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“There is a new normal of pace and agility. Businesses are having to shift how they set themselves up to win in this very fast-moving world.”
In this episode of The Persuasion Game podcast, Adam is joined by Eleanor Lloyd Malcolm, Forge’s Chief Growth Officer, to reflect on the panel she hosted in Cannes about growth in transformative times.
We hear from three exceptional leaders: Kathryn Swallow, Head of OTC at Haleon, Nicole German, Global CMO, Corporate & Institutional Banking at HSBC, and friend of the podcast Nathalia Amadeu, Global Brand Director for Vaseline at Unilever.
We tackle four themes under the banner of creating value in transformative times: why the fundamentals matter more than ever, how to create genuine consumer relevance beyond category convention, the shift from brand ownership to stewardship, and why the kind of cultural and consumer intimacy that truly drives competitive advantage is something no AI can replicate.
This is part one or our reflections – part two, covering leadership in transformative times, is coming soon.
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This is an 18Sixty production for Forge.
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) Introduction
(05:46) Building Resilience
(11:07) Creating Consumer Relevance
(14:14) Differentiation Beyond Table Stakes
(16:17) Stewardship Not Ownership
(24:03) Global Ideas Local Heart
Transcript:
Nicole: 95% of the businesses are like, “resiliency and change is just here to stay”. Those change cycles are actually happening faster and faster.
Nathalia: The brand is much bigger than our marketing department. It’s being defined in real time.
Kathryn: The most important thing is getting the fundamentals right. Yes, we need to deliver for the long term and today, but you can’t deliver for today if you’re not clear about who you are and what you’re trying to do.
Adam: Welcome to The Persuasion Game, Forge’s podcast all about growing brands and persuading consumers in the modern age, brought to you by MSQ. This episode, we’re talking to Elle. Elle is the Chief Growth Officer at Forge, and she was the host of our panel at Cannes, which was all about growth in transformative times. Welcome, Elle.
Eleanor: Hi, Adam. Lovely to be here.
Adam: I’m very excited to have you here after a sweltering week at Cannes, back in the air conditioning of London. We’re gonna be talking a little bit today all about the talk that we had on transformative times. You led that talk brilliantly. We wanted to put that talk on, didn’t we, because we are hearing so much from our clients at the moment about the change that’s going on, the world of abundance that they’re operating in, and the transformation that’s happening in their customer and consumer worlds.
Also, how they’re having to lead through this disruption and take their organisations into growth.
And I think what we wanted to do was assemble an all-star panel of leaders, visionary leaders that could take us there. You introduced Kath to us, didn’t you? Kath, who was working at Haleon, onto the panel. Why don’t you share a little bit about who she is and why you thought she’d be a great addition to that panel?
Eleanor: Kathryn Swallow is global head of the OTC category at Haleon. Haleon’s going on a really exciting journey, shifting from being more of a business rooted in pharmaceuticals to a business that is really driving consumer-first products.
And Kath comes from Unilever, where they’ve obviously got some world-class brand-building capabilities, and she’s really bringing that to the fore at Haleon to build fundamentally brilliant, superior brands that are consumer-centric.
But she is having to take the business on a journey of what that looks like. It’s a business that’s rooted in the excellence of science, but how do you marry that with consumer demand to build really transformative brands?
Adam: A brilliant person to have on the panel. We also had Nicole German, global chief marketing officer for corporate and institutional banking at HSBC, and she has come from a really interesting background of leading tech organisations, leading other banks, lots of global roles all over the world.
Now she’s looking after the B2B part of HSBC across over 50 markets worldwide, leading that business through all the challenges and change that we are seeing in that market. So she offered a really interesting perspective on that kind of B2B world that is so interesting.
And then finally, we have actually someone, a friend of the podcast, shout out to Nathalia Amadeu, the Global brand director of Vaseline at Unilever, who, as you will remember from three or four episodes ago, Nathalia came on the podcast and shared all about the campaign that Vaseline was putting together that she was preparing actually for her Cannes entry, which was all about Vaseline Originals.
