Angela Zepeda (Hyundai Motor America ) | A Leader Must Set the Standard

A recurring theme has started to pop up on the CMO podcast, Sustainability. One of our recent guests even incorporated sustainability into his job title. He might not be alone. According to Deloitte's 2023 Global Marketing Trends Report, sustainability continues to be a focus for brands. While some organizations may want to pull back on sustainability initiatives in times of economic uncertainty, consumers continue to stress that a brand's commitment to sustainability is critical to their preferences. However, only 25% of brands that Deloitte surveyed say their focus for 2023 is on urging consumers to take action. Instead, organizations are recognizing that focusing on their own sustainability efforts can have an even more positive impact on the planet and on their business. For more inspiration on how to make this year be your organization's most impactful year yet, check out Deloitte's 2023 Global Marketing Trends Report at Deloitte.com slash Global Marketing Trends. What's the first brand you remember making impact on you as a young girl? Is it a fashion brand? Oh, there was a lot of designers I loved growing up in the 80s. But I do remember like Donna Karen being interesting to me. She really got the backing and I think she just made a big force for herself, even some of the others. But you know Ralph Lauren, you know, he's not even really, he admits he's not that much of a designer but he's more of someone who knows how to put things together. That's how I feel like I am. But there's so many of that era. I just remember going to the mall and just wishing I had more money to spend on clothes. Hi, I'm Jim Stangel and I help major brands find their purpose and activate it and the profits follow. For seven years, I was the global marketing officer for Prokker and Gamble where I oversaw the marketing of hundreds of brands. You may not know it but the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of all of your favorite brands are trying to connect you with your favorite products and services through purpose. And on this show, I delve into how they do it. My guest today on the CMO podcast is Angela Zupeda, the chief marketing officer of Hyundai Motor North America. Hyundai is a trending brand that just finished a record 2022 in vehicle sales following a record 2021 and they're not stopping there. They have very ambitious goals. Top selling model, you guessed it, it's the Tucson. Hyundai Motor Company was founded in Korea in 1967 and has been in North America for 36 years. Angela has been CMO for three and a half of those 36 years and it is fitting we are releasing this show as we head into Women's History Month. Angela is the first woman to join Hyundai's C-suite. Before her CMO role, Angela worked 24 years on the ad agency side with her last role as managing director of a notion which is Hyundai's agency of record. Very few ad agency leaders make the jump to CMO at a client company. You will hear that story and a lot more from Angela. This is my interview with a Southern California native who never tires of having a glass of wine and watching the waves crash. Here's Angela Zupeda. Angela, welcome to the CMO podcast. I dug up your Myers-Briggs test in my research and discovered you are an introvert. Are you surprised or people surprised when they discover that you're an introvert? First of all, I'm surprised you found Myers-Briggs is somehow in your research. I don't know is that public info? It's hilarious to me. I actually heard you talk about it on another show or with a journalist or something and it was interesting. I think people are probably a little surprised that but I think this is kind of a typical thing for a lot of people. I mean, from Myers-Briggs standpoint, there's always that famous part where they say, where do you get your energy? Do you get your energy from people or do you get your energy when you sort of retreat? For me, that is really true. I do love people and I do have sort of this big personality at times but I think when I really need to gather my energy and regroup, I have to retreat a little bit and I think that's when I really do my best creative thinking. When I just do sort of my best thinking overall and that makes me, I think, an introvert. I always say I'm an introvert that moonlights as an extrovert because there are moments when I really do like people and like being around people but I also, I'm very fine by being by myself but I come from a big Italian family. My husband is from a big Dominican family. I mean, I'm around people so much. Maybe it's I like to be by myself sometimes just to kind of gather those quiet moments but I definitely have tendencies to be an introvert for sure at times. I have found that I've done the Myers-Briggs several times in my long career and I was more extroverted when I was younger and I've gotten more introverted as I've gotten more senior which I think is interesting. I think that's interesting too. I think we can change as we mature. Maybe you've becoming wiser and like a more wisdom. I don't know either but I do think that is interesting and maybe I've become more of an introvert too as I've gotten older. I definitely become more serious but maybe that's the job. How do you feel being an introvert has helped you be a successful leader? Is it because you do take time to collect yourself or you're more prepared when you go into a situation? Oh, I definitely think so. I think taking time away from people helps me focus. I'm definitely a people pleaser. