This conversation was recorded for IRG’s Humanizing Growth series in June 2020. Lucio argues that the moment is unlike anything he has lived through, closest in character to the upheaval of the 1960s but different because of the number of layers and its global scale.
His view of the function is unsentimental. If one word should describe marketing it is growth, and for some reason it has been forgotten. Marketing’s reason for being is to drive growth by building brands that stand the test of time.
Key findings
- Stakeholder convergence is the structural change he points to. Social media has brought all stakeholders together, reading the same things with access to the same information.
- That ends the old separation of narratives. Early in his career, PR spoke to journalists, policy to politicians, HR to employees and marketing to consumers, each with its own research and storyline, tied together only loosely at the top. Today an inconsistency in any of those narratives gets called out within minutes.
- At Facebook the collaboration with communications runs at two levels. On the corporate brand there is complete alignment and a weekly planning meeting. On the individual apps and services the narrative is consumer communication, which communications amplifies rather than leads.
- On purpose, his approach starts with the same question regardless of company: why was this company ever invented, and what was the idea behind the founder.
The founder’s words instead of a mission statement
At Visa the founder was still alive, and Lucio spent five hours with Dee Hock in Seattle. The line he brought back was Hock’s own: a universal currency for life and commerce, built as a service center for all the banks and one unified brand that would democratize money.
He contrasts that with the alternative route he did not take: research, a consultant, and a mission statement in flowery language that the board would simply like or dislike. Because the words were the founder’s, the question became which parts of the original vision to keep and which to change.
Facebook is the opposite case, since its founder is present and can answer any question about his vision. His diagnosis is nonetheless blunt: the company has not had a consistent narrative or an ongoing dialogue with its stakeholders, it is one of the most misunderstood companies in the world, and that is the company’s own fault.
The job he sets himself is explanation rather than persuasion. People should understand where Mark Zuckerberg is coming from when he talks about free speech, neutrality or amplifying voices, so that the decisions make sense. Whether people agree is their decision.
His own purpose, and where it came from
He states the principle first: people grounded in a personal purpose build purposeful brands, and that is integrity. He came to his own late, at 44, out of personal difficulty.
He was head of marketing for PepsiCo International, traveling constantly and jet lagged, unable to sleep and unwell without knowing why, until he sought help and was diagnosed with chronic depression. He describes running since he was 21, from Procter & Gamble to Kraft to PepsiCo.
He told PepsiCo he could no longer travel that much and needed to reground, and would move on if no suitable role existed. He calls the management amazingly understanding.
The purpose he arrived at is a test rather than a slogan: to create environments where people working together can achieve extraordinary things while finding meaning and wellbeing. If any of those conditions is missing, he says he is out of purpose, and he uses that as a guidepost for both personal and professional relationships.
For this chapter of his corporate life he names a specific mission: bringing transformational change to the marketing and advertising industry and making sure diversity, inclusion and equality are present around the world.
The playbook
His first point is that diversity is not a special category. Any major transformation requires holistic and systemic change: a clear vision, specific objectives, programs, measurement and feedback, repeated year after year. Diversity is a business transformation and is treated as if it were something else.
He says the evidence stage is over. He is tired of seeing new business cases each year showing diverse firms perform better, and the best practices have all been shared. What is left is meaning what you say and holding each other accountable.
The mechanics start with what a CMO controls. Diversify the marketing team, particularly in senior roles. Ask agency partners to set their own targets and diversify at senior level, not just junior, because that is where communication is shaped. Then extend it to production, behind and in front of the camera.
Measurement is part of it. In the US he uses the ANA’s GEM score along with the CIIM, and at HP he was able to establish a direct correlation between higher scores on those measures and work that performs better. Progress with agency partners is evaluated quarterly.
He is explicit that this includes holding his own employer to account. He tells the CMOs on the call that it is their responsibility to hold platforms like his accountable for brand safety and civility, that Facebook should be held accountable first as the biggest platform, and that the same pressure should apply to every other platform, online or offline.
What goes into the work itself
His criticism of the craft is the total market approach, which he describes as creating the average of the average of the average, a single message aimed at a hypothetical consumer who has nothing to do with the real people buying the product.
The alternative starts with consumer understanding and carries into the brief. With a diverse group across the whole value chain, he says the output is significantly better, and he has measured dramatic results from removing stereotypes and depicting people as they want to be depicted.
He also asks for consistency across geographies. Companies are clear about their values regarding the Black community in the United States and Europe, and forget those values when the subject is Africa and emerging markets. Some brands are tied to the history of slavery and should be eliminated, and some supply chains are not clean.
The contradiction he names most sharply is internal. He calls it sickening that marketers have engaged in cultural appropriation from Black, Hispanic and other cultures while some senior leadership teams do not have a single Black member, telling brands to do one thing while doing something else inside.
He ends on ownership. These are things marketers control, and if they are not done, shame on the industry and on him by name. Marc de Swaan Arons closes by recalling Paul Polman’s line that no one needs to give you space, you need to take it.
Scope and limitations
This is one leader’s account, given in June 2020 while he was chief marketing officer at Facebook, and his views on platform accountability are stated from inside that role.
Source
This page summarises Marc de Swaan Arons in Conversation with Antonio Lucio, by Marc de Swaan Arons, Antonio Lucio, 26th June 2020.