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How Visible’s Head of Brand Marketing Taps Influencers to Drive Customer Engagement

Mrinal Parekh Mrinal, Senior Product Marketing Manager at CleverTap, excels in B2B strategy, market planning, and product launches. Proven success at Razorpay and Amazon.
How Visible’s Head of Brand Marketing Taps Influencers to Drive Customer Engagement

The arrival of the new normal* didn’t just mark a sea change in how companies must engage their customers. It impacted how consumers want to engage with brands. 
For the first time, consumers on all continents desired meaningful interaction with brands around a whole range of societal issues – from diversity and inclusion to mental health – that aligned with their personal life stages and lifestyles.
The outcome: purpose-driven marketing has become as important (and in some cases more important) than price.
A survey of nearly 19,000 consumers in 28 countries conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value in association with the National Retail Federation found that 81% of consumers worldwide feel they belong in one of two segments. They either identify themselves as value-driven consumers (41%) who want good value for their money or purpose-driven consumers (40%) who gravitate to products and services that are aligned with their values. Consumers who make a purchase based on brand alone (13%) are a shrinking minority.*
Clearly, brand values matter to consumers. 
It’s a cultural movement where Visible, the first all-digital, wireless carrier in the US, stands out by standing up for what its consumers value most: connection. It also understands that, as brands and values converge, the role of influencers, individuals, and celebrities who act as intermediaries to connect brands with consumers will also become increasingly important. 
For Pearl Servat, Head of Brand Marketing at Visible, meaningful and deep engagement depends on two factors: what brands communicate and the partnerships they pursue with others (influencers, individuals, celebrities) to “carry the narrative of the brand to their communities.” It’s the guiding principle that has helped Servat and her team elevate the Visible brand to new heights. The challenger wireless carrier was recognized as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies and as Best Telecom Brand in Adweek’s Brand Challenger Awards.
In this episode of CleverTap Engage — our podcast and video interview series where we shine a light on marketing leaders achieving meaningful and memorable customer engagement — co-hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier sit down with Servat to discuss how the company works with influencers to support brand values and deliver a consistent message to its members. She also discusses the incredible success of an email campaign that asked consumers one simple and sincere question.

Key Takeaways

Personal Brand is Part of the Equation

Memorable and effective marketing uses influencers to amplify the brand message to their communities. It pays to be deliberate and intentional in choosing the right influencer, and it’s important to align with influencers who have integrity and personal brand credibility, Servat says. 
Kevin Bacon wins on both counts, and his TV spots for Visible have become wildly popular and generated valuable word-of-mouth marketing. But marketers who can’t afford to partner with celebrities can drive engagement – and positive results – if they read the signals that matter. “It’s really about building a relationship with a lot of depth in an integrated way from day one,” she explains. “But then also measuring the success of it in real time and watching the KPIs and watching the conversions, whatever those are built around, and then continuing to build from there.” 

Show Up and Stand Up

Massive budgets don’t guarantee impressive results. Human marketing – and listening – on a limited budget can drive engagement metrics into the stratosphere.
Servat recalls several campaigns that have achieved just this. They are joined by a single guiding principle: empathy
“If a brand doesn’t show up or behave in a sincere and genuine way, consumers know that right away,” Servat says. “You know what your KPIs are, you know what your objectives are, but you build campaigns, tactics, and plans that truly allow you to connect with the consumer.”

Be Courageous and Consistent

Consumers need to see your brand several times before they add it to their consideration set. But it’s not a numbers game. In a world where noise is high and consumer attention is limited, brand consistency is critical.
“You have to be incredibly thoughtful about how you’re breaking through, what your narrative is, and what your content is,” Servat says. “Most importantly, ensuring that there’s a connective tissue between all of these different components and all of your creative and messaging …. is more important than anything.” In her view, it’s all about ensuring that you’re telling the same story within all of the different channels in your marketing ecosystem. In short, go omnichannel
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FULL TRANSCRIPT

John Koetsier
How do you win in the most competitive markets on the planet when you’re facing massive, well-funded, established brands?  And when you’re in a classic zero-sum game?
