Michelle Taite (Mailchimp) | Leading a Brand Through an Acquistion

The first brand you remember making an impact on you as a young girl growing up. When is Kit Kat? My, yeah, my great grandmother, his friend who was British, my grandmother would take me to her senior citizen's home where she was. She had Alzheimer's and we would bring her Kit Kat's. And she wouldn't remember who we were, who my grandmother was, where she was, who she was. But she knew that 4 p.m. was Kit Kat time. And it was like a lovely experience of her. Hi, I'm Jim Stangall 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 Prokka 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 in the CMO podcast is Michelle Tate, the chief marketing officer of Intuit Mailchimp. Mailchimp's target audience is most everyone listening to this podcast. Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing automation and email platform for growing businesses with a special focus on small and medium sized businesses. The company was founded in 2001 in Atlanta, Georgia. Its roots are an email marketing, but it has evolved to offer a far wider range of services. Get this. Mailchimp has 12 million regular users and sends out 500 million emails a day from its platform into it. Purchased Mailchimp in late 2021 for about $12 billion. And now Mailchimp joins other Intuit portfolio brands such as TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint and Credit Karma. My guest, Michelle, was born and raised in Israel, traveled to the UK for university studies and art design, and then started her career as a shoe designer for new balance. Michelle left the shoe industry to earn her MBA at the Wharton School in Philadelphia, then worked seven years at Unilever before joining Intuit in late 2017. After Intuit acquired Mailchimp in 2021, they appointed her CMO at the new acquisition. This is my conversation with the true Renaissance woman CMO, Michelle Tate. Welcome to the CMO podcast, Michelle. You started your professional career as a footwear designer for new balance. Were you a sneaker head back then? I definitely don't a sneaker head, but I do have an obsession for shoes, so for sure. So you have become a sneaker head. Somewhat, yes. But mostly recently, because my team is so cool that I'm trying to keep up with their trendy footwear. Well, I asked my son around Christmas time, what new shoes should I buy? And he said, you should buy these two new balance 990s. Oh, wow. Yeah, they're back in fashion for sure. Back in fashion. So I have two pairs of those and I'm wearing them a lot these days. But I want to know what's the most famous shoe that you worked on as a designer? Oh, it was a lifestyle shoe for the Japanese market. That was sort of a combination between a sports shoe and a boot. Oh, well, I just came from Japan. I was there last week and I wore my new balance in Japan. And and I was I was seen as pretty cool last week. I love it. I'm sure you're seen pretty cool every week. Now I want to start our discussion today or more serious discussion with four concepts that I know you believe really strongly in. Continuous learning, fearlessness, passion, and how humility and curiosity supercharge each other. So let's start with continuous learning. You are a voracious learner. I've seen and read that. So what are you voraciously learning about right now, Michelle? So many things. So I I am very, very curious about the sort of fine line between psychology and marketing. And so I read a lot of psychology books. They're not necessarily linked to business or something that we're working on then and there. But right now I am I just finished reading a book called Couples That Work, which talk about sort of the transitions and the trade offs between dual career couples and sort of their lives and how they make decisions. Reading, stumbling on happiness with Dan Gilbert around, you know, how I find it so fascinating to think about the fact that we're making decisions that we think are going to make us happy. But in real life, we have very little very little control. And yeah, and then I learn a lot from my team around what are the trends that are happening in market. They are so much cooler than I am and are so ingrained in pop culture that I tend to learn a lot around that. And then I guess the final thing is just been reading a lot about chat GPT and sort of how that's impacting the world around us. Yeah, I've been playing around with it too. It's pretty remarkable. I asked you to question the other day about how the technology is going to affect advertising, unbelievable the answer I got. Yeah, I asked it. I asked it, what will Jim Stengel ask me as a Sammo of Mailchum during our interview and it played a whole interview back and forth with me. It was pretty fascinating. Wow, well, you have to tell me if it was pretty correct. After the interview is over. I know. We'll have to check it out. I like to throw some curveballs. I probably didn't get everything right. Now, what do you feel like most CMOs should have on their voracious learning list? Whoa, it's a good question. I think it goes back to what I'm what I believe is the core of what we do. And that's craft and connection. And I think about it as people live to connect and work is no different. And craft yields connection and connection yields craft. And so I think it's a combination of what's going on in the industry and how to how to do great marketing and whether that's a pan of psychology or or technology or really just learning different, different practical ways to get to your customers that your peers or different industries are looking at. And then on connections, really how to how to peel back the onion and connect the teens around you, how to