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing all the time. I definitely want to make sure that people feel good and comfortable. Again, I think probably being raised in a big family and being a middle child, that was something that I got very custom to a lot. I'll have a tendency to do that when I'm around other people. So if people aren't around me then I can focus on myself and what I need to do to make sure that I'm really prepared. As a leader and especially now an executive in this role, there's a lot that has to be done to make sure that when I show up, I'm really prepared. I do a lot of writing and I can't do that when you're distracted. So I think it's good to take that time. I'm a morning person. I love the quiet of the morning. It is my favorite time of the day. You seem to have, as I was doing my homework on you before this episode, you seem to have a very high level of self-awareness and I think you're already demonstrating that in this discussion. How did you cultivate that? I think it's a tough, a lot of people do not have it and I think it's hard for them as they get more and more senior responsible for more business, more people. But you seem to really know yourself and know your strengths and know when you're at your best and know maybe when you're not at your best and readjust. So how, for those who would like to have a higher level of self-awareness, how did you cultivate it? Oh gosh, that's a really good question. I didn't know if I really felt like others were better or worse at this than maybe I am. One thing that did happen to me, that I feel like maybe heightened my awareness was I did go through some executive coaching when I was in a senior position when I was at an ad agency, Campbell Ewald, and a lot of responsibility. A huge job. I was also going back to school to get my graduate degree on top of it, which was really ridiculous on my part. I mean I was really burning a lot of hours. And you know, an ad agency is a crazy place to work. You get all kinds of wacky personalities, creative personalities. You're working with clients that are very business-minded. The whole timeframe of that was probably 2008, 910. Financial crisis, I mean, clients are not just looking for creative ideas or looking for creative ideas that are trying to find business solutions. I was juggling a lot. And I was given an opportunity to do executive coaching. And they said it's going to be rough. They kind of strip you down a little bit and kind of tell you what you're not doing right. And it was a little rough. I did have a tough executive coach. And they do point out a lot of things that maybe you thought were you were doing right and things that you could do a lot better. And one thing that I remember that they pointed out, we used to cancel a lot of meetings a lot. And I know I rescheduled with you and I feel bad about that. But one thing was, you know, about being appreciative of other people's time. So when you cancel on people and reschedule, that's not being appreciative of other people's time. And it was one of the first things I realized like that behavior could stop with someone like me. As a leader, I could stop some of the chaos sometimes that just swirls and then I get stuck in it too. The other one was we used to have a lot of drama in our office. I don't know where that sometimes comes from. You know, you've been in cultures, maybe sometimes where you get into that. And a lot of that can be stopped by the leader. And so that was one of the things I also said, that's going to stop. It was just interesting how there were things that were pointed out to me that really I was then responsible for stopping. Where I used to think they were out of my control, I guess is more of what ended up happening. And it was that moment in time that I just thought, yeah, these are circumstances that are around me. But in my position, I had the power, I guess, or the authority to emulate behavior that then would set the standard for everyone else. Did you share with your team that you were going through coaching? Later I did for a while. I kept it as a personal thing. And in that, I just became much more aware of how I just behaved as an executive. And as I finished actually that graduate program, it also started to separate me a little bit from everyone else. And I just became much more heightened about my position and how I was. I was like, I was part of a group and a team. And I suddenly felt like I wasn't part of that group and that team. I was the leader of that team. And I had to be different. And so in that I started behaving a little bit differently. And I started being much more self-aware about how I was to them. But that coaching was the first time that I think some appointed things out to me and said, it's time to start making those changes. You are a rare breed, Angela. There aren't, there are not many leaders really who make the shift. Right. From agency to client side and almost none who do it at the CMO level. I think I could count it on one hand. And so you really, you really did something as very unusual. What was it that your CEO, Jose Munoz, saw in you that he felt that you, he felt with confidence you could make that leap and do it successfully into a big role. I'm not really sure. I mean, I got really lucky. He saw something. There were a couple of people that I think helped give him that extra confidence. What ended up happening though, if I stepped back a couple of steps from that, Jose, and we were so lucky to get Jose, we had heard about him. He's a rock star in the auto industry. He had been at Nissan. And so that was a big deal for us. I was at a notion, the agency for Hyundai. And what's unique about that relationship is that Hyundai is the only fully integrated auto company. So everything from the iron ore mines in West Australia to the steel mills to railroads to the trucking companies to logistics to all the