Landing insights without an insights team

Ryan Barry:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. My name is Ryan Barry, and I'm here as always with my friend and cohost, Patricia Montesdeoca. Patricia, what up?

Patricia Montesdeoca: 

What up dude? How's it going?

Ryan:

Good. It's almost summertime here in Boston, my friend. I'm tan and I'm feeling good. I got shorts on.

Patricia:

Damn. I completely feel like it's already summertime. I mean, I've got every single window in the house open. Actually, it's not summer. It's that lovely, lovely time pre-summer where all the windows are open, and the mosquitoes are not attacking me, and it's not overly hot, so it's just... let's call it “perfect season.”

Ryan:

Perfect season. So, for those of you who are wondering our definition of perfect, we live in the Boston area. We actually... neither of us live in Boston, but it's easier to say we live in Boston, and it is 82, sunny, and breezy today. Perfect weather.

Patricia:

It's cool in the shade, warm in the sun. It's just perfect.

Ryan:

So, we're going to get into an episode today. Now, full disclosure, this episode is actually one of the conversations that we had at our recent Virtual Insight Summit, which is a conference that we've curated with Voxpopme two years in a row, and it's really an event that's designed to get the insights community together to be inspired, to share and learn. 

And, we felt like the conversation with Lauren and JM from SoFi Financial was so impactful for the general theme that we're going for in Inside Insights, that we wanted to repurpose it here. And, this is the second interview of this season that we've had with a marketer present, so the recent example was our episode with Fernando Kahane from Walkers, and he was talking about his opinions about the art and science of advertising development.

Lauren and JM are really unique marketers with a really unique background, and they've built an incredibly customer centric business at SoFi. And, the crazy thing is, and this actually pissed a lot of people off in our Virtual Insight Summit audience, they don't have an insights team. And, for anybody who's listening to this saying "How could they do insights without an insights team," I encourage you to listen and not get pissed off. Embrace the learning that this affords you. The world is moving. Insights is something that everybody in the company is responsible for, not just you, and if you want to call me to debate that point, I would love to, but please don't get defensive. Embrace it. This is where the world's going. Patricia, I want to hear what you have to say, but before we do, let's get into the interview.

Patricia:

Let's do it.

Ryan:

Thanks everybody for coming. I am really excited to talk to JM and Lauren today. We're going to get right into it because there is a lot we want to talk about. We had three calls leading up to this, and we could have talked for two hours each time.

So, I just want to say we're in for a treat today because we've got two marketers that are ahead of their time, that are customer centric and they're seeing incredible business results. And so we're going to dive right in. Lauren, JM, thank you both for making the time to be here today.

Lauren Stafford-Webb:

Thanks for having us, Ryan. We love Zappi and you all have been such great partners to us. So we're so excited for the opportunity to chat with you today.

Ryan:

Perfect. And I did not pay Lauren to say that, but I do appreciate it.

Lauren:

He did not. That's a true story. He definitely did not, folks.

Ryan:

So, I want to start off with your two journeys. As I've gotten to know the two of you, it strikes me that you're an incredible team together. Yet, if I look in contrast to your backgrounds and what's brought you to this place. You couldn't have more different backgrounds. So, I want to talk about both of your journeys, respectively, and you've had many different stops along the way. And as you talk about your journey, I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of the things you've had to learn, but also unlearn along the way.

So, Lauren, I'll start with you. Take us through the journey that's brought you to be SoFi's CMO.

Lauren:

Thanks, Ryan. Well, I had the privilege of starting my career at Procter & Gamble and I was fortunate enough to get to lead some really amazing brands while I was there, so everything from Herbal Essences, Aussie, to some amazing billion dollar brands. I had the opportunity to lead Tide, CoverGirl. I don't know if we have any easy, breezy, beautiful CoverGirls in the crowd today, but got to lead that. And so I had just an awesome opportunity to grow up there and really learn the power of brand building and the value of insight-based brand building, really during my time at P&G.

And then from P&G, I wanted to make the transition into tech, and I moved over to Intuit, where I had the opportunity there to lead the first ever corporate brand campaign as we really put Intuit on the map as a company that powers prosperity. And then from there, I came over to SoFi about two years ago to lead the marketing group. It has been just an awesome two years being a CMO at SoFi.

SoFi was just such an amazing opportunity, because this is a company that is really committed to helping our members get their money right, and so focused on financial independence. For those of you that don't know, finances and money is actually the number one source of stress in most people's lives. And it really doesn't have to be that way, but most people don't have the tools, resources, knowledge, they don't have the trusted partner in their bank to help them know: how do they get their money right, and how do they get to a good place?

And so, I couldn't think of anything that would fire me up more in the morning than to know that I would have the chance to wake up every day and help people tackle what is that number one source of stress in their life. And so, it has been an awesome privilege to get to be part of this organization and such a mission-based company.

And then, to your point, Ryan, to get to be part of such an incredible team, JM leads our brand strategy group at SoFi and just has done a tremendous job leading and building the brand in partnership with our creative team. We do everything in-house. We have am100% in-house brand strategy, creative, media team. And so it's been a really awesome opportunity to get to build that.