be vulnerable with them and create that. I guess the the group connection that yields out the most innovative and fun idea is to work on. Well, you talked about happiness a minute ago. There's this new book out, The Good Life. And it's about this really long Harvard study on happiness and what makes people happy. And I mean, the number one finding by a long shot is people who keep connections going and who have strong relationships and connections are the happiest. It's just it boils down to that. And and I think it made me it made me call a couple of friends I haven't talked to in a long time after I read that. And I had wonderful chats with all of them. So I think it's true at work. It's true at home. It's true everywhere. Keeping connected is what it's all about. And I think the core of marketing is exactly that, right? That you connect to customers and you connect to people at the end of the day in different ways. Yeah, makes them happier, makes us happier. It's just a virtuous, wonderful circle. Now the second one, fearlessness. This is a strong belief for you. So why is that? I think it comes from experience where probably in the first few years of my career, it was naivety rather than fearlessness. But I can talk about some experiences, but perhaps it won't make sense, but they have sort of built my fearlessness over time. When I was 17 or 16, I truly believe there was going to be a rock star. I was going to get on stage. I was performing in hotels in Israel. I was going to make it in the industry. That's fearless. And I honestly didn't fret out. But one of my favorite artists came to my town, my small town. And I think it was for the equivalent of Valentine's Day. And I said, I went backstage. I sort of found my way there. And I said, I want to sing with you. I want to sing this duet with you, which was at the time, like his best, you know, his best single. And he was like, who are you? And then I sort of said, well, I'm sure you won't regret it. And I got on stage, right? And it was one of the most spectacular moments in my childhood that I remember. And then, you know, at New Balance, I worked a lot on what then was called the Women's Initiative. It's kind of crazy to think that we can call something the Women's Initiative. But New Balance and a lot of the footwear companies in the past had made female shoes as a derivative of men's shoes, meaning they use men's last and sort of put girly colors and materials on them. And it was me and another colleague of mine that sort of said, wait, what if we thought about this differently? What if we thought about true needs of women in the gym or wherever? And that sort of spun into the Women's Initiative and the whole line of women's footwear and cross training. And I think through my career, I've sort of been raising my hand and saying, what if, right? And just seeing. And I think that fearlessness, what's the worst I can come of it? So one can say no, and you're on to the next thing. So what do you fearless about right now? Doing the best marketing out in the world. And I think we need that these days, right? Because so much is changing so quickly. I mean, it's always been true. But if you're not experimenting, you're not trying new things, you're not, you're not pushing ourselves or teams, then you're going to get irrelevant. Exactly. So passion is the third one. And I love how you connect passion with self-awareness. We each need to determine what we are passionate about. Think about that, what drives each of us. And this obviously changes over our career. So can you speak a bit about how your passions have shifted over the course of your career and why? Yeah. Um, I think I started my career in product design. Um, and my passion was really about creatively exploiting constraints. And that came from a background that was exceptionally modest. And, and that coupled with my experience in the Israeli intelligence forces sort of got me thinking about how do you create these new experiences a little differently? Um, and all I was passionate about was these insights. Really, I went to design school and everybody was passionate. I went to design school for product and furniture design. And my product, my furniture design colleagues, uh, were very much obsessed with aesthetics and visuals. And I was obsessed with what does this say about the person using it and how can we make it better? Um, and so that was sort of my passion and continues to be my passion across my career. Um, as I, as I got into new balance, I realized the passion, my passion was actually bringing products to life. And that was commercialization and business and P and L's and brands. Um, and as I went into Unilever, um, it was sort of bridging, I think the emotional and the functional together in that insight. Um, and working on brands that had a mission that I believed in. Um, and I think that, you know, and at the time I also had kids and so my passion changed a little bit to, I need to be, I want to be a mom for a little bit and, and also have a career, right? Um, my passion then, uh, turned to, uh, how, how am I, um, expanding on being a people leader? Um, and I think there was a point in my career where it was kind of like, how can I be as a people leader or a small group, how do I lead in larger groups? Um, then when I got to into it, I realized how much of an impact we could have, we could make for small businesses. And I passed when we came just touching as many small businesses as possible and making their day to day better. Um, in a way that was still creative and, um, and fun and, uh, brought out the best of my teams. And then I think in the last few years, it's really been around, how do you bring teams together to form something