services after sales parts and our ad agencies, they're all part of the Hyundai Motor Group. And so when Jose came, we had had a couple of off sites and he invited executives from each of what they call the affiliates. So I got invited to those meetings. And that's how I had FaceTime with Jose. And in the first off site that we had, probably 60 executives were around in the room. I was the only woman. And he thought that was pretty shameful. And so I stood out. And so, you know, he was very friendly to me. I think because I was credentialed with an MBA, that's pretty unique for an agency executive. And so anyway, we got along well. And then it ended up that our CMO client had gone on to take another direction in his career. Although I thought he was crazy, because I thought this was a fantastic job. And we were on the cusp of great things happening for Hyundai. And we thought for sure Jose was going to bring someone from Nissan to fill this role as CMO. And we were a little nervous at a notion. There's even with that relationship, you just never know with a new CMO. And so I got called into a meeting at like 730 in the morning. And I thought we were going to get the news of who he was going to bring in. And so there was the CEO from Inotion, who was my boss at the time, Steve June. And then a gentleman named William Lee, who was sort of the gentleman who was helping bring Jose along with, I think, more of the sensitivities of the Korean culture. And it was Steve and William, who I think helped broker this idea of bringing me over. And I think one thing that I think helped was that I did come from Inotion. And it did help that I have that agency relationship because it's so close to Hyundai. And so, you know, I walked in and Jose said, well, Angela, you know, Dean is not going to stay with Hyundai, he's decided to go. Okay, do we know who the new CMO is going to be? And he says, we do. And I said, okay, well, who is it? And he says, well, we want it to be you. And I seriously did had no idea. And he saw the surprise on my face. And so he kind of chuckled and he says, you're surprised. And I said, I am. And he said, why? And I said, well, because I thought I might be like COO at an ocean, but was told categorically, it wasn't going to happen. And it was because I was a woman, you know, that there were there were no women in the Korean culture at the C suite. And he says, well, that was true. But today that stops. You'll be the first woman in the C suite at Hyundai. And the good news is I'm not the only one now today. So many have followed since them, which is fantastic. But it, you know, I think it kind of took a non-Korean to make that move and Jose opened that door. And thankfully, it's been, you know, going on three and a half years now, since then. And you know, I trust me, he didn't give me a pass. You know, he's an equal opportunity, you know, tough guy, not mean, but he's serious in what the results have to be. And so he's, he's been fair, but there's been a lot of hard work to do. But he's been fantastic. And it's been a great ride. You know, I think he saw I had creativity and the relationship with the notion. And we were aligned on what needed to be done. So you said yes, right away. Absolutely. Yeah, I said, I think I'd be stupid not to take it. He did ask me if I was nervous about anything. And I was, there was a couple of things. I mean, I was very open. I said, you know, I, I've never worked at an OEM. I don't know everything there is to know about the auto manufacturing world and industry. I'd only known it from the side of being at the agency. And he says, okay, what else? And I said, well, you know, being a CMO at an OEM is very public. I'm going to succeed or fail very publicly. He says, don't worry. My job is to make sure that you're successful. And in that moment, I felt very comfortable that he, he doesn't accept failure. And we were not going to fail. So I said, okay, then I'm going to take the job and I'll be thrilled. As a marketer, our job is to be creative. But what does that mean? I love George Lois's definition of creativity. George is, of course, a famous art director. And he said, creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality overcomes everything. I love it. The way I think about creativity, I love George's definition. But I think of it as fresh and unexpected ways to solve a problem or to discover new opportunities and new approaches. In the world of business, however, creativity can be a scary word, but it doesn't have to be. In the 2023 global marketing trends report, Deloitte surveyed more than 1000 top executives from today's top brands to understand how they plan to meet their customers needs this year. Turns out some of these high growth brands are reimagining creativity in their organizations. At a time when we're seeing a shift from creative skills to analytical skills and marketing, these brands are often doing the opposite. And some CMOs are discovering creativity can be their superpower. Are you looking to make a meaningful impact in your organization in the year ahead? Check out Deloitte's 2023 global marketing trends report today at Deloitte.com slash global marketing trends. What's been the most challenging part, Angela, making the transition from being a senior person on the agency side to being a CMO, as you said, a very big job in a very visible space? You know, I think the most challenging thing, I think most people are surprised to hear that advertising is probably the smallest part of my job. I'm part of Jose's executive team and together we're running this company. I mean, there's just a lot to do. And we went through a lot like everybody else at every other auto manufacturer. I mean, COVID and inventory