Tailored Brands CMO Carolyn Pollock, Part 1

Carolyn Pollock: You want to make sure that the invitation to the party isn't better than the party itself. And if marketing is about that invitation, marketing also has to play such a critical role in the party. But there are a lot of others that are responsible for the party as well. And that's where the control starts to slip, and that's where it becomes the team sport that it really is.

Greg Stuart: Welcome to Building Better CMOs, a podcast about how marketers can get smarter and stronger.

I am Greg Stuart, the CEO of the nonprofit MMA Global, and that voice you heard at the top is Carolyn Pollock, the CMO of Tailored Brands. Maybe that name doesn't ring a bell, but you definitely know some of the brands in their portfolio, including Men's Wearhouse, Jos. A. Bank, K&G Fashion Superstore, and Moores in Canada. Carolyn has been with Tailored Brands since 2020 and previously worked or consulted at companies like Thumbtack, Facebook, Dolby, and eBay.

Now today on the podcast, Carolyn and I are going to talk about the challenges and opportunities of modern measurement and the morass of technology that comes with that in marketing, the growing importance of customer experience, and why marketers need to stop marketing themselves so much. This podcast is all about the challenges marketers face and unlocking the true power that marketing can have. Carolyn Pollock is going to tell us how she did that right after this.

Carolyn, welcome to Building Better CMOs. I'm so glad you could join me today.

CP: Thank you. It's good to be here, Greg.

GS: So listen, you are actually a rarity amongst CMOs. How long have you been CMO at Tailored Brands now? It's been like five years, give or take.

CP: Yeah, about five years. Yeah.

GS: Wow. So I want to get into that business, but I have to get right into the first thing with you that I noticed in your background. What is the degree that you have from university?

CP: I have an undergrad in biology with a specialization in genetics.

GS: Well, don't all CMOs? No. Listen, I've had chemical engineers, and I'll tell you what I noticed. It's very funny, a lot of what I hear from people in these podcasts are kind of related back to their undergrad work. It's very funny. Why that degree?

CP: Yeah, I mean, I was passionate about science and biosciences in particular. Knew I didn't want to be a doctor. Most of my classmates went on to med school. I can't handle the sight of blood, so that was not going to be my calling.

GS: That slows you down. I'll be the same, right?

CP: Yeah. But I think I've always gravitated to things when they're sort of on the cutting edge. And I've been around for a while. So when I was studying genetics, they were in the process of finalizing the coding of the entire human genome. And it was a fascinating time. And all of our readings were papers, not even textbooks, because things were changing so quickly at the time that you could only keep up with papers. And I just loved the newness of it and the discovery of what was to come with that knowledge. And it's funny, now that I think about it, I guess that's kind of been a theme through a lot of the things I've done in my career.

GS: I'm telling you it's going to come up. It just always does. It's very funny. So mine was as an economist, and so I tend to talk in those cost-benefit [terms] I find myself using. It's very funny. I just think that's very interesting. So genetics, have we mapped it all out? Where do we stand? Are we actually better understanding?

CP: It's amazing now the understanding that they have around what drives different reactions to things and what drives enzymes. The coding of the genome was a massive watershed for understanding of all of that and how to treat genetic diseases. I mean, there's lots more work to be done, but all the things that are happening now with mRNA and all that really came from this understanding of the genome. So it's pretty incredible.

GS: I think you start to realize just how neophyte we are as humans at understanding actual humans.

CP: And how our code really drives not just our physical manifestation, but even how we emotionally react to things. It's amazing.

GS: It's funny you say that. I've been listening to a guy, I won't be able... Even if I could remember his full name, I couldn't pronounce it. But I've been listening to a guy that's been coming up on my TikTok feeds a lot for whatever reason, and YouTube Shorts, and he talks about the complexity of the human mind and interpreting information and some of the blocks that we have to actually getting clarity. And I find it just absolutely fascinating. And to that point, we didn't know this 20, 30, 40 years ago, I guess.

CP: I think it's almost one of those things where the more we learn, the more we realize what we don't know.

GS: There you go. I think that's better said. Well, that actually might be the subtitle of Building Better CMOs actually.

GS: Okay, so you end up going to Unilever. You were trained as a brand manager, I think was your original work experience. Is that right?

CP: Well, actually after university, I lived in Japan for three years.

GS: Oh wow.