that is very special. Um, and specifically for me, it's sort of, how do you create the environment by which you feel and the team feels like this is the best work of their career. Um, is, is what I'm really passionate about. That's a powerful, uh, standard. I've, I've said that to many teams in my career too, just to say, let's make this time we're together, something we really remember and where we do something significant that is part of our life forever. And you know, there's some interesting research out of the Kellogg school that we remember so little in our life. When you look back, the percentage we remember is unbelievably small. And the things that we do remember are the powerful ones emotionally. And if we can have experiences with teams in our careers, which they remember, it says something very powerful about what we did together. And that is usually associated with great business results. A hundred percent. Yes. We kind of cultivate that into a hashtag on our team called beat our best together. I love it. All right. The last one, humility and curiosity, supercharging each other. I've never really heard anyone put those together that directly. So tell us why in your mind, they supercharge each other. If you think about humility as the ability to say, I don't really know everything or don't know a lot, um, and being very vulnerable about that. Um, and curiosity, this, um, passion to learn. Um, then essentially what you're doing is you're continuously learning and continuously asking those around you to come learn with you, um, and bring, bring their best. And so I think about my team when I, uh, on the Elchamp, when I first started, and I had no idea what I was walking into was obviously so inspired and humbled by the opportunity and the brand, but, um, didn't know the business. Didn't really know, um, didn't know how to build on this foundation of the awesomeness that was before us. Uh, and so walking in and saying, hi, I'm a shelf. I don't really know much. We're gonna ask a bunch of stupid questions here or me. Please ask me the same. Let's learn together. Um, but also being super, super curious and learning a ton around me. Um, and bringing sort of external thinking back into the team. That's sort of how I think about it. Supercharging. And you just rattle off some of the things you do, but if you could kind of summarize that and how you operationalize it and how you work and how you lead, I think it'd be really helpful. Sure. Um, I write a weekly email to my team called the weekend review. And it takes a lot. Um, a lot of times about an hour and a half of two hours of work in a week. And what it does is, um, to mention lies, uh, a few things. One is here's the awesome people news of the week. So it brings together sort of things that we didn't know about people. Um, and we usually get those, uh, apart from birthdays and anniversaries, we usually get those nuggets from a fun channel and Slack that we hold. Um, where once a week I will usually slack the team with sometimes and absurd, sometimes a really vulnerable moment. Uh, I've been known to show pictures of my, um, my son's meltdowns in the morning and say like mornings are really interesting here. Um, but it kind of opens up to the team to, uh, their, their moments, uh, their passions, uh, whether it's cooking or what they did on the weekend. Um, and then so we take some of that and we pull it together as well as, um, you know, what's the gift of the week? Uh, we also share awesome, uh, work of the week. So we connect the dots for, um, different people on the team as to what's happening and how does it all connect? Um, and recognizing their, uh, contributions one by one. And, and within teams. Um, and I bring in an external inspiration, which is usually, uh, from my reading or my listening, uh, into that email, which keeps me current because I have to have content. Um, and it's sort of, um, me, it was, it was sort of a way for me to, to keep myself learning, uh, even when I didn't have time. And so what you'll do, what you'll see me do is I'll make dinner for the kids while listening to an audio book or, uh, I'll definitely read at night and stuff like that. Um, but constant learning. One of my favorite mentors is David, David Rubin. Now you see him walking in the hallways that you never always looking at his phone, always reading. And I think I've become more and more like him in that sense. He's been a guest on the show. It was a great episode. All right. I want to shift your career path for a bit before jumping into your CMO role at Mailchimp. You spend about seven years at Unilever before joining into it about five and a half years ago. These are two crazy, highly admired companies. They highly, highly value marketing and brand building and leadership. But I want to ask you, having pretty deep experience now with both of them, what could they teach each other? Most a great question. I think Unilever taught me a ton about how, uh, how to do positioning that merges emotional and functional so well. Um, my first, uh, my first rotation was on Magna Myskreme as we launched the brand in North America. Uh, it's so good. Uh, but we have one sentence of positioning, which was Chanel on a stick. Right. And, uh, that, that sort of, uh, the ability to distill, uh, such a clear positioning and then sort of take it out into the market. Um, I think is something that Unilever does exceptionally well and SaaS brands are very, it's really hard with SaaS brands to find that, um, intersection of, uh, emotional and functional. Although I think with MailChimp, there's a lot more of that we call ourselves high growth with a soul, uh, for a reason. I think there's a lot of the, the positioning that could be