Marketing Trends: Understanding VICE Media Group’s Role as a Global Brand with CMO, Nadja Bellan-White

Michael Rivo: Welcome back to Blazing Trails. I'm Michael Rivo from Salesforce Studios. And today we're going to continue our August showcase of shows from our Salesforce podcast network, and I'm so excited to share the Salesforce sponsored show Marketing Trends. It features interviews with trailblazing marketers, CMOs, CEOs, all kinds of C's, VPs and industry leaders, but what's special is these conversations are a treasure- trove of marketing goodness directly from some of the best marketers out there. And today, I've got my good friend, Stephanie Postles, creator of the show and CEO of Mission. org, here to tell us all about it. Welcome to the show, Stephanie.

Stephanie Postles: Thank you. So great to be here, Michael.

Michael Rivo: All right. Well, tell us a little bit more about Marketing Trends. What should we expect from the show?

Stephanie Postles: Yeah. So Marketing Trends is the number one show for anyone who works in or is interested in the marketing field. We just passed over a million downloads. Woot woot! And we have over 300 episodes to check out. A lot of content. So on the show twice a week, we talk to some of the top CMOs around the world from brands like Lego, Vonage, Fiverr, Coldwell Banker and a ton more. They share a lot of really good, juicy insights and best practices, and we get to find out where the industry is headed as a whole, which is super fun.

Michael Rivo: Yeah. That's really cool. I mean, that's an incredible network of people that you've talked to over the years. Just tell us a little bit about how you choose your guests, how you get in touch with them about that process.

Stephanie Postles: Yeah. So we of course always start by looking at Fortune 500. The people who are leading those companies have a lot of good stories to tell an a lot to learn there. So that's kind of where we start. But then also digging into some of the younger startups, younger companies because they also have a lot of good insights. They're able to move really quick and try things and test things out in a different way. So anyone's who's got a great story or is working for a really good brand, we want to learn for them. And we invite them on.

Michael Rivo: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I know since our audience is listening to a podcast and interested in podcasting, can you tell us a little bit about your journey, the Mission's journey, too, with podcasting? I'd love to hear just a little bit about that.

Stephanie Postles: Yeah. So back in 2017, we actually started as a media publication, and we were writing some articles on there, one of which was called The Story. We started a really fun piece of content there telling the unknown backstory of people who changed the world. It did really well in written format, and that was when we kind of had an aha moment to put it into podcast form. So that podcast, it was actually sponsored by Salesforce, our first show ever. We brought it to you guys and said, " Hey, do you want to sponsor this show? It's going to look and feel something like this." For some reason, you guys said yes, and we were off to the races. It won a bunch of awards. It has celebrity narrators like Alec Baldwin, Jeffry Wright. And then from there, we just continue to build out our podcast network. So now we're at about 17 podcasts essentially covering the entire C- suite, a lot of good business content there. Yeah, Salesforce is an amazing sponsor for many of the shows within our network, which is amazing.

Michael Rivo: Wonderful. Well, we've enjoyed being along for the journey, and we're excited to share this episode today. So we're going to hear a conversation with Nadja Bellan- White. She's the CMO of VICE Media Group. Before VICE, she was at Ogilvy where she was the CEO of Ogilvy Africa. She's led brand work with Dove, which was some really culturally impactful and significant campaigns as well as work for American Express, Ikea, Coca-Cola and many others. She really knows her stuff. Stephanie, tell us a little bit more about this conversation.

Stephanie Postles: Yes. Nadja is VICE Media's first global CMO, which is huge. And on the episode, she details why she was so excited to accept the challenge of running a marketing team trusted with pushing VICE's vast portfolio forward. Plus, she also detailed why marketers are in the midst of a Renaissance, and they must alter the way that data powers their decision making. We hear this time and time again on all of our shows around there's data all around us and how do you actually harness it and get good insights from it. So she really went into the weeds detailing how to do that as a marketer. The other interesting thing in the episode was all around demographics and how Gen Z is so different than boomers, and a smart marketer has to know how to look at that data and actually make actionable moves off of that data to be able to connect with their audience in a different way. So she was really interesting. Such a good episode and just really fun.

