Episode 176 / Aleena Mansoor / Procter & Gamble / Brand Director
Podcast: Using Stories and Insights to Communicate More Deeply with Consumers
As the Brand Director for luxury skincare brand SK-II at Procter & Gamble, Aleena Mansoor enjoys working in a start-up culture, ringfenced from the bigger corporate atmosphere and more innovative in her view. Her Shiny New Object is all about looking at marketing from a deeper, more connected place where insights are used to deliver authentic storytelling to consumers.
Aleena’s favourite new belief that she’s developed in working at P&G for six years is the value of deep thinking, away from distractions and constant interruptions from emails and instant messages. As she’s very interested in the way the brain works, she’s learnt that it takes 23 minutes on average to come back to the same level of focus if you’re interrupted mid-flow. This leads to a lot of details being missed, to us remembering less, and to creating worse-quality work.
To avoid this, Aleena marks out hours of her diary (usually early morning) where she will not allow any interruptions. This involves agreeing with her manager upfront and just managing that time more thoughtfully. She believes that, otherwise, we are driven too much by the fear of not doing enough and working faster, not better, just to stay afloat.
Staying on the topic of deeper, better quality output, Aleena’s Shiny New Object is authentic storytelling. In her view, all human communication relies on stories, whether these are specifically spelled out in an ad or implied. However, the most important aspect for brands to look into is how to build these stories from new or deeper insights. Instead of always chasing for the newer, faster, more automatic way to advertise, Aleena thinks we should be looking at consumer insights that no one is looking at or understanding an insight in a different way.
As she puts it, “Great advertising is about touching on the right emotions that are relevant to people” – and identifying these will set brands apart from all the rest.
Learn more about how Aleena manages her time to deliver better quality output, listen to her top marketing tips, and find out how to build authentic storytelling in your digital marketing strategy, on the latest podcast episode here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Aleena Mansoor 0:00
I realized that we're all operating as a low grade version of ourselves and in the world that we live in, which is always go go go and you know, you're always connected on five different platforms at the same time, you're on WhatsApp, you're on Teams, you're everything. And I just feel like you don't have enough deep thinking or even just normal thinking in your day, you're just running from one thing to another.
Tom Ollerton 0:29
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Hello, and welcome to the Shiny New Object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative and this is a weekly show where I get to interview people from exciting brands talking about exciting things, particularly the future of the industry. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Aleena Mansoor who is Brand Director at P&G. So Aleena, for anyone who doesn't know you, can you give us a bit of a background on who you are and what you do.
Aleena Mansoor 1:24
Hi, everyone. Thank you so much, Tom, for having me here. I've been really excited about it. So my journey started in Procter and Gamble. Six years ago, this was my first job fresh out of university. And I have been working on the brand SK-II, which is a luxury skincare brand. The Global office is here in Singapore. And what we do is basically my job revolves around creating content for SK-II, essentially designing campaigns that are blasted globally, and also doing all the end to end analysis for it as well.
Tom Ollerton 2:04
So what I'd like to know is, in that six year career, what kind of new belief or behavior has really helped with your work.
