Nissan Global CMO Allyson Witherspoon, Page 1

Allyson Witherspoon: Automotive is incredibly competitive. And so if everyone is using AI and the dataset is the same for everyone, then what's going to be differentiated if everyone uses the same thing? And so that's why I think you have to have a very clear view of who you are as a brand. And then these become enablers and tools, but you still need that creative mind. You still need a strong point of view as a brand and as a marketer in order to kind of fully leverage that capability.

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 Allyson Witherspoon, the corporate vice president and global chief marketing officer at Nissan. Now she's been with Nissan company since 2013 and in the CMO job specifically since November of 2020. And Allyson has spent her whole marketing career around automotive, working on campaigns for companies like BMW, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti, in addition to Nissan. Today on the podcast, Allyson and I are going to talk about what's really different about working in Japan, which is where she's based, the role of AI in auto marketing, and the art of an impactful creative message. Now, this podcast is all about the challenges marketers face and unlocking the true power that marketing can have. Allyson Witherspoon is going to tell us how she did that right after this.

Allyson Witherspoon, welcome to Building Better CMOs.

AW: Thank you. Hello.

GS: So nice. And just to be really clear, I mean nobody can see this. You're in Tokyo, or at least in Japan.

AW: I'm in Japan, yeah. So I am 11 hours ahead of you.

GS: Yeah, exactly.

AW: It's the future here.

GS: Exactly. Well, hey, I should have called you yesterday to know that the Fed rate was going up today.

AW: I know, yeah, because no one knew that. No one knew that.

GS: Okay. That was maybe the world's worst-kept secret. I guess you're right. Listen, in case the reader or listener wasn't paying any attention, Allyson Witherspoon is with Nissan. She's the global CMO, and as we're going to find out, she has probably more automotive experience than I think any marketer I've ever met and a great variety of those. So we'll get into that. But this is your second time in Japan, correct?

AW: Yes. Yeah. So I'm on my second overseas assignment. So I was here in 2017 and '18, and I was the number two to the global CMO at the time. And then I moved back to the US, and I was the US CMO there for four years. And then I moved back last — I don't even remember what year it is — but I moved back last year in 2023. So I've been global CMO... or US CMO for a total of six years at Nissan.

GS: Right. Wow. Wow. Is there a mandatory five days in the office there in Japan, by the way? Post-pandemic?

AW: No, actually. This is what's interesting, when I came back, Japan was actually very late to open after COVID. And so I think Japan really didn't open until April of 2023. And if you think about that, that's almost two and a half years after most of the rest of the world. And so it was really interesting when I came back, there had still been kind of full-time work from home except for some of the executives. And so in Japan, we started the process — which I had already experienced in the US — of how do you start to integrate more in-office meetings? How do you bring people back? So I would say my team is in the office around two to three days a week. And this is the learning, I think, when we all went through, how do you start to come back from COVID lockdowns? But what I learned is that — and I felt it myself — is that people want flexibility. They want to be able, if you have a doctor's appointment, if you need to drop your kids off at school, it's okay.

GS: It's what's going to happen, right?

AW: It's going to happen. And then also sometimes I have overnight calls with different regions around the world, and I do that from home. It's no longer the time or era where you have to be in the office doing some of those things. So I like to promote flexibility. I'm generally in the office five days, but that's just because of when the big boss calls you in, you've got to go.

GS: And I like an office. I like the environment of an office. I'm a big go to office. In fact, I kind of joke sometimes if I work from home, then I have to get involved in dishwasher repair. And I prefer not to get involved in dishwasher repair if I can help it.

AW: Exactly.

GS: That means I am pushing it to somebody else who does. So maybe a kid, we'll see. But no, I think this recording will probably come out a couple of weeks after by the time it actually goes live. But this was the week that Amazon announced mandatory five days at work come January 1st.

AW: Yeah, and I think obviously things are shifting. I think it's a completely different time. I think there are a lot more expectations. Economy is in a different place than it was a few years ago, and so I think it was inevitable that it would happen. I think my philosophy kind of moving forward is going to still be this flexibility. We know how to do things virtually. So what I try to do is maximize the times that we're in the office for team collaboration. And if it's a bunch of people sitting on Teams or Zooms, I don't see that being very productive. But as part of coming back from COVID, we actually completely redid the marketing floor that the team is on.

