TOP CMO: Alice Milligan, Morgan Stanley - 'Trading Traditions for Trends'

Alice Milligan  00:00

my catchphrase is always your career is a marathon, not a sprint.

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Ben Kaplan  00:04

This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders for the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups. Three ideas package a certain way want to spread, we want to be told to someone else simple, surprising, and significant. Data to unlocking viral creativity is to make it rapidly scalable. This is TOP CMO with me, Ben Kaplan. today I'm chatting with Alice Milligan, CMO at Morgan Stanley, the American multinational investment bank and financial services giant. Alice served as Chief Customer Officer at E trade before its acquisition by Morgan Stanley, and transformed customer experiences at Citi as their Chief Digital Client Experience Officer. Her career has been vast and varied with over 15 years at American Express in her foundational years at at&t. So how does an iconic and historic brand like Morgan Stanley better resonate with today's generation? What are the intrinsic values that truly matter? When scouting for marketing talent? Let's find out with Alice Milligan. Alice, a good jumping off point is this effort by Morgan Stanley to really democratize its brand. It's obviously a well known brand respected brand and financial services, but it's known in a certain context. And it's really been over the past few years, correct that you've tried to make it more accessible to more types of people that might not have been a Morgan Stanley customer before?

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Alice Milligan  01:36

Yeah, Ben, thank you. I appreciate it. And glad to be here. Yeah, we've been on a journey. The firm, you know, started with James's growth strategy, over the last 10 years has really been focused on growth. And part of that growth was bringing on and acquiring new capabilities, like E trade need bads, with those capabilities and products, services, kind of new audiences that we needed to focus on. And so my team and I have spent the better part of the last two years really working through that developing our brand platform, understanding how consumers view the firm. And then lens do we use to talk about the firm externally in a way that's appealing to new audiences, but also ensures that our existing clients and customers feel good about forever as well. So in January, we launched a new ad campaign, with the tagline of old school, Brave New World ideas, old

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02:36

school wisdom, with a passion for what's possible. That's what you get from the Morgan Stanley client experience, old school grid, new world ideas, Morgan Stanley. And

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Alice Milligan  02:46

that came out of a ton of research, we spoke to over 10,000 employees, clients, prospects, etc, just about what the firm stood for. And what we heard were a couple of things. The first thing was that consumers felt they had two choices, either sort of an old school bank, that had a lot of history, but didn't have a lot of new innovation and ideas, or fintechs. And startups that had a lot of innovation ideas, but didn't always have that sort of sense of security, the ability to stand the test of time, and all of those things that a bank had. And what we realized is through the acquisitions, and through the strategies of Morgan Stanley, we had both and so that really died at the message. The second piece was, you know, then how do you communicate to a new generation of consumer and so we've been doing a lot in terms of new media, so not just being on Bloomberg at CNN, but we were in People Magazine and Vogue and, you know, Conde Nast Traveler. And then we've also been working with different influencers in social media, and different types of icons. Like we did a banker bag collaboration with Rebecca Minkoff, we brought on a partnership with the WTA and Leila Fernandez. So we really tried to be thinking out of the box to appeal to a broader group,

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Ben Kaplan  04:10

just unpack it a little bit old school grit, new world ideas, I get the duality there and both sides and usually in those kind of branding exercises, like the words aren't an accident, and it sounds like what stands out there as the word grit, probably, and probably trying to put the best spin on the legacy. The history. Yeah, you know, old school can just be old school. So why that? Well, you

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Alice Milligan  04:36

know, it was interesting when we talk to employees and we talk to clients and prospects. The concept of having a like doing hard work, rolling up your sleeves, persevering over time. Just you're partnering to get things done that came out a lot. And this back the firm had been around for 87 yours at the time we launched will be around 88 In September, but you know, sort of that combination. And as we started to think about it, we're sort of like, what stands for hard work, what stands for determination, what stands for perseverance and this concept of read just kept coming through. And so it was interesting because there was people that loved the concept internally and people that didn't. And as we sort of worked through it, and really started to lean into the legacy and its history of the firm, I felt like it really resonated.

