Microsoft's Carly Morris on winning data driven marketing with a people centric approach

"A computer can do [your marketing], if that's all you care about. But are you having those ideas that actually connect with humans?"

Carly Morris, Global Head of Acquisition & Growth at Microsoft Advertising, is on a mission to keep people at the heart of data driven marketing. In a world full of anxiety about AI "taking jobs" and endless margin pressures, marketing leaders need to remember that true originality and connection come from humans. Creating an environment in which they thrive is essential to get the most out of your people. Moreover, data is just a starting point - really understanding it and the whole story behind it only comes from speaking to people.

Tune in to hear why Carly's shiny new object is people centric leadership in an AI evolution, and how she's ensuring her people do their best work in the best possible environment.

The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.

Carly Morris 0:00
Be curious, because not all data is created equal, and not all data is measured in the same way, even when you're working with similar competitive platforms.

Speaker 0:09
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Tom Ollerton 0:48
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton, the founder of automated creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform, and this is a podcast about the future of data driven marketing. Every week or so I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing one of our industry's leaders of their vision for the future of data driven marketing, and this week is no different. I'm on a call Carly Morris, the newly appointed Global Head of acquisition growth at Microsoft advertising. So Carly, for anyone who doesn't know who you want, what you do. Can you give us a quick bit of background?

Carly Morris 1:23
Yeah, sure. And first, thank you for having me very excited to be on the podcast. So I am originally from New York. I live outside of London now, and I've been in this wonderful industry, I'd say, since I was a paid search intern in 2006. I've been at Microsoft the last 10 years of my career, helping to build out their media and ad tech.

Tom Ollerton 1:45
Hold on. You've gone from being a PPC intern to Global Head of acquisition and growth in 10 years.

Carly Morris 1:52
No, 20. 2006 was the internship, but 10 years at Microsoft, yeah, sorry, I skipped through the resume. Yeah, it took some time, I put in my years, paid my dues, but yes, and now I lead growth in acquisition at Microsoft. So focused on bringing in net new advertisers, new to the platform, you know, helping us just build our base. We've been a search shop forever, and now's the time to change that. So it's pretty exciting.

Tom Ollerton 2:25
That is a tough gig mate in sales. I can't... I can't imagine how much, but congrats on the new gig, right...

Carly Morris 2:33
Thank you.

Tom Ollerton 2:34
Okay, so in that 20 year career, from PPC intern to head of absolutely everything, what new belief or behaviour has improved your work life?

Carly Morris 2:43
Yes, so I will say, like many people, was a bit forced upon me once I had two small children. Since they change you, they force you to reevaluate. You know, when I was younger, in those early years, I probably gave too much of myself to my job, and now it's just not possible. So my new belief is knowing thyself. And I know that seems pretty simple, but it means like, when do you work best? When are you most creative? Right? So many people I'm sure have read like, eat the frog first. Are you most patient in the morning. Are you most creative in the morning? I never really took the time to care or think about it. You know, you're typically just on everybody else's schedule and doing what's asked of you. But you know, I've found even sometimes on a Sunday afternoon, if I have a break and a new cup of coffee, I'm actually able to focus because I've had two days away from my inbox, right? I've had two days to not think about work, so as I close out my week, and I might actually have some of my best ideas, so I'm really trying to focus on, like, what works for me. And of course, I'm very lucky. I have a lot of flexibility in when I can, you know work, and adjust to my family, work life, but I think getting to know who I am and how I do things best has been a game changer for me in setting those boundaries between my work and my personal life.

Tom Ollerton 4:08
I remember my daughter's seven, and when she was born, I spoke to Nathan McDonald, my boss at We Are Social. I said by you know, you did We Are Social, sold it... How did you do that with a family? And he's like, you've got, you've gotta trust your subconscious. So take it all in, be a sponge, and then just assume that your brain's gonna work it out, you know, by the time you have to make decision or do a thing, whereas when you don't have the kids thing, you know, well, I'm gonna work till nine o'clock at night, or, do you know what? I'll pop over my laptop on Saturday or whatever, you know, and you can just sort of contrive it. But then, but I was like, All right, okay, well, I'm not completely thick, so I'll just let my I'll just let the, you know, the stuff that I can't control, work on the problem. And it sounds like you have a similar approach.