In terms of the second part of your question, which is what have I learned and what has changed over the years? I would say for me, there's three core things that no matter what brand you're working on are true that I've learned. We put the member or the customer at the center of everything we do. And that's going to be true no matter what brand. You want to win? You better put your consumer at the center. And you got to truly understand their needs, wants, desires, pain points. Whatever that is, that consumer is at the center, no matter what.

I think the second thing is just the power of building a unique and ownable brand, a brand that really opens minds and melts hearts, a brand that people truly love. And you've got to be persuasive and compelling in the way you do that. All of you, think of the brands you love and how indispensable they have become to your life. That is my aspiration for any brand that I work on.

And then I think that the third thing that is consistent is showing up where your audience is. It's not just good for your business. I can't think of a better way to help your consumer know that you understand them than by showing up in relevant places in their lives. 

Those are my three foundational principles, no matter what brand I work on. I think we do have some other values at SoFi that are also really important, that hopefully we'll have the chance to talk about. We really value learning, iterating, innovating and moving fast. We value getting to the truth and putting the data first.

I think what has evolved, or what I really appreciated in my time at SoFi is to the spirit of this LI squared, we call it LI squared, which has learning, iterating, innovating, the value we place on rapid experimentation is really high. And at other times in my career, you might expect to do some testing and get results in a few weeks or a few months for really huge studies. And we do rapid experimentation and you get stuff back in a few hours. And, no, Ryan didn't pay me to say this. It's truly been in big partnership with Zappi that we have been able to get to that rapid pace of innovation, and I have so appreciated that.

And then same thing, we can iterate in-market as much as you can iterate pre-market. And I think both of those aspects and how we operate will certainly steer the way that I continue to build brands moving forward.

Ryan:

Wow. We could spend the rest of the time on the words you just said. And I do want to unpack more of SoFi's essence, because it's truly a fascinating company as I've gotten to know it, both on the user side, but also in working with you folks.

So, JM, take us on the journey and what brings you two together, and obviously your background's quite different. I think it's a really interesting contrast for what brought you here today and how your values align with some of the things Lauren just shared with us.

Jean-Michel Hoffman:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, the background is a little bit different. I started my career working in the creative agency world. And so prior to joining SoFi, I was at Digitas for five and a half years. And I led brand and creative strategy on a number of their key accounts based on the West Coast, like Taco Bell, PlayStation and I had the chance to work on a lot of media-only accounts also that they had.

And I think the thing that was interesting about that was that it was an opportunity to really focus on how we take cultural insights and turn them into moments of fame for the brand. And that gets at one of the key things that I've had to learn or unlearn as I've come to SoFi. I've now been at SoFi for three and a half years, and it's been just an amazing opportunity for growth.

But one of the key things that I really had to think about differently or reframe was the fact that agencies are so often hired to find fame for a brand. That's the explicit task that they're given. “Help my brand to become famous and do whatever it takes to get there.” Whereas, when you move over to a position of ownership or accountability for a brand, you're much more focused on performance, owning the equity that you create for the brand overall, making sure that the brand is set up such that you're protecting its reputation and truly building the value of it as an asset over the course of its history.

And so, I think that one thing that I've just felt an immense amount of pressure on is feeling much more accountable for the actions that we take as a brand and creatively as well, rather than just being focused on doing something creative for creative's sake.

And the other thing that I think is really interesting, where all of the search starts to come together is at scale. How do you think about doing this for a brand that's worth billions of dollars and impacts millions of people, rather than just impacts the few people who are potentially going to see an activation that you do at the creative agency?

And also you have to start to back into setting up processes. I mean, you think about the fact that SoFi is only 10 years old. We're not a hundred-year-old like many of the brands that Lauren has had the pleasure of working on. And so a lot of these fundamentals we've had to build from the ground up. I've gotten the opportunity to learn so much from Lauren, about the way that a lot of the amazing long-term brands that she's worked on have been set up, that we've been building a lot of those new processes together from the ground up for SoFi.

And it's a blessing because we actually get to get rid of all the baggage that a lot of old brands have, and also implement the newest technology. And so, I think that, to Lauren's point, we've found that doing rapid research and really putting our members first in that research process has been absolutely fundamental to building a strong brand with great opportunity to build equity that resonates with our target customer.

Ryan:

I love that. I want to talk about this, particularly when we get into SoFi, but the commitment to experimentation. And I think a lot of people probably in the audience are working for bigger, more established companies, trying to find insights and nuggets to say, "How do I do this in an established environment?" And so I think it's obviously an interesting thing and problem for you two continue with, as your business continues to have the success that you're having.

So before we get into SoFi, let's stay on marketing for a few minutes. So you're both passionate about building brand, you work in a high-growth technology environment where growth and performance is critical, but also one of the tensions, I think, that exists in technology-forward companies is the balance of product and brand marketing.

Let's talk about some of those principles and how you balance building fame and brand, driving performance, and also making sure that the offering is super clear to people. I think you do a wonderful job, so there's obviously some sauce that you've put into the soup that makes it so good.

Lauren:

It's really interesting. I don't subscribe to the idea that there should be ongoing tension there. I hold my team to the brand work should always halo the product work, and the product work better halo the brand. And when that system doesn't work is when you have tension. When it works, you get to the one plus one equals 10. Wow. I love that brand. Because your products become proof points for your brand promise, and your brand promise is hollow in the absence of those amazing product offerings.

