What I’ve Learned: Lessons from a Life in Marketing
After nearly two decades as a marketer working for companies like Procter and Gamble, Heineken, Nokia, and Absolut Vodka, I wanted to take a moment and reflect on some of the highlights — and some of the things I learned along the way.
When I was a boy, I wanted to be a writer. I was obsessed with words and stories, I read voraciously and wrote — short stories, poems, journalism. So when the time came to go to university, I picked English Literature as a major, spending three happy years at King’s College London, studying Shakespeare, Milton, the science fiction of Arthur C. Clarke, the novels of Ian Fleming.
I continued that fascination with words when I returned to my native Sri Lanka to become a print journalist, writing three columns a week on film, music, and culture ; hosting and writing all manner of radio shows, from morning drive-time to Friday evening comedy ; and writing and presenting television shows on arts and culture. I returned to London to do a Master’s in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, writing my thesis on how television could be used to create distance learning education opportunities that could serve the whole world.
Upon graduating however, I got a rude awakening; no-one in London wanted to give a work visa to an ex-journalist from Sri Lanka and if they had, the pay would have been dismal. It was then that I stumbled across marketing as a new outlet for my passions: I did a three-month summer internship at Procter and Gamble, and at the end they offered me a job (and that all-important work visa).
The three years I spent at P&G were foundational in my thinking and development as a marketer. It was like doing an MBA while getting paid at the same time. I learned the skills which still I use to this day: how to write a concise and impactful brief, how to create a P&L spreadsheet, how to lead a team that comprised people from all backgrounds — finance, R&D, product design, retail, supply chain, creative — and help them coalesce to do great work.
I was fortunate to work on Vidal Sassoon, the legendary haircare brand which was undergoing a brand revamp at the time. I got to meet Mr. Sassoon himself, an inspiring yet humble figure of a self-made man, who had risen from the extreme poverty of the East End of London to conquer the worlds of fashion and business through grit, hard work and talent. I remember him being remarkably kind to this boy from Sri Lanka, talking about cricket, and taking me along to meetings, like meeting superdesigner Marc Newson to look at a new hair drier.
Sassoon was a sponsor of London Fashion Week, which meant I got to work on the partnership with the British Fashion Council. I was lucky to be able to attend the twice-yearly fashion shows, seated in the second row, hanging out backstage and seeing how to create great theatre for the buyers and the press — the power of great imagery. I worked as part of the team to create the VS Sassoon Award for new British talent, and began to see how a brand could help support culture in a meaningful authentic way.
I moved from Sassoon to Max Factor, where I learnt more about make-up than any man really should need to know. I used to lurk in the cosmetics aisles of Boots, watching how consumers interacted with the shelf displays I had so lovingly created. Max Factor, ‘the make-up of make-up artists’ was deeply centered around Hollywood glamor. I remember one particular idea I came up with which was pretty successful, a partnership with the movie ‘Bridget Jones Diary’ where we gave away actual diaries (based on the design of the ones used in the film). I learnt how to start trusting my instincts and using my creativity to help a brand be playful and fun.
The lure of the media brought me from Procter and Gamble to EMAP (now Bauer Media) to work on the legendary Kiss 100 and Mixmag brands. Kiss was a pioneering radio station in London, championing hip-hop, R&B, drum and bass, house music, a thrilling eclectic mix of genres which I loved, with legendary DJ’s in it’s history like Pete Tong, Gilles Peterson and Danny Rampling. To work on this amazing cultural powerhouse of a brand , and help it evolve into digital, TV, CD’s and other multi-media platforms was a great opportunity to learn how to extend a brand into new areas.
At Kiss, I was lucky to work with Mother and Naked, two agencies who produced great work for the brand ; I learnt how a strong agency partnership could produce thrilling results and help shape the story of the brand to it’s fans.
I also learnt to take risks. One idea I came up with was re-connecting Kiss to it’s pirate radio roots, by staging the ‘Pirate Soundclash’ ; bringing in teams of young DJ’s from illegal stations and giving them a shot at a legit radio show. Though controversial at the time, it brought some fire and energy back to a brand that had become polished and commercial over time, and got national coverage. I’m proud that it also gave a shot to some amazing talent who are still working in radio and culture today.