It built on the Vaseline Verified campaign, which won her the Cannes Titanium Lion the year before, and this campaign around Originals was all about including creators in the innovation process and building a commercial model with them. She’s clearly at the forefront of transforming that 150-year-old brand at Unilever, so it’s absolutely brilliant to have her on the panel too, sharing that perspective.
Eleanor: Yeah, we had an absolute stellar lineup. It was really incredible to have their different perspectives. I loved having Nicole on the panel to bring her B2B perspective, especially the complexity of a global organisation like HSBC, and I think what was fascinating is actually a lot of the fundamentals that we heard, very similar across three quite different organisations, and that kind of really resonated, and I think there was a lot of shared learnings and understanding.
But also hearing how important marketing is in the B2B world and driving that kind of customer engagement and the role of marketing within financial services, so that was absolutely fascinating. And then of course, having Nathalia there, who was up for a Titanium and her learnings and experiences of how you build a brand in a modern world was just so inspiring for the audience.
Adam: Absolutely. Absolutely. So we recorded the panel, we recorded the audio, and it really was a brilliant discussion. We had so much great feedback after that, that we thought it would be such a miss not to take that audio, take the learnings, and share that back with you today on this episode. So that’s what this episode is all about.
We’ve actually got so much content that we’re gonna break this into two episodes. There’s going to be a part one, which is all about creating value in transformative times, and a part two, which is about leadership in transformative times. And each of those parts will break down into themes. So the themes for today on creating value in transformative times are getting the fundamentals right, creating genuine relevance with consumers, stewardship over ownership, and consumer and cultural intimacy.
So I thought a brilliant way to start this would be to actually hear something that Nicole said based on some research that HSBC had done, which really does set the scene about growth in transformative times. Let’s listen to what Nicole said.
Nicole: What we understand and what we’ve done is surveyed the top 4,000 CEOs before our annual conference is that 95% of the businesses, large organisations, are like “resiliency and change is just here to stay”.
It’s not like I’m going to just figure out that plan B when it comes. It’s like it happens every day all the time, so that’s part of what every large organisation is dealing with, right? So it’s just becoming quite natural to them. They’ve seen it time and time and again, and those change cycles are actually happening faster and faster and very unexpected as well.
But 85% of them want scalable growth.
So much like our clients, we’re also in that same sort of vein for us as well, and so I think, you know, we’re really looking at how do we build the infrastructure, which is around the people and the process to help to drive that scale.
Eleanor: I think what Nicole says there is such a powerful insight into what’s going on.
You know, I think there’s a huge level of change, and I think businesses have realised we’re not getting back to what the world was. There is a new normal of pace and agility and what that requires of businesses. And I think what we heard from all of the panelists is that businesses are having to reorientate themselves, restructure, you know, what are those kinda like core fundamentals?
But how do they start to shift how they set themselves up to win in this very fast-moving world? What does that mean for how they make decisions, how they set up teams, how they structure themselves, and really lean into these new ecosystems and let go of old structures that are no longer fit for purpose.
Adam: I think that’s absolutely right. It was the theme across all of it. The old normal isn’t coming back, and so we have to really set ourselves up now for the kinda reality that we’re in at this point, but also what’s coming next, and I think we heard that from all of our panelists. Moving on to theme two, getting the fundamentals right, let’s hear what Kath Swallow had to say about this, because I thought it was so poignant based on some of the things that we heard at Cannes.
Kathryn: Yes, we need to deliver for the long term and today, but you can’t deliver for today if you’re not clear about who you are and what you’re trying to do. It just becomes tactics. And I think certainly if I look in my own sort of stable of brands within Haleon, you know, getting sharply defined brands that understand who they are, where they’re going, what they’ll do, what they don’t do, how they’ll show up in a hugely proliferated environment is critical.
‘Cause once that’s clear, then you can build the 10 and work back. But without that, you just dance around doing things that might not be building sustainable growth. So it is that, the rigour, and I do believe in a world that, yes, it is AI-powered, yes, the world’s changing more than ever, but actually the fundamentals are more important than ever, more important to have those buttoned down, and that’s certainly something we’ve been doing in the last sort of six, eight months as I’ve been in Haleon, is really trying to get who are we?
