Episode 179 / Duarte Garrido / Coca-Cola HBC / Head of Social Media
Podcast: Why Values Matter For Driving Profit
According to Duarte Garrido, Head of Social Media at Coca-Cola HBC, brands need to start focusing on and communicating their core values if they want to draw attention from the new generations. New consumers are much more values driven, he thinks, so that’s why his Shiny New Object is “values as a driver of consumer action.”
Duarte Garrido started his career in journalism, with experience within Reuters as a reporter, producer and editor, then moving to Sky News. It was at Sky that he took his first foray into social media, noticing how that department amplified the reach of the content produced by the digital desk. Since then, he’s been setting up social media content teams, at Philip Morris International and now at Coca-Cola HBC.
Duarte’s new behaviour that he’s picked up in recent years has been learning from podcasts. He gave us some examples of his favourites (including the Shiny New Object!): Jim Stengel’s The CMO Podcast, Social Pros and the B2B Marketing Podcast. Podcasts are part of Duarte’s morning routine walking the dog, as he’s waking up earlier and earlier!
So, how come he believes that values drive consumer action and represent the future of marketing? It all started with some reflection around an episode of the CMO Podcast featuring Lorraine Twohill and Marvin Chow from Google. They were explaining how Google was looking to move from product marketing to brand marketing, building a narrative around the company that simply doesn’t exist at the moment. Indeed, if you think of Google, you probably think of “search”, which is just one of its products and definitely not a brand defining identification for consumers.
How can Google and any other brand connect with consumers better? It’s by focusing on and communicating their values. Duarte believes that the new generations are more value driven than ever, and that will influence buyer intent at the point of purchase. He gave us an example of himself choosing to buy a razor that’s not market leading, simply because the alternative was to use on that does animal testing. This is just a small sample, but a glimpse into how digital marketing should evolve to put values first. In Duarte’s words, “Speak to the values of the consumer and profit will follow.”
Listen to more top tips from Duarte, how he uses podcasts to develop marketing knowledge and inspiration, and more on how to create value driven marketing, on the latest podcast episode here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:04
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative and this is a weekly show, where I have the privilege of speaking to some of the most exciting people in the industry. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Duarte Garrido, head of social Coca Cola HBC. So DG, as you tell me, I can refer to you as well. Can you give us a bit of background on who you are and what you do?
Duarte Garrido 0:33
Sure, thanks for having me, Tom. And kudos on the pronunciation it was. It's pretty spot on. So a little bit of background on me. I'm Portuguese, as you can probably tell from my from my weirdly pronounced name. I was born in Lisbon. I came to the UK about eight years ago, to study international journalism in Cornwall. And from then I moved on to Reuters, where I became a reporter, and then a producer and an editor. And that took me to Sky News, where I managed and edited their entertainment section of the digital website. And my foray into social media was actually at Sky where I noticed that the articles and the content that we were creating on the digital desk was then being distributed and amplified by the social media desk, which was working in a silo, literally on another spot of the room. So me at the time, when I was writing articles, I was creating videos, I was editing other people's content as well. So I decided to just reach out to the social media team and sort of bridge that, that gap. And, and that became, it was really the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And eventually, that led me to lead the daily operations on social media desk at Sky News, and which was an amazing time, I had a lot of fun there. And it was at around about a year, year and a half. After that, I got sort of a very peculiar invitation to join the biggest tobacco company in the world, Philip Morris International, as their Deputy Head of Global Social Media, to basically assemble a content team from scratch. And you may be thinking, why would someone want to join a big tobacco company? And that was my thoughts exactly. But the pack here was that Philip Morris International was pledging to stop selling cigarettes, and becoming a science and technology driven company. So that radical transformation that sort of unforced disruption was an incredible communications challenge. And from a social media point of view, it was quite unique. So I took it. And I was there for nearly three years, I built a team from scratch, I built the content studio from scratch, where I helped the content team from scratch, and the social media operation. We empowered over 70 markets to launch their own social media accounts and do their own social media work. So that was, that was a lot of fun. And it was a I would say my my biggest social media for a up until now. And now I'm at Coca Cola HBC where I'm Global Head of Social. And again, I'm starting an operation pretty much from scratch. And it's been fun so far.
Tom Ollerton 3:40
And we were introduced last week, I think, by the FUTR Conference, and that's futr.today, and you're speaking on the first of July, what, what are you going to be covering?
Duarte Garrido 3:51
That's correct. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I think the topic is going to be how to leverage social media to build trust. And trust is something that I'm that I have a lot of interest on, and how to build trust aligning on a values based approach. So that's going to be the key topic of my keynote at the FUTR.
Tom Ollerton 4:17
So across that interesting career, what has been a new belief or behavior that helped you have a better work life?
