Episode 162 / Myriam Estanboulie / Unilever / Global Digital Transformation Manager
Podcast: Why Brands Should Keep It Simple
Myriam Estanboulie is the Global Digital Transformation Manager at Unilever, where she takes complex technical concepts into the wider business context, simplifying and adapting so that they can be used to move forward with digital transformation. Simplicity is the cornerstone of her activity, but also underpins her Shiny New Object – simplifying things.
In a world where technological advances have carried on at an incredible pace, Myriam thinks that we all have a tendency to believe that making things more complex also makes them better. However, she draws inspiration from a quote by Richard Branson that she heard a while back: “simplification is the utmost level of sophistication.”
In Myriam’s view, the simpler brands can keep things, the more effective their messaging will be, especially in the context of consumers being bombarded with advertising and marketing. There is also a case to be made for people over-complicated concepts and processes to hide from scrutiny. However, “what we communicate has to be simple for it to register or resonate.”
This is a key part of Myriam’s work as Global Digital Transformation Manager, where she has to take complex technical concepts and link them to how they would work in the business in order to drive strategy. Her advice is to start with the key objective of what you are trying to convey and aim to simplify it so everyone can understand it easily and quickly, too.
In her quest for simplification, Myriam applies the same concepts beyond work into her way of dealing with overwhelm and the fast pace of life. She is an advocate of breathing space, creating boundaries and allowing herself to go back to the bigger picture whenever things get too much. Ten deep breaths are the best way to extract from a frantic strive for success and productivity, helping her meditate and re-centre.
Listen to more top advice from Myriam, including her approach to digital marketing through mindfulness and listening and her top tips for simplification in all aspects of corporate life, in the full episode here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. And I am the founder of automated creative and this is a weekly show where I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing one of our industry's leaders, and this week is absolutely no different. I'm on a call with Myriam Estanboulie, who is global digital transformation manager at Unilever. Myriam for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, could you give them a bit of background?
Myriam Estanboulie 1:21
Thanks, Tom. Sure. So I'm Myriam. And as you said, I'm the global digital transformation manager at Unilever, based out of Rotterdam right now. I started my journey with Unilever, almost 12 years ago. So I've done different kinds of roles. So I started as a management trainee in sales for three years, and from there, I moved into channel marketing roles in the food service industry. Then I did some trade marketing roles. And I switched from there to e commerce, working with our foodservice distributors on launching their order taking tools with us. And then finally, from there, I got into digital transformation, where now I'm responsible for global change management, deploying an in house system globally out to all our markets to manage to end product dena.
Tom Ollerton 2:19
So don't think we've had anyone in 170 episodes that switched from trade to ecomm. How did that happen?
Myriam Estanboulie 2:28
That's a good question. So yeah, it can sound a bit strange to move from traditional trade marketing to e commerce. But ultimately, if you think about it, it's kind of the same principles that you find in trade marketing, which are all around the four P's of marketing product price place promotions, we do the same thing in E commerce, and I was really passionate to try to evolve in the digital world from there, so it kind of makes sense, career wise. But I think what really triggered me to make this move was this incident that happened one morning in the office, I was sitting next to actually our digital marketing lead. And we were sitting next to each other and there was this aisle, separating us. And our general manager walked down the aisle in the morning, literally walked straight to her desk, said good morning and completely ignored me. And I remember that moment, it just switched this light bulb in my head. And I realized at that moment in time that if I did not switch my career in a more digital direction, I was never gonna get told Good morning by the General Manager. So I think that was the moment when everything changed for me.
Tom Ollerton 3:44
That's a great story. And have you had that? Good morning? Yes? Do you have a good morning status yet?
Myriam Estanboulie 3:49
Yes, of course.
Tom Ollerton 3:53
So you're clearly ambitious and entrepreneurial and to spot an interesting bit of data like that and changing your career is is really admirable. But I usually find with ambitious people, they get overwhelmed, because they say yes to a lot of things and they do a lot of things. And as a result, Life and Work can get a bit too much. So how do you deal with that? How do you deal with overwhelm when it happens?