So I think that they have to be working together as a system to really solidify yourself as a brand that people know, love and trust. And so we really tried to operate like that as SoFi, and build a really cohesive team between our brand strategy group, which JM leads, and then our product marketing team. It's really a tightly connected group so that we can get to that overall, really, impact that we want to see by that system working together as effectively as possible.

Jean-Michel:

Yeah. And I think that the build I would have, too, is that we think about platforms. Our brand is a platform that the product can take advantage of, and the product is also a platform that can take advantage of our brand. And both need to be flexible, such that you can iterate as quickly as possible.

And so we've really been focused on being able to have new ways into the brand and to the products as platforms so that we can iterate and pivot and learn and make great work.

Ryan:

You guys make it sound easy, but you're doing it so well. So let's talk about SoFi for a minute. I mean, we're talking about a business that is flying. But what struck me the most as Zappi was getting to know you, but particularly as I was getting to know the two of you, I mystery shopped you, every single touchpoint I had with your brand was about me. So when you very casually in an unscripted way say, "We're all about helping our members get their money right," it shows everywhere. So you've clearly pulled off that the brand and the product work together.

So, keeping the consumer at the center and experimentation are two key pillars in addition to some of the other mission points that you made. But talk to us a little bit about how you've been able to continue the sustained growth that you've had, and what are some of the areas that you attribute to the success that you're having in market?

Lauren:

I think there's a couple things. We keep bringing up this point, but the member at the center really is the secret sauce. It is the core to everything we do. We truly take their input, their feedback, their preferences, their passion ... It is the cues and the information that we build everything upon. I think, first and foremost, foremost, I have to really reiterate that that is the core of our success.

I think the other two things in the company that I think we have done really well is when we decided we're going to stand for helping people get their money right and helping them achieve financial independence, we decided that we sure as hell then better offer the full product suite we need to to deliver on that promise. You can't say, "We're going to help people get their money right," and then be like, "But we think we'll be in this part of finance, but we're going to out out of this part," because you maybe don't make as much money on this part as a company ... We didn't play that game. And there is actually a lot of people in finance that do play that game, that are in on some, out on the other. I think for us as a company, we really said, "If we're going to deliver on that promise, then we better offer the products we needed to actually fulfill that promise."

And I think that that's a good lesson for any business that you're in. And so over the last two years, we've rapidly gone from being what was a primarily lending business to whatever stage of your financial journey, you're saving, we have a vault for you. You need to take out not just a student loan, but you need to take out a personal loan for anything, IVF, remodeling your house, whatever it is, we're here for you. You want to invest for your future? We got you covered. You want to dabble in crypto, we got you covered. Whatever it is on that financial journey, we're going to be there for you and make sure that we help you get your money right. And I think that was the only way that we're really able to deliver on our promise. 

Ryan:

So it strikes me that your commitment to experimentation allows you to say, "Well, let's figure out how to play in crypto. Let's figure out how to do other parts of people's finance."

So, how do you balance agility and development of the experience with the offer that you're putting out? Because it obviously requires you to expand your capability really quickly, which I think a lot of companies are trying to figure out how to do better. You've worked in environments where an innovation process would take three years. 

Lauren:

We improve the flight path while we're flying. Obviously you've built something for a consumer to start using it. But we definitely improved the flight plan while the flight is in the air. And I think that that's how we're able to get into so many businesses and be successful in so many businesses quickly.

The third thing, though, that I definitely want to make sure we touch on that I think has really helped SoFi is just the great work that Jean and our creative team have done to really build the brand. As we've launched this, we've done a ton of work to grow awareness and drive association with our “get your money right” promise. And a lot of that work, Ryan, we've done in partnership with your team. We have been able to go to creating the highest scoring TV copy in the brand's history. We've improved our overall advertising effectiveness over 20% in the last two years since working with Zappi, and it's because of the rapid iteration that we're able to do.

I'll give you an example of how our day works. we'll have a brief and we'll have a couple of edits, and JM will throw them into Zappi in the morning. And within three or four hours, we don't just have qualitative feedback, We have tons of quantitative feedback on all of the key metrics that we need to make sure we're delivering on: favorability, uniqueness, consideration. We can walk away and say, "Okay, this is the changes we need to make," and by the end of the day, I have three new edits.

It has allowed us to iterate, to really get to a place where all of our TV copy is now significantly above industry average. And when you are trying to build a brand from the ground up that most people the first time they see your commercial, it's the first time they've ever heard of your brand, you got to nail it. And so we've been able to do that, and largely, of course, thanks to JM and our internal creative team, but also in partnership with the Zappi team and the great tools that you have given us access to.

Ryan:

So here's the crazy part for the folks in the audience. SoFi Financial does not have an insights team yet. Let's just process that for a minute, everybody. We've only talked about the consumer at the center, rapid experimentation, and I love your phrase of changing the flight path while you're flying. I think that discomfort is something everybody in business needs to develop comfort for, because there's no business that needs to move any slower than what you're articulating. I think we let our own BS get in the way.

So let's talk about consumer centricity in a world where you don't yet have an insights team. And I bet there's some people who are in their chair right now at home being like, "How could they do that?" Or, "I'm uncomfortable," or, "Why would they do that?" et cetera. So, we've talked about copy testing, but how do you go about engaging with your members, and talk to us a little bit about the process, but also for both of you, some of the signals you rely on day to day to actually do your jobs effectively.