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Ben Kaplan  05:35

And of course, the second half of that is new world ideas. It's old school grid new world that the US now when I think of new world, kind of makes me think of ships coming from Europe over to the new world, in some sense, that's a kind of a historical reference is our new world. A number of things from a little bit older now, social media, new world generative AI or something else. So So what is the new world sort of sounds pioneering in a way like those two words together a little bit different than the words alone? And what was the thinking there? Yeah,

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Alice Milligan  06:03

I mean, I think the thinking there was really about we're a global firm, said, the element of, you know, the world, and being global was something we wanted to capture. You know, you're right, in terms of being visionary. Being out there exploring being new, as opposed to sort of old school was important to incorporate there. I think vision was also the critical piece. And we did want it, you know, kind of felt a little bit like, next gen is sort of overplayed everybody's next gen and talking about next gen and, and so we wanted to say, you know, how do you encompass being visionary, having new ideas, being open to new ideas, and then bringing ideas and vision to the table for our clients? Across the world, it sort of just came out of that, and then bringing it together to just say, you know, what is that sort of interesting balance and dynamic that we bring to the table that's very unique, and differentiating for the firm. The combination of those things really, really worked well, when you think about leaning into what makes you good from your experience, and also leaning into some of the new ideas that is firm. The other thing I would say is when we did the research, either, because Morgan Stanley starts a huge fight base, regardless of you know, sort of wanting to appeal to, you know, women and, you know, emerging affluence, and all of those things. We serve everyone from institutions and corporates all the way through the individual, self directed investor now that we have a trade. And so what we did is, as part of the marketing strategy, which really tried to come up, what is the common element, or need of all of these different groups. And for us what that was, when we talked to people who were customers and prospects, it was, like, I have a vision of what I want to do and what I want to accomplish or what I want to achieve broccoli, but I know that it's not like without the help of someone who could see sort of broader than I can see a bit around the corners that that I can't see through without that help, I can't necessarily make my vision a reality. So as a result, I want a partner who sees untapped opportunities, or creates untapped opportunities for me, so I can make my plans and my vision even better than before. And so we really sort of pulled that into what we developed to make sure that we brought it to life. And that, again, that concept of grit and vision really was what helped bring those, you know, that noun light, and

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Ben Kaplan  08:58

to actually go from strategy to execution. You mentioned already very specific tactics, whether that's using certain influencers using certain, you know, media outlets that are maybe like not the traditional Morgan Stanley covering media outlet, but how much time do you think and just your overall strategy and maybe even just overall resources and dollars? Do you focus to three areas of that democratization process? I mean, one, you've mentioned women, yes, you you've mentioned merging affluence. Three in the past, we've talked about diversity and inclusion, and you're trying to bring more people into the tent. So how much of this strategy is implemented in those three areas? Like you're gonna focus time effort, mindshare, dollars on women, emerging affluence, diversity inclusion, versus you got a lot of other customers too, that don't fall in those buckets as well. How do you think about that in terms of marketing?

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Alice Milligan  09:46

You know, I think well, there's a couple of things. It's so for me my job. And a lot of my team's job is to need a focus, I would say probably 80 to 90% of our efforts. On those days, and and the way we're sort of structured within the firm is little bit of a difference between those that are focused on or my team that's focused on brand, marketing, and those that are focused more on performance marketing, which I would view as sheer acquisition, and then pure loyalty, right, in terms of just kind of generating and maintaining loyalty. Our job is to focus on awareness, favourability, and familiarity. So the top elements of the funnel, and if you think about that, then people that needed to make were firm, familiar with it and feel good about the firm were women, people of color, and emerging affluence or younger, you know, sort of individual investors, primarily because the firm historically had been a sales of face to face culture for. So there was a lot of work done with individual bankers and FAS, with large institutions and and clients and then a lot of that sort of word of mouth, you know, sort of estate planning those types of things. And so in appealing to a broader group, we really had to change what we were doing and how we thought about that. And so most of our efforts were tackled, were about tackling on, you know, the new audiences recognizing their importance to the firm. So when we did that, one of the first things I wanted to do is just test our way into it. So we started with some of the smaller activations, the banker bag with Rebecca maypop, which was really all about sort of refreshing it old Wall Street symbol, in a way that recognize the role that women play on Wall Street today. And so we launched that got a ton of great feedback for our employees. I think we started out with about 350 bags that we created, and the waitlist was 850 people long within the firm. So it was okay. Then from there, we've said, you know, what are some of the other barriers and industries and places that have strong growth trajectories, like space, for example, in the space economy, but has also historically been sort of high barriers for women and people of color? And so the next thing we did is we did a partnership with CNN and raucous their brand agency to create a space suit that fit smaller stature people, you know, we'd found out that, you know, there was a space mission out, but you know, it was scrapped because there weren't enough suits to spit women astronauts. And so we, we redesigned this, we'd launched it with a big splash and Time Square. But again, it's, it's just those ideas, how do you change things as simple as a symbol in a way that's meaningful, that helps people start to see what those changes are. And then the final was our partnership with the WTA, where that was a little bit less about changing things, but capitalizing on how do we help advance this faster. So what we're doing with them as we're developing a financial empowerment program, for their coaches and for their athletes, that that kind of focuses on three areas, one, giving them greater education, about finances and the importance of financials to an advisory path if they want an advisor to help them with complex things like taxes, and, you know, cross border taxes and those things. And then three, a leadership component that helps them both on and off the court as they think about their future and how they grow as people and as female leaders.

