Podcast Transcript - Building Better CMOs
Credit Karma Head of Marketing Natasha Madan
Natasha and Greg discuss bridging the gap between brand and performance marketing, understanding deep consumer psychology to drive results, and her leadership philosophy of playing offense.
NATASHA: It's the connection of the work that you do to get an amazing brand. Think about a brand or the brand creative, right? In order for it to be breakthrough, in my mind, you have to connect with the customers where it actually moves them, it lifts their heads. And the way you do it is by understanding what matters to them and what is the problem that your brand is trying to solve. When you do that work, Greg, you come across so many insights, you come across so many learnings.
GREG: Natasha Madan, welcome to Building Better CMOs today.
NATASHA: Thank you for having me, Greg. It's an honor to talk to you today.
GREG: I know this is going to be fun. I could just tell. I think Erica and I both just love — Eric's the producer there, for the listener who doesn't know — but the person that ... We just love those who have a sense of energy about what they're trying to do, and you definitely fit into that cap. Now, I guess I should ask you, though, does that come because you worked on sugary candy businesses for so many years at Nestlé that you're sort of just jacked up with energy? Or no, you've always been that way.
NATASHA: I think I [have] always been that way. I have to say that candy did help.
GREG: Candy did help, yeah. I don't know if I really believe that, that it does that, but it's a funny sort of thing.
NATASHA: Thank you for having me, Greg. It's an honor to talk to you today.
GREG: I know this is going to be fun. I could just tell. I think Erica and I both just love — Eric's the producer there, for the listener who doesn't know — but the person that ... We just love those who have a sense of energy about what they're trying to do, and you definitely fit into that cap. Now, I guess I should ask you, though, does that come because you worked on sugary candy businesses for so many years at Nestlé that you're sort of just jacked up with energy? Or no, you've always been that way.
NATASHA: I think I [have] always been that way. I have to say that candy did help.
GREG: Candy did help, yeah. I don't know if I really believe that, that it does that, but it's a funny sort of thing.
From Nestlé to Tech
GREG: What's interesting about your background, because I think it's going to come [up] a lot in a conversation, so I'll take the time to introduce it here, is that you actually spent a big chunk of your early career at Nestlé and specifically worked on candy businesses there. Give it the brands, just for everybody. It'll be like coming home for a lot of us.
NATASHA: Yeah, it's Halloween time, so I'm sure it's top of mind for everyone, and it's pretty much what you get in your Halloween bag, which is the Butterfinger, Crunches, Laffy Taffy, Nerds, Wonka, Gobstoppers, if you remember those, Sweetarts.
GREG: Oh my God.
NATASHA: Baby Ruth.
GREG: Oh my God.
NATASHA: There's a long list.
GREG: Oh my God, so much fun, like the best. Now listen though, but those were very core brand-oriented businesses, obviously sold through retail, and it's hard to turn those businesses into eCommerce businesses because the weather and heat and just all sorts of issues. So they really do remain, I think, pretty strong, the epitome of a strong brand business-oriented. But then you went to tech, which has a very different orientation to the world. What possessed you to move to tech, by the way? (laugh) Is that the right ... What's the right question here for you on that?
NATASHA: Yeah, I'll say I think that was probably hands down the best decision of my life.
GREG: Really.
NATASHA: Yeah. So at the core of what I love doing is really understanding what makes our consumers tick. Why do they behave the way they behave? What are their deep insecurities? What are their fears? What are their aspirations? And how as brands we can solve those. And I think there wasn't a better place than Nestlé to learn all that.
GREG: Totally. Top of the heap.
NATASHA: Being top of the heap. It's the place where you really hone in your craft as a marketer. And I think at Amazon, what was really interesting was they were really ... I went to work on Amazon Prime. I was their first marketer to actually work on their brand strategy, and it was fascinating. That was one of the trusted brands and of the bigger brands, not only just in the industry, in the country and the world, and it was so interesting that it was built on consumer experience and the trust was built on how consumers were experiencing the brand. It was what our customer service looked like. It was how fast they were getting their products. It was how easy to shop and prices and all of that.
But as they were thinking of adding more benefits to Prime — video, music, we had Wall Street Journal discounts, we had reading, we had so much in there — the question at hand was what does Prime really stand for and how do we position Prime in the hearts and minds of our consumers and how do you create that emotional connection? There was a lot of connection based on innovation and transaction and utility, but do customers really care about us as a brand and what would that look like? So it was that transferring of that knowledge back there, which I thought was an amazing challenge to do it for one of the best brands.
GREG: Did they really reach out to you because of your brand background?
NATASHA: Yes.
GREG: I guess, obviously, right. They really wanted to experience that.
NATASHA: Yes, and I applaud them for thinking like that, to be honest, at that time.
GREG: Listen, they've done an amazing job and they feel that in their company. I mean, it's kind of what it is. Good for them to have that, but so it's interesting that they would take the time to listen to somebody outside. I don't know that they're always naturally oriented to that sometimes, so it's phenomenal to hear that they were good at that. At the time, what did your friends think when you were going there? So you went there in 2015, 2016. What'd your friends think when you were going there?
NATASHA: The way it was seen in the Nestlé world at that time was that, Great, you're going from selling to Walmart and Targets of the world to one of the top retailers. So Amazon in the CPG world was at that time seen as a retailer. And they're like, Good for you to go work for a retailer. That was so different because in my mind, I wasn't working for a retailer, I was working for the biggest brand in the world and helping shape that. And it's such a data company. Of course it has marketplaces like a retail, but nowhere close to that from a marketing standpoint.
GREG: That's so funny that that was their interpretation. Well, listen, we're going to get into I think the difference of mix that that makes for a marketer and stuff. We're going to define some of that here as we get deeper into this episode, but I want to stick to, a little bit, with Intuit Credit Karma. So as I said earlier, you've gone from candy to credit, but I think it might be helpful to explain to people, what is the Intuit Credit Karma business? I don't know if everybody's maybe fully up to speed. Give me some orientation just so they know.
NATASHA: Yeah, it's Halloween time, so I'm sure it's top of mind for everyone, and it's pretty much what you get in your Halloween bag, which is the Butterfinger, Crunches, Laffy Taffy, Nerds, Wonka, Gobstoppers, if you remember those, Sweetarts.
GREG: Oh my God.
NATASHA: Baby Ruth.
GREG: Oh my God.
NATASHA: There's a long list.
GREG: Oh my God, so much fun, like the best. Now listen though, but those were very core brand-oriented businesses, obviously sold through retail, and it's hard to turn those businesses into eCommerce businesses because the weather and heat and just all sorts of issues. So they really do remain, I think, pretty strong, the epitome of a strong brand business-oriented. But then you went to tech, which has a very different orientation to the world. What possessed you to move to tech, by the way? (laugh) Is that the right ... What's the right question here for you on that?
NATASHA: Yeah, I'll say I think that was probably hands down the best decision of my life.
GREG: Really.
NATASHA: Yeah. So at the core of what I love doing is really understanding what makes our consumers tick. Why do they behave the way they behave? What are their deep insecurities? What are their fears? What are their aspirations? And how as brands we can solve those. And I think there wasn't a better place than Nestlé to learn all that.
GREG: Totally. Top of the heap.
NATASHA: Being top of the heap. It's the place where you really hone in your craft as a marketer. And I think at Amazon, what was really interesting was they were really ... I went to work on Amazon Prime. I was their first marketer to actually work on their brand strategy, and it was fascinating. That was one of the trusted brands and of the bigger brands, not only just in the industry, in the country and the world, and it was so interesting that it was built on consumer experience and the trust was built on how consumers were experiencing the brand. It was what our customer service looked like. It was how fast they were getting their products. It was how easy to shop and prices and all of that.
But as they were thinking of adding more benefits to Prime — video, music, we had Wall Street Journal discounts, we had reading, we had so much in there — the question at hand was what does Prime really stand for and how do we position Prime in the hearts and minds of our consumers and how do you create that emotional connection? There was a lot of connection based on innovation and transaction and utility, but do customers really care about us as a brand and what would that look like? So it was that transferring of that knowledge back there, which I thought was an amazing challenge to do it for one of the best brands.
GREG: Did they really reach out to you because of your brand background?
NATASHA: Yes.
GREG: I guess, obviously, right. They really wanted to experience that.
NATASHA: Yes, and I applaud them for thinking like that, to be honest, at that time.
GREG: Listen, they've done an amazing job and they feel that in their company. I mean, it's kind of what it is. Good for them to have that, but so it's interesting that they would take the time to listen to somebody outside. I don't know that they're always naturally oriented to that sometimes, so it's phenomenal to hear that they were good at that. At the time, what did your friends think when you were going there? So you went there in 2015, 2016. What'd your friends think when you were going there?
NATASHA: The way it was seen in the Nestlé world at that time was that, Great, you're going from selling to Walmart and Targets of the world to one of the top retailers. So Amazon in the CPG world was at that time seen as a retailer. And they're like, Good for you to go work for a retailer. That was so different because in my mind, I wasn't working for a retailer, I was working for the biggest brand in the world and helping shape that. And it's such a data company. Of course it has marketplaces like a retail, but nowhere close to that from a marketing standpoint.
GREG: That's so funny that that was their interpretation. Well, listen, we're going to get into I think the difference of mix that that makes for a marketer and stuff. We're going to define some of that here as we get deeper into this episode, but I want to stick to, a little bit, with Intuit Credit Karma. So as I said earlier, you've gone from candy to credit, but I think it might be helpful to explain to people, what is the Intuit Credit Karma business? I don't know if everybody's maybe fully up to speed. Give me some orientation just so they know.