shortages. It's a chess game every single day. I mean, we're here to drive demand and build our brand. And we're part of the operations of the company. And it's a very big deal. We're looking at the numbers every single day. And there are funny moments. I mean, Jose will say, well, Angela is the only one here with a checkbook who spends money. And I'm like, that's right. Somebody's got to do it. But it's a very serious thing to spend the money. And we go with a win. And we have to not defend necessarily. But there's been tasks that have been given to us as we've been held to corporate profit and lost objectives. And we've pulled budgets back. And you know, it's a little bit like bacon a cake. I mean, by that point, we've done strategic plans where, you know, like a cake, it's flour and water and oil and eggs. And we've mixed it all up. And they're like, okay, we need the eggs back. And it's like, well, how am I going to do that? And so we've been very rigorous over the last three years on, you know, thinking about what we do, about how we give budget back when needed, how we do that without hurting our overall plans, putting in metrics that help us really see in a predictive way, if we pull money back, does that hurt our demand? Will we still hit our retail objectives? That's probably the most challenging part. And then, oh, yeah, I have this other thing that I have to do. Will we still make stuff? I'm the one executive that's actually making something. I just not doing that part of the job where I'm reporting and doing that executive part of the job. Then I go do this work with the agency where we're creating things. And that is magic. That's art and science, not just numbers on a page. And you know, sometimes you get it right the first time and sometimes takes a while. But it's still my favorite part of the job. And I still love it a lot. And an ocean's a good partner for us. And but it's like, I have to go switch my brain and then go do that creative work. But that is probably the biggest challenge is that I'm stuck. And I mean that in the most respectful way in a lot of business meetings. And then I have to go do my other job, my Moonlight job, which is advertising. But that's it's juggling time is the biggest challenge. One of my previous guests on the show, Jeff Jenkins at Carter's, you know, the baby where the baby care company, he said, my job is 90% chief, 10% marketing, which which I love that. I've held that with me. And that's exactly how you're approaching the work. I'd be curious how you spend your time now, Angela, you know, versus when you started this role three and a half years ago, how has that evolved? And what are you focused on right now? Just with the work, you know, our strategy has really remained in place. You know, this is an interesting brand. We really consider ourselves a challenger brand. And there's still a lot to be done. I mean, when we all kind of this executive team really started with Jose in 2019. And a lot happened at the end of 2019, the biggest of which was our products. Well, let's kind of step back even before then, our executive chair, E.S. Chung. He is the grandson of the original founder of the Hyundai Motor Group. So, E.S. is really critical for us because he's really leading the way forward for the whole company. And in that is now we have this all, all this gorgeous new product. I mean, we have Genesis, our luxury line, our Hyundai product is gorgeous. Our sister company, Kia's equally fantastic, although challenging for us because they do really well. And we're very competitive with them. But you know, there was, the product was a big part of it. And that led the way to a whole new strategy. But then we had COVID and inventory shortages. So, you know, a lot of that got in the way of what we had set out to do. So a lot of the strategy remains in place. But we have high ambitions. The biggest thing is we'd like to get to a million units. The goal was to get that to a million by 2025. We're going to get that to a million. We hope this year the biggest obstacle to that is capacity. But I think for us, the biggest thing we're trying to amplify right now, Jim, is having people fall in love with this brand and have them really understand that this sort of weirdly named company that doesn't really stand for anything really is amazing. And so we're doing a lot of work behind the scenes that's just, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about our products because we've got to move the sheet metal. But we really want to spend some time about people really understanding who Hyundai is and what we stand for and really making fans of the brand. But last or last night and yesterday, we launched some new fantastic work launching our onyx six with Kevin Bacon and his daughter, Soci. And, you know, that's really fun work. And we're going to do a lot more work that's not always in that vein. I mean, that's fun work. But we just need to do a lot more brand building for people to really understand who Hyundai is. And I'm excited about that. That's probably the next sort of amplification of where we want to take the brand. Yeah, I'd like to stay on that because I've heard you say that you that Hyundai now passes the driveway test. So people see in the driveway and they get it. They realize, you know, you're a smart person. You bought a Hyundai, much like Toyota built their brand sort of the same way years and years ago. But you say it's time to move way beyond that as you've just articulated it. That's hard to do. And you know, we get into the areas of purpose and connections with people and your values. So could you just talk us through what you're learning as you set this higher ambition and you're trying to fulfill it. So you become