Michael Rivo: Yeah, Stephanie, it's so interesting how so many of the conversations and what marketers are trying to solve right now is being able to look at the data, understand it, act on it, and create something that's going to be compelling, some good story telling out of that data. And that's a lot of what you learn on many of these episodes and hearing it from different angles. So today, we're going to hear from Nadja Bellan- White, the CMO of VICE Media Group talking about that issue and why marketers are amidst this Renaissance. Let's hear it now.

Ian Faison: Welcome to Marketing Trends. I'm Ian Faison, host of Marketing Trends, and today, we are joined by a special guest. Nadja, how are you?

Nadja Bellan-White: How are you, Ian? Nice to meet you.

Ian Faison: Yeah, great to meet you, as well. Great to have you on the show today. So excited to chat about VICE, talk about your background and everything in between. So how did you get started in marketing?

Nadja Bellan-White: It's a long story, but I'm going to make it short. Let's just say, I started out in consulting at Pricewaterhouse and ended up working at IBM. And just to date myself, for those of you out there that might be of a slightly older but sexier generation, I remember being quite frustrated with some people at IBM because I was in charge of trying to figure out how they can sell direct to consumers using something, a new platform called the internet selling direct to consumers. And it was a bit frustrating because at the time, there were some naysayers who were like, " Yeah, this thing about doing everything with this channel, are we sure this is going to take off?" Little did we know that it would actually end up transforming the way we live and work. And then from there I ended up going to the agency side largely around digital and technology and innovation. So I was quite fortunate to be ahead of the curve, helping to create trends and anticipate them with big clients like American Express. There's a young group we worked with called Coldplay before they were big and Kanye West before and John Legend and Sting and Ellen and Jerry Seinfeld. And we did all these amazing innovative works using digital and technology at a time when many kind of looked at it as that other thing over then. And then from there, just continued to build an amazing career in communications all over the world working with publicists and digitas and working in almost every country around the world. That's how I got my start quite a long time ago.

Ian Faison: Well, so and then flash forward to today. You are the first CMO in VICE's history here, and I want to know what goes into that. What does the CMO of VICE do?

Nadja Bellan-White: Well, it's interesting. They had people who were primarily doing marketing primarily one division. So mostly TV. And when I met the then CEO, Nancy Dubuc, and she was telling me a bit about the vision. I said, " Based on what I'm seeing with clients, we really need to look at this as marketing and comms and insights. It really should be one, and it should be an enterprise center for growth. And it has always been for the clients that I've represented. So why isn't it for you?" And when she shared a bit with her perspective about where the group was going, I began to sketch out a bit of what I thought would be interesting. I said, " You don't necessarily have to hire me, but here's what I would do." And she said, " Well, maybe we should talk." And that's kind of how it happened. So it's an exciting time to be here.

Ian Faison: It is an exciting time. In prep for this episode, I couldn't believe that VICE had been around for so long. That was one of the shocking things for me that I didn't realize that the length of the story telling and the things that you all have been working on, but truly, and people talked about new media and what is this and what is this sort of stuff? But it seems like right now, you are at a point at the precipice of something new. I know you don't like the phrase digital first because everything is digital, but we really are in this next chapter that is just totally different, and you're starting. You're a little bit outside of the first hundred days at the organization. So how did you view going to this role?

Nadja Bellan-White: Well, it's interesting. You remember, I told you the story of how I started back in 1999. And if you remember the era that we were in and what we ended up accomplishing, digital is kind of transforming the way we were doing business back then. In many respects, if you think about the world economic form has talked about it, many others have quoted it. We are in the middle of what I call the great reset. I call it, we're in the midst of a revolution. And through any great revolution, you're going to get change. You're going to get positive agitation. You're going to get people who are creating new models. With any level adversity in history, that's what you get. And through it, you're also going to get a bit of a Renaissance and a re- imagining, a re- awakening. And who better than VICE Media Group to help usher you through a bit of this era of trying to reimagine what life could be, reimagine how you're going to engage with consumers, reimagine what culture means, what travel means, how we feel about brands. There's so much that people are re- imagining around the world. If any of us would've said 18 months ago that we'd be sitting here living the way we are, none of us would've believed it. But the truth is, we are in the middle of a transformation, and we are in the middle of a big reset. And based on VICE Media Group's history, our track record with consumers, our foundation in trust from news, we believe that we can help people usher through the next, help them see around the corners, hear things that have never been heard before, see things they haven't seen before and tell stories that have never been told before all with the goal of helping us move forward as society. That's what VICE Media Group means to everybody.

