ANGELIA HERRIN: Welcome to the "Quick Take."
Today, we're introducing a series of conversations
between Harvard Business Review and Think
with Google where we ask Google executives
the questions every business leader wants to know.
I'm Angelia Herrin, editor for special projects
and research at HBR.
And we're talking with Tara Walpert
Levy, vice president for Agency and Brand Solutions at Google.
Tara, thanks so much for joining us today.
TARA WALPERT LEVY: My pleasure.
Thanks so much for having me.
ANGELIA HERRIN: Tara, as someone who works with and advises
CMOs and CEOs, what are the most common questions
you're getting?
What do they want to know?
TARA WALPERT LEVY: Well, typically, all executives
are asking the question they've always asked,
which is how do they drive growth
in the current environment?
I think what's interesting right now
is that with the incredible technology innovation that's
taken place across all industries,
we're seeing such big shifts in consumer behavior.
Our millennials and Gen Z are behaving
in such a fundamentally different way than the boomers
before them and seeing so much more competition
in the environment from new entrants
as a lot of the access to tools and technology
and the ability to scale a business
has democratized, that, all of a sudden, traditional businesses
really need to think quite hard about both what the risk is,
frankly, as created by technology disruption,
and potentially more importantly, what
the huge opportunity is for them, both as a company
and for their executives.
So that often will lead them to think about, OK, well,
where is the future of technology going?
And how do I think about evolving my C-suite
as a result?
Meaning, for example, do we have the right balance
between the CMO and the CIO, particularly
as there are new issues emerging around data or privacy?
Are we thinking correctly about how
to balance the interests of the CMO
and the CFO around the cost and effectiveness
of different media options?
And how do they really think about the application
of technology across the entire organization?
I spent a lot of my time on customer-focused functions--
marketing, customer service product, et cetera.
But I'm a CEO.
I also am looking quite heavily at finance,
manufacturing, really every part of my business.
ANGELIA HERRIN: You mentioned changes in consumer behavior.
What are the most important changes
you're seeing from a marketing standpoint?
TARA WALPERT LEVY: What's fascinating is
that everything about how people interact with brands
and buy has changed.
It hasn't changed who people are.
It just taps into their fundamental characteristics
in a really different way when it comes to behavior.
So people's curiosity now plays out
in a different way in terms of how they research products.
RIght?
Once you would have walked into a store,
looked at some toothbrushes, had some brand impressions
in your head about a toothbrush.
People are now researching everything.
There is extensive research on which kind of toothbrush
to buy.
I think, also, the level of demand and expectation
for brands has gone up.
As people are living in a world where
they get whatever content or experience
they want when they want it, how they want it--
that expectation for brands becomes more dramatic as well.
And then fundamentally, people are impatient.
They want everything right now.
And it amazes me that over half of the visits
to a mobile website are abandoned
because it takes more than three seconds to load the site.
At three seconds, you would think
people could wait four seconds.
But I know from my own experience when you're sitting
there watching the site load, no, actually, we won't.
And so I think the challenge for businesses
is that a lot of these shifts are happening
in really small increments, as they can almost go unnoticed.
And that's why the data is so important
to be able to see the trend as they're emerging
and decide as a business what to do about it, which is something
that becomes more of an ongoing real-time activity,
rather than a silver bullet.
CMOs or CEOs will often ask me, what's
the one thing I should do?
And honestly, the one thing to do
is to be engaging in a much more regular basis
with data and insights so you can
be able to adapt on the fly.
But that's not the easy answer I know a lot of folks look for.
ANGELIA HERRIN: You're talking about a lot of change
and a lot of challenges.
Where do you see the growth opportunity?
TARA WALPERT LEVY: Well, it's best huge growth opportunity,
because think about it.
You now have an ability to, as a brand or as a company,
to be with people 24/7, to be a part
of their fundamental daily lives in a way
that you were historically much more arm's length.
And so I think that's a very big opportunity.
It just means that as an executive team,
you really need to bring an open mind
to your vision and a relentless pursuit of the
why you're going to make any of the changes
that you decide to make.
One of the big risks around technology
is that people can get a little bit distracted, sometimes,
by shiny objects.
But if you're really focused on the fundamentals
of your business and why consumers are behaving the way
they are, I think there's a big opportunity, particularly
in marketing, to leverage your partners and your customers
to be much more fundamental to who they are
and to be much more relevant to what
they're interested in at any particular moment of time.
