High-performance partnerships

In this insightful episode, hosts Adam and Laura sit down with Selina Sykes, Global Lead for Digital, Media, and Commerce at Unilever. They delve into the essence of partnerships, storytelling, and leadership in the modern business landscape.

Selina shares her journey from a psychology student to a leader in digital marketing, and discusses the importance of empathy and compassion when driving successful partnerships and brand transformations.

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Transcript

Adam: This is the Persuasion Game, the Forge’s podcast all about the art of persuasion. Each episode we connect with marketers, business leaders and beyond to learn how they use persuasion to influence their customers, convince their stakeholders and drive their businesses forward.

Adam: Good morning Laura.

Laura: Hello Adam, how are you?

Adam: I am wonderful. I absolutely love the fact that we are going to be talking about partnerships today.

Laura: In person!

Adam: In person, exactly. I think this is our third-

Laura: from the studio?

Adam: Yeah, and they do tend to be better don’t they. I’d love to hear what the listeners think about whether getting people in the studio —

Laura: sound wise and rapport wise.

Adam: Absolutely absolutely. So talking all things partnerships — what’s your favourite partnership of all time?

Laura: I was thinking about great partnerships over the years and then as luck would have it there was a newspaper article about the sale of some Morecambe and Wise memorabilia. Just to be clear I was not alive when Morecambe and Wise were huge, but I’m obviously familiar with their work especially around Christmas. And what came to light was there is a letter that Ernie Wise wrote saying “I just can’t do this anymore” — I think it’s about 1950, so just before they really broke big. And he was like “I can’t do it anymore, my home life is so stressful, I really need the money” — like,

Adam: you know, how long they’d been going at that time,

Laura: a few years, knocking on a very closed door. And anyway Ernie Wise wrote to Eric Morecambe “I just can’t do it, I’m so sorry mate, farewell.” And Eric Morecambe just was like “stop being an idiot, I’ll see you on Monday.” And I think there’s something about that — obviously they have an incredibly famous complementary relationship where one just didn’t quite work as well without the other. But I also think there’s that real sense of a potential stumble in the road, could have gone their separate ways, but actually saying “look, we’re going to make our way through it and it’s going to get better.” And obviously it very famously did.

Adam: Yeah. And you can kind of just say it as it is — “I’ll see you on Monday.”

Laura: Yeah, yeah. See you at 9am.

Adam: I was actually reading in the paper the other day about Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon finally speaking again after —

Laura: It’s not quite such a happy partnership story.

Adam: Not, not quite. Yeah exactly. Fantastic work at the beginning but obviously a partnership that on the flip side of this story didn’t work as well. They clearly were incredibly talented, made a breakthrough album, tried multiple times over the years to rekindle it which then fell apart, and there was obviously something about that relationship which just wasn’t meant to be.

Laura: I think one of the things which will be so pertinent to the conversation we’re going to have with our guest today is that one of them had to be seen as the better one, one of them had to be seen as the winner and one had to be seen as a support act. And that’s perhaps how a lot of leadership and collaboration used to be seen. But very much not the case now, especially in our always-on world. And our guest today is going to talk a lot about her ethos for leading and partnering in that new landscape.

Adam: Can’t wait.

Adam: Selena is the Global Lead for Digital Media and Commerce at Unilever, leading marketing transformation for beauty and wellbeing. She also spearheaded the Uncovery — Unilever’s innovative brand incubator and venture studio — where she launched transformative brands in beauty and wellness. With expertise in digital strategy and brand development, Selena combines bold creativity with data-driven insights to redefine consumer engagement and drive growth in high-potential markets, as well as leading key partnerships. Welcome Selena.

Selena: Hello.

Laura: So excited to have you here. Selena and I have known each other 20 years this year

Selena: don’t say the amount of time —

Laura: We met when we were five.

Selena: Exactly, just say we’ve known each other for a long time. Many many years. Yes indeed.

Adam: And you know each other from the beginnings of your career right Selena — do you want to tell us a little bit about how you got from there to here and everything in between? Maybe half a paragraph.