What do our brands stand for? What is our portfolio strategy? How will we win out there? And then get that machine going to accelerate the growth through content and projects and so on.
Eleanor: I loved hearing Kath talk about getting the fundamentals right. I think a lot of the businesses that we’re working with at the moment are kind of almost caught in a paralysis because there is so much abundant opportunity, but there’s also so much disruption.
And so helping businesses understand where to play, how to win, how to get after that growth, can cause almost team paralysis, and actually really thinking about what are the fundamentals you need to get right, and what is the core of your business, and how do you drive those core fundamentals?
And then think about what you need to do tomorrow. And I think it’s really also interesting that a lot of businesses are needing to work at a kind of two pace, both like how to win today and how to win tomorrow and plan for both. And I think historically you saw lots of businesses with futures teams and kind of different departments that had the time and space to be thinking about those both speeds.
And as teams have got smaller, you’ve got individuals that are constantly having to think about how do I win in the day job? How am I looking at the sales on a daily basis, but what’s my innovation pipeline for the next 10 years? And that’s really requiring a new set of skills and mindsets from the teams and the businesses.
Adam: Yeah. What’s so refreshing to hear is that so many businesses are refocusing on brand. We’ve seen lots of D2C businesses emerge, in the kinda performance and digital era that are now doubling down on brand. We’re seeing lots of FMCG businesses who kind of explore different innovation avenues coming back to the core.
I think what we’re seeing is a consolidation, not just in terms of like teams and structure and people, but we’re seeing a consolidation in organisations back to what made them successful in the first place, and basing it around those fundamentals, which I think is very refreshing to see.
Eleanor: Yeah, and I think, you know, we’re gonna dive into it, but those fundamentals of consumer relevancy and distinctiveness and how you drive that forward.
You know, consumers are absolutely bombarded by content and information every minute of every day, and it’s the brands that have got those fundamentals right that are the ones that are winning, that really understand their consumers and kind of really drive distinctiveness in their category and in culture and kind of on shelf.
Adam: Well, you’ve teed up theme three, creating relevance. Let’s hear what Kath had to say about creating relevance.
Kathryn: So for me, it’s about starting with a bit of a dream. Like, what do we want this to be? Consumers want to live better for longer. That’s not gonna go away, and we have a fundamental role to play. So actually reframing our role.
We’re a business that’s about brands that make a real difference, so setting that as a bit of an ambition, and then raising up the brand. So talk about Voltaren, I’ll give an example. When you go through the archives of the brand and you go back to the beginning, you’re like, Voltaren is a movement brand.
Voltaren is a brand that should be enabling pain-free movement. Or Otrivine. Otrivine is one of the biggest brands in the world when it comes to things like nasal decongestant. It’s a breathing brand, and last time I looked, breathing was quite important. And actually, if you look at now, 99% of the world breathe air that doesn’t tick the guidelines of the WHO.
99% of the world. I would argue that brand’s never been more relevant. It’s like create the dream, which is based on consumers, and then unlock that potential by really defining what those brands can be, which is basically where we’re at now, and then I think the magic will come.
Adam: We’re hearing this from lots of our clients, this need to stop thinking about the way that they see the world, like in categories or in products or ranges, and actually think much, much more about what the consumer needs in the occasion, in the moment, what behaviours we’re actually trying to serve.
I think she articulates that so well about becoming a movement brand or a breathing brand, and it really does just open up that world to make the creative much stronger, the innovation much more focused.
Eleanor: Yeah, I think we see, you know, and this is almost a time-old issue of organisations, and we all do it, we do it ourselves, of getting caught up in your own business, and I think those bits are really important.
So, you know, be that you’re a financial services business, a pharmaceuticals or personal care, you know, you have to get things like the science, the security absolutely right and on point. And that can take a lot of time and energy. But that’s not necessarily what a consumer wants to hear about, a kind of innovation on the percentage of a drug in a product or—
Adam: The efficiency of a nasal spray.