On a less controversial note, I also came up with the idea of Kiss having a float (truck) in the Notting Hill Carnival — Britian’s biggest street festival, with over one million people in the streets — from which we would broadcast on. That was one of the most fun days I’ve had: we had DJ’s playing soca and reggaeton on a massive twenty-thousand watt sound system, as we glided through streets filled with reveling party-goers. It showed the community that we were part of the heart and soul of London in a way that no ad ever could.
Mixmag was an equally fun brand to work on. In my first days, I remember going to the legendary Cream in Liverpool and watching the crowds go absolutely nuts and thinking ‘This. is. huge.’ Mixmag was the bible of dance music and club culture at a time when interest in the music was at a peak across Europe. Heading to Ibiza with the Mixmag editorial team was to be given the royal treatment by the clubs there, like Pacha, Manumission, etc. I went clubbing a lot; I’m glad I was in my twenties when I had the stamina and enthusiasm to do it. I brokered partnerships with club megabrands like Cream and Godskitchen; I helped produce the cover CD’s for the magazine featuring mixes by legendary DJ’s. I learnt how music could move people on emotional levels in ways that no words or images ever could.
My next job was at Nokia, when the brand was in it’s heyday. It was about to launch phones with MP3 music players and needed someone who knew the music space to drive credibility and awareness. I spearheaded the Nokia Trends experiential platform in Europe which had the mission of ‘bringing new music to new places’. Our goal was to take the coolest artists of the day- Phoenix, Justice, Fischerspooner, Tiga — and put them in unique venues, ranging from art museums in Athens to horse-racing tracks in Warsaw.
My personal favorite show was Nokia Trends in Paris, where we took over the historic Palais Garnier opera house in Paris; it was the first time anyone had done a show that wasn’t opera or classical music, and we made headline news in scandalized France. We had Soulwax, Franz Ferdinand and Kelis who rocked the crowd, and we only broke two chairs. (And Bruce Willis gatecrashed the show, which was pretty cool.)
All this gave me the confidence to try something even bigger. Nokia was the biggest mobile phone company in the world. I came up with a simple but radical pitch: if Coca-Cola could ‘own’ Christmas, why couldn’t Nokia ‘own’ New Year’s Eve? After all, it was the biggest time of the year when people connected with their friends all across the world — true to Nokia’s brand purpose of ‘Connecting People’. My idea involved staging five simultaneous music concerts around the world and connecting them via a global webcast and TV show.
Not having a clue on how to actually execute it, I turned to the one man who actually had done it before: legendary live music impresario Sir Harvey Goldsmith who had staged the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts. Working with his company Ignition, we put together a feasibility study and to my amazement, I got sign-off on what turned out to be a $30 million dollar project. The catch: instead of doing it in eighteen months, it had to be done in six.
Thus began one of the most intense periods of my life. The tagline was ‘Five Cities. One Party’ to show the world unified on one night. We had to put together five shows in Hong Kong, Mumbai, Berlin, Rio de Janiero and New York City. I was on a plane constantly checking out venues, while Sir Harvey booked the acts, and veteran TV producer Kevin Wall negotiated TV broadcast rights in 100 countries. I turned into a chain-smoking, two-pack a day stress-monkey for the next six months. But the result was worth it.
On New Year’s Eve in 2006, we started in the East with Hong Kong’s Harbour City Ocean Terminal, followed by Mumbai’s Andheri Stadium, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro and rounded off the night in New York.
We had the Scissor Sisters play to a crowd of 1.2 million in Berlin; the Black Eyed Peas, John Legend and local legend Sergio Mendes rocked another million-plus crowd on Ipanema Beach; with Rihanna, Nelly Furtado, and Ludacris also contributing performances.
The whole thing was live-streamed by MSN, and turned overnight into a 90 minute TV show that aired in over 100 countries the next day.
Here’s some of the highlights.
(apologies for the crappy resolution of the videos).
It was by far the most ambitious thing I have ever attempted, and I was proud to be part of an awesome team that pulled off what may be the biggest and most audacious one-night experiential event ever done. It taught me to not be afraid to dream big — and execute with precision
I did take a nice long vacation after that though. And quit smoking.