a brand that people really love and a brand that's part of culture and a brand that people really identify with. Yeah, there's so much to impact there. I mean, right, wrong or indifferent, the metric that we're held to is GFK brand opinion, overall brand opinion. And you know, it's a lagging indicator. So it takes a long time to move. But you know, we look at Subaru, who moved that measure about 13 points in about 10 years. Gosh darn them. If no one else had done that, maybe we wouldn't look at it as a measure of success, but they did. And there's a lot of things that they did right. You know, they found the idea of love. You know, they have all will drive in their vehicles. And you know, more than anything, that was a safety and quality story wrapped in this idea of love. We don't quite have that. You know, Hyundai had a lot of fits and starts in this country. We've been here for 36 years. Not quite the following, you know, because of that. So I can't really emulate that story as well. And in fact, we've asked GFK, tell me more about brand opinion. What's really in it? For a long time, it was just, you know, QDR quality, dependability and reliability. And by the way, Toyota owns brand opinions still in that measure in that research study. So they, you know, tore it apart for us. And they said, well, really at the heart of it, at brand opinion is trust. Okay. Well, what's really about trust. And if they impacted even further, it's kind of a big bucket to the left is this idea of familiarity. All right. Well, that's kind of on me. That's about emotional messages that get people to say, I know you, I like you, I connect with you. That's on marketing. Okay, I'll own that. And that was about 38% of this study they did. But the other bucket that made up trust was things that come out in PR, my experience at the dealership, a recall, my overall experience with the vehicle. And you could actually have an older Hyundai. If I got charged above MSRP, I mean, anything that's negative, right? And unfortunately, we have a bucket of those things. So you've got this idea of familiarity, which is positive, but you got an equally heavy bucket of negative things going in the opposite direction. And so what's happening is we've basically been treading water. And until these negative things pipe down, my positive messages can't really soar. And that's really kind of where we're at with the brand. But one thing that we did on earth, we did more discovery was because of our uniqueness of being a completely enclosed auto manufacturer. And the way that this brand was built, which was really the fact that Hyundai was born to put the people of South Korea back to work after the Korean War. It is about putting people first. It is a brand that's really about inclusivity. And for example, like even our, you know, ionic brand, which is our electrification platform, you know, it is a Tesla sort of competitor. Whereas the second electrified brand in the US right now, we're democratizing electrification. We're not stinging people with a price tag, but we're giving everything that you could get in the Tesla. That is such a Hyundai ideal. And even things like America's best warranty, 10 years, 100,000 miles, that's still the best in the industry. That's such a Hyundai thing to do. People will say, well, they have to do that because they, you know, they need to stand behind their product. No, it's actually really expensive to stand behind our products. We do that because we don't want people to have any worry about their vehicles as a company. We want to make sure that people know we have their back. And that's really what we want to get to is that we want people to know that we have their back that as a company, we care about people and that they, that the vehicles that they buy from us are the best and the safest in the industry. And that's the promise of yes, Chung. And that's the story we want to start telling. And so that's the next level of messaging we're trying to get to. And we know things like America's best warranty or even when we did Hyundai Assurance during the financial crisis, when we said if you had an issue financially, we'll buy your car back or we'll defer your payments. This popped huge on brand opinion. So we know things that go beyond the sheet metal, metal even really get us a lot of points. And that is a very Hyundai sensibility. And so we're unearthing more of these kinds of things. And those are things we want to do more in advertising. But you know, we're a very sales and engineering focused company and that makes people nervous not to always have our cars front and center in our advertising. But a little band of brand would probably get us a lot. So I think that's the next evolution of working really hard on that. I have never worked in your category, although I have a lot of friends in your category and I've followed your category pretty closely throughout my career. And I've done some benchmarking visits to some of your competitors over my career. And marketing historically has not been a power function in a lot of OEMs. And that feels like that's different in Hyundai and it's changing. So can you tell us how you've done that in a high level way? Because it's not just your industry that has marketing, you know, in a subordinate position, a lot of industries do. Yeah. So you have certainly elevated its impact at Hyundai. What have you learned in doing that? Well, I haven't been successful yet. We're still on that path to that level. And it is true. It is a sales and engineering focused company first. But I think Jose in his wisdom understands that creativity does lead to business results. I mean, he's a really big supporter of marketing. And you know, I'll just be really honest, the