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Dads Talk Data
Two dads. Too much data. Questionable humour.
If you’re into Adobe, data, or just enjoy watching two grown men pretend they have their lives under control - this is your podcast.
Join Kasper Andersen (Accrease) and Casper Noreen Frid (Accutics) as they navigate the wild intersection of Adobe Experience Cloud, data strategy, and the everyday chaos of business-life.
Expect sharp takes, pragmatic insights, and the occasional existential crisis over broken tracking… all generously sprinkled with dad jokes so bad they should probably come with a GDPR warning.
Dads Talk Data
Guest Edition: The VP Who Told Her Team She Was Not Okay - Laurence Paquette (Vestas)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Laurence Paquette, VP of Marketing at Vestas, had a rough 2024. Divorce, losing a best friend, burnout — and 35,000 colleagues watching. She still went to work. And at some point, she told her team.
This episode is about what happens when leaders actually do the thing they tell others to do — be vulnerable, be human, be present. Not as a culture initiative. As survival.
We also get into the unusual world of industrial B2B marketing: no leads, ~300 customers, deals worth hundreds of millions, and a TikTok account featuring cows next to wind turbines. Laurence makes the case that even in that world, people buy on emotion — and that marketers who won't accept that are still making PDF brochures nobody reads.
One thread runs through all of it: the cost of pretending everything is fine.
Hello everyone. Um in business we log love to talk about talking about performance, we love talking about targets, growth, results, uh, all these important things. Um but somehow we often lack the conversation about what it really takes to drive setups and and teams like like this. Um being a human inside all of this pressure that that's sometimes in marketing as well. Um so today we are joined uh by a true marketing leader who um has been very vocal about authenticity, about mental resilience, about creating space for people to perform as themselves, as who they really are. Um she is a VP of marketing and brand at Vistas, uh a loving parent, and a true believer that you need to be true to yourself. Lawrence. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for uh for joining Casper and I on uh on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01Uh we haven't met, Laurence. So uh if you could just spend uh a minute on who you are and yeah.
SPEAKER_05So I'm Laurence, I'm originally from Canada, from Montreal. So I'm French Canadian. I've been living now in Denmark for 20 years. Uh I'm a mother of two kids, a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old. Uh I live in Copenhagen. I work for Vestus. I've been at Vestus for 15 years. I've done all sorts of things in the company. I've worked in strategy and communication, in public affairs, on the commercial side, and I'm heading marketing. I've been heading marketing at the company for the last uh four years now. And um and I spend a lot of time online and I create a lot of content about leadership and authenticity.
SPEAKER_04And we love it. We saw it. Uh, and on that talk data, we've been talking a lot about um humans behind marketing, humans behind tech, behind all the tools that we work in. Um so your content has really been resonating with us, uh and we were really impressed with it. But before we dive into the whole uh marketing array of things, I'm I'm super uh interested in what shaped your belief of bringing in the human side so much into uh to leadership uh as it has done.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so that comes from so I think it comes from the fact that in addition to everything I said initially in my intro, I'm also I'm also part of the LGBTQIA community. So when I started working, I always promised myself that I would be out and I would be myself at work. So for me, that has always been really important that I and everybody else can be who they are at work. And so it came very naturally. So my entire career I've been out and very open about that. And over time, it has evolved that I've talked about it way more than I intended to. Um, and I became uh someone who was asked to to open doors and be more of a diversity um representative uh for the company and also outside the company.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So so being used uh as as a spokesperson for embracing this this culture?