That experience lead to another partnership which I am particularly proud of — with the TED Conferences. I was asked to lead the Nokia team sponsoring Pangea Day, the result of TED Prize winner Jehane Noujaim’s wish to create a global day of film; Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro were linked to produce a 4-hour program of films, music and speakers.
Pangea Day was cool, but what happened next was even cooler. I brokered a two-year partnership between Nokia and the TED Conferences, with the centerpiece being Nokia’s underwriting of what became the Open Translation Project : taking the fantastically popular TED Talks, which had hitherto only been in English, and asking a community of passionate fans to translate them into the world’s languages. Working with the amazing Dotsub, that seed funding started a snowball rolling that has today lead to over 100,000 talks translated into 113 languages by 25,000+ translators.
It taught me the power of collaborating with a community of fans to help do something greater than anything could be done alone — by tapping into their deepest purpose and passion. Helping TED spread it’s world-changing ideas even further because of this brand partnership is probably the thing I am most proudest of in my career to date.
I moved to New York in 2008 and joined Heineken, heading up their PR, Digital and Sponsorship efforts. I led strategy and planning for Heineken’s sponsorship portfolio which included partners like the US Open, Tribeca Film Festival, Coachella, Ultra, Outsidelands and the Bowery Presents, amongst others.
I got to use my deep love of hip-hop in continuing the legacy of the Heineken Red Star Soul experiential series, a pioneering cultural initiative. We put together shows with J Cole, Wale, Ludacris, Big Boi from Outkast, Pharrell with N.E.R.D, Estelle, Nas, Jay Electronica, T-Pain, and many more. Superfun. I learned how a brand could connect with audiences by giving them amazing brand experiences, filled with soul and passion.
Check out a young Kevin Hart (one of our MC’s) interviewing Estelle in Dallas:
Here’s an excerpt from a secret show that we did in Brooklyn with Kanye West:
I also put together a new experiential initiative, Heineken Inspire, which featured music from a diverse range of bands from Fabolous, Ryan Leslie, Rick Ross, Pusha-T, Wale, Cee-Lo to the Hold Steady, Cold War Kids, DJ Jazzy Jeff, and more.
One of my favorite projects was executive-producing a documentary on how design influenced nightlife called ‘Discotecture’ that we did with Vice. We got to interview many legendary icons of New York nightlife like David Byrne, Andre Balazs, Peter Gatien, Kenny Scharf, Eric Goode, Michael Musto, Amy Sacco, Steve Lewis and more. It got millions of views online, helping establish Heineken’s credentials in the nightlife space — something difficult for a beer brand to do. Here’s the trailer:
And here’s a link to all six episodes if you’d care to check them out.
It was part of a larger global initiative called ‘The Nightclub of the Future’ where talented designers from around the world were invited to collaborate with Heineken to create an installation at the Salon Internationale di Milan. Here’s a Fast Company article about it. I learned how a brand could foster creativity and progress in unique ways, that created compelling content that was of value to people.
One other fun execution was working on a Heineken Light pop-up show by TV on the Radio in the middle of Manhattan.
Which we also repeated in Chicago, this time with Broken Social Scene. Though it caused a lot of controversy with indie music fans accusing the bands of selling out, it underpinned a reality of the music business ; in an era when fans don’t want to pay money to artists for their music, preferring to stream or pirate, bands need to rely on brands to help survive. When done respectfully and authentically, there is nothing wrong with a great collaboration: a point of view I will defend to my dying day.
Which brings me to my time at Absolut Vodka, creatively one of the most liberating and exciting times in my career. The brand had a history of doing super-creative things, from making a short film with Spike Jonze to doing a documentary with Jay-Z. So it gave me a wonderful license to shoot for the moon (sometimes literally as I will elaborate on in a moment).
First out of the gates was a marketers dream; working with the electronic supergroup Swedish House Mafia to collaborate around a ground-breaking music video for their song ‘Greyhound’, which Absolut produced for them:
The video has clocked up an amazing 54 million views on Youtube to date — at no cost to Absolut. This was truly a lightning-in-a-bottle moment: this was one of the hottest bands in the world, at the peak of their career, releasing a giant track, with a sick music video. We parlayed that into the most Shazam’d TV ad of the year, and a global tour which reached over a half a million people on it’s U.S. leg. And every night, what did the band kick off their set with? You guessed it, ‘Greyhound’.