Myriam Estanboulie 4:18
Yeah, that's a great question, Tom. I think nowadays more than ever, more and more people are feeling overwhelmed, not just in their professional life, but also outside of work. And it's just simply the nature of the world right now. We're continuously bombarded with messaging, communication, ads, and things like that. And I think for me one way, which helps is just to take a step back an d, you know, as a yoga teacher, what I really value is just that breathing space, you know, so I take a step back and I tried to take like 10 deep breaths, and just we focus my attention on the priorities. So I asked myself if it's a in a work situation, what was it that we're trying to do? You know, and I think one thing I learned throughout my career thanks to my mentors over time is to not really focus or get over one well into the details and always try to just go back to the bigger picture. And then from there, just take the next action.
Tom Ollerton 5:24
So, breathing, pretty affordable, accessible, easy. Why do we all struggle to do that? Because when you say I'm like, yeah, yes, of course. Mental note, do more breathing. And I have a yoga past as well. But yeah, I've stopped doing it. I really believe in them at the bottom of the funnel home coverage, you know, when loyalty and advocacy but yeah, I forget to do it. Why? Why do you see us bad career, business people that we, we do that?
Myriam Estanboulie 5:56
I think when we're just busy and working, jumping from meeting to meeting and thinking of the next thing to do, we just often forget to breathe, right. And one thing to note is breathing tells us a lot about our emotional states and how we're feeling. So if you feel like your heart is racing, your your chest is tight, this is a clear indication that you need to take a pause. And my tip here would be to you know, if you want to relax, always take shorter inhales and much longer exhale. So you can count to like, let's say four. On the inhale, take a pause, maybe six breaths, and then on the exhale, count out eight. And it's vice versa as well. If you ever want to energize yourself, you have to take, yeah, it's the other way around, basically.
Tom Ollerton 6:47
Now. That's a new one. I mean, yesterday, I recorded another show I do called advertisers watching ads. And I literally said on the call before I pressed record is I'm gonna turn off all of my productivity apps, right, which was like, Slack, and Asana and WhatsApp and Zoom. And then it's just like, I think there's a real tension between what these companies need, which is our constant attention. And the more times slack is opened, the more times Asana or Trello or more times that's open, the more their shareholder value goes up. The more time those things are opened, the more productivity goes down. TBC sorry, I don't have any data on that. But you know what I mean? Like, I've deleted WhatsApp from my desktop, because I'm just I was, Oh, my God, there's a notification on WhatsApp, oh, it's just some boring group I'm in, for example. And so how do you? How do you deal with that kind of that tension that you that struck the you strive to be successful? And to be proactive, but you're also trying to meditate at the same time? And then that must be a real? Two different forces pulling in different directions, so keen to get your view on?
Myriam Estanboulie 8:02
Yeah, yeah. I think that's the only way to kind of progress. And nowadays, you know, especially with remote working, technology, drain or fatigue is becoming more and more common, especially in my kind of global type of roles. I'm on calls from morning to evening. So the only way that I could cope with all of that is to practice mindfulness and breathing techniques when I can. And to your point, I think your earlier question on how can I keep my focus when so much is going on? It's exactly the point we were saying about WhatsApp, and slack and all these apps that keep trying to send us messages. So one of the first things I do is I put my phone in my, in my bedroom, and I put my status as busy on Microsoft Teams, and I try to stop everything around me. So I can just take a moment to reassemble my thoughts, you know?
Tom Ollerton 9:04
Yeah, the heavy lifting, I'm trying to do them and it's I'm trying to delete Gmail from my phone. Because I'm working from home. Why do I need it on my phone? Really?
Myriam Estanboulie 9:12
Exactly.
Tom Ollerton 9:13
You know, like, this is what message I find myself checking my email on the stairs and like, why? Nothing, I'm not that important if they have nothing going anyway, this. I'm talking about myself too much. It's about you. So I'm really curious to know, do you have a top marketing tip that you've or you find yourself sharing, most often?