Credit Karma's Mission
NATASHA: Yeah, I would say that as people know of Credit Karma, [it] was born by giving free credit scores about 18 years ago to level the playing field for our consumers. People would not ... People who were just starting out or were disadvantaged did not have enough money to be able to understand the role the credit score played in their lives and how they could actually change their financial trajectory based on that. So Ken Lin, who was the founder of Credit Karma, did that. He basically provided free credit scores when they were like 20, 30, 40 bucks in the marketplace. But since then, we've grown to really helping members make financial progress, which was always the mission, but then we added a lot of products to help enable that. Now, because of the help of Intuit, our consumers can file taxes on Credit Karma. We can help them understand what their situation of debt is, how they can actually manage their debt, how could they consolidate their debts.
We have personal loans that we offer on our platform. If they want to build credit, they can buy credit cards on our platform and actually put money in CK Money savings accounts, what we call it, which is high-yield saving accounts. So there's a gamut of financial products and services we provide that customers can think about their financial lives end-to-end. And that's possible because — with the power of Intuit now, and then hence you see why Intuit Credit Karma makes sense — is we can help them make their money go much further. We can help them get maximum refund through their taxes. For most of our members, that's their biggest paycheck.
GREG: And it's been a change in the strategy of Intuit. I mean, I think brand people appreciate this kind of thing to attach Intuit onto Credit Karma, that wasn't ... It used to be, I think, the brands all sat very individualistic, I thought. I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong on that, but now there's been a real move to say, let's stitch this together, the whole story, right?
NATASHA: That's right. Because I think as we bring other brands into our app and their environment, what's the connective tissue that's really Intuit? And at the end of it, what Intuit is really trying to do is powering prosperity. It's literally access to money, and we are able to do that by bringing these brands together. So that's the connective tissue between the two brands.
We have personal loans that we offer on our platform. If they want to build credit, they can buy credit cards on our platform and actually put money in CK Money savings accounts, what we call it, which is high-yield saving accounts. So there's a gamut of financial products and services we provide that customers can think about their financial lives end-to-end. And that's possible because — with the power of Intuit now, and then hence you see why Intuit Credit Karma makes sense — is we can help them make their money go much further. We can help them get maximum refund through their taxes. For most of our members, that's their biggest paycheck.
GREG: And it's been a change in the strategy of Intuit. I mean, I think brand people appreciate this kind of thing to attach Intuit onto Credit Karma, that wasn't ... It used to be, I think, the brands all sat very individualistic, I thought. I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong on that, but now there's been a real move to say, let's stitch this together, the whole story, right?
NATASHA: That's right. Because I think as we bring other brands into our app and their environment, what's the connective tissue that's really Intuit? And at the end of it, what Intuit is really trying to do is powering prosperity. It's literally access to money, and we are able to do that by bringing these brands together. So that's the connective tissue between the two brands.
The Psychology of Money
GREG: You said something earlier too. We were doing a little pre-talk around just the consumer's orientation and some of the challenges in talking about just financials in general, and the words that you used were sort of the guilt and shame around finance. So talk a little bit more about the insights you developed around that and how that plays into some of what you try to do in communicating with consumers.
NATASHA: Yeah, it's fascinating, Greg. When you are sitting in these positions, it's very easy to look at your customers and say, yes, they don't have money, they're living paycheck to paycheck, and they struggle. Especially when you have not experienced that yourself very deeply, I think no amount of empathy is enough at that point, I feel. One of my charters as I came in was to really expand the brand. It was very similar to Prime, how to take it from shipping to, we said, best of shopping and entertainment, and here, how do we expand it beyond credit scores? But you start by understanding what the customers want, how are they feeling? This is when [the] Nestlé background comes into play where you're like, when you try to get consumer insight, you really have to get down to what are their insecurities, what are their aspirations, what are they looking forward to? What are their goals? And yes, it was about buying a car or getting access to a loan or a credit card and understanding what were the benefits of the card. But in the end, it was really about how they grew up thinking about finances, very similar to their relationship with health care. I think people have the similar relation to finances. It's how did their parents handle their finances? What impact did that have in their lives? How will they want to live their lives? What's the legacy they want to leave for their kids?
GREG: My relationship to money is dictated on what my parents', probably, relationship to money was.
NATASHA: And there was so much guilt, shame associated with it. Most people, no matter where they are in their financial journey and how much money they have in their banks or not, they feel they're not doing good enough work.
GREG: Nobody feels they're doing well enough, even no matter what you have. Is that what you're saying? That's very interesting.
NATASHA: Yes. And it's like that constant "Am I missing out on something? I don't know if I'm investing it right. I don't know." And those problems change. When you're starting out, it's very much about, I don't know what this world looks like. I don't want to make any mistakes. I don't want to lose my house. What if an emergency happens? Can I pay for it? If my car breaks down, what am I going to do? Those, I would say, problems change, but the feelings don't change. And your attitude towards finances doesn't change because it's so deep rooted and very much associated with the legacy you want to leave and the genetics that you inherited with that, how you grew up with it.
GREG: Oh, that's so interesting. I looked here quick too while you were talking, and I noticed 67% of US workers say that they live paycheck to paycheck.
NATASHA: Yes, that's correct.
GREG: Yeah, I think that's, yeah.
NATASHA: That's correct.
GREG: And here, a Bank of America study or internal analysis, 25% of households spend 95% of their income just on necessities. In other words, they're very low margin.
NATASHA: 80% of the people have less than $2,000 in their savings.
GREG: I suspect that that's a lot. I've tried to assess what's going on in the world today. There seems to be disruption. Let's just leave it at that. And I think it is predicated on some of this anxiety and fear, which is a variation of what you've just said, and I'm just not so sure that we can go through life and ignore the struggles of those who are in that position, to not be helpful to them, which feels like the kind of underlying thesis or takeaway that you have, then, in the role that Credit Karma, Intuit Credit Karma, plays.
NATASHA: Yes, we are very sensitive to what our members are going through right now. So listen, we went through Covid and the financial implications during that time and how we had to give them the right guidance and the tools. I think at the core of what we provide is the guidance at the right time to our members, and it's objective because we don't make any money off of them. So it's very much in terms of how should they think about their finances, what are their best practices, how can they save? And now we are able, with all of our new products and services, we are able to have them take action. So if they connect their accounts with us and they share their information, we can tell them what, from our standpoint, is best practice in terms of where should they put their savings, what should they pay first? So we are able to do that for them. And AI has enabled that so much also that they can —
GREG: So much, yeah.
NATASHA: Yeah, that they can have that conversation and be able to make those decisions for them in a matter of seconds.
GREG: You said something there. What is the business model of Credit Karma? How does it actually generate revenue and make money?
NATASHA: So it is free to our customers. We give them advice. We have our proprietary technology, which we call our Lightbox platform, which helps them, actually saves them a lot of time. It also overcomes a lot of that guilt and shame we talked about. Imagine being able to apply for credit cards and get rejected over and over again. We can tell you where you have your approval odds to be able to get that. So what we do is we bring in partners on our platform like Chase, AmEx, Capital One, and we serve those on what we call our marketplace. And once a customer is matched to the partner, whether it's a loan or a credit card, we do get the money from our partners.
GREG: Got it, got it, got it, got it.
NATASHA: That's how we make money.
GREG: Yeah. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah. But otherwise, yeah, I mean I remember the service being free in the times I've interacted with it.
NATASHA: And it's a win-win-win model because, for our partners, this is great because we are sending them customers we think they can approve.
GREG: Hey, Natasha, it's interesting what you're saying about the information that's available, and we mentioned AI there, so a lot of people are starting to get so much of their insight and knowledge. So how does Intuit Credit Karma fit into their lives, then, when you can get so much information from AI? What do businesses like Credit Karma ... What does that future look like?
NATASHA: Yeah, I think it's actually we are so much well set up because we have their personalized information.
GREG: Oh, okay. So it's the relationship that matters most, it's not the random ... Yeah.
NATASHA: It's the relationship. They trust us. Yeah. It's also not generic advice. So if I understand what taxes you've paid, how you spend, where you spend, if I know what your credit history looks like, what your debt situation looks like, and you share with me your bank accounts, which most people connect because they want personalized advice, we can actually tell them what's best for them and hopefully we can be in a place where they can search and chat with us within our platform to be able to do that.
GREG: Listen, I was kind of struck. I actually had to finish my taxes the other day and my tax form has gotten very long. Hundreds of pages, it's sort of silly, I don't know why there's a bunch of ... But whatever, that's what the account says to do. It was interesting. I was actually able to load that into ChatGPT and have it actually completely analyze it. It was sort of backing up to what I was hearing from my CPA and what to do. Very interesting change in dynamic in the world, I think.
NATASHA: Yes, I think you'll get a lot of information and get so much further. Where folks like TurboTax, Credit Karma, brands like that come into play is like when we have your history and you filed with us, we can prefill your taxes. 80% of them could be done before you even get done. A big part, what we are realizing in filing taxes is the information that we have to give and preload. And if you file with us and you keep telling us throughout the year what you've done in bite-size questions — we call them turbo snacks internally — and you give us those, give that information, we can prefill your taxes. Not only that, if you're stuck somewhere, we can immediately connect you with a live expert.
GREG: Got it, got it.
NATASHA: And help you just move through the next phase. You can talk to them. And in a matter of, I would say, less than an hour, you're done with your taxes, which was not possible earlier.
GREG: Oh, no, no, no. That would be great. And more of the reason why Intuit's sort of bringing all those businesses together under a single umbrella. Right, exactly. So smart.