Eleanor: The efficiency of a nasal spray, exactly! That’s quite low down their decision hierarchy. Actually, you know, what Kath was saying is whilst those are really important reasons to believe, it’s about elevating the brands up into what consumers really care about, what they’re really motivated about, be that emotionally or functionally.
So being a brand that helps people breathe better is much more exciting than talking about some of the science components. And that I think it’s really important to say those bits are still equally as important, but how do you make that relevant and exciting to a consumer? How do businesses get out of their own way of that kind of cycle and really stand for something that’s culturally relevant and exciting, but still has those fundamentals that drive the superiority?
Adam: And we also heard, even when you are, I guess, focused on something that consumers really care about or customers really care about in the case of Nicole. So she was talking about being an international bank.
Nicole: Sometimes there’s just a perception of that’s what we should lean in and start with. So we, for us, across the bank, the brand was always just about international, right?
Yes, we’re very seen and perceived and loved for being international, but so is every other international bank, so it wasn’t a differentiator, right? It’s actually a table stake, and so that’s your point is, like, going really deep and being more curious to say, “So we need to go beyond that,” and then make some choices as what is that wedge, what we’re gonna go after, make sure it resonates, as you said, with the clients, and it’s believable, of course, but sort of truly differentiated, too.
Adam: What’s so interesting there is that, yes, that is important to customers, but it’s what all the banks are talking about. It’s not that differentiated or distinctive, and so you end up actually focusing on something which isn’t gonna cut through. So, yes, we need to find the things that consumers care about, or customers care about, but we also need to think about what actually makes us different within this, and how can we stand ourselves apart.
Eleanor: Yeah, exactly, and I think also, you know, one of the things I guess that HSBC has done so brilliantly, and I think Vaseline’s also true of this as well, is there’s a real consistency through what they stand for.
But they’re observing the changes in their category with their customers in culture and bringing to life that positioning in a relevant way. So it’s evolving over time, but they never stop listening and keeping their ears to the ground, which I think is so important, and that is what is driving that distinctivity above the table stakes.
Adam: Yeah, and the other thing that Nicole was talking about is not just thinking about being there in the moment of transaction but having share of mind, of wallet, of thought leadership, of the kind of full share of experience that they kind of focus on and thinking about the way that they create value more in ecosystems than in actual direct relationships.
I thought that was incredibly powerful, too, and actually brings us on to the next theme, which is all about the idea of stewardship over ownership, and I think there is no brand that has kind of demonstrated this better over the last couple of years than Vaseline.
Nathalia: I think there’s no recipe that fits one, that fits all, right?
I believe, yes, in the ambition, and yes, we talk a lot about this mindset shift of ownership to stewardship, right? And I think every brand can behave like that. It’s really understanding that the brand cannot be defined. The brand is much bigger than our marketing department, right? It’s being defined in real time, and I think this is an important vision for all the brands, right?
To understand who else but the people who use it, who live it, to have the best ideas. I think there’s a difference actually. For decades and decades, we marketeers, I think we behaved as the brand is an asset that we need to manage. And increasingly, what I see and what I believe is that it’s actually ecosystems to be stewarded.
And I think this is our role now. It’s not to define or protect. It’s to guide and let it grow. And I love what you said, Kathryn. This is incredibly important, the foundations, right? Knowing who we are, our identity, our brand essence, so that we grow with consistency without diluting our equity, but with much more flexibility than before.
Eleanor: What Nathalia’s done is kind of world-class in where the category and the industry is going, and I think to take a brand which is 155 years old, and at the heart of it, it’s quite a simple product, right?
But really take it into the leading edge of what our business is now about, and hand that brand over to its consumers to take it forward, I think is just so exciting. But I think what really struck me listening to Nathalia is the way that she went about that was deeply understanding the customers, how they’re interacting with the product, what it meant to them, you know, how they were using it.
So, you know, that story about seeing some people in Brazil using it for the carnival to kind of apply glitter versus mothers in Africa putting it over their children’s faces before they start their day, to how marathon runners in London use it.
Nathalia: With Vaseline Verified, among the many hacks we saw one of the most popular hacks was the runner’s hack, right?
