will get you. So you have to be clear on what you're doing, but you also have to execute it flawlessly. And that's a challenge.
GS: What does it mean the cloak room will get you? I'm sorry, what does that mean?
JC: If the basics don't work. If the beer's not flowing, if the ice machines aren't working, if you've nowhere to put your coat, if the air conditioning's wrong. You have a massive strategic imperative with sponsorships and you have to deliver at a micro level. One of the marketing disciplines that's most unforgiving because if it goes wrong, it goes wrong at scale.
GS: Yeah. Listen, MMA runs 30 conferences in 14 countries around the world, maybe 15 now actually. But conferences, events are about getting a thousand things right, and you're lucky if you don't miss half of them. I mean, that is the dynamic.
JC: Absolutely.
GS: It's a million little details that got to go your way. Hey, Jonnie, I want to get right into just some of your thinking here, but I did want to call out one other thing because I'd seen it and you mentioned it. Heineken 0.0, that actually has been a pretty big success for you guys. I think I saw something like a 30% share against non-alcoholic beer. Is that right? That's amazing.
JC: Yeah. Well around a 25% share in value terms. An amazing success, a beautiful innovation that's been really accretive to the franchise. So it's a very simple strategic premise. I mean, from a corporate perspective, if you think through a value maximization lens, we have breweries, we have sales reps, we have a system, but there are millions of moments when you'd love a beer, but you don't want the alcohol. And that's a different thing.
And so Heineken 0.0 really opens up a huge amount of occasionality. Technology and brewing has enabled us to make a really exceptional beverage, a really exceptional beer. The first thing everyone says when they drink Heineken 0.0 is, "Oh my god, it tastes like beer." And that wasn't always the case in non-alcoholic beers, particularly in the US. And it's a very underdeveloped category in the United States, it's still less than 1% or around 1% of the beer market. If you go to somewhere like Spain, non-alcoholic beer is 16% of the beer market.
GS: Wow, I didn't know that.
JC: So it's an everyday thing. Very underdeveloped here. It's been a remarkable success. It allows us to access occasions and moments that we wouldn't otherwise get to, and it allows us to broaden penetration for the franchise because you might want a Heineken Original on a Friday night, and you might want to Heineken 0.0 on a Monday night. So it's been a terrific success for us.
GS: Was there any challenge to, I don't know, what was the internal discussion on extending the brand to non-alcoholic?
JC: Yeah, it was really, really simple. There's a Heineken family, and we knew that the beer is good enough to put the name over the door and our globally iconic brand, Heineken Original. We simply wouldn't have done Heineken 0.0 if the delivery wasn't good enough, if the beer wasn't good enough. So the conversation was really quick, which is, this is an exceptional beer. Our brewers did some real magic, and we were actually proud to extend the franchise.
GS: Got it.
JC: We're really proud of what we did. And sometimes we get this question: "Yeah, you do that because you have to." We just ran a Super Bowl ad for Heineken 0.0, and people ask us, "Are we serious about non-alcoholic?" I can tell you I'm serious, or I can show you what I did with the Super Bowl where we partnered with Marvel and Antman. You probably want a Heineken 0.0 if you've got to save the world.
GS: You want to be available to save the world.
GS: What was the Super Bowl spot this year? Five million, 7 million, something like that? It was a big—
JC: In that ballpark. Yeah, absolutely.
GS: It is a big number.
JC: And that's before you make it, right?
GS: Yeah, exactly. So you're making a commitment there. You're right. You're making a commitment. I get that point.
JC: Well, our philosophy is very simple. We are making moderation cool. And that is a very important thing to us. We spent 10% of our global media budget on responsible communications in terms of how to drink responsibly. And we are committed to making moderation cool by doing things like partnering with Marvel on Heineken 0.0 and putting it into the biggest advertising moment in the year. So we're really pleased with how it's gone. It's a great product. I'll stick some in the mail for you, Greg.
GS: Okay. Okay, I appreciate that. So you serve currently on the global board of the MMA, and you certainly understand that we're all here about trying to unlock power of marketing for marketers in ways that maybe not have been self-evident or that they haven't seen themselves and looking for new opportunities in that. So listen, given that I'm always kind of on the hunt for where we can do better, let's take a very big question. What do you think that CMOs and marketers, they may not fully understand or appreciate? What do you think we're missing in marketing that we just don't get enough?