SPEAKER_05Exactly. And showing that it's okay to be who you are at work, that people come in all sorts of different shapes and forms, and that it it it adds value to the company uh and it helps us innovate, it helps us be different, it helps us if we are who we are at work.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Was there a certain uh point in your career where this approach became real to you, where it kind of like what became a path that did you say, hey, I want to follow this?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think I think earlier in my career, I was I was very vocal about who I was at work, but there was not a lot of people doing it. Uh it was basically just me. Uh you know, there was not a lot of uh talk about diversity and inclusion. I think when uh when uh when COVID hit and after COVID, when we started going back to work, there was a big movement in a lot of large corporations before before Trump got into office and before DEI has been pushed aside again. But there was a a probably a two, three years where it became extremely important in large corporations to be uh open to diversity, to have diversity and inclusion agenda. And uh and at that point in time, it spoke to me a lot to get a lot more involved. So I got a lot involved at work in different employee resource groups. Uh, I did a lot of uh keynotes and uh and really help pave the way because at that point I was also already a VP. So I had, you know, the credibility, I had done the work. So there was a so this was my visibility, was was a privilege. And I thought that I should pay it forward to the people who are not in a visible position, but who want to be themselves at work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Did did that happen because of COVID, or was it just a coincidence that it it's I think I think at work it happened as a coincidence for me personally during COVID, and maybe you want to talk about that later on, but for me during COVID, I got a bit of a burnout and and I was feeling quite low. Uh, it happened during COVID when we were all sent home. So I spent a lot of time working on my mental health. Who am I besides being this person who works for Vestis? So I had a bit of an identity crisis during COVID because I felt that most of my identity was tied to my title and to my job. And I thought, if I lose my job during COVID, who am I gonna be?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And so I spent a lot of time during COVID in 2020, 2021 trying to figure out who am I besides this person who works for Vestis. And I think that's where it came from, this idea that I wanted to really be me at work and what did that entail.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_05I also discovered I was neurodivergent during that period because of my burnout. So that added to the list of things that I was working with and tried to figure out what my identity was. So when I we finally went back to work, then I was very open to talk about these things because I had just been through a like a 12, 18 months period of soul searching.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So for me it was it just made sense. And then the company was also very ready. We had a lot of initiatives going on for uh diversity and inclusion at the time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04You talk a lot about courage uh in this, like the courage to be yourself, which I find very inspiring. Um can you talk a bit about uh all these things that you're mentioning here at a company uh like Vestas? What what does this courage mean every day uh when when uh when you have to bring it into life when you have because it's it's it's a big step, I guess.
SPEAKER_05I think, yeah, I I guess it is courage. I think the first thing is that what people find really hard is it's really hard to be vulnerable in front of a lot of people. Um it's hard to to just show who you are and put yourself in a in a place of vulnerability. And um, but what I've learned is that when you're vulnerable, people it resonates with people and actually it makes you way stronger because people then come to you and tell you, oh, I feel the same. But it is hard to be yourself at work. And also in a lot of big companies, especially very large companies like Vestas, where there's 35,000 employees, there is there is a culture, there is a structure, and and people want people want to climb the ladder. You know, you kind of need to figure out how to fit in. Uh, how how what what behaviors are accepted, how people speak, how people carry themselves. And of course, it it is it can be courageous to try to be fully yourself at work because you might fall out of that norm. You might not look any more like a ex-McKenzie consultant, you might look different. So, um, so it is a bit of courage, but I think the more people do it, the more it becomes the norm to be all different, and then the easier it gets it is for everyone to just be themselves.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And being a marketing leader, how do you go about creating this safety for the people that's on your team?
SPEAKER_05I think being in marketing is a great advantage because we come with the or there is this idea in large corporations that marketing is different already. It's the creative people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So because we're the creative people, I am not, but a lot of people on my team are, we are already allowed to be a little bit different. We like most of the team, most people in my team don't wear any suits. But if we were in finance, I think it would be much harder because there is a a standard for what a finance person should look like. Whereas in marketing, it's been much easier because you know, we have creative directors, we have people with long hair, we have people wearing just normal clothes every day, t-shirts. So it's been much easier.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. There's there's no special like now you mentioned that Vista's also kind of took the decision to move forward on on a more diverse approach to things.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_04Um but but if it in a company, I guess, in in in less diverse companies, it it would take some leadership to to kind of encourage that courage to to be present.