Selena: Sure, let me pull out my prepared notes. No, so yeah — I met Laura on the Unilever grad scheme right at the beginning of our careers. And yeah, Laura will agree with me — it’s an amazing place to start your career because you get such a key foundation in marketing that you still use today. I still use the things I learned there today. So it’s an incredible start. And then I’ve been at Unilever ever since really, and that’s because they’ve just offered me so many amazing opportunities to learn and grow. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been at one place — it feels like I’ve been at many different places because of what I’ve been involved in. So yeah, hugely exciting journey. And I kind of broadened out of the more classic marketing into digital, into e-commerce, into data-driven marketing, then pulling it all together to lead the Uncovery, which was kind of an end-to-end business model. And now leading a really fantastic journey that we’re on to transform how we do marketing.

Adam: Excellent. And at university I believe you studied psychology — is that right?

Selena: I did, I did.

Adam: And how does that kind of lead you into a marketing career?

Selena: Yeah, I think it’s a really strong link actually. I have always loved people — even since I was a kid I’ve just always been interested in why people do things, how they work, really interested in working with and learning about people. And I actually wanted to become a psychiatrist, so I was going to do medicine and psychiatry, and then I kind of decided I didn’t want to do the medicine route, so I’d be a psychologist.

And in my degree — it was actually a very scientific degree — we learned a lot about neuroscience and how the brain works. And while I was at university I worked for a charity as their like chief marketing officer as a volunteering gig while I was studying. And I just realised how much overlap there was in terms of understanding people and then understanding marketing, influence and persuasion. So when I was coming out of university I just applied for some grad schemes because I thought it was a really interesting space, and it’s proved to be true. So everything that I loved about my degree and why I did psychology is why I love my job today — really understanding people and insights and how to connect with people, be relevant to them and add value to them.

Laura: It’s funny how prevalent that theme is at Unilever. Even in the assessments, I remember — they were looking for people with the ability to persuade others in the room, or people who were able to think laterally around persuasion. What does that kind of mean to you? Like when you think about persuasion in your role today, what does that mean?

Selena: So when I think about it — you’re right, it’s a key part of marketing because essentially you’re trying to persuade people to buy your brands over other choices they might have, or buy new formats and new categories that you’re developing. But even day-to-day in any business, as a leader you’re trying to drive followership and persuade people of why they should put their time and energy into something that you believe is going to drive the business forward.

So it’s definitely a key theme in everything that we do. But for me, what persuasion is really about is understanding. I think you have to start from a point of really understanding where the other person is — whether it’s your consumer or it’s someone else in the boardroom — what’s going on, what are they thinking, how can you add value to what they’re trying to drive, and co-create and collaborate to find solutions. So for me it’s less about trying to get someone onto your point of view — whether that’s a consumer or someone else in my job. It’s about understanding how together you can find the best solution — best solution for the consumer, best solution for the business.

Laura: So it’s kind of an empathy-building thing. What’s your approach to empathy building? How do you seek to build empathy with others?

Selena: I think you have to definitely have those insights. So without taking the time to listen, to experience — like sometimes you really need to just experience some of it, that kind of “walk a day in my shoes” approach — that’s how you can really build strong empathy.

But I’m really interested in the definition of empathy versus compassion. Empathy is you understand what’s going on for someone. Compassion is right — you understand what’s going on, and how can I take action and drive that forward? So I think really being a compassionate leader — understanding what’s going on for the business, for your teams, for another part of the business — and then thinking “right, therefore what does that mean for me?” Because otherwise you just sit in the empathy.

And again, same for marketing — you’ve got to understand what’s going on for the consumer in their lives, whether it’s a functional need they have for their hair, or from an economic point of view, or from their community and what they’re interested in and what’s going on for them in their life. You can have empathy and understand that, but then if you’re being really humble about it you’re like — “what can I do about that? What’s my role?” Because you can’t solve all of their problems. But how can you take action and be part of their lives in a way that’s going to enhance it and make it better?

Laura: What I love about that is — we talk so much about the “what” and then the “so what.” But then we also talk about empathy building, which sits really firmly in the “what”. But what you’re saying is — translate it through the lens of your capabilities or the brand’s capabilities to something that could actually add value to that person truly,

Selena: and then take that action. Not just talk about it — actually deliver on what you say you’re going to do.

Laura: It kind of reminds me — in terms of building what you said you were going to do — we’ve talked in the past about the trust equation.

Selena: Yes

Laura: And I’m going to try and remember it now, but I think it’s: trust is reliability, credibility and intimacy divided by self-interest. So obviously if you are gearing it towards your own ends the whole thing is undermined. But we talked a little bit about reliability and credibility — but you’ve mentioned intimacy also being a really important part of that.

