Marketing experts on navigating the Polycrisis era
Politics and business are no longer separate worlds. For senior marketing leaders, the challenge is clear: how do you build authentic, trusted brands when disruption is constant and customer expectations are shifting? In this episode of The CMO Show, Josh Faulks CEO at Australian Association of National Advertisers and Emma Webster, Director at Hawker Britton join host Mark Jones live from stage at the iMedia Summit.
The polycrisis and its impact on CMOs
Josh described today’s environment as a polycrisis - a term both melodramatic but also reflecting reality. “There’s climate crisis, there’s wars raging. We’ve got the Trump circus and the Trump tariffs… And that’s before we even get to stuff like AI,” Josh said. “Uncertainty has a pretty big impact on consumer and business confidence. And we all know in this room that that’s pretty bad for business.” For CMOs, the pressure is intense. “They’re being asked to do a lot more with a lot less,” Josh said. “Roles are expanding beyond what you’d consider to be that traditional CMO… They’re supposed to be on top of this AI tidal wave as well.”
Polarisation and the perils of taking a stand
So what are the risks of brands entering political debates? Many and varied is the answer, according to Josh and Emma. “History is littered with brands that have tried to enter the political fray and just been slammed and completely cancelled,” Josh said, citing Bud Light’s 2023 backlash. “By May one, their retail sales were down 26%… And the operating profit plunged nearly 30%.” Emma agreed that brands should tread carefully, know their customer, and stay true to their values. "Unless there is some massive reason as to why you should go out on a limb and say something… Just stick to who you are, get your core business right and you’ll be okay.”
Lessons from politics: Authenticity wins
Both Josh and Emma returned repeatedly to the theme of authenticity. “If you do something wrong, you own up to it. It’s honesty, it’s authenticity,” Emma said. She contrasted this with political spin. “I’ve been frustrated watching politicians being interviewed where they’re asked a question and it’s like they’re answering a different question entirely.” Even in chaos, consistency matters. “You must align with your organisation’s values,” Josh said. “If you can find that intersection of what’s the right thing to do and what’s good for business… Then brands should be able to take a stand.”
Building resilience: From survival to leadership
So what does resilience look like for CMOs? According to Josh, right now it feels like survival. “The only way you’re going to survive at the moment is not put your head in the sand… but lean into it and lead,” he said. "This is the new normal. We’re not going back to the old days.” According to Emma, returning to the centre of your values, and remaining authentic, are key to staying resilient. "Do your core business well. Because when you’ve got that down pat, the rest is just the icing on the cake,” she said.
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This episode of The CMO Show was brought to you by host Mark Jones, producers Kate Zadel and Kirsten Bables and audio engineers Ed Cheng and Daniel Marr. This is an edited excerpt of the podcast transcript.
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Mark Jones
Now, there's no question that the worlds of politics and business are inseparable these days, and it's having a huge impact on the brands that we manage as marketers. But the real question we're facing now is how do we build authentic, trusted brands at a time when perhaps customer loyalty isn't always there and we're not really sure what's coming down the road?
Hello and welcome to The CMO show. My name is Mark Jones, and this is a podcast produced by ImpactInstitute in partnership with our friends at Adobe. Now it's a special episode. This time we're coming to you from the Gold Coast, where we have done an on stage interview, a live podcast recording, if you like, at the iMedia Future of Marketing Summit. And my guests are Josh Faulks who’s the CEO at AANA and Emma Webster, director at Hawker Britton.
We got on stage to deliver a closing fireside chat, where we spoke about how our political worlds and our business worlds are all coming together. And in particular, we looked at this idea of what's happening with the customer and how we need to be authentic, not just as marketers, but as whole brands, and how we can build and maintain trust in a sort of stable way over time. Because of course, the world is changing so incredibly fast. There's a temptation to react against some of these external pressures. But the call really is how do we be consistent over time? It's a really great conversation. Let's get stuck into it.
What a ride over the past couple of days. We are going to attempt to connect a few threads. We're going to have a live poll, so get your cameras ready because we want a bit of interactivity and actually a sense of a bit of a room check. I don't know that we're going to have too much time for Q&A because Josh talks too much. No, Josh, just kidding.
Josh Faulks
Pot kettle, black.