GS: Oh, did you? Wow.

AW: In Japan, very different than other parts of the world, but typically only corporate officers have offices. So everyone else is in kind of open seating, and it was very sectional. So now we have one side, which is hot desking, and the other side is completely open space: screens, large meeting tables. And everyone, for the most part, moves to that side to just even do emails and things, and it's great. And there's a buzz, there's energy. People are working. It's great.

GS: I've been in offices where you really feel the buzz and it's like, oh, I really love that. I love that. Yeah. Listen, my team is pretty distributed. MMA's in 16 different countries now, so it's working all over. So back to my original point, though.

AW: Yes.

GS: You are the automotive maven. I mean, so I don't know, you want to list all the automotive brands you worked on? Started with Mercedes.

AW: Alright, let's go. Lets go. I was a consultant for Mercedes, so I consulted on B2B, so how to communicate product technology with the dealers. And then I just became kind of this jack of all trades. So I just started picking up other projects at Mercedes and consulting on a lot of them on the marketing and sales side, product marketing. And then I went to Mercedes' agency, so Merkley+Partners. So I was there, and then I went to BMW's agency, which was Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners. So I was there, and then I moved to... Both brands, obviously, they're international brands. At BMW, we became the agency of record globally for BMW. And so I was spending a lot of time in Germany, and I really enjoyed thinking about global problems and how do brands show up globally. Then an opportunity came up at Volvo's global agency, which was Havas at the time.

So I moved to Amsterdam because the global agency team was based in Amsterdam. So I led the global agency team. And at the time — it's so funny to think back on it now — but at the time, Volvo had just been bought by Geely, which was a foreign car company. China was an emerging market, and now obviously it's the preeminent automotive market. And so learning a lot about that style and also just how to manage teams globally was really a good development for me. And then I got a call that I always say changed my life because I had been consulting or agency side up until that point, and then Nissan called me and they were looking for a head of marketing for the Infiniti brand.

So I moved from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Nashville, Tennessee, and I had never been to Nashville before. And I led the Infiniti brand for three years. And then I took a global assignment on the global marketing team in Japan. So I was here for two years and then moved back to Nashville for four years, and then back here.

GS: Yeah. Wow. And listen, you're also one of the rare people too who actually has a degree in marketing, which I don't see an awful lot. I'm kind of curious, though, given all the experience you have, especially with the international, is there some point in time where you've gotten what you thought was really exceptional advice? Can you recall a great piece of insight that somebody gave you? It could have been something you read maybe, but that somebody shared with you an experience. You have such a diversity of cultures there that you've dealt with.

AW: I think on diversity and culture, the biggest piece of advice that I got... And Nissan, when I took my first foreign assignment in Japan, they actually had me meet for an entire day with a sociologist. And they were there to help get me ready to come into a completely different culture. It was fascinating.

GS: Very smart.

AW: And I really, really appreciated it. Thank you, Nissan. But she told me... And she's an expert in working in Japan and also with female leaders because the gender dynamics here are quite different. She told me, she goes, "Whatever made you successful in Europe and in the US is not going to work in Japan."

GS: Just flat out.

AW: And I was like, go on. My flight is in a week. What am I going to do?

GS: What did she mean by that?

AW: She meant that it is such a different culture that in the US and in Europe, we lead from the front. Leaders lead from the front and the teams follow you. You can give feedback in the moment, you can coach in the moment. And that's constant, ongoing performance feedback. And in Japan you have to do what's called push from the side.

And you need to give the teams a direction and what the vision is, and then they need to figure out how to get there. It's really important for the teams to buy in because if they don't, it collapses. They don't respond to top-down mandates. So you have to find this balance of giving direction, giving them enough room and empowering them to find their own way, and then kind of pushing from the side to make sure that they stay on track. It's a very different style, and I think it's something that I have to constantly work out even as I've come back because top-down things, they have a way of imploding. If the team either doesn't understand or they don't agree with it, they'll never say that to you because it's also a very hierarchical culture. And so you fall into these traps a little bit, and so you have to find your way out of them. And I also think when I came back to the US after I was in Japan the first time, the learnings of that really still held true even in a US culture.

