Visha Kudhail  0:00  
In my view, after spending a lot of time thinking about authenticity and researching it, generally speaking, when you hear somebody come on an industry stage and talk about authenticity, I feel like everybody like eye rolls and think, "Oh, here we go again, but it's probably because of the fact that we haven't really got a clear view of what we think it is, we've misused the word, and we've almost diluted it. We treated it as jumping on a TikTok channel, that's it, that'll do. Or, you know, we've treated it as being just factually correct on content. Well, actually, truthful brands can actually also be insincere brands as well. So, you know, for me, the way I've approached authenticity is really seeing it as an operating principle, so it's when your words match your beliefs, and this is where your tone, your message, your actions, your marketing, the way your CEO speaks on CNN, they all need to line up.

Ben Walker  1:09  
Hello everybody, and welcome to the CIM Marketing Podcast. I'm Ben Walker, and today we're joined by Visha Kudhail, who's going to be tackling a really interesting question, you know, we've talked a lot about how the world's becoming increasingly automated, increasingly metric driven, and Visha today is going to be telling us whether human authenticity is a genuine competitive advantage or indeed a luxury that only a few can afford. Visha has been on a big executive journey across ThinkBox, Google, YouTube, Pinterest, and Square UK, and she's got a new book out, I'm delighted to say, called Authentic Marketing, and today she's going to be giving some insights on implementing what she calls the other AI authentic inspiration to drive measurable business growth without sacrificing your brand soul. Visha, welcome to the show. How are you?

Visha Kudhail  2:11  
I'm good. I'm good. What an introduction. Thank you, Ben.

Ben Walker  2:15  
It's fantastic to have you on the show. Let's go back a bit, let's go back a little bit before the book, perhaps before the big tech experience that you had. What first drew you into our industry?

Visha Kudhail  2:31  
Oh, that's a very good question. So I'm gonna walk us back, what, when I was 18 years old, so I actually first got my look into marketing by doing an internship when I was, it was at MTV. It was organised through my university, and I was in a very, you know, it felt very glam, didn't it? Like MTV is very glam, and marketing felt very glam, and you know, it's interesting now, I guess not nearly 20 years on, you sort of see marketing in a completely different light, and I'm sure we're going to talk about that a little bit more, but you know, I think at the beginning it was all about brilliant storytelling, and you know, like, oh God, this is such a glamorous industry, and you know, when I joined Think Box, I was mesmerised by advertising and the powerful stories that they, you see people tell, so I think that was quite an eye-opening experience for me. You know, as you go along, you learn exactly how complex marketing is, and I'm sure we'll talk about that in a second.

Ben Walker  3:39  
Apart from digging our innate glamour as an industry. What were the key learnings you made? Would you say in the early stages of that career?

Visha Kudhail  3:47  
Yeah, I mean, you know, when I started, I'll use Thinkbox as a good example, because I felt like when I was at Think Box, it was my proper career, that's when I was sort of not working at different places, trying to figure myself out, and I joined Thinkbox as a young marketing executive, and then I grew to become head of marketing before I left, and actually working in a smaller company, Think Box is a trade marketing body for commercial TV, and at that time it was like, you know, there were six of us when I first joined it, then grew to 20 people, so it's always very small, and what I think it really taught me was how you can learn a bit of everything in marketing, and to roll up your sleeves and get, you know, stuck in, and so it taught me that, and another thing that I think it really taught me was being able to do a lot of the work yourself, so not just rolling up receivers, I mean, like taking, I don't know, a roll up banner to an event and making sure you're organising logistics and sending out the emails and things like that, but also, you know, we did a lot of our in-house filming ourselves and scripting and things like that, so you know, I was interpreting lots. Of case studies, writing scripts, not something I think a lot of marketers end up doing now, because they outsource a lot of that, but when you're in a smaller company, you do a lot of that yourself, you've got to just sort of make sure that you're saving on resources and budget at all times, but that really does help you set yourself up for success, because I can now think about how to structure a story when it comes to a brand story, a customer story, or I know what to look out for when I'm judging an award entry, because I've actually looked at so many and had to interpret what a good IPA case study is, for example, and turn that into a film case study, and you know, another thing that I found that it really helped me with was learning how to feedback to creatives, so I used to have my former boss, who still is now a CEO of Thinkbox, Lindsay Kay, she gave me some really good advice when I was learning how to work with creatives at that time we had an external creative agency and my initial reaction to like a new piece of work would be something like that looks great and but actually I think that's wrong and that's wrong and that's wrong and she sort of pulled me to the side and said, Do you know what I think the way you should approach it is this way, which is, remember that somebody spent all this time working on something, and when she shared that piece of information with me, it literally blew my mind, and I know that sounds really silly to say that, because right now we have to be empathetic, and this is kind of common when you're in leadership roles, but when you're younger, you're not quite familiar with these kind of dynamics, so actually learning how to communicate and talk to creatives, so you get the best out of them, was something I was also learning on the fly as well.