Mark Jones
The big premise underneath this concept of resilience in the age of uncertainty is that our politics and our business lives are so deeply interconnected now. And a story that came up in the news just a couple of days ago, Australia Post, you would've seen stop flying small parcels to the US because of the tariffs.
Anyone here out of interest affected by that? So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yeah, so six. A really great example where very fast changing geopolitical events are impacting real-world business. So we're going to look at a little bit of that and then we're going to get down into some other fun stuff around our personal brands as marketers. So to kick things off, I want to hear now this concept of the poly crisis. It's my new favourite word, multiple global intersecting events that accelerate over time is changing the way that we feel about our work. And I'm curious, Josh, do you want to kick it off with your sense about how this is changing the world of work?
Josh Faulks
You've got to love that word. It's so melodramatic, the poly crisis, but it's got a fair bit of foundation in truth. And we're not talking about Trump's truth here. There's climate crisis, there's wars raging. We've got the Trump circus and the Trump tariffs, which are just ridiculous. And then we're talking about a range of cost of living crisis. And that's before we even get to stuff like AI. And all of that is leading to this uncertainty. And Uncertainty has a pretty big impact on consumer and business confidence. And we all know in this room that that's pretty bad for business.
So for CMOs at the same time, they're being asked to do a lot more with a lot less. There's names like chief growth officer or chief customer officer, and their roles are expanding beyond what you'd consider to be that traditional CMO. Some of them are including corporate affairs and investor relations, but it's also data analytics. And they're supposed to be on top of this AI title wave as well. So for them, they're dealing with this really difficult and uncertain environment. They're dealing with being asked to do more. And at the same time, they're under pressure with tight budgets. And a lot of the budgets for our members, the marketing budgets are being restricted and being brought down. And they're also dealing with CEOs, leadership teams, CFOs and boards saying, "You need to deliver more. You need to do an ROI on every single marketing dollar spent."
And that's a challenge for a brand as well if you're trying to build a brand, how to do that when they're pushing you down the funnel to performance marketing. So I think the good news or the takeout from that is for the role of CMOs on leadership, it's improving. It's more important around that role around the leadership table and that board table. And the second part is collectively, I think as a group, we're doing a better job of selling in marketing as that critical driver of profitability and growth and not just the cost centre or colouring in department.
Mark Jones
Now, I know that you've got a few members here too of the ANA, and if you don't know, of course, it's this incredible association of advertisers and they're giving you a lot of this feedback. So this is very much a real time conversation. Emma, your take on this. Now, you've got a really interesting past in working in politics.
Emma Webster
I do, yeah. Well, I was thinking about some of the things that President Trump's come up with and some of the topics you listed for discussion when we were planning for this panel. And I thought about DEI. Now, just because President Trump doesn't like the term DEI doesn't mean your business doesn't have to do it in order to be successful. It makes business sense to do it. The importance of having diverse views for employees to feel safe, all that sort of thing. But you just, you can do it and not say it. So that's probably my key takeaway here. It's knowing who your customer is and staying true to your values. And unless there is some massive reason as to why you should go out on a limb and say something or back something in the political world, I think it's probably not advantageous. Just stick to who you are, get your core business right and you'll be okay.
Mark Jones
And just for some very quick context setting, you used to work with the former Prime Minister Julia Gillard back in the day.
Emma Webster
I did.
Mark Jones
And everyone's like, hooray. How different is this environment to those times in terms of this dynamic we're speaking about the incredible impact of politics at speed?
Emma Webster
Yeah, well, and you mentioned Gillard and of course, Trump. And the first thing I always do is compare Australian politics to American politics. Only in America could you get a president like Trump, like that flamboyant character. And then you look at our leaders here and they're quite plain, they're trusted. They're not going to come up with some fan dangle crazy policy idea generally. And you look at who our longest serving prime Ministers have been. Look at John Howard, not exactly rocking the boat. Safe pair of hands. And most likely it'll be the same way with Albo too, I would've thought. A bit boring. I mean, that feels cruel.
Mark Jones
Nice guy.