You can’t get deeper integration than that. So it was a pity that the band decided to break up shortly afterwards. Ah well.
Another favorite project was Absolut Lunch Breaks which we did in partnership with the awesome folks at Flavorpill. The idea was simple: 60 minute dance parties in New York City clubs featuring supercool DJ’s like Questlove from The Roots:
It worked so well we rolled it out to five cities across the US and had DJ’s like Major Lazer, Jazzy Jeff, Just Blaze, and the legendary Frankie Knuckles in one of his last appearances before his untimely death. The club owners loved it because we were making use of unutilized capacity, the DJ’s loved it because they were able to do an extra gig, and the fans loved it because it beat the hell out of sitting in a cubicle eating a wilted salad. Oh, and we raised over $10,000 for the Food Bank of New York because we asked people to donate their lunch money to a good cause (and gave them a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and a banana to eat instead).
We ended up in the New York Times and on Good Morning America. Sweet.
More music partnerships, this time with the uber-cool Encore Sessions at Le Baron club in NYC which featured performances from Little Dragon, Theophilus London, and more:
Next up was creating an art x music x cocktails experiential series called Absolut X. Here’s the trailer:
Going to cities like New York, Miami, Austin, LA and Seattle, the one night extravaganza asked supercool contemporary artists like Sanford Biggers, Nick Cave, Cruz Ortiz and Bert Rodriguez to collaborate with musicians like Santigold, Questlove, Twin Shadow, Bloc Party and Grimes to create one-night-only experiences for the cool kids in each city.
I learnt the power of contemporary art in helping a brand add that ‘x’ factor of mystery and unpredictability when done in the right way. Here’s the NYC show recap:
I’m also really proud of this collaboration with art world rock star Olafur Eliasson to do a brand experience at Coachella to showcase his innovative ‘Little Sun’ light project. It taught me how a brand could use the power of cool to help introduce people to a social good idea. Here’s a Fast Company article on the collab.
Next up, another pair of experiences that I’m really proud of. As part of the ‘Transform Today’ campaign launch, Absolut Open Canvas took ordinary city blocks in Williamsburg, NYC and San Francisco, and transformed them overnight into open-air art installations. Here’s the New York City recap:
The full show ran for one week and 160,000 people walked through the street during that time, showing the power of large-scale experiences. And the reaction from the local community was super-positive — they even asked for some of the work to remain on permanent display.
Featured artists included: Asger Carlsen, Tony Cox, Craig Damrauer, Ara Dymond, Aurora Halal, Dev Harlan, Valerie Hegarty, KATSU, Andrew Kuo, Justin Lowe & Jonah Freeman, Ryan McNamara, Joseph Montgomery, Mark Nystrom, Olek, Rostarr and more.
Here’s the San Francisco experience, which was equally enchanting:
Featured artists in San Francisco included Darren Bader, Jesse Willenbring, Michael Krouse, Alicia McCarthy, Jenny Sharaf, David Benjamin Sherry, Mat O’Brien, Brian Sharp, Mathew McGrath, OLEK, Jennifer West, Henry Taylor, Jerry Hsu, Aurora Halal, Lele Sevari, Mateo Tannatt, Joe Roberts, Tofer Chin, Daniel Arnold, and more.
Here’s a great re-cap from Sid Lee, the wonderful agency behind the work. It taught me that brands can positively transform public spaces in respectful ways, that add some delight and wonder to what is ordinary and mundane.
Now onto a collaboration with one of the biggest and most artistically adventurous performers in the world — Lady Gaga. Ahead of her ArtRave tour, her team approached Absolut with a radical idea: how about building a bar into her actual stage-set? We said yes and the result was the Absolut Artpop Bar:
The coolest part was that you could only win tickets to it if you had done ‘acts of kindness’ in your local community. Here’s Gaga herself announcing the initiative:
I learnt the power of partnering with an artist who shares the same purpose as your brand: Gaga wants to create ‘a kinder, braver world’ and Absolut has always stood for open-mindedness, tolerance and inclusivity. A beautiful fit.
