Episode 243 / Grant McKenzie / Asahi Europe & International / Chief Marketing Officer
How AI Is Helping Marketers Get Back to Profound Work
Grant McKenzie, the CMO of Asahi Europe & International, has a long and varied experience in marketing. He started his career at Mars and moved on to SABMiller, which took him to different new countries and markets, enabling him to appreciate the nuances of marketing around the world. In his role at Asahi Europe & International, he now oversees a global team of 200 marketers. He credits moving around the world with “stretching the mind muscles” to understand cultural diversity better.
Artificial Intelligence - Still A Shiny New Object
Grant finds AI fascinating and exciting - like many of our other podcast guests. But it’s not just the speed, it’s also the quality of output that is impressive for the stage of development we’re currently in.
"AI can eliminate or reduce 60-65% of work, freeing time for inspiring and exciting marketing efforts," he says. In an organisation where Grant feels that marketers struggle with too much focus on day-to-day tasks, AI is appealing as a way to streamline processes. It is also a ticket to going back to “the great idea” and to more profound, human-driven work.
AI’s Impact On the Industry
Grant believes AI will accelerate changes already underway, such as marketers taking more control of the creative process and agencies needing to adapt to this. While AI experts are not a priority hire, he now looks for marketers who can leverage AI to enhance strategic efforts.
"The basic people who write mediocre briefs don't really understand consumers. We don't need them anymore." Grant sees AI making the skills of profound marketers all the more valuable in the future.
Learn more about why AI is a great leveller, and why people remain at the core of Grant’s marketing strategy, in the full episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Grant McKenzie 0:00
Goodness gracious me, marketers. Holy smokes. We are very, very, very similar people. And I think we just need to be aware of that our job is not to market to ourselves and our friends, but to understand the people out there.
Tom Ollerton 0:18
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform. And this is a podcast about the future of data driven marketing. And I get to interview some of the high flyers and celebrities from this industry. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Grant McKenzie, who is CMO at Asahi, Europe and international. Grant, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do. Can you give us a bit of background?
Grant McKenzie 0:43
Yeah, sure. Hi, Tom. Hi, everyone. So I'm Grant, I started my career in marketing in 97. Working for Mars in Slough. Working in a chocolate factory is just a fantastic thing to do. I got to tell you, so I spent eight years there. And in 2005, I moved from chocolate to beer, as you do. And I joined the global beer company called SABMiller. I spent about 11-12 years in various local marketing roles across Europe. And in 2017, the business was bought by Asahi, which is a Japanese beer company. And since then, I've been doing above market and global roles. So today I look after the marketing function in Asahi Europe & International, it's around about 200 people in marketing, mostly situated in the local markets. And I also look after the five global brands. The two most famous are Peroni, Nastro Azzurro, and ASAHI SUPER DRY. So that's me.
Tom Ollerton 1:39
So Graham, in that career, what has been the best investment of your time, energy or money?
Grant McKenzie 1:46
Well, I think there's no question for me that having grown up in Scotland, going to university in Scotland, starting my job, or my working life, in the UK, moving abroad, getting out, seeing the big world, living in foreign places. So in 2000, I moved to the Czech Republic, which was a bit rough and ready in those days, a tremendous experience, the language, Czech language is kind of like Chinese, it's extremely hard, I think it's the fifth most hard language in the world to learn for English speakers. So that kind of took you a little bit out of your comfort zone, or took me out of my comfort zone. I lived in Spain, which was, ironically, probably, culturally the most challenging place for a Scotsman to live, you know, so many things were different. And I think in terms of marketing, it really helps you stretch your mind muscles. Because the things that you consider to be normal or common, you realize are very culturally specific. So they may be very true in the UK, but very much do not apply in other markets. I think also in terms of leadership, you know, the ability to connect with people from different cultures. I mean, and my job today is to connect with Italians and Romanians, who are passionate Latins, as well as Dutch, and Polish, and even fruity British people. So I think no question for me that having that international experience working in different markets, has been a game changer. I mean, just the other week, I was actually in China, Shanghai for the first time. And wow, is that different? You know, I think one of the questions you ask in global marketing is, when you're developing a brand for, you know, the world, which markets are genuinely different, because everybody says they're different, but what sometimes you recognize there are very few differences, you know, surface differences, yes, but not deep, meaningful differences with consumers. But then you go to China, and you go, Okay, it's different. It's really different here. The use of technology in that place is just like absolutely stunning.