Emma Webster
Nice guy. Yeah, and that's exactly what you want. And that comes back to mandatory voting. And whereas in the US, all Trump really needs is a energised 25%. And that's how you get someone like Trump there. In terms of how things have shifted, I don't think we've ever seen a president like him before and it's that unexpected nature of what's he going to do next? Is he just saying this to get another story off the front page and we're never going to hear about it for two weeks? I don't think I've heard about that. The tariff on Hollywood productions since he announced that a few months ago, that just disappeared. It rattled the cage for a while and then it disappeared. But it comes back to him, I guess appealing to that base of his. And when he doesn't keep coming back to that base, when that base feels betrayed, rather. Examples I can think of are the Epstein files. He's gotten himself into a bit of trouble on that and that's because he's contradicted a lot of his previous statements around that or prior-
Mark Jones
It's time to change the narrative and move on.
Emma Webster
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Mark Jones
So let's then make a nice little segue into polarisation and its impact on business. And as a bit of a heads-up, we'll do a poll in just a moment to get your take on this. And when we think about polarisation, Josh, how much of a problem is this for CMOs when we think about the public conversation? Because as marketers and business leaders, we pride ourselves on knowing our customers. There's been a lot of talk about customer experience and related issues and how we can understand their psyche, but it feels like it's getting just a little bit too hard.
Josh Faulks
I find this polarisation thing absolutely staggering. In the US, there is no middle ground. It is just nonsensical what's happening in the US. And I agree with what you were saying before. Australians are like apathetic. They don't really give a shit. They don't really care about the... Sorry, am I allowed to swear?
Emma Webster
Glad it was you, not me.
Josh Faulks
They don't really give a shit about politics. And so I think we're lucky that it's not as polarised here. But history is littered with brands that have tried to enter the political fray. And we can talk about the voice and we can talk about a range of other things, but try to enter the political fray and just being slammed and completely cancelled. A really good example of that is, but the Bud Light example, and I think it was April '23 or something, a marketing manager within the Bud Light team sent a case of beer with the name of, I'll just get the name, Dylan Mulvaney, who was a trans influencer, a case of beer with Dylan's name on it. Dylan got up on his channel and said, "Thanks to Bud Light." The backlash from the conservative America was intense. People were being bashed in a bar for holding a Bud Light can.
Kid Rock, and I don't even know Kid Rock that well to be honest, but he was filming himself shooting up with a gun, which is America, shooting up Bud Light cans. The interesting part of this is the impact it had on Bud and I deliberately wrote down these things. So that was April. By May one, this retail sales were down 26%. 26%. And lost its position as the top-selling beer, which it had held in the US for 20 years. And the third bit is AB InBev, the parent company that owns it. The revenue fell 10.5% and the operating profit plunged nearly 30. Now, you tell me a business leader that is willing to sit there and stick to that kind of thing when it's affecting your business that much. There's a lot of big lessons from that. And this is all over the media. I'm not saying anything new, but the key bit there was authenticity and knowing your base. Their base was middle American, American blue collar workers.
Mark Jones
Correct.
Josh Faulks
And they said, "This isn't us. This is betrayed us." So it really pissed them off. The second bit was they handled it really badly. So instead of saying this was, first of all get out in front of it, they didn't, but instead of saying this aligns with our values and we're going to stick with it, they pulled back, didn't know what to do and they were a bit all over the shop. And so then they annoyed the progressives. So they annoyed the progressives and the conservatives. It was a messy thing. The other bit closer to home. Look at Woollies when they banned the Australian Day stuff. That was interesting. You had Dutton out there having a crack at Woollies.
Mark Jones
I remember they turned that around pretty quickly though. That was one or two weeks where they were like, oops.
Josh Faulks
They turned that around quickly. And then something like the voice is interesting too, and hindsight is a wonderful thing, but you had the incoming chair of Qantas saying business just needs to stick to their knitting and stop going out there and pontificating on social issues, which is really interesting. But I thought the car crashes are easy to identify. What is the role of brands to take a stand? And I think they do have an important role to take a stand, but there's a few lessons from it. You must align with your organization's values. You've got to align, I think the Bud Light examples really good by aligning with your customer's values. You can't just say, this is us and putting you on your core customer base, you've got to have your own house in order.
You've got to be doing this for some time and not just all of a sudden jumping on a particular cause. And if you're jumping on that cause, you've got to listen hard to that minority that you're trying to represent, whether it's the trans community, whether it's the indigenous community with a voice or something like that. And you've got to try and take the whole team with you and the organisation if the team doesn't believe in it. So some of that stuff, I think I love that intersection. My favourite intersection is what's the right thing to do and what's good for business. Something like people with disability, we do a bad job of advertising and people with disability, it's 20% of the market, so we're missing out on 20% of the market. So that's good for business and the right thing to do. And I think that's where that, if you can find that intersection and aligns with your values, you've got the runs on the board, then brands should be able to take a stand.