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Ben Kaplan  13:54

One overlooked benefit of using diverse marketing channels is that it allows you to reach different types of audiences, even without super precise audience targeting. In the case of Morgan Stanley, the company has its core audience and its aspirational audience. By leveraging emerging marketing channels for those newer audiences, Morgan Stanley can skate to where the puck is and where the puck is going at the same time. What is interesting about that, both on the sports side and maybe like the philanthropic side is you're describing a lot of things that isn't purely a Morgan Stanley logo at the back of the championship match there you're actually doing a lot of actual activities. How important do you think that is for other major companies brands that are particularly involved in sports partnerships? That is his like, you know, we just want to be associated it eat expect Morgan Stanley to be involved in tennis, right? Maybe tennis or golf or like sort of sport works that traditionally kind of go with financial services that kind of go with people to have affluence. But you're doing a lot more stuff. It sounds like I don't know, if that's the new world is part of it? How important is that? Versus just like, get your logo up and be associated? Yeah,

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Alice Milligan  15:15

I mean, to me, I think, you know, my philosophy is brands do well, by doing good, right. And, and I think you as a brand have to be clear and transparent about what you stand for. Because today's consumer makes decision in terms of who they're going to do business with, based on, you know, that alignment with their own personal values. And so, as a firm, we've had, you know, a long history of what we follow our core values, diversity and inclusion giving back to the community are all part of those values. And so again, to me, it's almost like, good marketing translates what our firm does, and believes in into what they say, right. And so this is it just a little bit more of doing that it's really about, you know, we're not just about getting our logo out there, what we're what we're about is giving back to the community, recognizing diversity, doing something that creates access or opportunity for people who were collaborate or engaged with us, and the athletes are no different. And so every one of those sponsorship has an element of, okay, and you have the overall Partnership, which we only we're all in business. So you know, we we want our logo out there, we want to do some things that help us in terms of media and reach and getting to the people that we want to talk to. But then the second and third piece is always a charitable component. So with our partnership with the WTA, we have come play events, which we do four of those, the ear, and those are really helping to get equipment coaching and opportunity to underserved communities that are around the different tennis matches that we partner on. And then we always have an education component, because what we believe is that if you're given the tools and the opportunity, and the education, that's empowering for the next generation, and that helps sort of lift all boats for everybody, everybody has equal access and equal opportunity to learn. You have the ability to be successful, make your dreams come true and build wealth over time. And

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Ben Kaplan  17:28

I want to talk about all of that. And then those values, but in a little bit of a different context, which is the context of your background, and specifically, Alice, we can maybe start a little bit more recent history and then go further back in history, but recent history is you came over from a trade. That was an acquisition of Morgan Stanley, I believe in 2020. That came over and now you're a CMO over the whole thing. Do you think you assuming that position? When was that a deliberate action to say we need to focus on democratization e trade is a brand that reaches a lot of people in a way that's different than Morgan Stanley typically has. And that's your primary purpose in this is to help us change our thinking and marketing culture and just approaches. Is that fair? Is that kind of assignment for you? Need?

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Alice Milligan  18:12

Yeah, then I would say that, totally. And it was, you know, it was it's fair in terms of why I thought this was an amazing opportunity. It's also clear in terms of why I think it sort of James and Andy and Ted Talk to be about the opportunity. You know, I don't think there's anything that James doesn't do that isn't intentional. And so in just that whole growth strategy, I think, you know, he also recognized the need to shift from that sort of face to face sales of product focused culture to a much more customer centric marketing based culture. And that's what we've been doing as well over the course of the last two years.