When people use Vaseline to protect their skin for the activities and for chafing, right? To protect against the chafing. I am not the most active person here in this room, but I went to the running clubs training, to the running clubs parties. I talked to the running clubs’ owners, to the running clubs members, to the people who wanted to join, the people who were running 5, 10, 20 marathons, Ironmen, why they run, the charities and everything.
And with that intimacy, it opened our eyes to insights that our competitors were overlooking. There’s no other one has access to that, right? So this connection becomes a real advantage, competitive advantage.
Eleanor: That richness and really getting under the skin of those consumers gave her the confidence of what the right thing to do with the brand was and put it into their hands and let it live and breathe.
It’s a really exciting way to think about innovation and the commercial model that they’ve now applied, giving back to some of those originators of how they’re using Vaseline. I think, you know, for a big, large organisation like Unilever to set that precedent is really exciting. And I probed Nathalia on, you know, do we think this is a sustainable model?
And I think she’s really confident that that is, you know, where the world is going. And if we don’t engage consumers in that way and create with them and allow them to shape the brands, we won’t survive.
Adam: The point that she made, they’re in more than half of households worldwide. You know, it’s as widely penetrated a brand as you can have.
And, you know, physical distribution isn’t going to grow their brand. It’s mental availability, creating more moments, more occasions, more rituals. But how do you kinda bring your brand into more points when people need it in their lives, which is so fascinating.
Eleanor: Well, and I think when you’ve hit that penetration level, it’s about frequency and driving up the usage so you buy it more. And it’s about premiumisation. And that’s what she’s done. She’s brought to life. You know, we’ve probably all got a, you know, half of us have got a pot of Vaseline in our homes. But we probably aren’t using them every day. And so how are you really understanding how you can elevate that?
What are the other opportunities? And making that exciting, bringing it front of mind. And then with the innovation, people are hacking, putting it on their eyebrows, so they’ve created an innovation around that, or how people are using it for makeup or tattoos. And again, that’s through observation, you know, really seeing how people are using their products.
I think it’s interesting because I think AI can do so much to help us understand the world at pace and how we speak to people at pace, but they don’t get under those nuances.
Adam: No.
Eleanor: They don’t see those little consumer behaviours.
And things like Guinness have also done a fantastic job in that. The whole behaviour around splitting the G, Diageo didn’t create that. They observed people doing it, and what they’ve helped to do is amplify it. And I think that’s also what Nathalia has done. And it’s brands that are seeing what consumers are doing, what’s being created, and kind of amplifying it versus trying to own it.
Adam: Yeah, I mean, and this is touching on our final theme about the customer and cultural intimacy that is now required. And to your point, you know, is required to go beyond what AI can get us. You know, if AI can raise the floor, you know, as Nathalia says, it was only by going really, really deep with runners as a non-runner joining running clubs, clubs of people that were doing Ironmans and marathons, really kinda speaking to the club owners, going on their social nights.
It was only through that level of kinda commitment and curiosity to that kind of cultural space that she was able to, as she says, get like, you know, a level of insight that was a competitive advantage beyond her competitors.
Eleanor: Absolutely, and I think it was also really interesting as we had this conversation that none of the speakers naturally brought up AI.
Adam: Yeah.
Eleanor: And that was probed on by the audience, and their response to that was really interesting because obviously Cannes was awash with conversations about AI. And the response to that was that AI, as you say, raises the floor. It’s an amazing enabler for pace and agility in this environment.
But it doesn’t drive the difference, and that is about, yes, as you’ve said, understanding the consumer and the needs and the demand, but also the creativity and the boldness of brands that needs to sit on top of that.
And I think that’s what came through really clearly. You know, that’s important to kind of hold onto, and that balance of how you use technology to go faster, but you must never lose that, you know, human empathy and creative brilliance to build standout brands.
Adam: No, yeah, it’s a slippery slope, isn’t it? It’ll quite quickly become a race to the bottom if you take your eye off.
