NFL, McDonald’s and Tubi CMOs on building vibrant modern brands in a chaotic world

The chief marketing officers of three creatively driven brands—McDonald’s, the NFL and Tubi—explained their strategies for making culturally relevant work without getting sidelined by fear or bureaucracy during a Cannes Lions panel moderated by Ad Age on Monday. Cannes Lions coverage See all of the Grand Prix winners here Top 5 Grand Prix campaigns McDonald’s and the NFL, legacy brands with historically staid advertising, have both enlivened their approaches in the past five years through work from Wieden+Kennedy and 72andSunny, respectively. As more of an upstart, streaming platform Tubi has also done provocative work through Mischief @ No Fixed Address. The talk at Tubi’s beach cabana touched on everything from how the three brands have learned to embrace risk to what great reactive marketing looks like in social media today. Here are some key takeaways from the session below. Learning to embrace failure McDonald’s CMO Tariq Hassan: I fundamentally believe you do not get great outcomes or great execution unless you actually remove fear of failure from the organization. That was probably one of the hardest things. But we actually literally made failure part of the culture. We quarterly celebrate what we call the “Amazing Almosts.” We call it “Failing Greatly.” There is a great way to fail. We set up discussions around what that’s like, and we celebrate and we reward it. Being willing to be polarizing NFL CMO Tim Ellis: You have to be comfortable with making people uncomfortable. We have 200 million fans in the U.S. Anytime we come out with a social justice message, a message for LGBTQ, you name it, some of them will be like, “Oh shit, here we go again. Can’t you just play the fucking game? Why do we have to listen to shit?” If we listened to them, we would never progress or move forward at all. Being irrelevant is worse than being controversial Tubi CMO Nicole Parlapiano: The worst outcome is you put something out there and nobody talks about it at all. In the fall, during NFL season, we ran these ads with a lifeguard with endless abs. My husband said, “You’re going to run that during NFL? They’re going to hate it.” My brother was like, “I hate your ad. It’s so gross. Why did you run this?” I’m like, “Well, you remembered it.” The CMOs that don’t do anything and take no risks are gone in two years. Wouldn’t you rather go out swinging? Supporting the LGBTQ+ community Ellis: I knew [our “Football Is Gay” ad from 2021] was going make so many people uncomfortable, inside and outside the building. And guess what? There were a lot of people that didn’t like it. But what we earned in terms of the relationships and the partnerships we got from so many people—it really helped us go into a completely different area of brand building that we had not seen before. ... It disappoints me that a lot of brands are pulling back [from supporting the LGBTQ+ community]. If you can make those decisions based on your values and be consistent, no one is going to blame you for that. It’s when you step in and step out [of a cause], that’s when things go wrong. [Also read: Kate Higgins on the power of LGBTQ+ representation] On McDonald’s “Grimace’s Birthday” campaign Hassan: Little known fact, it was Cactus Plant Flea Market, our great partner on the Adult Happy Meal, who suggested bringing the McDonaldland playground characters back. I have a 16-year-old who didn’t know who the hell Grimace was. I’m not going to sit here and tell you we orchestrated what happened on TikTok [with creators trying the milkshake and then faking their own deaths]. I wish we were that good. My boss called me and said, “I’m not mad at you, but are we OK? Can you explain this to me?” I’m like, “We’re great.” If the market’s picking you up and celebrating you like that, our biggest challenge is not fucking it up while it’s going on. I give kudos to the agency and to my social team. We made one post in response. We didn’t try to fan it. We didn’t try to keep it going. And we sold out [the shake] 12 days earlier than we expected. Cannes Lions coverage See all of the Grand Prix winners here Top 5 Grand Prix campaigns On Tubi’s “Interface Interruption” Super Bowl spot Parlapiano: A friend of mine sent me her college kids’ video reactions [to the 2023 Super Bowl ad] on TikTok. And I was like, “Oh, if the kids are reacting, and if they’re making videos about how they’re reacting, then we hit it.” There is a tendency to push agencies to over-engineer the social plan. Especially this generation, you cannot push them like that. They are allergic to it. You have to put things out there and give them room to make it their own. Which means there’s a whole half of the creative process which we are not involved in and we can’t engineer. On using agencies instead of bringing creative in-house Ellis: We have brought more people in house, and I think that’s important. But we value [72andSunny] as true partners. We’ve been on a tear, and that’s been fun. The biggest thing is, are you having fun with your agency or not? We have a great time. And when you’re having a great time, usually good things happen. Hassan: Our partners [at Wieden+Kennedy] feel like they own our problems, and they own the conviction to solve those problems. You’d be hard pressed to know, in our partnership, who’s the agency and who’s McDonald’s. It’s seamless. And if you have an in-house mindset, what do you call your partners? Outhouse? If you think that way, you’re going to get the shit that’s in the outhouse, too. [Also read: More marketers are in-housing creative] Parlapiano: The way creative agencies foster talent, the way they train and cultivate strategic minds, I don’t know that we have the ability to do that internally. There’s going to be things we do together with Mischief that aren’t going to hit. Sometimes the reaction is to blame the agency, get a new agency. But we both come to the table accountable for the work, and if we have a swing and a miss, we will collectively own that. If you set up the right relationship, they are natural extensions of your team. And if the incentives of how you work together are aligned, it’s a win-win.

NFL, McDonald’s and Tubi CMOs on building vibrant modern brands in a chaotic world

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