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Ben Kaplan  18:51

Has that been easy? Or has it been difficult? What I mean by that is, in some ways, it sounds like, Man, you've got support from the top, right. This is no like, you're going into the CEOs office trying to convince him of something that he's begrudgingly doing now you have support, though, that was you got Wednesday, your back maybe the most important point, but it's also 80 plus year old company used to doing things a different way. And also, you know, there's the E trade that's coming in. But, you know, Morgan Stanley acquired the trade not the other way. Has that been challenging? Is it difficult to try to shift thinking and culture? What has been the easy parts and the difficult part?

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Alice Milligan  19:27

You know, I would say a couple things, the easier parts have been, to your point, right, the top down support, which is critical, you know, any role I've been in whether it's been a city or American Express or E trade. It's important to have the support and the buy in on the CEO and the operating committee. And when you do do that, it makes at least people to sort of pick up the phone when you call. So that was, you know, that's made it easy. Um, I think what's made it not necessarily challenging, but just something that takes a lot of work has been, depending on the culture of the firm you're in. So Morgan Stanley's a very collaborative and very relationship driven culture. So the first thing that I spent probably, you know, my, maybe my first six to nine months on was just going around and speaking to everyone who had, you know, sort of a bit of a stake in the game, from the ACO all the way down to the most junior person. And I asked them of over that first six months, like three key questions, what's working today, as it relates to marketing? What do you see as the biggest opportunities? And then sort of, what would you stop if you had to, and through doing all of that I came out with a couple of things, the biggest opportunities were was this brand strategy and launching a new creative platform, which we hadn't done since 2019. The second was our data and analytics around marketing and proving the value of marketing and the return on marketing when you can. The third was around value, showing value to the organization and being a partner with a seat at the table. And the fourth was talent. We hadn't been known as a marketing firm, we had a pretty small marketing team, and we weren't attracting, like new and the best and brightest marketing talent. So I kind of how to tackle all of those things. I'd say the, the attracting talent, especially when I started, which was right in the you know, the midst of COVID was tough. But over the last, say, 12 months, has really pleasantly surprised me in terms of people know about us, and people are excited about the firm. And then I would say just the level of engagement and getting buy in over the course of the development of our new brands strategy and platform was also pretty challenging.

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Ben Kaplan  22:14

Here's a great example from our work at top agency, about the connection between research and creative. In our work for Budweiser, top market research teams uncovered a unique insight that people felt others wanted to talk to them more at bars when they were drinking about. Well, thanks for asking, I'm doing fine, you want a beer, I want. That insight was passed along immediately to our creative team, the launch within weeks a beer pressions campaign, a campaign based on a public version of our data insights that revealed to us audiences, what kind of impression your drink of choice at a bar makes on others around you. The results, a Super Bowl ads worth of earned media coverage without the high price tag. Maybe we could just go back a couple of the places that you've been at you were 15 years I think and American Express and really kind of work your way up there. What do you take with you from American Express? What do you learn about how American Express markets that you can use now at Morgan Stanley?

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Alice Milligan  23:18

You know, I am so glad I had and I spent a lot of my formative career years at American Express, you know, I think there were two main things that I took from that experience. One is that one of the best marketers out there. And so being customer focused, being customer driven, and also putting time and emphasis on research and the upfront parts of the marketing process, and a lot of firms will EOC is that people spend maybe 20% of their time on doing research and the strategy and building out the platform. And then 80% of the time on the creative like the commercial that goes in the marketplace. At IMAX, we sort of did the opposite, right? It was like 80% was about research and understanding your audience and understanding what's important to them and building the strategy and the 20% on the creative because the creative flows naturally if you thought the other right. And so I would say that was a key takeaway. The second thing was your ship sales. The company spent a lot of time on just building good leaders. tensional was the CEO while I was there, our Kelly who ran the business unit and Musa just stepped down as CEO of visa. Both of them were very influential in in just people leadership, the focus on your team building followership, and those are two lessons I've taken with me throughout my career.

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Ben Kaplan  24:47

And then you went and you did five years at city rose to Keith digital Client Experience Officer in North America consumer banking, what another well Don't brand that has have to shift its position a little bit. Also, what do you take from the city experience? Now at Morgan Stanley as well, it's