Ian Faison: It's a crazy thing to create new brand in media. There's this timeliness to media and media creation that is so fascinating because our kids grow up and VICE has always been around. VICE has been a mainstay for the whole time, but it kind of is, as you said, we're ushering in a new era and all this stuff has to be important. How do you kind of take on that responsibility of kind of shaping what's next?

Nadja Bellan-White: Well, it's with great humility, right, and with active listening skills. One of the things that VICE Media Group prides itself on is its ability to really listen and pay attention to what our consumers are saying and feeling. We have these amazing young minds called 20/30 fellows, and they just published a report today about what's coming up next. Now you and I, Ian, may not agree with what they're saying, but those are the facts. Things like what fluidity means, what it means to live in a poly- cultural world, what it means to be third generation, what it means to reinvent what home is, reinvent what love it, what commitment is, what relationships are. And it's not based on judging anybody. This is just how they're living. So being able to bring that voice to the world to amplify those voices, to be a bit of the arbiter of trust and transparency, and let me be clear, some of what we report on is not popular.

Ian Faison: Yeah.

Nadja Bellan-White: Some of it represents the ugly truth that is, but it is truth, and it needs to be said. So I think we're quite unique, and I often say, when you talk about other media companies, there's no one quite like VICE Media Group that has the breadth or the offering of a Pulse Films, that has the heritage that we have, that has the foundation in news, that has an agency network, production and experiences a digital platform in ways to really tap into culture in a way that no one else has. Yet, do it with an air of humility that others always don't do. And I think that's what's interesting, and I've worked in many different types of agencies and worked with many different types of clients. And when I speak to partners today, and I tell them about VICE Media Group, they're like, " Really? You did Flea, right. Oh, that's right. That is VICE Media Group. You did Gangs of London. Oh, of course you did. Oh, you worked on that video with Beyonce. Really? That was you? So you're doing both." Not a lot of people know about our story.

Ian Faison: I think that's so true, and I think it's so true of media now. I create podcasts for a living. Each individual podcast has its own brand. It has its own community, it has its own relationship. And what's so interesting about someone like VICE Media Group is you have products in your portfolio that are brands that are something totally different that someone, one person loves and then another person might despise, and that's good. That's by design, right?

Nadja Bellan-White: Absolutely. I've always maintained that working in media is a burden and a privilege. And if you reflect on what I said earlier about us being in a moment, a bit of a culture revolution as well as a Renaissance, what role are you going to play in this? What role am I going to play in this? Are you going to help lead culture? Are you going to help effect change? Or are you going to be on the sidelines complaining about it. My believe, as I've worked around the world, is I've always been about being the change. I'm not just going to sit back and complain about something. I'm going to be part of the change or part of the action. And if I want to have a say in how people are portrayed in a fair and equitable way, I need to be at the table to help drive some of that change. And when I looked around and looked at the competitive set, I realized that there was no one quite like VICE Media Group with that raw grit, with that unfiltered desire to tell truth. And I thought it was quite refreshing at a time when the idea of truth is under attack and, quite frankly, has been watered down by those who really are disingenuous, and I'm proud to be part of a team here that is not like that, and I look to my colleagues, and I say I'm so very proud of the work of news and in studios and at Virtue and at Digital with Refinery 29 and with ID. And what they're doing is they're reinventing the modern media model before people's eyes. And I'm pretty excited about that.