Right?
So if you're a restaurant company,
and you're able to be there when someone's sort of flipping
around, like, oh, I'm hungry.
What might I like?
Where might I go?
How do I do it quickly?
The ability to provide relevant information, convenience.
Right?
Think about how much you love being
able to speak a coffee order into a smartphone
and then walk into Starbucks, and five minutes later, it's
waiting for us and ready to go.
That kind of routine act can become so embedded
in someone's life in a way that makes
the brand and the business more important
than it ever has been before.
That's just an example of the kind of opportunity
that's out there for businesses.
ANGELIA HERRIN: Well, talking about technology platforms--
what do you think the future holds?
And what do you think executives ought to be looking for?
TARA WALPERT LEVY: Well, there's a couple key trends I think.
One is that machine learning is already democratized.
And it's only going to be more so, which
means that all of these powerful technology capabilities that
used to be available to only a few companies
are now available to any business.
Right?
So there's going to be significantly more competition.
I think the use of data will only
continue to be more important.
But we're living in a privacy-first world.
And I think making sure that companies are thinking from top
to bottom about how they, in a secure and privacy-protected
manner, use data to better serve their customers
is really important.
And I think thinking about new ways
that customers are interacting, right?
We used to be able to connect with people
through a mass message in must-see TV on a Thursday
night.
And today, the whole notion of primetime viewing
has become intensely personal.
People are connecting either through voice or by viewing
or by texting or by searching through their mobile phone,
their home devices, throughout the entire day.
And thinking about how to be helpful to people
when they're in that mode is critical for brands.
ANGELIA HERRIN: What sort of talent
do you think is required to make these new approaches work?
When you think about who people ought
to be hiring, what they ought to be developing,
what kind of skills are critical now?
TARA WALPERT LEVY: Well, particularly
in marketing, if you think about the impact of automation, what
that means is an ability to essentially
outsource to machines the sort of lower-value, high-frequency,
very repeatable tasks in order to enable your team
to focus on much higher-value work, which
should be exciting for them and exciting for the team.
Also means you need folks who are
really capable of thinking strategically and being
flexible.
That agility is going to be really important,
because the consumer trends and the technical platforms
all continue to change so rapidly that you want people
who really can grow with and evolve expertise based on that.
It's also an interesting angle to think
about when you think about how you
organize those capabilities.
Where do you build in a house?
What are the things that are really strategically core
to your brand?
And where do you want to partner with an agency
or with a consulting organization or whomever,
because they're constantly on the cutting
edge of the latest evolution that's
happening in the industry?
And then lastly, I think there's an element of culture,
which is critical in terms of, are you sure?
How do you make sure that your teams
are rooted in data and experimentation,
that they're trying something, looking at the data,
iterating, and trying it again?
We don't see that as how that many corporate cultures work
today, even though a number say that they will.
And it really requires people who are just
extensively comfortable with that approach
and have a learning mindset.
So they know they don't know at all.
But they also know that they're learning every day.
ANGELIA HERRIN: When you think more broadly than marketing,
what do you think leaders need to be thinking about or doing
today that, perhaps, wasn't part of the equation for leaders
five or 10 years ago?
TARA WALPERT LEVY: Well, I think,
as I alluded earlier, irrespective of what function
you sit in, there's an imperative
for every company and every function to be a data company
and to be a technology company.
And I really can't stress those points enough.
I think data and technology as drivers
of competitive advantage have never been more important.
And I think one other area that pops out
as particularly interesting here is the value of diversity.
I think in addition to being the right thing to do,
there's been an overwhelming amount
of data that shows that diverse teams in terms
of background and perspectives deliver better results.
And part of that, I think, is because
of what they bring to the table in a world that is constantly
changing.
And so I think embracing the imperatives
around data, technology, and diversity are just
critical for companies and leadership to grow.
ANGELIA HERRIN: Tara, this has been a great discussion.
Thanks so much for talking with "Quick Take" today.
TARA WALPERT LEVY: Thanks for having me.
It's been a lot of fun.
ANGELIA HERRIN: Have a question for Google?
Tweet @ThinkwithGoogle using the hashtag #QuickTake.
And your question could be answered on our next episode.