Mark Jones
And it's a great vote for consistency over time. The reference to the voice is interesting. What’s your take?
Emma Webster
Yes, yeah. Well, I was going to talk a bit more about Qantas and then I was like, oh, I wonder if anyone from Qantas is in the room. So I mean, absolutely agree everything you've said there. The only thing I'd add as well is when it came to the Voice and Qantas, a lot of businesses put out statements backing in the voice, but it may have just been a short statement on a website. They weren't at events with the prime minister with a plane that was painted while at the same time in record numbers. People were losing their baggage, flights were being cancelled. And to go back to the Bud Light reference and that apathy that Australians have, it wasn't like Australians were getting guns and shooting Qantas planes or anything like that, but they were just annoyed. They wanted Qantas just to do their core business right, put me on a plane that runs on time. And then the other thing that Qantas do well is they tap into who their workforce are.
And they had an openly gay CEO and they've been very upfront about equality and marriage equality and that sort of thing. And that looks at their workforce too. And in Sydney a couple of years ago when one of their flight attendants was murdered by a previous partner, Luke Davies, they had a float in Mardi Gras. And I think everyone really respected that and appreciated that. But then it was only, was it last week or the other week, there was a ruling from the federal court of Australia that said Qantas had to pay $90 million to workers and the Transport Workers Union. And you're just like, well, do they actually care about staff? Do they not? So I think it just comes back to actually getting your core business right.
Josh Faulks
Just an interesting angle I want to add there. I think most people in this room will know this, that consumers vote with their feet in their wallet. There's two really good examples there. And that-
Mark Jones
Unless you've got a great loyalty programme.
Emma Webster
Yes.
Josh Faulks
They vote with their feet in their wallet. So at the moment we're talking about what the organisations are doing that way out, but the consumers often decide this. You look at the Costco and Target example in the US. In January, target pulled back all their DEI initiatives in response to the Trump stuff and then Costco said, "No, we're sticking to it." And the response was amazing. So there was a full boycott on Target for 40 days. Their foot traffic plummeted, their sales fell 5.7%, which is big in that world. And their stock dropped 12%, they lost 12.4 billion off the stock.
On the other hand, Costco who really doubled down and said, "No, this is part of our values, it's part of who we are." They had 13 consecutive weeks after that, this is just January this year, of increased foot traffic, 7 million more people came in. So it's like a pretty good swap and their revenue increased by 10%. So I think the consumers, it doesn't matter what... I shouldn't, I'm not going to say it. It doesn't matter what Trump says on the other side of the world or what he's saying about DEI, the consumers still consider this when they're purchasing and they will decide what happens, not what Trump says.
Mark Jones
So now if we then move into the concept of resilience and adapting with intent. What do you think resilience looks like for us as leaders and particularly in a brand? And I guess if you think about, Emma, your experience in politics and resilient politicians and some that aren't, are there some lessons that come to mind or perspectives you think apply from that world to how we think about sustaining the right focus over time as brands?
Emma Webster
Well, when you mentioned that, I immediately thought of an expression you often hear around politics and it's like, today's scandal is tomorrow's newspaper that wraps up fish and chips. I butchered that.
Mark Jones
Young people, they used to arrive at home and-
Emma Webster
They used to print news. So I think any scandal can generally be weathered and it's just about coming back and doing the job. And with enough time people can generally forget things.
Mark Jones
How do they do it? How do they keep going, the mindset of these politicians? Because I think there's something that translates to our leadership world right?
Emma Webster
I think there has to be something personal in it. I often think about Barnaby Joyce who was kicked out of cabinet because it was revealed he was having a relationship with his media advisor. He went from that to then becoming deputy prime minister. Kicked out of cabinet, then basically the highest job you could get in his party. And then was it last year he was on the streets in Canberra drunk on a phone call and people just-
Mark Jones
Well, it's Barnaby.
Emma Webster
Yeah, it's Barnaby and people love him and he does an interview where he posts a video where he standing on the back of a ute talking to the clouds or whatever and people just like him. He's authentic.
Josh Faulks
The authenticity piece comes back.
