Episode 173 / Marisol Saona / Reckitt / Senior Brand Manager - Finish
Podcast: Why Invest In New Courses to Become a Better Marketer
Marisol Saona is the Senior Brand Manager for Finish at Reckitt, where she brings a wealth of experience from a varied career spanning the marketing graduate scheme at Tesco through to working with iconic brands like Frazzles and Walkers Sensations at PepsiCo. Her Shiny New Object is the Marketing Week Mini MBA in Brand Management – an investment into developing her understand of brands throughout the management cycle and a way to continually improve her craft.
For Marisol, the idea of going on a course about her own vocation was a no brainer: her experience had been in making brands grow, going through the difficulties that come with that, and seeing that there were ways to further her knowledge and skill in the industry. As she puts it, “if this course could make my marketing just a little bit less crap, then it would probably be worth it.”
So, why invest in a new course when you’re already a successful brand manager who has worked with some iconic names in your time? Marisol’s main takeaway was to discover new ways of approaching the business of marketing. Specifically, she told us about how she had worked with brands under a business objective, e.g. growing revenue, but without ever setting clear brand objectives that would guide strategy and tactical options in her digital marketing initiatives.
The difference between brand objectives and business objectives leads to marketers considering plans to impact the consumer in specific ways, bringing in concepts of behavioural economics and psychology. It is not something that can be applied and succeeded at immediately, but something Marisol says has given her “a lot to chew on.”
Learn more about the Marketing Week Mini MBA in Brand Management, as well as about Marisol’s top tips for students and seasoned marketers, on the latest podcast episode here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:04
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 podcast where I speak to leaders of the industry about their vision for the future of marketing. And I'm on a call with Mari Saona, who is Senior Brand Manager for Finnish at Reckitt. Mari, for anyone who doesn't know you, can you give the audience a bit of a background on who you are and what you do?
Marisol Saona 0:31
Yeah, sure. And thanks for having me on your podcast.
Tom Ollerton 0:35
My pleasure.
Marisol Saona 0:37
So in terms of my background, I have worn a couple of hats in my lifetime. But I think the simplest way to explain my career is I started my first job after finishing business school at Tesco. I joined the marketing graduate scheme, within a week of the new CEO at the time, he was Dave Lewis. And for those of you who aren't familiar with him, he really turned around the business, which was an exciting and sometimes scary experience, to be inside, on the inside. But one of the benefits for me in my career was the creation of a brand team, a newly formed brand team within the marketing department. And the idea was that this team would manage Tesco's own brands, with the same rigor and calibers, as maybe the brands at Unilever were managed. So that experience working on Tesco's own food brand, and also launching Wicked Kitchen exclusively at Tesco, it made me want to join a company where brand was already the driving force of the organization. So I then moved on to PepsiCo, where I worked on some really cool iconic snacks brands, you know, from Frazzles, to Walkers Sensations. And then actually last year, I made a huge personal and professional transition from living in London, to living in Barcelona. So as you mentioned, I now work at Reckitt as Senior Brand Manager on Finnish in our Spain hygiene business.
Tom Ollerton 2:18
So why was it scary at Tesco?
Marisol Saona 2:25
I started the graduate scheme on a store placement, I think the first big news that hit the headlines was a massive profit scandal. And also, I think what comes with turnarounds quite often is redundancy and restructure. So it was turbulent times, let's say, but I got to witness, I guess the start of Dave Lewis's vision for Tesco, a new purpose that they brought to the whole company, and that, you know, marketing was really key to that, does that answer your question?
Tom Ollerton 3:09
Yes, it does. And my next question is, what advice would you give to a student who would want to follow in your footsteps?
Marisol Saona 3:17
Oh, it's a really good question. And I sometimes mentor students from Warwick, my old uni. And this is something I wish I had been told. It's called the PIE model. And it's a concept about what makes for success, you know, at work but I think you can you can apply it to a student trying to get into our industry. So, if you imagine a pie with three slices, there's a P, an I and an E, and the P is your performance. So how well you do your actual job. The I is image, so what people think of you, and that he is exposure, so who knows what you do, who knows you and what you do. And basically, a lot of people think that performance is the main aspect of success so that the P is going to take up a huge portion of this metaphorical pie, right? But some academic guy came in and said, well, actually, exposure is 60% of your success. 60% of this pie. Image is 30 and the performance is actually 10%. So the moral of the story is, you won't get ahead just by doing a good job but by not having managed your personal brand and when the people who make career decisions for you or hire you don't know about you and your results. And if you'll let me I can share an example of pie in action. But I experienced this.