Aleena Mansoor 2:13
So the way that SK-II works is very different from other brands, and Procter & Gamble, at least from what I hear, we actually have very much a startup like culture, we try to break all of the rules of bureaucracy that P&G usually has and try to work in a bit of a different manner, which is a lot more faster, a lot more innovative. But what I've learned in the last few years is that I've had a more nuanced take on hustle culture. While I deeply respect the idea of trying new things and breaking boundaries, the fact of the matter is that, when unchecked, it really ends up draining people. So I feel like you can only rely on overly energetic young people who are ready to give up everything for their job til so far. And I feel like it happens at the cost of good ideas, smart presentations and innovation and have seen both sides in the six years that I've been here, what the benefit of hustle culture is and also how it can go awry. So fun fact at the side is that I am really obsessed with the brain, I actually study a lot about it, I listen to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of, I read a lot of literature on it. And one belief that really, or knowledge I really, that really changed me was that when you're disrupted, or interrupted, it takes 23 minutes to get to the same level of focus, because you're constantly switching. So imagine like we're talking right now and a text message pops up. So I'm going to take time to disconnect from this conversation, look at the text message, disconnect from that text message and come back to you. That already takes up a lot more of my bandwidth than you think. And what it essentially ends up doing is that it you know, you just make a lot more mistakes, you actually remember less, and you're of course less creative. So that really was a bit of a shocker for me, because I realized that we're all operating as a low grade version of ourselves. And in the world that we live in, which is always go go go and you know, you're always connected on five different platforms at the same time. You're on WhatsApp, you're on Teams, you're everything. And I just feel like you don't have enough deep thinking or even just normal thinking in your day. You're just running from one thing to another. And I feel like what really created a higher quality work experience for me was when I actively started carving out time in my schedule to do some deep thinking. Now I feel like this is something that people tell us all the time. It's almost like lip service. But how do you actually do it? And obviously since up to recently I was fairly junior in the company. What I started doing was really I had conversations with my managers on really what are the hours of the day that I don't want to be disturbed at all like that, you can carve out like a few hours in the morning, a few hours in the evening. These are completely no touch times, I feel like we're always, you know, rushing to impress our managers and always being available to them. But taking the time out will make us more valuable to them. Also, I feel like while there needs to be, of course, a systemic change in the office. But if you can take these small efforts to have these hours crafted in the day, it can help you already before you can even effect that full on systemic change. And if you like separately, you need you absolutely must take a holiday every three months, because the world isn't gonna die if you take that time off. And I feel like it really does help you run for longer because people just don't take that holiday unless they're like, Okay, you know what I'm gonna take that two week off. Rather than just take that one day off and make it a long weekend. I feel like it is quite important. And sometimes I feel that working late into the night doesn't work. Also, I'd rather wake up earlier to work. Even though I am a night person, I must say that like I am a night person, but you are so tired at night, and your brain is so full of, you know, just jumping from one thing to another, sometimes you shutting off at a proper time and waking up earlier makes you do the work a lot faster. So I mean, these are all these small tricks that I have picked up on how I can have deeper thinking in my day. But you know, everyone has their own way I feel like just crafting that deep thinking time is I feel a belief that has really changed my life.
Tom Ollerton 6:32
I don't think many people, me included are gonna argue with you. But how do you do it? How do you implement that?
Aleena Mansoor 6:37
So I mean, like I said, um, I think first it really starts with a conversation with your manager on how and where you would like to take this time off. Right. So for me, I really just went up to my manager who would like to, for example, just Teams me whenever she, it was like a stream of consciousness, every time she had a thought she would just message me and it would just like, onload on my brain and just, you know, weigh me down. So after when I just told her that I will be making my Teams like, Do Not Disturb between these hours of the morning, whatever you need to talk to me, you can just send it over email. And I will only look at my email at a certain time. So that was one way that I did it. The other ways is really...
Tom Ollerton 7:16
Can you actually, do you mind me asking you when is that? I'm just trying to get the specifics here, do you like 10 or 12, or like half nine till 2 in the afternoon?
Aleena Mansoor 7:24
It depends, I think something different days, or different. I'm not a very big routine person. So for me, it would be whenever is like, usually it would be the first thing in the morning. So for example, from 9 to 11, I would take that time off, it's also a low activity time for most people, a lot of people are, you know, sort of settling into their day anyway. Or it would be in the evening, for example, a 5pm to 7pm, when people are sort of winding down. So that would be my time. But I would take that two hours every day.
Tom Ollerton 7:55
And what are the main benefits you've seen from this?
Aleena Mansoor 7:58
I feel like a lot of especially junior people in high stress environments, we are being fueled by "if you don't do this, you will die." Or "if you don't do this, your career is on the line or your image is on the line," right. And you don't genuinely think about what you're doing. You're just kind of trying to deliver something, just something on a slide or you know, a presentation so that you can show a person that I did the work checkbox, right. And, and in that time, because you are just so fueled by fear to meet that deadline, you are essentially not putting in a lot of thinking into that work. You're just doing whatever you think like you know, you've heard from other people, you're just trying to string together a narrative that you've heard from five different people and you're just putting it on. That's the fastest fastest thing to do anyway. But I feel like when I took that time, I would fundamentally question why we're doing that piece of work in the first place. If there are any fresh ideas that I can bring from outside that we can take inspiration from it would give me time to research, it would give me time to see what else is out there. It would also give me fundamental questions to ask my manager to get her to say to be like, do we even need to do this? Or is this way or is the speed of doing things the right way? So I feel like these kind of questions you can only think about when you take a step back.