JC: If there's one single answer to this, I'll be surprised. I think what I'm often struck by is, as a discipline, we're trying to define a single view of how to successfully add value and build our brands and build our businesses. I see a lot of magnetism and gravitational pull towards lower funnel, towards performance marketing. I understand why, and I feel it every day, why that's an attractive place to go. But I do fundamentally believe that the magic of the discipline is in the balance between the logic, the magic, the science and the joy, the creativity, and the discipline. And especially with the kinds of brands I've had the privilege to work on, you need that upper funnel fabulousness. That magnetism, that is the game changer for organizations that can absolutely drive different types of non-incremental growth, step change growth. And you need discipline.
So I think my simple answer to your question is what people don't get is that it's balance. It's not one or the other. It's not this or that. It's not upper or lower. It's not performance or brand. It's all of it, all the time. And you have to be brilliant and insightful, and you have to be disciplined and driven. And I think when we get that right, we see brands fly. I certainly sense that there's a stronger gravitational pull because of the performance environments we're in towards the lower funnel. I hope that we protect both.
GS: Let's take the big one, the fun one. Listen, I worked on P&G business for a year, so very, very brand oriented. So I was steeped in that in part of my career. Given that you're tasked to try to either come up with a big idea or a big way to communicate the ideas, the strategy you've already agreed to, how do you really support getting to great work in that regard? If you don't deliver against that top one at a really significant of level, then you've not really accomplished half of the thesis you've just put forward here. How do you do that?
JC: Yeah, that's a great question. And you're right, the sequencing is the key. Because if you don't have the right level of insight, certainly in our business and the brands I've worked on, the right level of consumer centricity insight and let's call it creative cut through and brilliance, then no amount of efficiency is going to compensate for that. They always say some advertising is better than no advertising. And even bad advertising is better than no advertising. But really we should be trying to do great stuff and do it brilliantly. So we spend... And look, I've worked also, a bit like you, in environments where we have direct access to consumers like in telco. But even then we believed that if you get the creativity and the insightfulness right, everything can flow from that. And then your efficiency that you deliver through discipline and data and being analytically oriented and being good at your lower funnel work is actually a catalyst, not a compensatory factor.
And I think that really, back to your first question, is are we using efficiency and effectiveness to compensate for a lack of creativity and brilliance at the top of the funnel, when actually the way to do it is to have them working together? Be brilliant creatively, be very compelling, and then be super efficient and driven about how you get that out there.
GS: Okay, so I've worked in agencies, I've worked with, I think some of the greatest creative minds of their time, way back when. It's hard to tell if you got it right when you're sitting in that room. You're in a conference room, you watch the damn ad or the positioning seven, 10 times. You experience all that, not in any way that a consumer does. How do you know that you've hit it? How do you know you got it right?
JC: Well, the first thing, Greg, and I'll probably deny ever saying this, is you don't get it right.
GS: Oh, okay. Yeah.
JC: And any CMO who tells you they're batting a thousand is telling a little white lie there.
GS: It's a very hard thing to get that. I mean, I've done those meetings and sat in those rooms. So how do you start? So then how do you get it right a second, third, fourth, fifth time? How do you know?
JC: There are ways to get there. I mean, first you got to surround yourself with great partners, like you say, great creative minds, great agencies. What we try to do is really get the planning right upfront. And we have one very simple philosophy, which is we buy ideas, not executions. And too often what happens—and what in the room, like you described, where there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of people, and you're trying to find it—is people get very focused on the execution itself: the script, the board, the story, the tone of voice, the joke, the humor, the moment, the reveal, whatever. When actually the trick is to buy fundamentally big ideas. Example: "You're not yourself when you're hungry" by Snickers. There are many, many executions of that. That's not important. What's important is that idea is so fundamentally insightful that you can't miss.
JC: In that ballpark. Yeah, absolutely.
GS: It is a big number.
JC: And that's before you make it, right?
GS: Yeah, exactly. So you're making a commitment there. You're right. You're making a commitment. I get that point.