NATASHA: Yeah, it's fascinating, Greg. When you are sitting in these positions, it's very easy to look at your customers and say, yes, they don't have money, they're living paycheck to paycheck, and they struggle. Especially when you have not experienced that yourself very deeply, I think no amount of empathy is enough at that point, I feel. One of my charters as I came in was to really expand the brand. It was very similar to Prime, how to take it from shipping to, we said, best of shopping and entertainment, and here, how do we expand it beyond credit scores? But you start by understanding what the customers want, how are they feeling? This is when [the] Nestlé background comes into play where you're like, when you try to get consumer insight, you really have to get down to what are their insecurities, what are their aspirations, what are they looking forward to? What are their goals? And yes, it was about buying a car or getting access to a loan or a credit card and understanding what were the benefits of the card. But in the end, it was really about how they grew up thinking about finances, very similar to their relationship with health care. I think people have the similar relation to finances. It's how did their parents handle their finances? What impact did that have in their lives? How will they want to live their lives? What's the legacy they want to leave for their kids?
GREG: My relationship to money is dictated on what my parents', probably, relationship to money was.
NATASHA: And there was so much guilt, shame associated with it. Most people, no matter where they are in their financial journey and how much money they have in their banks or not, they feel they're not doing good enough work.
GREG: Nobody feels they're doing well enough, even no matter what you have. Is that what you're saying? That's very interesting.
NATASHA: Yes. And it's like that constant "Am I missing out on something? I don't know if I'm investing it right. I don't know." And those problems change. When you're starting out, it's very much about, I don't know what this world looks like. I don't want to make any mistakes. I don't want to lose my house. What if an emergency happens? Can I pay for it? If my car breaks down, what am I going to do? Those, I would say, problems change, but the feelings don't change. And your attitude towards finances doesn't change because it's so deep rooted and very much associated with the legacy you want to leave and the genetics that you inherited with that, how you grew up with it.
GREG: Oh, that's so interesting. I looked here quick too while you were talking, and I noticed 67% of US workers say that they live paycheck to paycheck.
NATASHA: Yes, that's correct.
GREG: Yeah, I think that's, yeah.
NATASHA: That's correct.
GREG: And here, a Bank of America study or internal analysis, 25% of households spend 95% of their income just on necessities. In other words, they're very low margin.
NATASHA: 80% of the people have less than $2,000 in their savings.
GREG: I suspect that that's a lot. I've tried to assess what's going on in the world today. There seems to be disruption. Let's just leave it at that. And I think it is predicated on some of this anxiety and fear, which is a variation of what you've just said, and I'm just not so sure that we can go through life and ignore the struggles of those who are in that position, to not be helpful to them, which feels like the kind of underlying thesis or takeaway that you have, then, in the role that Credit Karma, Intuit Credit Karma, plays.
NATASHA: Yes, we are very sensitive to what our members are going through right now. So listen, we went through Covid and the financial implications during that time and how we had to give them the right guidance and the tools. I think at the core of what we provide is the guidance at the right time to our members, and it's objective because we don't make any money off of them. So it's very much in terms of how should they think about their finances, what are their best practices, how can they save? And now we are able, with all of our new products and services, we are able to have them take action. So if they connect their accounts with us and they share their information, we can tell them what, from our standpoint, is best practice in terms of where should they put their savings, what should they pay first? So we are able to do that for them. And AI has enabled that so much also that they can —
GREG: So much, yeah.
NATASHA: Yeah, that they can have that conversation and be able to make those decisions for them in a matter of seconds.
GREG: You said something there. What is the business model of Credit Karma? How does it actually generate revenue and make money?
NATASHA: So it is free to our customers. We give them advice. We have our proprietary technology, which we call our Lightbox platform, which helps them, actually saves them a lot of time. It also overcomes a lot of that guilt and shame we talked about. Imagine being able to apply for credit cards and get rejected over and over again. We can tell you where you have your approval odds to be able to get that. So what we do is we bring in partners on our platform like Chase, AmEx, Capital One, and we serve those on what we call our marketplace. And once a customer is matched to the partner, whether it's a loan or a credit card, we do get the money from our partners.
GREG: Got it, got it, got it, got it.
NATASHA: That's how we make money.
GREG: Yeah. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah. But otherwise, yeah, I mean I remember the service being free in the times I've interacted with it.
NATASHA: And it's a win-win-win model because, for our partners, this is great because we are sending them customers we think they can approve.
GREG: Hey, Natasha, it's interesting what you're saying about the information that's available, and we mentioned AI there, so a lot of people are starting to get so much of their insight and knowledge. So how does Intuit Credit Karma fit into their lives, then, when you can get so much information from AI? What do businesses like Credit Karma ... What does that future look like?
NATASHA: Yeah, I think it's actually we are so much well set up because we have their personalized information.
GREG: Oh, okay. So it's the relationship that matters most, it's not the random ... Yeah.
NATASHA: It's the relationship. They trust us. Yeah. It's also not generic advice. So if I understand what taxes you've paid, how you spend, where you spend, if I know what your credit history looks like, what your debt situation looks like, and you share with me your bank accounts, which most people connect because they want personalized advice, we can actually tell them what's best for them and hopefully we can be in a place where they can search and chat with us within our platform to be able to do that.
GREG: Listen, I was kind of struck. I actually had to finish my taxes the other day and my tax form has gotten very long. Hundreds of pages, it's sort of silly, I don't know why there's a bunch of ... But whatever, that's what the account says to do. It was interesting. I was actually able to load that into ChatGPT and have it actually completely analyze it. It was sort of backing up to what I was hearing from my CPA and what to do. Very interesting change in dynamic in the world, I think.
NATASHA: Yes, I think you'll get a lot of information and get so much further. Where folks like TurboTax, Credit Karma, brands like that come into play is like when we have your history and you filed with us, we can prefill your taxes. 80% of them could be done before you even get done. A big part, what we are realizing in filing taxes is the information that we have to give and preload. And if you file with us and you keep telling us throughout the year what you've done in bite-size questions — we call them turbo snacks internally — and you give us those, give that information, we can prefill your taxes. Not only that, if you're stuck somewhere, we can immediately connect you with a live expert.
GREG: Got it, got it.
NATASHA: And help you just move through the next phase. You can talk to them. And in a matter of, I would say, less than an hour, you're done with your taxes, which was not possible earlier.
GREG: Oh, no, no, no. That would be great. And more of the reason why Intuit's sort of bringing all those businesses together under a single umbrella. Right, exactly. So smart.
Why Marketing?
GREG: So listen, you kind of got into it right there and stuff. What's the best advice you've ever been given? I mean, you've now served as a head of marketing in a number of different places. You've been in marketing your entire career. Yeah, entire career, correct? Yeah.
NATASHA: I wouldn't do anything else.
GREG: Really. Is that true?
NATASHA: Ever. Yes.
GREG: Why did you want to go into marketing, by the way? I don't know if I often hear that from people.
NATASHA: I either wanted to be a marriage counselor or a therapist. (laugh)
GREG: A therapist or a marketer, okay.
NATASHA: Or a marketer. I think the underlying, I would say, motivation was to really understand people, love for people and really understand them deeply. And that still is what keeps me going. The curiosity of why people think the way they think, what are they doing, why are they doing that, and what else is going on in their lives is super important. And for me, I thought in order to be a good marketer, if I could market a commodity which was so focused on emotions and connection and perception, that would hone in my craft as a marketer. So that's why I sought to go to CPG, and Nestlé was the one that I actually chose because of the culture and leadership.
GREG: Wait, now, so you grew up in India? Yes?
NATASHA: Yes. I grew up in India.
GREG: Okay, so in India, did you always want to be a marketer even then?
NATASHA: Yeah, so I think my untold story is, you probably won't find it enough on LinkedIn or my resume, is that I actually started my career as a brand marketer at Beiersdorf. It was the Nivea brand. I sought to go there. There were many investment banks coming to my campus and other companies, and CPG was not where the cream of the crop would go. And it wasn't one of the ... There were either ad agencies in marketing during that time that you would go to, but going into brand management was not sexy. I chose that because I just really wanted to figure out how do you turn these insights into actually business-driving, growth-driving initiatives. So there are two sides to it. One that's fascinating is understanding the consumers, but then how do you translate that to drive actual business growth? And that's the harder part, to be honest. Truly adding value to our members' lives. So that's the harder part. And I feel like that's what's kept me in marketing because it's challenging going from one company to another or industry to another.
GREG: You know, Natasha, it's very funny, we didn't talk about this earlier, but you know what? I always wanted to be in marketing. It's the only thing I've ever done. It's the only thing I ever would do, I think. Now listen, some of mine came from, because I read a book called, there were two books. One was Jerry Della Femina wrote a book called "From Those Wonderful [Folks] Who [Gave] You Pearl Harbor." It was his experience with the Samsung account, which ... And I got to meet Jerry one day. That was phenomenal.
NATASHA: That's awesome.
GREG: And there's another guy, and I'm going to forget his name, George Lois. He was a bit of a rebel, and there's a pretty famous story of him hanging an account executive out the window of the building on Madison Avenue. I mean, you wouldn't get away with that today for sure. But he was a bit of a rebel and a phenomenally powerful and talented art director and stuff. And I read those two books. I says, oh my God, I got to go into this business. I picked up from Seattle, I moved to New York City for that very specific reason to do that.
NATASHA: That's awesome.
GREG: Yeah, the business just sounded ... But I think it was always rooted in just what you said, which is I wanted to understand what made people tick. That was interesting to me. Which is funny. A therapist would be very similar to that kind of thing, right?
NATASHA: Yes. Well you're doing it now, Greg.
GREG: Well, I'm back to helping in a different way, running a trade group, exactly. Okay, but here, let's come back.
NATASHA: I wouldn't do anything else.
GREG: Really. Is that true?
NATASHA: Ever. Yes.
GREG: Why did you want to go into marketing, by the way? I don't know if I often hear that from people.