Jean-Michel:

I think it starts with the fact that we've tried to build really, really tight bonds with our members and create as many opportunities to hear from them firsthand as possible. And that starts with going back into the company's history and the brand's history. We started just hosting events all around the country where we were inviting our members to come out, starting with a cocktail party in San Francisco. We sent an email out to our members in the Bay and said, "Anybody who wants to come, there's going to be free drinks tomorrow night at this spot in the Marina."

And a hundred people came. And all of a sudden we started talking to them about our products and the products that we offered from there. We realized we had this amazing opportunity to start to scale the relationships we had with our members. We started hosting member events all across the country. That then got translated into a community that we built, and we've built a Facebook members group for our members that's exclusive to them. They have to be a member to join it. And it has over 55,000 members in it, 10,000 of which are active on a weekly basis. And they're all talking about the key topics around their finances that are relevant to them.

We moderate that community and we observe that community and we prompt questions to them. And we've actually asked a few of them to join some even more exclusive groups like our beta group, our ambassador group, and our member advisory board. So, I mean, I think this point about members centricity, we take it to the extreme. We have a group of members on an annual basis, it's about 12 members, who provide us feedback and provide our entire executive team feedback on how the company is performing.

But we've also taken that to a more formal place. I say "formal." It's formal for us, and it might not be formal for others, but I think we've tried to empower everyone within the marketing team to become a source of insight generation. And that's in part due to just everyone being empowered to do research on their own, whether that's research within their craft, so you can imagine a creative person coming up with an idea, and then we go and we put it into Zappi for testing, and we get qualitative and quantitative feedback back. Or our media team also doing insights using other tools to understand our target audiences, behaviors, and preferences.

But we're in the process of really trying to democratize insights that anyone can be empowered to do research, but we just see that as part of this process of learning, iterating and innovating, and also getting to the truth. What does the data say? And so we're looking for more ways for anyone within the company to be able to do that research.

And we of course have some other more formal ways that we're collecting that feedback. We do post-contact NPS when we have a direct relationship with our member or communication with our member. But we also are running an NPS study, randomly asking our members to provide us that feedback on their experience at SoFi.

And so I think that that’s sort of a scale, we have these qualitative ways that we do it; we also have these more quantitative methods that we're using to get feedback from them.

Ryan:

There is a buzzword in the consumer insights industry around democratization. So, I think some of the insights we're hearing from you today are… it obviously starts with the culture in the organization. It's clear that the consumer is at the center of the culture by the fact that they would even come to the Marina. By the way, next time I'm out west, I'd love to have a drink with you two at the Marina.

Lauren:

We would love that.

Ryan:

So, you folks have started with consumer centricity, but as Lauren said, you're still building the plane while you fly it. So talk to us about some of the steps you're going through to fully empower your product teams and the marketing team at large, with tools, datasets, signals that allow them to do their jobs more autonomously, because I think it's something that a lot of folks on the line are struggling with, particularly those that are in a more traditional CMI or CMK role saying, "What part of my Legos do I give away? What part of my Legos do I keep? How do I make sure they don't screw it up and make a bad decision?" I mean, there's a lot of those emotions, fears, thoughts, I think, that happened.

And JM, you very humbly have shared with me, you're not there yet. You're not where you want to be. So, share with us a little bit about that journey and some of the things you're working on.

Jean-Michel:

Yeah, totally. So, I mean, I will caveat; we are in this process, so we're in flight for sure. I think the way that we're thinking about it, though, is in terms of building playbooks for different functions within the organization to take advantage of. So I know that the eight folks on the brand team who report to me are going to have a specific set of questions that they're asking. And so we're building a set of playbooks to help them work with our creative team more effectively, and answer the questions that they need to ask.

I also know, though, that our product marketing managers have a different set of questions they're asking. And so we're in the process of building a different set of playbooks for them to take advantage of to answer those questions. So this could be anything from claims testing to copy testing before they go and run an ad, or even earlier in the process, thinking about developing a value proposition for a product.

But I also know that there are certain things that we also need to enable deeper into the product, and that's really where we have a lot of unpaved road enabling our product managers to be able to do research autonomously on their own as well. And they're asking a whole different set of questions. They're thinking about user experience, they're thinking about copy within the product and the messaging within the product. And so we need to structure and build a different set of playbooks for them, but the goal would be that whatever question you're asking, you are absolutely including a phase in the process of doing your work where you're going and getting feedback from real people on the question at hand.

Lauren:

I could just share one other thing. For the leaders on the phone, no system is perfect. But I think part of what is allowing us as our organization to be successful in this direction is because it is more about the culture you set for the organization than it is about the org structure you set. And I think at SoFi, like I mentioned before, we have 11 values, which is a lot for an organization, but I have to say more than anywhere, we really eat, breathe and live these values.

And two of the values I think are core to this are the two we mentioned: learn, iterate, innovate, and get to the truth. And I think because we have focused on building a culture where we emphasize that everyone should be empowered to have the data. Everyone should be empowered to come up with what the right insight is out of that. You don't have to be right, it doesn't have to be perfect, it's about have you done the work to get to the truth, and are you rapidly experimenting to continue to get better at that?