Emma Webster
Exactly. He's not pretending to be anything he isn't. And I think people are more forgiving when he's just upfront in who he is.
Mark Jones
So we just heard a great case study in the session before on Mecca and how much people love that brand.
Josh Faulks
Amazing.
Mark Jones
A lot of brands aspire to be loved because of all the benefits.
Emma Webster
Just on, so Mecca launched its massive building in Melbourne last week or the week before.
Josh Faulks
It's the biggest beauty store in the world.
Emma Webster
Yeah, there you go. The premier of Victoria and the Lord Mayor of Melbourne went to it and I saw TikToks of them dancing at the opening and it was like, this is the... People love this brand so much that our top Melbourne leaders are there.
Josh Faulks
And Kate Blythe is the CEO of Mecca is doing an incredible job. Everyone looks to Mecca about customer experience and that is insane. The tier thing that people go and shop to keep their... I didn't even know what a loop or whatever it is, beauty loop is, but it's incredible masterclass on how you do customer experience, and Mecca is doing it better than anyone.
Mark Jones
So we think about the equity that's built up in a brand like that. It actually gives you a lot of licence, but at the same time you've got to stick to your knitting, mixing my metaphors here, stick... I don't even know. Makeup. Anyway. But the point is there's a lot of licence to move in some spaces, but at the same time they're still nervous. So what's your take on the way that brands can navigate this and stay resilient when there's a lot of pressure even for a brand like that?
Josh Faulks
Look, and unfortunately just tying into what we said at the beginning about polycrisis, this is a really complicated and difficult, it's a tough operating environment for everyone at the moment. Resilience feels like survival. It's not just for the CMO or the senior marketing leader or the marketers in this room, you're talking about survival of the brand and everything has been bet on AI for the last couple of days. And that's I think the only way you're going to survive at the moment is not put your head in the sand when it comes to AI and all the uncertainty, but it's that metaphor of you're in a storm, you can either try and resist the storm as much as you want or lean into it and lead and sail through and sail the storm and take advantage of it.
And I think that's really where resiliency is going to come at the moment. To mind, switching your mindset to, holy shit, there's a lot going on at the moment. How do I deal with it? Or to, I need to just get ahead of this and lead. And that's what I think it's going to affect that resilience within the industry.
Emma Webster
Can I add something to that? So cyber attacks have become a common crisis that we see with a lot of brands lately, and one of the first prominent ones was with Optus, I believe. And the way that was initially responded to was probably a case study on what not to do. And looking at it from an outsider and not really a marketing person, it was like this response looks like a response that a lawyer wrote. It was-
Mark Jones
Probably ChatGPT.
Emma Webster
Yeah.
Mark Jones
For the lawyer.
Emma Webster
For the lawyer. Yeah. It's like, yeah, AI inception-
Mark Jones
Then the journalists wrote the story using, anyway.
Emma Webster
Yeah, it didn't focus on the customer, it didn't focus on what was at risk for them or how frustrated it would've been. It was just them trying to cover their butts and I think that just made it worse.
Mark Jones
keeping up with changing customer expectations. This is a perennial challenge, is it not, Josh?
Josh Faulks
Yeah, I think at the moment it's hyper. Well, everyone talks about hyper personalization that comes in and out of fad, but at the moment with AI, is that going to become a reality? But the expectation of the customer about how you deal with them, going back to Mecca, it's an incredible experience throughout every part of the journey. And that's where Mecca has absolutely landed it. It's not just one touch point, it's all of it. And so I think customer expectations are shifting significantly and expecting a lot more outer brands. How do you respond to that? And I think the AI as a tool will help do that.
Mark Jones
If you go back a little while, there was a lot of social pressure within organisations that was part of the DEI story and how are we're going to change our workplaces. But it's interesting to see that shift. This is also the case in politics and I've been seeing a lot of clips in the US, Emma, around constituents being really upset with their local representative toeing the party line. This is the core DNA of politics is representation. And the parallel of course here is the customer side of things. What's the lesson that you've observed over time in terms of what makes a difference for a leader that can stay finely attuned to your political base or on the flip side, the customer base?