Ben Walker  6:53  
That sounds like an interesting, almost transformative moment. It sounds simple. Some of these moments, they do sound simple, and they perhaps you don't realise them always at the time. Do you, how important they are, but that's probably changed your approach, has it not? For life, it

Visha Kudhail  7:05  
has. It has. I remember, actually, we were.. this was at Pinterest. We had a new creative agency we'd onboarded to support all global markets, all of us, international and the US, and the way that we approach feedback was very different, because everybody has their own style, but I always remember that piece of advice that was given, and I always thought about, you know, make sure that you respect people's time and the work they've done, and I think I delivered feedback in a more empathetic way, which really softened the room, I think, less than versus us. It became a little bit more about, oh, we've just onboarded a new creative agency, they're just learning about us, they haven't got the work right, that's fine, they've just started the process. So, really, just understanding the context of how people are working was just, you know, it's always helped me out.

Ben Walker  7:59  
It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, bringing from a creative agent to myself, I support and endorse that message. By the way, I think it's a great way to interact with your agencies, is in that way, and recognise actually it does. There's a learning curve when you take on a new client, so be empathetic and work together. You've worked at many hyperscalers, such as Google, YouTube, Pinterest, we're talking about leadership this season on the show. How would you characterise the big tech leadership style, apart from the sheer scale of these things? What are the key defining cultural differences? Do you think?

Visha Kudhail  8:37  
Yeah, that's a really interesting question, because I think when you're going from a smaller company to a larger company, you know there's just different things that you've got to be aware of. There's larger responsibilities that you have. I mean, certainly, like with big tech companies, just tech companies in general, there's a larger responsibility of what they do and how they have a large role in shaping behaviour in society, and I think that means that you have to show up as somebody that is well informed, understand regulation, become a subject matter expert, but also make sure that consistently you're listening to your team and that you're being empathetic to your team as well. And I worked with a distributed team across multiple different markets, so I wasn't always in the office sat next to somebody at all times. So, being available and being accessible was a really important part of my personal leadership style, and I learned from really, really great bosses in sort of big technology companies, you know. When I joined Google, I remember seeing Matt Britton always show up in multiple different events, and I always just loved the way he sort of handled things, you know. He was almost like. Steady pair hands, you know, he was navigating a lot of uncertainty at Google at the time that I was there, and I liked the fact that he was showing up as a really strong and stable leader, and I think that's what people need amongst all of the chaos that we always operate in, is stability and reducing chaos and making sure that people are set up for success, so they can do their best work, and I remember when I joined Pinterest, had multiple bosses, but one of my bosses was Andrea Mallard, who's now moved on to Microsoft AI, and I just always loved Andrea's really like empathetic style, and her creativity, and how she gave really detailed feedback, and really listened, and she listened a lot to me, and I actually just thought I picked up all of these little nuances from my bosses, but also moving away from sort of larger technology companies, you know, at Think Box I was working alongside, you know, Tess Alex, who was CEO at the time I joined, but now is non-executive director at Channel Four, and Tess had a really, and still has - sorry, she has issues - still has this very unique communication style, and I think communication is really critical for any person in a leadership role, because, and even in sort of larger technology companies, because you have to be an over communicator in larger technology businesses, because of the scale of those companies are so vast, but what was really interesting about meeting someone like Tess was she wrote personal notes, she really understood courtesy, and she treated emails as a really strong personal communication tool, and you know, I think she got a lot of respect and grew her network from multiple different people, but you've got to draw people in towards you, and I think that was another thing that I sort of picked up from another leader in sort of these, and brought over actually to the larger technology companies,

Ben Walker  11:55  
it makes our working lives better and more enjoyable, of course, when our leaders communicate in an empathetic way to us, and in a clear and empathetic way to us, but it's also important for project delivery, isn't it? You, somebody who knows that all about that. If you've built marketing functions in business from the ground up, haven't you? In several of your roles, I mean, I'm sure that's something many people listening today will dream of. What's it like in practice, and how do you get it right?