NATASHA: I either wanted to be a marriage counselor or a therapist. (laugh)
GREG: A therapist or a marketer, okay.
NATASHA: Or a marketer. I think the underlying, I would say, motivation was to really understand people, love for people and really understand them deeply. And that still is what keeps me going. The curiosity of why people think the way they think, what are they doing, why are they doing that, and what else is going on in their lives is super important. And for me, I thought in order to be a good marketer, if I could market a commodity which was so focused on emotions and connection and perception, that would hone in my craft as a marketer. So that's why I sought to go to CPG, and Nestlé was the one that I actually chose because of the culture and leadership.
GREG: Wait, now, so you grew up in India? Yes?
NATASHA: Yes. I grew up in India.
GREG: Okay, so in India, did you always want to be a marketer even then?
NATASHA: Yeah, so I think my untold story is, you probably won't find it enough on LinkedIn or my resume, is that I actually started my career as a brand marketer at Beiersdorf. It was the Nivea brand. I sought to go there. There were many investment banks coming to my campus and other companies, and CPG was not where the cream of the crop would go. And it wasn't one of the ... There were either ad agencies in marketing during that time that you would go to, but going into brand management was not sexy. I chose that because I just really wanted to figure out how do you turn these insights into actually business-driving, growth-driving initiatives. So there are two sides to it. One that's fascinating is understanding the consumers, but then how do you translate that to drive actual business growth? And that's the harder part, to be honest. Truly adding value to our members' lives. So that's the harder part. And I feel like that's what's kept me in marketing because it's challenging going from one company to another or industry to another.
GREG: You know, Natasha, it's very funny, we didn't talk about this earlier, but you know what? I always wanted to be in marketing. It's the only thing I've ever done. It's the only thing I ever would do, I think. Now listen, some of mine came from, because I read a book called, there were two books. One was Jerry Della Femina wrote a book called "From Those Wonderful [Folks] Who [Gave] You Pearl Harbor." It was his experience with the Samsung account, which ... And I got to meet Jerry one day. That was phenomenal.
NATASHA: That's awesome.
GREG: And there's another guy, and I'm going to forget his name, George Lois. He was a bit of a rebel, and there's a pretty famous story of him hanging an account executive out the window of the building on Madison Avenue. I mean, you wouldn't get away with that today for sure. But he was a bit of a rebel and a phenomenally powerful and talented art director and stuff. And I read those two books. I says, oh my God, I got to go into this business. I picked up from Seattle, I moved to New York City for that very specific reason to do that.
NATASHA: That's awesome.
GREG: Yeah, the business just sounded ... But I think it was always rooted in just what you said, which is I wanted to understand what made people tick. That was interesting to me. Which is funny. A therapist would be very similar to that kind of thing, right?
NATASHA: Yes. Well you're doing it now, Greg.
GREG: Well, I'm back to helping in a different way, running a trade group, exactly. Okay, but here, let's come back.
Drive or Be Driven
GREG: So what is the best advice you've been given? Who gave it to you and what did they tell you? What sort of really informed your perspective today and how you look at the world?
NATASHA: Probably I think what sticks with me still today is: If you don't drive, you will be driven.
GREG: That means if you're not leading, you'll get run over. Is that what that means?
NATASHA: Yeah. And if you're not proactive ... You have to play offense, you cannot be playing defense.
GREG: Now I don't know you that well, but I'm going to presuppose you're not somebody who got bowled over very easily in her life. You don't strike me that way, but I don't know.
NATASHA: I have to work really hard to not be in that position. (laugh)
GREG: Okay, okay, okay. You hide that well, you hide that well. Okay. I dunno.
NATASHA: I have to work really hard to not be in that position. My husband will have a different story for you. (laugh) He's like sometimes it's okay to be bowled over.
GREG: I think so. Exactly. My wife's the nicest person in the world. I don't know. I'm not so sure who runs the show here sometimes. So what does that mean? Talk a little bit more about how you do look at that or how you activate against that or what you do and especially what you had to learn, which I think is where you just kind of went with it.
NATASHA: It's complex. There's a lot behind, underneath, that tip of that iceberg. It starts from this place of when you are probably the only immigrant marketer in a CPG world where you don't know too much about what are the cultural nuances and codes and all of that. And you have to come in and you have to let your work speak for itself. The only way to push through that is the merit, your intelligence, your ability to work with people, your collaboration and figuring out what is it that you bring uniquely to the table, and then how do you continue to do that?
And what that does is that keeps you on your toes constantly and you are pushing to push those boundaries. You're bringing people along to be able to do that slowly. It's one brand at a time, one initiative at a time, and one sales meeting at a time. And you count those wins and that clears your path to keep driving. What I have learned is if you are passive and you are not proactive, what happens is you're just continuously told what to do and you're pushed around and you lose your agency. One of my values is autonomy and that's completely not who I am. So it kind of fed ... That advice stuck with me so much because it fed into my value system. In order for you to have ... It's very important for me to have a point of view vetted and move on. And if I don't proactively work towards that or drive, I have this, I know I will be driven.
GREG: You don't strike me as someone who's going around trying to boss everybody around. So that's not your style. I've talked to you enough now.
NATASHA: No, yeah, I think bossing is the opposite.
GREG: Ahh, okay.
NATASHA: I think you inspire, you don't boss. I think the way I lead or the way I collaborate is really by focusing on the problem and seeing how we can collectively solve that problem. And it goes back to setting the vision, setting the strategy, or even putting a stake in the ground when you don't know where you're going and why we are going. And one thing in Credit Karma when I came was like we were not good at social, we were not good at brand building, and I just had to be declarative and say, we are going to go do that. We are going to deliver best-in-class social campaigns. I don't know how we are going to do that. Where will we do that? But we create a vision and enlist people along that and why that's important.
NATASHA: Probably I think what sticks with me still today is: If you don't drive, you will be driven.
GREG: That means if you're not leading, you'll get run over. Is that what that means?
NATASHA: Yeah. And if you're not proactive ... You have to play offense, you cannot be playing defense.
GREG: Now I don't know you that well, but I'm going to presuppose you're not somebody who got bowled over very easily in her life. You don't strike me that way, but I don't know.
NATASHA: I have to work really hard to not be in that position. (laugh)
GREG: Okay, okay, okay. You hide that well, you hide that well. Okay. I dunno.
NATASHA: I have to work really hard to not be in that position. My husband will have a different story for you. (laugh) He's like sometimes it's okay to be bowled over.
GREG: I think so. Exactly. My wife's the nicest person in the world. I don't know. I'm not so sure who runs the show here sometimes. So what does that mean? Talk a little bit more about how you do look at that or how you activate against that or what you do and especially what you had to learn, which I think is where you just kind of went with it.
NATASHA: It's complex. There's a lot behind, underneath, that tip of that iceberg. It starts from this place of when you are probably the only immigrant marketer in a CPG world where you don't know too much about what are the cultural nuances and codes and all of that. And you have to come in and you have to let your work speak for itself. The only way to push through that is the merit, your intelligence, your ability to work with people, your collaboration and figuring out what is it that you bring uniquely to the table, and then how do you continue to do that?
And what that does is that keeps you on your toes constantly and you are pushing to push those boundaries. You're bringing people along to be able to do that slowly. It's one brand at a time, one initiative at a time, and one sales meeting at a time. And you count those wins and that clears your path to keep driving. What I have learned is if you are passive and you are not proactive, what happens is you're just continuously told what to do and you're pushed around and you lose your agency. One of my values is autonomy and that's completely not who I am. So it kind of fed ... That advice stuck with me so much because it fed into my value system. In order for you to have ... It's very important for me to have a point of view vetted and move on. And if I don't proactively work towards that or drive, I have this, I know I will be driven.
GREG: You don't strike me as someone who's going around trying to boss everybody around. So that's not your style. I've talked to you enough now.
NATASHA: No, yeah, I think bossing is the opposite.
GREG: Ahh, okay.
NATASHA: I think you inspire, you don't boss. I think the way I lead or the way I collaborate is really by focusing on the problem and seeing how we can collectively solve that problem. And it goes back to setting the vision, setting the strategy, or even putting a stake in the ground when you don't know where you're going and why we are going. And one thing in Credit Karma when I came was like we were not good at social, we were not good at brand building, and I just had to be declarative and say, we are going to go do that. We are going to deliver best-in-class social campaigns. I don't know how we are going to do that. Where will we do that? But we create a vision and enlist people along that and why that's important.
Leadership and Tough Decisions
GREG: So the essence of what you just said there is leadership and a style of leadership, right. So this is interesting to me.
NATASHA: 100%.
GREG: 100%. Yeah. I love that you just ... That's how a leader responds to that. Exactly. So I had a friend of mine one time extol a point of view, which is that leadership is a new followership — okay, so before you respond to that — and I took a step back and I thought, well that sounds like being liked, and I'm not so sure that my job is always to be liked. I'm not here to just be purposely disliked if I can help that. But I think that sense of leadership is that at some point somebody's got to make a decision and point people to the hill that we're going to go take.
NATASHA: Yes.
GREG: Is that what you're getting to? Is that what that means for you in some regards?
NATASHA: Yes, 200%. It's just we have to say where we are going, why we are going where we are going, how we are going to get there. Do you want to hop on that bus with me or not to get there? And I think that's very important.
GREG: We've got to build followers along on that, so I don't disrespect that, but I think it could be misconstrued if we sometimes say, there's so much in business today that is around being liked and I'm like, no, I think leadership is making tough decisions sometimes and being held accountable to that.
NATASHA: It's really being respected and less about being liked. If you're being liked, you're probably not making the tough decisions because when you make tough decisions, you're actually just going to disappoint a lot of people and if you can't live with that disappointment of disappointing people, you're probably not pushing far enough.