Give me an example of that, what was it that struck you there as being like profoundly different?
Well, there's people on the street selling bits of chocolate, you know, street salespeople, and they have a QR code tied around their neck. And you essentially you pay for everything with online mobile. You just pay for mobile with absolutely everything. There's beggars, people begging, and they've got a QR code. So I think the use of tech is quite stunning. The fact is that you go to a supermarket. So in our case, if you sell beer, you're quite used to doing market visits in supermarkets. How does the category look? How's that merchandise? Well, there was no one there. There were like about 50, 50 to 100 staff. And we were the only shoppers. And we were like, Oh, it must be a quiet time. And they're like, no, no, no, it's this is normal. So basically, everything is online. Everybody gets everything delivered. So you know, Category Management, as we might have called it in the past doesn't mean anything here because it's online shopping entirely. So So it makes you think, wow. And I guess, you know, places like China and parts of Eastern Europe where I spent a long time working, you know, have skipped is this leapfrogging concept. So they went from having no phones, to 100%, you know, broadband connection, and mobile phones everywhere. So it shows you that how technology can really change lifestyles, I guess.
Tom Ollerton 5:23
So how does that glimpse into a completely different tech and marketing and fulfillment culture help you plan what you're going to do in the next couple of years?
Grant McKenzie 5:33
Well, clearly, you get some inspiration and ideas about how you could reach consumers in a different way, or talk to people in a different way. But it also gives you a foresight of what's to come. And you look at the brands that have been successful in that environment, or the categories that have been successful. And it gives you a perspective, I think, you know, sometimes in the past, there was a feeling that from the west or from the UK, we were bringing expertise to the east. But in fact, in my experience, now, it is much the other way. And when I say east, I don't just mean China or Asia, but also, you know, Eastern Europe, a lot of great practices are were there, you know, I think are, are would be really relevant to the UK market, because it's certainly interesting in our category, the development of the category, the profitability of the category, the brand development category, in many cases in Eastern Europe is more successful than Western Europe. So I think it gives you a foresight about what can be achieved.
Tom Ollerton 6:39
So I have this theory that the goal of all innovation is to become completely boring, it has to start off as like a shiny new object, right? It has like whether that's AI or voice or you know, like one click delivery, or whatever it is, like the first time you do these things you go Oh, wow. Or like, first time you spoke to Alexa, for example, the way it came back was quite impressive. But for these things to work, they've got to scale and they've got to become commonplace. And as soon as they become commonplace, they cease to be interesting. So that you know, the world you're talking about where you're paying everything on a QR code, even like someone who's having a challenging time, and they're begging on the street for money, like at the point that becomes ubiquitous, it ceases to be interesting as a thing in itself.
Grant McKenzie 7:16
Well, I would say that usefulness overtakes novelty. So I think it's, yeah, the technology becomes more useful than entertainment. And at the beginning, it's more like entertainment or niche. But yeah, you know, you've made it when it becomes, you know, useful, incredibly useful. It's true. Well, I think for marketeers, the other thing I just wanted to mention was language. So I think, you know, British people are pretty bad at learning languages. You know, I left school and I had, you know, studies in chemistry and physics, which have turned out to be completely useless to me. I wish I'd learned the languages, but now that I have learned a couple of languages, it really exercises also different muscles around, you know, words, because I think, great marketeers have some of the skills of the great authors or journalists, you know, you need to be able to use language and understand how language can influence I think, people. So I must say that's made a profound impact on me, as well. I wouldn't underestimate it.
Tom Ollerton 8:23
I always think on the British point there that Europe gets the good weather, but they all have to learn to speak our language. Yeah, I think that's a reasonable trade off.
Moving on, we're going to move to your top tip, basically, what is your top data driven marketing tip that you find yourself relying on or sharing or calling back to?