Visha Kudhail  12:21  
Yeah, so good question. It sounds sexier than it is. Boiler, so what's really interesting is that I guess when you're working in technology companies, your job changes all the time, because you know, like I said, there's a lot of the work you end up doing shifts according to what the core objectives you need to deliver on at that point, so you know, at Google Trust became the biggest conversation to tackle, because it was I joined at a time with brand safety, very sceptical market, it went from a one story to then shifting to another way of communicating to audiences, which was celebrating effectiveness, and and then for YouTube and data and privacy for Google itself, and then when I got to Pinterest, I guess when, when you're thinking about that sort of function as well, I mean, I had to think about what is the vision, what is the identity, what is the European identity, we had a strong brand, but largely it was seen as a US company. It's just, you know, thinking about the nuances of cultures in different markets that you're accountable to, and the other thing is thinking about processes that aren't already been set up, because that was a new function, and then thinking about cross-functional alignment, and making sure that people understood what your team is set up to do, and how this they support and amplify other people's departments as well, and I say this time and time again. Marketing is a leadership function, it's not just here to do multiple different ad campaigns. There's a larger role and responsibility we have of creating a story, creating core messages that then multiple different team members can take on and then amplify in their own sort of unique ways, like sales, for example, product marketing, or or comms, or something like that, making sure that that the storytelling and the vision was very clear and very communicated, that meant showing up to all the meetings and all hands and ensuring that I'm talking to all the heads of each of those departments, and seeing where I could find joint opportunities, join OKRs, objective key results, and see if we can combine efforts, and then also from, you know, looking at the perspective of your team to, you know, OKRs, making sure that everyone is focused on the areas that they're accountable for, so that they can see their growth and see how not only how they're moving the markets along and seeing progress in that way, but also themselves as well, seeing projects being delivered and actually we're seeing ROI and positive ROI and seeking our wins and learns. We had a really strong wins and learns approach, so as a Pinterest philosophy, actually. We actually got together as a team and always documented here are our wins and here are our learns, so that we could always learn from any areas that we thought was a potential failure or mistake. So a lot of it was operational at times, and lots of air cover and communication, but what was really lovely was being able to deliver this really beautiful story about Pinterest, which is, you know, it's a positive corner of the internet to the European market. So I really loved doing that. Yeah,

Ben Walker  15:30  
you loved doing it, and you were brilliant at doing it. You weren't best marketing leader at the 2022 Global Women in Marketing Awards, which is a pretty tremendous achievement. What do you think are the key capabilities you need yourself to be a successful leader? A lot of people listening are leaders or aspire to be leaders. What are the key capabilities you need to be that, and more to the point, how do you cultivate them?

Visha Kudhail  15:59  
Firstly, there's probably different types of leadership styles, you could be a people manager, and then you're a leader, you could be, you could think about leadership in even if you're in an IC role, so an individual contributor, so you don't have a team, that doesn't matter, you are still a leader, and the other point, and I'm sure we'll talk about this, as well as being cultural leadership, as well. So, I think leadership has many complexities, and it depends on where you want to spend your time, and where you want to grow your brand, or where you want to double down on. I think right now, in particular, we need to make sure that all leaders are making sure that they are measuring what their impact is, and documenting it, and I think this is something that we, as marketers, got to do and do better at all times, and just make sure that we're telling the data story back to the business, but also telling the data story back to ourselves, so we remember that actually we are all commercial leaders, no matter which part of the marketing discipline that you sit in, so that's one thing I think, and I guess the other point, and I guess this is the reason why you do podcasts like this as well, was being an always on learner, and I learn from people in the industry, I listen to podcasts when I take my dog out for a walk, you know, I spent time writing a book, but I also listen to other people, audio books, or buy books as well, and I listen to other leaders and take feedback on, and actually filter that feedback in my brain, and think, where could I have done better. So I think that always on learning capability helps you grow. Sure, is

Ben Walker  17:41  
there anything innate about it? Obviously, we all learn, even great leaders learn, but is there anything innate about leadership? Do you sometimes get people who are more naturally cut out to be leaders than others?