GREG: Maybe. Maybe. It could be the case. Right. So were you always wired that way? I'm not so sure that I respected the importance of leadership until I got later on in life and then I realized it was all that mattered to me was the ability to demonstrate leadership in some of them. And by the way, it's not just business. In fact, I could kind of feel it sort of tearing up. I had a child get in a lot of trouble and it required a huge assertion of leadership on my part to pull her back from the edge. So I mean it comes up in a lot of different places, but sometimes somebody's got to do something.
NATASHA: A lot of it was within me because my dad played a huge influence in my life.
GREG: I love that.
NATASHA: He was in the army and growing up in India, it was my sister and me, and during that time he was very much a person who did not care as much about the society, but he really cared about how he would raise girls in a patriarchal society and how he would raise girls in that environment. And he was the one who basically told us, you have to learn how to fend for yourself and you have to be able to be independent, and for that, to be able to do it, the road is going to be very tough and you just have to be okay with that. There are many easy paths to do. So this idea of living with something that's tough or difficult in terms of disappointing people, working with people, or any of that, the "like" part, I knew how to deal with it, but it did not kick in — to be honest, when you're still finding who you are for quite some time in your life — till I became a mom.
And when you said that, it really resonated with me is like, you love your kids deeply, but you have to tell them at some point what's right and what's not right and what those boundaries are and what you will support and what you will not be able to support. And you have to live with disappointing them because you know what's right and your eye is on that ball and they probably cannot see it. I think that really shaped me to be a little bit tougher in that work environment because it gave me the confidence to say it's for the right thing and I'm standing for the right thing and I'm communicating that's what I'm standing for. I'm transparent, and I think people see through your value system and then they respect you. The right child, you've done your job well, will eventually say, Mom, you did the right thing. I'm glad you did that.
GREG: I hope so.
NATASHA: I hope so, that's so true. (laugh)
GREG: My oldest are 25, I think I can say yes, but I totally appreciate the point there at this.
NATASHA: It's really hard in that moment, Greg.
GREG: It is. It's very hard.
NATASHA: Slamming doors and emotions and is that the last thing you need in your life during that time? It's just like a lot, but in the end when you go through that you're like, I'm so glad I did it and I'm so glad I stood. And my leadership style is very much tough love, so I ask a lot of my team, but I will go to bat for them and I think they probably can see through that.
NATASHA: 100%.
GREG: 100%. Yeah. I love that you just ... That's how a leader responds to that. Exactly. So I had a friend of mine one time extol a point of view, which is that leadership is a new followership — okay, so before you respond to that — and I took a step back and I thought, well that sounds like being liked, and I'm not so sure that my job is always to be liked. I'm not here to just be purposely disliked if I can help that. But I think that sense of leadership is that at some point somebody's got to make a decision and point people to the hill that we're going to go take.
NATASHA: Yes.
GREG: Is that what you're getting to? Is that what that means for you in some regards?
NATASHA: Yes, 200%. It's just we have to say where we are going, why we are going where we are going, how we are going to get there. Do you want to hop on that bus with me or not to get there? And I think that's very important.
GREG: We've got to build followers along on that, so I don't disrespect that, but I think it could be misconstrued if we sometimes say, there's so much in business today that is around being liked and I'm like, no, I think leadership is making tough decisions sometimes and being held accountable to that.
NATASHA: It's really being respected and less about being liked. If you're being liked, you're probably not making the tough decisions because when you make tough decisions, you're actually just going to disappoint a lot of people and if you can't live with that disappointment of disappointing people, you're probably not pushing far enough.
GREG: Maybe. Maybe. It could be the case. Right. So were you always wired that way? I'm not so sure that I respected the importance of leadership until I got later on in life and then I realized it was all that mattered to me was the ability to demonstrate leadership in some of them. And by the way, it's not just business. In fact, I could kind of feel it sort of tearing up. I had a child get in a lot of trouble and it required a huge assertion of leadership on my part to pull her back from the edge. So I mean it comes up in a lot of different places, but sometimes somebody's got to do something.
NATASHA: A lot of it was within me because my dad played a huge influence in my life.
GREG: I love that.
NATASHA: He was in the army and growing up in India, it was my sister and me, and during that time he was very much a person who did not care as much about the society, but he really cared about how he would raise girls in a patriarchal society and how he would raise girls in that environment. And he was the one who basically told us, you have to learn how to fend for yourself and you have to be able to be independent, and for that, to be able to do it, the road is going to be very tough and you just have to be okay with that. There are many easy paths to do. So this idea of living with something that's tough or difficult in terms of disappointing people, working with people, or any of that, the "like" part, I knew how to deal with it, but it did not kick in — to be honest, when you're still finding who you are for quite some time in your life — till I became a mom.
And when you said that, it really resonated with me is like, you love your kids deeply, but you have to tell them at some point what's right and what's not right and what those boundaries are and what you will support and what you will not be able to support. And you have to live with disappointing them because you know what's right and your eye is on that ball and they probably cannot see it. I think that really shaped me to be a little bit tougher in that work environment because it gave me the confidence to say it's for the right thing and I'm standing for the right thing and I'm communicating that's what I'm standing for. I'm transparent, and I think people see through your value system and then they respect you. The right child, you've done your job well, will eventually say, Mom, you did the right thing. I'm glad you did that.
GREG: I hope so.
NATASHA: I hope so, that's so true. (laugh)
GREG: My oldest are 25, I think I can say yes, but I totally appreciate the point there at this.
NATASHA: It's really hard in that moment, Greg.
GREG: It is. It's very hard.
NATASHA: Slamming doors and emotions and is that the last thing you need in your life during that time? It's just like a lot, but in the end when you go through that you're like, I'm so glad I did it and I'm so glad I stood. And my leadership style is very much tough love, so I ask a lot of my team, but I will go to bat for them and I think they probably can see through that.
Clarity and Values
GREG: I had a bunch of people recently and it totally disconnected. It was very funny that I heard this so many times in a row there, so it's really kind of stuck with me. They said, I think it was a variation of clarity is kindness. And what I think they were suggesting in the context that they were saying that is sometimes I just need to tell people the facts and let that stand as it is and that, although that might not feel good at the moment to people, there's value in that being clear.
NATASHA: Yes, yes. We talk a lot about radical candor at work.
GREG: Oh, do you? Yeah, yeah.
NATASHA: I mean, if I have spinach in my teeth, I would love for you to tell me. (laugh) I'll be grateful. It would be awkward and embarrassing at that time, but I would be grateful.
GREG: It's also the advantage, as you get a little bit older, you're not as sensitive to those kinds of things. I hope, for most people, at least that's the case for me. It's like I don't have to worry about pretense about how I look or what you think sometimes. Right, exactly. I love that. I love that. Yeah, no, listen, business is a funny thing, isn't it? There's so many great lessons to be learned.
NATASHA: Yes.
GREG: So many opportunities to grow within that and I think to really become the human being you wanted to be. I grew up at the age where you worked in business and you worked to aspire to greater things, whatever that was. Okay. I think there's a tone in some people to not to want to do that today. They have a side hustle, they just run a side hustle, or they step off of this sort of acquisition. I don't know what it is, or an advancement kind of word, whatever that is. And yet, I don't know, I found so much value in that struggle to try to accomplish things, to be better, to show up and be a part of it. It gives a sense of pride to my life that I didn't realize, that I didn't see coming. Here's my point. I spent so much of my life looking forward and I got to a certain age, I realized that now I'm starting to look back. And that looking back is really important to me to have acted properly in it, right, in that world and to have done the best that I could.
NATASHA: Yes. I think if we can spend time understanding what our values are, we spent so much time understanding our consumers and what makes them tick, if we did a lot of introspection in terms of what makes us tick, what's so important to me. One of my coaches said, she's like, what are your top three values? At some point I was like, that's an interesting question.
GREG: Yeah. What really matters to me?
NATASHA: What really matters to me in the end? And it could be at work, it could be ... And that reflection is really, really important. Once you know that and you can stay true to that, you will know who you want to work with, which companies you want to be part of, leaders, your leadership style, a lot of that becomes so much clearer.
GREG: Totally.
NATASHA: But in the beginning, I, at least, was very much in the pursuit of achievement, I think, which is okay, everything has time. Sometimes I feel like if I had done that earlier, it would have been maybe a better manager or a better leader or a more impactful contributor, but I'm glad that I feel like aligning your work with your values is super important now.
GREG: I had somebody say — one more diversion — I had somebody say to me sometime, they says, You know, Greg, they go, Life is just about relationships and work. And they hesitate, I'll never forget, they hesitate, go, And work? Meh, it's just relationships. (laugh) Isn't that funny? I was like, oh my God. If we're talking about a way of summing it up, the whole point of what the world's about.
NATASHA: Yeah, in the end, that's what you remember, right?
GREG: Yeah. That was the advice given to me. Right.
NATASHA: Yes, yes. We talk a lot about radical candor at work.
GREG: Oh, do you? Yeah, yeah.
NATASHA: I mean, if I have spinach in my teeth, I would love for you to tell me. (laugh) I'll be grateful. It would be awkward and embarrassing at that time, but I would be grateful.
GREG: It's also the advantage, as you get a little bit older, you're not as sensitive to those kinds of things. I hope, for most people, at least that's the case for me. It's like I don't have to worry about pretense about how I look or what you think sometimes. Right, exactly. I love that. I love that. Yeah, no, listen, business is a funny thing, isn't it? There's so many great lessons to be learned.
NATASHA: Yes.