learned, uh, from Unilever as it relates to into it. Um, they're both very customer obsessed with a very similar in that sense. Um, I think on the MailChimp side, it's interesting because in SaaS, you get to have such an intimate relationship with your customer because you touch them and so many points and you have so much data about them. And so I wonder if there's a way to get to, uh, being there, not only on the first and second moment of truth as it relates to CPG, but sort of in the day-to-day experience, um, I know you can't quite, um, I think about Dub Body Wash, you can't quite go into the shower with people. Um, but as I think about our customers on, on, um, the MailChimp side, once they're in product and they're using something and we see them get stuck, we immediately can reach out to them in multiple ways and have a, and have a meaningful connection that helps them and sort of brings them along. What's the major leadership lesson that you took away from your time in Unilever? Um, the people work on a challenge, but they actually, um, they're driven by a mission and a purpose. Um, I worked on many brands that Unilever, but I think working on Dub, uh, specifically iterated to me, uh, read it to me that working on a mission is something that just powers you in the mornings, uh, and it gets, it gets people together and thinking in innovative ways that they probably wouldn't have if it was just a job for revenue and new customer usage. I often wonder why everyone doesn't see that. Cause once you experience it, you realize you don't want to work any other way. Exactly. So how did you bring that forward to into it in MailChimp, that philosophy? I mean, I think into it from its founding, I mean, it was founded by a former PNG person, which you probably know, Scott Cook. And I think in these very customer centric and very empathetic and a real listener and learner and a curious person. So, um, but how did you bring it forward? That kind of pivotal experience you had Unilever leading this, this mission driven brand of, which is affected so many people just in terms of how they think about purpose and activating it in organizational culture. Yeah. Um, I, I had the opportunity to come into it as we were repositioning and, uh, relaunching the QuickBooks brand. And specifically we were going from accounting software to a suite of business tools and that required the world to understand what we said for and why. Um, otherwise you can't really extend a brand in a meaningful way. Uh, what was interesting was that I walked in and this company was so customer obsessed, really understands why they do what they do and is so powered by it and energized by it, but nobody could really tell you in a sentence or two, what it is that they did or as I, I would think tell their grandmother, right? Um, and so we had to very quickly come back with what is our positioning and what is our brand foundations? What's a brand book look like? Um, and we were able to pull together a meaningful, um, depiction of, of what QuickBooks said. And we were the champions of those who dared to dream. Um, we were backing those who didn't back down and we really got to the, uh, distilled insight that working for yourself is really lonely and, um, or rewarding, but also very lonely and unpredictable, right? Um, and that, um, was a tool that I took from Unilever as it relates to how you just depict the brand, how you get everybody galvanized around that mission. Um, and talking in that same language and what we were able to do then is, uh, talk to not only customers, but also the employees and the different functions and say brand isn't a marketing thing. Brand is a company thing. So you were having this great run at Intuit and then into it acquired Mailchimp. And you were pretty promptly sent over as CMO. So tell us about that. Here's, here's an acquisition. You're coming from the acquirer. I've been in that situation once in my career. It was hard. It was really hard. And I just like you to tell us how did it happen? How did you get asked to do that? How did it feel? Um, I remember getting a call from my boss on a Saturday morning, which we all know is not a good signal. Uh, and he said, I need to fill you in on some confidential information. We're looking to acquire this company. I want you to come in and do some of the marketing integration work. And so I'd come in for a couple of months and sort of started working on what would it look like if we acquired, what would it, how would we, um, how would we not integrate, but collaborate between the two companies and brands? Uh, what would it mean? And for me, it was kind of like a dream come true, right? Like I get to get closer to this brand that I admired forever. Um, and I think the, the passion was there and the opportunity to essentially take this amazing foundation and brand led growth of a company with lots of brand led growth and sort of layer on the performance that into it is known for was there. And so it was just asked to take the CMO role. Um, and honestly, I couldn't believe it. Um, and I walked in and I think, I remember my first meetings, they were terrifying. Um, and it's a unique situation where you as a leader come in and you know this brand, so you think, you know, this brand so well. Um, and you're terrified to screw it up. Uh, and you need to grow it even faster than it grew before. And it's amazing. So you're wondering how, and then there's the team on the other side that's terrified. Uh, that's terrified of what they're going to do, or they are, is the brand going to live. Um, and, um, Mailchimp specifically, the whole company loves this brand so much. Um, that it was, everybody was looking at where, where's this going? You