Visha Kudhail  17:53  
I would say so. Yeah, I mean, like, I've met many people that just enjoy doing a great job, and that's that's great, and I think there are people that thrive on being a people manager and really thrive on nurturing a team. I certainly do. I think it's been one of the things that I have found really fulfilling in my career, and nurturing and developing and mentoring people, and it's been a consistent thread in my career. You know, like when I worked with a network, I co-founded a network. I spent time with Campaign magazine and started a series called Plus It On to make sure more women had voices in campaign. You know, I've done things like, you know, make sure that my team is always set up for success, run off sites, and I like, I enjoy that. I enjoy listening to people's problems and go, I can find a way of unblocking it. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody loves that. I particularly thrive on that. This goes back to what type of leader do you want to be? You can still be an individual contributor and be a great leader, but that just means doing great at your job, getting stuff done, and really making sure that maybe it's the one function or that one project you are doing is delivered at highest standard, and that means you're not thinking about things like performance reviews and thinking about cultural things, or you know, how do you show up and be the brand spokesperson? You don't need to think about that, you can do those things. So I think it's within us of choosing what type of leader we want to be.

Ben Walker  19:23  
It's a great take that different people are tailored to different types of role and different types of leadership. There's not just one leadership style or one leadership role, and sometimes it's about marketers trying to work out which of the roles is right for them.

Visha Kudhail  19:39  
Yeah, I agree. I agree, and I think the culture that you're in needs to help set you up for success to be able to thrive in that environment, and most of the time I would always encourage marketers, go and talk to your line manager and work it out, so that you can then set yourself up for success in that way.

Ben Walker  19:56  
I have to mention it, your female leader, who's. Climb to the top of the field, you mentioned it before yourself. Are there still persistent myths about women in leadership in our industry, which is quite heavily feminised, but are there still myths about women in leadership? And if they are, how have you dismantled them?

Visha Kudhail  20:18  
It's a great question. So, I do think there are many myths out there that lots of women are debunking, but some of the common ones I would say are, are there enough qualified commercial leaders, and I have seen that come through time and time again. You know, we do see lots of men in CMO positions that own the budget in own the decision making power, but I do think this is where we just need to right size our expectations, because there's lots of women in the marketing workforce, they just don't tend to be in those senior decision making roles, particularly in the UK, I would say. Having said that, I think this is where male allyship and sponsorship and support really can come into its own, and I do think, like, I've been very lucky where I've worked with really great male allies, but also really brilliant women leaders that have put me in the rooms, and that I could be in, and I wouldn't have thought I could be in as well, and you know, Andrea is a really good example. I reached out to her recently and told her, "Thank you for doing that for me, because that's the way that you get access to the right rooms and the strategies and the conversations. So, I do think we need more sponsorship in marketing and marketing forums, and the other way I guess I would say is another myth, and I've heard women say this a lot in multiple different forums that I've been in, which is women need to act like men to get ahead, and that has come up a lot, and I've seen women behave like that as well, and find that it's not authentic to them, and then there's change strategies, but one of the most brilliant things about women in leadership is that they bring a different type of skill set, soft skills, they're more relational, they can handle crisis management and communication really well. This has come through from proven in studies as well. So, this is not just me just saying this out loud, and I do encourage women to have the same audacity as a man. You certainly can ask what you want and show up well, and speak up, and come to a room with knowledge, but don't have to act like a man, because this is the uniqueness about having gender balance in a different meeting and a different room. I think men and women are brilliant when they come together, and I actually love working with men, and I know lots of men that have actually loved working with women, so I think we need a bit more collaboration in that way, and that's why I think sponsorship is just the way to go.

Ben Walker  22:49  
That's a fantastic, interesting take, sort of on this topic. You co-found an organisation called the Futures Network, it's been going for about a decade, just over a decade. Its relevant data is to support female leaders, so from your vantage point, you perhaps touched on it a little bit. What's the biggest leadership blind spot, do you think, which plagues the UK marketing industry?