Emma Webster
And I don't think it's just the US, it's here as well. I've been frustrated watching politicians being interviewed where they're asked a question and it's like they're answering a different question entirely that might include one word that's the same. It's like, did you actually hear the same question? This is so bizarre. And I think that's what frustrates people. It's not real. It's like they don't care about who they constituents are and it comes back to that authenticity piece as well. It's like they're just trying to pull the wool over your eyes or they're trying to get away with something or do something dodgy. I think if you do something wrong, you own up to it. It's honesty, it's authenticity, and it's just like not trying to say something else, just be upfront.
Josh Faulks
I'm going to challenge that. That's not what happened with Trump. So Trump came with his four word slogan and he constantly lies and he constantly just moves on to the next bit. And it's been effective. Appeals to his base, but simplistic messaging said over and over again and there's not that authenticity really, it's Trump just trying to get ahead on a lot of the different bits. I think it's different in Australia, but for Trump it's been incredibly successful. He just won an election, I don't know the opponents, there's lots of different bits behind it with really simple messaging.
Mark Jones
How would you both summarise the mood of the Australian community right now in that context? So if you think about these are our customers as marketers and people who we've talked about frictionless. Like I said, we love things being easy. We don't want complication, we just want stuff to happen. Don't make it too hard. And at the same time, this sort of stress. I think all of these starts to play into how we need to think about from a brand strategy point of view.
Josh Faulks
I love this question. Do you mind if I go first?
Emma Webster
Yeah, go for it.
Josh Faulks
So one of the most interesting things about the political analysis and the lead up to the last Australian election was that the baby boom is being pushed out by the millennials as the biggest group and the most influential political voting block. And geez, I loved it because I didn't know this existed, but I'm probably an ex-millennial Casper if that exists that, I don't know if they're still here, they're behavioural scientists-
Mark Jones
You're a generational slashie.
Josh Faulks
The demographic. But I loved yesterday when someone said about the millennials, they're no longer the youngins because they're all the 30s to 45s. They can't claim that, which is amazing. But the millennials are now this big block and they know in their bones that they're not, or they're not as well off as the previous generation as their parents. They're struggling to buy houses. And that is leading to a lot of disillusionment and that's leading to a lot of mistrust or lack of trust in institutions. So that is a huge block at the moment, the most influential block. And that is hard to tap into. They want different things that the boomers want. They want different things than the exes want.
And a lot of that comes down to trust. And we all know that trust is this difficult thing to grab onto and to build. But that is, I love that concept about how things are moving away from the boomers and the demographic stuff we saw yesterday was fascinating, but the millennials now are mistrusting of politicians and of institutions and of brands, which comes back to that common theme we keep going on, sticking to your values, sticking to being an authentic brand. If they can sniff that you're not being authentic, then your brand's going to be whacked, especially by that generational group.
Mark Jones
So I want to look at personal brands and I've been thinking a lot about our role as marketers and how of course that's changing. And if we can bring up the poll, let's look at this question around personal brand. What's the most important quality in a CMO's personal brand today? And this is thinking about you in the marketplace here in the community and the work that you're doing. So adaptability, authenticity, visibility and strategic thinking. Let's take a look then. People love the first response. Is that because it's easy, do you think?
Emma Webster
Yeah, first one there maybe.
Josh Faulks
Starts with 'A”.
Mark Jones
It's like politics. We go for the first one, you want to be top of the list. Could be it.
Emma Webster
Yeah, could be.
Mark Jones
Authenticity quite clearly is coming up as number one, which is always great to see, to be honest. Oh, and missed one down the bottom there, of course, visibility and courage under fire. So just as those poll responses start settling down, it's quite clear that we're thinking about who we are today. Lessons from politics and business and your own experiences, Josh and Emma. The interesting thing that I've observed is that a CMO brings more than just experience and skills to the role. There's a sense of who they are as a person, their reputation in the community, and an expectation that they'll be a type of thought leader in their organisation. What's your take on how you're seeing that evolve?
Josh Faulks
Do you want to go first?
Emma Webster
No, no, go for it.
Josh Faulks
So look, I think the role of the presence and the public persona of a CMO hasn't been more important because it's reflective of the brand and how they show up is reflective of how the brand shows up and their profile. And it's not just all about profile, I think it's right what people are saying here, strategic thinking, authenticity and adaptability are the key parts there, but how those show up actually affects the brand and how they show up affects what they're getting from their CFOs and their CEOs and their leadership teams.
