- If you want to be best in your job,
you have to always kind of be peeking
around the corner or, right?
- What's over there?
- What's happening over there?
Because when you're in the media business,
or even in the marketing business,
you have to know who your consumer is,
and you actually have to be focused
on where they're going next.
- Hey, I'm Sarah Franklin
and welcome to Connections where we hear
from some of the most innovative leaders in marketing.
My guest today is Linda Yaccarino,
Chair of Global Advertising and Partnerships
at NBCUniversal.
Linda's a long-time innovator
in the media world and a visionary
who sees how the industry needs to change
and isn't afraid to say so.
So let's start with where it all began, with your mom.
You say that she was an incredible inspiration to you.
- She's a first generation Italian-American immigrant.
She didn't have the good fortune to go to college.
She raised three daughters and made sure
that each of her daughters focused on an education,
so we could each be financially independent.
I continue to think that I owe her,
and it helps push me and drive me.
- Three daughters, three things.
You chose media. What drove you to media?
- I know. It sounds crazy.
In college, I gravitated towards communications.
I was very interested in content
and content's influence on culture.
And that's kind of what landed me in the business
of content, which has become media and advertising.
- And you started as an intern.
- So I started as an intern,
which is totally coincidental, but at NBCUniversal.
So I show up for my first day
as the bright new cheery intern,
and I said, "Hi, I'm Linda Yaccarino. I'm the new intern."
And they were like, "Linda who? From where?"
No record of Linda.
- What?
- So I went home so like downtrodden and upset.
And they're like, "Don't worry, we'll call you
in a couple of days. We're going to figure this out."
And I ended up in the media planning department,
and that's where the love affair was born.
- Your fourth time then at NBCUniversal,
your job was to, no small thing,
but just transform the entire company.
- I'm not exaggerating, 15 different sales teams.
But the fascinating thing was all
of those sales teams were calling on the same clients.
So we were so difficult to do business with.
So we aggregated all of our teams for scale
and become more like one point of entry
and therefore drive bottom-line revenue,
which end of this year, end of 21,
will be my 10th anniversary at the company.
- Congratulations.
- So we've been on a really good trajectory.
- How did that feel? Were you lonely?
- You learn very quickly
that culture is everything
and the culture of your team,
particularly in the face of change.
And it's hard. It was scary for my team.
So it was very difficult.
You had to make sure that I looked confident to them.
Even when inside, I was nervous. I was a little scared.
I wanted to be a good leader.
I also wanted to perform for my new bosses.
So that's where the loneliness came in.
Because when I went home from work at night,
it was the only time I could let my hair down.
And I remember it was the first anniversary
of my tenure at NBCUniversal,
and I went out to dinner with my husband,
and I burst into tears,
and he was like, "What's wrong?"
I'm like, "This is the loneliest job I've ever had."
But it was also kind of provided like a breakthrough
because then you started having more good days
than bad days. You started seeing progress.
You started seeing your team kind of rally alongside of you.
You know, little by little, the culture got better.
And then, then you feel like I have an army
of people that we're all really agreed
on our vision, and it feels great.
You have to invest in that every single day
because the culture is what defines the success
of your team.
- It's so powerful when leaders share
those vulnerable feelings because people get intimidated.
What advice do you have to marketers
or business leaders looking
to have those lessons that you learned?
- It takes a point you get into your career
when you feel comfortable enough showing that vulnerability.
Many of us grew up in a time,
there was this ad campaign that was,
I think it was for a deodorant,
and said, "Never let them see you sweat."
- Yeah, I remember that.
- Right? You remember that.
So showing your vulnerability,
actually let your teams see that you're human,
and it actually invites them to share their advice.
But seeing you as human is really important too,
because you don't have all the answers.
And as a leader, and I talked to my teams
about this all the time,
you want to invite contribution,
and you want to develop your plan together, right?
So your whole team can lean in
and contribute to the success.
Marketers, you know, we don't have all the answers.