SPEAKER_05Absolutely. If the if it's not if the ambassadors are not leaders themselves, then it's really hard for people, you know, at at lower levels to to be able to be themselves and take that courage themselves because they could also be pushed aside or be told that they don't fit. So it needs to come, it needs to be sponsored at the highest level possible.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And Casper, we've been talking a lot uh previously on the podcast about um making change. Like the uh we've been talking a lot about the the like marketing leaders and tools and change and data ownership and all these things that is also kind of like how we as leaders I I enable a culture where where we can kind of shape shift in some form, right? Um do you do like how do you see this? Like, because I think I think obviously having the courage to be yourself is a is a bit different, but it's also like having the courage to to to dare to take the power, so to say.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but I I I think there's also a big difference between being a corporate company like Vestas with 35,000 employees and then having a consultancy of 30 people. Um and and I think being 30 people is to some degree like a family. At least you can you can you know you can you can create that feeling uh which also makes it easier to be one I can't pronounce that. Vulnerable. Thank you. Whereas uh obviously there's some hierarchy or structures and in in an enterprise company, right? Um so I think uh I think the the environment is also playing a large role in in in how we can create a culture around it, right?
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. And and the diversity is super interesting because I see the diversity happening on so many levels levels right now, supposed to diversity in terms of of thinking differently, of dressing differently, of of uh being a man versus a female in terms of empowerment to take decisions and make changes and all these things. So there's so much going on that uh that can be somewhat stressful for for many people and it's a talk track. Um, but I guess the first step is is being open about it and talking about it. Is that something that you experience too?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think that's absolutely the first step is to talk about it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Uh to talk about it to make sure that everyone knows that it's expected, that it's okay. So there's awareness. And then the next step is for leaders to embrace it and do it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Because if you allow to be vulnerable, if you allow yourself as a leader to be vulnerable in front of your employees, uh, tell them if something important is going on, then you also give them permission to do the same afterwards. Yeah. As an example, I I got divorced in 2024. Um, and I also lost my best friend to a biking accident during the same period. And um, and when I went back to work in August that year, I I did tell my team at our first team meeting that I was not feeling great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Uh, that my that my headspace was very uh was very uh handicapped. And so that if I forgot things, if I was not present or anything, they should let me know because I was just not fully myself. But I also didn't want to be home and just dwell on. So I wanted to do something. Uh so and and that allowed my team. My team was great. They supported me so much, they managed to do everything. I was barely, I barely had to do anything. But the feedback I got later is that that was really great because it allowed them to feel comfortable if something happens in their life. Yeah, they know that it's okay. You don't have to, you know, keep that at home. You can still, you can, you can say it, you can say it to your manager, you can figure out how much can you work, what can we do, and it's it's it's comfortable.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that that might also be um not a wrong perception, but but an idea if you're a manager that you need to be strong for your team. Yes, right? But I think is uh if you can share things like that, it it creates a stronger culture in the team. Yes, right.
SPEAKER_05It also creates a stronger collaboration, people can feel that they need to be there for each other, you know. So so it's also where trust is much we can establish trust on a much higher level. And then people can help each other. It's no longer everyone for themselves. So it's it's also you're really fostering more like a feeling of a real team coming together.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, but but it requires the courage to be vulnerable in the first place. Because it's not easy to tell uh, you know, a whole team, I'm not doing well. No, yeah, it is not easy. It's also not easy to tell your own boss, so I had to tell my boss, because you know, there is a perception that suddenly maybe people will see me as weak or as less competent, or maybe they'll think, okay, she's she's no longer good enough to do her job, like you know, so so you it it requires courage. But when uh when you do it and people receive it well at all levels, then you also realize that you know, afterwards the team is better, my relationship with my manager has been better because we know that we can trust each other.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. You mentioned um kind of the survival mode. You I think you called it survival mode. Uh it was is it was a scroll stopper for me when I read your post about it because I was like I I've never seen anyone talk about this before. But you talk about uh performing in what you call survival mode. Uh and many people listening in, including myself, uh really, really it resonated with me because I was like, hey, I know this. I feel I I I can totally relate to this feeling. How how did you realize that you were uh or when did you realize that you were performing this this mode and and all uh and all the thoughts that you have around uh performing in survival mode?