And I think just breeding that culture has helped us get past any trip-ups you might have on what the right org structure is, if that makes sense. We want those to be values that everyone in the organization embraces. That's not to say that some people may not already be more trained or more capable on how to do that. So I want to be careful; I don't want to diminish that skillset because it is a really important and highly valued skillset. It's not to diminish it. It's to actually say that it's a teaching opportunity and to allow our entire organization to get better by learning from you on what that looks like and helping the core tenets of insights, people are always going to be getting to the truth and rapidly learning, helping the entire organization adopt that mindset and culture, I think, has been some of our secret sauce as well.

Jean-Michel:

Yeah. And I think just on that point, because I also saw this one comment that people maybe seek out validation for a hypothesis that they already have. When we think about hiring for our teams, we think about hiring curious people who are open to whatever answer the data is going to present to them and taking advantage of that answer to move their projects forward. And I also think that, as Lauren mentioned, there are specialized skillsets. So it's not to say we don't have any people within SoFi's organization who have done what we would call traditional consumer insights work in the past. Those people do exist. They might be in different job functions, but we still call on them for their expertise. Or when we don't have that type of person within the organization, we call on an expert to help provide us with that guidance, because it is super valuable and sometimes you need that expert help or someone who's done it before or seen it before.

Ryan:

I think the skillset is really important, but there's a bigger job to be done, which is the truth that customer success is an organizational wide job. It is not a job that sits in the market research department. And, by the way, I'm somebody who's been in this industry my whole career, probably will be the rest of it, but it's about customer success being disseminated. And I think that's the thing that we need to come to grips with.

So, there's a few more questions I want to ask you. There's always this discussion about CMOs. Particularly in a world where data is everywhere. What's the CMO's stack? What signals does the CMO need? We've talked a lot about how your organization is set up, but talk to us about the signals you rely on day to day to do your job, to manage the board, to work with your CEO, to lead your teams. What are some of the data signals, consumer business performance, et cetera, that you rely on to the extent you can share?

Lauren:

Yeah. Certainly at SoFi, we have a set, but I think what may be more helpful… Why don't I share a little bit about how I think about what matters in terms of are we doing a good job building our brand?

I think there's a couple of things. First is we place a lot of value on unaided awareness. And the reason why is it takes it a step further, not just from, have they ever heard of you, but it's are you top of mind? Are you their first choice, their top choice? And that's really important when you think about, going back to what I said before, which is being a brand people love, being indispensable in their lives, being their first choice. You really, as you think about brand building, want to get to a place where you're growing unaided awareness and that is validation that you're most top of mind.

And I think when you get to unaided awareness, those things are intrinsically linked also with business growth. As you become more top of mind, you are naturally going to get into more baskets or whatever your equivalent of a basket is in your industry, and that will drive business growth. So I think that really matters.

Going back to another metric that I think we place a lot of value on at SoFi. That's the NPS score, the net promoter score. After our customer interacts with your brand, will they recommend you? Will they say it was a good experience? I think that's critically important, and we are absolutely accountable as an executive team for getting all of our products, I won't share what the number is, but to a pretty high NPS, and I got to tell you, it's grueling day in and day out. We have a tracker, it comes out every day to everyone on the leadership team. That's right. And there is a ton of diligence that goes on that.

I'll tell you the other thing that we watch really carefully, and that is your OCO emails. There is no better way than to really understand the pain points of your customers, and that's office of the CEO. So, if people have an issue, they will oftentimes write your office of the CEO. And that's an amazing way to also keep a pulse on what's going on with the customer.

And so those are three core metrics as you think about building a member centric brand, a brand that people love that will also grow your business. Those are three things that I'd say helps us really keep our pulse on how are consumers feeling about the brand we're building?

Now, beyond all that, we have all the normal business metrics that of course all of us have, that you track, that we track daily, hourly, just like anybody else: new member growth, revenue, per unit economics. We look a lot at our per unit profitability so that enables us to scale as a tech company. Each unit you sell, you want to be profitable on and then you can get to scale.

So there are certainly a lot of other business metrics, but as I think about an insights audience here today and the things as brand builders, marketers, and insight leaders, that we look at to really help us understand, are we delivering on our promise to our consumer and really delighting them? Those are certainly things that help us make sure we're doing our job. Unaided awareness, NPS, and then just staying really close to those OCO emails.

Ryan:

That's amazing. And what about you, JM? What are some of the things that Lauren's using, but you might be adding on top of that to do your day-to-day to partner and help her?

Jean-Michel:

Yeah, I mean, definitely it's all of those elements. I'm also keeping track of them, but I think I have the privilege to potentially spend a bit more time in our community, and it's a little bit of my function within the organization, too. My team manages all of our social media accounts. 

Lauren:

Jean is the superstar who not just leads our brand strategy, but leads our social and influencer strategy too. So, he's got a huge, amazing scope.

Ryan:

I was going to say thank you for pumping his tires because he's very humble. Go ahead. Now that we've embarrassed you, you can finish.

Lauren:

He’s a superstar brand leader-

Jean-Michel:

I appreciate that. But, I mean, I wake up every day and I go in and check our Facebook member group. And I look at the questions that they're asking. I go in and check our Twitter account and I see what we're getting asked about. And, there aren't necessarily specific metrics there, I'm of course checking volume and sentiment and all of those things on a weekly basis, but there is this feeling of being in the community as well that helps you just get closer to the member and understand what they're thinking.

