Publicis Sapient's CMO Helps Companies Reinvent the Customer Experience | Connections Ep. 23

Most companies are really good at their core business. What they're not very good is that reimagine their business and disrupt themselves. Not just about creating efficiencies, which is a lot of the things technology has done too, is how do we imagine it from the eyes of the customer.

Hey, I'm Sarah Franklin and welcome to Connections, where we hear from some of the most innovative leaders marketing. And that is certainly the case for my guest today, Teresa Barrera of Publicis Sapient. I'm here in New York City to find out about her journey from a small town in Portugal to the top of the marketing world.

I grew up in a village of a thousand people in the northern Thousand. It was a northern part of Portugal. My parents, they were small business owners. They owned a restaurant, a cafe and a grocery store. After school I would work in a cafe or in a store making coffee or selling groceries. I think I was 10 years old. I was managing my father's store. I was opening the store, negotiating with vendors.

I love it. You learn to be scrappy, you learn to be confident. You learn to just kind of roll up your sleeves and do what was it like then coming the United States?

I immigrated with my mother, sister and grandmother at the age of 16. I learned English watching General Hospital. Growing up, my parents would say, you're going to be a doctor or lawyer and if you can't do either one, you become a banker. Like a teller, you work in a bank. Three choices, three choices.

There's really doctor, lawyer, banker, banker, that's it.

So I went to university as a pre med major. But I really learned that organic chemistry wasn't for me.

Oh my God. The same. So I did chemical engineering and biochemistry major. I wanted to be a doctor. I would like try to remember oxaloacetate. And I don't know.

It was done. Yeah, same. I was terrible at it. And I quickly realized that I had to change my major.

So what brought you to marketing?

Then I went to business school and then that's how I end up here. The interesting thing is when I was in business school and I graduated and my mother did not explain in the village what I did. So people say, what does your daughter do? What does she.

What is Teresa doing right now?

Whoa. She's like a lawyer, but not really a lawyer.

At Kublis' Sapient, how important is the storytelling and that connection to customers story.

And marketing is really important, right? To engage with an audience. And I think that brands that do that, I think they're the ones that we tend to gravitate and the ones that tend to thrive. People always think we are an agency because we're part of publicis.

Yes.

And I have to always explain that's not exactly what we do. We are a digital transformation company. But what that means is really working with established companies, usually large companies, to help them transform their business digitally. And that means it's to becoming digital at the core. Right. So they can themselves this business drive more value to their business, but to their customers, to their employees, and ultimately to their communities. But I always think about it in two broader categories. One is out of modernize the enterprise and two is how really elevate and enhance the customer experience.

How have you helped companies like McDonald's and Walmart deliver a more personalized customer experience?

And those are great brands, right?

Yes.

Right. So how you help those companies continue to evolve and to maintain relevancy? So at make tunnels, one of the things I think done, and they've done very well, is to create flexibility and empower the consumer to make choices and how they want to be served and how they want to engage with the food. So we work with them to create a digital platform where now the consumer can decide how do they want to get their food? They wanted to pick it up at the restaurant, they want to pick it up at curbside, they want to pick it up at the subway station, at your lobby.

And you did this before COVID We.

Did this before COVID yes.

So visionary that that would be necessary?

Yes, because real transformation, Sarah, it comes is from the eyes of the customer. Right. Real transformation is how do you reinvent and continue to evol your company by doing what your customers want to, by meeting those expectations.

You have a phrase I love, random acts of digital. What does that mean and why is it important to move beyond that?

People have been thinking about digital transformation for over a decade and companies are been doing it. But what they really been doing is what I call random acts of digital. They been really mainly digitizing parts of their business or adding new digital channels. But that it's just technology. It's not transforming, it's not transformative, it's just adding technology. Actually, we are very deliberate at buen we call it digital business transformation. And why? Because it's more than just digitizing parts of the organization. It means like rethinking the way you do your business, asking who you are at the core. To become digital at the core, you have to reinvent and rethink the way you view your business. So like if you're a Retailer, you might ask your question. I am in the retail business or in the data business. If you're a bank, I am a financial service, or you are like a software company.

Those are big questions.

Those are big questions, right? And the way you answer the question, that's the way you're going to behave.

So with like this crazy business world we're in, how do you think that marketers can need with the next phase of reinvention?

I always say that marketing is not to support or is not to enable. We're not here to support the business, we're not here to enable the business. We are here to lead. I love that we lead by informing where the market is going and informing what the customers want. And that's a really important mentality to have.

You've said campaigns are a dirty word. Why is that? That is the world of a marketer. What campaigns are you running? How effective are they? What is your data?

The other word I don't like is funnel. No, I'll tell you why the funnel. You like the funnel.

I like to see the data and I like to see them go through the funnel.

You don't like funnel because campaigns are one and done to create this big splash. So what I have tried to evolve is don't think about campaigns, think about journeys. Because a journey is something, it's longer, it's more sustainable.

Yes.

You're in the market for a long time. And back to your point, because you love data, allows you to optimize, so you don't have like this big splash. And then you got to start again, you have small splashes and you keep going. So I retrain my team to say no campaigns. We do move from campaign to journeys. And now I'm going to tell you why the funnel, the reason funnels that I have an average reaction to that as well, because I find it very linear that the world we live in today, that path is much more circular. Because I really believe today's customers don't go shopping, they are shopping. So you don't have to map it that way, like as the linear way a funnel does.

So it's really important. You put the customer at the center. And now you've had that impact on these incredible brands and you're telling these stories of digital transformation. How does that feel then, as a marketer, to look back on those accomplishments?

You look back and it's great, but you always want to look forward. It's about constantly evolving and constantly challenging yourself. And maybe that comes a bit from the mentality of being an immigrant. Because when you're an immigrant, you always think that you have to work harder, you have to study harder, and you always think it's never good enough. And that's why things keeps you going.

What do you think the future brings for marketing?

I actually believe right now it's probably one of the greatest times to be a marketeer. You know, 10 years ago I used to say to my team, you gotta think like a publisher and act like a publisher. Today I would tell them, you have to think and act like a streaming services. I think marketeer is starting to behave what I call more like a trading room floor where you use data to make decisions in real time. I think the next phase is going to be about story and entertainment. And I actually think what you're doing here is a great example. You're creating great content, but it's content that is actually fun. Fun mean it's engaging. It's not just about the capability, but it's also about the person. And I do believe that's what we need to think about, how we create content that not only educates and informs, but entertains.

Thanks for tuning in. Never miss an episode by subscribing and turning on your notifications. We'll see you next time.