Tom Ollerton 5:02
That's a great sentence. Yeah, that's awesome, pie in action, please.
Marisol Saona 5:05
That's been pie. So, um, a couple of years ago, I had a colleague who was promoted. And I was, you know, a bit awestruck by her, she was a really great marketer. And she moved on, I went to take over her budget files. And I was in for a big surprise, though, you know, it didn't follow naming conventions, PO numbers were missing, you know, the cost center was overspent, the works, and my illusion of her perfection was shattered. But then I realized she'd applied the pie model. Her brand was a strategic person who could, you know, bring cross functional teams together to make stuff happen. And her brand wasn't about being the world's best budget manager. So she focused her performance around being better at what mattered to her brand. And then she damn well made sure everyone important in the company knew her for that. So what, it didn't matter matter that the budget file was messy. And that, for me was a moment when PIE clicked in my head. And I think we can apply this to the students trying to get into our industry, where you imagine that the P, that performance is your grades, so you got great grades, you're top of your class at uni, well, good for you. But that's only the 10 percent, and a lot of other people will have the same P so to speak. So you've got to move on to the 30% of your image, you know, that pitch, what's personal about you, something you overcame, or something that makes you just burn with curiosity. And then you really need to go big on the exposure, that full 60% remaining of the pie. So I think, as a student, if you do all that and apply the PIE model, you're going to be ahead of the pack, because you'll be noticed, remembered more easily, than your competing students, and you know, in turn, you'll be more likely to get selected. And I know how competitive it is, these days for people going into our industry. So I hope that tip can help them.
Tom Ollerton 7:17
That is fantastic. And I'm going to push back because it's kind of my nature, I saw a posting, I think it's Adam Grant, this American work influencer guy that says all these really smart things that I wish I'd said..
Marisol Saona 7:30
I really like him. Do you disagree with him?
Tom Ollerton 7:33
If it wasn't there, it was somewhere, I'm sure Adam listens to every episode of this show. So sorry, Adam. But I think he said something along the lines of like, just forget personal brand, it's all BS. Because if you form really good relationships and do really good work, then you're always going to be fine. Because someone will always give you a job if you have a good relationship. And if you are absolutely excellent at what you do, then you're kind of fine. Whereas what you're promoting here, although I do buy it, and that's a great story that, you know, your proof point is really strong. But aren't we just in the danger sort of hiring people with flashy LinkedIn profiles and sort of, you know, fancy slides and stuff, when really, you know, the job is to do good marketing, but good people.
I think it's a really good challenge. And I could almost flip it on its head, because aren't the relationships, aren't they a result, you know, that's what creates your brand image. So for example, Tom, you, you have an image of me based on our relationship. So I think you could almost like say both points are reinforcing each other. But yeah, I think the PIE model isn't saying performance isn't important, and that you can suck at your job, and your results. But the PIE model is specifically referring to the relative contribution to promotions at work, and that sort of thing. So yeah.
Interesting.
Marisol Saona 9:10
So I'm saying I do you agree with you, actually. I'm a both-ist.
Tom Ollerton 9:19
And if you could share the link, actually, to that, the person who said that research could be interesting to dig down into how deep that is, but thanks for sharing. That's a great one. And my next next question is like, what is your top marketing tip? And I kind of feel you may have already have it, but do you have another bit of advice to go with your pie model? You have a cake model as well?
Marisol Saona 9:39
I do, and I guess this one's more for people in the thick of it now, you know, in the marketing career, and it's a little part of me can't quite believe I'm giving this as my hot tip. But, you know, I've spoken to people graduating from business schools who say like, this isn't really taught. And then also, I, you know, interact with people who don't really think this way. Yep. And the tip is that penetration is king, or queen, if you want to put it that way. So the growth of your brand, primarily comes from gaining new users, i.e. not frequency, volume, or price. So this is like straight out of the how brands grow, I guess school of thoughts. And maybe I need to be more open to different, you know, approaches to marketing. But as someone who works in FMCG, I'm quite attracted to the more evidence based, you know, empirically proven side of marketing. So I think if you're a marketer, and you're feeling overwhelmed at you know, complicated segmentation of products, brands, tiers, consumers, then I would say, just take a deep breath. And remember, penetration is king. And the best thing you can do today to grow your brand, is to figure out ways to get more buyers, probably like buyers, that notice you and buy you. I think, Tom, if you just imagine how many million hours could be saved across marketing organizations globally, everyone was focusing on that, as opposed to, you know, talking about loyalty, niche targeting, I think it could be incredible. But do you agree with the tip, and what's your stance on these kinds of law like principles that Byron Sharp and, and his colleagues talk about, I'm really keen to hear your perspective.