Visha Kudhail  23:10  
Yeah, I think what was really interesting when we co-founded Futures was suddenly, you know, you're meeting lots of people and lots of women who are fantastic leaders, but they're also trying to solve problems that they have, so you know return to work processes and policies that some companies don't put in, parenting, flexible working these are really important business challenges and a lot of women are facing them. You know, I don't have children, but actually help me be a better leader. I had women in my team that were going on mat lead, but I was more empathetic because of the fact that I was connected to this network. So, I think certainly listening to this group have been really helpful, but you know, we touched on this a bit earlier on, which was, you know, there's lots of women in the workforce, but they're also not at senior level, but they are there, so a lot of the time we mistake visibility for equity, but actually, what we probably should be doing is making sure that we're levelling women up in those forums, and I think that's the area that we probably need to fix a little bit more in the industry. Yeah,

Ben Walker  24:20  
a lot of the processes are almost sort of too gender blind. We're an industry with lots of women in it. We're a heavily feminised industry, but nevertheless, the corporate structures at which the marketing function operates in are not always aligned to the needs of those employees.

Visha Kudhail  24:34  
Yeah, I think that's completely true. And now that we are in this kind of strange, sort of hybrid remote, maybe all in the office. These points need to be thought about more clearly, because you want a happy workforce, and you know, great team that you can help nurture, because bringing in new people is expensive as well. Yeah,

Ben Walker  24:55  
talk a little bit about your book, you used this word earlier. A couple of times, authenticity used it very recently, when you've just been talking about why it's not authentic in your view for women to show up in a masculine way. There's other ways of approaching the job without acting like a man. You're big on authenticity, generally, and in fact, your book is called Authentic Marketing: combining human thinking and creativity with technology to inspire audiences, it's out this June, so very soon. Tell us a little bit about it, and what's in

Visha Kudhail  25:30  
it. Oh, great. Well, thank you for asking. And so you know, I wrote a book last year with Cogan Page, and the reason why I wrote this, but to be completely frank with you, but last year when I was approached about the book, I just thought this is fantastic. I've always thought about authenticity. I've always worked with businesses with good values. I've always looked at audience-first strategies, and this is a lot of, I think, has gone into this, but, but as the year has gone on, you know, AI has been such a big driver to how we are thinking about marketing and content, and also how people are really feeling right now. This book is now becoming very important, so I'll explain what I mean by authenticity, but just to really quickly touch on what I meant in terms of the sort of landscape we're in. We are in an, I guess we're in probably one of the most untrustworthy worlds that we are ever operating in right now, and this is something that Enderman's Trust Barometer for 2026 has actually communicated. People are becoming more insular, they have reported a further decline in trust, and you know, a lack of belief in what's real and what's not real, so we're always questioning content. We're seeing there's a rise in misinformation. They also reported there's a lot of optimism as well in people, and we get a sense of that as we consume the content that we're consuming at the moment as well. So there's a lot happening in the world right now, and where I think that's a cultural, societal problem, brands are operating in this space, and right now authentic storytelling is really how people are navigating the complexities of this world, and you know, finding out who they can trust and don't trust, and trust is a connecting thread throughout my book, and in my view, after spending a lot of time thinking about authenticity and researching it, generally speaking, when you hear somebody come on an industry stage and talk about authenticity, I feel like everybody like eye rolls and think, oh, here we go again, but it's probably because of the fact that we haven't really got a clear view of what we think it is. We've misused the word, and we've almost diluted it. We've treated it as jumping on a TikTok channel, that's it, that'll do. Or, you know, we've treated it as being just factually correct on content. Well, actually, truthful brands can actually also be insincere brands as well. So, you know, for me, the way I've approached authenticity is really seeing it as an operating principle, so it's when your words match your beliefs, and this is where your tone, your message, your actions, your marketing, the way your CEO speaks on CNN, they all need to line up, and that's where I think you know when you're building products that are for the audiences that you want to reach, but is your marketing married up to that? Is the website that you're, you've created also creating that sort of authentic experience? Authenticity runs deeper within a business, and it makes the marketing land harder, because ultimately marketing is what the customer sees, you know, it's the stories they see. So, all of these parts need to be really thoroughly connected. And at Pinterest, we thought about that a lot when it came to product to output.