know, the change is going to come is what she's telling us really, what she's telling us. So there's a lot of trust building in the very beginning. And I'm really, really grateful to the team that they just welcomed you with open arms and I think we were able to have some really good, uh, transparent conversations that sort of opened up the, okay, how do we do this together? Tell us about the first few months. How did you, you said a lot of trust building. And so what did you do to onboard with this, you know, new company in your portfolio? I'm sure the team was feeling a bit vulnerable, which you, you've already talked a bit about, but if you advise someone who is doing a similar thing, going in at a higher level, like at CMO to a company, it's been acquired. What would you advise them to do? Uh, learn and listen. Um, so I spent the first few months, uh, learning a ton and listening. I also spent a lot of the time, uh, creating some framework by which we, we as a team saw the same data and could have, uh, great conversations around it because one of the hardest things to do is to come in and understand how the business is doing and what it's doing and why, uh, when you're used to seeing it one way, uh, as the acquiring company and the company who's running it is used to seeing it a different way. And so one of the first things that we did was sort of before we set goals, before we were clear, I'm like next steps, uh, were these, um, call them performance measurement reviews where we looked at the funnels and we had really in depth discussions about what they meant. Um, and I asked a ton of just really basic questions, which I think in turn, enable the team to sort of, um, get to be more at ease with me and ask questions in return. And then we started celebrating, we got to what our goals were going to be. Um, and we moved to slowly. And, uh, I think people were like a little freaked out that, you know, how slow can this be, how we're just learning how to work with each other. But we started celebrating small successes and, um, not even success with unlocks. So we said, uh, we started a meeting. I remember this so well. It was one of my first performance review meetings with the team and people were scared of talking to me. So I would only get my staff to talk to me. And I really was desperate for the junior folks to speak because they have such great ideas and such great knowledge. And, um, and I try to figure out why the data was saying one thing, but the business was performing in a different way. And, uh, and this woman Jasmine said, um, she gave an idea of where her hypothesis was and it was brilliant. And I said, Oh my gosh, Jasmine, you need a coaching button. Uh, and that night I sent her like a cash register coaching button. And that became sort of a little bit of, uh, some of the fun and the joyful, uh, you know, celebrate, celebratory moments. We now have like 50 coaching buttons across our team. Um, we started celebrating these small unlocks, these small brain shoes, these small differences. And the team started gaining momentum and a lot of trust. Um, and also, uh, really show that they wanted to win together, uh, and got more and more competitive. So it was really fun sort of watching it, but it certainly didn't happen overnight. I know you're very proud of your internal agency, your in-house agency. Wink. Now, could you speak a bit about why it's so special? I mean, it's so many things I know that they are part of and you're, you're involved in so many non-traditional, interesting areas of content and engagement. Yeah. You know, I came in and I'd never worked with an internal agency before. So I was quite, um, I didn't know what to expect to be honest. Um, and what I learned was this was a group of 40, 15 individuals that really believe that they can change the world with creativity. And more so the world of work. Um, and that spanned everything from game design to, um, web design to creative for campaigns. Um, and so not only were they creative, but they actually knew the product and the brand really, really well. Um, and as a result could have, uh, really big impact at speed. Because once we had an insight or we found something in pop culture, they were able to move on it really, really quickly. It's hard to explain when you don't know the individuals, but they have just this fire in their eyes where they're, they're like, we are going to change the world for entrepreneurs and marketers and small businesses. Um, and they just are so passionate about the mission. Um, and so ready to go. And, um, I think the relationship that we've been able to foster because of the continuity of it, um, means that there's a lot of trust and they can bring to the table really radical ideas. And even if they don't come to fruition, there's another idea that will. Um, so it's been, it's been a really interesting experience, uh, sort of managing this creative force. Uh, well, they sort of manage themselves because they're so different. Um, in a good way, but yeah, it's, it's been, I think it's our secret sauce, to be honest. How is that culture created? Was it a leader or was it a, what, I mean, what you just described, everyone would love, right? They would love their team to be like that. They love their whole group to be like that. So what was the, what do you think the origin of it was or is? I think it's a few components. One, we have a really best in class talent, uh, that Katie Patocni, who runs the agency brought in. Um, and, and so they're, they're holding themselves to the highest standards. Um, the second is when I came in and there was a question around, are we going to sort of lean into performance versus the brand and where is this going? Um, my ask to