Selena: Huge, huge. Again as I said — you need to listen, you need to experience as much as possible to really get that closeness with someone. We thought about it a lot when we were working with our customers. Trust for me is everything — you have to have that credibility, you deliver on what you say, you’re reliable. But also you really are close and know what people are going through and what they need. You can’t know it entirely but as much as you can. And then yeah, divided by the self-interest. That’s interesting because the real fact is everyone has self-interest — and that’s not a bad thing. That is not a bad thing. But it’s about how much you’re balancing that with what you’re bringing to the table.

Laura: It sounds like what you’re also saying is through those top three things — through the credibility, reliability and intimacy — you can almost find a point of self-interest that’s a win for everyone.

Selena: 100%.

Laura: So it’s rather than saying “and then it’s going to serve my ends,” it’s actually going to serve multiple ends.

Selena: If you just rock up only with your self-interest and expect people to trust you, it’s just never going to happen. And nor should it. Because if we all approached life like that we wouldn’t get anywhere. So of course we should all have self-interest — we’re all humans, we all have things we need to get done, for ourselves, for our families, for our business. But you need to also bring that value with it. And that’s the key cornerstone of partnerships really.

Adam: I suppose the key bit of that trust equation is actually you need that there for when you haven’t got aligned objectives — maybe there’s something that you do need to do where it might actually go against what someone else wants. And they need to trust you at that moment in order for you to be able to do it, and for them to trust that you’ll have their long-term better interest at heart.

Selena: Yeah, yeah. And I think alignment is a really interesting concept because we used to talk a lot about alignment in business — getting everyone aligned.

Laura: which used to mean “everybody agrees with me.” The red leader.

Selena: Or not, yeah. But it also used to mean everyone smiles and nods in the meeting — “is everyone aligned? Yes we are” — but they’re not really aligned and then you don’t get stuff done. For me it’s about driving things forwards, making progress, learning.

Laura: How do you get out of that though?

Selena: Trust is a key way — if people trust you then it’s not that they need to be aligned with you, but they need to say “okay, maybe I don’t fully understand where this is going — what actions can we agree to take together and let’s learn together.”

Humility isn’t in the trust equation but I think it’s really important. It’s kind of that obsession with a learning mindset — knowing that you don’t have all the answers. And I think that’s the humility. If you can come to any challenge with that kind of “look, I can bring my expertise, I can bring my commitment to this, I don’t have all the answers, but together in partnership we’ll work on this and we’ll make it happen and we’ll learn along the way” — and I’m sure the solution we get to at the end is going to be much better than something we can imagine sitting here right now. If you can bring that kind of humility to partnerships I think that’s critical.

Laura: So liberating for everyone isn’t it — to have that kind of way. Including for you, to not be like “I have to have all the answers and fake it till you make it.” To actually come to it and say “this is the specialism I bring, what’s yours, let’s work it out together” — that’s so much more powerful.

Selena: And also the talk about specialism in how you approach things — we’re going to use everything that we’ve learned in all the different transformations we’ve led or problems that we’ve solved, we’re going to bring that approach to this one and we’re kind of confident in that way of working. And then yeah, collectively if you think of all the collective experiences and therefore specialisms that people bring, you’re really going to get some amazing outcomes.

Laura: It’s quite exciting given that your role is evolving to kind of champion excellence and look at quite a new way of communicating.

Selena: 100%, 100%. We’re really stepping up how we do marketing — it’s hugely exciting, we’ve got so much momentum. And yeah it’s about coming together, collaborating with everyone to deliver it.

Adam: We touched a bit earlier about the work that you’re doing with partners, and I guess the way you’re talking about this, it’s kind of critical to the role — getting the best out of these partnerships. How do you get to great partnerships? What are you doing specifically to kind of get to great partnerships, accelerate good partnerships, get to that intimacy stage quicker, that trust stage quicker?

Selena: I think spending time together, kind of breaking down whatever the formality is — whether we’re the supplier, whether we’re the client, whatever side of the table you sit on — and getting to the point of “we’re all people in this room trying to achieve what?” And getting really clear on that. And then understanding what our expectations of each other are and what we’re agreeing and contracting to bring into this. How much are we going to prioritise this? How important is this factor? And getting those conversations in early so that then you can get on to the work together.

Laura: The contracting piece is interesting. I remember listening to a really fabulous mentor who was giving advice on becoming mentors, and she was saying you need to have a contract between the mentor and the mentee of how you’re going to behave, how you’re going to show up, what the boundaries are — all of those kinds of things. Is that something that you champion formally or informally?

