00:00Frank Cooper, Chief Marketing Officer of Visa.
00:03We're in the midst of a brand refresh across the board.
00:08I would say actually it's on two levels.
00:10One, we're doing an evolution of the brand, positioning.
00:14Everyone knows the phrase, everywhere you want to be.
00:17And most people think about that as a physical destination, and it is that.
00:23That was launched in the late 90s.
00:25But we also think that today, there's a purpose that a brand can serve for people,
00:32where it helps them become the person they want to be.
00:34And so we see that phrase now as representing both a physical destination and a personal aspiration.
00:42But we're also launching something.
00:44It's a companion to this evolution of the brand, and it's more of a refresh.
00:49You hear the saying, no matter if it's the truth or not,
00:52you have to restate that truth in the language and concepts of successive generations.
00:57Well, we feel like now is the time where the colors, the font, the photography, the iconography,
01:06there was an opportunity for us to modernize that and make it feel fresh,
01:11particularly for the next generation of consumers.
01:13And so we're launching that, and we're very, very excited about it.
01:16We think it marries well with the evolution of the brand overall.
01:20We worked closely with the internal team and our agencies for about a year before we landed on what is
01:27the brand ethos,
01:28the thing that we've always stood for from the very, very beginning.
01:30You know, this notion that anyone can make it given the right tools and the right access and the right
01:35information.
01:36That was a philosophy coming from the founder of Visa, DHOC.
01:40And then we said, from the brand ethos, what is the thing that actually rings true about Visa
01:45and it can actually do through the products that we launch and the connections that we have with our consumer?
01:50And again, we believe that it's not just a swipe, tap or click.
01:56It in some way, every transaction in some way is helping people slowly become the person they want to become.
02:01You know, if you took your receipts in life and put it into a scrapbook,
02:06it would actually start to paint the picture of not only who you are, but who you might want to
02:10be.
02:10We have consumers that we're approaching and connecting with.
02:16We call that B2C.
02:17We have clients that we engage with.
02:19We call that B2B.
02:20You know, there's the in-between space of B2B2C.
02:23But there's a new person at the table.
02:26It's not even a person.
02:27It's a machine.
02:28And we call that B2AI.
02:31And that is where businesses are now communicating with agents and in some cases, agents with agents.
02:37And for us, it is a profound shift because many of the things that you would take for granted,
02:43whether you use a funnel model or some other model,
02:46but the notion that you need to make people feel a certain way,
02:50you know, that you need to inspire them.
02:53The machine doesn't sense any of that.
02:55And so it required us to rethink how we approach marketing when it's B2AI.
03:03And suddenly, things that seemed relatively insignificant before become really significant now.
03:09Your product catalog becomes really significant.
03:12Your website becomes very significant.
03:15And so people are no longer browsing.
03:17You know, they're delegating.
03:18And that delegation to the agent for us is, again, one of the most profound shifts.
03:23And we're making a change in our mindset, but also in talent.
03:29And this is probably a counterintuitive thing, right?
03:31So in talent, you think, hey, we're in the world of AIs, tech.
03:35You must be bringing on a lot of tech people to deal with that.
03:37Yes, we are.
03:38But the most interesting area is actually the liberal arts majors.
03:42You know, the ones who actually can interrogate in a Socratic way.
03:47The one who actually can apply curiosity and creativity and then critical thinking and collaboration on top of it.
03:54And that's where it starts to get really interesting.
03:56And you start to unlock new possibilities.
03:58And you get outside of not just AI slop.
04:01You get outside of just the mediocre results that can sometimes come from relying, over relying on AI.
04:09So the shift we're making right now is marketing to the machines in a way that actually machines can understand
04:16and bringing on talent that actually can meet this moment through curiosity and creativity and critical thinking.
04:23When I think about the biggest challenges, or the biggest challenge actually, facing CMOs today, you know, it's easy to
04:31turn to AI.
04:32It's easy, you know, to say that it's the complexity of the world.
04:37It's easy to say it's the kind of next generation of consumers.
04:41I think it's more of a perennial challenge that we've all been facing as CMOs.
04:46And that is, how do you translate what we do into the language of the organization in a way that
04:53it becomes intuitive and believable,
04:56and more importantly, part of the muscle memory of the organization?
05:00That's always been the hardest thing.
05:01It's like the, in most organizations, it's like the Tower of Babel.
05:04You know, marketing is talking one language and everyone else is talking another language,
05:07and you never really find the connection.
05:10I think that is the, that's the foundational challenge for marketers in general and CMOs in general,
05:15is creating that translation layer so that others in the organization not only understand it, but believe it,
05:22and then make it a core part of the operating model.