Duarte Garrido 4:29
It's a really interesting question. I'm gonna go with behavior here, rather than belief. I didn't that's because I always tend to incline more towards actions than intentions. Like you're better off changing small little things in your routine everyday than having great ambitions about the kinds of man that you want to become more the kind of father the kind of husband or what have you. Because there's this old Portuguese saying that I don't think it translates very well but it gives something like a hell is brimming with good intentions, so I tend to rather live, you know, incrementally and through behaviors. But anyway, I digress. Well, the question was in the last five years, which new belief or behavior has improved, the quality of my work life, so I'm gonna go with behavior, and a new behavior that has improved the quality of my work life has been, I would say, learning through podcasts, which is quite meta since I'm speaking on one. But that has radically revolutionized not just my life, my personal life, but but also my career.
Tom Ollerton 5:36
So obvious question, how do you learn through podcasts?
Duarte Garrido 5:40
That's a good question. I mean, my foray into podcast started a couple of years ago. I mean, obviously, I've heard podcasts before, but I really got into it as part of my daily routine about two years ago, when I started waking up religiously, just before 6am. For no reason without an alarm clock, I think it's just getting old will do that to you. And I now wake up about an hour before even my own daughter and my wife wake up. So what I do is, I get my earbuds, I get my Tibetan Terrier, Bayou, and we go for our 6am morning walk in the park in London. And through that morning walk, which takes us about an hour, I listen to a podcast of, you know, an industry podcast. And that is...
Tom Ollerton 6:34
Which ones are your go to?
Duarte Garrido 6:35
Oh, that's, that's a great question. So I've got a good few favorite ones. My favorite one by far is the CMO podcast from Jim Stengel.
Tom Ollerton 6:45
Yeah.
Duarte Garrido 6:46
I love it. Because it's, you know, I love podcasts where I can listen to my peers. But the my, the CMO podcast is me listening to my gurus. So it's even more valuable to me. I have a few others that I really like I love, Social Pros.
Tom Ollerton 7:03
Social Pros. Yeah, I'm writing all these down.
Duarte Garrido 7:07
Social Pros is a really great one. B2b marketing is a great one as well, though, one would sell a good old, obviously Shiny New Object, I listen to it. Absolutely true. This is absolutely true. I have a long list of very good podcasts. I don't mind sending them to you after.
Tom Ollerton 7:28
Yeah, maybe we could share them like on the LinkedIn post or something, or the blog post that accompanies this. So it's a deal. Yeah, we another time, I'll tell you about my morning routine as well. And how relatable that is so. So podcasts, great behavior, and I love that, "Hell is brimming with good intentions", that was funny. So the next one is, what is your top marketing tip? What is the bit of advice that you give your team most often or people who ask for advice, what is that kind of nugget?
Duarte Garrido 8:01
So the best marketing tip, I don't know if I've ever actually passed it to anyone. But it's a marketing tip that I received when I wasn't yet a marketer. But that I've applied throughout my career. And it's been it's proved incredibly, incredibly valuable. It is Start with cake. And it's it's a weird one. But let me tell you a story about it. It was given to me by my mentor, an assigned mentor by the way, I've just sort of I chose him as my mentor when I started off at Reuters in my internship as a young journalist, I think it was my first day there. I was, you know, still learning the ropes and trying to get a sense of what what the company was about and what the job was about. And I lacked confidence, obviously full of imposter syndrome. And I met Axel Threlfall who was editor, Reuters editor at large, this, you know, really important guy in the company, Reuters face in any big conference in Davos, etc. And he's this amazing, full of life character. And he for absolutely no reason just got, you know, sort of said to me and my first day if I wanted to take the train back with him at the end of the day, and I did in he just said, you know, you're this, I can tell that you're intelligent guy that you're an ambitious guy, that you're friendly and that people like you and that's, that's amazing. He told me, you know, I'm sure that you have a fantastic career ahead of you and that you'll stay where it is and get a permanent key here. My only piece of advice is you know, just bring the You know, be friendly smile, and bring cake. People love cake. And I did, you know, a couple of days after, I think it wasn't the next day, but I think a couple of days after I baked an orange cake at home, and I brought it, and I took it and everyone had a slice. And that sort of, it worked. For some reason, it was this magical piece of, you know, goodness at the center of the room. And people just sort of passing by grabbing a piece and chatting to me and getting to know me. And I feel like that changed my whole approach to working in an office environment or working in a team to being part of something being part of a culture, which is, you know, start with something sweet, you know, get people in, start talking to them. Be friendly. And that's something that I actually, as a marketer, apply almost metaphysically to everything I do. Even you know, I've, I think business meetings should always start with you going around the room and asking people, something great that they've done over the weekend, you know, or, or something funny that happened to them. Just something that will break the ice that will get people to talk about something else than work. And that will get them sort of warmed up and, and friendly to each other. And I feel like whatever conflict comes from the brainstorm or, or from the strategic meeting, it's going to be softening by that, by that proverbial piece of cake.