Peggy Anne Salz
Well, John, the best way, of course, differentiate.  Be different, disrupt, get my attention, create a unique, compelling offer, bring it to the market in a distinctive and memorable way.  But it’s not always so simple.
John Koetsier
Oh, the way you said it there was so simple.  I mean, just one, two, three, three steps to surpass.
Peggy Anne Salz
Yes, let’s do it.  That’s right. 
John Koetsier
Amazing.  Well, we know that it’s not.  In a mature mobile marketplace, pretty much every app has this challenge.  That’s why today we’re chatting with an expert in differentiation, branding, marketing, and customer engagement.
Peggy Anne Salz
And I would also add making some waves, John.
John Koetsier
Good.
Peggy Anne Salz
Absolutely.  Her name is Pearl Servat.  And she is the Head of Brand Marketing at Visible, the first all-digital wireless carrier in the U.S.  And this challenger wireless carrier that I’m sure you’ve heard of is taking on incumbents with a simpler, more price and experience accessible offer, and some might even say better service.  But it’s not just the service, John, it’s the brand story.  That’s what we’re here for.  Pearl has shaped the success at Visible that has now been named to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list and recognized as the best telecom brand in Adweek’s Brand Challenger Awards.  So it is raking them in.
John Koetsier
Adweek Awards.  Wow, that’s always a big deal for CMOs, and brand leaders, and everything like that.  So got to finish the intro here.  Before Visible, Pearl worked at Paramount Pictures, which is pretty cool.  She led marketing for a production company that did work with, you know, you never heard these names before.  You know, companies like Netflix, I mean who’s that?  YouTube, Amazon, never heard of these, but pretty impressive.  She’s a trailblazer in understanding how brands and creators can work together to engage audiences.  Welcome, Pearl.
Pearl Servat
Thank you.  Thank you so much for having me.  And thank you for the very kind introduction.
Peggy Anne Salz
That’s a great introduction.  But it’s an even cooler career path, right?  I mean, you could be and should be, Pearl, in film or music, and you were.  But you went and I will say rogue, and took your talents to telecom.  You moved from LA to Denver, literally.  So tell us what happened.
Pearl Servat
Thank you, Peggy.  And thank you again, both of you for having me.  So, I spent the larger part of my career in the entertainment industry.  I worked at PMK•BNC under Pat Kingsley initially who’s one of the icons of the entertainment world.  And she’s to this day, still a mentor of mine.  So, you know, everyone thought I would be a lifer in entertainment.  I worked at the intersection of brands and talent and worked with names in film, TV, and music.  Facilitated a lot of brand partnerships.  Established a lot of owned brands, and really introduced a number of talents to sort of like the world as they were starting their careers.  And in 2018, I was working in my previous role overseeing marketing at Philymack, which is a hybrid model between talent management, production company, and they also have a portfolio of investments.  So working there really broadened my horizon of like, wait a minute, there’s a world outside of entertainment.
And it was during that time that I’d been talking to Minjae Ormes, who is Visible’s current CMO.  And, you know, she shared with me that she was leaving Visible to go to Denver and build this new company under the Verizon umbrella.  In a couple of months, I heard from her again and she was like, “Look, I’m doing this thing and I’m taking a chance on myself.  Do you want to join me and do this with us?”  And I didn’t even blink when we had the conversation.  And like you said, I jokingly say that I went rogue a little bit, you know, left a career and an industry that I’d spent many, many, many years in. It’s one of those decisions where admittedly, there were a lot of people who advised me against it.  A lot of people said, “Look, you’ve really built a lot of brand equity in the entertainment industry,” with the network that I had, and the clients that I represented.  And so a lot of people, including a lot of my mentors, told me not to do it.  And I did.  And I think to this day, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Peggy Anne Salz
So what’s interesting about your background is…and we’ll get to that in a moment.  But it really…it is good to bring together entertainment and brand story.  That really is where everything is at that intersection these days.  And your brand, you know, Visible is wired, literally to watch trends, encourage talent.  What is the talent that you bring with you to Visible?