SPEAKER_01Could could we take a step back for people who haven't read it and just add a few words on on the post? Absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04I hope the answers that you that that that you know what what uh I'm talking about, but but it is essentially uh yeah, the the survival mode post.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so I think I made a couple of videos and also wrote, I think, an article about how in 2024 I was in survival mode all year. And uh and you know, you still have to do your job and you still have to perform, you still have to deliver. And how do you manage that when you are also just trying to survive and you really don't feel good, which goes back to what we were just talking about. Um, and you know, for me, I think in 2024, I have the first half of the year where I was in survival mode and I was not feeling great. But I just I just did my job, I went to work and I tried my best to just park things outside uh as much as I could, but still, but I after after a few months of doing that, it became too heavy. And and um and at some point I realized, you know, I I I need people to know that I'm I I'm hitting a limit, that I can I can continue to deliver, but I'm not feeling great, and I don't want to go on sick leave. So, you know, I don't want to to be told I'll take time off because I know that I've done it before, I've taken time off, I've had a burnout before. I knew that that would not help. I need to do things in the day because my home life is awful. I was doing going through a divorce. I didn't want to be home. So so I think I think performing survival mode, it was it was good at the beginning to just pretend I'm doing fine, but after a while it became too taxing. And that's when I had to uh to start talking about it and say it and also be very clear to people that um I was not going on stress leave. I I I needed work, I needed something to occupy myself.
SPEAKER_04But needed to have that support.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, because I my my short-term memory became very bad. I was not always attentive. Sometimes in meetings I would lose track of what we were talking about. So my my my cognitive level was reduced.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Uh I was just I had too much on my mind. So, you know, so I had I needed people to know and uh and I needed people to tell me when I was not when I forgot things, but I was also want I also wanted to be at work.
SPEAKER_01But there's there's a big difference between telling your team and then publicly saying it, right?
SPEAKER_05Yes. I waited a little while. I mean, I waited a little while and I waited when I started to feel better. I was not fully out out of it. But when I started to feel better, I started having I started having energy having coffee chats by the coffee machine. Like having a ch talking about what you did in the weekend for months, that was really, really tiring. Like I did not want to talk to people about anything. I did it, but it was very tiring. And then I discovered maybe around November 2024 that I was at the coffee machine talking about a movie and I was engaged and I was feeling good about it. And it was the first time in months that I was in enjoying a small talk. And so, and at that point, I I I started to notice I'm I'm slowly getting better. And that's when I decided to talk about it openly because I was also on the I was starting to be on the other side. So I also felt that it was a good time to talk about it. And I wanted to put it out because I do feel that a lot of people have this illusion that leaders know everything and they're always grounded, they always know what they're doing, that, you know, big things in life don't really affect them that much. They're very good at keeping that at home. And I wanted to demystify that because it's not true.
SPEAKER_04Love that approach. I think it's super important.
SPEAKER_05Leaders also have a hard time. They just are very good at hiding it, which doesn't make it healthier.
SPEAKER_04Which which I find very interesting because so many leaders talk about uh empathy, talk about uh psychological uh safety and security. But so many teams are burned out still in marketing, especially I think at at this time where a lot is is happening around the marketing space as well. Where do you think this this uh gap uh comes from?