Ian Faison: Well, and they're lucky to have you because I think that part of the problem, not to get super deep into the problems with media, but I do think that one of the key problems with media today is a business model problem. It is something that you need to have someone with strong business knowledge and strong relationships with customers. So I'm just so curious when you came into this role, very different from your previous one, how did you think about building those relationships?

Nadja Bellan-White: For me, it's a continuation of my relationships. So at VICE, we have our consumer proposition, and we have the B2B proposition. And the B2B proposition is about that engine, that data searching engine, that culture. So you're right. Coming into VICE Media Group, I over- indexed on the data point. I said, " Okay, let's think about the engine we have and the data points we have around the insights." And the question is not, " Do you want to buy this package?" The question is, " Tell me what your business goals are. Let's figure out how we can tap into what we have across on multi- media portfolio to help you drive growth for your business." It's a different narrative than, perhaps, one maybe used to telling, but it's one that I've been telling for decades. So when I sit down with potential partners, it's from the perspective of how we grow together. How do we learn a bit more about the audience that we can help your brand grow or help us drive additional sales for your particular organization or give you a bit of insight about what my competitors may be telling you? So traditional media agencies and traditional agencies and research companies going to tell you, " Here's what the data says." I'm going to tell you, " This is what the data is saying, but let me tell you how they're feeling. Let me tell you a bit about what's underneath the culture. Let me tell you what's motivating them. Let me tell you what's scaring them. Let me tell you the things that are so politically incorrect that no one else wants to tell you." Make those informed decisions. And because I have these relationships, I'm not going to sugar coat it. I'm going to say here are the facts. This is how we can help drive and make a difference to your value proposition in the marketplace. I've been on both sides, right? So I'm able to leverage the great fruit salad, or I call it the great stew if you will. If you think of a great big stew, and I love to cook, VICE Media Group has all these amazing ingredients in the stew. Sometimes people just want one bit of it, but when you put it all together, it's quite an amazing meal to have with a nice bottle of wine, by the way.

Ian Faison: Now I'm hungry. So as you think about your relationships with you agency partners, as you think about your relationships with your customers, the B2B, the folks that want to work with VICE Media Group, and as you said, you start with that business proposition. Where are you trying to get to and why? Which I think, again, not to be... I know that a lot of people do that, but it's still not that commonplace. I think al to of people are used to buying and selling media and just say, " Hey, here's the rate card. This is what we do. This is how many impressions you can buy. This is how many pages you'll get, X, Y, Z." That's still pretty common. I mean, what do you hear? Oh, go ahead.

Nadja Bellan-White: That's not my approach. I've said to the team, look, there are going to be instances when, sure, it's about the rate card, but that's not the conversation I'm having. The conversation I'm going to have is talk to me about your business. Talk to me about what's keeping you up at night. Talk to me about what you don't know. If I think about some of the questions I've gotten from some conversations I've had at the C level, it's, " You know what, Nadja? I don't really know how to reach out what's going on out there. I have no..." What COVID has done, the recent Black Lives Matter and all of the challenges that are happening around the world have done is marketers don't know what to do right now. They're actually a little bit like, " I don't know what to do." The great thing about us, the great thing about working at VICE Media Group is we're going to tell you the real. We're going to tell you about the pain. We're going to tell you what frustrates people. We're going to tell you how you actually need to connect with culture differently. We're not going to tell it to you because we're selling you a rate card. We're going to tell it to you because that's what's going to help drive your business. And then we can sit back and co- create what we could do together. And sometimes that co- creation happens with agency partners. Sometimes it will happen with media partners. Sometimes it will happen direct with clients. We don't have any defined model. We work across all medias. And that is different here.

Ian Faison: Yeah. No, it is different. I think what we saw over the past year, especially when you look at Black Lives Matter, you had a lot of brands that kind of had no idea how to weigh in. They had no idea what to do. But then you have people that conversely, they're confused or don't know how to weigh in, and you have someone like VICE Media Group where you're reporting stories from the front lines. You're doing things like that. And they're saying, " I don't know if I want my brand to be associated with blank." And maybe in this case it's Black Lives Matter, but it could be something different. " Hey, we're going to do a story about rhino poaching in Africa." And they're like, " I don't know if that's really what I want my..." And you're kind of saying, " I hear you, but this is really, really important work. Do you want to be part of that?" And I'm just curious how much of that goes into the conversation because it seems like that's the most important part is you got to get people to vote with their dollars.