Selena: I really love the idea of “how are you showing up?” — and that’s almost like a personal thing. Almost contracting with yourself. “How am I going to show up to this? What mindset am I going to bring?” Because we all know when we’re having a bad day. I sometimes realise that I have certain triggers — things that get you in a bad mindset that isn’t going to be helpful. So I think the more self-aware you are of those — what are the things that don’t help you be your best self, what are the things that could be holding you back — coming into partnership with that kind of self-mastery is really important.
And then you can set the expectations — you’re sitting there with “this is how I’m showing up” and you can absolutely expect that from your partners. “Come on, this is how we need to be here. We need to be honest.” It’s all about values isn’t it — honesty, the trust we talked about, commitment, reliability. All of those things then build off everyone showing up in the best way that they can.

Adam: It’s a lot of stuff you hear from top sports teams isn’t it. Like there’s the famous quote — the England rugby team were asked “what time is on time?” and the answer they all came up with was “15 minutes early.” It’s just like — how are you going to show up, what version of yourself are you going to bring, understanding what bits of you are your strong points, which bits you need to work on, and then when you’re in that partnership working out how you make it all work together.

Selena: And communicating that intention — because that “15 minutes early” thing is really cool. That comes with an intention of — why is that important? Because with their training schedule they must have had a really clear agenda. They needed everyone to be in the room for it to work — one person missing wasn’t going to work. So understanding everyone’s intention behind those contracted behaviours is really clear.

Laura: You and I were chatting about coming on the podcast and we were talking about great partnerships, and you actually had a fabulous example from outside of the world of business — a fashion collab right?

Selena: Yeah, Zendaya and her stylist. I was just in a workshop the other day and we were talking about it, and I just love partnerships like that because they bring the best out in each other and you can see it for both of them. You know, it’s like a great marriage — any great partnership is you enhance each other. I talked about showing up and being our best self, but an amazing partnership is when you help that person be their best self.

Adam: So for the uneducated in the room — does Zendaya and her stylist always-

Laura: They only work together, and he only styles her.

Selena: Yes, and it’s just incredible what they achieve —

Laura: beautiful work. And very creative and playful. When she was doing challenges — which was a tennis-set role — there was always some kind of illusion, some playfulness around tennis. It’s method dressing, but high fashion as well. Not cosplay.

Selena: 100%, 100%.

Laura: And she really looks out for him as well — you can see that she champions him.

Selena: That viral clip where she was like

Laura: Yeah, “where’s your seat?”

Selena: Exactly, exactly. But that’s what it all comes down to — you bring out the best in each other and you’ve got each other’s back.

Laura: 100%, that’s a real partnership.

Adam: And you’d imagine there’s a bit of challenge in there as well, right? He’s pushing the boundaries, she’s kind of “I’m not sure about this.”

Selena: Yeah, yeah. And that kind of comes back to what I was saying about alignment — alignment’s good if it’s helping you get to the best outcome. Alignment’s not good if it’s kind of taking the edge off. We don’t want to take the edge off — we really want to be bold, achieve, perform.

Adam: So how do you encourage your agency partners to make you feel that uncomfortableness?

Selena: It’s something we’ve talked a lot about in terms of setting the conditions for success. And I think you need to look in the mirror as a client about how you’re doing that as well — maybe breaking some of the habits that you might have had that didn’t get you to a place where that was possible. Unlearning some of the things that we’ve done before. But I see so many brands doing that in a fantastic way, so the best work definitely comes out of that type of partnership.

Laura: That’s fascinating — really interesting to say you’ve got to unlearn a few things. Because you could unpack that in different ways — it could be about not being completely wedded to the processes that we’ve always had, or challenging some of the language that we use in terms of how we define success. But what does it mean to you in terms of unlearning?

Selena: I think it means understanding what’s not helpful for this. Like everything that you’re unlearning was helpful at some time — there’s a reason why you learned it. It was helpful, it kept you safe, it kept you delivering what you needed to deliver. So everything was there for a reason. So it’s respecting that — it’s not disrespecting how things were done at all — but it’s about saying those things aren’t helpful anymore. So what do I need to do, what do we need to do to move on? These things are now actually getting in our way.