SPEAKER_05Well, I think right now is a very interesting time because uh in Denmark, but also in other markets, you know, it's a very there's so many people looking for jobs. The market is saturated with unemployed people, intelligent, talented people that have experience. So, you know, uh people in in their roles in different companies and marketing are are gonna push even harder because they don't want to lose their job. They don't want to enter the unemployment, they don't want to be unemployed and be part of thousands of other people looking for jobs. So I think for now that trend is not gonna improve, at least not in the short term. Uh I think people will burn out even more because they don't want to lose their job. I can also see it in my job. Uh people want to stay, people don't want to go because they know it'll be very hard to find another job if they're kicked out or if they decide to resign or look for something else.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, but to go back to your main question, like why in marketing, I think, I think it's just that we're still trying to figure out as humans how to how to showcase our vulnerability without it being perceived as a weakness.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05How can you say to people, like, I don't feel good without people thinking you're weak, you can't do your job. And and that we're still trying to figure out how to do it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Uh, because, you know, I I mean, it is a risk. You could have a manager that if you tell your manager, yeah, I'm really tired, I'm feeling less motivated, that immediately your manager will be like, okay, that's it. This person needs to uh to be out at some point, or they need something needs to change.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_05Exactly. So so there's still there's still there's still a a lot of efforts to be done in psychological safety. Yeah. And for managers to do the work because it's it's their job.
SPEAKER_04But I guess as managers, there's uh responsibility to take this on as well. But just thinking about what we just talked about with this survival mode, uh, I mean, like it's easy when everything is fine and dandy. Then you kind of have the the things going on. Uh oh, you have to the like you can make changes because because your mind is is clear and ready for that. But when you're in survival mode, it can sometimes be hard. And I guess that a lot of marketing leaders are in kind of survival mode in in these days where a lot is happening around. Technology around uh everything in the world, around the bigger companies figuring out how can we optimize, how can we do different things. Do you do you feel that that marketing leaders should take a a a different step or or more responsibility into this area?
SPEAKER_05But I think all leaders should, marketing leaders too, but I do understand it's a tough period. There's also, you know, even even if we might all have our opinions of how AI will come in and is coming into marketing, there is pressure by a lot of leaders or company owners to to improve productivity and to work faster and better using AI. And that puts a lot of pressure, especially on marketing, because that's one of the first disciplines that have been identified as, oh, AI can help.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05It can write all your content. It can push through all your channels, you know. So so there is a lot of pressure. Um, and and I I think I don't think that pressure will be reduced in the short term. So I think I think it's it's a very tough balance for marketing leaders. So how much can I push my team and how much can I make sure that we deliver the results versus how much can I, you know, be myself, be vulnerable, tell that it's difficult. So finding how to create psychological safety and still deliver. And that's a tough balance, but I think it's the responsibility of the leader to figure out how to match that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Best they can.
SPEAKER_04I really like that. In talking about marketing, uh, I want to dive a bit more into the actual marketing side. Uh now you've uh you mentioned uh before we went on air here that like being in industrial marketing, B2B, there is kind of a different approach to it. You often know a lot of the customers uh before um before you need to. Like it's not finding leads, you know who you you're gonna do business with in the in the future. And it's a lot about branding, it's a lot about creating the the all the sub things around the usual marketing funnel. The marketing funnel doesn't exist, uh as you said. Can you take us into that world?