And what I realized was that I was a much better communicator than when I left the US. And because I was in a situation where every day there's a language barrier, there's a cultural barrier, and I started to train myself to think how to lead and how to manage. So how to better communicate projects or direction, how to be really clear, how to motivate the teams around this kind of pushing from the side. And so I was able to bring that back when I went back to the US and the teams there were like, "You give really clear direction." I didn't realize that I had built up this muscle.

GS: What does it mean to give extra clear direction? I mean, I assume all managers think they're doing a good job. I know they're not, and I know I'm not. Okay, let's just be clear about that.

AW: I work on it every day. I think we all work on it. This is one thing that I firmly believe. I think as leaders, people leaders, you're going to make mistakes every day.

GS: Every day.

AW: I don't think that there's an angle. I don't think there's a perfect leader. I've relieved myself of that. And now I just try to be better. And if I make mistakes, I don't beat myself up. It's like you were too whatever in this situation. Just be better, be better tomorrow.

GS: I have a psychologist on retainer here for the MMA, so I'm a big believer in your sociologist thing. People just need help. You need to connect it. And especially we try to move pretty fast on things. And I said to him one time, I said, "I think what I'm doing is I'm just a CEO of a small company." Nothing compared to a Nissan, of course, or anything like that. But I said, "I'm just trying to be a little better every day like you would at golf." Because you're never perfect at golf and the game changes and the terrain changes and each hole is different, and you're never perfect. But you're in a pursuit of perfection, but never coming close as far as I'm concerned.

AW: I completely agree, and I refer to myself as a recovering perfectionist.

GS: Oh, funny. Yeah.

AW: It was really my time in Japan, I really failed a lot. And it was culture failure, it was a communication failure. It was personal life failure. I was working crazy hours, just global jobs can be kind of a grind sometimes.

GS: Totally.

AW: But I failed a lot. And as somebody who had been pretty successful in their career up to that point, it was super humbling. And I had to sit with it for a little bit and just realize this is not about perfection, actually. This is about learning. It's about progress, and stop beating yourself up about it. What did you learn? And move on.

GS: And it sounds like some of those concepts... So you've been made a better executive by the experience of having, at some level, to be so sensitive or nuanced to what's happening with you there in a new culture, whether that be Amsterdam or maybe Japan. Then all that served you well within the times you've had either come back to the US or otherwise.

AW: Yeah, exactly. And I think it's because I've thrown myself into uncomfortable situations and had to work my way out of them. And how do I succeed? How do I drive value? How do I build a great team in something that I don't know? There's no playbook, and there's resistance and all these things. And so I've realized, and I have an article series on LinkedIn that I write, Outside the Comfort Zone, because I really feel like that helped me. I grew more and I developed more in the two years that I was in Japan than probably my entire career up until that point, just because of this absolutely failing and the recovery from that.

GS: And when you say that, are you speaking specifically your first time in Japan? Is that what you're saying?

AW: Yeah, that is. And I think there was so much development that came, and I would say coming back the second time, the culture shock is different. It's still there, but I'm aware of what the situations are and when I encounter them, I already have tools that I can try to work my way through.

GS: I admire you doing that. I was at Y&R for many years. I did a lot of work with Y&R Dentsu, and I went to Japan a lot. And at some point after I left Y&R, I had Dentsu call me a lot to come and do consulting work. And I'll tell you, you're a better person than me. I eventually backed away from it because what I found — I'm enamored by cultures and their idiosyncrasies, I don't want to diminish them — but I found in working with Japanese, I never knew what was going on. I had great difficulty, I couldn't read the signals. And for me, that was very difficult. I'm very good and nuanced in my own culture. I get it. I run a trade association, that is a lot of politics to manage. But I never felt like I knew, and I didn't have the time or the immersion you did to do that. So I would find that very interesting. But it's hard for any culture, I think.

AW: It is hard. The meetings are never the meetings, the decisions are kind of made outside of that. It's very difficult to have direct discussions because culturally that's not really accepted. You have to be very careful.

And I'm naturally a direct person. And then also working with German brands who are very direct, the Dutch are very direct. I'm American, I'm very direct, and you have to make sure that you don't disrupt or create an environment where there isn't a safe space. Again, I make mistakes all the time and I still do, but it's like the quick recovery. And I have an executive coach that I've been working with for a few years. And now I have one that specializes in Japanese culture, and it's kind of like the pause, how do you frame things when you're trying to provide critical feedback, and if something isn't meeting your expectations, again, how do you push from the side?