Ben Walker  28:54  
It's a great thing to do. It's a good thing to be, to strive to be authentic, to make sure that your words match your actions is a good thing to do in business, as in life. Is it commercially gainful? Like,

Visha Kudhail  29:08  
yes. So, and I actually have real-world examples included in here. So, it is being authentic does drive commercial value, and interestingly, there's a couple of power brands I bring into this, you know, Nike's a good example, absolutely amazing power brand used values at the heart of everything that they've done. So Nike actually has really strong NPS scores as well, and I think they've earned their right to become a power brand because of the level of work they've done on, you know, the stance they take when it comes to their values, so I think they've done a fantastic job on that. You know, Airbnb has commercial gains off the back of the tech storytelling, and another one that slightly surprised me when it came to rising profits was Elf, which is Elf Beauty, the

Ben Walker  29:57  
beauty firm rather than the oil firm.

Visha Kudhail  30:00  
Yeah, the beauty verb, yeah, yeah, and I saw the CEO speak on CNN, and he was talking about their core values as DNI. He was on CNN, really talking about DNI, because, of course, there was lots of changes coming through because of the Trump administration, and he was communicating, we really believe in our values. This is, we believe in DNI. We see it through and through. We see it in our marketing, but we also think about it in our staff. We think about it in our product innovation, because everyone looks and is different. So, we have to make sure that our audiences feel like our brand is talking to them and is relatable. Their profits are skyrocketing. They were really showing that leaning into their brand values and leaning into being who they are from the start, and their mission hasn't changed really does have strong commercial gains as well. It

Ben Walker  30:55  
was interesting. You mentioned audiences there. You got this concept called audience first, haven't you? Talk about audience first marketing, what does that mean in practice? Some marketers say, well, of course, it's about the audience, well, that's who we're talking to, but it's a bit more to it than that, isn't there?

Visha Kudhail  31:10  
Yeah, 100% There's this, there's two different ways, I guess, thinking audience first, and actually in the book I cover data and a lot of details. Data is so vital for us, so I cover data, but also how to interpret data into your marketing strategies, and the third thing is, like, how do you always think audience first, and what I've come to find over the course of the last few years is that our language in marketing teams has become less human, you know, we are taught, we're very metric driven, our heads are in a spreadsheet, we're almost talking about people, you and me as a number, and that's becoming something that's common in a lot of companies. So, I feel like this may resonate with a lot of people that might be listening to this. So, from my perspective, there's two ways of looking at the audience first, and that is at the start of your storytelling and your marketing strategy, which is, do you have the right data? Are you talking to customers? Are you listening to them? Are you curious? Are you doing research? If you can't do research, can you commission research? Can you go consolidate research within your business? AI tools can now help you do that. So, spending time really unpacking what your audience is and means and what they need and what are the unmet needs are is really important before you start your journey in creating a marketing strategy, delivering on the tactics, and then as you start to see your metrics come through, what we tend to find in a lot of companies is a lot of celebration around metrics that kind of don't mean a lot of things, that don't move the business along, that don't encourage a strong marketing effectiveness culture, and we look at metrics again under that lens of a data point, you know what we tend to do is that 2000 likes on my Instagram post, wonderful celebration, and I'm really conscious of what we celebrate as marketers, because we're sending signals to other people in the business that that is what good looks like, but what good looks like is intent-driven metrics, and really learning how you know what people saving, what they're coming back to, what they're downloading, what are they interested in, so just thinking a little bit more about what human beings are driven by and what their challenges are, and trying find ways of meeting those needs is just really, really critical. I think for us,

Ben Walker  33:33  
it's less about determining likes and more about determining intent.

Visha Kudhail  33:37  
Intent, yeah,

Ben Walker  33:38  
intent is the key to audience first marketing, it wouldn't be a marketing podcast in this day and age without mentioning AI, of course. So let us do that. I suppose it's a big overarching question, really. This concept of authenticity, do you think it will become more or less valuable in the AI era?