Tom Ollerton 9:20
So you've got some great advice there. And thanks for helping me understand the practical benefit of that. So let's move into marketing itself. What is your top marketing tip? What's your favorite bit of advice that you've been given and that you give most often?
Aleena Mansoor 9:34
I think the best marketing tip that I've ever received is "stop drinking your own Kool Aid," which basically means that a lot of marketers or brands approach marketing communication as "what I want to tell people." Now I'm launching a new product. I want to tell people about it. Now I have a new celebrity that I signed. I want to tell people about it. Instead of doing that, our fundamental fundamental way of looking at the problem should be, what problem or concern am I solving for a consumer and present it to the audience with storytelling or in a medium that people already consume? So for example, people go to Instagram to scroll about fashion, lifestyle, art, right? You need to think about how do you fit into their culture, rather than creating your own random messaging and trying to present that. So basically, you need to figure out how you seamlessly fit into people's lives. So you need to borrow from culture or borrow from things that were genuinely interest your consumers. And also think about how do you fit in as a solution to that concern or that problem, right? Rather than just blasting your communication everywhere? So I feel like that was a game changer for me, because it really made me think deeper about what do consumers really want?
Tom Ollerton 10:59
Can you give me an example of when you've applied the practice of not drinking your own Kool Aid?
Aleena Mansoor 11:04
That's a good one. Let me think.
Tom Ollerton 11:06
While you think about that, I'm going to make a point because I feel I've put you on the spot there. So there's part of me that massively agrees with you, in my career I've always held that belief that you need to be part of culture in the right way, and interrupting and spamming people isn't appreciated. But then there's a fair amount of marketing science that I can't quote, I don't know who said it, that would suggest that just repetition of messaging over and over again, will create those memory structures and top of mindness at the point of purchase. So you know, I drove past a Pepsi ad the other day, and it was just a massive bottle of Pepsi, with a young person next to it with headphones on singing or something. I don't think there was any copy on it, right? There's the most interruptive thing, boring, straightforward, but the 10s of 1000s of people that have driven past the ad will think about Pepsi potentially more than Coke at point of purchase, but it's entirely Kool Aid, well, obviously a strange drink to compare it with, but there's, so what do you feel about that the fact that there's that balance of just ramming home that message as often as possible, versus what you're talking about, which is a much more subtle, empathetic approach to marketing?
Aleena Mansoor 12:14
I think, even if you're getting to, like, I'm thinking like, on my feet here, so pardon me if it's a little incoherent. So I feel like the first thing is that, that kind of marketing where you know, you can just grab people's attention in like big ways, like, you know, for example, a billboard ad or, you know, like always, like spamming that same message everywhere. That is also a benefit of very, very rich brands, a lot of people don't have that kind of money, they have a limited slot, a limited period to really hit home. And then that's it, right? And of course, yes, you'll do it as many times as possible. But you can get a bigger bang for your buck, if you're able to give a better message, a more memorable message, a more authentic message in that time period, which could be limited. And now with the democratization of marketing where, you know, places like Google, Facebook, you know, you have to have, you have to be relevant to those audiences, for example, right, they're already making it harder for you to do what that example that you just said, because that is in a world where you can just buy a lot of physical spaces, you can just throw money, and you can get that space to again, shout your message, right. But now I feel like in this world that we're living in, it's a lot harder to do that. So that's why I feel like not drinking your own Kool Aid or spamming would be a better way to do it. And secondly, if I look at Pepsi or Coke, who have been the old school, you know, winners in the marketing world, even their message comes from a place of relevancy, they have spent a lot of time really making themselves part of culture, like you know, Coke with its happiness slogan, right? Where literally every time you think of Coke is and what happened is they made a lot of effort into creating that emotion and also capitalizing on that emotion because genuinely, we always have Coke when we're trying to celebrate something, or when we're trying to enjoy a party or when we're hanging out with our friends. They took that actual insight and they put it into their campaigns, right? So it is based off something that is real. And in the end, yes, you can just show two words or show like a cool visual of a person wearing headphones and you know, enjoying Coke or Pepsi and you know, you immediately feel that, right? But I feel like a lot of empathetic in depth work has been done prior to that for you to have that immediate impact. You can't do that. If you're a new brand who hasn't done that legwork before.