Pearl Servat
I think initially the talent that I brought was sort of like the hustle mentality, and scrappiness, and being a creative thinker, and problem solver.  Growing up, if you will, in the entertainment industry, your brain sort of gets wired in a way that you’re always, always thinking of new opportunities and identifying them.  And if you’re working with talents, just like a brand, you’re building these personalities from the ground up.  So that was one of the biggest similarities between my previous work and then coming to Visible when you were talking about the marriage between entertainment, tech, and startups. I think the two worlds view the other one as very attractive, because one can help leverage the other.  
So in 2020, Dan Levy, who is the star and creator of Schitt’s Creek, became the face of the brand.  And then he obviously is having a very huge moment.  And then this year, we did a pretty significant partnership with Kevin Bacon.  So we’ve been able to bring a lot of those relationships in-house and sort of bring them to life.  And then from an influencer and talent, you know, beyond those marquee relationships from a talent and influencer standpoint, Taylor and my team who leads those efforts is really, really intentional and deliberate about the types of talent we work with, how do we formulate these relationships with them, and how do we extend them, and also, most importantly, how do we measure them?
John Koetsier
It’s amazing, because you have so many people who are at the top of their game for what they do, and are willing to slide down that hill, climb another mountain, and have to relearn something.  That takes a lot.  As well one plus one sometimes equals three.
You’re working with Kevin Bacon, you mentioned.  A lot of us are six degrees away.  Now, hey, guess what, Peggy, we’re literally one degree away or two degrees away.  I don’t know if you count one person as one degree or two, I’m not sure.  But what did you do with Kevin Bacon and why were you working with him?
Pearl Servat
So he starred in our TV spot earlier this year.  And one of the reasons that we wanted to work with him is because, one, he has huge, huge awareness from a mass standpoint.  And then beyond that, we worked with our agency, Madwell, who identified him as the right brand match for us.  And then we reached out to him and everything went from there.  But, as you know, he’s very brand friendly, very personable, and obviously has had a very pedigreed career. We always say we want to work with people who have not just the brand engagement, but also personal brand credibility, people who walk the walk when it comes to impact.  That’s really important to us.  You know, and people who are willing to have fun when it comes to creativity, because as a new-ish brand, that’s really, really important to us.  And he sort of checked all of those boxes.  And he starred in a spot for us.  It was a plan, six degrees like you just said, and it’s become wildly popular and has created a lot of chatter and word of mouth.
John Koetsier
What would you give as advice to CMOs who are looking at doing something similarly, and that might be at a very high level with a Hollywood star, that might be at a lower level with an influencer, right?  Those brand marketing partnerships, they’re critical.  How do you find the right one with the right brand equity and make that equation work, that the one plus one isn’t just two, but it is three?
Pearl Servat
Yes.  That’s a really great question.  So the Visible model is that we never go into a relationship with a one and done mindset.  I think that’s a little bit old school when it comes to brand and talent partnerships.  And it’s never…we never want to confine ourselves to that.  Because you have to give enough breathing room not only for the talent to get to know your brand, but also for their audience to sort of understand and remember the connection between that person and the brand as well, and get to know the brand through that person.  So the way that we usually approach relationships is through, first of all, we do a lot of social listening.  We do a lot of sort of research and study on their personal brands. Their followers or communities really pay attention to what they talk about, but more importantly, how do they, again, walk the walk when it comes to critical topics and things that are really important.
So, it’s usually a multi-content partnership and approach.  And we never want to approach a campaign or partnership as a for the moment thing.  It has to be…you know, for example, we just did a pretty significant campaign for Pride.  A number of the talents that we worked with as part of that campaign were folks that we’d worked with many times before.  So the second we brought this up to them, not only did we use some of them as a sort of informal advisory board, but the second that we approached them, they were like, “Yes, I know this is just who you guys are.  It’s in your DNA.  Count me in.”  And then a lot of them advised us on some of the strategies.  So it’s really about building a relationship with a lot of depth in an integrated way from day one.  But then also measuring the success of it in real time and watching the KPIs and watching the conversions, whatever those are built around, and then continuing to build from there.