Grant McKenzie 8:47
Well, I think it's just a mindset. And I, I'm very sure I'm not the only one in this podcast who said this, but marketeers have to realize that most people are not like us. And our job is not to market to ourselves and our friends, but to understand the people out there, you know, so, I think we've got lots of data on our business, and most of it is not used today. So sometimes when I hear that, the future is going to be like, you know, data lead, like, well, we've got bunch of data, people don't use it. People are the people are the weak link here. Humans are most complex people. And I guess, you know, my advice is just remind yourself that people are not like us. marketeers are a strange breed. You know, there's a, there's an interesting statistic about how, like, how similar people are together. And they looked at generations, and one of the things I think, is very unreliable is generational demographic marketing, you know, oh we're going to market to Gen Z or Gen X or Gen, whatever. And you realize these people are not very homogeneous at all. And they... but they did this survey and they find that you know, for example, being a lawyer, you've got obviously much more in common with other lawyers than you do with people from your own generation doing other things, but not nearly as much as marketeers, goodness gracious me, market, dears, holy smokes, we are very, very, very similar people. And I think we just need to be aware of that.
Tom Ollerton 10:19
So I'll just go back one step to saying you've got a ton of data in the business, but it's not being used. And people are the weak link, which is nice. But why isn't that data being used? Like you're not the only business that produces a massive amount, but you think there's been unused by the business or by marketers help me understand that a bit more?
Grant McKenzie 10:37
What I think I think marketeers generally like to focus on the outputs, the creativity, the stuff that appears in the market, which I understand, me, too. And the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. So understanding the opportunity, quantifying that is just the time, it's just the area you want to spend, they want to spend less time on, I think there is the bias around when the data and the numbers confirm my opinion, I definitely use it. And when they don't, yeah, maybe they're not right. You know, so I think having that discipline, you know, to use the numbers. I think it's just sometimes challenging to, to, to make it work in an organization. It's like, you know, when you ask about advice, you know, you give marketing, young, young, ambitious marketing people, I mean, I guess it's obvious what I would say this, but I would say, you know, go join the big marketing schools, go and join the big companies, learn your trade, learn the skills, don't go into a startup, you know, don't, don't go and do your own YouTube channel, yet, don't spend a lot of money on an idea that you think is brilliant, because probably 95% is going to fail. And you'll learn something from failure, I get that. But you know, a lot of lots of reasons it's failed, you could have predicted had you got the right training in the first place. So I think, you know, there's, there's a little bit of a tendency to walk away from, you know, discipline and kind of traditional schools of marketing. But in fact, I think they're a brilliant place to get the foundation. And so I think, you know, the numbers question for me is, is not: Do we need more data or better data? But do we have a culture where people, you know, use it and think about it? And I guess that's the biggest challenge for most organizations.
Tom Ollerton 12:21
And what do you think's the most important skill here? So I love that little anecdote you like, oh, when the data supports my view, I'll ride that out all day long. And then if it doesn't, then you say, Hey, man, I'm experienced. Come on, I know a good creative idea when I see one. Both of those things are true, right? But what is the skill? Like if you're advising someone who's who's Junior on your team, and they're coming up, and you're saying, Look, you need to leverage the data in the right way and leverage your creative muscle? Like, what's the most core and common practice that you see in people that are doing this?
Grant McKenzie 12:51
Well I think it's all about making connections. So the data tells me this brand is losing market share. Well, that's, that's just one point. Whatever data points do you have there? Well, we have their advertising tracking performance. Okay, we have their price point and their promotional rates, we have their distribution. And you start to put the pieces together, it's like having, you know, a page with like six or eight pieces of information, each one on its own, isn't very interesting. But put together, you've got a picture of what might be happening here, and you start to see the impact cause and effect. And I would say, that would be my advice is don't use, use as much of the source data as you can and try and build up a holistic picture of what's happening here. It's like you're diagnosing something. Success and failure, you know, understand both and you'll realize in most cases, particularly in our category, it can be fine lines, it can be 2% drop here, 1% drop here can have quite a profound impact either way. So I think using multiple data source that's that's what's critical.
Tom Ollerton 14:01
This episode of the shiny new object podcast is brought to you in partnership with Madfest whether it's live in London or streamed online to the global marketing community, you can always expect a distinctive and daring blend of fast paced content startup innovation pitches and unconventional entertainment from Madfest events, you'll find me causing trouble on stage recording live versions of this podcast and sharing a beer with the nicest and most influential people in marketing. Check it out at www.madfestlondon.com.