Carly Morris 4:50
Totally, that you just have to kind of know that it's not always going to happen. Like sometimes I sit in a meeting. I'm not trying to be the most outspoken. I'm not trying to always have the most, you know... Creative point, because it might not come to me right then I'm still taking it in, like you said. You're still absorbing. You can always follow up. You can always bring a new idea to someone later on and have a great conversation about it. So it's putting less pressure on myself to always be at everything and have that, you know, big idea or new thing to work on in every single meeting, it might come to me two weeks later, you know. And that's okay, it's progress over perfection.

Tom Ollerton 5:24
You think a bit recently about, you're obviously motivated, you're obviously ambitious, you obviously have a strong work ethic and, like, but not everyone has. You kind of assume that all of your competition are all literally on it, and they're amazing. And, yeah, have, like, amazing work life balance, and they go to the gym at four in the morning, and they sleep over and bored and, you know, don't like the, you know, people I work with, and whatever you know then it but actually bringing the best version of yourself whenever it happens. Can I sometimes be a lot better than what everyone else is doing? I think, yeah, oh myself, to make myself feel better. So we'll move on now to your best bit of data driven marketing advice, right? So what is that? What do you find yourself sharing with folk on this topic?

Carly Morris 6:10
Yes, I was thinking a lot about that because I wanted to think of something different that no one else has said. But, you know, I've worked in performance marketing a very long time and working at Microsoft, you can imagine we have so much data. The thing I tell people is, be curious, because not all data is created equal, and not all data is measured in the same way, even when you're working with similar, competitive platforms. We talk about this a lot, and I think it's even more important with the emergence of AI and how we're processing data and LLMs... Like two platforms that do very similar things, they even could be competing and out there in marketing saying they have the same value prop. They might be processing data differently. Their lag times might be different. Their match rates might be calculated in different ways. And I see this often, where our customers and partners, they're looking at us and they're comparing us apples to apples. But it might not always be. So I always recommend folks ask, How is data processed? How does your algorithm learn? Right? How is your AI learning? What is the period that you best recommend for it to learn? You can't always compare data across different platforms, different marketing types of different media in the same ways, but, yeah, but I think, you know, it's tough. We're all super busy in this industry, and everybody needs to just get their data presented to them and compare and who's got the best rates and who's got the best value and etc, and so on. But I think if you really want to understand where your data is coming from, how it's processed, how it's measured, how it might differ, what's the you know, algorithm lead time? Like all those things are actually really important to understanding if you're getting the best performance, not just reading a data as it's presented to you, surface value.

Tom Ollerton 7:53
Good points.

Tom Ollerton 8:00
So now you're going to move on to your shiny new object. I really want to get into this one. It's people centric leadership in an AI evolution sounds very great. I know we agreed on it. This sounds very grand, doesn't it?

Carly Morris 8:16
I know someone in marketing call in and give us a better name for it. What, what I mean is, is something that I'm very passionate about right now is, I think, when you look at marketing and ad tech right now, you look at the world of AI, everybody is afraid, you know, AI is going to take over a computers are going to do our jobs. You look across the marketing, ad tech industries, we're seeing lots of layoffs, lots of reorgs. It just feels like there's so much margin pressure. And what I often see happening in organisations is that they default to extrinsic motivators, right? They default to just looking at revenue. They default to pay and bonuses and revenue as goals, and all the stuff that we as leaders always believed in before, right, all the stuff around culture and intrinsic motivators and enablement and education and just general happiness seems to be the first thing to go. Even though we all believe that, you know, happy employees work harder, happy employees produce more. So I'm on a quest to ensure, and maybe it's not entirely new, but that in this emergence of AI and technology, people still stay at the centre, because the we are the ones that are bringing in those innovations and and ideas and moving, you know, the technology along.

Tom Ollerton 9:41
Yeah, because I guess the worst version of that is just AI search, isn't it? It's just like... where should I put my marketing quid, give me a pros and cons list with the data. And to go back to your earlier point that you'd have Microsoft advertising versus whoever else, whoever else. All right, okay, there's the best ROI at the end. Cool. Let's go and hire those people. But as you say, it misses all the nuance, misses the context and humans. Probably, I think you're saying the people to deliver that, that crucial bit of data that goes alongside the numerical data, right? What signs are you seeing that the spreadsheet people are taking over and forgetting the soft stuff?