more we spend in marketing, you know, the less we spend on incentives. And we don't want to discount our cars. That's the Hyundai of the past. So, you know, the power of bringing people in, because they want to buy our cars is definitely the way forward. I think this next iteration of where we want to go to really align people to our brand based on brand values and having people feel something about our brand is really what we haven't done. It's been a much more rational decision. To that point to you, just said, yeah, I feel good about buying a Hyundai because now it has passed that driveway test. It looks great. It's got safety, you know, that standard on the car, you it's got surprise and delight that's overwhelming. You sit inside a Hyundai and it's absolutely stunning. People are really surprised about how fantastic the car is now. But you know, we need to make people feel something differently about the brand overall. And that's the work we're going to do next. And I think there's an appreciation that we can do that now. The time is now. And I think we weren't ready for it until now. It is really a remarkable company. And I think it's done some incredible things. And I just think people don't know about it. And it's time for us to tell those stories. And I think, you know, people around us and other parts of the company, they're excited about it for the first time. I think it's always been sort of dismissed as sort of a nice to have. But now people feel like it's absolutely critical. And for us, it just doesn't make us feel good. It makes us feel like we can't live without it. Angela, you were 24 years in advertising. So you worked with a lot of brands over the years who made people feel differently about them and how they went to market. Is there any brand in your background, in your experience that is a bit of a beacon for you in this journey? There's one that stands out more than others. And it's one I go back to and everybody goes crazy because I use it as the example of all examples. I mean, they all grown up, she brought it up again. But it's Kaiser Permanente. And for those who are listening to don't know what that is, it's a West Coast medical delivery system, very California based, but it's in seven or eight other states. And it's an incredible company. Started by Henry Kaiser, who brought needed medical care for his workers at the Hoover Dam. And he worked with Sidney Garfield, who was a doctor. And they basically did this very unique medical delivery system. So it's basically medical care with insurance that was prepaid. And unfortunately, after it grew up after many, many years and became kind of a real company for others outside of Henry Kaiser's corporation, it was kind of seen as like a lower cost medical delivery system, blue collar medical care. And through the 70s and 80s, it did get lost its way. And it was not good delivery of care. But a woman, her name is Debbie Cantu, an incredible marketer, she went there as their CMO. She went on a journey to find an agency. And to rebrand that company, and she ended up hiring Campbell Ewald, which is the company I was working for, the agency I was working for at the time. I was not part of the pitch team, I came about a year later. But what they found in the research was everybody in the health care industry at that point in time was basically advertising very much the same, showing doctors, showing care, wearing the lab coats. And they would talk about co-pays or what they were offering with their care, very pedantic type of advertising, very much the same. And in the research, it came out that talking about health care, nobody cared about. But if you took off the word care and just talked about health, everybody was interested in that. And in the early 2000s, nobody was doing that. And when they really looked at the DNA of Kaiser, it really was about giving you preventative healthcare first. And the whole idea of that company is I don't really want you to get diabetes. I really don't want you to be obese. I really don't want you to ever have a heart attack or to get cancer. I really would rather never have you come here as a sick patient. Unfortunately, the medical system in this country kind of does want you to get sick. That's how we make money. And so in that came this beautiful idea called thrive. And it just upended the entire category. And it didn't talk about anything except eat your carrots and go for a walk. And the message was for everyone and simple and beautiful, colorful messages and it transformed everything. It transformed them. It became their, their beacon as a company. They had a CEO at the time Bernard Tyson, who absolutely fell in love with the campaign. And it became their North Star and how they actually built their medical facilities. In fact, he became sick as a patient. I think he was in their San Francisco hospital and was there for weeks and had this tiny little window. He could look out and he's like, who is the person who had these horrible little windows in the? Oh, I think that was me who did that before. I mean, so now if you walk into a Kaiser facility, it's Florida ceiling windows to let natural light in. It's got, you know, chamomile and all kinds of wonderful natural flowers around and it's incredible. And that campaign really did transform everything that they think of as a company. And that's the power of creativity in the mindset, not only of the people who work there, but the people who came to Kaiser afterwards. And it was as simple as words and pictures, you know, in advertising. And to me, that's the inspiration that can move forward. And I think I go to it all the time because knowing how dark and cloudy Kaiser was before and still how it's viewed today in