them was make the brand bigger and better than it ever was and make a pop and pop culture like it's never popped. Uh, this is our time to shine. This is sort of a new wave of MailChimp and they took that really seriously. Um, and I can say those things that they can only bring them to fruition. Right. Um, and so they felt really, um, they felt empowered and they felt like anything was on the table and ideas that big to small could come through. Um, that resulted in just a lot of experimentation on their end across different mediums across different platforms. And we were doing work that at the same time was really changing, um, trajectory for business. So we had launched a whole new website, uh, we, um, we launched our first truly global campaign with guest last summer. We, um, we launched an activation at New York. Fast. I mean, we were all over the place and their fingerprints were all over it. A lot of my guests on the show talk about the trade offs or the tension or the balance between performance and quote brand marketing. You seem to have that pretty well figured out at MailChimp. How have you done that? Um, I don't know that we've done that. We're trying. Um, this brand has, this business has grown through brand lead growth, uh, for, for most of its existence. Uh, what do you mean when you say brand led growth, Michelle? Meaning, uh, brand activations and, uh, really what we would call top of funnel type of, of work, the less performance marketing, uh, like, like, like, classical marketing and, uh, more, uh, bottom of funnel slash in product. And, um, and it's all been as a result of its exquisite, uh, clarity on who it is and what it does and zigging and zagging when people are sort of walking a straight line, um, in the market and bringing new experiences to folks. And as a result, it's gotten a lot of trust from its prospects and customers that, you know, how to do marketing. Um, but in the world we live in today, we need to sort of marry the two. Um, I think what we've, what we found is that brand can feel performance in a way that it's never done before. Um, we saw that with New York Fashion Week where we really had a brand activation, but the reality was that we were collecting a ton of first party data. Um, and one of the goals that we had for, for last year was to grow up a little bit as a brand, um, to become a little more sophisticated, to showcase the maturity that we had as a brand while keeping our DNA and that, uh, expert absurdist to show the advanced marketers that we were now serving and our product was now serving, but we had everything for them. Um, and so we had lots and lots of real conversations around what happens if we put product into our columns and what happens if we put product front and center and, uh, down funnel on the, on the website and the data showed the differences, uh, and the, and the wins and the team was very data backed. Uh, but at the same time there, we always have this like really good debate in a conversation around, well, what's the male to impuversion of this? If you took off our logo with someone, no, right? Um, and I think also, um, we got really competitive together. Um, we, we took them, uh, we took some risks that maybe didn't have immediate ROI results that we could point to, but had a lot of clear, um, you know, brand, uh, attribute lists, uh, that then ended up in, uh, you know, bottom of funnel lists over time. Um, and Donna and itself helped the team understand that they could, uh, fuse the two we very early on, I think it was like November and December. Uh, there was a HubSpot conference and we are trying to go up market and talk to these customers that was a HubSpot conference in Boston. Also, we're, uh, competitor, Flavios, it's, we decided we were going to, um, we were going to paint the town in, in yellow and healthy full understand why we are the number one email marketing platform. We, um, wrapped taxis that took people from their hotels to the conference. And in the taxis, we ran ads, we ran education, we ran inspiration. Um, and it poured the whole time, uh, of the conference. So everybody was in our calves. And that for the creative team was like, oh, wow, we can do something really, really cool as it relates to creativity, but actually drive a lot of performance. Um, so I think it's a lot of, uh, a lot of experimentation, but also a lot of small wins, right? That sort of build the confidence. So you use this term expert absurdist in that, that explanation just gave us about how you think about performance and brand marketing. Tell us about expert absurdist. What is that? Your description of the brand. Where does it come from? Is it, has it worked for you really well? How do you ensure everyone understands it? Yeah. It's sort of our brand characters, how we show up in the market. Um, we're, we're this quirky brand, uh, that we say we, if you look at our mascot, uh, Freddie, who's part of our logo, uh, the chimp. He's winking. And really what you should look at is his wink and the wing signals that we get you and we got you. Uh, and so we think about the expert absurdist as we're there with the right tools at the right time, um, whether it's inspiration or education or marketing tools. Um, but we don't take ourselves very seriously. Um, we do when it comes to the actual ROI as in campaign deliveries for our customers. Um, but then we know that our customers are quirky, our customers are different. They want to connect to us in a different way. Um, we know that they also connect to us offline, right? So it's just a way of coming to life for the brand. And we say that in a sea of blues and greens of small business and B2B were very bright yellow. Now, man, Mailchimp seems to have always