So we're gonna move on now to your shiny new object, which is, I'd say probably the shiniest object around at the minute, which is artificial intelligence. So that's a broad category of that we've got 1015 minutes to get into but I really want to know why you've chosen this as your shiny new object and why for you it represents the future of data driven marketing. Yes. So,
Grant McKenzie 15:01
I am definitely not an expert on AI. But I've got really excited about this. In the last six months, I, we had our marketing conference, and we always think, you know, what's going to be the topic, the theme we want to talk about. And it just struck me that we should talk about AI. So this year, you know, our conference was Terminator 2023, the rise of the marketers. And when I was doing the research for, you know, the presentation, it struck me that this AI can be quite profound for us, I started to play around with it, see how it could be used. And it really got me quite excited more than I was expecting to. So you know, for instance, I did a short summary, I said, Alright, let's try and make a picture for one of our brands, you know, like, classic key visual, if you like. So I put in a few prompts, gave it some information. And what it came back with, I can tell you in about five minutes, was pretty decent. I mean, really decent. We've seen a lot worse work than that from some of our agencies. I looked at, you know, doing a couple of studies, we asked it for some prompts and words came back, you know, some really, really fascinating and insightful stuff. Is it unique? No. So at the moment, I think the challenge is around uniqueness. And that's, I think, the role for marketeers. But on a basic level, it can really speed up things pretty nicely. So I, I challenged us as an organization that, I think, you know, it's not the end of AI is not the end of marketeers, but it is the end of mediocre ones. Because if you're not better than AI, I don't need you. I simply don't need you, because the AI is going to be, you know, obviously cheaper and obviously faster. And I think that's true for marketeers. And I think that's also true for agencies. And I think it will probably accelerate the changes that we started to see things around in housing, taking more control of the creative, I think that stuff will accelerate with AI.
Tom Ollerton 17:10
So it's interesting to hear you say that. And I've also been on a similar journey of experimenting for almost for the fun of it in in a work context. And one of the thing that strikes me about the way that a lot of people are talking about AI is they're marveling at the fact that you can do what they're currently doing faster and cheaper, right, you know, so if you're like write me 50 characters and a social post about this beer and make your 50 characters long, right, it can crank out that thing that would have, you'd have to written a brief or gone to the agency, they'll have to come up with five different versions, you'd have a discussion about it, whereas you can correct this outright. So essentially, let's assume that the quality is the same, right? Which I think you're alluding that it will, it will get there, but it's not quite there, once the quality is the same, and everyone's doing everything a bit faster and a bit cheaper. And it's not like it's a big investment, ChatGPT is like 10-20 quid a month and like that, maybe more, it's easy to use, you don't need any training, and it's cheap, which by my logic means that everyone will do it at some point. And when everyone's doing it, everyone's gonna save that 20% in production, everyone's gonna save that 20% in creative time, or whatever it is, then becomes a different zero. So what I'm really curious to know, what was coming out of your head now at your conference was, what are you guys gonna do differently? Or what do you think certain people in the industry will do differently now that they have this technology that can do stuff far quicker?
Grant McKenzie 18:25
Well, I think I think about it a little differently. So you know, 60-65% of our work that consumes the time of our people, is that kind of work. And if that work can either be eliminated or reduced, it gives you more time to do the stuff that we know, we should be doing more of, we just don't have the time or always the money to do it, which are the really profound stuff. So you're right, the biggest challenge from AI is, everything's going to look the same. It's not going to be completely wrong, but it's not going to be inspiring or exciting, necessarily. And that's where the space for the true marketeers comes in. And the true agency work. That's really, really profound. And I think, you know, we've, we had this concept in the past of the big idea, the big creative idea, which was like a unifying concept that would really excite consumers and could be used, you know, through the line. At the moment, you know, we run around, do so much day to day stuff, so much performance stuff, I think, occasionally that gets lost, and we don't have enough, you know, good solid thinking time. And what I see the advantages of AI is to, you know, just free up time to think about something more profound and important. I think on the cost side, the media has become more fragmented. It's much more challenging to reach people. Yeah, we need the money to reach people. Although, of course, there are other ways of doing it than traditional media. I think one of the reasons we've stepped into sport As partnerships is because sport is a unifying platform. And it's one that does actually reach a lot more people now than some of the traditional media.
