most companies are really good at their
core business what they're not very good
is that we imagine their business
and and disrupt themselves not just
about creating efficiencies
which is a lot of the things technology
has done too is how we imagine it
from the eyes of the customer
[Music]
hey i'm sarah franklin and welcome to
connections where we hear from some of
the most innovative leaders in marketing
and that is certainly the case for my
guest today theresa barrera of publicist
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
[Music]
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 own
a restaurant a cafe in a grocery store
after school i'll 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 to 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 a lawyer and if you
can't do one either one you'll become a
banker like a teller you work in a bank
there's three choices three choices
doctor lawyer 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
yeah so i did chemical engineering in
biochemistry major i wanted to be a
doctor i would like try to remember
acetate and i don't know yes yeah
i was terrible at it and i
quickly realized that i had to like
change my major so what brought you to
marketing then i went to business school
and then i that's how i end up here
the interesting thing is i was when i
was in business school and i graduated
then my mother did not explain in the
village what i did so people say what is
your daughter who is theresa doing right
now well she's like you feel like a
lawyer we're not really a lawyer
[Music]
at publishes 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 the brands that do that i think
they're the ones that we tend to
gravitate and the ones that tend to try
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 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 how to
modernize the enterprise
and two is i 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 do you
help those companies continue to evolve
and to maintain relevancy
so 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 your food they
wanted to pick it up at the restaurant
they want to pick up at curbside they
want to pick it up at the subway station
at your lobby and you did this before
coven we did this before cover 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 want
to reinvent and continue to evolve 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
been thinking about digital
transformation god for over a decade
and companies are
been doing it but what they've really
been doing is what i call random
acts of digital they've been really
mainly digitizing parts of their
business or adding new digital channels
but that it's just technology it's not
transformative it's not transformative
it's just adding technology actually we
are very deliberate at public safety and
we call it digital business
transformation
[Music]
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 the way you get questions those
are big questions right and the way you
answer the question that's the way
you're gonna behave
[Music]
so with like this crazy business world
we're in how do you think that marketers
can lead 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 enabled
because 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 really good
mentality to have
you've said campaigns are a dirty word
why is that that is the world of our
marketers what campaigns are you running
how effective are they what is your data
the other word i don't like is funnel
are you like funny no i'll tell you why
you like the funnel i like to see the
data and i like to see them go through
the funnel you don't like funnels
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 dating it 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 that they're very
linear but the world we live into then
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 a
mentality of 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 too 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 ten 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 marketing 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 minutes 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
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time