From Murder Your Thirst to Electric Air Taxis: Creating Brand Desire // Lessons from Liquid Death, Duolingo, and Joby Aviation

**Jim Stengel** (0:00)
If you were a chief marketing officer in Consumer Products, I want you to think about something for a moment. You have creative that works. You have campaigns that capture attention. But somewhere between that moment and the register, the signal gets lost. You cannot see what actually drove the sale. You are making optimization decisions on inference, not truth. Well, that changed in February. Infillion acquired Catalina. Four decades of deterministic purchase intelligence. 130 million US households, 70 retail banners, $600 billion in verified annual consumer spending. And here is what really matters. Over 90% of consumable purchases still happen in store. Infillion and Catalina together can close the dupe from digital advertising to in-lane purchase and incentivize the next one. This is not a measurement tool you consult after the campaign. This is a live signal that runs through your media while the campaign is in flight. You can now optimize from attention to action in real time against people whose actual purchase behavior you know. A consumer product's brand needs return on ad spending. It needs foot traffic. Infillion now delivers all of it. Not as separate vendors you reconcile later as one connected platform. That is what closing the gap looks like. I spent years at Procter & Gamble trying to answer that question. We had the creative. We had the reach. We had campaigns that genuinely stop people. And then we watched that value quietly disappear somewhere between the moment of engagement and the proof of a business result. That gap between attention and action is where most media budgets go to die. And most digital media platforms have been content to live inside it just a little upstream from accountability. Infillion is the company that decided to close it. They started as the original attention company, built on the idea that a consumer choosing to engage with an ad is worth more than one who ignores it. But they did not stop there. They have built the infrastructure to connect the moment of attention to the proof of action across every screen, every format, every vertical. That is not a feature. That is a fundamentally different idea of what an ad platform should be. And it is the one brands have been waiting for. Learn more in the show notes.

**Manu Orssaud** (2:08)
And we have a fun culture internally as well. So we reflect that in our marketing, in our product, but also in how people work at Duolingo. So fun is really that common dominator to what we do.

**Jim Stengel** (2:19)
We underrate fun, I think.

**Manu Orssaud** (2:20)
Yeah, I agree.

**Jim Stengel** (2:21)
If we're not having fun with our work, who's going to enjoy it in the outside?
Hi, I'm Jim Stengel. I've helped hundreds of major brands discover and activate their purpose. Because when a brand's purpose is clear, compelling and authentic, profit naturally follows. Each week, I welcome the CMOs, the Chief Marketing Officers of your favorite brands, to speak to how their job is so much more than marketing. These leaders share their inspiration and challenges, along with how they try to build a full, healthy and happy life in and out of the office. And it's that energy that reaches everyone they touch. And we're glad you're here to feel that energy and to learn from these remarkable leaders. So here we go.
At the Cannes Lion Festival this year, we partnered with our friends at the Havas Group for three special live roundtable conversations, exploring the question of creating desire through three different lenses, through media, through creativity, and through a health and longevity lens. Our first discussion brings together three senior marketing leaders from three very different industries to explore media and desire. In other words, the role media plays in building brands people don't just notice, but genuinely want. I'm joined first by Manu Orssaud, the Chief Marketing Officer at Duolingo, the language learning app with the famous Al Mascot. Manu is a returning CMO Podcast guest. He previously shared the remarkable story behind one of the world's most culturally relevant brands. Before joining Duolingo, Manu led global marketing strategy at Spotify. Right before that, he spent nearly a decade helping build the PlayStation brand across Europe. Next is Benoit Vatter, Chief Media Officer at Liquid Death, one of the fastest growing beverage brands in the world. Before joining Liquid Death, Benoit founded Mammoth Media, building media strategies for leading consumer brands. Benoit also previously served as CEO of the gaming platform Playhaven. Today, he's helping redefine what modern media looks like for a challenger brand, Liquid Death. And finally, Oliver Walker-Jones, who leads Marketing, Communications and Brand at Joby Aviation. Oliver has helped guide Joby from a stealth startup into a company on the cusp of commercializing electric air taxis. Before Joby, Oliver held leadership roles at Lilium, Rolls-Royce, Walmart and Blackstone. He's currently tackling one of marketing's greatest challenges, creating desire for a category that doesn't yet exist. Together with these three gentlemen, we explore how three different companies think about media, creativity, culture, AI and the role brands play in earning attention, building affection and creating lasting desire. Here's my conversation captured live at the Havas Café with Manu, Benoit and Oliver.