JC: Well, our philosophy is very simple. We are making moderation cool. And that is a very important thing to us. We spent 10% of our global media budget on responsible communications in terms of how to drink responsibly. And we are committed to making moderation cool by doing things like partnering with Marvel on Heineken 0.0 and putting it into the biggest advertising moment in the year. So we're really pleased with how it's gone. It's a great product. I'll stick some in the mail for you, Greg.
GS: Okay. Okay, I appreciate that. So you serve currently on the global board of the MMA, and you certainly understand that we're all here about trying to unlock power of marketing for marketers in ways that maybe not have been self-evident or that they haven't seen themselves and looking for new opportunities in that. So listen, given that I'm always kind of on the hunt for where we can do better, let's take a very big question. What do you think that CMOs and marketers, they may not fully understand or appreciate? What do you think we're missing in marketing that we just don't get enough?
JC: If there's one single answer to this, I'll be surprised. I think what I'm often struck by is, as a discipline, we're trying to define a single view of how to successfully add value and build our brands and build our businesses. I see a lot of magnetism and gravitational pull towards lower funnel, towards performance marketing. I understand why, and I feel it every day, why that's an attractive place to go. But I do fundamentally believe that the magic of the discipline is in the balance between the logic, the magic, the science and the joy, the creativity, and the discipline. And especially with the kinds of brands I've had the privilege to work on, you need that upper funnel fabulousness. That magnetism, that is the game changer for organizations that can absolutely drive different types of non-incremental growth, step change growth. And you need discipline.
So I think my simple answer to your question is what people don't get is that it's balance. It's not one or the other. It's not this or that. It's not upper or lower. It's not performance or brand. It's all of it, all the time. And you have to be brilliant and insightful, and you have to be disciplined and driven. And I think when we get that right, we see brands fly. I certainly sense that there's a stronger gravitational pull because of the performance environments we're in towards the lower funnel. I hope that we protect both.
GS: Let's take the big one, the fun one. Listen, I worked on P&G business for a year, so very, very brand oriented. So I was steeped in that in part of my career. Given that you're tasked to try to either come up with a big idea or a big way to communicate the ideas, the strategy you've already agreed to, how do you really support getting to great work in that regard? If you don't deliver against that top one at a really significant of level, then you've not really accomplished half of the thesis you've just put forward here. How do you do that?
JC: Yeah, that's a great question. And you're right, the sequencing is the key. Because if you don't have the right level of insight, certainly in our business and the brands I've worked on, the right level of consumer centricity insight and let's call it creative cut through and brilliance, then no amount of efficiency is going to compensate for that. They always say some advertising is better than no advertising. And even bad advertising is better than no advertising. But really we should be trying to do great stuff and do it brilliantly. So we spend... And look, I've worked also, a bit like you, in environments where we have direct access to consumers like in telco. But even then we believed that if you get the creativity and the insightfulness right, everything can flow from that. And then your efficiency that you deliver through discipline and data and being analytically oriented and being good at your lower funnel work is actually a catalyst, not a compensatory factor.
And I think that really, back to your first question, is are we using efficiency and effectiveness to compensate for a lack of creativity and brilliance at the top of the funnel, when actually the way to do it is to have them working together? Be brilliant creatively, be very compelling, and then be super efficient and driven about how you get that out there.
GS: Okay, so I've worked in agencies, I've worked with, I think some of the greatest creative minds of their time, way back when. It's hard to tell if you got it right when you're sitting in that room. You're in a conference room, you watch the damn ad or the positioning seven, 10 times. You experience all that, not in any way that a consumer does. How do you know that you've hit it? How do you know you got it right?
JC: Well, the first thing, Greg, and I'll probably deny ever saying this, is you don't get it right.
GS: Oh, okay. Yeah.
JC: And any CMO who tells you they're batting a thousand is telling a little white lie there.
GS: It's a very hard thing to get that. I mean, I've done those meetings and sat in those rooms. So how do you start? So then how do you get it right a second, third, fourth, fifth time? How do you know?