SPEAKER_05Uh so working in a large industrial Sylvestas, we sell win win projects. Uh so we sell multi-million to multi-billion customized infrastructure projects. So we don't sell one turbine, we sell a lot of them, in rare cases, just one, but it's very expensive and it's a customized project. So we have about 300 customers globally. And most of them, a lot of the projects will go through tenders because it's there's a the government needs to allow it, there's permits. So we usually know where the projects are going to be, and we usually have you know two to three, sometimes four competitors bidding on the same projects. And if the customer owns the land, owns the project, and there's no bidding, then it's still relationship-based and it's still, you know, us versus uh uh maybe one or two other competitors. So we already know. So there's no leads. It's not like we're gonna discover something that no one in sales knew. Everyone knows the customers and the project. So from a marketing standpoint, our job is very, very different. Uh the customers know us, they know the brand. So it's a lot of our custom, a lot of our marketing effort is, of course, on the brand, the stories, making sure that they know about the latest projects, the latest innovation, about how we've done something in the US and how we're doing it now in Europe, or vice versa. And then another very important part of what we do in marketing is customer intimacy, organizing special events, uh, organizing customer visits, having allowing our executives to be with our customers' executive in a setting that makes them, their relationship uh flourish, so that if there's a problem in three months on a project, our CEO can just call the CEO of the customer and they can solve it immediately. And it's really hard to show that on a KPI dashboard. It's very hard to showcase the return on the investment, but we usually showcase it through anecdotes by saying, for example, we invited an American CEO to an event in October. And two months later, there was a problem in the project in South America, and our CSO called them. Usually it would take two, three weeks for the meeting to take place. They texted each other, they went on a call the same day, and they fixed the problem immediately. And that's because they spent two days together in October in France at an event. And so our job in marketing is to do a lot of that uh customer intimacy. And then uh, of course, we survey our customer, we have data on them, but making sure that we we get um our executive and the customers closer. Yeah. That's a large part. And then, of course, the normal branding, storytelling, and so on, to to really try to uh to stay top of mind and make sure that uh all our customers remember how great we are by by really targeting them, especially on LinkedIn with content that speaks to them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So so yeah, staying top of mind. Top of mind. Yeah. At a crease we refer to that as the day one dist. Right. So if you ask, you know, who would you reach out to for wind turbines? Yes. You want to make sure that uh Vistas is in that top three.
SPEAKER_05Always. Yeah. Always. Because then after that, it's it's it's other factors that marketing can influence.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So we need to be top of mind. And that means they need to know the brand, they need to know how we feel, how we talk, and then they need to know who the people are in the company. Yeah. So we also spend a lot of time making sure that our executives are very present online on LinkedIn and elsewhere because they're also the voice of the company.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. A lot of other companies, uh, like most companies, to be honest, are still running this crazy demand generation machine. Uh, more leads, more campaigns, more dashboards, everything. Um, from where you sit, is there something that that like the traditional marketing world is missing out on from what you learned at being in a in a bit of a different setup?
SPEAKER_05I think, you know, in a B2C or in a B2B where you have a lot of customers, uh, demand generation and lead leads are critical and they're very, very important. And I do wish that where I work we could uh quantify the return on the investment and have more KPIs. Um so, so, so I don't want to say that what others are doing is not good. I actually want to say that I wish I could do sometimes more like the others. But I do think that I think at least in B2B, even if you don't work industrial, one thing that is really important and that we need to take from B2C is that at the end of the day, even in massive large projects, the decision makers are people. And money makes a lot of decisions, but it's never really money money at the end of the day. People make decisions based on very emotional, um, a lot of emotions that they have about the product, about the company, and about the people they deal with. And and that we need to focus on in marketing a lot, even in B2B, and even when we do lead generation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02People, emotions. Yes.
SPEAKER_04If you could go back to being a younger marketing leader with everything that that we talked about here. I and I think it ties perfectly together with everything that you are talking about, both in your online profiles and in terms of your work and all these things, like be authentic to yourself. Uh understand that you will perform in survival mode, understand that you need to do all these things. Um you are in high pressure, but still you need to understand the dynamics of marketing as well. And I think it's it's super interesting what you just talked about in terms of of of how we buy it, it's not always money. With all these things in consideration, going back when you first became a marketing leader, um what belief in yourself would you challenge the most?