So, I mean, on this topic, one of the really interesting questions when we handed over to the audience in the Q&A was, how do you do this cultural relevancy and this intimacy but at scale in the way that Vaseline does?
The whole global/local dynamic, how do you make it kind of really resonate with local markets but also ladder up to what Vaseline is trying to achieve?
Nathalia: We are a business of scale. You might have heard “desire at scale,” how we build desire at scale. So it’s very important that what we do travels globally.
We win business globally, but we win hearts locally. So having a deep understanding of the local cultures, what’s happening in the markets, it’s fundamental.
We tend to bet, yes, on insight and big ideas that could travel, but for example, just to illustrate and make it a bit more concrete, we verified. We said, “Okay, there are many hacks,” but what’s happening in Arabia they are using Vaseline to, you know, protect the henna on their hands. In Nigeria they use Vaseline as part of the marriage ritual to put the gold dust in the ceremony.
So, you can only hit hearts if you really understand the nuances, the local and the cultural nuances, and we cannot ignore that. We really need to go that far.
And of course, it’s very important that we work in partnership with our markets, right? So they can surface that to us. Our community surfaces that to us. But there’s no way to just, like, ignore that.
Eleanor: I love this question. What’s brilliant about the marketing ecosystem today is it really enables brands to have a globally relevant idea, executed locally at scale because obviously you can personalise those messaging and that activation according to kind of regional and attitudinal demand.
If you take Vaseline, how you execute in a market or a city like Rio versus London can be really flexed. And so, you know, what Nathalia did was deeply understand the role of care and the role of the product in those markets. So she had an overarching idea, but she was able to bring it to life in a much more culturally relevant way.
And I think, you know, similarly with, you know, a brand like Haleon, when you’ve got things like pain products, how people interact culturally the idea of pain in, say, America versus China is kind of really different. But the digital ecosystem of brands enables businesses to have overarching brand propositions that can then be really relevant to local markets through kind of flexible execution.
And I think that’s enabling kind of a really exciting ecosystem for brands to win globally and locally.
Adam: What I think is so interesting about Vaseline is if you looked at the three entries or the three campaigns which they won Lions for this year, you had obviously the Vaseline Originals, so playing in a kind of like beauty, Gen Z creator premium space, you know, taking the brand over into that kind of territory.
And you have another campaign of mothers in South Africa rubbing Vaseline into the skin of their children to get them ready for the day, and that was a much more touching, kind of emotionally rich territory. It felt quite different to what they were doing with creators.
And then you look at what they’re doing in London with the marathon, and they’ve got like a man dressed in a Vaseline tub running along, like offering Vaseline for lips and nips, and again, it’s like leaning into humour.
And so like this kind of brand, which is global, which is in all of these households, is finding three very distinctive and different ways to kind of activate depending on the space that they’re into. And I think that’s a fascinating learning as to how much you can stretch a brand but also keep it true to its core.
Eleanor: That South Africa ad, it’s just so beautiful to watch, and I think that’s that point of being able to flex a brand at a local level. But equally, when you see that content from other markets, it still resonates really true in terms of how people are using the product, what it stands for, and also is kind of almost surprising and delighting to see, with a product that’s so simple and universal, all the different ways it’s being used, and I think that’s what’s really clever about what Nathalia has done is really she’s showcasing usage, right?
And in that point of, like, if you can’t drive more penetration, how do you drive up the usage and the frequency?
Adam: Yeah.
Eleanor: She’s showcasing to everyone, here are the different ways you could use it, but rather than tell people that, she’s sort of showing it through kind of more natural consumer behaviour, and I think that’s really beautiful.
Adam: And at no point do they talk about petroleum jelly.
Eleanor: No, exactly.
Adam: So that’s it for part one, all about creating value in transformative times. In part two, we’re gonna be talking about leadership in transformative times. We’re gonna be hearing from Nicole about her role as CMO at HSBC B2B.
We’re gonna be hearing from Kath talking about leading teams through a transforming business, going from a pharma business to an OTC, more consumer-driven business.
And of course, we’ll be hearing more from Nathalia on leading Unilever through this change that they’re going through. Join us for part two.