JC: There are ways to get there. I mean, first you got to surround yourself with great partners, like you say, great creative minds, great agencies. What we try to do is really get the planning right upfront. And we have one very simple philosophy, which is we buy ideas, not executions. And too often what happens—and what in the room, like you described, where there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of people, and you're trying to find it—is people get very focused on the execution itself: the script, the board, the story, the tone of voice, the joke, the humor, the moment, the reveal, whatever. When actually the trick is to buy fundamentally big ideas. Example: "You're not yourself when you're hungry" by Snickers. There are many, many executions of that. That's not important. What's important is that idea is so fundamentally insightful that you can't miss.
JC: So the first trick is to buy and believe in ideas. And once you do that, all the noise dies down because then you're evaluating executions purely through their executional lens and how well they are representing the idea. So that's a trick, or the focus. And that's a mistake—it's probably strong—but that's an easy thing to get wrong, is to focus on what's in front of me. But it's the "What's the bigger idea?" And that's what I try to impart to the people on the teams who are starting their advertising careers. Like don't buy the script, buy the idea, because there will be 20 scripts.
GS: Can you share, I mean I don't need to reach into your confidential strategy documents here, but what is the idea for Heineken?
JC: Well, I'll take Heineken Silver, for example, which we're just launching. So one of the biggest innovations and launches in US beer, the investment is north of $100 million. So it's high-stakes stuff. We have many different deployments, but the core idea is "All the taste, no bitter endings." That campaign is just breaking right now. And of course it nods to a very accessible version of Heineken, something that's very easy to drink, but that still has a lot of taste. So you could say that's a functional descriptor of Heineken Silver. But if you think about it as an idea, we can then play with that in popular culture.
GS: Can you share, I mean I don't need to reach into your confidential strategy documents here, but what is the idea for Heineken?
JC: Well, I'll take Heineken Silver, for example, which we're just launching. So one of the biggest innovations and launches in US beer, the investment is north of $100 million. So it's high-stakes stuff. We have many different deployments, but the core idea is "All the taste, no bitter endings." That campaign is just breaking right now. And of course it nods to a very accessible version of Heineken, something that's very easy to drink, but that still has a lot of taste. So you could say that's a functional descriptor of Heineken Silver. But if you think about it as an idea, we can then play with that in popular culture.
JC: We can play with that in how we show up in bars. Formula One next week: "All of the grid, none of the gridlock." So we're able to have this pivot around the brand idea where basically anything that happens that has a bitter ending, we're kind of against that. And Heineken Silver will bring that to life creatively and in a fun way.
Would you like us to rewrite the end of Game of Thrones? We might do that for you because we want a different ending. When you get to a core, if you're a Chicago Bears fan, your field goals would go over, your points after would go over if we were there. So we can play with that idea in very simple ways. And that's a test we do. Can you do this on a billboard in a static environment and in very creative ways as per the TV campaign that's out there at the moment where a Viking suddenly becomes friendly because we want to end the story differently.
And when we see an idea like that from the agency, there is... just to your original question, there is always a moment when your stomach flips and you have that feeling of like, "Oh my god, that's it." And you have to protect that feeling and not ignore it. Because so often you think, "Will my boss like it? Will the CEO like it? Will the lawyers approve it?" But you have to suspend that at the beginning and say, "Is that just a brilliant idea?" Look at Progressive: you become your parents.
GS: It's a very funny idea.
JC: Everybody understands that that's true. You start to look like them, you start to behave like them, you turn into them. It's a true insight. It's a massive idea. And they are able to drive all sorts of different work off that because they bought an idea, not an execution.
Would you like us to rewrite the end of Game of Thrones? We might do that for you because we want a different ending. When you get to a core, if you're a Chicago Bears fan, your field goals would go over, your points after would go over if we were there. So we can play with that idea in very simple ways. And that's a test we do. Can you do this on a billboard in a static environment and in very creative ways as per the TV campaign that's out there at the moment where a Viking suddenly becomes friendly because we want to end the story differently.
And when we see an idea like that from the agency, there is... just to your original question, there is always a moment when your stomach flips and you have that feeling of like, "Oh my god, that's it." And you have to protect that feeling and not ignore it. Because so often you think, "Will my boss like it? Will the CEO like it? Will the lawyers approve it?" But you have to suspend that at the beginning and say, "Is that just a brilliant idea?" Look at Progressive: you become your parents.