Tom Ollerton 11:51
So the Byron Sharps of this world, ultimately, what they need to sell is rules that apply to everyone. Because what they want to do is produce one thing, a book or seminar, a conference talk, that is as relevant to as many people that they can get paid for. So someone writes a book, like the 10, 21, Immutable Laws of marketing, or like how brands grow, like what they need, and be very cynical here, is to have a model that applies to everyone, because the more people they can cover, the more of everyone they can cover, the more they can sell. That's their gig, whereas like a hot consultant, I'm not that close to many of them, and what they will go is: look, Reckitt, this is your business problem. And this is how you solve it with marketing. And that may well not be penetration, right, you know, penetrate like acquiring new customers is expensive, versus retaining existing customers or getting them to like, you know, grow across the portfolio or, you know, try new variants, and so on and so forth. You know, it's the, the guys that have the view of look, we need a model for everyone kind of ignores the fact that brands have very different needs. And I run a business that works, got tons of life projects for different businesses, and they all have very, very different needs. And if I just said refuted, all of their briefs, said no, no, it's just all about penetration, then they'd say Tom, you're not doing your job, you're not consulting with us, you're not understanding our problem. So I think just saying it's all about penetration suits the person saying that, but in reality, when the rubber hits the road of, you know, marketing, that isn't always right. Anyway, it's not what's in this book is not about me, it's about you.
Marisol Saona 13:38
Oh, okay. Okay.
Tom Ollerton 13:39
You tricked me into it.
Marisol Saona 13:41
I think it's good to be skeptical about the motivations of the sorts of, these kind of you know, principles. But at the same time, what draws me to them is that they're not kind of just made up, they are, you know, shown, you know, peer reviewed, you know, by an institute, scientific, all these studies, and they're trying to find things that replicate across industries and brands. So, yeah, I'm just super still attracted to the scientific, the promise of science or the discipline.
Tom Ollerton 14:23
Yeah, no, no, I, um, you know, having a swipe it people that are far more qualified and experienced than I am. Yeah, sure. There's, there's a ton of data to support all that stuff, otherwise, it wouldn't be so wildly popular. However, it just then from a practical perspective, in my own experience of running a marketing technology business, that applying Broadbent principles doesn't solve the problem in that moment, necessarily. But anyway, like you've got me all excited now and wound up which is unusual for this podcast. So we're gonna move on to your shiny new object, and your shiny new object and I kind of blown it for you a little bit here. I do apologize. It's the Mark Ritson MBA in brand management. So firstly, I salute you massively for having a shiny new object to someone's course. In nearly 200 episodes no one's even come anywhere close to that. So that's a great innovative idea and of itself, but I think a lot of people will be familiar with Mark's writing, and potentially even the course because everyone in the industry seems to have done it. But what is the MBA in brand management? How does it work? Was it any good?
Marisol Saona 15:27
Yeah, so the the mini MBA in brand management, you called it by Mark Ritson, I call it by Marketing Week, but you're totally right. He's the, I guess, he's the lead professor and a bit of the brains behind the operation. So yeah, I'd been kind of reading his column, getting into behavioral economics and marketing effectiveness for a while, kind of just dabbling in it. And then I finally took the plunge and, you know, invested in the course. And it was the first time since leaving university that I'd ever, you know, paid serious money to learn something about my vocation. But I looked at it like an investment. So I figured, I work in brand, I get paid to make brands grow. And in my experience, it's not been that easy to make them grow. So if this course could make my marketing just a little bit less crap, then it would probably be worth it. So for people who aren't familiar with the course, it's online, it takes 12 weeks and covers 10 modules that take you from the start to the finish of the brand management cycles, though, from diagnosis, through to strategy through to tactical execution. And if it's handy for you, we can talk more generally about the course or I can tell you about one part that kind of stood out for me.