Tom Ollerton 20:16
So I don't think anyone's ever talked about advertising in terms of being profound before on this podcast. And it's really interesting for you to bring AI as a topic. But then what you're actually talking about is at the core skill of the marketer, or the agency, as you say, is to is to make those connections and leaps that a machine can't based on feel and experience and a semantic understanding, I guess. So why that surprises me is that that's not happening anyway. Like, is it just because there's so many channels? Is it just because the industry is moving so quickly that you guys don't get the time you need to spend on that having these sort of transformative thoughts? Is that really the problem? There's just it takes too long to do all of this stuff that you don't get enough time to think?
Grant McKenzie 20:56
Yeah, I think there's a lot of management of the day to day, right. So generally speaking, basic work is delegated to junior managers, who don't always write very good briefs. In fact, if you ask my agencies, I think you'll probably see most of the briefs are rubbish. So we have to kind of like, change those, look after them, shepherd it through, it takes a lot of work from the senior managers, instead of actually, you know, giving it to a machine, approving it in one hour. And then having time to think about something more important. And of course, the marketeer's job, you know, communication is what 25% of our job. We are all the time on business cases, looking at financials, we're looking at pricing decisions we're looking at, you know, in store materials and all kinds of other things. So, you know, time is the biggest, I would say challenge at the moment, I think if you ask most, most marketeers, that's if they're honest, they'll say, of course, we'd like more money, always want more money. But, but if we're really honest, our biggest challenge is time. So I my excitement about AI, when I saw how quickly it was able to deliver stuff that was of an acceptable quality yeah, maybe not world shaking, brilliant, but pretty decent. That got me thinking, Wow, all right. Now I can... I've got my, my smart senior managers have got have more time to do other things, the things that we really know could make the big difference. And that's, I think, I think what gets me more excited. And then secondly, the in housing part where we're on the beginning of that journey, we're a bit behind some other people, and we're looking at across business with, you know, 13 languages, and lots of local brands, how can you in house, and I think AI, you can see how that would speed up things like language recognition, and all the rest of it, it could really make that more of a reality for us, you know.
Tom Ollerton 22:52
So if you're going to hire someone, in the next however long and you wanted them to have some AI smarts or experience or knowledge or understanding, what would you want them to be saying to you in that interview to make you think, Ah, right, I need you on my team, because AI is gonna be important for us to experiment with and you've already done X Y, Zed, I'm curious to know what you would look for what would they be saying to you?
Grant McKenzie 23:12
You know what, Idon't I wouldn't, I wouldn't hire someone who's who's an AI expert. I mean, I would, I always want to hire marketeers people in their, in their minds in their souls, who recognize what marketing, how profound it is in an organization, what it can do, and what it's, what we're here to do is to really understand particularly in our industry, I don't market to billionaires or niche people I market to the mainstream. Even the premium brands, yeah, so everybody, everybody who's a beer drinker, occasionally drinks premium beer. So it's very important to have your feet on the ground. And to understand that this is a part social psychology job, you need to understand what drives people to make decisions. How the role of the crowd can influence people, and then you need to be, you know, skilled at using words and using pictures. Those are what I'd always go for first, because I think AI and I don't want to undermine, you know, the skills involved. I think it should, it will get to a point where it's going to be quite user friendly. You know, it's like going back 15 years and say, Would you hire people who know how to use mobile phones? No, because I think the mobile phones will adapt themselves to us so that even dummies like me can use them pretty easily. Right. So I think the skills of the marketeer are going to become more valuable. And the basic people who turn up to work, write mediocre briefs, don't really understand consumers. We don't need them anymore. They're on the way out.
Tom Ollerton 24:43
Oh, Grant, unfortunately, we're gonna have to leave it there. And that's a nice point to leave it on. So if someone wants to get in touch with you talk about AI or live in working abroad and learn different languages becoming a better marketer, where would you like to do that? And what makes an outreach message that you will actually reply to?
Grant McKenzie 24:58
So LinkedIn is fine I mean, I get a bunch of messages. I mean, I'm sure like a lot of people, right, I get hassled a lot. So I think you know, have a point of view be interesting. And know our business and my business, right. So don't be generic know our business and have a point of view. Generally, when I get interesting, you know, connections I always reply.
Tom Ollerton 25:20
Well, Grant, thank you so much for your time.
Grant McKenzie 25:22
No, you're welcome. Thanks a lot. Tom, it was fun.
Subscribe to the ‘Shiny New Object’ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and Soundcloud.