And I spend a lot of time in our awareness data and trying to understand what's going on in our tracker and what it's telling us and pointing us towards. And there's a lot more that we do in our tracking beyond just awareness; we're looking at perceptions of the brand, we're looking at advertising recall, and those are all elements that we're paying really close attention to, to understand the effectiveness of the work that we have in market.

Lauren:

Last thing I'll say about that, we spend a lot of time with our Zappi dashboard too. And I truly mean that. That Zappi dashboard, not only do we spend a lot of time, but our creative director spends a lot of time. And that was something that was, I would say in other roles I've been in, taboo. The creative director didn't always have any interest and in fact typically shunned away from getting into the data and understanding the performance and really had art for the sake of art. And listen, folks, art is great, and you want to have work that makes people laugh, cry and smile, but you also need to make sure it drives your business.

And I think that this de-centralization idea has been so powerful because our creative director will come to the creative reviews with his Zappi dashboard. And he'll start the review with, "Here's my TV copy, and I am all green on all 14 metrics." And we have really embraced that as a tool that helps us know we are being successful, that we are moving in the right direction, that we are doing work that delights our consumers and will move our business. And it's been really powerful for us having a tool like Zappi that everyone can use to get to good business outcomes.

Ryan:

I find that really inspiring. Oh, go ahead, JM.

Jean-Michel:

Yeah. Oh, I think that that ties back to the comment earlier on the difference between the agency and the brand world and fame versus performance. Performance doesn't just mean how much revenue is it driving? How many signups is it driving? But it means is the work actually resonating with our target audience, and that's totally what Zappi enables Jonathan, our ECD, to do, is understand what real people think, because I hate to say it, but if you're just sitting in a room with three people, a creative director, an art director, and a copywriter making an ad and seeing if it's working, you're totally going to be clouded by your own opinions and the blood, sweat, and tears you've put into the work and the edit just to get there. You need to get some outside perspective.

And, I mean, I'll say it, too, we've tested hundreds of ads on Zappi, and we've had almost a hundred that didn't make the cut. And that's real money that we're putting against those ads, tens of millions of dollars. And we couldn't have just been steered by the judgment of just a few people in making the decision to run it or not.

Lauren:

Yeah. And we've been able to grow our investment in the brand or the confidence we have through the data we get from Zappi. And as a result, we've been able to really grow our business. So, we are super grateful, Ryan, to you and the team for the tool that you've provided us. It's made a huge difference in our success.

Ryan:

Thank you so much. This notion of agility, where experimentation is about learning and getting to the truth, and it's why your creatives love the data, because you're not telling them that their baby's ugly; you're actually helping them make things better. And I think that's such a great opportunity.

I'd be remiss to not shout out McKenzie and Justin who actually do all the hard work to set up for success. So, McKenzie and Justin, I just want to give you some love because you're doing a great job of setting up the SoFi team.

Jean-Michel:

They're both superstars as well. I totally have to shout them out.

Ryan:

100%. So I have a final question. Let's just say you find yourself back in the walls of a company that doesn't have an office of the CEO email chain. How would you go about this if you were in a climate that wasn't the climate that you're in? This is an organizational culture setup that is incredible and you're running with it, but give people a pointer or two of how you might tackle change in an environment that's not like this.

Lauren:

Yeah. Okay, I got a couple for you. First is: Never underestimate the power a single individual can have in an organization. It takes one person to drive change. And I promise you, if you're brave enough to speak up, you will probably find others who feel the exact same way you do, who sense you're right, like, "We need to be doing more here." So, number one, speak up. Use your voice. If you feel that way in your heart, I promise, not only do others want to hear it, but you are going to be the person who is courageous enough to start that. So that's first.

The second is you can never go wrong with aligning around principles. I really believe in being a principle-based leader. And so, if it's an area that might have consternation or people being concerned, worried, whatever that is, start with principles. Put together a set of principles, like, "Do we truly believe in putting the consumer first?" Do we? Do we believe that actions must deliver on our values? Put that set of principles together. And if you can get organizational alignment to a set of principles, then the action that you have to drive behind those principles becomes a lot less emotional. When you start with the action, sometimes it can be super emotional, especially when it requires a lot of change.

So those would be my two things. Speak up; never underestimate the value you as an individual can have, and, two, be principle-based. Get alignment from your exec team on the principles, and then the action is so much easier to drive behind that.

Jean-Michel:

The third element that I would add on that, I wholeheartedly agree with this, Lauren, is just start with a little bit of data. Whatever data you've got, but introduce it to the conversation, and ground your principles and ground the recommendation that you have in some data, and it will start to unlock the conversation and help it roll out.

Lauren:

Totally. Spark leads to fire. Create that spark, get that spark going. Get a little bit of data that shows that there's validity behind that direction you want to run after, and before it, you're going to have a huge fire going.

Ryan:

You two, I could sit here and talk to you both all day. I hear you're actually really busy scaling your business and helping people get their money right, so I will let you off the hook. On behalf of this entire community, I'd just like to thank you both for your time. You've brought the heat and dropped a ton of knowledge on us today. So, seriously, thank you so much for your time. 

Jean-Michel:

Thanks so much for having us.

