Kees Kruythoff on the phone call that ended a twenty seven year plan, the rule he used when Unilever bought founder-led companies, and why he thinks the marketing role is where purpose either enters the economics or does not.
Vodafone Business’s chief executive and chief marketing officer on the two intersections marketing sits between, why the free service for small firms was the strategic move, and being called out on purpose in meetings that have nothing to do with it.
L’Oreal’s chief digital officer on why she refused to build a digital silo, what a translator actually does, and the ocean of sameness she found at the bottom of her own optimization work.
Elana Rosenfeld built a coffee company from a garage and sold most of it. She takes her definition of growth from nature, would choose values over purpose if forced, and wants marketing to stop following.
Marc Pritchard on building good into the business model so a bad quarter cannot cut it, the campaign that became simultaneously the most liked and most disliked, and doing the work inside for twenty five years before saying anything outside.
Hubert Joly on why Best Buy waited four years before defining its purpose, the childhood photographs he asked his executive team to bring to an offsite, and a dinosaur that needed surgery.
GSK Consumer Healthcare’s chief executive and chief marketing officer on six months of fortnightly meetings, the wording they were told to change, and the brand whose whole promise went tone deaf overnight.
Old Mutual’s CMO on lobbying his executive team one member at a time, the actuarial modeling that made a vaccination program a business case, and the one market where the pan-African campaign could not run.
Sanda Ojiambo on the letter that has to come from the chief executive, the three things a company can do there, and the question she keeps asking about what twenty years of a different approach would have produced.
WPP’s chief executive on what creative transformation actually buys a client, the three decisions he took early because they were the riskiest, and why a CMO’s job is harder to hold than a CFO’s.