Laura: I love that. One thing that I found really helpful — even many many years later — is just a bit of empathy for the context that clients are coming from when they set briefs. And I think it’s one of those things that when you’re literally sometimes going to the factory, you really appreciate what’s behind a brief. How do you try and explain the context you’re operating from? What are some of the challenges that you seek for your partners to really understand, to build that compassion for you and what you want to achieve?

Selena: I think it’s making sure you invest in that. That’s probably the only challenge — it’s totally possible if you actually choose to prioritise making sure people understand the context. People understand context if you give them the context and you make time for that and you invest. So it’s about great quality brief writing, it’s about that intimacy that we talked about — investing up front in like “where am I coming from, what’s going on for us” — that’s really really critical.

Laura: Onboarding people.

Selena: Yeah exactly. But in a way that isn’t just throwing loads of PowerPoints at them — taking the time to make sure that they understand that context.

Laura: Yeah.

Selena: like the best leaders who I’ve worked with — they’re just fantastic at doing that for their teams. And you get it immediately when they take the time to explain it to you — you’re like “okay, now I understand where you’re coming from, now I can do my job so much better.” It’s the same for agencies.

Laura: That’s really true actually. A lot of Unilever leaders are incredibly good at storytelling.

Selena: Yeah, key skill.

Laura: And sort of taking it from a place of “this is my world” to “how does that relate to the bigger picture.” Cheeky question — do you get trained on that? Because people seem to be really good at it.

Selena: Not training that’s called storytelling but — I mean you could call marketing storytelling. A lot of our comms training probably does cover that. And throughout all of my career, storytelling has been a really key part of it.

Adam: It feels like context is key in order to get everybody on the same page and moving in the right direction. But there’s also aligning motivations and even commercial outcomes. Obviously we’re going to see all sorts of value shifts in the industry with AI — what would your advice be on getting both agencies and clients on the same page, working for the same motivations and incentives?

Selena: I think we’re learning a lot about how the AI models work, especially in marketing. So we’ve been doing a lot of work this year in beauty and wellbeing around that. We definitely know now how we should approach it differently. So I think it’s about that experimentation — you can’t predict some of these things because it’s quite pioneering, it’s quite new. You need to experiment, learn, and then have the discussions about what’s the best way forward.

In the Uncovery, the kind of test-and-learn way of building brands and trying something new is something you really champion — can you speak a bit more to that?

Laura: Yeah. Really we focused in the Uncovery about this idea of minimum viable product. And I learned so much from hands-on doing that for a couple of years, because you can read all the books about it, you could go on courses on agile working and how it works. But when you’re actually living it, and your entire end-to-end is set around how do you do fast experimentation and fast learning — then it really creates that muscle. So yeah, I would say that’s something that is fully programmed into me now — how do you learn fast? That’s the end goal. It’s how do you learn fast.

And you can learn from successes just as much as from failures. Because people talk about “fail fast” — it’s about “learn fast.” Whether something works or doesn’t work there’s always a learning. And if you want to get better and you want to outperform, you need to constantly constantly be upping your game and learning from everything that you’re doing.

Laura: How do you share that kind of learning as well? Because it’s so “driving the car while putting the wheels on,” really.

Selena: 100%, that’s constantly what we’re doing. Community — having people who really are on this transformation journey and building a community around them, giving them the support they need, means that you can scale things really quickly and create those feedback loops so you’re sharing those learnings really quickly. We have to have the control over it because we are a huge business and we have clear checks and measures to make sure we’ve got the discipline behind that kind of programme. But it’s also a mindset — because you can do it wherever you are in the business. It’s a mindset of “I’m going to get better and better every single day and drive the results harder.”

Adam: And the products you’re creating in the Uncovery — are these like beauty products?

Selena: Yeah, yeah. We launch new brands. It was an amazing experience. This was before we had changed our business structure — quite a few years ago now, so we have a beauty and wellbeing business now, we have a very clear beauty and wellbeing strategy. This was a different time, to be clear. But in that time it was about really experimenting in the beauty and wellness arena, understanding these key communities — like menopause — and how we could meet the needs of them through a branded offering. And what that would look like, learning about them, launching it, understanding — and doing it in a really lean way, because that isn’t the Unilever model — we normally do big brands. So we did it in a super lean way. And a lot of what we learned through that we’re applying to our big brands now. Because now our model is to go “few, bigger, better” — big billion dollar brands. But where you can apply those kinds of learnings to those brands so you really develop markets and categories fast.

Adam: That’s fantastic. So you create an innovation hub where you can learn and fail and move very very fast —

Selena: And then we applied all that to the big brands. Yeah.