Tom Ollerton 11:44
Such a great bit of advice. And thanks for sharing that story, just realizing that there's absolutely zero cake at the start of my own podcast. But anyway, moving on. So we're going to talk now about your shiny new object, which is values as a driver of consumer action. So I think I know what some of those words mean, but as a sentence, and as a shiny new object. What does that mean to you? Why have you chosen it today?
Duarte Garrido 12:11
I chose that as a shiny new object, because I wanted it, I wanted, you know, I could have chosen the latest, you know, social media software that I'm using, that's been proving valuable, or the latest marketing technique that I've read, and try it out. But actually, this is something quite metaphysical and intangible to some performance marketers, not so much to, to the CMO level, because they're quite akin to what the into the role that words like purpose and trust and values actually matter when it comes to customer intention, and customer action. But I'm going to start with actually one episode from the CMO podcast with Jim Stengel, in which he brought in Lorraine Twohill & Marvin Chow from Google. And they were explaining how Google was evolving from a product marketing focused organization, which sort of had been since its inception, almost, to focus more on brand marketing, you know, and on building your brand narrative to tie the company together. And this was the episode that got me thinking, past purpose, because I feel like we're at at a point as marketers, where purpose is a bit of a given, you know, if as an organization or as a marketer, or as a CMO, you don't realize the value that purpose has, then I'm afraid you're far behind in your lost cause. So that this episode actually got me thinking beyond purpose. And I'll tell you why. Basically, Google, you know, it's a pretty, if you think about it, it's a pretty brandless company, right? Even with all its logos and color palettes and company culture in lingo. What is Google to the average consumer? And I'm throwing this question back at you. What is the one thing that comes to mind when you think Google?
Tom Ollerton 14:27
Search.
Duarte Garrido 14:28
Exactly. Thank you for saying that. I was hoping you'd say that. Because search is not what Google is. Search is actually one product of Google. And it's actually a product in decline. To be honest, I don't know if you've heard of a small company going around called Neva. That's been it's a small startup that's rivaling Google. It's search without ads. It's been catapulted by Reed Hoffman, who is the founder of LinkedIn and by other venture capitalists. So this is, you know, Google is Google as a search engine is going to have a lot of trouble in the future. But exactly to the average consumer, Google as a brand is limited to one of its flagship products such. So Google has focused so much on building great products, and giving those products autonomy to fail or succeed. They're known for that, that they actually forgot how to build a brand, a brand that will stand the test of time, even when new agile competitors come in, to disrupt the market, right? And then I started thinking, okay, so what is Google's grand purpose? They must have one, right. And I went and happened and did some research. And I was listening to this specific episode. And I remember that Lorraine Twohill, Google CMO, she kept talking about helpfulness, Google is helpful, we're helpful. And I was like, Okay, well, this is great, as a brand purpose, if you're a Google engineer, or if you're a product manager, right? Because basically, what it does is it gives you direction, for product building, you know, everything that Google does, needs to be helpful to the consumer. We're a consumer centered company. That's awesome. That's great. That even helps build culture within the company.
