AI could make you sound like everybody else.
Sure, you possibly can flaunt your uniqueness, burst with contemporary concepts, and combine each shiny new tech toy. However one broad stroke of AI, like autotune in music, can dissolve your model’s identification sooner than you possibly can say “algorithm.”
So, what can set you aside?
“Tales,” declares Leandro Perez, Chief Advertising and marketing Officer for Salesforce within the Asia-Pacific. It is a easy reply to a fancy downside, however one which carries the burden of his 20 years of expertise.
The hackneyed however nonetheless influential artwork of storytelling stays on the coronary heart of brand name differentiation. Leandro’s method? Use AI purposefully, weaving it into current workflows with a “thought of, measured method.” From his early days as a software program developer to his present position on the helm of selling efforts throughout 10 international locations, Leandro has at all times seen know-how as a method to an finish, not the top itself.
In our current dialog, Leandro paints a vivid image of the advertising world’s AI conundrum, reminds us that AI remains to be in its infancy, and posits the marketer as the only supply of reality for the client whereas stressing the significance of native groups in various markets.
This interview is a part of G2’s Skilled Highlight collection. For extra content material like this, subscribe to G2 Tea, a e-newsletter with SaaS-y information and leisure.
Heat-up questions
What’s your favourite beverage? When do you get pleasure from it?
I’ve a protein shake each morning after my exercise to assist my muscle groups get better. I additionally love my morning macchiato after I arrive on the workplace.
What was your first job?
Earlier than I even completed faculty, I began working after I was 14 at an electronics retailer referred to as Dick Smith Electronics, which is a series. I used to work on the weekends there. I discovered so much about buyer expertise, teamwork, following a supervisor’s directions, and private self-discipline, together with exhibiting up on time. And I additionally discovered about gross sales and advertising.
However my first skilled job, popping out of college with a pc science diploma, was as a programmer. I positively didn’t assume that I might be the place I’m in the present day.
What’s your favourite software program in your present tech stack?
My favourite is Slack. It permits me to speak with people worldwide asynchronously. For instance, I can schedule to ship somebody a voice clip or a video recording of myself whereas I’m asleep. Then, they will reply. The software additionally has a package of AI capabilities.
What issues at work make you need to throw your laptop computer out the window?
In advertising, you might have a powerful stakeholder relationship with gross sales. Traditionally, like many people, attribution inside advertising can get contentious. The place did the lead originate, and from which pipeline was it generated? Was it gross sales or advertising? That was a giant, contentious merchandise after I began on this position in 2020.
Our world CMO revamped our advertising attribution technique and carried out new algorithms utilizing AI to calculate the share of attribution to gross sales and advertising. Because the implementation, these moments have been lowered.
Deep dives with Leandro Perez
Sidharth Yadav: You began as an engineer and transitioned right into a advertising position. May you’re taking us by way of your skilled journey? What had been the numerous milestones, and the way did they form you as a marketer?
Leandro Perez: My first position as an engineer taught me how know-how can handle a enterprise downside. In that firm, each enhancement was requested by the enterprise. In actual fact, they paid for the enhancement upon its supply.
Subsequent, it was resolution engineering or pre-sales. I’d been an engineer for 5 years. Folks informed me that I needed to search for different roles if I wished to spend extra time with prospects. Then, this chance got here up. I used my technical abilities to showcase discoverability options to enterprise search applied sciences within the early 2000s. I used to be working with enterprise search applied sciences then.
Then got here my product advertising position, which took me to the US. I received this chance as a result of I received to know a few of our merchandise rather well whereas positioning them to our prospects. It was about understanding what the product does, the client’s ache factors, and creating messaging belongings.
That have was an eye-opener for me. Product advertising allowed me to be on the forefront of know-how.
“I spotted the way you promote know-how is simply as vital as the way you place it. It’s not nearly what it may well do however what folks assume it may well do.”
Leandro Perez
CMO, Salesforce, Asia-Pacific
I continued in that position for a number of years earlier than touchdown in Salesforce.
At Salesforce, I helped launch the analytics cloud, rebranded as Einstein in the present day. At the moment, the corporate was pioneering the cloud shift. Later, I used to be requested to hitch the company messaging staff, which I ultimately led. It was about figuring out the right way to signify Salesforce as a collective—not only one product however every part that Salesforce does.
At Dreamforce, our largest occasion in San Francisco, I used to be chargeable for the staff that constructed the keynote. We’d later take that keynote around the globe.
After experiencing these roles, I may mix them as CMO for Asia-Pacific, which introduced me again to my homeland, Australia.
The Asia Pacific is a various market. How do you create synergy throughout your groups and tailor your methods to go well with the area’s cultural uniqueness?
Salesforce has many working items. APAC is split into Australia and New Zealand, Southeast Asia, India, and Higher China. Impartial groups are chargeable for these items.
I do not need to create the identical asset in India as I’m in Australia from scratch. So, I’ll create it as soon as and localize the final 10% to fifteen% with the native buyer story or nuance. This mannequin empowers native groups, and so they implement options primarily based on how they see match.