Nadja Bellan-White: Right. And guess what. Some people are not as authentic and forthcoming as you would imagine. There's a big difference from what you tweet and post on LinkedIn, and at the end of the day, if you truly want to reach a certain type of demographic, if you truly want to move your brand, if you truly want to make an impact, come talk to my team and I. We'll help you all day long. Let's be honest, not everybody's for that, and that's okay. That's okay. Not every partner's meant to be with us, but for those that want to be on the journey with us, those that want to connect with consumers in a much more authentic way, those who want to do it with an air of transparency and humility, I say come talk to us. And I think what they'll see is a part of the audience that perhaps they didn't know about. That's what makes me excited. Yeah, we're definitely not for every kind of brand, but I'd like to believe we're for the ones that are really going to be revolutionary in the future.

Ian Faison: Yeah. It's a great positioning, and it's a great way of thinking about it because you go to company. vice. com, you see the Definitive Guide to an Uncertain World, right? And if you're a company, if you're a brand, partnering with uncertainty can be scary. We always want to talk about the future. Everybody always wants to future of blank. We want to be associated with, that's why selling spots in Back to the Future and those sort of things. Yeah, of course, if my brand's Nike, I want the character to wear Nike's because that's 100 years in the future. Nike better be around, and people better still be wearing them. But I think people are scared about uncertainty, and it's a great point you make that you pick each other in those relationships. It's not just a one- sided street. And I'm sure you've had your share of brand transformations over the years where you give your advice on something and the other person says, " Yeah, no. We're not that edgy. We don't want to take a stand like that."

Nadja Bellan-White: It's hard when you know they're making a mistake, right? And when you can see the mistake being made, and they don't want to listen. Or you can see the impact that they're going to make, and you can't do anything to effect it. I think here it's different. I'm having a different conversation with people. I look at the breadth of assets across the portfolio at VICE Media Group, and I'm thinking, " Gosh. This is amazing. Some of my former clients would be happy to have access to this information." So a lot of times, it's about sharing that prospective, that point of view. One of the things we'll be publishing at the end of this year is the Definitive Guide to Culture. And that Definitive Guide to Culture is going to be based on the data that we have, that we've had all along.

Ian Faison: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nadja Bellan-White: I have an amazing team of global insight individuals around the world, and they're tapped into the insights teams in each of our companies. This is the engine that we have, but it's how you use that data. It's not just about having it. How are we using it? And how is that actually enabling brands to grow? And it's constantly being fed by current information, by what you're seeing in news, by what you're seeing in studios, by what you're seeing in projects, what we're learning on a daily basis. So it's an engine that feeds the enterprise. It is at the center of our strategy and certainly the center of my team and part of what's driving our point of view moving forward. When you think about what happens now, what happens now is magnificent. What happens now is a transformation. What happens now is we're reinventing the modern media model. We're reinventing how we engage with consumers. We're reinventing what it means to be humans and interact with people. All of that's happening now. And VICE Media Group's in the middle of it.

Ian Faison: So you spoke a little bit about data. What are the types of things that you think some of the brands are missing, that marketers are missing, that they're not getting that you all can provide to them? I think we're at the point now where data is arguably the most important thing that every marketer has that they don't yet have enough insights from.