But ultimately, what does that do for the consumer? As an average consumer, are you going to choose to buy a product from a company, because the company is helpful? I mean, that isn't a value. That's the utilitarian purpose, right? So that serves culture that serves product, but that has nothing to capture demand, that does nothing to create demand. And if you look at these big research papers from Deloitte Digital, you know, on trust, and you look at Edelman's Trust Barometer, and Accenture's, all these companies have done their consumer research, and they came up with consumers will now buy products based on values. And the word value kept coming in. And I started thinking, okay, values, being helpful isn't a value. And then I looked at another industry that's been threatened by younger, sort of startup type companies, banking, right. We have these big incumbents. And I looked at, let me look at HSBC, which is the UK's biggest incumbent. And their purpose is to open up a world of opportunity. Again, there is no, this isn't a value based purpose, right? This does nothing to capture the interest of the consumer. And then I looked at Revolut, right, this new agile startup that's come in to the FinTech world to disrupt and they don't even talk about purpose, they go straight into their grand values. There are they are think deeper, stronger together, never settle. Right? So what does this tell you? togetherness, right? Ambition, thrive. So this these are, these are values, right? And you look at a smaller bank, like Standard Chartered, for instance, they actually nailed it. Their brand purpose is here for good. And that smart in two ways. One, because you know, it's here for good in terms of here for good to stay. So it says, consistency, but also good, good as in a value a human value that people can rally behind. So we know that the coming generations and even millennials to some, to some extent, will choose purpose over product, right? They won't, they don't care that your product is the best product in the market, if your company's values don't align with their values. So having a values based approach to your purpose is absolutely essential. This is actually how you build a great brand DNA. And this is how you ensure that your brand remains relevant in the future. And it's even more important for these big incumbents who are often oblivious to the fact that they are already in decline, because future generations distrust them, right? So they need to look at their brand DNA and think, what are our values as a brand that can speak to Human Values, that can speak to this new generation, that this new generation can understand. Take it take them as their own rally behind. And, for instance, in the case of Google, if they want to sell their Google Pixel, if they want to get Gen Z out of the iPhone of the Apple walled garden, right, which they are in now, we know that Apple isn't a good company, right? Apple sticks consumers behind their walled garden through closed systems. And they did that very, very well. But if Google wants to disrupt that, and take customers away from Apple's iPhones into the Google Pixel, they're not going to do that by selling your product that's helpful. They need to speak to this generation's core values. And then Gen Z will buy the Google Pixel, not because it's a luxury item, like the iPhone, not because it's a helpful product. But because they see Google as a company for good, unlike Apple, so they speak to the values of the consumer, and profit will follow.
Tom Ollerton 21:16
So many things, so many questions I like to ask you, but we are out of time, unfortunately. So we may have to have a follow up episode at some point. So I'm going to try and ask a short question. Hopefully, there'll be a shortish answer to it. So do values matter at the point of purchase?
Duarte Garrido 21:42
Of course. Absolutely.
Tom Ollerton 21:44
And what is your data point for this?
Duarte Garrido 21:49
That's exactly what I was talking about when I was referencing the Edelman's Trust Barometer. And Deloitte Digital's research on trust, they actually look at buyer intent. And they...
Tom Ollerton 22:03
Exactly, exactly buyer intent, claimed behavior, claimed beliefs. Because in our practice, as a business, we don't see that when it comes to looking at actual behavior, actual purchase, actual arrival at site and CRM capturing stuff, that stuff doesn't work. However, I'm not saying, that's not saying it's not important, but I'm just as a provocation, that what people claim, what people do is very, very different. And that's the data that we see. So I'm curious to know that, yes, if you're doing a TV spot, yes, you should talk about the values behind your purpose. And you argue that point beautifully. But talking from my own personal experience, when I went to buy a phone the other day, I had like no idea what phone to buy, I just don't care. And the person in the shop said, which phone do you want? And I was like, which which one do you recommend? And what was the price, like the fact that Samsung's values or Google's values, or Apple's values were present or not present in my mind didn't matter at all. So the question is, What proof do you have that it matters at the point of purchase where things like price, urgency and deals come in?
Duarte Garrido 23:12
It absolutely matters. And I'll tell you what, I'll follow your anecdotal story with with one of mine. And, by the way, neither of us are the focus here, because we're talking about a generation that's much more values driven and much more eco conscious than ourselves. But I'll tell you an anecdotal story about my own purchasing habits. As an example, I shave my head every day, right? Because I'm old, and bald. And I used to use the best razor on the market. Until I found out that the best razor in the market, the company that manufactured it actually, product tested on animals.
Now this for me is it brings very, very close to my heart because I'm an animal lover, I'm a dog owner, I will not buy a product from a company that tests that does animal testing. So what I did was I bought a substandard razor that hurts my head every day when I shave, sometimes literally to the point of bleeding, because they are cruelty free. And I know that this is an accurate and anecdotal story. But this is why eco conscious brands are actually on the rise here. It's not because they've put the best products on the market. It's because their values are in the right place. And because consumers today, but most importantly, consumers tomorrow, they will buy according to their values, whether that has to do with impact on the environment, on people on planet, on animals, or even on in society in general, and the impact these companies have on our quality of life. Now, trust me, it matters. And it does drive buyer not just buyer intent, but at point of purchase as well.
Tom Ollerton 25:07
Duarte, we have to leave it there. I would love to continue this conversation at the time. And as I'm sure there are many listeners who want to reach out to you, and how do you want them to do that, and where?
Duarte Garrido 25:19
I would say LinkedIn is the first port of call. I'm quite active on it. So if you want to look me up on LinkedIn, I'm Duarte Garrido. This is hard to pronounce. But it's easier to search DUARTE. That's my first name. And if you want to contact me on Twitter, I'm @dgonsocial. And those are by far the two best ways to get a hold of me.
Tom Ollerton 25:47
Thank you so much for your time.
Duarte Garrido 25:48
Thanks for having me.
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