believed in brand and a lot of B2B companies and tech platforms don't or struggle with that. Why is it that Mailchimp has always believed in brand and has built this beautiful brand that into it saw potential for and purchased it and things have gone very well? What, what is it about the DNA of this company that is so strong and in its belief in brand building? Yeah, I think it's two pieces. One is, um, it looks like a South brand, but it's actually a lifestyle brand. Uh, it's almost like there we say the Nike of SaaS, uh, or it's trying to be that. Um, it thinks about the customer experience on the platform and off the platform. Um, that is really about the connection of, um, the art and creativity and the science of data, right? And the product itself is very much built off of data and, um, the data advantage of sending billions of emails a day that then with AI models and so forth, enables our customers to be so much smarter. Um, the brand takes that and, um, delivers that in different, meaningful ways. And we think about it as democratizing access to different audiences, to different inspiration to, um, to different tools. And we think about the marketers that we serve or the small businesses that we serve, we think about their day to day and we talked about connection before. You don't just connect to someone on a platform, right? We think about marketers and sort of what they do and their day to day lives and what they're listening to and what they're interested in. And, um, surprise, surprise, they're really interested in creativity. And so we go and find craft experts and talk about, um, their craft and how, you know, we, we just had a, an amazing launch with Bjork and her sonic symbolism podcast. Um, and that was all about her creative process and how she essentially founded a genre. Um, so we think about like, what are they interested in outside the platform? What are they engaging with in their life? And then how do we sort of build that relationship with them over time through data, which allows us to personalize this sort of journey with compounding value over time. You and your team know a lot more about marketing people than most companies, right? Because these are your customers. Yeah. So what, what have you learned about marketing people that our listeners could find useful and effective in how they approach their teams and their jobs and their brand? Yeah. Well, and they're very skeptical. Mm. The second is they really care about creativity and innovation. So they're actually obsessed with, uh, learning about those outside of their day to day work life. Um, like I said, it's one of the core reasons why, um, why we're activating in those spaces, uh, podcasts around creativity, podcasts around partnership, um, and connection are really relevant to them. Um, and they're looking for it in all, in all sorts of places, New York Fashion Week is another place where they're looking at creativity from another lens, right? Um, they're also very data backed. And so it's really, you can't wishwash them with, uh, fluffy claims really need to be granular about what it is that you're delivering to them and why. Um, and yeah, and they really want to see you in action. So it's, it's sort of, I would think about creativity. I would think about where they find the inspiration for their creativity. And then I would think about when they're doing business, they're in business and they really want the facts. I think our listeners will see themselves and that answer Michelle. I want to switch to the creative brief. My first question is you grew up in Israel, but have not lived there for many years. Do you get homesick much? Um, I do. Uh, but now I have my kids and my husband here. So it feels like a, you know, our family, but for sure. How often do you get back? Uh, once a year usually. Yeah. Yeah. What do you, what do you like doing first when you go back? Is there a food, a drink, a place? I just like to hang out with my parents and have some coffee and there's in their living room. That sounds sweet. Now the first brand you remember making an impact on you as a young girl. I think there's two. Um, when is Kit Kat? My, yeah, my great grandmother, uh, who's British, my grandmother would take me to her home where a senior citizens home where she was, she had Alzheimer's and we would bring her Kit Kat. Um, and she wouldn't remember who we were, who my grandmother was, where she was, who she was. But she knew that 4 p.m. was Kit Kat time. Um, and it was like a lovely experience of her. Um, the other one is, uh, Yamaha and Sydney Yamaha piano pianos. Um, I started playing piano at the age of eight and, um, I think that it's hard to explain the age of eight. But now as I look back, I think it was the first brand that really allowed me for self-expression. And, uh, you know, I grew up in a home where like I didn't really decide what I was going to wear or was it going to eat at the age of eight, but I totally decide what I was on, what I was going to play. Do you still play? I do. Yeah. What do Yamaha? On a Yamaha. I couldn't afford a Yamaha for the longest time. And what I could, it was this magical moment. Your most memorable course that you took at Wharton. Oh, um, probably Jerry wins. Uh, it was called, um, the instructing mental models. So many of those lines. Yeah. It was really about how innovation is created through different types of thinking. Jerry will be happy to hear this. What do you think your superpower is as a leader? Um, humility. Uh, just connecting to people and first and foremost wanting to wanting them to connect back. What are you working on as a leader? Uh, I'm very biased to action and as a result of speed. Uh, and I think a lot of leaders more