That harmonious partnership lead to us starting work on what would have been the most outrageous creative collaboration yet: partnering with Gaga as she attempted to become the first artist to perform in zero-gravity. Here’s the (never-before-seen) key visual from that partnership, featuring Gaga wearing a Donatella Versace jumpsuit:
Unfortunately, after months of planning the Virgin Galactic spacecraft tragically crashed in the desert, derailing the whole idea (though I hear hints that it will return in 2018). For me, this will be the greatest collaboration that never was.
One important lesson we learnt was that you had to decouple ‘moonshot’ innovation ideas like this from the normal commercial calendar (we had to scramble to find a replacement retail program at the last minute). To do truly breakthrough marketing innovation, a brand needs to create spaces to experiment…which is what lead to the creation of Absolut Labs.
From the website:
“Absolut Labs exists to encourage new ways of thinking that develop products and experiences to help shape the future of nightlife — and inspire people to create richer social connections. Absolut Labs brings inclusive and innovative experiences to life through creative collaboration, invention and exploration. Positioned at the intersection of technology, music and art, Absolut Labs marries artists and creators from different disciplines to drive nightlife forward.”
Basically, with the help of agency ForeverBeta, we created a space where the brand could experiment with all the new technology like VR, AR, Internet of things and wearable tech around the purpose of making nightlife better. Our first project was a modest ambition: could we solve a problem that people had — being unable to attend a concert by their favorite band — by using virtual reality to live-stream a concert to them? The result was Absolut Reality, the world’s first live-streamed VR concert:
We live-streamed a 90 minute show by Vancouver band Bob Moses in 360 VR, and gave 5000 headsets to their fans to watch all across the U.S. What happened next surprised even us. The fans self-organized into over 600 viewing parties in their living rooms, and watched an average of 19 minutes each. Think about that. When was the last time you had consumers voluntarily inviting people into their home for a brand experience — and spend that much time engaging with what is technically ‘branded content’?
It showed me the power of solving problems in people’s lives — and creating genuinely valuable content that helped them access extraordinary experiences. Which brings me to my last execution as a client: Absolut Deadmau5.
It started as a simple idea: what if we gave fans a chance to follow their icon, electronic music superstar Deadmau5, as he went on a night out, using the power of immersive VR. What started as a relatively straightforward, linear live-action piece of content took a quantum leap when the wonderful Unit 9 production company, suggested that we make use of the fact that Deadmau5 was an inveterate gamer to turn him into a videogame. Here’s the recap of what we did:
We ended up creating an immersive 10 minute experience, that started in live action and then morphed into you, the fan, controlling Joel (Deadmau5) as he moved through a series of gameplay environments — finding his cat in his garage, arguing with bouncers, trying to dodge fans taking selfies. Your reward for making it to the end? You cut back to live-action , hanging out with Deadmau5 in the DJ booth as he dropped his new track ‘Saved’ to a roaring crowd. So fire. Mashable called it ‘the best iPhone VR experience they had ever seen’.
The experience was available for free across iOS, Android, Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR and has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, and played for millions of minutes. The lesson again: by creating truly delightful content, a brand can engage with consumers in a deeper and more meaningful way than simply thrusting TV and banner ads in their face.
In closing, to me this all speaks to the future of marketing: how do brands create physical or digital experiences that exist at the ‘intersection of useful and delightful’? In ways that genuinely solve problems and add value to people’s lives, such that they turn into your biggest advocates. That’s how brands can play positive roles in people’s lives and future-proof themselves. And that’s also how we marketers can also find meaning in what we do for a living, and feel like our craft is a genuinely noble one.
This article is dedicated to the many wonderful team-mates, bosses, mentors and assorted partners-in-crime, without which none of this would have been possible. It has been my privilege and honor to work with you all, thank you for everything you all did. I can’t wait to see what’s next!
Afdhel Aziz is the Founder of Conspiracy of Love, a think-tank and idea incubator that helps Fortune 500 brands use the power of technology and culture to do more good. He is also the co-author of ‘Good is the New Cool: Market Like You Give a Damn’, a provocative manifesto for a new model of marketing. Find out more at www.afdhelaziz.com or reach out to him at af@conspiracyoflove.mobi