Nadja Bellan-White: What's interesting about what I'm seeing from this particular generation is number one, they don't want to be boxed in. They actually hate being boxed in to anything. Fluidity is the key to everything. So you have to be fluid and flexible. And they have a different set of values. There's a premium on trust and transparency in a way that perhaps older generations may perhaps say, " Oh, it's okay. It's just the brand doing this one thing. Don't worry about it." Oh, absolutely not. This particular generation places a premium on trust, and they have no problem making decisions with their wallet. They will not support you if they feel as though you are somehow in violation of what their values are. So you have to think very clearly about what role you're going to play. One of the things we're going to be working on is a trust index overlaying trust against culture and what this means with respect to brands. And those are just some of the things that you'll be seeing from us later on this year to help brands navigate the next and help them figure out how to market to people. It's not just about how you're re- imagining home. You're re- imagining the experiences at home, the products that you need and what it means. So a lot of the data that you used to use has to be re- thought. And you have to recalibrate it. And that's not something that traditional companies have been considering until now, but certainly we've been doing it for some time.

Ian Faison: And also, you just have a portfolio of brands. I think that that's one of the exciting things is you're not just seeing it on one brand or one platform that you get to cross- reference all this stuff. I'd imagine that you have a pretty robust data and analytics team.

Nadja Bellan-White: Oh, yeah. They're kind of incredible. I said to them, " That's one of the reasons why I came." I said, " You all are just amazing. Not like the Wizard of Oz, but better than the wizard." Like a real person with a real engine, and her name's inaudible.

Ian Faison: Yeah, yeah.

Nadja Bellan-White: But they're amazing people that are all over the world. So imagine the insights you're learning in Mumbai and the insights you're learning in Lagos and the insights you're learning in Berlin and London, in Louisville, in New York, in Detroit, all these places around the world, what you're learning in inaudible, in Saudi Arabia. You're learning these insights around the world, and you're looking, " Okay, what does this mean?" I have a group of individuals that we meet twice a month. We call ourselves The Predictors. What are we learning? What happened? What's bubbling up? And how are people reacting to it on a regular basis? So we just have regular conversations about this. This isn't a special report that we're running. This is how we do our jobs on a day to day basis.

Ian Faison: So let's talk audience. You recently came into the role, but it seems like you're obviously an audience- focused person and trying to figure this out and dive into the data. You all have a program called Vice Voices, which I have a lot more to learn about, but how do you think about this audience building and creating things for them?

Nadja Bellan-White: Well, Vice Voices, we have insight communities probably about 40, 000 combined audience members who signed up to talk to us about brands and how they're thinking. And we engage them a couple times a month. And we talk to them through surveys, discussion boards. And again, when I talk about that engine, I'm talking about how we're tapping into Vice Voices. I'm talking about how we're using those 20/ 30 Fellows, our Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z people within the company. We have all these sub- communities. Here's the beautiful thing. VICE Media Group can be best seen as a great community brand, and we keep growing as a community brand because we are the confluence of multiple communities, and what we've been able to do is tap into these communities as part of the data. So we have the qual and the quant. We have what they're saying, and then we overlay the quant with it. So what you get as a partner with us is insights no one else has. What consumers continue to feed to us is what they're doing. They don't have to do anything. It's just kind of who we are. So we continue to develop more appropriate programming off of that. We think about who we want to collaborate with. And if a brand comes to us, they get insights. They can ask us questions that they can't ask typical partners. And we have all the great creativity. I think about the magic that a Pulse Films and a Virtue is doing on a day to day basis. Where else do you get access to that all under one umbrella?

Ian Faison: Switching gears to some of the experiences in your background. You spent a number of years in Africa. You spent a number of years in London, obviously in and around New York. You got the world tour. I'm curious, as you came into this role, it really feels like you have this experience that not as many people have. How do you think about leveraging that? How do you think about developing strategies for Africa and other places, which I know VICE Media Group is already in a lot of.

Nadja Bellan-White: I believe I said earlier that we're in over 25 countries around the world. I think I've worked in almost all the countries that VICE is in, which is crazy.

Ian Faison: Wow.