GS: It's a very funny idea.
JC: Everybody understands that that's true. You start to look like them, you start to behave like them, you turn into them. It's a true insight. It's a massive idea. And they are able to drive all sorts of different work off that because they bought an idea, not an execution.
GS: One of my favorites was the one that John Costello, who's my old board chair here at the MMA, did for Dunkin', which is "America runs on Dunkin'." I think it's one of the most brilliant ones ever. I can't even imagine how you could have done that better than that.
JC: It's a brilliant example, Greg, because it's so good and so compelling that they can represent that using illustrations.
GS: Yes.
JC: If you've seen what they do, the map of America, a small running figure, and the D. I mean they don't even have to say it. Look at Mastercard's ownership of price.
GS: Priceless. Amazing, amazing.
JC: The bottom line is buy the idea.
GS: But Jonnie, so listen. So in some regards, and you can take umbrage of the question here, or maybe you don't, I don't know. Let me throw it out there. We'll see. You, as CMO, are in essence being paid that your intuition at getting at that is better than somebody else's intuition. Because if it's a, I know it when I see it, I know it when I get it. And I hear you with a series of qualifiers, but that's a very tricky thing to do. And then, like you said, you're spending tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars against something to validate that in execution. That's tricky. Is there any other way that you know?
JC: Oh, for sure. I mean we do all of the discipline stuff you'd expect like testing and link testing and consumer testing and comprehension testing and eye tracking and non-verbal. I mean, it's the combination of using, and the beauty of the discipline is the science has evolved so much that I don't need to ask you if you like the copy because people lie, but I can tell using other behavioral triggers how you're feeling about things. Are you confused? Are you upset? Are you angry? Are you engaged? Do you think it's funny? How funny? All of those things.
So we have beautiful marketing technology solutions in behavioral science and neuroscience even that allow us to test. There is a role for intuition followed by the discipline of checking, testing, and understanding. But we shouldn't deny that some of what great CMOs do is they select things. And someone said to me a while back, "It must be amazing. You get to pick all this work." And I said, "Yeah, but really what I get to do is kill a lot of work." It's also about what you don't do, and it has to go both ways. So I think it's intuition-plus. There's a lot of tech in addition to that frisson that runs through you. But if your stomach flips and you're like, "Whoa," you shouldn't ignore that.
GS: Have you had experiences where you've had stuff that your stomach flipped, but the research said no and you went ahead with it anyway?
JC: Yeah, of course. And I mean it goes to your organizational philosophy. And I think also some bravery sometimes that you have to, occasionally as a CMO, support something not in a way that's reckless or disregarding of the research, because there will always be clues there. But research is designed to help you make decisions, not to make decisions. And that can be a trap that's easy to fall into. And it's hard. I can imagine listeners who are maybe more junior in their career or coming through their career saying, "Yeah, that's easy for you to say. You've got the stripes and if you screw up, they'll probably forgive you because you've probably been out on some good stuff." If you believe, you've got to protect the work and you've got to protect the idea. And I would say you know more CMOs, Greg, than I do. I think bravery is probably one of the characteristics that you see a lot, that they're prepared to say, "We should do this."
GS: Yeah. The older I get, Jonnie. Bob Pittman from now iHeart Media spoke at one of our events, he says, "The only advantage of getting older is pattern recognition." I love that as a thesis.
JC: I'm looking forward to being better recognized. I think it's what you've got to try to do. Again, it's back to balance. It's some intuition and then lots of data, and then make the call.
GS: But I do agree with you, too, that I think the other part of that is that you're right, the older I get, the more courage I have, the more... I think it's a really a sign of leadership. What's the leadership that I push forward based on and somewhat the courage of my convictions. And listen, that doesn't mean I'm going off half crazy or making stuff up. I've sort of checked the touchpoints. I've sort of evaluated, heard people's perspectives. But there does come a point in time where you need to make a decision and get going because indecision is deadly.
JC: Indecision is deadly, and recklessness isn't okay and casualness isn't okay.
GS: Agreed.