Visha Kudhail  34:00  
I think it's going to be more valuable, and I think it's critical for us. I think for a couple of reasons, actually. I mean, you know, I called out some of those problem areas a bit earlier on. We are creating content for a performative attention economy. A lot of our content is starting to not mean much, and you know, we are in danger of going far down that sort of short term metric driven sort of strategy, and forgetting about brand truth, delivering on customer expectations, meeting them where they are. Storytelling is such a vital part of our industry, if we want it to survive, and the showing up as a delightful guest in people's homes and on their screens, so I do think you know we're going to need to think more about how AI can enable us versus outsourcing ourselves completely to AI, and so in two different ways we need to work on building trust with audiences, building connection. With audiences as well, and the other part I think is going to be vital, as I just touched on, which is our own abilities too, as well. You know, we, we are lucky we have AI to help us with all the stuff that was really hard before, like, who wants to spend all day or two days working on a research deck, when actually it can consolidate and give you an objective point of view. Now, what is really important for us is to be critical thinkers and scan for things that maybe AI has not scanned for you. AI will do a part of the job, you've got to do the other half of the job as well. So, don't completely outsource yourself to AI, and I think if you do that, your experience is always going to be second-hand.

Ben Walker  35:46  
So, do you think AI-generated content per se can ever feel truly authentic,

Visha Kudhail  35:52  
potentially in the future? Who knows? I think today the AI capabilities that we have, I would say no. You know, AI mimics human language. It doesn't feel and think in the way a human can. It doesn't feel emotions or feel desire or feel pain. And you know, one of the things that I guess AI does is creates perfection versus, you know, think about relatability. And there's a beautiful thing that Andy Nairn has said to me, he's a contributor to my book, but he said we want our heroes to have flaws, and I really like that saying, and I think there's a lot of truth in that. We do want our heroes to have flaws, and I think we as brands need to think about being more relatable to audiences at the moment, but equally at the same time, I think you know we don't know where the future will take us. We don't know what's going to happen the next 1020 years, but we do know one thing, which is you always need to be an audience first thinker. So always put customers at the heart of what you're doing. We always need to be creative thinkers and tell great stories, and we always, always need to be great collaborators with the businesses we are in, and the cross-functional teams that we're in right now. There are some things that will never, never change, and we also need to make sure that we're telling great stories, and that does come from our own original thinking and our brains, and coming up with great ideas, so we don't get lost in the sea of sameness that we're seeing, but you know, I think this is why we all of us need to lean into AI and learn it, but bring it into your skill set in the way that it's going to help you. Right now, don't feel overwhelmed by you're not doing everything at the same time, you want to consolidate data, and then tell a great story. Focus on that. Learn how to do parts in bits. You want a sparring partner, great AI can help you do that. But I think use AI well at this point. But you know, who knows? Maybe in two years' time, we'll be having a very different conversation.

Ben Walker  37:58  
Maybe we will, but use it for today. Live for today, use AI as your job is today. Some of the audience will already know this, but Visha has, in the past, had her own podcast, and she's interviewed some huge names from a really wide variety of industries and backgrounds, not just from marketing, but from all sorts of industries. We're talking about leadership in this season of the show. What are your three biggest lessons you've learned from those people you've spoken to?

Visha Kudhail  38:27  
Yeah, it's great questions. Three lessons. So, interestingly, my podcast was very diverse, as in, I had guests that may have been a ballet dancer, an author, or maybe a script writer, so they all brought something very unique, but I called out three that I can talk about, and that I still think about and apply to my day-to-day. So, the first one is from Lindsay Irvine, who has just left Square. She was a CMO of Square, and I did a great podcast with her, and she says something about glass balls, rubber balls, which is you will not be able to catch everything, and your job is to figure out what's the glass ball that you to hold on to, and that you don't want it to fall and shatter, and what are the rubber balls that you just go see it, hear it, I'll park it right now, but I'll come back to it later, or bounce back. So, especially when you are in large global roles, maybe regional role, even if you're in a UK role in a very complex business, you're going to have to start juggling things a lot and feeling like it's okay that you don't catch every ball. So, glass ball rubber balls was a great analogy she shared with me, and I still apply this today. The other one I would say is from Hannah Franks, and not a marketer, she's a Peloton instructor, and a great friend of mine. But the reason why I love this thing, she says we talked about social media content, and actually a lot of us are on social media a lot of the times, specifically on LinkedIn. In communicating thought leadership, if you're a marketer, and one of the things that she said to me was, we need to look at our social media content and think, is this for me or is it useful, is it helpful, am I doing anything, if I'm going to look back at this, or my children look back at this, will they be proud of me or not proud of me, and I absolutely love that, because there is a lot of social content out there that you know, particularly on like LinkedIn thought leadership, that I think has almost just filled a gap, but I think always communicate with value. I would also say that to the point of like, when you're in a meeting, don't create noise, create value, always. If you're going to speak up, always come to something with value. So, I love that particular piece of insight she gave me. The other one was Rankin, who, again, not a marketer, but he is an iconic photographer, really fantastic, and he gave me a piece of advice, and I apply this to myself all the time, which was always look at yourself and really look hard at yourself and understand if something didn't work out, what was it? You know, don't blame anyone, but work out what did you do in that moment that you can then think, okay, maybe I will approach it in a different way, or maybe you may not have, but I think as we always get feedback from our bosses, look at performance reviews, and you know, get information back to us. Always look hard at yourself, or even if you're going for an interview process right now, if you're talking to companies, take a look at yourself and think, where could I have done better? So, I think that growth mindset and that humbleness as well is something I think is really important for all of us,