California, especially which is where I live, I mean, it really is remarkable. It's a beautiful story of purpose, of courage, of conviction, of creativity. Yeah, it's fantastic. In that 24 years on the agency side, is there one leader that had a profound impact on you? And who was that and why? Oh, there's a lot of people who had a lot of impact on me. And I worked with some amazing people. You know, I worked with a chief creative officer who was still really good friends with Mark Simon. My boss at the time was Jim Palmer. He became CEO of Campbell Ewald. So there were a lot of those people at that time. And those were the folks at Campbell Ewald. And I spent a lot of a long time in my career at Campbell Ewald. So those are formative years for me. I would say that group probably was the most. And then my boss, Tim Blet, he was the one who brought me to donor. I went there to work on Mazda. He was the one who who brought me to a notion and had Tim not brought me to a notion that I wouldn't be here today at Hyundai. So, and I'm still friends with Tim today. And so I've had some incredible people who have shepherded me and opened doors where I never even thought those doors would be opened. And of course, I owe a huge amount. Of course, Steve June, who's the CEO of an ocean. And of course, to Jose, who asked me to come here forever grateful to him. And he has an amazing boss and leader for this company. And he's just an incredibly brilliant man. He's doing great things. And Randy Parker is our CEO now of Hyundai Motor America. And I directly reported to him. And he's also an incredible leader for us. So there's a lot. It's too many to name. But I'm well protected and very well supported. Yeah. Well, it's a good that's a good bridge into the last section of this show, which is the creative brief. And my first question for you, Angela, is I know you love fashion. Ah, yes. So where does that come from? I don't know. You know, a young girl who grew up in Orange County. My mom was a home maker, basically. Did they call it that anymore? But she was always at home with us. My I was lucky enough that my parents could afford for that. But she did kind of on the side. She did she was a fit model. That's what they had. And so she would do that, go to LA and she would do fashion shows. So my mom was very stylish and my stepmother, both very fashionable ladies. You know, my mother used to put herself completely together with false eyelashes every day to like clean the house. I mean, this is what I grew up with. I mean, we would go to the beach and she'd put on a poochy scarf and, you know, hoop earrings. I mean, it was ridiculous. What do you think about it? And I always love fashion. And I thought I would go via fashion designer. And I really wanted to go to New York. You know, of course, my parents said absolutely no when it came really time to go. They were definitely afraid of that idea. And again, this close-knit family, no one left home. And so I ended up going to school here. But it was my lifelong dream. So I've always had this creative outlet through fashion. Everybody knows that I love clothes and, you know, always kind of make that extra effort, you know, to kind of think about what I'm wearing. And I don't know, it's just a creative outlet for me. I just love it. What's the first brand you remember making impact on you as a young girl? Is it a fashion brand? Oh, there was a lot of designers I love growing up, you know, in the 80s. But I do remember like Donna Karen being interesting to me. You know, she really got the backing. And I think she just made a big force for herself. But you know, Dion von Fustenberg and, you know, just even some of the others. But you know, Ralph Lauren, he admits he's not that much of a designer, but he's more of someone who knows how to put things together. That's I feel like I am. But there's so many of that era. They're just all so good. I just remember going to the mall and just wishing I had more money to spend on clothes. But I used to save my money. And that's what I would spend my money on. You've talked about this big family you have and your husband. I'm also from a big family, so is my wife. And I'm just curious, how do you manage that so that you have time for family, time for your husband, time for yourself, time for the things that really keep you fresh and innovative. I've struggled with that my whole life. And I just wonder how you do that. It's one of the hardest things to do. I think because we live where the family is, we try to mix it in with our life. You know, like my husband, especially his job is a little more flexible than mine. His father's 94. So he really feels like, Oh gosh, I can take time to go down and see my dad tonight. They live about an hour away. He will do that pretty often. Right now we're living with my father, my stepmothers. We're remodeling a house and it's we've been there eight months now. There are models taking as we just talked before that we started the podcast way longer than we thought. And it's actually been really nice because this time we'll never get back with them. Spending time with my husband just with him, that's probably the biggest challenge because he's family. So family means big group. Just getting away with him is probably the biggest challenge. And we both struggle with that. In fact, this house that we just got is a bigger house, which is to gather more of the family. So we have to work on just spending time with the two of us. Renovations can test the relationship, but we've done a lot of them ourselves and we found it just it's a fun thing to do. Yeah, it's been great. So we are coming out of Super Bowl season here as we released this episode. What's the and you've worked on a lot