CP: So I thought, well, I thought maybe I'll do investor relations or something in biotechnology. I knew I wanted to do something in business, and Japan was a huge investor in the biotech world at the time, still is. And so I thought I'll go over and learn Japanese. And anyway, as things go, the pathway led me to working with a market research firm in Japan...

GS: I saw that.

CP: And they had clients that were multinational companies. So we did, when IBM ran their global subtitles campaign, we did all the market testing for that advertising in Japan. I did market testing for Campbell's Soup, Pond's face cream, all that kind of stuff. So that got me into marketing and when I moved back to Canada, I was like, I need to do this. And so that's how I landed at Unilever.

GS: And then you've really been, I mean, it seems your background is sort of big brand marketers, so Unilever and then Labatt was in there, too, I think I saw. And then you've touched on a lot of the brands, but then also, you seem to take off to tech companies, too, sort of experience in there. So were they startup oriented or were they just tech oriented? What was your focus there?

CP: So it started again back to — okay, I've never really thought about it this way, but — trying new things when they're kind of at their cutting edge. Labatt was owned by Interbrew. Interbrew had spent a bunch of money on a URL in 1999 called beer.com, and there was a tiny team of five of us. So we were a startup within Interbrew that launched beer.com on the web in 1999. So that got me, I was like, "I'm going to get into this internet thing. I think it's really going to catch on." And so we launched the site.

GS: You were right, by the way, you were right.

CP: Well, every once in a while. Launched the site, and then I thought, if I'm going to do this .com thing, I probably should be in the San Francisco Bay Area. And that's what drove me down to here. And from there, tended to skew in consumer tech, if you will. A bulk of my time was spent at eBay and really understanding the role that eBay played in kind of shaping e-commerce as we know it today.

GS: Totally.

CP: So that was an amazing experience, and obviously then became a launchpad for kind of other involvement I've had in the tech space.

GS: Were you there at eBay before or after going public?

CP: Just after. So I started in 2002.

GS: So I got a call from a headhunter. I was in New York. I was a very arrogant New York marketer agency guy. Had a big job at Y&R, and I got called to go meet with a company in the Bay Area. And I remember driving down the 101 and thinking, "Wow, this looks like an absolute hell hole." There's just a bunch of small two-story buildings. They looked like tacky apartment buildings to me, just to be really nasty about it. And I went and had this meeting, and the office was terrible. It was dirty. There were Beanie Babies everywhere and they were looking for a new head of marketing. I met with a guy named Jeff Skoll.

CP: Oh my goodness, that's so funny. And you're like, "I don't know, this auction thing, is it real?"

GS: That's exactly what I said, Carolyn. I just said, "I don't know that I get it, Jeff. I don't know how you build trust in the system. It just doesn't kind of make sense to me." So I walked away. Meg Whitman came in six, nine months later, took the company public, and the rest is history. So I only love pointing out that story because I love to know when I'm wrong. It just reminds me not to be so sure I'm right all the time.

CP: That's right. There's a number of those Silicon Valley stories of the woulda coulda shoulda, right?

GS: Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. It's just so funny. And in fact, I don't know if you even know the story, but Meg Whitman, allegedly, she took the interview not because she wanted to go to eBay. She had no intention of going to eBay, but she took the interview because she didn't want to displease the headhunter because when she or he had a good job, Meg wanted to make sure she got that call, not this eBay thing.

CP: Well, Pierre Omidyar was a very persuasive person and had an incredible vision.

GS: He did. It was a big, big deal and they solved all the problems I was concerned about. So very interesting.

GS: Okay, so again, you have a very broad market. Now you're over at Tailored Brands. So for the listener, it's a collection of retail, but talk about the thesis of the company, so people have some background to it.

CP: Our vision with Tailored Brands is to become the sort of menswear specialty retailer, the primary destination for anyone looking for menswear. And with that we have a portfolio of banners and so we have Men's Wearhouse, our best known and our largest. We also have Jos. A. Bank, and then we have a brand called K&G, which is a little more centered in the South and the east a bit. Then in Canada we have Moores, which is very similar to Men's Wearhouse in Canada. Across those brands, we have a very large share of the tailored clothing market for menswear and increasingly are working to expand into more of the casual clothing as well. But we are really kind of the number one destination nationally for anybody who's getting married or has some kind of big formal special occasion.