Carly Morris 10:20
Well, again, I think, I think a lot of margin pressure and layoffs in our industry are a leading indicator. Again, when you look at it from the creative marketing side, everyone has become a lot more bottom funnel, right? We're all trying to please the CFO instead of the CMO, trying to ensure that the ROI is at peak and at the lowest cost, and sure, a computer could probably do that, if that's all you care about. But you know, are you having those ideas that actually connect with humans, right? Like is the work that you're doing is, you know, the marketing that you're driving, are you creating and connecting with humans? And that's only going to come from employees who have space to be creative, who have space to think, who feel stable in their environment of work, who don't feel you know, worried that a bot is going to take their job tomorrow, right? If you want to really build human connections in marketing and media and ad tech, you're going to still need those creative people to do so, and we're not seeing, I think, enough fostering of that culture anymore in this industry. In my opinion.

Tom Ollerton 11:33
I'm wondering if a natural yin to the yang of the high speed, low quality AI situation that we're in is stuff that comes back slowly. So that's a personal story. So my dad was visiting, and my wife said, Well, can you think of some ideas for food? So that was my brain just went, right, just message my dad, like, what does what does your wife eat? Not, not. Each person needs food wise. And then, you know, and then I'll just whack it in the chatGPT. Before I'd even done it, my wife was like, don't use chatGPT, because what she wanted was me to think about it, to care about it, to put some love into it. Yeah, because she was and is and deserved the same from me. So actually, she would rather have a slow answer than me, efficient man like this in one, like, one minute, one minute and a half. So, I mean, so I'm wondering, like, yes, it hasn't happened yet, but if someone comes back to me quickly, I'm going to be like, really, like, was that? Was it an AI? But like, Okay, well, we're gonna really think about this. So we're gonna come back to you in a month. Oh, my God, this is gonna be amazing. It's gonna take a month. I don't know. It's like, is that? Like, everyone wants their fast, new, cheap thing. So, and human nature is to swing back the other way. So what is swinging back the other way?

Carly Morris 12:47
You know, I think you're on to something. I'm actually just started reading a new book. I'm not very far. So don't ask me to go too much into it, but it's called how big things get done. I love leadership books. I'm such a nerd toy, but the very first chapter is titled, think slow, act fast. And I think you're on to something, because that's, that's what we're we're potentially missing, right? That love, that care, that personalization, that builds those true connections again, that comes from people, that comes from having time to think and space to think, if we just want fast responses, they're not always going to be the best ones, right? If we just want fast performance, it's not necessarily going to be as big or as creative as we thought it could be. It's not going to be bold, it's not going to be ambitious, it's going to be just data driven. And don't get me wrong, like I said, I've been in performance forever. I believe in data driven marketing, we absolutely need it to evaluate, and AI is going to help us do so much more, but we've still got to create space for that slow thinking, that creativity and again, that's got to come from fostering environments for people to do so.

Tom Ollerton 13:59
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Tom Ollerton 14:36
Yeah, and I just finished, I just went to publish a book called using creativity and data in marketing. And one of the big things that came back from the research I put like 40 interviews with all these far smarter people than me, was that, yes, data driven marketing, but it can't just be the cheap, quick, easy to get your hands on data. Sure you can open up your whatever dashboard for any of the platforms, and there's a deluge of data there, but that is not the same as the data of you sitting slightly to one in a pub or a cafe or in store or like, you know, ask speaking to people. It's hard, it's slow, it's expensive, it's, you know, it's you need, it's you need far more of it in order to for it to be robust. But you do need that and slurp that you don't get that stuff quickly, right?

Carly Morris 15:24
Yes. And to both your examples, right? It misses that human element. It misses that real life experience. I see this all the time. I see it in my own organisation right now, where leadership just looks at a bunch of data and they think that they have the answer, but they missed out on the opportunity to go ask questions of the people doing the work, to go ask questions of the people on the front line speaking to our customers. They miss that opportunity. They just look at data. They often miss something critical. And some of the best ideas that we've had, products we've created, have come from that real, deep understanding of the person and those real life lived in experiences, you're not going to get that just looking at data. You have to understand the context. You have to understand the environment. So I absolutely agree with you, like that human element is so crucial, and I just don't want it to get overlooked. You know, that's my fear.