Peggy Anne Salz
So I have to ask the question, if you’re talking about KPIs.  I won’t go too far down into the weeds, but it is a very big problem, and an interesting challenge in the industry, you know, how do you measure the impact of influence?  So I have to pick up on that one, Pearl.
Pearl Servat
So absolutely.  As a, again, newer brand we’ve only been around for three years.  The most important thing when it comes to influencer and talent partnership for us is having their support and leveraging the partnership to create brand awareness, education, and validation.  So sort of having them carry the narrative of the brand and tell the brand story to their communities.  So that’s one of the biggest KPIs is around awareness.  And then other things like share a voice, direct brand engagement with their communities and our brand.  So those three I would say are the biggest three components.  I know you’re right.  When it comes to influencer partnerships, it’s a very, very hot topic of what matters and doesn’t.  But for us, I think, and I have to give credit, again, to Taylor and my team, I think we’ve really figured out the secret sauce with what the value is and how do we do it, you know, this is the most important thing, in a credible and genuine way when it comes to establishing these relationships.
John Koetsier
I got to pick up on that too, Peggy.  That was a great question.  I’m glad you asked that.  The question that I have that kind of follows out of that is, I’m brand new to your brand.  That’s the case for many people for mobile brands.  But they come to somebody and it is the first time ever, how many hits do they have to have of seeing your brand from Kevin Bacon or from some lower level influencer, or whatever, before it becomes kind of something that you get to the consideration phase?  You might get there lucky on the first try, but, you know, is it more often like three to five?  What’s that number?
Pearl Servat
It’s multiple.  It’s more than five, especially for a newer brand. …let’s be honest, we’re all overly stimulated.  There’s so much content out there.  There are so many brands out there.  So you have to be incredibly thoughtful about how you’re breaking through, what your narrative is, and what your content is.  Most importantly, ensure that there’s a connective tissue between all of these different components and all of your creative and messaging, and the strategies.  So that I, as a consumer, if I see this brand, let’s say on a billboard, and then in a week, I see a TV spot, and two weeks later, I see something on Instagram, I instantly start to know, “Wait a minute, this is the same brand that I saw over there, and now here, and now here.”  And then that’s how the brand will go into your consideration set.  But I think consistency is more important than anything.  It’s sort of quality more than…over quantity, in ensuring that you’re sort of saying the same story and the same narrative, channel appropriate, obviously, but within all of your different mediums in your marketing ecosystem.  So it is multiple times.  But it’s all about efficiency, right?  Telling the story in the right way, and then capturing the consumer’s or the prospect’s attention immediately in the right way as well.
John Koetsier
Love it.  Love it.  Love it.  Vivian Chang, who we interviewed recently from Clorox calls that surround sound marketing.
Pearl Servat
Exactly.  Yes.
Peggy Anne Salz
And what I also love about this is the principles.  This is something that has consistency.  You’re talking about the long term.  There are a number of brands, we won’t name them, John, but we do know them where it’s like, “Oh, this is hot.  Let’s do this this week.”  And this is not the case here at all.  This is a strategy.  And this is well thought out.  What’s interesting for me is that you foster an ongoing relationship with the influencers.  And you’re concerned about that match and you’re focused on that.  But I’d like to understand how you’re also listening to your customers?
Pearl Servat
The biggest thing that I should point out about Visible is that we’re a community-centric brand.  So when I say community, I mean, our members are immediate and extended communities, so folks on the digital sphere that we connect with in various ways: our influencer partners, our business partners, even our internal team members.  Everything that we do is centralized on this notion of community.  And I know that…as you know, a lot of brands tend to say that because it’s a really critical component of what and who you are as a brand.  But, when I sort of look at the work that we’ve done and where we sit today, I’m hugely proud to be able to say with confidence that Visible is truly a community-centric brand.