Laura: And they are really big, influential brands. But moving into a very VUCA future, right — there’s a lot of uncertainty. I always think having these conversations and doing our project work, there is so much more for marketers and their partners to think about. So many more challenges to overcome. What do you think are going to be some of the guiding principles to really partner well as you go into that future?

Selena: I think the key principles as we go forward in these partnerships is about really understanding each other — as we’ve talked about, showing up with the right behaviours, showing up in the best ways. Investing that time in understanding what we need from the partnership. Being super clear on what great looks like and what we’re trying to get to. And then on that journey from here to there — it’s not going to be linear. So understanding that you’re going to learn really fast together, keep moving forward, keep taking those steps forward, constantly making progress to achieve the goals.

Laura: If there were a couple of pieces of advice that you could give someone who was out of, let’s say, a grad scheme, or was working in kind of mid-level insights or marketing and trying to influence some of these new behaviours — what are some of the habits you would encourage people to foster? Because it’s quite a different mindset you’re talking about.

Selena: So one habit would be about learning. I’m not one of those people who say “do something every day” — but you could every day think about what did I learn, what am I taking from this day that’s going to help me be better tomorrow. I wouldn’t necessarily do that every day — that’s quite a lot. But to have that habit of reflecting and learning and optimising in yourself.

The second one is to understand yourself. All of us are a work in progress, all of us are growing. But really seek data points and seek understanding of yourself and how you can be your best self. Because that’s the thing you’re most in control of in this VUCA world. So if you can be the best version of yourself you’re going to bring value — so understanding what is that value you bring and how can you get it better.

And then — not having a fixed mindset. There are key principles — I said that in the grad scheme at Unilever, I still use what I learned there today. There are things that will never change — they’re the really simple but enduring truths and principles. So definitely grounding yourself in those. But not having a fixed mindset to think about how they apply to the world in a different way, and not tying yourself down to too many constructs that aren’t useful anymore.

Laura: We have absolutely loved having you in.

Adam: Thank you so much, it’s been so so interesting.

Selena: Thank you, so fun.

Adam: Well Laura, can’t thank you enough for bringing Selena onto the pod. I thought she was a brilliant guest.

Laura: I can’t lie, I’m very very pleased she said yes.

Adam: I’m not surprised — you’ve had such a long and trusted friendship with her.

Laura: Not that long. Not that long.

Adam: No. I really liked some of the stuff that we heard from Selena — all of it in fact. One of the bits that really stuck out for me, just based on some of the stuff that we’ve been doing internally at the Forge this year through some of the relationship and partnership building training that we’ve done, is this idea about understanding yourself. You’re never too old to learn about the things that you do, what motivates you, how you tick. And then obviously how that relates with everybody else. We did DISC training which I found incredibly insightful and illuminating. But yeah, I really like this idea that that’s a critical part of the beginning of one of your partnerships — understanding yourself and being willing to change and to use that information to find out how to become a better version of yourself.

Laura: I totally agree. I think what I also loved was her definition of compassion versus empathy. And I think in insights we tend to overuse empathy and assume that if people feel something they’ll do something about it. Whereas actually what she was saying was compassion is really feeling what someone’s going through and then thinking “how can I, or my brand, or my business serve that need?” And I think it’s that difference of actually going “well, what am I going to do about it? What’s my role in that equation?” versus just sitting in the feelings. That’s so interesting emotionally, but actually a really good business wake-up as well — to actually say, well, ultimately we need to make products or services that delight consumers. So how are we going to take that really rich understanding and translate it into something that makes a difference? Yeah — future consumer value.

Adam: I think there’s a tendency isn’t there to acknowledge what people might be feeling or saying or doing, but thinking “actually this isn’t really somewhere where we want to be as a brand.” There are some parts of this which aren’t as glamorous as we’d like. But actually going that step further and going “actually, you know what, we can play a role here” — I think that’s really quite powerful.

Laura: Absolutely. See you soon.

Adam: See you soon.

Adam: Thanks for listening. If you’d love to hear more from marketers, entrepreneurs and business leaders about how to use the art of persuasion to drive your business forward, then make sure you’re following the podcast in your favourite podcast app. And just one last ask from us — this is a new podcast and we’d love it if you could be persuaded to help us spread the word by telling somebody else about it, leaving us a review, or even better sharing an episode on social media. Search The Forge on LinkedIn.