And I know like NBCUniversal,
particularly in the US, is the biggest media company,
but we can't give you everything you need.
So help me learn what else you need,
and that's where partnerships come in.
Because we're confident enough
in our own business and our partnership together,
then we want to introduce you to partners of ours.
Because if I bring a partner along with me,
it's like introducing you to a good friend,
a mutual friend, that you believe in and you trust in.
And that takes a little courage too.
- What are some of the most innovative things
that you're most proud of?
- We're about a week away
from the one-year anniversary of Peacock,
our new streaming platform.
It was probably about nine months in the making,
develop the strategic plan, the business case,
pitched it to the then CEO, my boss, Steve Burke,
it got green lit in the room,
and that was a nine-month project of my entire team.
And to jump into a pool with Netflix, or with Disney+,
or with Hulu, and say, "This is our stake in the ground."
I burst. If you couldn't tell, I burst with pride,
that I was able to partner with my team
and bring that to a successful launch in the marketplace.
- Viewers are everywhere. How is NBCU using technology
to help marketers reach their audiences?
- Well, you're certainly right. Viewers are everywhere.
And actually content is everywhere.
We have the ability to reach consumers.
The screen in their hand,
the screen, or the tablet, in their lap,
or the big giant screen on the wall.
But how do we connect all of those screens
on their own terms to offer scaled opportunities to you?
So how we use technology for that?
It's a really good example
of the strategic focus of our company.
Comcast NBCUniversal is focused
on three very simple things: broadband, aggregation,
and streaming, so it's a technology-driven content company.
We're using our technology partners
to improve the viewing experience.
So when you're looking at the screen on your hand,
you're getting the ads that you want
when you're in that type of environment.
And we wouldn't be able to do it.
If we weren't investing in the technology infrastructure
to improve the viewing experience for viewers
that have unlimited choice,
feeding them the advertising and the content that they want.
- You said that we're all living
at that intersection of media and technology,
what do you mean by that?
- People say, "oh, that's a,
there's a bunch of tech companies over there,
or that's a media or content company over there."
Consumers don't think that. It's the consumer first.
And if we're serving that experience right,
and if the products we bring
to them are influenced by that intersection,
then we'll be best in class
because the consumers are very vocal.
They'll tell you where they're going.
They'll tell you what they want.
- You've also said
that consumers are just demanding innovation.
How can marketers be innovating for the future?
- Let's think about the change
in consumption in just the last 15 months.
There's been such an acceleration
of the viewing behaviors of consumers moving to streaming.
So what I always talk to marketers about is
how can we string all those things together?
So in the past, we would have had a conversation
just about your interest sports,
or how you want to interact with broadcast television
or cable television. We can't do that anymore.
We have to stitch them all together
to give you the scale that you need.
And that requires technology.
It requires data sophistication.
So what I tell marketers to think about is
let's learn from what we were doing in the past,
but not let that legacy process and behavior
hold us back from thinking about what's new.
- You drive big transformations,
but you're also have been one
of the only women in the room.
How hard is that?
- Particularly earlier in my career,
when I first started noticing, sitting around the table,
and I was the only woman,
I took it as a very unique opportunity
to be able to stand out,
because I thought that the chances were greater,
that someone would remember the studied, prepared,
ready-to-go woman in the room
as compared to the 10 or 15 men that were in the room.
So it probably created, typical of women,
that we prepare more, that we are more focused and specific
on what we want to accomplish,
but it also gave me courage to embrace my differences.
- What advice do you have for people
who find themselves as the onlys in the room.
- Be confident to be independent and speak your mind.
Who really wants to be like everybody else?
- [Sarah] Nobody does.
- So exactly. And conforming is boring, right?
So embrace your differences.
But what I also talked to them a lot about today,
is make sure you bring somebody along with you
because it's lonely being the only woman at the table
or the only person of your background at that table.
Bring somebody else with you and change it.
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We'll see you next time.