relate to this, the, the more senior you get, the more people you need to lead the bigger the lift is the slower it gets. And so having the patience, uh, to move the, the big ship, but knowing that once it's moved, it's, it's really on its leg. So how did you make that shift to be able to move from the action orientation to, you know, a bit more intentional, maybe a bit slower so people can come along with you in any tips on that because it is something a lot of people struggle with as they get more and more senior. Yeah. Um, I don't know that I've perfected it by any means, um, and I'm still extreme, biased action and really on speed. Um, I think very clear communication and constant communication. Um, where people understand where you're coming from, what you're thinking, how are you thinking about it and clear communication in the other direction, right? It's, it's much easier to know why things aren't moving as quickly as you'd want them to when you realize the, um, complexity and richness of the work is being done. Who's been the most influential mentor in your career? David Rubin. Um, we, I worked for him at Unilever. He, uh, he was the first leader that, I mean, I'm not even going to talk about his marketing magic. He's just beyond exceptional. Um, but he was the first leader that was really authentic and, uh, and I, and, and was. The most senior person that I met that was actually himself. Um, and I could see how I could grow up to be somebody who's not one of these cookie cut or like super charismatic people, uh, in front of teens, but actually really smart, genuine individual, um, who could bring together a team and sort of take them out to like win and market. We're recording this episode around Valentine's Day. So what relationships are you most grateful for in your life? Um, my husband, uh, we've been best friends since I was 18, probably 16. Oh well. How did you meet? We met in high school. We didn't date in high school. We did when I first started my army service. Um, but I think he, and he is an ex-pianjier. You, you'd love to know, I'm sure. Um, so he, he's a lot of the best people in each, there we go. Uh, he's one of the first people that introduced me to brand building and, um, and I think he's, we just build on each other's, uh, strengths and are there for, uh, to hold up in the weaknesses. And we've, we've sort of built everything from scratch together. Um, and we've made a lot of transitions and trade offs together. And, uh, yeah, I think he's there when I need to talk about a business problem. Um, yeah. So how do you deal with the, the conflict? I'm sure you have when you're in the grocery store and you're looking at a brand from Unilever or a brand from PNG. Which one do you buy? I'm always right. So it has to be in labor. Do you buy any PNG brands? We, we've, I tied. How's that? Okay. Good. All right. I'll give you that. Well, you should be buying time. It is better, you know, I can show you the demos. Yes. So Michelle, this has been a wonderful conversation. I've asked you a lot of thoughtful questions. I'll now turn the microphone. Do you have anything you want to ask me before we sign off? What's your favorite Unilever brand? Magnum. I mean, I remember, you know, it's not the first brand I remember in my life, but we PNG sent us to Eastern Europe. And when my kids were young and it was my first general manager job. So it was changing countries, changing levels, blah, blah, blah, bring in the family with me. We lived in Prague and Magnum wasn't in the US then. And I just remember taking walks and stopping with the kids and getting a Magnum bar. You know, and all the beautiful little streets and cafes and, and it was just part of our ritual. And we'd go out for a walk at night or on a summer day. And Magnum was very much a part of that. So if you ask my kids that they would have very vivid memories and they still love the brand. That's amazing. It's a great company, by the way, and I have many friends from Unilever. I have, you know, Keith, we eat and I go back and forth a lot. I went to the flower show with him last year. He invited my wife and I to the Chelsea flower show. We did that together. Simon Clift and I have skied together after we both left our companies. So the PNG people and Unilever people have a lot in common. Yep, I even get married once in a while. I love it. I love it. Michelle, thank you. Thanks so much. You too. That was my conversation with Michelle Tate. Three takeaways from this one for your business brand and life. The first one is curiosity. We talk a lot in this show about how this characteristic is so important for marketers and for CMOs. Michelle takes this to a new level. She is a highly curious person, which helps her be a more effective leader and frankly helps her be a more fulfilled, happy human being. Second takeaway, the importance of trust building in a new role. Trust building is important all the time, but especially when you're moving into a new role, new team, in a vulnerable situation for your success. And for the situation for yourself and for the team. Michelle went to it, went to Mailchimp after it acquired it. And the first thing she did was go in listening to build trust with her new team. Third takeaway and relate it, our responsibility as CMOs is to build really strong cultures in our direct teams and throughout our company. One ritual Michelle has to build this culture is a weekly letter that goes out at the end of the week with fun things, things they're proud of, celebrations, work that happened that week, which is really, really important for the company and silly things as well. That's it for this episode of the CMO Podcast. 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