Nadja Bellan-White: It means that as a global CMO, or certainly have visited or had meetings and worked with people, it means that my perspective of how I look at how we solve our problems is through a very different lens. I may be this African American woman who grew up in Queens whose family is from Jamaica and Haiti, but I have just as much family hanging out in Nairobi and in West Africa and Ghana or Nigeria. I have just as much family hanging out in London. I have beautiful friends around the world and across Europe. I have an amazing network, and that means, if you're thinking about developing a project and with a partner in Cairo, changes are I know someone in Cairo that I think would be good for us to team up with. If you're thinking about developing a project in Lagos, chances are I'm going to probably know who to get on the phone and speak to based on my experience. And certainly, this goes without saying, about our partners in Europe. So my experience over the last 25 plus years around the globe gives me a unique perspective. So I might say, " Wait a minute, I don't think that's actually going to work for what we're trying to do in APAC. And I'm not sure if that's going to work as we push into India. And I don't know if that format's actually right. Perhaps we need to think about things differently." In my prior world, I managed inaudible worldwide with WPP working on Dove, and I also worked with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in helping to eradicate the impact of malnutrition in developing countries around the world. Yes, I've been in Kathmandu. I've been to Nepal. And I've been in Seoul, South Korea. And all of this is about how we transform lives and make impact. So all of that experience I bring to bear when I come to work every day at VICE Media Group.

Ian Faison: How do you think marketers who don't have that opportunity right this second, how should they think about building that base of knowledge? So I'm just curious, how do you coach your team members to think outside of just their little bubble or the bubble they have on Twitter or social media or things like that because I think a lot of us now are so trapped in our bubble, and people don't realize it. You don't know. If you look at somebody else's, if you jumped on their Twitter and you saw their algorithm, you'd be like, " What is all this stuff?" We just don't know.

Nadja Bellan-White: You don't know. And I think I'm constantly pushing my teams. I actually drive them crazy. I'll say on a call, I'll listen to what everyone's saying, and I say, " Are we coming at this from a pure North American point of view? Have you guys considered what the views are from different parts of the world?" When we're thinking about making staff changes, I'll often say to my team, " Are we considering this as a global role? Are you automatically going to go to someone out of Brooklyn because that's your comfort zone?" I'm constantly pushing the envelope, but my advice to others is think beyond your four walls. Think beyond your city, your state, your country. There are amazing networks around the world. If anyone wants to know about qualified people, email me. I have literally people all over the world who are these inaudible marketers and amazing minds, and all they need is a chance.

Ian Faison: Totally.

Nadja Bellan-White: And by the way, it's not a handout either. These are some brilliant, brilliant minds. When I was in Nairobi, Kenya, one of the best TEDX talks I saw was around inaudible. And I was at a forum that WPP in Cape Town. And I was listening to this debate between a group of individuals from Nigeria and a group of individuals from South Africa and a group of individuals from Kenya talking about how you're using your phone to make commerce. And they were saying to the East Africans, they were like, " It should've been us. I can't believe you guys came up with that technology first." And it was this amazing out of body experience that most Americans probably would not have had that front row seat to observe. But one of the things I've learned particularly living on the continent is you create innovation out of great needs, and Paystubs was created because there was a need to service a level of people in the rural areas that couldn't get to banks who were really the unbanked, but they all had a phone. Not like that wasn't tried here in the West. We weren't ready to receive it. This is how most people in parts of Africa transact. Someone would've thought that that's how that would've kind of really spurred that level of technology, but the banks and the inaudible come together to really create their own institutions, and that's really happening out of Africa and India?

Ian Faison: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nadja Bellan-White: Come on. Most Americans don't know that story because most Americans are too arrogant to realize it. And one of the things I learned about living and working on the continent is to be humble and listen to what everyone else is doing and say, " Ah, I can learn something here."

Ian Faison: You talked about your relationship with Nancy, the CEO of VICE Media. She's someone who has been named one of the hottest hands in terms of picking shows and all that sort of stuff over the years, true visionary in our industry, and then the relationship between the CMO and a CEO is obviously arguable the most critical one. How do you view working with a CEO to make sure that you're achieving her vision and mission for the company?

