- The future's bright.
I can't tell you everything-- - Tell.
- But I'm dreaming big.
Hyper targeted, hyper personalization.
AR, AI is gonna take us to the next level of experience.
- Hi, I'm Sarah Franklin and welcome to Connections
where we hear
from some of the most innovative leaders in marketing.
And today I'm here in the heart of New York city
with Samsung's chief marketing
and communications officer, Michelle Crossan.
But her journey started thousands of miles from here
in Glasgow, Scotland.
- So I grew up in a very impoverished area,
social housing and parents didn't work.
And there wasn't a lot of hope where I grew up.
However, when I look back,
I feel like it was the best childhood
because I learned so much about grit and resilience.
And I got that in abundance growing up.
- I love that, so you talk about learning.
What does learning mean to you
and how did you learn to be a marketer?
- I learned how to model people.
I go, okay, if that's what it takes to go to college,
i.e study three hours a day or do A, B, C.
I've kind of reverse engineer,
a little bit of their formula.
Fast-forward, you get your job, you get busy,
maybe I stop learning.
And so I created this morning routine and it's kinda crazy.
I'll wake up at 4:45, every weekday morning.
- Okay, that is crazy, right.
It's crazy.
- Really crazy.
And I read up about four books
before my kids wake up at six.
So I've been up an hour and 15 minutes.
- Four books.
- Yeah, I read about a chapter in each book
and it can be any book,
but these books basically are continuing my growth
because it's not just about being a marketeer,
is about being a leader.
And I think being a great leader requires you
to constantly refine your skill set.
- What do you think about transformation as marketer?
- When I was a kid,
I had to transform myself to kinda get from where I was
to where I'm now.
And then I start to see my time in Procter & Gamble
that moved me into roles that required transformation.
And then when I joined Samsung,
one of the first things
they asked me to do was own transformation.
And was like, oh, and so for me,
I love transformation at a personal level,
at a business level, I have people that come to me and say,
oh, I really wanna do something different,
I wanna change the same.
And in my head, I'm thinking,
yeah, they want a transformation.
So how can I help them?
- I love that because what seems simple to you
is not so easy to everybody else.
How would you recommend
people guide their own transformation?
- That's a question,
I look at a landscape of different examples
and I try and find the gold standard
and I simplify that formula.
When we meet as a business team,
we spend maybe our first five, 10 minutes talking about
what did we learn?
What worked, what didn't work?
And what do we wanna start, continue, and stop?
Learn is everything if you wanna continue growing, right.
- I love that.
And you have an incredible role here at Samsung,
you run this incredible space.
It's so great.
And it's really an experience.
How are you thinking about experiences as a marketer?
- I love that you're here by the way.
- I love being here. It's so great.
- For those who are watching,
we are in the heart of New York City
in the Meatpacking District.
And we created this space in 2016
because we fundamentally believe that consumers
should have a chance to play with the products.
People that come here really enjoy the unique experience.
People are so curious about how will this feel in my hand?
The design thinking is all about the experience,
but it always starts with consumer first
and what are we solving for?
And I think that's what any product innovation
and marketing team really should focus on.
- You took on the challenge of transforming Samsung,
and now you have not just product marketing,
but you have experience marketing.
We're here in this store.
Like, what do you think is the future of marketing
for brands and experiences?
- We created a whole program of what that would look like,
and it was all about enhancing the skills
of our organization
so that they felt that they could be confident
to be bold in that space.
The future is bright.
We have the metaverse coming,
who knows what this physical space will be virtual.
I can't tell you everything-- - Tell.
- But I'm dreaming big.
And I'm excited about how hyper targeting
and hyper personalization, AR, AI
is gonna take us to the next level of experience.
We could be in the pocket of every genzie,
if we do this well.
- So customer first,
what does that really mean for marketers?
- I think about when I first started in P&G
and I'm working on the Oil of Olay brand.
And so I'm working with a lot of individuals
that didn't grow up in my neighborhood
where every dollar mattered.
And so for me,
I remember knowing the value of that moisturizer.
And at the time I think it was like 5.99.
A lot of people didn't think that was a lot of money.