Tom Ollerton 16:57
That was gonna be my question. You know, what, what surprised you the most about it? So I think that would probably be that question.
Marisol Saona 17:04
Yeah, totally. And I was listening to your podcast, and one of the guests said that their shiny new object was kind of going back to basics, and not shiny or new. And I guess that's the case for my top takeaway as well, which was, it was the module called Brand objectives. And the reason the objective book module blew my mind was because I realized in my career to date, you know, in some of these most famous companies in the world, but that I had never worked on a smart brand objective. And in the class, we learned the difference between business objectives and brand objectives. So, a business objective is something like increase net revenue by 5% or increase market share by two points. Whereas a brand objective is based on funnel and what you actually need to do to the consumer in order to get to your business objectives. So a brand objective could be something like, increase consideration by 10 points, or increase top of mind awareness by three points. And what I realized in the module and you know, has had profound effects on me as I think about my job is, having a brand objective really narrows down and helps you choose the right tactical options. So I think if you just have a business objective about gaining revenue, then in theory, all sorts of tactics are fair game. But if your brand objective is concretely, a top of mind awareness or consideration or something else, then you kind of have to shape plans that impact the consumer and that way, rather than just having a smorgasbord and doing everything, so think brand executives can really give direction that maybe I've lacked so far in my marketing career.
Tom Ollerton 19:13
And without giving away any corporate secrets, how have you applied that thinking to your work?
Marisol Saona 19:20
Um, let's see how to explain. I'm fortunate to work in a company which has, you know, some quite robust brand equity tracking, and that tracking not only considers brand image attributes, but also classic marketing funnel, so, awareness through to consideration, preference, etc. So, I've started looking at the funnel for my brands, comparing it to competitors, and looking particularly at the conversion between stages of the funnel to see if there's big drop offs versus rivals. So yeah, it's definitely a journey. I wouldn't say I've implemented it and cracked it. But it's given me a lot to chew on, I think, the brand planning.
Tom Ollerton 20:18
And what didn't you agree with, what elements of the course for you, like no, you've got this wrong, or that's not my experience? Or were you converted by everything?
Marisol Saona 20:30
Yeah, I, I'm a big fan of the course. Otherwise, it wouldn't be my shiny new object. But there was one, I guess, one part that didn't really resonate as much with me was, Mark's a big fan of using founders, founders' stories as part of shaping the positioning of a brand. He really, he's worked on quite a lot of heritage brands. And he really sort of values that aspect of diagnosis, that shaping a brand's positioning. And I just, I didn't always see it. Sometimes you dive into, you know, a brand's history that you're working on and find out, maybe it's not that pleasant, or you're, you know, not politically, okay, for the times we're in now. And, and it can't be that, it's not always that useful, in my experience, but, you know, hats off to Mark because he, he knows his stuff. So I don't know whether other people taking the course, agree with that thought. But there's not too much I, you know, I strongly, you know, disagreed with.
Tom Ollerton 21:46
I can't remember where I heard this quote. But in the last few days, someone said that, no great business starts without a great crime, which I thought was cool. But which isn't something that you would want to put in your marketing specifically, but you know, don't don't dig too deep? Sometimes this is my experience. But there you go. Well, look, Mari, we are unfortunately out of time. That has been a really fun and interesting podcast. And I could definitely ask you a million more questions about the course. And thanks for introducing us to the PIE model and making it, challenging me to share my opinion, which doesn't always, I don't always get it. Thank you so much for that.
Marisol Saona 22:25
I wish I could have asked you more Tom. But hey...
Tom Ollerton 22:27
Well, you know, but we'll definitely do a follow up episode. Next time for sure. But in the meantime, if someone wants to get in touch with you about PIE or Mark Ritson, how would you like them to do that? Where would you like them to do that? And what makes a really good outreach to you?
Marisol Saona 22:44
Hmm, good question, Tom. Well, I guess despite my bold move to, you know, choose to appear as a guest on your podcast and share my views, I'm actually quite selective about who I interact with on social media. So I guess my preferred platform would be LinkedIn, and to increase the likelihood of response from me, um, my recommendation is just get straight to the point like what do you want a chat about, this or that or ideally just not selling me stuff?
Tom Ollerton 23:21
Right, don't sell but get to the point. Okay. I think that's a clear enough brief. All right. Thank you so much for your time.
Marisol Saona 23:28
Thank you, Tom.
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