Tom Ollerton 16:18
So someone's listening to this thinking, Oh my God. Like, okay, my big you know, I'll dispute confessional. So what I'm doing, I mean, I record all of my calls openly on I use, I use otter, and what I do is, especially if it's been an important or tricky session, I'll take that and I'll put it through like a closed AI GPT thing going right? What was what did I do well, what did I do badly? And they say, Tom, you did this. That was great. And then, like a great leader would have done it. It's brilliant for me, because it just helps me see all these things that I couldn't see and say, Well, next time you speak to Carly, you know, maybe they'll talk over the whole time, you know, that kind of... And that's really helped me, but now we now, you're talking about people centric leadership. I'm like, Oh God, like, am I putting too much trust? Am I stopping using that sensitive, empathetic muscle?

Carly Morris 17:13
Yeah, you know what? I think the data becomes a starting point. It becomes a way to fill in the gaps as you need to. But I had a similar situation. I was, you know, having a rough summer, not sure where my career was going, kind of thing, and a friend sent me an AI prompt, and they were like, go to copilot and say, you know, treat me like a friend. Be super honest. Look at my emails, look at my chats, look at my interactions. And like, remind me why I'm a good leader. Someone sent me this, and I was like, Cool, I need this today, like, I'm going in. And it gave me some grateful points back. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy. But as I was reading it, I was like, this is just looking at really recent data. It's not taking into account, you know, context, or, honestly, the majority of the last 10 years, or, you know, it wasn't there for the conversations where I was people centric, where I helped someone through a really tough day. And not that I, you know, couldn't remind myself of those things, but it just made me think, like, Oh, this is... these are helpful points. But if I really wanted someone to get to know me and what I'm good at and what makes me a good leader. This doesn't do it. This doesn't show the human side, the people side. This doesn't show the communication that I do. You know, it's missing something. And it actually made me think of myself and believe in myself again. So it was a good starting point, but it's, it's not going to have that context. It's not going to know, you know, unless you continue to prompt it right? I probably could have re engaged it, but there's just stuff that's missing. So yes, trust the data. Yes, use the technology. But again, when I, when I think about leadership too, it's also making sure that you're trusting in people. So it's not even just about yourself, right? The data is telling you one thing, but are you also taking the time to bring it to your teams and say, Hey, this is what the data is telling me. What do you think? What was your experience? What what context is the data missing? Was there a nuance in the data? Was there a nuance in the customer? Was there a nuance in the brief? That's that's the element when it comes to people centric leadership, it's not ignoring the data, but it's making sure that the data, you know, the data might not tell the whole story, and making sure that you're speaking to people who really care and trusting their care, that they're going to give you the rest of the story.

Tom Ollerton 19:29
Yeah, all of the AIs are trained on things within a box, generally speaking, a square or rectangle, or in an email, yeah, video or something. But as it's like, it can't possibly process what it felt like to walk into a room with the same person over three years. You know, changing body language, tone of voice, all that sort of stuff that we that we don't track. I actually always think if I was going to do another business. I think there's so much wasted data from these calls, because you'd get, you get your little put. A copilot transcript, or, you know, Riverside, or whatever it is, but, like, we shared a tonne of emotions, it's not been that emotional, but generally, a smile...doesn't it. Can I do it? If only I didn't co run Automated Creative, I'd go and do that. But there you go. I could, I could talk to you about this all day. You've really, you've really reawakened my passion for this. You know, like, well, when my business partner wrote a ... did a lovely post the other day, talking about, she said something along the lines of, like, really proud of our work. You know, McDonald's marginal, these kind of people, but she's as proud, if not more proud, of how we work, and that's finishing at 3 on a Friday. No meeting Fridays, family first, yeah, all of this people centric stuff, and to be honest it's mostly come from her and it, and that's a big part of Automated Creative like this is that people centric understanding. But then I'm also obsessed with messing around with AI as well. So hopefully, hopefully...