And if you look at our whole ecosystem, that extends to our product output.  So when you look at a product like Party Pay, which is unlike anything that exists in the industry, …you find each other online and through these communities, and then share a phone service, right?  So there’s that element of trust without…you know, John and I don’t know each other.  I saw his Party Pay link on Facebook and decided to join because…so there’s that sort of undertone of trust in the product output and what we’re building from that standpoint.  But then, also our social impact work, the way that we show up for our members, the way that we, you know, to your point, engage and work with our influencers, it’s all about truly listening and taking in the information and then action planning around it.
Peggy Anne Salz
So, you mentioned Party Pay.  And that is something…it’s not just an offer.  It’s almost a movement, if you think about it.  Because you’ve brought people together from around the country in communities where they wouldn’t normally be.  Explain a little bit or unpack that a little bit for us what that offer is.
Pearl Servat
So Party Pay is unlike anything that exists in the wireless industry.  It is a no strings attached, shared unlimited data plan where you can come into a party…and these parties have the coolest names.  You can come into a party and share the savings, but not your phone bill or the data.  So each person in a party is responsible for their own bill, right?  You’re not liable to someone else, or you’re not accountable to someone else.  Each person pays for their own bill and you share the savings.  So 4 people and above is $25 a month, and the number of people who can join a party, it’s unlimited.  There is no cap on it.  So as you can imagine, folks within these social communities have a lot of fun with these parties, like you know, when it comes to sharing their links and their invite codes and things like that, and naming these parties.
And we’ve started to really personify and contextualize these parties.  So for example, one of them is, I think it’s the bikers group and our social team made actual bikers jackets.  And as a surprise and delight tactic, send these jackets to these members.  And then, you know, we’ve done sweatshirts for one of the other groups.  And we’ve done different things, just to sort of play on the name of the parties.  But, you know, it’s really, really incredible.  I can’t tell you the number of times when I go into our subreddit groups or the Facebook groups, and I see people, the amount of engagement that happens around Party Pay, and people connecting with each other, starting parties together, joining parties together. 
And, you know, it just reminds you and there’s a lot of perspective that for a service that’s traditionally known as a utility, for us to create this really, really warm and engaging interaction and community, sort of like a community-centric world, it’s really truly unheard of, right?  And it just reminds me that when you’re dealing with something that has a lot of quality and with a really, really strong and compelling product, that people will be attracted to it.  And you know, some of these members have become our biggest brand champions, which is more valuable than any marketing channel that a brand can hope for.  So we’re really, really proud of the product.  But also, I would say equally as importantly, the communities that we’ve built through the product as well.  It’s really, really heart-warming to see. 
John Koetsier
That’s a great segue, because I want to get into the topic of the competitive space that you’re in, which is telecoms.  And guess what, this is not a space that people typically associate with warm, fuzzy feelings, community, or happiness.
Or anything like that.  It’s pretty conservative.  It’s a very competitive space.  And, you know, I probably can’t say this about your customers, but for many carriers, no one likes them.  No one is super happy that they’re dealing with their carrier and giving them a certain amount of money every month, especially when they have to get in touch with them to get service or whatever.  It’s also a classic zero-sum game.  Somebody gains a subscriber, somebody loses one.  It’s not like even streaming for, you know, media connected TV from your old universe where, you know, I could have five services, right?  So how do you foster loyalty and retention?
Pearl Servat
I think, John, 100%, it’s in the way that we show up as a brand.  Everything that we do is done with a lot of care and thought.  And I think that goes back to the type of people who work at Visible.  Everyone leads with a lot of heart and with a lot of compassion and care for both the brand and what we’re building, but also for our customers and our prospects, right.  And the social work that we do, you know, the brand, as you’ve seen, it’s cool, and hip, and witty, and engaging, and inviting, and all of the above.  And we have incredibly high numbers for our social sentiment, for our NPS scores.  These are things that you have to pay attention to, day in and day out. So if an idea feels cool, but it doesn’t feel right, we won’t pursue it.  Or if an engagement tactic feels, you know, funny and hip, but it doesn’t have a lot of meaning and depth behind it, we won’t do it.  …I remember early on when I first joined the company, I think, at that point Visible had launched about four or five months ago, it was during the holiday a few years ago.  I remember one of our members, one of our customers, had found our office address and came there to drop off Christmas presents, pastries for all of us, with a huge thank you note.  And I was like…and I remember that was my first “Aha” moment about the type of brand.