JC: But intuition is valuable. Everybody has it to a greater or lesser extent. And so it is that balance and you've got to try. If you believe in something and you can see where it could go, you've got to protect ideas. They're so fragile at the beginning.
GS: So fragile.
JC: But if you get them and you establish them, they become so liberating and so organizationally galvanizing because everyone can get behind it. And as your business gets more and more competitive, we're scrapping for share and volume growth and performance. If you can orient the organization behind unifying ideas, which are often brand led, you'll see performance. And I think that is the trick. You're trying to protect it.
GS: It's interesting you say that, too, Jonnie, because we're saying this as kind of a side topic, but we've seen that in the marketing org research that we've done that getting alignment on the mission of marketing and the marketing department is one of the single greatest drivers of net promoter score within the marketing department, like would I recommend this marketing department to somebody else? And it's the first step to get right. There's not, per se, I mean there's some measurement we can do around that now, but that's not a quantitative exercise. That's about really making sure that we get all aligned to what we believe to be true in the world that we're going to go take the hill with.
JC: And even a simple example, we have a process called mission mapping, which allows us to say, what are the crucial things we must do this year? So it's like almost a one-year battle plan as part of our strategy. We always start with, if you will, that objective or that philosophical star point. And in our team this year, our mission is "Wow the consumer." We just want to do stuff that in the end... And we will research it and we will try to prove it. But in the end, you see stuff we do and you think, "Whoa."
GS: What's an example of wow the consumer this year?
JC: Heineken House at Coachella.
GS: Oh, okay.
JC: The most iconic music festival probably in the world. And the side stage lineup at Heineken House would blow your mind. It's a beautiful environment. On your Uber ride to Coachella, when you call your Uber, you will see Heineken. It will tell you to go to Heineken House. You can then go there and have a Heineken. You can see amazing music. And as you leave, you'll be prompted to download the Heineken House playlist onto Spotify. So we will get your data so then we can continue the customer journey conversation. I mean it's wow the consumer, and under the hood, it's wow with the tech.
GS: Wow.
JC: And the joined up thinking.
GS: Wow. I just said it myself.
JC: And that's a brilliant... You could say, wow the consumer is such an amorphous objective, but how liberating is that if you're a brand VP, you're like, "That's not good enough," or, "That's awesome. Let's do it."
GS: Yeah. Well, and it gives you a center, it gives you a North Star that you're aiming for.
JC: It's a brilliant example, Greg, because it's so good and so compelling that they can represent that using illustrations.
GS: Yes.
JC: If you've seen what they do, the map of America, a small running figure, and the D. I mean they don't even have to say it. Look at Mastercard's ownership of price.
GS: Priceless. Amazing, amazing.
JC: The bottom line is buy the idea.
GS: But Jonnie, so listen. So in some regards, and you can take umbrage of the question here, or maybe you don't, I don't know. Let me throw it out there. We'll see. You, as CMO, are in essence being paid that your intuition at getting at that is better than somebody else's intuition. Because if it's a, I know it when I see it, I know it when I get it. And I hear you with a series of qualifiers, but that's a very tricky thing to do. And then, like you said, you're spending tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars against something to validate that in execution. That's tricky. Is there any other way that you know?
JC: Oh, for sure. I mean we do all of the discipline stuff you'd expect like testing and link testing and consumer testing and comprehension testing and eye tracking and non-verbal. I mean, it's the combination of using, and the beauty of the discipline is the science has evolved so much that I don't need to ask you if you like the copy because people lie, but I can tell using other behavioral triggers how you're feeling about things. Are you confused? Are you upset? Are you angry? Are you engaged? Do you think it's funny? How funny? All of those things.
So we have beautiful marketing technology solutions in behavioral science and neuroscience even that allow us to test. There is a role for intuition followed by the discipline of checking, testing, and understanding. But we shouldn't deny that some of what great CMOs do is they select things. And someone said to me a while back, "It must be amazing. You get to pick all this work." And I said, "Yeah, but really what I get to do is kill a lot of work." It's also about what you don't do, and it has to go both ways. So I think it's intuition-plus. There's a lot of tech in addition to that frisson that runs through you. But if your stomach flips and you're like, "Whoa," you shouldn't ignore that.