GS: Got it, got it, got it, got it. And listen, that's got kind of an interesting sort of dynamic. I assume. I don't know the brand, I know the brands, I don't know the overarching... But listen, retail's in a funny spot right now, but then it's very hard to buy clothes that you can't see on you. So you've got that, and then styles and fashions are changing so much, so dramatically than where things were. So what caught your attention? You actually were a consultant there before you came on full time, so...

CP: That's right.

GS: Yeah. What was kind of your process when you looked at it? You said, "Oh, I like solving hard problems like genetics. This is going to be a hard problem." I don't know. I don't know how you looked at that, but go ahead.

CP: Well, you kind of nailed it. Yeah, I had a consulting business for about 10 years and had the opportunity to work with a real range of companies: big, big companies, tiny companies, different stages of growth. And through that got a really good perspective of where there are real opportunities versus, well, this company's probably always going to be kind of in maintain mode as opposed to there's something really special here that could be growth. And what attracted me to Tailored Brands was this opportunity of people come to us for, you think about it, the most important day of their lives to that date, right?

GS: Yes.

CP: Their wedding day, more people are looking at them, they're getting more photographs. Those photographs will live forever. They want to look good for those moments, and they come to us to help them look really great for that moment. And there's a bond and a trust that is built with that. What the opportunity is, is that you trust us for that most important day, and yet you don't think about us for all the other occasions, like the inevitable date nights that happen after that. Or the job interviews or whatever it is that we equally can apply our expertise to help with. That's where the real opportunity is. A lot of that's just a marketing challenge around shaping perceptions, and we need to make sure we've got the right product there, but making people aware that we can help them for all these other moments as well. Maybe not the most important moment, but lots of other great moments.

GS: I noticed too in some news that at least Men's Wearhouse is opening new locations, so that suggests growth. So you've got it on track and moving in the right direction. Good.

CP: That's right.

GS: Yeah. Yeah, no, I would think that would be a big challenge. I mean, you're almost having to respond to, boy, what you'd suspect is the speed of change in the world equal to almost anything else that's going on. It's very funny to me just how much fashion has changed dramatically.

CP: It is, and I mean men's fashion doesn't change at the same pace as women's.

GS: Understood.

CP: And then within that formal...

GS: But the rules have changed so dramatically. I think it's the rules that have changed, not the fashion maybe itself, right?

CP: Yes.

GS: I have to go to a dinner tomorrow night, and I have to wear a tie. And I thought, wow, I've not done that in a really long time.

CP: I was just at a wedding this weekend, 400 people, and I would say, I don't know, maybe a third of the people... third to half were wearing ties. It was very hot, so I'm sure that drove some of it. But yeah, the formal wear code has changed a lot.

GS: Yeah, crazy.

GS: So you mentioned Pierre earlier in eBay and some of your experience with that. I always like to ask people because I find I get interesting answers to this one: what is the best advice you've ever been given? It could be around marketing if you want to go there, but it even could be professional advice that you've gotten.

CP: It's funny, as I was thinking about this... This is probably more personal, but it also kind of extends to a little bit of my belief around our profession and all of that. So there's kind of two pieces that dovetail. One was very early on, it was while I was at Unilever. Things were going great, I was successful, moving quickly through the ranks, et cetera. And there was somebody I really admired who's one of the most dynamic, creative people I've ever met, really well recognized there, also is very successful. He gave me this advice of don't ever believe your own hype. And oh my god, I love that so much. And that just, boom, grounded me so much about this isn't about patting myself on the back and coasting through because I just did this amazing thing. And everyone's like, wow, you're so great. It's like, no, you've got to constantly... The minute you start doing that, that's when things start falling apart. And I've seen that happen directly as well as indirectly.

GS: A hundred percent.

CP: That was really helpful. And then relatively recently, I was at a conference and someone asked the question of the gentleman on the stage, "What advice would you give to marketers?" And he said, "Stop talking about yourselves." And then that got a huge roar from everybody in the crowd. Everyone was laughing. You'd start thinking about it, you're like, we're all spending all this time marketing ourselves and we're not working to help one another on the work. And we're losing sight of just how challenging the work is. And we think we're kind of getting at it by talking about, oh, I just did this amazing thing. But I think if there's more focus on the work and the role that marketing is playing in the business, that will continue to build the rest of the organization's faith and confidence in marketing than if they see us all just off doing all these showy things and at this and that conference and all that. That starts to erode their belief that you're really focused on the business. And again, I've seen that and heard that from others in other aspects of the business that I think is really important. I think it's important we do these conferences and we have these conversations together because that's how we will help one another, but we've got to make sure that we don't come across as pushing ourselves as opposed to the work.