And if they're not speaking that language of CFOs and leadership teams, not in terms of funnels and conversions and likes and impressions and all that kind of marketing jargon, but if you're not speaking the same language of incremental sales and profit and all those kind of things, then they're not going to be able to demonstrate the value of what marketing is delivering. And at the same time as securing that budget moving forward. But I think that the role of that personal brand for CMOs has never been, I don't think it's an option. I think it's their licence to lead.
Mark Jones
Thoughts on lessons from politics?
Emma Webster
I keep coming back to Trump and I think about how he's just-
Josh Faulks
Knocked the playbook out of there.
Emma Webster
Yeah. Even just visually, he's just so easy to imitate. We saw the Italian prime minister do that the other day when she was mimicking his mouth.
Josh Faulks
And South Park.
Emma Webster
Yes, in South Park. So many people can't even say the word China properly now. They say it like Trump. Yeah, he's orange, he wears long red ties. He's just, Trump is Trump. It's Trump. And there is an authenticity in it and there's an authenticity in Trump just being absolutely chaotic and changing opinions on things. And when his base is the most frustrated or annoyed by him is when he deviates from that. So before coming to office for a second time, he said he didn't want to be involved in international wars and so much of what we've seen has been-
Mark Jones
International wars.
Emma Webster
International wars and Trump intervening and the MAGA people are now a bit annoyed by that. So yeah.
Mark Jones
So my take on this is that it's quite destabilising in terms of our expectations of leadership. Is stability the thing or is adaptability what we need to be almost like chameleon character? And I think that will be interesting to see as it plays out.
Josh Faulks
Well, I don’t think you have a choice. We’re kind of underplaying. Well, I don't think we're underplaying because we're talking about it all the time, but AI is going to be the greatest disruptor of all of our time. It's going to be more consequential with the internet than mobile and potentially electricity. The technology is just, the pace of change is just incredible. The technology is developing, but the way it's being adopted is intense. Electricity took decades to become ubiquitous. Mobile and the internet took years and years to go. This is happening in months, but now it's weeks, and we don't know where it's going to go. So it has to be adaptability, the ability to be able to... But again, it's just that do you sit there and head in the sand? I keep on looking in my head, I've got the emu with their head in the sand going, wow, this is a lot. Or do you sit there and say, this is how we're going to differentiate our brand and get ahead?
Mark Jones
Time flies when you're having fun.
Emma Webster
It does.
Mark Jones
Let's wrap it up with a killer question from both of you or a response from both of you rather, but what's the mindset then that CMOs and heads of marketing need to take into the future as they think about moving from the survival mode that we've been discussing to actually getting back to a place of thriving and feeling like they're really making an impact?
Josh Faulks
So Buddha said, "When nothing is certain, anything is possible." And I think at the moment everyone's going, there is so much going on with the polycrisis stuff. So I think leaning into that uncertainty and owning it is going to be a really interesting way in the position that most people would need to take. So this is the new normal. We're not going back to the old days of the pre-COVID days where everything was a lot quieter and easier and a lot more certain. This is the new normal, it's not going to get better. So we've got to learn to sail in that storm.
Mark Jones
Yeah. Emma, my take on politics by the way is that it is quite obviously by democratic process, a popularity contest. So how you become likeable and authentic?
Emma Webster
Yeah, so I mean I don't have a Buddha quote, but I guess, I mean even if we reflect back on the conversation we've had here, it comes back to doing your business well, your core business well. Because when you've got that down pat, the rest is just the icing on the cake. It's being authentic, it's knowing your customers really well and if you get all of that done, I mean the rest is up to you and you can adapt and change the world, but comes forward-
Josh Faulks
I agree with what she said.
Mark Jones
What she said. Turns out there's a role for human marketers in the future. That's what we want to hear, isn't it?
Josh Faulks
Definitely.
Mark Jones
Would you please thank our panel?
You know, you think about all these conversations. It's such a swirling vortex of issues that CMO have to deal with, and thinking about the role of purpose in all of that. Our vision as organisations is a great place to start, is we want to have a consistent message over time that appeals to customers. That was the bright reminder for me. I also like the poll that we did, where it was quite clear that CMOs really value authenticity in themselves, in their brands. So a great reminder to you as you think about your strategy going forward. And that's a wrap for this episode. Thanks for joining us on the CMO Show. We'll see you next time.