Lauren:

Thanks for having us, Ryan, and the entire Zappi team. You have amazing tools, and you're amazing partners. And the combination of those things has helped us achieve so much success.

Ryan:

Lauren and JM, I’ll see you soon. Thank you both. 

Ryan:

All right, Patricia. Our audience has heard the beautiful story from Lauren and JM, but they really are here for you to break it down for them. What'd you hear? What'd you see?

Patricia:

You know, these people, as you said before the talk, is they're absolutely ahead of their time. So, you know in the same way we thought of a new name for the season? That it's perfect season? I'm not going to call these people marketers, I'm just going to call them strategists. They're incredibly smart business people. They are there, so let's eliminate the titles. Let's just listen to their content and forget whose title is because at the end of the day, I remember it. I'm going to give some kudos to an old boss called Javier Patino, who's probably not listening. 

Ryan:

Shout out Javier.

Patricia:

Shout out Javier. And, he told us all that from the person that stands in front of the door, like we had a receptionist, right? To the President, we were all there to quench the thirst of the Colombians.

Ryan:

Love that.

Patricia:

That was our only title. So, I love the fact that Lauren and JM have that mentality. I absolutely love it. Right? So, they're ahead of their time, they're customer centric, and that's what they're seeing. They're seeing that the customer is their be all and end all, and that's why they're seeing these incredible business results at SoFi. They're leading and building the brand partnerships with their creative teams, and they're doing everything in house, 100%  in house. My God, so brilliant. So, what I've done is I've broken this down to a baker's dozen, because I decided not to have big chunks. I decided to have bite-size chunks, because I'm in my change management mindset. 

So let's get started. Number one, I could bet most of you know exactly what I'm about to say, put the customer at the center of everything you do. Truly understand their needs.

What I loved about SoFi is they call them members. What they say is members come first, their wants, their needs, their desires, their pain points, that's what comes first for them. 

Number two, choose success metrics that put consumers at core. Which consumers? Which metrics? Their consumers, obviously, but their metrics are net promoter score, unaided awareness, and the CEO emails. And we'll talk about that in a second.

Ryan:

Loved the CEO emails thing, by the way.

Patricia:

I mean, it's amazing that this a company, the size of theirs, that their CEO gives out his email and opens up everything and responds. And, I'm going to give a shout out to number two of this baker’s dozen to Bill Beane because he led a very exciting chat during the conversation about if we're saying the consumers come first, the customers come first, what are the success metrics? Are they sales, or are they something else? And, so he forced this issue and it was great because they answered it during the call. So, thank you Bill Beane for pushing that topic.

Number three, build a unique brand that opens the minds and melts hearts. Oh my God, melts hearts. They want a brand that people love and they use these words, heart and love, and that's why I can't call them marketers. They're not using jargon, they're using real words. They're talking about being persuasive and compelling. This sounds like a relationship, and they actually treat it as such. They're building an equity that resonates with the person. But, as they said, make sure you know your target before you start talking to them in love words, because you can't have the right love words if you don't know somebody.

So, that's where number four is, show up where your audience is. That one's so simple. 

Ryan:

So simple, no-one does it well, except for them. 

Patricia:

It's like oh my God, let them know that you understand them by being present in the relevant moments in their lives. Shadow their journey and make it your portfolio. Choose their needs, cover their needs, their jobs to be done. 

Number five, value as a company, value learning, iterating, innovating, and moving fast. Their example to this is improve the flight plan while the plane is in the air. Oh my God, I just had visions of like, what are they... parachutes. I got nervous when they started talking about that, but the truth of the matter is that, get improvement while you're going. You can't just wait till you get there to change and turn around is commit... and they've committed to experimentation so much that they have an acronym, because that's how you know things are real, because it has an acronym. LI squared. Learn, iterate, innovate. Loved it. 

Number six, own the equity. They talk about that they... Agencies used to get hired to like make the brand famous, but that's not it, making the brand famous is not the point, it's owning the equity. Protecting their reputation, building the value of equity as if it were an asset, just like as if it was toothpaste or a sneaker, right? Make sure that the equity is a thing in and of itself and be accountable for every action you take to build this brand. I remember, going back to Javier, "What did you do today, Patricia, to quench the thirst of Colombians? Did you do something for them? Because if you didn't, you wasted a day," which I thought was amazing, right?

So, we're going to number seven, ensure the brand always halos the product and the product always halos the brand. I got admit to you, it took me a couple of times to read and reread and listen to re listen to this one to understand, but then they've summarized it for me. Products should be proof points for the brand promise. There's no space for anything on your portfolio that doesn't complete or contribute to the brand promise. Loved it.

Ryan:

Love it.

Patricia:

Coming down to the end. Number eight of this Baker's dozen, grow consumer awareness of your brand and drive association with that promise. That means you're telling them what's in your black box. Make sure they know what your issues are. Make sure that they know what your drive is, what you want to do. Know what you want to say and who you want to see it to so you can be focused, because if not, you're going to talk to too many people saying too many things. You're not going to do anything with it.

Number nine, make everybody in the company responsible for insights, same way that Javier had made us all responsible for quenching thirst. Everybody's responsible for insight. Everybody has to know it. They talked about hiring curious people who are open to whatever the answer the data's going to present to them. Don't have an ego involved here, just totally be there and listen to the data. Don't have a bias going in. You can have a hypothesis going in, but you got to be ready to disprove that hypothesis, right? And, create the opportunities for people to learn. 