SPEAKER_05Uh I think, well, that's easier said. It's easy after the fact. I think I might have been more, I would have probably tried to be more risky from the get-go on some of the decisions I've made. Uh there is for for when I first became a marketing leader, the first time I was heading digital marketing and campaigns, and we did a lot of uh the legacy work. So a lot of what my team and I inherited, we continued to do for a while. And I should have stopped that way faster. Have the courage to, you know, look at what we what has been done in the past without without saying it's bad, but just asking yourself, are we still doing this because we've always done it, or are we doing it because it actually adds value? Yeah. And uh and and we ended up doing that, but it took me a long, it took me longer than it should have to have the courage to just be like, you know what? This doesn't add value. We shouldn't do it. Nobody buys a turbine after reading a PDF brochure. Why are we making so many brochures? You know, in the late 2010s, like in 2019, 2018, 2019. But so it took, I think I would have taken more risk or be a little bit braver. I I wanted to make sure that I was being perceived as doing a good job. And uh, and I was, but I I I that's what I would have told myself to be a little bit more risky, not not not headless risky, but just to to stand up for what I believed a little bit faster.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. We talk a lot about this, about the situation, the the do as we always do. Don't don't risk, don't let go with both hands to experience what what could happen. And it's really the challenge in most marketing that's going on as I see it today, uh, exactly what you mentioned here. Um is it something that you see a lot of in the market too that that that marketing leaders are very conventional and and and and not daring to do, like follow the advice that you would give uh to yourself as as a I mean all the marketing leaders I know in large industrials, it's the same.
SPEAKER_05It's it's you know people are very careful not to go too fast and not to change things too fast. Um and and I see that a lot. And I see, you know, daring to go places that we haven't gone yet is it it takes a lot of approvals or it takes a lot of guts. Uh an example would be, for example, in uh our US team managed to uh to succeed at getting everyone to agree that we should have a uh a TikTok account, not for Vestus, but a separate TikTok account to promote wind in a positive way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um and and to to and and to do it in a very TikTok way. For example, you know, one of the videos shows uh it's a black screen and it it's written on it uh disclaimer, you will now see awful footage of cows and wind turbines. And then it's just these cows with these wind turbines in the background. It's a sarcastic video about how you know the cows are fine, they're just hanging out, there's wind turbines. And we started doing a lot more of that, but it took a long time to dare go down that more modern, very B2C, uh targeting younger people and different community. It took us a long time to get there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So long time because of getting the courage to do it, or long time to get the company aligned on and approved to do it?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, they're both. So first ourselves to say, should we do it? And like, are we ready? And then once we we decided as as a group, okay, we should do it with our the the American team, um you know, to get everyone to agree. There's also in large corporations, there's a lot of education to be done. What do we mean by making videos on TikTok? For what purpose? Who is this for? We're not like that. We're like this big company, we have one way of speaking, this is not our style, and so on. So and that took also uh time and courage because you have to change people's opinions. And and often in large company, at least that's where I come from, even though people are not markers, everyone has con everyone believes they have expertise in marketing. You know, it's they confuse their opinion with their expertise, so but they believe that they have an expertise. So you have a lot of convincing to do.
SPEAKER_04Yes. And if I am a marketer sitting sitting somewhere, and in whatever industry or whatever my situation is, I looked at turbines being sold as PDF documents. What is your advice? What should I do? Like how how do we uh promote this change and and get it started?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so we had that challenge and we started by first uh asking sales how do they use these PDF? And they were saying to us that we leave them behind with the customer. So we said, well, from a sustainability standpoint, that's a ridiculous idea. You know, we don't need that. And then we said, like, do you really do we really look at them? And if it was a PowerPoint, would it be easier? And we had all the same content in PowerPoint anyway. So we started with sales just asking them and making sure sales would be okay no longer having them. And and then we just stopped updating them. And when things no longer are no longer available or updated, people stopp using them. And we I took a decision. If people reach out, we will see if we should accommodate their needs. But then when nobody reaches out, then you realize they were not that needed, right? So so we we did it slowly, step by step, but by really making sure that the main users were not gonna need them. And if they did, we really challenged their needs. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So it became a more operational thing than a comedy political conversation.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and we use sustainability. We said we're going paperless.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And when you say stuff like that, then it was like, okay, but then it also meant we didn't want to make PDF brochures online either, because that's that's it's not helpful either.