Tom Ollerton 14:50
Well, you apologized before the answer for being inarticulate. But you've argued the point incredibly well.
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We are gonna move on now to your shiny new object, which is authentic storytelling. It doesn't sound like a shiny object to me, that doesn't matter. Can you explain what authentic storytelling is to you and why you've chosen that as your shiny new object?
Aleena Mansoor 15:54
You know, I I really I do agree it really doesn't sound like the new thing but I feel like it has gotten lost. Because I feel like these days there are just so many things, right, that new thing, the new ways in which you can be a marketeer. You know, there's mixed reality like what you mentioned in your brief to me, like prior like there's mixed reality, there's dark social blockchain, there are so many different ways of being a marketer. Now with the metaverse, the world has become even more complicated, right, and you can do so much more. So what I feel like is that platforms can keep changing. Recently, there was this other concept that I heard of, was that hyperspeed content creates so much content and creates it in a fraction of your time, just keep throwing at it. And I feel like it does work, that it's not like all of these things will not work. But I feel like the thing that should be holding it together is really proper storytelling. And what that is, to me is finding consumer insights that either no one is really looking at, or looking at a present consumer insight that everyone's looking at, but understanding it in a deeper way. So I'll give you an example of something that I've actually done it at work or an experience that I had was that every year we launched a limited edition bottle, right? It's basically, you know, we have a product called Facial Treatment Essence, we wrap it into Limited Edition packaging every Christmas, and we sell it. During Christmas, everyone is talking about gifting and you know, showing your Christmas queues and winter and ribbons. Everything is the same. And it's just a competition of who has a prettier bottle. And we have a pretty good looking bottle as well.
People are in the mindset of buying and gifting. Right? So that's the insight that everyone's focused on, and everyone's capitalizing on. But when I was given a choice of working on this project, I thought of what is a consumer insight that no one is really thinking of. And at that point, we saw that women who are our target market women 25 to 35, they're our target, right? At the end of the year, they're often in a reflective mood, they are pensive. They're taking stock of their year, they're like, you know, did we do we have a boyfriend that we're spending Christmas with, you know, gosh, did I really get that promotion, did I not get that promotion, you know, they're thinking about taking stock like most of us are. So it can be actually a time that is a little bit sad or a little bit quieter for a lot of people. So in that time, I thought that why not our bottle be a statement of empowerment for women, rather than just a pretty bottle that you can buy and put on your shelf. Our bottle had three empowering statements written on them, like destiny is a matter of choice, because our brand has this whole campaign of change destiny and making women you know, take control of their lives. So Destiny is a matter of choice or change is in all of us or be the person you decide to be. There were these, like, you know, they're empowering statements. So I thought, why not just cut away with all of the Christmas cues and the gifting cues and position each bottle with a celebrity who actually embodies that statement. So for example, one of the girls celebrities that we chose for "Be the person you decid to be" was this woman who is a superstar singer's daughter. She is also a singer, but she is trying to become a superstar without her mother's influence. She's also Chinese, but she is fully out as a gay woman, which is a very difficult thing to do in China. She is a woman in China, but she also dresses androgynously, which is also a thing that SK-II has never really, you know, like, none of the girls that we have are like that. And also it's a big thing to do in China, right? So I feel like we chose that girl. So I mean I petitioned my organization like let's get that girl to become the face of our brand for that bottle. And we chose other girls for the other bottles as well. And eventually that became one of our most successful campaigns because women resonated so strongly with that, because they were like, hey, you know, I feel stronger. I feel like I want to get this bottle because it speaks to me. And it is something that, you know, that I would be proud to put on my vanity as opposed to any other pretty bottle, right? So it's just a way of, you know, connecting with people in a different way, and in a deeper way. And I feel like everything that we've seen, some of the most iconic campaigns, like Ariel's "Share the load" or even Blendtec's "Will It Blend" or even if you go really far back, like De Beers, "A diamond is forever," everyone is going after an insight that is at the time new or deeper. And I feel like we forget that a lot. Because we have all this opportunity to spam people with so much content or use all this amazing technology to create something very different. But at the same time, if you forget this, it doesn't matter what platform you're on, you're just going to be like every other brand. So I feel like this is really the differentiator for me.