GS: It's funny you say that. I think, listen, I had Bob Pittman — now over at iHeartMedia and the founder of MTV — say at one of my events one time, and he looked probably about as old as I'm now, I think. He said, "The only advantage to being older is pattern recognition."

And I thought, wow, that's a great statement. And I think you just said a variation of that. I think when you're around long enough, arrogance... I mean you didn't go quite this far, but I've often thought that arrogance is the beginning of the end when that enters into it. And it's about me having my ego get in the way. I guess the question I'd ask you around marketers, though, why do we talk about ourselves so much? You're right. Actually, I'll tell you another story. I had a CEO tell me one time, he says, "I watch my CFO. He doesn't go around and give himself a bunch of awards like my CMO does." I thought, oh boy, that's not good. So what do you think is going on?

CP: Well, I mean it's part of the challenge but also what I love about what we do is that there's not a black-and-white measure of your success. And so much of it is intangible. And if you're the CFO, either you got the balance sheet or you don't. You're coming up with the cool business acquisition strategies. There's really clear, tangible outcomes to work well done or not. And with marketing, there's so many dependencies on all other aspects of the business, and yet marketing is the most visible thing that everyone turns to that first and picks on that if things aren't right. And that just generally erodes even the most confident indiviual's confidence. That, well, gosh, maybe am I not thinking about the right thing or am I not? And I think that's part of it is that we do this to bolster ourselves and make ourselves feel better. But no, I am doing really amazing things and all that, and there's not the same always quantifiable... There absolutely are business results and all of that, but there's a lot less of it that's as tangible.

GS: It's funny, I was sitting last week, I was in London last week and I met with a guy who used to run Cannes Lions. It was very interesting, and I think he's right. He says, marketing is the only business that gives awards that wins business. And so break that down just to make sure the listener understood that: a Cannes Lions or a series of Cannes Lions awards is what an agency uses to get new business. It's not generally how much did we grow the business, although some of that. And I've not done agency new business pitches in a long time now or had a lot of exposure to them recently, but I think that's still true. So think of any other interest. So that's why Cannes Lions has become such a big deal because it reflects ability to get money. It's not just ego. It is actual real revenue for those agencies. Isn't that funny?

CP: It makes a lot of sense. And I think, generally, the people that get recognized are the people that deserve that recognition because they're driving business. At the end of the day, that is really what matters. But I think it's almost, it's gotten a little out of control in how it's like, "Oh, I'm so humbly honored to dah dah, dah." And it's like, what did you do? What did that mean for the business? And how do your colleagues feel about the impact of that? And I think that to me is... The way your colleagues feel and how they believe in your partnership and your focus on the business itself, that really matters. And it matters in their confidence in you and all of that.

GS: I'll tell you another observation I've come to recently, which is that I think the role of the CMO is the only person in the C-suite who is a hundred percent tasked with growth. You can get growth through acquisitions as you kind of mentioned there, too, but just say organic growth, okay. It's all up to the CMO, and near as I can tell I think most bonuses and most financial structures are paid out based on growth of the company, stock market rewards growth. I mean we're all oriented towards growth, and yet, I don't know, some of the data seems to suggest that CMOs are not always the most respected C-suite member. Something feels funny about that to me. How do we not get that a hundred percent right yet?

CP: I don't know if I've got the answer, but I think the dependencies that marketing has on other aspects of the business to achieve that growth are huge, right? And somebody else talked about you want to make sure that the invitation to the party isn't better than the party itself.

GS: There you go.

CP: And if marketing is about that invitation, marketing also has to play such a critical role in the party, but there are a lot of others that are responsible for the party as well. And that's where the control starts to slip and that's where it becomes the team sport that it really is.

GS: I'm laughing because there's no way that Eric, our producer, he isn't going to use that as the opening sort of quote when this goes live. That was just too good.

It's time for our favorite question: what do CMOs get wrong? We'll find out what Carolyn Pollock thinks in a moment. But first, let's take a quick break.