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Alice Milligan  25:07

interesting because if I think about my whole career, working for sort of a well known and iconic to some extent, brand, that that's looking at a shift has always been a component of what I've done, whether that was you know, in real early days at AT and T or American Express or city, all of those companies have similar sort of journeys they've been on with CD, it was really about driving and building, more positive client satisfaction and favourability. And advancing their digital agenda and fine experience. So I spent probably most of my five years there, really taking them, you know, an example JD Power is a tool that many companies use to measure customer satisfaction and sentiment, when I started city was like, you know, 11, out of 11, in terms of the financial services industry. And by the time I left, we had gotten into the top five for the first time. And so that was really exciting. I think we hit top three in digital experience category. So that was a great challenge, but really exciting to accomplish, spend a lot of time on defining the customer journey and the experience and and what were the things that we could do to improve it. And then we'll post a lot on digital because that was a really key driver in terms of that satisfaction and ease of use at the firm. And

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Ben Kaplan  26:40

finally, e trade for a couple of years before it was acquired. And if that just be the continuation now of what you were doing an E trade, just overall kind of bigger playing field, or was that sort of experience distinct? Before e trade was acquired? And what have you learned there and take from it,

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Alice Milligan  26:59

I would say that experience was a little distinct, for two reasons. One is the reason I left city was one of the things I want to do long term is serve on publicly traded corporate boards. And I started to look into that, you know, like, how do I start to build up my skill set, so I can serve on these broader boards beyond, you know, being on a board or not a nonprofit organization, I really wanted to get like the corporate structure, and all of those aspects of serving on a board. And so when I started to look into it, what I had heard from a lot of the recruiters was, you know, he needs or they're looking for someone who either has board experience or has regular board interaction, you know, and they sort of outlined a number of capabilities. And that was one thing that I really wasn't getting at my city job I, you know, presented to the Board periodically, but there was not really a lot of engagement and ongoing interaction. And so at that time, a recruiter called me about the trade opportunity, which one it was an officer firm, C suite, reporting to the CEO, regular bored interaction. And then the second piece was it took all of the things I did at different jobs out of

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Ben Kaplan  28:24

synthesized, made sense of everything you had done, and all these pieces all fits together. Okay.

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Alice Milligan  28:30

Yeah, like everything from marketing and branding all the way through data and analytics and product development.

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Ben Kaplan  28:36

Okay, got it. So it was a unique opportunity. And of course, Morgan Stanley came calling with the acquisition of that made total sense. And the final part of your history that and just to kind of wrap things up, I think that is super interesting to go back even further in time, is just your background, which I think could be inspiring to a lot of other people who hope to rise to your level and to be CMO of a major well known 80 plus year old company, then tell me if this is correct, but like, what I've read about you is that you're someone who really like paved your own way, like you left home at 18. Your first job was as an administrative assistant, you enrolled at night classes, you earned your bachelor's degree over a 12 year period. You went on to get your Masters in marketing and communications, but maybe not the typical story or journey of someone who rises to your level in the C suite. So what was that like? And how does that impact how you mentor others or Brian to help others along having that experience?

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Alice Milligan  29:38

Yeah, you know, I think it's, it's helped me I think, in my career, because one, you know, we use that word grit, right, you need to have perseverance and determination to do that. And, you know, it took me a long time to get through school, doing it all at night and all that kind of stuff. But I think it helped in a couple of ways. One, it gave me one of those one of my biggest pointers, right, which is be the CEO of your own calendar, in order to work full time and to manage and juggle all this, you need to spend your time wisely. And time is sometimes your only resource that you can actually control. So I made sure my calendar is focused on the things that are important to me or the business that I work for.

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Ben Kaplan  30:26

If we looked at your calendar, you're putting first things first, like the your calendar reflects Alice's priorities and where she wants to spend her focus or time. Yeah, is that work? Is that personal? Is it is it everything, it

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Alice Milligan  30:40

tends to be everything, um, and it includes, you know, like, I blocked time for like, hold for revealing email, hold this for kind of thinking through strategies. My, my administrative assistant today like it, when somebody asked for a meeting they've got he's got like, five questions to ask, you know, why do you need this meeting? What decisions does she need to make? Who are you working with on our team? Like those key things so we can determine is it something I need to attend to something I can delegate to are something that could be handled in an email? I

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Ben Kaplan  31:15

see. So you're constantly prioritizing and if you put something on the schedule, then you need to understand where that fits. Exactly. And priority got it. And insanity, you learn that, from having to juggle a lot of things and do night school,