GREG: So many opportunities to grow within that and I think to really become the human being you wanted to be. I grew up at the age where you worked in business and you worked to aspire to greater things, whatever that was. Okay. I think there's a tone in some people to not to want to do that today. They have a side hustle, they just run a side hustle, or they step off of this sort of acquisition. I don't know what it is, or an advancement kind of word, whatever that is. And yet, I don't know, I found so much value in that struggle to try to accomplish things, to be better, to show up and be a part of it. It gives a sense of pride to my life that I didn't realize, that I didn't see coming. Here's my point. I spent so much of my life looking forward and I got to a certain age, I realized that now I'm starting to look back. And that looking back is really important to me to have acted properly in it, right, in that world and to have done the best that I could.
NATASHA: Yes. I think if we can spend time understanding what our values are, we spent so much time understanding our consumers and what makes them tick, if we did a lot of introspection in terms of what makes us tick, what's so important to me. One of my coaches said, she's like, what are your top three values? At some point I was like, that's an interesting question.
GREG: Yeah. What really matters to me?
NATASHA: What really matters to me in the end? And it could be at work, it could be ... And that reflection is really, really important. Once you know that and you can stay true to that, you will know who you want to work with, which companies you want to be part of, leaders, your leadership style, a lot of that becomes so much clearer.
GREG: Totally.
NATASHA: But in the beginning, I, at least, was very much in the pursuit of achievement, I think, which is okay, everything has time. Sometimes I feel like if I had done that earlier, it would have been maybe a better manager or a better leader or a more impactful contributor, but I'm glad that I feel like aligning your work with your values is super important now.
GREG: I had somebody say — one more diversion — I had somebody say to me sometime, they says, You know, Greg, they go, Life is just about relationships and work. And they hesitate, I'll never forget, they hesitate, go, And work? Meh, it's just relationships. (laugh) Isn't that funny? I was like, oh my God. If we're talking about a way of summing it up, the whole point of what the world's about.
NATASHA: Yeah, in the end, that's what you remember, right?
GREG: Yeah. That was the advice given to me. Right.
Connecting Brand and Performance
GREG: Okay, so Building Better CMOs, right? This is all about helping marketers. It's the goal of the MMA. It's the privilege I have is running a nonprofit to try to really improve marketing. So I use this as a platform, as I mentioned to you earlier, and you understood, to really understand what do we in marketing maybe not get right? And you could go a bunch of different directions with this. What do we not fully appreciate? What do we not fully understand? What do we think we don't have the knowledge around? Is there just new learning? Do we need to go solve cold fusion to progress marketing? I don't know what it might be. But in your opinion, what do you think that marketing either doesn't respect, could better understand, might want to work harder against? In your experience, what do you think that is?
NATASHA: For me, it's probably from the vantage point of my career journey, I think I have come to realize that we as marketers can do a better job of connecting the dots between what we call brand marketing and growth marketing or direct response. And I feel like when you bring the two together and create that flywheel, we become better CMOs and marketers because we are able to add more value to the business and actually drive better growth. I saw that come to play when I grew up in CPG, as you know, and it was like my capital was based on how deeply I understood the customers and how the brand work would look like and how —
GREG: How do you communicate the right motivation and message and positioning.
NATASHA: And communicate, yeah, perception and emotional connection. And then I made a hard pivot to go to Amazon, which was so data-based, it was so much all about using machine learning, personalized models, to serve the right message to the right customer at the right time. But what it was missing, I saw at that point, is what's the human connection? What are the deep insecurities that these customers have? What do they really want from us and what are the brands that they're aspiring to? And learning and opening that up, that work up, during repositioning of Prime or expanding Prime, gave us so much fodder to actually think about what my email campaign could look like, what those banners that I serve to our customers for retargeting, what would that language look like? Even small things like say, Hey, come back and finish buying this product, just made them feel heard and seen.
Even Credit Karma. One thing we learned was along the way, motivation and championship that we can actually provide for our customers is so much more important. We basically started adding things like, You just got X percent of the way there. Come and complete your taxes, for example, you're only there. Our emails would say, Great job getting this credit card, now you're onto this next step in your journey. That helped my email open rates, CTAs, but that came from a lot of work about deeply understanding our customers. So I think that flywheel, if it's orchestrated really well in the marketing organization, that really drives double-digit growth. I feel like I was successful because I was able to connect those dots. And it's not prevalent today because it's just a function of how we grew up as marketers. There used to be CPG marketing and brand and agency work, and then when the internet happened and digital transformation with social media, we had what we called demand-gen marketers. And so it was about traffic generating demand. So we learned the either-or and now we are seeing a lot of folks transcend those industries and companies and come in and bring that thinking to life and there are very few of those, but I think wherever they are, they're trying to really work with, they know how to work with CFOs, they know how to work with CEOs and actually drive the strategy of the company forward. Because now you can be the voice of the customer and actually translate that into results.
GREG: Listen, this is a big topic. I, at one point, was working on the relationship between brand and performance marketing and what is the real value of brand over time, and there was no methodology of that. But in the process of doing some research, I ended up talking to — easily — 300 CMOs. It was just a phenomenal effort of ours over years to talk to 'em. 100% of them would've said to me that the dynamic between long and short — which is a variation of the brand versus performance or versus demand gen or whatever — was a top-three issue within their marketing department. It's a question, it was an unanswered question. So it's a pretty challenging one, and I happen to know that there's not a lot of great research out there about this. It's not definitive. You've got what Les Binet and Peter Field did around the long and short of it. You've got the work that we did called "Brand as Performance," but it's otherwise ... It's a complicated question to get a handle on. What maybe proved to you the importance of this as an issue to be tackled and understood or figured out?
NATASHA: I fundamentally believe that if you understand your customer deeply and you figure out how to communicate with them and you understand very deeply the role your brand plays, and you can talk about that authentically, whether it's at a higher brand emotional level and you're stirring their emotions and connecting with them at an emotional [level], or it is at a transactional level where you're giving them a display ad to come back and say, Hey, come to my platform and get that. It works.
NATASHA: For me, it's probably from the vantage point of my career journey, I think I have come to realize that we as marketers can do a better job of connecting the dots between what we call brand marketing and growth marketing or direct response. And I feel like when you bring the two together and create that flywheel, we become better CMOs and marketers because we are able to add more value to the business and actually drive better growth. I saw that come to play when I grew up in CPG, as you know, and it was like my capital was based on how deeply I understood the customers and how the brand work would look like and how —
GREG: How do you communicate the right motivation and message and positioning.
NATASHA: And communicate, yeah, perception and emotional connection. And then I made a hard pivot to go to Amazon, which was so data-based, it was so much all about using machine learning, personalized models, to serve the right message to the right customer at the right time. But what it was missing, I saw at that point, is what's the human connection? What are the deep insecurities that these customers have? What do they really want from us and what are the brands that they're aspiring to? And learning and opening that up, that work up, during repositioning of Prime or expanding Prime, gave us so much fodder to actually think about what my email campaign could look like, what those banners that I serve to our customers for retargeting, what would that language look like? Even small things like say, Hey, come back and finish buying this product, just made them feel heard and seen.
Even Credit Karma. One thing we learned was along the way, motivation and championship that we can actually provide for our customers is so much more important. We basically started adding things like, You just got X percent of the way there. Come and complete your taxes, for example, you're only there. Our emails would say, Great job getting this credit card, now you're onto this next step in your journey. That helped my email open rates, CTAs, but that came from a lot of work about deeply understanding our customers. So I think that flywheel, if it's orchestrated really well in the marketing organization, that really drives double-digit growth. I feel like I was successful because I was able to connect those dots. And it's not prevalent today because it's just a function of how we grew up as marketers. There used to be CPG marketing and brand and agency work, and then when the internet happened and digital transformation with social media, we had what we called demand-gen marketers. And so it was about traffic generating demand. So we learned the either-or and now we are seeing a lot of folks transcend those industries and companies and come in and bring that thinking to life and there are very few of those, but I think wherever they are, they're trying to really work with, they know how to work with CFOs, they know how to work with CEOs and actually drive the strategy of the company forward. Because now you can be the voice of the customer and actually translate that into results.
GREG: Listen, this is a big topic. I, at one point, was working on the relationship between brand and performance marketing and what is the real value of brand over time, and there was no methodology of that. But in the process of doing some research, I ended up talking to — easily — 300 CMOs. It was just a phenomenal effort of ours over years to talk to 'em. 100% of them would've said to me that the dynamic between long and short — which is a variation of the brand versus performance or versus demand gen or whatever — was a top-three issue within their marketing department. It's a question, it was an unanswered question. So it's a pretty challenging one, and I happen to know that there's not a lot of great research out there about this. It's not definitive. You've got what Les Binet and Peter Field did around the long and short of it. You've got the work that we did called "Brand as Performance," but it's otherwise ... It's a complicated question to get a handle on. What maybe proved to you the importance of this as an issue to be tackled and understood or figured out?
NATASHA: I fundamentally believe that if you understand your customer deeply and you figure out how to communicate with them and you understand very deeply the role your brand plays, and you can talk about that authentically, whether it's at a higher brand emotional level and you're stirring their emotions and connecting with them at an emotional [level], or it is at a transactional level where you're giving them a display ad to come back and say, Hey, come to my platform and get that. It works.
Measuring What Works
GREG: How do you know it works, Natasha?
NATASHA: How do you measure it?
GREG: Were you able to actually measure it? By the way, yeah, and listen, another way to do it, if you want, and I am not here to pick on anybody from before, but did you see work where you went, Oh, I just think they're missing the point. Is there somebody you can — leave enough of the brand out — that, say, they didn't get that right? Or I don't know.
NATASHA: Yeah, so I think two ways we look at it is ... One is return on ad spend. That's short term. I put the creative out, I figure out is it incrementa, did it ... Was it worth it? That's one. The longer term is really truly understanding the perceptions you want to shift in consumer's minds. Like if I want —
GREG: Oh, so being clear about where they stand and what you need to move them to to improve the business.