Carly Morris 21:03
It's, it's a balance, right? It's just, it's just a gentle reminder for all of us you know that have become so succumbed to margin, margin pressure, who have grown into leadership positions over our career. Like, think about the time when you did your best work. How did you feel? How did you feel walking into your office every day. How did you feel walking into meetings? Did you feel welcome? Did you feel encouraged to speak up and come up with new ideas? Like, there's something that got a lot of us to the positions that we're in, and usually it was somebody creating space for us. So, you know, I think human centric leadership, whatever better marketing term someone comes up with for this... You know, it's just, it's just those gentle reminders that it's not all about the data, it's not all about the technology, it's not all about the dollar signs, like our people are, what make that and you'll still see the same results. And I've seen that myself. When I'm the only one focusing on culture, I'm still going to see those same results. I might even see better results than those that are not because their teams are just not, as you know, stable, not as encouraged, not working in as much of a safe space as maybe the folks on my team are, and I value that over everything.

Tom Ollerton 22:18
And I guess also, and I've been in sales for getting on for 20 years. You know, it's a pretty... It's a brutal environment, right? There's not a tonne of praise and affirmation going around. It's quite the opposite, right? You're working in a vacuum of that. And occasionally get the win connection, the meeting, whatever, and you get all that euphoria. But sometimes it's days, weeks, months, where you just like, just keep keep going, keep turning the wheel, and since you remove fairly people centric leadership from that scenario it being pretty bleak.

Carly Morris 22:44
I mean, I couldn't imagine being motivated in that. And don't get me wrong, there are lots of places still getting it very, very right. You know, it's not everywhere, but I think again, you just see this shift in focus. You see this shift in vibes right now. You know, I even had a leader say, like, tides are turning, you know, in the ad industry. And I'm like, do they have to though? Like, can we hang on? Like, can we, can we, can we keep a hold on culture? Can we bring back the bullpen bells that people ding? And, you know, like, there's a way to still focus on wins, but make it fun again. And I, you know, I see again, places still doing it right. And I hope a lot of us that you know work in those environments can continue to encourage it, or, you know, others, others find their groove again.

Tom Ollerton 23:30
Yeah, it's like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg's announcement, that by the end of next year, is going to automate all advertising, and it's not going to exist anymore. And I thought, yeah, it's difficult when a big platform says something like that, but fundamentally, he's right if marketing is an engineering problem and it's not; either sales, right? Yes, you can engineer outbound, deal, flow, scoring, all that stuff, you know, you do, we do. But actually it's not, it's sales isn't an engineering problem. It's a people problem. So really, people see how many sales you get.

Carly Morris 24:05
Yeah and that's exactly it. And I feel like I'm belabouring it at this point, but I've seen those quotes out there, right of like, AI is not going to take your jobs. The good, the good people will survive, or the hardest working will survive, or whatever. And I'm like, okay, but are we still enabling people to be hard working, or are we still enabling them to be successful and achieve things? Have we cut all training budgets, you know? Like, see that a lot like...

Tom Ollerton 24:06
You know, like the company, company social is downstairs, by the coffee machine, bring a sandwich.

Carly Morris 24:07
But yes, like, we need to still create environments to enable that success. And sure, at the end of the day, not everyone might survive, but, but did we help at all? Did we know, or did we just rely on the technology? And I hope that's a question leaders are asking themselves, like, okay, yes, maybe this is the outcome, but, but what did we do to enable that success along the way? And hopefully they're still focused on those internal, centric tools and cultural motivators that get everybody a chance to get there.

Tom Ollerton 25:07
We've overrun and that's because it's been good. If Automated Creative gets gobbled up by Mark Zuckerberg, I'm going to come and call you and beg you for a job, because I think working for you right? If someone wants to get in touch with you. Where's the best place to do that and what makes a message that you will actually respond to?

Carly Morris 25:26
Yes, so LinkedIn is a great place to, I'm actually forward slash Carly Maverick. That is my maiden name.

Tom Ollerton 25:34
Why did you change that?

Carly Morris 25:36
I know I'm so sorry. I wanted my kids to have the same last name. That's that's really the only reason. And I'll stay on theme for this one. I think, if you're reaching out and please do let me know that you're I'm not on some automated, you know, marketing outreach list, because I get a lot of those. You know, if you saw something you were interested in, if you went to my university, if you listen to the podcast, like mention it, you know, like mention a reason. You're reaching out. That's that's real, that's authentic, that's unique, that's personal, and you'll get a response.

Tom Ollerton 26:14
Yeah, gosh, I have strong feelings about that. Carly, I've got to go. I would love to carry talking. Thank you so much.

Carly Morris 26:21
Same. Thank you so much. Tom, appreciate it.

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