Myriam Estanboulie 9:36
I mean, I always think like, the simple basic tip is always the most impactful one. And for me, it would always be like, listen to your consumers. So don't make up in your mind what you think you heard from your consumers. But that would be my ultimate tip is to actively listen to what people need to try to find that, you know, the need that you're trying to address basically.
Tom Ollerton 10:05
So what's the best way to do that?
Myriam Estanboulie 10:09
Be mindful. So I think when you're listening, one of the ways in which you can successfully actively listen is to be present in the moment. So when you're doing that focus, when you are looking at the activity of your consumers on your digital touchpoints, except like, really have an open mind and just need the headspace to kind of understand what they're going through to have that empathy to understand what their pain points are. And only by by meditating and trading that headspace in your mind, will you be able to, to relate to their needs.
Tom Ollerton 10:51
So slight push back on that I had a podcast went out earlier this week with a guy called Miguel Magalhaes, who's a brand manager on Tampax at P&G. And his what he was talking about, his shiny new object actually was market orientation or your your position in positioning in the market. And he seemed to think that, that everyone got very focused about the consumer. Whereas the bigger or more sensible play in some ways, it's just to get your market orientation, right, because you can have 10 different brands all listening intently in a mindful way to the consumer. And then they'll go, oh, that consumers problem is x. So we're all going to solve that. Whereas the one brand that market orientates could go, Oh, those nine other brands or after that pain point, I'm going to go after this one. So just curious to know how you how you feel about that. How does listening and being empathetic and mindful with consumers tally up with proper market orientation?
Myriam Estanboulie 11:53
So sorry, if I just understood this correctly, is it more around defining the pain point?
Tom Ollerton 11:59
Yeah, I just I, I never really thought about market orientation. I was always very customer centric in my approach to marketing. So just curious to know how important you think that is? And is that something that how does that work with a proactive listening approach?
Myriam Estanboulie 12:14
Yeah, so I think Tom, there's no one size fits all approach, it really depends on the brand and the product. And you just do that what's right for your brand. So if I just take it from my current work experience, where I'm trying to launch a quite complex in house system, the only way I can actually learn this with my quote unquote, consumers who are now my internal colleagues, is to really listen to their pain points today. Understand how they do their jobs currently, and just position my in house system as how it's going to improve their day to day life. So for me, I found that by having an open mind listening to feedback, and then communicating back to consumers, you know how you're actually tackling that feedback. That's the the best way to get them on board with your brand or your agenda.
Tom Ollerton 13:17
This episode of the shiny new object podcast is brought to you in partnership with MADfest. Whether it's live in London or streamed online to the global marketing community, you can always expect a distinctive and daring blend of fast paced content, startup innovation pitches, and unconventional entertainment from MADfest events, you'll find me causing trouble on stage recording live versions of this podcast and sharing a beer with the nicest and most influential people in marketing. Check it out at www.madfestlondon.com.
So we're at the halfway stage now. And so we're gonna move on to your shiny new object, which is simplifying things. So what does that mean? And why is that your shiny new object?
Myriam Estanboulie 14:10
Yeah, so for me, Richard Branson once said, simplification is the utmost level of sophistication. And since I read that, quote, as a teenager, I remember it really resonated with me. I think a lot of times, especially with now, like all the technology that's coming and the world is, you know, really advancing, I think, we often think that by making something more complex, it's like, we're doing it better. But I found throughout my career, that the more simple we keep things, the more effective at the end of the day, especially that if we just consider that our consumers are in fact getting bombarded by a lot of messaging. Then what we communicate has to be simple in order for it to register or resonate. So I'm very passionate about simplicity.
Tom Ollerton 15:00
So in your role, a digital transformation is incredibly complicated. So how do you simplify that task and that role in that mission? Without dumbing it down too much?
Myriam Estanboulie 15:15
Yeah, so ultimately, I have to bring together basically, technology and business understanding, you know, kind of I'm that person that links the two together. So what I tried to do is just stay close to our tech team and understand how they're working, and then use my business understanding to try to simplify the concepts, the terminology, the naming conventions, and turn them into something that our, our business would understand. So as you said, it's not an easy task. But I think having all these years of experience inside the company really helps me then be able to go back as a credible person to go back and explain complex technology ideas, back to our business.