Number 10. Do you remember what number one was?

Ryan:

Know your consumer.

Patricia:

Scale the relationship with the consumer. So, we talked about the consumers, we've talked about loving the consumer, we talked about telling them we loved them, we talked about measuring the love with the consumer, now it's all about scaling this love with the consumer. Not only do we scale it to everybody in the company, but we're scaling it even further. We're creating communities. They're creating communities exclusive to our customers. That's what SoFi is doing, right?

Giving them the space to talk about what's important to them. Not what's important to SoFi, but what's important to SoFi's customers, and all that SoFi does is moderate, observe, and ask questions, right? And, that's where they get betas, probably alphas too, ambassadors, and advisors. That's where they get their ideas, that's where they solve their problems, that's where they ask for solutions. They're not telling them anything, they're listening. 

Number 11, just in case you were wondering, they believe in democratizing, iterative learning, and innovating. They talk about building playbooks for different functions within the organization so that everybody knows what they have to do and how to do it, and everybody's doing it in the same way. 

Number 12. I can't believe we got to number 12 before talking about culture, as if this company needed to talk about culture, but you ask them this specific question about culture and they answered. They talked about building a company culture that's recognizable to anybody on the inside or on the outside. Company culture, they've gotten like 11 values, but company culture shouldn't be a secret. It should be something that's... What is it? Eat, breathe and live the values? That's what they talk about. And, then somebody in the chat asked what happens if you don't have a company like that, and they're like "We hear you homie." 

Number 13, that's why I had to make it a Baker's dozen. If you are working in a company that doesn't have 11 values and everybody lives by, then create one, and they gave three easy steps to create that one. Number one, never underestimate the power of person. It only takes one dude to drive change, be that dude. Number two.

Ryan:

That dude, I love that.

Patricia:

Number two, start with the shared company values. Whatever your company values are, start sharing those. Be a principle-based leader. And, number three, introduce data. That one was so amazing to me, introduce data into your discussions. So, every time you have a point, don't say "I think, I believe, I imagine," just say "The data shows this" and everybody's going to say, we hope, "Where'd you get that piece of data? And can I see that data? Can you share that data? Give me more of that data," and that way you're going to start grounding your recommendations and data. Unlocking the conversation, bringing data, and eventually, slowly, baby steps, things will change. And, you're going to have formed yourself amazing culture. 

I'm out of breath from that baker's dozen Ryan.

Ryan:

You did great with recapping a really in-depth discussion and I'm impressed with your breath, but you've had a puppy next to you this whole time who was hell bent on distracting you, and you kept your shit together, Patricia. That's why you're a boss. For those of you who are listening, you'll never get to see this, but there's a dog just staring at her right now like "What on earth are you doing lady? I want to go outside." Now he's standing up over her shoulder. Hopefully Kelsey captures this for the bloopers of Inside Insights because it's been absolutely hysterical. 

Patricia:

I'm a grandma. I'm babysitting my grandchild.

Ryan:

So, grandchild is an Australian Shepherd, for those of you trying to visualize what the F we're talking about, and he's... He or she?

Patricia:

Pascal is a boy.

Ryan:

Pascal is really, really cute. 

Patricia:

5 and a half months.

Ryan:

Jokes aside, I thought, well I obviously know Lauren and JM cause they're big customers of Zappi, but the simplicity and profoundness of their words is just amazing. And, I'm not somebody who thinks insights people are being replaced, I just firmly believe insights is the job of the whole company. And, so yes, those of you who know a lot about segmentation, and marketing science, and algorithms, and everything else, you're amazing and your super powers are incredible. I challenge you to disseminate that learning to others, because it gets in their fingertips when they're making decisions, they'll make better decisions for your customers, and that's what matters.

Patricia:

You know what's cool is that it's not our fault in insights that we have the coolest job in the company.

Ryan:

It's not our fault.

Patricia:

It's not our fault. If everybody wants our job, that's fine, I'll share. It doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing my job because I love my job. I have the best job in the world.

Ryan:

Correct. That's it, that's exactly right. So, ladies and gentlemen, we have two more episodes left of season two. Two weeks from now we're going to be talking to Nick Graham who has recently joined Mondolez to be their Global Head of Insights. And, we're going to be talking to Nick about how he's transitioned from running US insights at Pepsi to running global insights at Mondolez, and how he's approached the first 30 days or so of a big new job. I'd like to also officially tell you that Patricia and I, we're coming back for season three, no big deal.

Patricia:

Woo hoo! Pascal is coming back too.

Ryan:

Pascal is coming back too. Season three, it'll drop, we'll tell you when. If you have ideas, things you want us to talk about, people you want us to interview, things you want to learn, get at us, insideinsights@zappistore.com. You can follow us on LinkedIn. You can subscribe to the podcast, or you could just get in touch with Patricia and I the good old fashioned way. We'd love to hear from you. We'd like to thank you for listening to our podcast, and we'll look forward to talking to you again soon. Patricia, good to see you. Pascal my dude, you're the best. Kelsey behind the scenes, appreciate you.

Patricia:

Love you, Kelsey.