 
We have numerous examples of members who reach out to us proactively just to say, you know, “My wireless carrier has never, let alone any brand, has never treated me this way.”  Right.  So it’s like, you…I think Peggy and I were talking about this the other day, we’re all consumers, right?  And we’re all very smart.  And we all have to make very smart choices when it comes to consumption, and what we’re purchasing, and what we’re integrating into our lives.  So if a brand doesn’t show up or behave in a sincere and genuine way, you know, consumers know that right away.  Like we all know those signs right away, right?  So with us it just all goes back to having a sincere and genuine approach.  You know what your KPIs are, you know what your objectives are, but you build the sort of campaigns and tactics and plans that truly allow you to connect with the consumer.  And especially as a digital brand, we could have easily lost sight of that emotional connection with our members, but it’s something that we just remind ourselves of every day.
Peggy Anne Salz
I love that, John.  You hear it again and again.  We could do a series of just that, you know, serving, not selling, being authentic, being honest, being upfront.  We’re doing this series now and we’re talking to some of the top CMOs, and we’re going to continue to talk to them.  And this comes through again and again.  You talk about your services, your marketing, but what’s interesting in your marketing story is that you didn’t start marketing right away, right?   You waited a few years.  And when you did it, wow, it looks like you were writing this playbook because you came up with the Visible Acts of Kindness.  I’d love to hear about that.  I’d love to hear about what inspired it.  Because you have all of these stories, shareable on social media, that’s gold right there.  They’re sincere, even better, even better for everyone watching this perhaps, minimum budget but maximum results.  Tell me what happened there.
Pearl Servat
Early on we did really, really cool and unheard of and unique in real life experiential activations, because we knew from day one as we were building and launching the brand that even as a digital brand, you have to have physical touch points where a consumer or a prospect can get to know you in various physical settings, right?  So experiential and IRL has been a part of our DNA from day one, and various…you know, mostly digital.  We really, really lean into digital strategies.  So that’s been a part of our ecosystem from the very beginning.  And then we started to do a little bit of TV and various tactics like that.  But with Visible Acts of Kindness, the campaign was created over the course of, I think, 48 hours last year.  When the pandemic first happened, as you both know, it was a moment of…we were all unclear about what this thing was, right?  What is it?  What does it mean?  When does it end?  How are we all going to be impacted?  And the impact was pretty clear, you know, very quickly early on.
And, you know, as a brand, we did everything that every other brand should be doing.  You know, we engaged in some impact-driven work.  We gave support to our consumers who weren’t able to pay their bills.  So through various different channels, we showed up and expressed our support in this time of, “Hey, we must all hold hands and see what the outcome of this thing is.”  Right?  One of the things that we did, which was led by our CRM team was we did a comms to our members, you know, very standard.  This is what’s happening.  This is what we’re doing.  If you need support with your bill, let us know.  And then, at the very, very end of this very long comms, there was half a sentence that just said, “And by the way, let us know how you’re doing.  We want to hear from you.  Just reach out and let us know.”  And admittedly, I had a lot of hesitation around it.  I was like, “You know, guys, no one’s going to respond to this thing.  You know, why are we doing it?”
And it was a very humbling moment for me, because we ended up doing it.  And we immediately heard from thousands of our members who said, “Thank you for asking me how I’m doing.  No brand ever does this.”  This simple how are you, asking it and really being interested in hearing the answer, just really, really spoke volumes to the folks who had received that comms.  So once we saw that and saw the vulnerability, we quickly went back on the social channels.  As a digital brand, you’re always doing social listening.  And we saw that a lot of people were talking about just how quickly the pandemic had impacted their lives, you know, whether it was separating families or, you know, loss of employment, things like that.  But then, as people were sharing their stories, there were others who were reaching out to them and saying, “Hey, I saw this story.  I want to help you, DM me,” or, “Let’s connect.”  And through just sort of all of these observations, we created the Visible Acts of Kindness Campaign.