GS: Have you had experiences where you've had stuff that your stomach flipped, but the research said no and you went ahead with it anyway?
JC: Yeah, of course. And I mean it goes to your organizational philosophy. And I think also some bravery sometimes that you have to, occasionally as a CMO, support something not in a way that's reckless or disregarding of the research, because there will always be clues there. But research is designed to help you make decisions, not to make decisions. And that can be a trap that's easy to fall into. And it's hard. I can imagine listeners who are maybe more junior in their career or coming through their career saying, "Yeah, that's easy for you to say. You've got the stripes and if you screw up, they'll probably forgive you because you've probably been out on some good stuff." If you believe, you've got to protect the work and you've got to protect the idea. And I would say you know more CMOs, Greg, than I do. I think bravery is probably one of the characteristics that you see a lot, that they're prepared to say, "We should do this."
GS: Yeah. The older I get, Jonnie. Bob Pittman from now iHeart Media spoke at one of our events, he says, "The only advantage of getting older is pattern recognition." I love that as a thesis.
JC: I'm looking forward to being better recognized. I think it's what you've got to try to do. Again, it's back to balance. It's some intuition and then lots of data, and then make the call.
GS: But I do agree with you, too, that I think the other part of that is that you're right, the older I get, the more courage I have, the more... I think it's a really a sign of leadership. What's the leadership that I push forward based on and somewhat the courage of my convictions. And listen, that doesn't mean I'm going off half crazy or making stuff up. I've sort of checked the touchpoints. I've sort of evaluated, heard people's perspectives. But there does come a point in time where you need to make a decision and get going because indecision is deadly.
JC: Indecision is deadly, and recklessness isn't okay and casualness isn't okay.
GS: Agreed.
JC: But intuition is valuable. Everybody has it to a greater or lesser extent. And so it is that balance and you've got to try. If you believe in something and you can see where it could go, you've got to protect ideas. They're so fragile at the beginning.
GS: So fragile.
JC: But if you get them and you establish them, they become so liberating and so organizationally galvanizing because everyone can get behind it. And as your business gets more and more competitive, we're scrapping for share and volume growth and performance. If you can orient the organization behind unifying ideas, which are often brand led, you'll see performance. And I think that is the trick. You're trying to protect it.
GS: It's interesting you say that, too, Jonnie, because we're saying this as kind of a side topic, but we've seen that in the marketing org research that we've done that getting alignment on the mission of marketing and the marketing department is one of the single greatest drivers of net promoter score within the marketing department, like would I recommend this marketing department to somebody else? And it's the first step to get right. There's not, per se, I mean there's some measurement we can do around that now, but that's not a quantitative exercise. That's about really making sure that we get all aligned to what we believe to be true in the world that we're going to go take the hill with.
JC: And even a simple example, we have a process called mission mapping, which allows us to say, what are the crucial things we must do this year? So it's like almost a one-year battle plan as part of our strategy. We always start with, if you will, that objective or that philosophical star point. And in our team this year, our mission is "Wow the consumer." We just want to do stuff that in the end... And we will research it and we will try to prove it. But in the end, you see stuff we do and you think, "Whoa."
GS: What's an example of wow the consumer this year?
JC: Heineken House at Coachella.
GS: Oh, okay.
JC: The most iconic music festival probably in the world. And the side stage lineup at Heineken House would blow your mind. It's a beautiful environment. On your Uber ride to Coachella, when you call your Uber, you will see Heineken. It will tell you to go to Heineken House. You can then go there and have a Heineken. You can see amazing music. And as you leave, you'll be prompted to download the Heineken House playlist onto Spotify. So we will get your data so then we can continue the customer journey conversation. I mean it's wow the consumer, and under the hood, it's wow with the tech.
GS: Wow.
JC: And the joined up thinking.
GS: Wow. I just said it myself.
JC: And that's a brilliant... You could say, wow the consumer is such an amorphous objective, but how liberating is that if you're a brand VP, you're like, "That's not good enough," or, "That's awesome. Let's do it."
GS: Yeah. Well, and it gives you a center, it gives you a North Star that you're aiming for.