GS: I love that point there, too, if I can ask you about that a little bit, having a coach. So like I mentioned, I've had a psychologist. He's got a PhD in organizational psych, very serious, very good school, and he's been working with me for 10 years here just to help the team get the alignment we need to move quickly. I actually think in my experience now, my whole career, I look back. I think not having a coach... I don't know how people do it if they don't have an outside. There's not an athlete in the world that performs without a coach, not one anywhere that I can imagine.

AW: Yeah.

GS: So why wouldn't you, if you want to be high performance in business, which you do. I do.

AW: Yeah, yeah.

GS: Why wouldn't you have that? What do you get from that experience, by the way?

AW: Yeah, and I think the first time I ever heard about executive coaching was Lori Senecal, actually. And so she was the CEO of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners. And I remember at the time I was thinking, and I was still early in my career, just thinking, why does she need a coach? She's CEO, she knows everything.

GS: I love it. At that level you think yes, they know everything. Yes, little secret, we don't know everything.

AW: And then the higher up you go, you realize you actually don't know anything.

GS: You don't know anything.

AW: We're just trying to get information and hopefully make a good decision. The first time that Nissan offered coaching to me, I jumped at the chance to understand it. And actually the first coach I had, I actually paid for myself. And it was a coach that excelled in creative thinkers and the nuances that we have, and how to navigate being a creative thinker in a corporate culture. The thing that I think I get the most out of coaching is that it helps round out my edges.

GS: Wait, but Allyson, you don't strike me... The listener can't see you here, but they can look up your picture. You look like the nicest person in the world.

AW: I can understand that. I think what it is is that if people ask me what's my style? I was like, I'm tough, but I'm fair. And I have high expectations, and sometimes high expectations can be misunderstood as tough. And I think that's where I work on my nuances. And it's never... I'm not mean-spirited, I don't have time to hold grudges. I'm just trying to get stuff done, and I have high expectations.

GS: Yeah, fair enough.

AW: And so how can I get teams to also have equally high expectations? That's the nuance.

GS: Yeah. Yeah, I get that. You're right. I've said to people, "You think I'm tough on you? You have no idea how tough I am on myself." But yeah, no, I totally agree. I find it really valuable because sometimes I think things can kind of get lost in translation. Funny enough, we're talking about you in Japan. But things get lost in translation or people misperceive or I bring a series of biases to any situation — either the contextual or long term, my childhood, I don't know, it doesn't matter — but it's like I bring in a series of things and so does the other person. And sometimes you just can kind of miss that. So if you can find that sort of alignment... And sometimes you need a little help to do that. I think, too, I use a coach just to find I have biases in my thinking sometimes. That's what I'm often doing. I'm saying, okay, here's what I'm looking at. Is there anything about how I'm looking at this that's wrong? Is there anything that's tapping into my own pathology that I'm not getting right in thinking through this situation? Because it is about, you said earlier, it's about making the best decisions you can with the information you have as often, as quickly as you can.

AW: Yeah, I read Rick Rubin's The Creative Act, and it was that moment of... There's this chapter on listening, and in the chapter it talks about how the ear is kind of the only organ that's all about the intake. It's there to take in information. And I am notoriously bad about, as someone's talking, trying to formulate my argument, and I've come to learn to stop doing that as much as you human possibly can. But to really listen to what they're saying. The thing that stuck out to me in the book is that if you're not listening, you could miss a great idea. And I was like, I don't want to miss a great idea. I need all the ideas.

GS: Listen, we're in dangerous territory. If anybody on my team listens to this and they hear me talk about acknowledging how valuable listening is, I'm going to hear about that later. So I think we should move on.

AW: Okay, that's fair.

GS: They know that I'm a true New Yorker, and it's more important that I speak loudly, forcefully, aggressively in every moment. In fact, I think the way New Yorkers are described is very good. It's like this, if anybody tells you a story, the New Yorker will always — watch, any of you out there — they will always go, "Oh yeah, wait till you hear what happened to me."

AW: Yup. I lived in New York for 13 years and it was, yeah, it's always the like, let's go. I can match you on this, this, and this.

GS: Let's go there right now. Exactly.

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