NATASHA: That is the long term and that does take time. And you can get signals along the way and you have your NPS.
GREG: What's an example of where you had to do that, by the way? I'm curious.
NATASHA: On Prime, it was like, Hey, Prime offers me two-day shipping. It's a brand that I trust will solve my shopping and entertainment needs. If we talk about that, have we moved the needle on that and what does that mean? Is it a brand that I'm going to tell people... Credit Karma is the same thing we talked about, is it a brand that gives me free credit scores or is it a brand that gives me credit cards or personal loans too. Is it the brand that I can trust with my financial needs? And in the end that's what we are all after. And then you look at what are your inputs to be able to get there. But that takes time and I think that's where you have to be at it and look at those signals along the way to be able to do it. I think that is a challenge for us. Very quickly, we may go into CPG where we would do Catalina coupons or something. You buy your way into it and there are ways to doing it, but then that erodes equity and that's the balance we have to focus on, I think, on every day is like, what is the focus on short term versus long term.
GREG: I don't know, I don't want to go wayback machine here, but I don't know how much Nestlé would've been discounting or offering coupons or so on, but I think it was generally proven that the coupons were a really bad idea in terms of building consumer brand and pricing protection and a whole bunch of things. And in fact, I worked on P&G business for years. They at one point tried to outlaw all coupons. They tried to get out of it, and they got so much pressure from the trade they had to bring it back. But I dunno, do you have a perspective on that dynamic?
NATASHA: It does give you a short-term lift, and something that is free or gives you trial in the category, so it depends. But I think where it doesn't work is because you actually book a lot of sales against that and then it's very hard to lap it next year.
GREG: Oh, okay.
NATASHA: So you basically get so addicted to it that you just can't get out of it and then you're training the customer to buy it when it's on sale. So you're actually not getting anything incremental, so it doesn't work. If it's a new product and you want to get trial, you probably do it and that should be the end of it, but it's very hard if you have to meet those annual numbers and you're not able to.
NATASHA: How do you measure it?
GREG: Were you able to actually measure it? By the way, yeah, and listen, another way to do it, if you want, and I am not here to pick on anybody from before, but did you see work where you went, Oh, I just think they're missing the point. Is there somebody you can — leave enough of the brand out — that, say, they didn't get that right? Or I don't know.
NATASHA: Yeah, so I think two ways we look at it is ... One is return on ad spend. That's short term. I put the creative out, I figure out is it incrementa, did it ... Was it worth it? That's one. The longer term is really truly understanding the perceptions you want to shift in consumer's minds. Like if I want —
GREG: Oh, so being clear about where they stand and what you need to move them to to improve the business.
NATASHA: That is the long term and that does take time. And you can get signals along the way and you have your NPS.
GREG: What's an example of where you had to do that, by the way? I'm curious.
NATASHA: On Prime, it was like, Hey, Prime offers me two-day shipping. It's a brand that I trust will solve my shopping and entertainment needs. If we talk about that, have we moved the needle on that and what does that mean? Is it a brand that I'm going to tell people... Credit Karma is the same thing we talked about, is it a brand that gives me free credit scores or is it a brand that gives me credit cards or personal loans too. Is it the brand that I can trust with my financial needs? And in the end that's what we are all after. And then you look at what are your inputs to be able to get there. But that takes time and I think that's where you have to be at it and look at those signals along the way to be able to do it. I think that is a challenge for us. Very quickly, we may go into CPG where we would do Catalina coupons or something. You buy your way into it and there are ways to doing it, but then that erodes equity and that's the balance we have to focus on, I think, on every day is like, what is the focus on short term versus long term.
GREG: I don't know, I don't want to go wayback machine here, but I don't know how much Nestlé would've been discounting or offering coupons or so on, but I think it was generally proven that the coupons were a really bad idea in terms of building consumer brand and pricing protection and a whole bunch of things. And in fact, I worked on P&G business for years. They at one point tried to outlaw all coupons. They tried to get out of it, and they got so much pressure from the trade they had to bring it back. But I dunno, do you have a perspective on that dynamic?
NATASHA: It does give you a short-term lift, and something that is free or gives you trial in the category, so it depends. But I think where it doesn't work is because you actually book a lot of sales against that and then it's very hard to lap it next year.
GREG: Oh, okay.
NATASHA: So you basically get so addicted to it that you just can't get out of it and then you're training the customer to buy it when it's on sale. So you're actually not getting anything incremental, so it doesn't work. If it's a new product and you want to get trial, you probably do it and that should be the end of it, but it's very hard if you have to meet those annual numbers and you're not able to.
Producing Breakthrough Creative
GREG: It's funny you say that — and now I'm really off track here, we'll come back — but it's like I was looking at this with somebody I was interviewing for the show here recently and I looked across, they had three or four different websites and stuff and every single one of them had the same message, which was 40% off. And I thought, boy, that doesn't feel like the right thing to do. And you're right, we have almost created a consumer expectation, that's what it is, but I just thought, no, it felt scary to me to the business. I mean I didn't get into it with them because it wasn't my place to do that. But yeah, I was kind of wondering, that would be hard to do. So I've had some people say to me say, oh, well I put brand, I put brand and demand generation or performance orientation into my ... I put 'em into the same ads. We just blend it together. And I'm like, hmm.
NATASHA: It's the connection of the work that you do to get to something that is to get to an amazing brand. When you think about a brand or the brand creative, in order for it to be breakthrough, in my mind, you have to connect with the customers where it actually moves them, it lifts their heads. And the way you do it is by understanding what matters to them and what is the problem that your brand is trying to solve. When you do that work, Greg, you come across so many insights, you come across so many learnings, and you transfer those learnings into your growth pod and your growth machine and you say, here, this is what Gen Z really cares about at this point, this is what we are hearing. Are the emails, are the SMSs, are the push notifications we are sending, are they reflective of this work or not? And in the growth world, what you're doing is you're running so many experiments. We do multivariate testing and all of that, which is you can't even count the number of experiments that are running at that point and the best one wins, but I don't think we understand why that wins.
GREG: If you're doing transaction-oriented marketing, then you're saying they can't test their way into the insight?
NATASHA: They probably are doing it, but they can't articulate it and understand it, right?
GREG: Okay, okay, okay.
NATASHA: It's very difficult in that world of that machine to come back and say, why did this work? Or how did that ... What are the insights we are gleaning from them? There may be some hypotheses, which is great, but when you're doing the brand work you're saying, Hey, I have this hypothesis. These are the few things that are working [that] we understand. And what if you brought the two together? In my mind, that's the magic. New product ideas come to life, new customer experience, CXs, a great marketer is not just the one who understands the consumer. It actually can then influence the product, can influence the consumer experience. That's where the growth comes eventually. So you can't just hack your way through communications. You just have to know what problems you're solving with products and services and communication altogether.
GREG: And this is particularly true then if I can say of a Credit Karma business because you both have this issue with the underlying psychology of what money means to people individually, which has all sorts of complexities we talked about. And then also too, you're a relatively transaction-oriented business because you're trying to drive people to solutions. You're trying to support them to a solution if that's what's appropriate. You're like the perfect test case of trying to figure this out.
NATASHA: On a recent brand campaign, we were able to do that. We call it, internally, we call it "karma you can count on" because what was really important was like, can I trust you to do this for me? In the end, that was what it was. And while we stood for progress, what we realized was progress is so personal and there is no one way. One big learning for us was I don't need to show a Gen Z in an ad for them to connect with me in an ad, for example, in a TV spot or something, because it's a use case and they don't want to see someone like them and make it real. We actually took a very different approach and we created metaphors that were almost unrealistic where when you put a metaphor in there, they're like, I associate with that feeling and I get there. Because before when we were testing our way into it, either we were being too heavy-handed or we were not clear enough in terms of what we were offering, and we were just alienating our consumers.
And so we basically realized, we have to abstract them from reality and really focus on that feeling, and that feeling is the one that everyone associated themselves with. And we even did an experiment where we ran these ads in direct response talking about does that even work? If you had asked me theoretically before it did, the team was so ... They were like, we haven't seen these kinds of results. What if we actually put them under our other creative that we run in direct response...? It did equal or better than those. So I think I am a really firm believer, if you connect with the consumer and you tell them clearly what you're solving for them, I think no matter where you are, whether you are a brand or a direct response. Those lines are blurring anyways right now.
GREG: We don't even really know. I've seen, like I said, I've looked at a lot of research and MMA actually built a methodology. We called it brand as performance. In other words, brand had to be performance, but it's an over-time measurement, and that measurement didn't exist until we had built the methodology to do that. Thomas would know about this there, and so he's seen some of this at the board level with the MMA. Thomas is on the team over at Intuit there, people, just to connect that for the listener.
NATASHA: That's great.
GREG: But those are very complicated studies. Those require two-and-a-half years of effort. You have to do six months to set up, just agree to do it. Then you're talking a year to 15 months of measurement, then you've got three months of analysis, it could be a long time down the road before you start to really understand that. But it's a phenomenally interesting question. I think you're right. We as marketers don't — it's a perfect topic — we really don't fully understand this because in part the research is so hard to do and hadn't been done to date at all really.
NATASHA: Yes. I think we have to simplify at some point and understand what are the drivers of brand equity and there would be transactional and deals and discounts are a big part of that. When we did the work for Prime, we figured out deals was really important and that is how Prime Day was born.
GREG: Is that right?
NATASHA: Yeah. Because we were really thinking it's not ... Walmart was EDLP, which was everyday low prices, and we were really more about convenience and not cutting our prices, but for our consumers it was important. Convenience, entertainment, and deals were very important, and we were neglecting entertainment and deals and we were so heavy on convenience and that's how we kind of built out the work. That's the work my team did to understand. We are doing the same thing here for Credit Karma as well. Guidance is important. Tools is important. Personalization is important. If it's not for me, I don't care about generic.