SPEAKER_01No. But it's also a great example of what you said before that we're doing something because we've always been doing it. Right. Yes. And it's probably a good exercise that even if you are sitting in a company for very long that you sometimes challenge, you know, should we just revisit why we're doing this? Um, as well as your someone new coming in. Yes. And just challenge, uh state state a scroll on it, right?
SPEAKER_05I think it's easier for the new people. The new people always do it, right? They come in, they're like, uh, why are we doing this? But as a person who's been there a long time, it's it's a tough thing to do. But I think we should do it way more. Like, you know, every 12 to 18 months, you should do a a quick like, let's look at everything we do. Yeah. Are we still sure these are all relevant? Or are we just stuck in the process of doing it and reporting on them? And then people expect us to report, therefore, we continue to do it.
SPEAKER_04So that happens. Honestly, I think this is one of the main challenges that we're seeing in marketing. Marketing is super challenged about having impact in a company because it often becomes very soft conversations, as we talked about before, compared to what the CFO brings, what IT brings, what all the other which means that we uh marketing leaders are the least trusted voice in in top leadership due to these reasons. And I think that a lot of it is to what you said just now and what we've been talking about today, like daring to change something that doesn't work. The biggest challenge in marketing is that we do way too many things that essentially doesn't work. And what works for the individual is up to the individual. You know best. But when you see things that don't work, like dare to change it, dare to let go. I think that's that's what I really wanted to change politically.
SPEAKER_01Uh and sometimes you don't know that it's not working, right? Well because it's it's uh you're just stuck in the process of you've always been doing it, like you said, but we've been reporting on it, right?
SPEAKER_04And nobody's asking questions or I I think many leaders know a lot of things that doesn't work that they for some reason don't dare to change due to political reasons.
SPEAKER_05I really loved advice on it being operational or instead of or because they have a a CEO or a leader who firmly believes that this is needed. Exactly. And that happens.
SPEAKER_04But in many cases also until otherwise is is proven. But this is the the the dance that's going on right now, right? And and I think marketing needs to take ownership of this, and I think that that it's super important that that we dare to have an opinion in anything in the world right now, that we dare to say this is not okay. Like we need to change this on larger or on a smaller scale. And I think it's up to the individual to do that. And I think for marketing, this this this is the thing that I really wanted to change. And I I think as a leader, I really want to be open to uh the courageous approach to being yourself and to these things. I think it's super important.
SPEAKER_05I think it's super important being vulnerable um as as a leader uh to your team and to and I also think semi-related to what you're saying, but as as we have so much content coming out that is done with AI or through AI or with some AI, what I first see we'll see is that companies that want to marketing teams and companies that want to stand out will now need to not to actually use people people, like the people behind the brands way more to market themselves. Because otherwise people will crave for authentic content, authentic people, and not just, you know, another semi, maybe semi-done by someone, semi-done by AI composition video where it's just the brand being showed and you don't know who it is. So I do think that a with marketeers have a great opportunity ahead, is that there will be such a pull for authenticity for actual real people, uh, and they should use it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05They should use it because if you look at all big brands of the world, their their CEOs for good and bad reasons are are the brand. And and we as marketeers need to be ready to brand the people in the company also.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. Lawrence, thank you so much for joining that stuff. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Oh, it and really inspiring as well.
SPEAKER_05Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_04We uh yeah, this is this is super interesting. Um before we let you go, yeah, if people wanna um follow you, yes, where where should they go?
SPEAKER_05They can go anywhere. Uh LinkedIn, I'm on TikTok, I'm on Threads, I have a Substack newsletter. But if you go to LinkedIn, you'll find me. I have a website also. So if you go to LinkedIn, my name, very simple, then I'm there. And then you can uh click on visit my website or just follow me there. Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_04That is passed. Thank you so much for joining. And to everyone uh listening in, uh, thank you. Um we look forward to seeing you next time and we uh we hope that that uh this inspired you just as much as it did us.