of Super Bowl stuff over your career? What's the most memorable Super Bowl ad you have worked on and why? Oh gosh, well, I'll give kudos to a notion or agency. I think this is some of the best work they do and they do some of the best, I think in general. These guys are really good. But I think one of our best was our Smart Park spot, which was for our Sonata launch. And that was in 2019. And that feature on that car was remote Smart Parking Assist, who would ever want to say that? Such a mouthful. And somebody just whittled it down to, well, I would just call it like Smart Park, just a bunch of wise guys in the agency. And then somebody said, I don't know if somebody had a Boston accent or something, they're like, like, SmartPak. And then they just sort of riffed on it. And then we just decided to make it sort of a fun play on Boston accents and did this cast that was from Boston. And it was so good. And just repeating that over and over and over again made it really sort of consumer-centric to understand that it had this fun, very unexpected technology that you would think would only come on a luxury car came on this very, you know, mid-priced mass market sedan and then demonstrated it in a very fun way. And it was breakthrough and it won a lot of awards. And I think they did a fantastic job. So that's one of our all-time favorites and we love it. So we love them all. They've all been great. And although this wasn't in the Super Bowl, we're pretty happy with this Ionic Six-Pot with Kevin Bacon and Sosie. We think they did a fantastic job. And they did a ton of social for us too. They're pretty famous on social and they were good sports about the whole thing. Last question we are coming into as we released this episode, Women's History Month. Yes. And you certainly, as you've broken a lot of ceilings in your career in advertising and now at Hyundai. So I'd like you to end this with what woman in your life has been especially inspiring to you? Or what woman in history? I'll give you a broader brief. Oh gosh, women in history. I'm going to pick one in my life because there's too many in history to name. I'm going to say my mother. And for a lot of people, I think maybe they may not understand why because my mom, as I just said, was a woman who stayed at home. But my mom, who was divorced from my father and who still got to stay home with us and didn't have to work outside of the home. She was fully committed to us kids, which allowed us to have this amazing childhood. But one thing my mom didn't like was that she didn't have control of her own finances, although my dad made it possible for us to have this nice life. But she really imparted upon us girls especially to make sure we were educated and that whatever we chose, even if we had husbands and chose to be married and we didn't have to work, that we were always in control of our own finances, that that gate would give us empowerment. And I think my mom never felt really empowered because she wasn't in financial control. And I think that something in that was a fire inside of me that led me to really want to go to school or do a career that I absolutely love. And I never had children of my own. It just didn't happen for me. This career is everything to me. And it has really defined my life in a lot of ways. And my mom is the one who gave me that spark and really gave me the self-confidence that I could do it. I got a lot from my dad too, who was highly successful as a dentist and a lot of things business-wise. But my mom was the one who really gave me the courage to do it and said that I had to do it. And so she's the one that I think of almost every day, if not every day, even though she's deceased. And she was a great lady. So I would give that credit to her. That's a beautiful story to Ando and Angela. Thank you. So thank you for that. And thank you for this fabulous conversation on so many levels. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you. Thank you so much Jim. Really great. I'm glad we got this finally on the calendar. Good luck in the renovation. I hope it goes well and I hope it wraps up someday. Me too. Thank you. Great to see you. That was my interview with Angela Supeda. Three lessons from this one for your brand, your business and your life. The first one is the power of coaching. Angela years ago took on a personal coach. She didn't tell her organization right away. She was doing it. And that coach helped her work on things that she needed to work on, helped her be a better leader. It was tough, she said. The coach was very honest. But there were lessons that she carries forward to this day from having a strong coaching relationship. Second takeaway and related, the power of a strong role model. Angela talks so beautifully about her mother at the end of the show and the important role model she was for Angela. We all have the power to be a strong role model for the people in our life. And the third takeaway from this great interview, the extreme motivation of having a high ambition. Hyundai has come a long way as a brand, but she and her team are not stopping there. They want this brand to be more creative, more connected, more loved. And they have the ambition, they have the plans and they have the creativity to do that. I think it's a brand to watch. That's it for this episode of the CMO podcast. If you found this helpful and entertaining, I would be so grateful if you could share our show with your friends. And I would be super happy if you subscribe so you can be updated as we publish new episodes. And if you really want to help, leave us a five star rating and a positive review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. The CMO podcast is a gallery media group original production.