Tom Ollerton 16:02
Can you give me an example of how you've done that in the past?
Myriam Estanboulie 16:08
Um, yeah. So now, for example, yeah, we're working on our roadmap planning. And we have so many governance processes around how we manage feedback and change requests and improvements to the UX and UI. And I basically have to just understand from our tech team, how do they prioritize all these changes? What are the criteria that they used to consider? And I have to explain it back to the business, so that they understand why, for example, things take the time that they take, and actually what's our, our process? What happens behind the scenes? And only then will they also be more understanding with us when you know, if we face let's say, a delay, or hurdle or something? I think that's the best way to get them on board.
Tom Ollerton 16:55
So listening to you say that I was trying to work out with like, why do people complicate things? What is psychologically what's going on there? Is it to make themselves look clever or to stall for time? Why is there an inclination to complicate things when I don't think anyone would disagree? That simplification? Is this button put an element equals sophistication?
Myriam Estanboulie 17:24
I don't know, I find it hard to imagine that someone would, you know, on purpose choose to make something complicated.
Tom Ollerton 17:32
I think you've clearly never worked at an agency.
Myriam Estanboulie 17:37
Or maybe people who do that are trying to like, hide something or show that, you know, they don't really know. So they've just tried to complicate it to lose the person in front of them. I think a lot of times it happens unintentionally. And just because of the nature of maybe how like a company like Unilever is structured, we have so many different brands, departments, categories, geographies, so it could get quite complicated when you're trying to create and rollout kind of a global system that's gonna please everyone. So in my case, it's really not an intentional thing.
Tom Ollerton 18:15
So if someone listening to this podcast is an unsimplifier, a complicater person, what are the steps towards making things simple?
Myriam Estanboulie 18:27
I think you should always start with the objective of what you're trying to do. And my friend always said, I really like that too, "If you can't explain the objective or the idea to your mother, then it's not simple enough." So I would say always do that test and check with your mother or your grandmother.
Tom Ollerton 18:55
I think there's some some latent sexism in this because it's never it's never done. It's like we're going to explain to your mom because youre mum's stupid. Your dad, however, would get it instantly. Yeah. No, because I struggle with that, the Einstein quote, If you can't explain it to a six year old, like, how are you going to explain the complexities of digital advertising to a six year old but it just cannot be done it like exactly spent 20 years in industry and still only understand like a small part of it. Right. So yeah, it seems it seems like a very Instagrammable or LinkedIn postable thing you know, if you can't explain it to your mom, or your dad, or your granddad, like...
Myriam Estanboulie 19:39
Here's your tagline.
Tom Ollerton 19:44
Not the most catchy, but so, but some things can't be explained to our parents or grandparents and does that mean that that person doesn't understand it? I just want to push you on that a little bit.
Myriam Estanboulie 19:58
There's always a way to explain this I think yeah, I always think there's a way. And if you just start there and just think of like the three things you need to do to get there. I think that's already a good, simple starting point. Yeah, sorry, sorry, no finish to that point. And it's not just explaining it to your mom, it's trying to do it within like a minute. That's also another.
Tom Ollerton 20:31
Explain to your mom in a minute. Yeah. Let's leave it there. That's a fantastic bit of advice. So if someone wants to reach out to you about yoga or digital transformation, how would you like them to do that? And what channel is best for you?
Myriam Estanboulie 20:50
I think, yeah, they can reach me on LinkedIn.
Tom Ollerton 20:53
And what makes a good outreach message to you.
Myriam Estanboulie 20:57
We heard your podcast with Tom Ollerton. So we'd love to connect. I think I will reply right away.
Tom Ollerton 21:06
Brilliant. Well, look, very, thank you so much for your time.
Myriam Estanboulie 21:09
Thank you, Tom. It was a pleasure speaking to you.
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