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Alice Milligan  31:29

you can't spend time on stuff. That doesn't matter. When you you're working from this hour to that hour, you drive from there to school, then you drive home and do your homework. And then No, I met my husband along the way. So you know, I think that's the second piece of advice, I think it was Sheryl Sandberg, who said that, like Be careful who you choose as your partner in life, and my husband, you know, was there for probably a majority of those 12 years picked up the slack when I was studying or couldn't do it. And then it's sort of been with me the whole the whole way. So you know, the partner you pick in life is a really important person, choose wisely. Um, and then I would say, you know, like, it does help me as I coach, sort of the next generation of a real big believer on giving back. And so I spent a lot of time coaching and mentoring young women who are entering, you know, the, their career, the work world, exiting College, et cetera. And a lot of it is just about, you know, normally ceiling light, as is the one you'd give it. And sometimes you can be your harshest critic. And so, you know, really focusing on leaning into your straights playing to what you're good at, don't focus on the things that you know, are, you're not, are not your strengths, you know, develop Ro And Jan's build skills, but really focus on what you're good at what you love, and what you're passionate about. And if you do that, and speak up about that, what your point of view is, from that lens, I found that it always helps and works. And what do you

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Ben Kaplan  33:08

say as a final question, because I get this so much now, and I don't know if you get this, it's from a lot of high achiever types, which is they constantly feel like they're behind, like, behind where they're supposed to be. And if I'm doing quick math here, I mean, if you've got your bachelor's degree, you're taking night classes over 12 years, then your masters, I mean, we're probably putting you you know, at the time, I don't know exactly what I mid 30s, late 30s. And, you know, people are now when they talk to me, so whether they're freaking out like late 20s, like, I'm not where I should, I'm not going faster than I do get that and what do you say to them? Because if you had to be a little bit patient, and how you knew this was a what is your, your thoughts on that, um, my

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Alice Milligan  33:46

catchphrase is always your career is a marathon, not a sprint. And I felt like, I focused on the long game. Right? I, I recognize that like there was a place I wanted to get over time, that things don't always happen in a straight line. Sometimes there's a lot of zigzags and, and different, you know, different paths you have to take to get there. And so I was always willing to put in the time to take roles that maybe I didn't 100% think were right for me, but because, you know, for example, I was in a firm and leaders were asking me to take this on and why they believed I should take it on. Maybe something that was not in my path, but it was something that really build new skills, new abilities, new perspectives. And so I think that's the advice I typically give folks. The other thing is I always tried to leave a legacy, which is, which is to mean really important. So when I take a role like first, like first, you know, three to six months on the job, I say, What do I want to accomplish? By the time I need this and I laid those out, I share those Like the leaders in the organization, and I try not to leave that job until I have accomplished those things until I can look back and say, You know what, this place this job, this team, this company is better now that I'm leaving than it was when I started. And to do that, it's not you can't do that quickly, you know, I think I don't think I've taken a job at spent less than a year on it. And that was, you know, that was when I didn't think I had a huge challenge ahead of me. But, you know, it takes time, and you can't rush it,

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Ben Kaplan  35:39

and maybe an underrated skill. And one thing, just as we've tried to do on the shows, we tried to say, what's the suite of CMOS skills that you need, maybe if that balance between patients and urgency, patients, things take sometimes longer, sometimes you need to get all this experience just to get to the point where you can move quickly. But then, you know, you're also reporting to lots of others that are impatient, and business is not, you know, a sport for the slow either. So you've got a new with a sense of urgency, yet have enough patience and perspective. You

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Alice Milligan  36:10

know, I think for me, it's really we're just at the start of the journey of what we've been doing here. As I mentioned, we launched a lot of the new creative. In January of this year, we've done a number of things in terms of activations, we're still developing the programs with the Women's Tennis Association. So I think there's, you know, back to my earlier point, right, I think there's a little more to do here. And the legacy that I want to leave is, is is somewhat greater than what I've done already. So I think I'll continue to do that. I think the final thing is, is an I've been shifting my focus a little bit on that this more these days is really starting to build the next generation of leaders within the firm in terms marketing and branding. I think as a leader, that's one of our most important jobs building for the future, and ensuring that the next generation could take the helm and do even better and greater things than we do. And so spending a lot of time on talent acquisition, training, and all of that that'll help build the skills that the team that I have now, which is an amazing and talented team.

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Ben Kaplan  37:28

According to Alice Milligan, a brand's marketing is ever evolving. So take some risks, but make sure your CEO is along for the ride. Do the research. Be innovative? If you base your creative campaigns on real insights, it's so much easier to achieve measurable results. Embrace diverse channels, venture beyond traditional media, test, learn, repeat, and scale. Remember, you are the CEO of your own calendar. And your career is a marathon not a sprint for TOP CMO. I'm Ben Kaplan.

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38:12

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