Oh, I knew that it was a lot of money.
And I knew there was some parent in a supermarket
trying to fill up a shopping cart
and keeping the mental tally
of how much that shopping cart was.
And could they afford that moisturizer?
It's about getting in their shoes.
%It's about feeling their pain, feeling their joy,
feeling their dreams.
And I think marketeers are so unique
in being able to do that.
So as a marketeers, is that intuition,
that gut where you see someone and you feel what they feel.
So that's what consumer centric in my opinion is.
I know a lot of people say,
oh, it's data driven and yes it is,
but it's mixed and hard and soft
with a little bit of intuition
and being able to predict the future for your consumer
and what you can solve for, I think is magical.
- So Michelle, you've talked about how the younger audiences
care more about story living, not just storytelling.
What does that mean?
- It's all actually seeing Samsung in action
before we actually start to tell the stories about it.
I'll give you an example.
We just solve for tomorrow.
And it's a stem competition that we started in 2010
and we've met over a hundred thousand students
and we literally are solving problems in their communities.
They genuinely bring solutions for us
that we would never have considered before.
So really for us it's inside out
and it starts from our people inside.
- So I was in Times Square and I saw
this incredible sustainability campaign.
- You saw that?
- Yes, I did.
- Excellent.
- So tell me why that's important?
- We have an enormous responsibility
to fight this climate crisis and it takes all of us
to look after our planet for the next generation,
everyone in Samsung in this part of America
and everyone across the globe.
We're making so many products
that are with renewable energy.
We talked to the kids of the future.
We talked to our gen seers, and any ideas they give us,
we really take to heart
so that we can include it in our efforts.
- So I have a maybe personal question
and I'll share my point of view first,
is that running a big team at a big company,
sometimes you're up there and you feel like,
what am I doing here?
What are they really gonna learn from me?
You have that little birdie that sits there
and tells you, you're not supposed to be here.
Do you ever feel that at all?
- Yeah, I do.
I'm glad you say that because actually the imposter syndrome
happens to everybody and it happens to more of my sisters
than I would like it to happen too.
We all have a chance to take that seat at the table.
We all have something to give
and everyone has the opportunity to learn from you.
You're a little bit nervous.
Go into the restroom,
go and look at yourself in the mirror and go ask yourself,
what you're about to do is it hard, score of one to 10,
10 being the hardest.
Oh, they'll say, oh wait, okay, go back in your lifetime
and ask yourself, have you done something even harder.
I'm feeling okay, yeah I looked after my mom who's sick.
And did you overcome that?
I'm like, yeah, I'm standing here today.
Are you stronger?
Oh yeah, I'm stronger.
So what you're about to do is nothing
in comparison to what life gave you.
Life actually has been your training ground
and you are now ready for this moment.
And so I always think about those hard moments.
- I needs you like in my ear, like on recording,
I'm gonna record them like, you are it.
- You are it, you can do it.
I use mantras, you're strong, you've done this before.
It's now or never.
People want you to succeed whatever is,
but you need to have your own mantras in life
because confidence does get,
it's shaken up sometimes, that's okay.
We can't let it win.
- So I love it, you think big.
Everybody that's watching today,
like how would you tell them to think big?
- You have to be open to the world
and you have to get inspiration from all different places.
I'm constantly watching TED talks,
constantly reading case studies
and articles in different industries,
but you can only be open to the world
if you're centered and balanced.
And so for me in the morning, I'm very intentional.
I really wanna think about innovation in this space.
And it just comes to you,
but you have to listen to your consumers.
We have so many people that come into this space
and they wanna tell us constantly,
have you thought about this ideas?
So actually our source of inspiration
comes from our consumers.
They're so forward-thinking,
it's not like focus groups anymore.
It's like these conversations that really trigger us
to think very differently,
actually there was two conversations here
that created our bespoke customization program.
And we started to learn, oh, they like different colors.
Oh, they like to have phone covers
that is reflecting their personality.
And hence, that's why we launched
our bespoke galaxy flip phone with up to 49 colors
because they told us here.
So if you listen with intention,
you can do so much when it comes to leading in marketing.