And the essence of the whole thing was to encourage, and support, and champion, and promote stories and Acts of Kindness both given and received.  We quickly partnered with a set of notables and influencers like Chef Emerald and Padma Lakshmi, and several other people.  And we were like, “Hey, let’s engage all of our communities and drive a little bit of positivity in this time of uncertainty.”  And I think we had over 13,000 stories of kindness, over 2 million people engaged in the campaign organically.  You know, impressions were through the roof.  But more importantly, we had a number of people who were reaching out to us proactively to say, “I’ve never seen a brand colour outside the lines like this.” brand sentiment went through the roof, but we didn’t ask for anything in return.  And we surprised some of the folks who’d shared their stories with Amazon gift cards, but we never asked for anything.  We just said, you know, it wasn’t about, “Hi, we’re Visible.  And this is what we are,” or, “Hey, we’ll do this for you if you give us a follow.”  None of those things.  It was all done with a lot of kindness and with a lot of sincerity.  And people really, really responded to that.  So, you know, I can give you a million examples of that, where as a brand when you show up with sincerity people will respond to it, so.
John Koetsier
Just two questions left, I think here.  Your founding vision was to create clearly differentiated and segmented opportunities for a diverse audience.  That sounds great.  Everybody wants to do it.  How do you actually make it real, clearly differentiated segmented opportunities for different people?
Pearl Servat
I think for us, it goes back to the approach in marketing and really understanding the consumers.  So we have a research and analysis team who are constantly studying and doing research around consumer behaviour, both our immediate members but also our prospects, you know, behaviours, consumption habits, life habits.  What do they like?  What are they into?  What are they not?  And almost all the creative that we do and all the campaigns that we work on, is really bespoke to sort of various audience groups.  In a lot of the creative output that you see from the brand, you’ll see a lot of togetherness, communities, people being together.  So I think that’s something that also resonates with folks.  Inclusivity, whether it comes to the creative output or messaging, a product like Party Pay, or our social impact work, is something else that’s a hugely integral part of the brand and who we are.  So those are all the various elements within which we’re able to establish a direct personal and emotional connection with the consumers.
Peggy Anne Salz
We’ve talked about empathy.  We’ve talked about consistency.  There’s a lot of brand wisdom that you’re sharing for other CMOs.  But I want to leave us here with wisdom of a different kind.  Because you’re a leader in the marketing industry, but you’re also a role model for many young women in the business.  And you have a very interesting sort of career path yourself as I understand.  You’re from Tehran.  So you bring sort of the immigrant experience with you as well.  And that challenge, overcoming that.  So there’s a lot of ways that you can give some wisdom to perhaps either industry newcomers or even women in the industry.  What would you like to leave us with?  What’s a go-to piece of advice?
Pearl Servat
Be fearless and don’t doubt yourself.  I think sometimes the best advice that someone gives you may end up becoming the worst advice you get, right?  So you have to trust yourself.  And you have to trust your instincts, and you have to have a strong work ethic.  Never question yourself.  And again, be fearless.  And always, always give yourself a chance and bet on yourself.
John Koetsier
Wow.  Wow.  Well, Pearl, thank you so much for joining us on CleverTap Engage.  We really do appreciate your time.
Pearl Servat
Thank you so much for having me.
Peggy Anne Salz
I will say, Pearl, thank you so much for your time.  And also, of course for sharing and your insights at the end, absolutely universal.  And of course for our audience, if you’re watching the video, check out the audio podcast, which is easy to consume on the go.  And if you’re on the audio version, hey, it’s the other way around, search for us on YouTube to chill and watch wherever you want.
John Koetsier
And this podcast is about finding the world’s best marketers and getting their top tips just like we just did.  If you fit the bill, hey, ping Peggy or me on Twitter or LinkedIn and let’s get you set up for your own show.  Until next time, this is John Koetsier. 
Peggy Anne Salz
And this is Peggy Anne Salz for CleverTap Engage.

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Last updated on March 29, 2024