That then connects to my management degree, which additionally consists of some pan-APAC roles akin to content material and area operations. This ensures I get the perfect of each worlds.
After which, in fact, we’re all related to our headquarters, which creates and disseminates model pointers and content material items segmented by product and business.
This creates a reasonably good steadiness. Native empowerment brings us nearer to the client and is advantageous to us as a result of it ensures we’re respectful of all cultures. We additionally guarantee our groups signify the communities we serve. So, the Indian staff has members from India.
You’ve led many transformational advertising initiatives internationally. However may you recall the one you’re most pleased with? What did you study from it?
We’ve been speaking about AI for a while now. At Salesforce, we’ve been working with AI for 10 years now.
Previously 12-15 months, generative AI has exploded. I had the problem of making certain the native market is aware of that Salesforce is a serious participant on this house and beginning the dialog.
Many individuals are defaulting to publicly out there generative AI options, which aren’t secure or trusted as a result of they’re open to the net. So, we launched a world marketing campaign referred to as “Ask Extra of AI.”
To drive the dialog in Sydney, our largest market in Australia, we made up a saloon in the course of the Darling Harbour. It was referred to as the WAILD West Saloon. Anybody may cease by. It was the sort of bar you’d see in cowboy movies.
However there was a twist. The entire bar had been generated by AI. It appeared like a daily bar from the skin, however the title was misspelled, and one of many doorways was misplaced. While you walked in, you noticed a barman with three arms. The drinks on the menu, designed by AI, had one thing off about them. We had been making an attempt to point out in these early levels of AI, you’ve received to ask extra questions as a result of AI remains to be in its infancy. It is nonetheless studying.
WAILD West Saloon marketing campaign of Salesforce. Supply: Salesforce
You may’t belief AI fully with out taking the correct steps. These embody making certain the information shared shouldn’t be leaked on the web and that the place AI received its information from and what it is leveraging.
The marketing campaign was an enormous success. Hundreds of individuals visited the saloon, and the media coated it, beginning a dialog.
You have careworn the position of CMOs because the buyer’s single supply of reality. What does this imply for the advertising operate? What challenges include this method, and the way do you overcome them?
Entrepreneurs are progress drivers and creators, however we are the closest to the client. We push campaigns to the market every day and get real-time alerts a couple of piece of content material being checked out, the feedback made, and the suggestions given. So, we have got the heartbeat on the client.
Traditionally, advertising has stayed in its swim lane. Entrepreneurs use the information captured to launch additional campaigns, section audiences, and so forth.
The change now could be about entrepreneurs bringing collectively the entire view of the client. We’ve performed this internally at Salesforce. You monitor advertising campaigns, evaluation gross sales made, service instances raised, and collect product telemetry. This manner, entrepreneurs can create a single view of the client.
That is vital as a result of, in the present day, you don’t need to attain out to a buyer to promote them one thing in the event that they’ve already received an lively service case with you. That is a horrible situation. However as we transfer right into a world the place AI will contact prospects on behalf of the advertising operate, if you do not have the whole view, AI doesn’t have it both. Your buyer will get annoyed about not coping with a human as AI doesn’t perceive in the event that they positioned an order or requested a service.
So, I’m bullish that the CMO is the perfect position for this past perhaps the CEO. Nonetheless, CMOs should associate with IT, the CIO, and the heads of gross sales and customer support. The problem is that they’ve all received totally different aspirations. I do not see any of them eager to place the client on the middle of every part they do in the way in which I described.
A current G2 survey revealed that AI integration into MarTech is hovering, with 75% of companies reporting adoption. As a CMO, what’s on the highest of your thoughts relating to AI? What units aside companies that efficiently implement AI in advertising?
AI has been round for a while. Many entrepreneurs use predictive AI even with out figuring out about it. For instance, our advertising cloud’s ship time optimization function allows you to ship emails at the perfect time. For some, you’d ship them at 10 a.m., for others at 1 p.m.
To reply the query of who’s having essentially the most success, I will offer you an instance of our group the place we carried out AI within the workflow. AI shouldn’t be a separate software in search of a separate enterprise situation. You inject AI into one thing already being performed to make it higher, sooner, extra environment friendly, or ship a greater ROI.
Once I led the company messaging staff, our CEO wished to make sure that our 70,000 workers, after Dreamforce, knew about our newest improvements and will speak through the most recent narrative we’ve simply launched.
So, I arrange a course of referred to as company certification. My staff educated 10 practical leaders on the most recent messaging. They educated one other 10, who in flip taught others. Ultimately, we coated the 70,000 folks. As you possibly can think about, this isn’t a quick course of.
The brand new head of the company messaging staff used Einstein’s AI capabilities in Slack. You’d document your self on Slack for 5 minutes pitching the company message after studying the fabric. Then, you’d ask Einstein to fee your presentation. It will come again saying, “Leandro, you’ve got performed an amazing job highlighting this buyer story in relation to this new product function. You forgot to say a statistic, and perhaps your tone was too direct. You most likely ought to make it extra pleasant.”