Tom Ollerton 21:01
So where you've lost me a little bit is you started talking about authentic storytelling. But actually, a lot of what you're talking about is insight, whether that's a old insight looked at in a new or deeper way, or a new insight. And it's fascinating to hear that story of the Chinese influencer. And I will go and check out their work afterwards. And I'm so glad it worked. Because very smart. But what I'm confused about is that storytelling, whenever I'm at a conference and someone's onstage at an agency and starts talking about storytelling, my eyes roll over. I'm like, honestly, are we still saying storytelling, because storytelling, in my view, is classic storytelling, famous narratives. You know, if you're talking about your favorite books, or your favorite films, or your favorite stories from your family, you're not going to go Oh, yeah, but then there's, you know, that story from Blendtec or Persil or whatever, it's, it's not a story. It's advertising, you can put storytelling elements into it, a start, a middle and an end. But I think the industry is kidding itself that it's actually storytelling. Like, Hey, guys, come sit around me, I'm going to tell you about this Persil ad, it's not storytelling that is one thing I'm unsure about is, are you just talking about insights? Or am I missing the point about storytelling, happy to be wrong?
Aleena Mansoor 22:18
I mean, yeah, I'm actually thinking myself, if that's the right term, because you know, sometimes, we all just get used to some jargon that we use in the office. So we start using the same words without thinking too deeply about them. But I would still argue that it is storytelling. Now, it may not be like, you know, watching a kind of award winning film, or you know, watching, like hearing a story from your, you know, Grandpa years back in the war, but you're still telling people, you're communicating something to people, and we always communicate in stories, that story can be a minute long, or it can be something that you just see on print, and you just create that narrative in your mind, or whatever it is, it is an aid to, at least it's an aid to telling yourself a story or telling the consumer story. Because I feel like that's the only way that humans communicate. So for example, if I am showing you a girl, you know, is picking up a bottle, you know, with an empowering statement on it. And she is just posing with it. That in itself is a statement that she's making a story that she's saying, because she's telling you that hey, I look like this, this brand signed me, I believe in this product, and I use it. And I feel empowered by it. So how is that not a story, I may not be telling it to you in like, you know, beginning, middle and end, not in that way. Because that's not really what advertising is, but I am giving you some, an aid for you to create a story or a narrative in your mind. So yeah, and I would say that any kind of story in the world is based on some deep human emotion or some deep human insight. That is why you know, Hansel and Gretel is still a story that we still tell today, because it is so much about, you know, feeling loss or fear, or, you know, like, no hatred, you know, whatever, there's just so many emotions in that story, right? It is touching on something that's very real for people. And that is why I feel like great advertising is also about touching on the right emotions that are relevant to people. And that makes them feel something and that is the only way that you'll be memorable. So I don't know, that was a very long winded way of proving my point. But you know, it's I don't know, like, I hear what you're saying. And I maybe I'll think a bit more about it. But I still think that it's storytelling.
Tom Ollerton 24:44
Well, I think you make an excellent point. And unfortunately, we are at the end of the episode. So what I would like you to do is to tell the audience, if they want to get in touch with you, where's the best place to do that? But crucially, how is the best way to do that? What makes a really good outreach message to you that your reply to?
Aleena Mansoor 25:02
I actually reply to most things, most people who reach out on LinkedIn. So you could just reach out to me there, you could tell me that you heard me on Shiny New Object and I'll immediately, you know, like I'll reply and you know, I'd love to talk to you. I love to hear people's thoughts on what they think about what was said in this podcast. And yeah, and if they have any new ideas to share, and if, of course you need any help, you'd have any advice, any mentorship, I'm always here. So yeah, LinkedIn would be the best place. My LinkedIn name is my name, Aleena Mansoor. So yeah, you can find me there.
Tom Ollerton 25:39
Fantastic. Aleena, thank you so much for your time.
Aleena Mansoor 25:42
Thank you, Tom. And thank you for the great questions.
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