Opinion: CMO World Tour Interview with Johan Jervoe, global vice-president of marketing & sales, Intel

Johan Jervoe isn’t waiting for the connected future. He’s living in the connected present.

“I wholeheartedly think that it would be impossible to live life and not be connected… as a marketer, well I should not say marketer, as a citizen of this new life, there is no forgiveness about not being connected.”

And the global vice-president of marketing and sales for Intel Corp and former vice-president of global marketing at McDonald’s, thinks world leaders should be connected as well. John McCain, former Republican candidate for the US presidency, who didn’t have a computer in 2008, is a symbolic target.

“His emails were being printed out by a secretary that he writes on paper and she types it back. Give me a break,” he says. “How can anybody not have an email address today and I would just argue that it’s probably a bunch of board members, senior managers, there is probably a bunch of senior marketers that doesn’t understand digital as good as they should.”

To stay connected himself, he is a keen Blackberry user and has a MacBook Pro. He also has a Bang & Olufsen phone, although mostly to show his support for the only global technology brand from his home country, Denmark.

He may now be based in Silicon Valley but he’s not a digital extremist. To the big marketers of the world, he says: “you don’t need to be connected to Facebook permanently but you need to get it. You don’t have to follow anybody in Twitter but get what it’s about.”

His own usage of Facebook is restricted to around 100 friends, dating back to his days in high school in Denmark. “Just meeting somebody at a dinner party and then all of a sudden [become] a Facebook friend, I don’t agree [with] that,” he says.

As a heavy traveller – and living far away from Denmark – he relies on Skype to keep in touch with his parents and texting to keep in touch with his wife and daughter.

“I feel that text messaging has something probably slightly more personal. It’s shorter, you get straight to what you are trying to say,” he says.

And despite having an 11-year old daughter, he also strongly rejects the trend among senior marketers to defer to their teenage kids on digital, a view that stems from his time as global marketing vice president at McDonald’s.

“In my entire career I have been the one that has had to listen to my boss telling me that his wife did not like the current Happy Meal ad,” he says. “I have told bosses throughout my career that I’m really sorry for not meeting the expectations of your wife when it comes to a Happy Meal but she is not between eight and 11, and therefore she falls out of my target.”

Far better than such “home marketing” strategies, Intel has made “digital savvy-ness” training mandatory. “And, when I say mandatory, it is all the way from the CMO to the latest, newest junior member of the marketing organisation”, he says.

FC: What changes do corporations need to make to adapt to the digital age?

JJ:  I just don’t think that companies in general are set up to understand the speed of the outside world looking in. That’s the revolution I think is going to come in the next five years into the classical corporate life: “oh we’ve discovered the world out there is quicker than we are in here”. How do we react to that? What role is PR playing? What role is editorial communication playing? What role is the acceptance of criticism?

I truly believe there is an opportunity as a brand to listen to some of the heaviest critics and some of the probably least favourites of your brand. Why? Because you learn a lot from just leaning back and listening to, here is what doesn’t work.”

FC: Are you personally tracking and listening to what the outside world is saying about Intel online?

JJ: Absolutely, and we are more than happy to provide a platform of criticism; here are some of the things that some of the heavy users, geeks and IT specialists [say] where there might be a different opinion. You have to have that conversation. We are revamping Intel.com to make it more responsive, more conversational, to have a social media attitude into the site.

FC: Can this fundamentally change what marketers are doing ? Is it a revolution?

JJ: Yes, in some ways. For instance, Twitter: Will-I-AM, the leader of the Black Eyed Peas, who is a really trusted partner, was telling me that, as they were planning their tour, he looked at where his Twitter followers were and that persuaded him and his label to do more concerts in Brazil because they have more followers in Brazil. Whereas in a very traditional planning of a tour then [they’d] probably [play] just once. So there is a revolutionising element to digital if done right.

FC: Talking about revolution, does the current turmoil in North Africa and the role of digital platforms in the Arab Spring have any lessons for marketers?

JJ: Great brands tell the truth and when they don’t they fail. Well, a great brand is a dictator somewhere, and they fail because they have kept their people behind the curtain or it’s a company that tells their story and does not uncover mistakes or failures, you fail. I think honesty, transparency and purpose, that brand ideal has become more important than ever before. And when you fail, it’s immediately distributed.

FC: How is Intel trying to respond to this faster world?

JJ: We have a bunch of people doing editorial content on Intel.com, [for example]. A lot of this is just very standardized, hey we need to update. And if you follow the traditional procedures, it takes a few months to get something new up. We have a fast track that a couple of the team members came up [with to] go directly from the page – if you have the passwords – change what it says on the page and update.

FC: On what challenges do you think you would benefit from advice from your CMO contemporaries at the World Federation of Advertisers?

JJ: I think there are probably two that I’m struggling the most with: Do fewer things deeper and better.

Do the fewer things, how do you really get to do fewer things?

And how do you make sure that your work is a solid B [grade], permanently a solid B? In a classical sense but it’s relatively easy to make sure that your TV advertising gets to a certain level of quality. It’s relatively easy to get your online experience to be a certain quality.

[What] I don’t think we have applied [that] to is: that comment you left on social media, is how you reacted to somebody else leaving a comment, was that a solid B? Are you having that attitude of 100% quality regardless of where you go? I’m not sure we have addressed that as marketers yet.

FC: How are you trying to strengthen your marketing team?

JJ: What makes your organisation strong is a brutal focus on talent and a brutal focus on attitude. And I think often attitude, talents are all rated obviously being in the marketing here. But having the right people, having a thin layer and a flat organization is how you react to this.

The most innovative brands of the world are run by 20-year-olds. I am not suggesting that all CMOs and the vice presidents of the Procter & Gamble, the Intels, the McDonald’s of this world, the Krafts of the world. I’m not suggesting that [they] all [have to] be 25 or I’ll be eliminating myself so I’m not stupid.

But fact is, you have 20-year-olds on your team, why are they still obligated to have the same classical careers you have? So how I’ve reacted to this is I have an extreme flat organisation. And we do face to face and staff meetings and anybody can come up with an idea. We have open door policies, it doesn’t matter where you are in the organisation, if you have a great idea it’s your project, you run with it. And it doesn’t have a negative impact on your boss’s career or on your career. But it might fast track you.

FC: What’s the key skill that you look for in a marketer?

JJ: One thing that my career has taught me is to seek to understand and question. The number one thing that I will hire somebody [for], whether it is an agency or employee, is: are they having the right questions? I’m not too concerned about having the right answers. But it’s the questions that I’m interested in. Somebody that has the right answers might not get the next important question. Someone that has the right question will renew themselves.

FC: And what about your relationships with advertising agencies?

JJ:  We have at Intel taken a very clear lead on having digital being the entry point to our agency relationships. So it’s the Razorfish of the world, it’s the Tribals of the world that get the brief. And then I’m expecting those guys in the network behind it, in the classical media and so on, to co-ordinate that in. I’m not going to have multiple conversations with 10 different agencies. Today, that ownership of co-ordinating agencies is with my digital agency.

Source: cmoworldtour.com

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