We accomplished what used to take a month in two weeks. The entire firm may do it at scale with increased high quality.
“To make use of AI in advertising, combine AI with instruments folks already use to allow them to see the fast worth.”
Leandro Perez
CMO, Salesforce, Asia-Pacific
With the rising use of AI, how will you retain the human contact? How do you steadiness AI’s progressive potential whereas sustaining an genuine model voice and personalization?
We do not desire a world the place each model sounds the identical. In case your model seems like everybody else’s, you would possibly as properly be promoting the identical merchandise off the identical shelf. So, it is advisable differentiate your self.
Certainly one of our prospects in Australia, Mecca, a cosmetics model, wished to reinforce its on-line shopping for expertise past the established shops. In order that they launched a chatbot referred to as “Miss Mecca.”
Salesforce educated the chatbot to have the model tone of Mecca utilizing customer support transcripts of human conversations. You need to name it an AI agent as a result of the previous chatbot wasn’t sensible sufficient. This reinvented AI agent seems like a consultant of Mecca. The model may deflect 75% of chats to the agent, which meant people now had extra time to spend with prospects.
Additional, there’s at all times a component of getting human customer support brokers within the loop. One other model, Turtle Bay Resorts in Hawaii, wished a concierge-like expertise for purchasers. The AI concierge may deal with nearly half the instances shortly, with people within the loop. They’d evaluation what the AI had advisable.
In each examples, the manufacturers thought by way of the use of AI. They didn’t go together with the most cost effective, most publicly out there software. It is a thought of, measured method, as with AI in place, for those who make errors, there might be extreme penalties.
Storytelling has acquired a strategic significance for organizations in the present day. What are the important thing parts of storytelling in advertising? How can leaders use it to advertise their manufacturers or improve buyer expertise?
Storytelling is near my coronary heart. Traditionally, B2B entrepreneurs have been poor on this area. Merely rattling options to your prospects or prospects gained’t excite them.
Within the age of AI, it is advisable differentiate your self. And a very good story can try this. At Salesforce, we do that by sharing examples of how our prospects have succeeded, which is one among our core values. So, belief is our primary worth as a result of, with out it, you possibly can’t do a lot with cloud computing or have an amazing relationship with the client. Nonetheless, the second worth is about buyer success.
We have performed that by creating movies of buyer tales. We function prospects in our occasions and like to have them converse and showcase their merchandise. We seize these tales; we rejoice them. Lately, we have gone from not simply celebrating tales about manufacturers but in addition concerning the people who assist ship buyer success. We name them trailblazers. We felicitate them on a keynote stage.
A current G2 survey has pointed to elevated advertising know-how utilization worldwide. Nonetheless, sure challenges persist, akin to a scarcity of expert expertise to function the instruments. How can organizations take care of them?
The advertising area has change into extra technical. I’m fortunate as a result of I come from that background. We’ve taken a couple of approaches for my staff. We’ve employed folks with that experience who can use the advertising cloud, information cloud, or our Tableau analytics resolution.
The opposite monitor is to make sure everyone seems to be upskilling. We provide Trailhead, a free on-line studying platform for Salesforce instruments and enterprise management matters. That is actually vital. You need folks to be self-serve. You don’t need a marketer who must go to an analyst or IT to grasp the ROI for his or her campaigns.
You might not be capable to rent for all these roles, so it is advisable reskill your current workforce frequently. You additionally want a resilient and agile staff as a result of their ability units change and develop.
What’s your imaginative and prescient for the way forward for advertising, and the way do you see your position evolving within the coming years?
I hope CMOs have a everlasting seat on the C-suite desk. In lots of organizations, they nonetheless don’t.
Additionally, AI presents an thrilling alternative.
“When a company implements AI at scale, prospects find yourself speaking to AI. Quickly, prospects can have their very own AI, so AI can be speaking to AI.”
Leandro Perez
CMO, Salesforce, Asia-Pacific
With this phenomenon, I feel the operate greatest geared up to grasp the client’s wants is advertising.
So, I implore all entrepreneurs to make sure this know-how shouldn’t be left to different departments and groups alone. Entrepreneurs should take up this problem.
Lastly, I don’t see any change in CEOs asking for ROI for every part from software program to investments. It’s important to brush up in your information evaluation abilities so you possibly can speak to a CFO and defend the place your cash goes.
At Salesforce, we’ve the privilege of working with some wonderful manufacturers, and I get the chance to share their tales. APAC is amongst our fastest-growing areas, and main groups right here presents a giant alternative.
I’ve not come the normal approach into advertising. I am excited to be at a rising firm like Salesforce, the place we’ve many new merchandise.
Do you know advertising know-how consumers valued integrations essentially the most whereas eying new instruments? Be taught extra about tendencies from our newest report.
Observe Leandro Perez on LinkedIn to study extra about AI-driven advertising.
