Every brand has a story to tell in the modern era of reaching consumers across a multitude of platforms. Storytelling is key to leaving a lasting impact for the brand on the audience. The job of leading marketing for a major Fortune 500 brand is now the art of deciding how, when and in what manner to express that message.

This was one of the major conclusions from a lively panel held June 22 at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Variety Brand Entertainment for Fans, presented by Walmart Connect, was held at the retail giant’s Walmart Connect/Vizio installation at the Hotel Majestic in Cannes. The session brought together Seth Dallaire, executive VP and chief growth officer for Walmart U.S.; Tim Ellis, CMO of the NFL; Dustee Jenkins, chief public affairs officer for Spotify; and Han Wen, chief digital and marketing officer of L’Oreal USA, for a candid conversation about the challenges and opportunities of reaching consumers and building brands.

Even a brand name as ubiquitous as Walmart is always looking to strengthen its customer base. When Walmart made reaching Hispanic men a priority, the marketing team turned to Major League Soccer is a vehicle for position Walmart as a friend to soccer fans by giving heavy promotion to marquee matchups in a way that fans had not seen in English-language media.

“If our brand can be around that and help bring exposure there and then speak to the audiences that are watching it, that’s really important for us,” Dallaire said. “The granularity is oftentimes with a retailer, like how much should we sell as a result? How many people came into the store, what were the results in terms of traffic? And those are the types of measures that we hold ourselves to when we’re evaluating those investments.”

Wen cited her experience with pulling off a tricky feat for a major brand — seizing on an expected cultural moment to burnish a brand. NBA star Kevin Durant found himself getting scorched on social media because his legs on the court looked to be in need of moisturizer. L’Oreal’s skincare brand Cerave jumped in and made Durant “the new face of legs” to help advance its goals of promoting skin care products for men, especially moisturizers.

It was a risk that could have backfired with NBA fans and L’Oreal’s core consumer. But it didn’t.
“The answer to the question [of when to react to trends] is to ask yourself what is it that is really at the intersection of what the fans of this cultural moment wants to talk about and does your brand have a role to play in that moment,” Wen said.

Dallaire echoed the sentiment. “The content piece is a really important compliment to what we’re doing on the outcomes side of the business,” he said. Wen impressed her peers by adding that the Durant-Cerave promotion drew 85 million views on social media in 24 hours “without a single dollar of paid media.”

Jenkins shared a candid story of how Spotify’s C-suite has had to ride out some touchy moments but she reinforced that the brand can’t afford to play it too safe. Case in point, Spotify recently decided to turn its logo into a silver disco ball as a nod to its 20th year in business. Spotify’s legion of users were vocal in their displeasure at finding a big change to Spotify app icon. But where some insiders fretted about the social blowback, Jenkins knew the flap was priceless marketing for the brand. She stood her ground even in the face of concern from one of Spotify’s two newly appointed CEOs.

“He’s like, ‘We are working on a plan to take this down.’ And I was like, ‘Oh no, no, we dream about moments like this,’“ Jenkins recalled, pointing out that it was a sign of how much the brand means to its users. “This is not a panic conversation. This is, ‘I love you so much that I’m really annoyed that the logo changed.’“

Wen and Ellis shared remarkably similar observations about the changing responsibilities of a CMO that explain why top marketing mavens have enormous clout in most studios. The same is true for other strong brands. Wen noted that L’Oreal is more than 115 years old, which helps them take a long view of business decisions.

“I don’t see my job as the next quarter or the next year,” Wen said. “I see my job as making sure that the next generation of marketers also have beautiful brands that can speak to their consumers.”

Ellis reminded the crowd of attendees at the international festival of creativity that marketers have to protect their brands but also be adventurous to capture consumer attention and goodwill for nailing a moment a la L’Oreal and Durant.

“My job is not to ensure that people come watch a football game every day. My job is to ensure that the NFL is still a leader and has the prowess it has today in 5-10 years from now. So I’m constantly looking at how do I build that fan base for the future?”

Another big issue for marketers is the heightened demand to draw deep insights from the ocean of data that flows in to most big brands from a range of sources, from retail to TV ratings to social media presence. CMOs need to sharpen their ability to discern trends and patterns from a firehose of data.
“Bringing all that data and insight together and going deeper into understanding these things is incredibly important,” Ellis said.

“There’s so much opportunity to get data today, but understanding the ‘why’ and the implications and therefore the judgment of what you do about that data has never been so important,” he said.

(Pictured top: NFL’s Tim Ellis, L’Oreal USA’s Han Wen and Walmart’s Seth Dallaire)