NATASHA: It's the connection of the work that you do to get to something that is to get to an amazing brand. When you think about a brand or the brand creative, in order for it to be breakthrough, in my mind, you have to connect with the customers where it actually moves them, it lifts their heads. And the way you do it is by understanding what matters to them and what is the problem that your brand is trying to solve. When you do that work, Greg, you come across so many insights, you come across so many learnings, and you transfer those learnings into your growth pod and your growth machine and you say, here, this is what Gen Z really cares about at this point, this is what we are hearing. Are the emails, are the SMSs, are the push notifications we are sending, are they reflective of this work or not? And in the growth world, what you're doing is you're running so many experiments. We do multivariate testing and all of that, which is you can't even count the number of experiments that are running at that point and the best one wins, but I don't think we understand why that wins.
GREG: If you're doing transaction-oriented marketing, then you're saying they can't test their way into the insight?
NATASHA: They probably are doing it, but they can't articulate it and understand it, right?
GREG: Okay, okay, okay.
NATASHA: It's very difficult in that world of that machine to come back and say, why did this work? Or how did that ... What are the insights we are gleaning from them? There may be some hypotheses, which is great, but when you're doing the brand work you're saying, Hey, I have this hypothesis. These are the few things that are working [that] we understand. And what if you brought the two together? In my mind, that's the magic. New product ideas come to life, new customer experience, CXs, a great marketer is not just the one who understands the consumer. It actually can then influence the product, can influence the consumer experience. That's where the growth comes eventually. So you can't just hack your way through communications. You just have to know what problems you're solving with products and services and communication altogether.
GREG: And this is particularly true then if I can say of a Credit Karma business because you both have this issue with the underlying psychology of what money means to people individually, which has all sorts of complexities we talked about. And then also too, you're a relatively transaction-oriented business because you're trying to drive people to solutions. You're trying to support them to a solution if that's what's appropriate. You're like the perfect test case of trying to figure this out.
NATASHA: On a recent brand campaign, we were able to do that. We call it, internally, we call it "karma you can count on" because what was really important was like, can I trust you to do this for me? In the end, that was what it was. And while we stood for progress, what we realized was progress is so personal and there is no one way. One big learning for us was I don't need to show a Gen Z in an ad for them to connect with me in an ad, for example, in a TV spot or something, because it's a use case and they don't want to see someone like them and make it real. We actually took a very different approach and we created metaphors that were almost unrealistic where when you put a metaphor in there, they're like, I associate with that feeling and I get there. Because before when we were testing our way into it, either we were being too heavy-handed or we were not clear enough in terms of what we were offering, and we were just alienating our consumers.
And so we basically realized, we have to abstract them from reality and really focus on that feeling, and that feeling is the one that everyone associated themselves with. And we even did an experiment where we ran these ads in direct response talking about does that even work? If you had asked me theoretically before it did, the team was so ... They were like, we haven't seen these kinds of results. What if we actually put them under our other creative that we run in direct response...? It did equal or better than those. So I think I am a really firm believer, if you connect with the consumer and you tell them clearly what you're solving for them, I think no matter where you are, whether you are a brand or a direct response. Those lines are blurring anyways right now.
GREG: We don't even really know. I've seen, like I said, I've looked at a lot of research and MMA actually built a methodology. We called it brand as performance. In other words, brand had to be performance, but it's an over-time measurement, and that measurement didn't exist until we had built the methodology to do that. Thomas would know about this there, and so he's seen some of this at the board level with the MMA. Thomas is on the team over at Intuit there, people, just to connect that for the listener.
NATASHA: That's great.
GREG: But those are very complicated studies. Those require two-and-a-half years of effort. You have to do six months to set up, just agree to do it. Then you're talking a year to 15 months of measurement, then you've got three months of analysis, it could be a long time down the road before you start to really understand that. But it's a phenomenally interesting question. I think you're right. We as marketers don't — it's a perfect topic — we really don't fully understand this because in part the research is so hard to do and hadn't been done to date at all really.
NATASHA: Yes. I think we have to simplify at some point and understand what are the drivers of brand equity and there would be transactional and deals and discounts are a big part of that. When we did the work for Prime, we figured out deals was really important and that is how Prime Day was born.
GREG: Is that right?
NATASHA: Yeah. Because we were really thinking it's not ... Walmart was EDLP, which was everyday low prices, and we were really more about convenience and not cutting our prices, but for our consumers it was important. Convenience, entertainment, and deals were very important, and we were neglecting entertainment and deals and we were so heavy on convenience and that's how we kind of built out the work. That's the work my team did to understand. We are doing the same thing here for Credit Karma as well. Guidance is important. Tools is important. Personalization is important. If it's not for me, I don't care about generic.
The Power of Personalization
GREG: We've been running a series of AI personalization experiments. It is the singular most powerful performance boost in marketing I've ever seen in my many decades of doing this. And it's funny, I sort of said, I had asked, there's a guy at Google who was somebody who had really thought extensively about AI, and I asked him at one point, dumb question, if you were to singularly sum up what AI is about? This is a couple of years ago. I said, what do you think it's about? He said, it's all about personalization. And I thought, oh, that puts a focus to the thing. So I would hope that you're right. We need to get to realize that people have different reasons. People come to you sometimes for auto loans. They come to you for a credit check. They come because they're not making their bills, because they need additional money, whatever. Yeah, they're going to buy a house, maybe, it's set up for that. I'm sure there's ... I've looked at ... There's a lot of reasons to come into your financial history about what would be the entry point.
NATASHA: Correct, correct. And if we can figure out what do they want at this time and then actually get it and give it to them.
GREG: And then people have different relationships to money.
NATASHA: Correct.
GREG: It means different things to them. Very common. Wow. It's kind of very interesting. Well, listen, I hope that maybe you can solve the fear of financial insecurity that exists in the world today. I don't know. I think that's part of where you're aiming as I listen to you. That's a big challenge. I think we need everybody to sort of feel a sense of comfort and so on.
NATASHA: I think our goal is to help them make progress that they can feel and is meaningful for them. I don't think we can ever solve it. I think we can just help them make progress in that journey.
GREG: Good for you. Good for you. You are saving the world and so am I, saving marketing at the MMA.
NATASHA: (laugh) I love it. Keep doing that, Greg.
GREG: It all comes back.
NATASHA: So mission-driven. I wish I could hear these podcasts when I was growing up. I think it would be amazing. I hope it's helpful.
GREG: Let's hope we can help a little bit. I think you did today here, so I can't thank you enough, Natasha, for doing Building Better CMOs. Thank you very much.
NATASHA: The pleasure was all mine, Greg, thank you.
GREG: Thanks again to Natasha Madan, CMO from Intuit Credit Karma, for coming on Building Better CMOs. Check the description of this episode for links to connect with Natasha. If you like this episode, you might also enjoy my conversation with Micky Onvural, the CMO of TIAA. We talked about helping the people you manage discover their best selves, the dynamics of communication between CMO and CFO, and the power of "I don't know." Now you can find those episodes on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're hearing me now. At the Market Media Alliance, we are working to make marketing matter more through conferences, research, and education. If you want to know more, visit mmaglobal.com. You can also email me directly, greg@mmaglobal.com. Now don't forget, Building Better CMOs is now on YouTube. Just go to bettercmos.com/youtube to start watching. Our producer and podcast consultant is Eric Johnson from Lightningpod.fm. Artwork is by Jason Chase, and a very special thanks to Angela Gray and Dan Whiting. This is Greg Stuart. I'll see you in two weeks.
NATASHA: Correct, correct. And if we can figure out what do they want at this time and then actually get it and give it to them.
GREG: And then people have different relationships to money.
NATASHA: Correct.
GREG: It means different things to them. Very common. Wow. It's kind of very interesting. Well, listen, I hope that maybe you can solve the fear of financial insecurity that exists in the world today. I don't know. I think that's part of where you're aiming as I listen to you. That's a big challenge. I think we need everybody to sort of feel a sense of comfort and so on.
NATASHA: I think our goal is to help them make progress that they can feel and is meaningful for them. I don't think we can ever solve it. I think we can just help them make progress in that journey.
GREG: Good for you. Good for you. You are saving the world and so am I, saving marketing at the MMA.
NATASHA: (laugh) I love it. Keep doing that, Greg.
GREG: It all comes back.
NATASHA: So mission-driven. I wish I could hear these podcasts when I was growing up. I think it would be amazing. I hope it's helpful.
GREG: Let's hope we can help a little bit. I think you did today here, so I can't thank you enough, Natasha, for doing Building Better CMOs. Thank you very much.
NATASHA: The pleasure was all mine, Greg, thank you.
GREG: Thanks again to Natasha Madan, CMO from Intuit Credit Karma, for coming on Building Better CMOs. Check the description of this episode for links to connect with Natasha. If you like this episode, you might also enjoy my conversation with Micky Onvural, the CMO of TIAA. We talked about helping the people you manage discover their best selves, the dynamics of communication between CMO and CFO, and the power of "I don't know." Now you can find those episodes on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're hearing me now. At the Market Media Alliance, we are working to make marketing matter more through conferences, research, and education. If you want to know more, visit mmaglobal.com. You can also email me directly, greg@mmaglobal.com. Now don't forget, Building Better CMOs is now on YouTube. Just go to bettercmos.com/youtube to start watching. Our producer and podcast consultant is Eric Johnson from Lightningpod.fm. Artwork is by Jason Chase, and a very special thanks to Angela Gray and Dan Whiting. This is Greg Stuart. I'll see you in two weeks.