Ben Walker  41:41  
they're three fantastic tips, really, really good tips. We have lots of people listening to this show of all ages, I'm delighted to say, but we don't have a lot of younger listeners as well. I'm absolutely delighted to say, obviously, you've gone from starting out in the industry to the very top and become marketing leader in some huge organisations, for those starting out in marketing, you know, before they start in marketing leadership, but if they have an ambition to become leaders, what advice can you give them that help them stand out as leaders?

Visha Kudhail  42:15  
Oh, that's a really good one. So I would say, at this stage, do not outsource yourself to AI completely. I know there's a lot of pressure to learn AI, particularly from a lot of companies, but do your best not to take too many shortcuts, because one of the things that I have learned time and time again is every company is different. You can get a great AI playbook if you execute that, as AI has told you. You are not thinking about the pivots and the challenges or stakeholders that may say, "Oh, I don't think so, actually, or big change in society that affect your company. So, again, I've said this earlier on about being a critical thinker, but actually being able to think by yourself and on the spot and navigate pitfalls is really critical. I think that's what great leadership is about as well. It's just like navigating complexities, and your experience, of course, helps you build that. And I'm so lucky I've been able to go back to my experience, and those tiny smaller companies of being that you know baby marketer with my, you know, going to all these events and carrying around boxes to being able to like lead bigger teams or show up in bigger forums, because I've had the chance to get all my experience firsthand. So I'll say that is critical for us.

Ben Walker  43:37  
Interesting, don't outsource yourself to AI, it's a snapshot. It's very useful as a colleague, but it is a course of looking at what's gone before, and when you've got to think on your thing to look what's ahead of you as a human being in marketing.

Karen Barnett  43:50  
Yeah, yeah.

Ben Walker  43:52  
And in terms of what's ahead of us, how optimistic are you about the future of the profession?

Visha Kudhail  43:58  
Oh God, that's deep, Benj, um it's a tricky one, isn't it? Because I do feel like there's a lot of doom and gloom out there if we're really realistic about it, but you know, one of the greatest things I think we have, and we touched on it a bit early on, which is, you know, we're marketers have amazing jobs, right, if we do it the way that we want to do it, which is powerful storytelling, being the guardian of a brand, that's such a privilege to have, but also the complexities of marketing, as we are seeing, you know, how does our brand show up on LLM models, like what does our SEO look like, and you know, there's so many changes that are happening on a regular basis, means that our jobs are never the same, and it's different all the time. So, I think we should just feel a bit more optimistic about the fact that this is a role that's not going to be stagnant, and it's always evolving. And if you can evolve along with it, that's fantastic. But I guess one thing, and I'll go back to that, see your sameness, and you know, lots of content. That doesn't mean anything. I think what we'll start to see will be really great marketers stand out amongst average marketers. I'll be blunt in saying that, and that is those folks that move away from let's create any content to those that say let's work out how to understand people and become more relatable and think more authentically, and how do we stand out in amongst the same as how do we zig when everybody zags, so how do we show up in really unique ways, and I really think again, like this is a space for brands to really take, so and I think this is a really great opportunity for marketers, in particular, and I do think we need more business leaders to give marketers the permission to think differently, so that they can just do what they're really good at, tell great stories, and drive gross profit.

Ben Walker  45:55  
Stand out, zig when everybody else is zagging. Visha Kudhail, thank you very much indeed.

Visha Kudhail  46:00  
Thank you. This has been great. Appreciate it.

Ben Walker  46:02  
It's been great having you on the show.

Karen Barnett  46:05  
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