Nadja Bellan-White: I am so grateful for having Nancy as a partner, as a boss, as someone who I admire every day. She believed in this idea of let's create this enterprise center for growth. Let's reimagine what brand can do to help drive the business. It was her that really had the inspiration for this. And she gave me the runway to really help develop it in a way that I thought could work for the team. But we did with existing team members. When listening to people around the globe, the truth is, I have an amazing team of people. Spencer Bane is my chief brand officer who's been at VICE for over 15 years. And our brand transformation could not have happened with out. I have partners I brought in from the outside, but we have an amazing group of individuals. And what Nancy realized is that the power of the collective group, the power of our total value proposition was the missing piece to VICE's transformation evolution. And she trusted that I would then be able to work with my partners in helping to elevate and amplify what was already there. So she and I are very close. I don't make any decisions without her. And she is, I call her the Queen's Gamut. You remember that Netflix show? Nancy can see the chessboard before anybody else can. She is one of the most brilliant minds, forget in media, in business period. Hands down. She is brilliant. I actually don't think the woman sleeps. She is a force and everyday I learn from her. And I am so grateful that I made the decision to come here because she makes me better as a marketing leader and as a business leader, and she makes this company great. So our secret sauce is Nancy and her ability to help us differentiate ourselves in the market.

Ian Faison: I'll check it out. That sounds great. Is there a specific piece of advice that you got either early in your career or recently that stuck with you?

Nadja Bellan-White: Be good to everybody around you. I make it a point to try to help as many people as I can. I didn't grow up having a blueprint. I didn't grow up knowing the right things to say or do. I mean, I made so many mistakes. I still do because for me, I'm first generation going to college and my mom still doesn't know what I do from a day to day basis. If you're not a doctor, an engineer, my mom doesn't know what I do.

Ian Faison: Sure.

Nadja Bellan-White: But I try to help everybody. Every single person. I may not get back to immediately, but I'm going to get back to you eventually, and I believe that part of my super power is the ability to give impact and to give back and to be a helpful ear to someone who may not have had it. So I try to do that for so many people no matter who they are, not matter where they come from. I'm going to be the one to listen to them and try to help give them a leg up.

Ian Faison: If you weren't in marketing or media at all, what do you think you'd be doing?

Nadja Bellan-White: I think I can see myself having a bar hut in Costa Rica. I actually secretly want to be Anthony Bordain, God rest his soul, that would inaudible. I love to cook, and I love watching... I think I was watching this show about, I think, Tucchi was in Italy exploring his roots. Anything that involves food and wine in me. So maybe I would've been a food and wine critic.

Ian Faison: I feel like there's still time. That's...

Nadja Bellan-White: I should think about it.

Ian Faison: I know a great media group that could help you tell that story.

Nadja Bellan-White: I think we could. I think my next chapter might actually be maybe I can go work at a winery or something.

Ian Faison: Oh, there you go.

Nadja Bellan-White: There you go. I could open up a wine bar.

Ian Faison: Do you have a drink of choice that you'd be serving at your... Well, I guess if it's a wine bar, but maybe cocktails, too? I don't know.

Nadja Bellan-White: Oh, yeah. I've learned, I'll shout out to my British peeps, the value or a good GnT. Fever Tree light tonic with a twist of lime, please.

Ian Faison: Excellent. What's your best advice for a first time CMO?

Nadja Bellan-White: Don't be afraid to ask for help. I think I've counseled several CMOs who think, " I just got to figure it out by myself and be a hero." No. The most important aspect to being a CMO is you have to be able to listen and also recognize the role that your organization's going to play in driving growth for the company. And you can't do that alone, and you have a variety of people that are going to be sitting at the table as your advisors. Some of them are going to be the quiet advisors, and some of them are going to be more active. You got to know which ones to use.

Ian Faison: I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining, Nadja.

Nadja Bellan-White: Thanks, bye.

Michael Rivo: That was Nadja Bellan- White, CMO of VICE Media Group speaking about how she uses her voice to challenge brands to think differently. If you like this episode and want to hear more from trailblazing marketers including CMOs, CEOs, VPs and industry leaders, be sure to subscribe to Marketing Trends wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Rivo from Salesforce Studios and your host of Blazing Trails. Thanks for listening today, and I'll catch you back here next week.