Jelena Veselinović on Truth & Brokenness
Jelena Veselinovic [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jelena-veselinovic/] is an advisor and fractional CMO at Brand Intelligents.ai. Previously, she was Head of Brand Marketing at Miro. Prior to that, she was VP of Global Brand Marketing Campaigns at Coca-Cola. She has a great substack, “Rewire Your Mind [https://rewireurmind.substack.com/],” where she’s dismantling the assumptions of brand theory one essay at a time.
So I start all these conversations with the same question, and I actually use it in my research, too. I borrowed it from a friend of mine, and she helps people tell their story. And it’s such a big question. I use it, but it’s so big, I over-explain it the way that I’m doing right now. So before I ask it, I want to make sure that you’re in total control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And the question is, where do you come from?
Okay. It is a big question, yes. Well, obviously, I can answer that question on many different levels.
So I will start for a smaller, lower level, and then I’ll try to explain how that connects to a real place where I’m coming from. So originally, I come in terms of where I was born. I was born in Serbia, in Belgrade, which is a little country in Balkans or Eastern Europe.
And I spent there, well, most of my young adulthood. And then when I got married, when I got my first child, I left with work and I never came back. Now, why is all this important?
It is important for many different reasons, because it truly made me into who I am. So firstly, when I’m saying that I’m coming from Balkans, what is important in there that I am carrying in my DNA a certain way, a certain history, a certain set of beliefs, a certain baggage, I would say. And that really makes me who I am.
And there are a couple of things that I believe are important to know about me. The first one is that I don’t know how not to speak or how not to say what I think. And that’s something that in my culture, in the culture where I’m coming from, I mean, first of all, you are taught from a very early childhood to always speak the truth, but I guess that’s generally true.
But also I think what is important is that speaking truth is considered a respect. When you respect someone, you will always tell them the truth. You will not try to manipulate that truth to make people better or to make it sound easier or more convenient or any of this.
If you respect someone, if you love someone, if you care about someone, you will always deliver them the most brutal, no matter how painful truth, because you care and because you want people to be better, to improve. Now, that’s something that I carry deeply inside of me. And it is something that helped me in my professional life, but I think it also cost me more than it helped me.
And something that is also connected with that is I was always seen, and I don’t know, we might or might not talk about my career, but I was seen always in my working environments, as someone who is always keeping others honest. And I to say, whenever we were doing all this psychological tests and stuff, I was always the majority of people would always be mapped somewhere in the center of the map. And I was not only extreme, I’m joking, I was probably outside of the map, because they couldn’t even fit me in.
Which meant, and I was talking to these coaches, how is that? Why is that? What’s wrong with me?
And they explained to me, nothing is wrong with you. You are actually very valuable to the organization, because you are balancing everyone out. And I’m well, I never, ever asked in my life to have a role to balance someone out, it’s a hard role to play.
But apparently, people appreciated that. And they appreciated it in a way that whenever there was an uncomfortable conversation, they would bring me in. And they’re why are you even bringing me in?
I’m not a confrontational person. I swear, I’m not. I’m a nice person.
Everyone likes to believe about themselves. But then I realized that a lot of people that know me or see me, they see a couple of things. One of the things is that they believe that I’m brave, that I am, that I have courage to stand up and to say things, which is honestly, I mean, for God’s sake, it can’t be further from the truth.
I’m not brave. I’m scared every moment of my life, which is probably because I built all these shields to make me perceived as brave. But the reason why I’m saying and how is that connected to my culture is that the bravery is not about being courage, it’s not about having courage to do something, to go against something, to whatever, to fight.
Not about that. It’s when you’re seeing the truth so clearly that you cannot help it. You need to go after it.
And that’s why I’m saying that truth speaking quality, or I would say, probably, inability of not speaking truth is also what makes me in the eyes of other people confrontational, brave, intimidating, all these things, which is very much not true. So that’s why I’m saying I’m coming from Balkans and because I want people to understand me and I want people to see beyond that hard shell. The other thing that is important about my origin is that I was born, I was born at the time, I am giving my age now, but I think it’s important.
I was born in a country that was called Yugoslavia. That country does not exist anymore. It was completely, I don’t know what, dispersed in the 80s and 90s, which resulted in a big civil war.
And I was I happened to be born in a country that was Yugoslavia, that was all built on this idea the different nations and different religions should live, work together and feel that sense of unity. That’s how I was brought up. But also my parents came from the mixed backgrounds or different backgrounds, so my mother is Croatian, Jewish, my father is Orthodox, Montenegrin, Serbian, what have you.
The point is I have in myself any possible combination of different nations, different religions, different everything. And this is what makes me, me, and this is, I was brought up, firstly, not to recognize that, because it wasn’t important, why would it ever be important to me, where is someone coming from, what’s the religion, what’s the nationality. My parents taught me, it’s not important, the second thing, I believe I’m carrying this complexity of different things, or multitude of different identities.
But anyhow, why is that important? It is important that, as I said, sometime in 80s and 90s, specifically 90s, the country and Serbia, Croatia, all of that, went through the massive, ugly, bloody civil war. And it was a situation that was going against everything I am, against every single fiber in my body, against every belief that I ever had.
And I just couldn’t take it, and I left the country. I left the country actually one day before the bombing started. And I left with the idea to never go back, because it’s not really about the war, it’s about the values, and I felt deeply betrayed by that country, by the history, by being born where I was born or when I was born, and I decided to build a new life.
So that’s how I left, and I’ve been living for, I don’t know, 30 years now, abroad. But anyhow, that’s where I’m coming from in terms of my origins. But that’s why I said, I’ll give you that part first, and then I’ll try to connect it to a bigger, most important part.
When people ask me a similar question, I am, I’m always saying I am coming from a from a place of confusion. I’m coming from a place of being permanently lost. And when I say something that, well, permanently lost, place of confusion and brokenness.
And what, by the way, there was a, sorry for a digression, but I read about some Indian semi-goddess, and I wouldn’t be able to repeat her name, but her name in English meant never not broken. Because it’s a goddess, by the way, she is riding a crocodile, and the crocodile as a symbol of fear, a crocodile that represents her biggest fear. So she’s riding that, and then she’s always coming in situations where she’s breaking down.
So she’s never not broken, or she’s always broken, and she’s always arising from the ashes and from the brokenness. But it’s actually that situation and the energy of brokenness that is her real power. And that’s something that I identify with strongly, so I’m saying the place of being lost, confusion, brokenness, that’s really who I am.
But I’m not saying this in a sense that if something is wrong with that, I’m actually in love with that state. It’s my most productive, my most creative, the most happiest place, state. And why is that?
Because I think, and that’s why I was saying, that’s why I was giving you the story also about leaving myself, my country, my place of birth, my family, my friends, everything, when I was 20 something years old, six, seven, and deciding to go and create a new life, because I’m not afraid of building new. I’m actually I think that that’s the most powerful state you can be. And I think I was writing recently, I’m confused, I don’t know if I wrote it or if it is just in my head, but anyhow, it is this moment, moment, moment, zero moment, it is a moment before you make a first step, and I believe that that’s the moment with the highest potential.
And it is a moment without fear. It is a moment that exists almost in some sort of a limbo, it’s a moment that lives in a limbo, it’s between the past and between the future, between the past and the future. It’s a moment in which everything is possible.
So I to stay in that moment. Anyhow, that’s my long answer to your powerful question.
Oh, my gosh, it’s a wonderful, it’s a wonderful, beautiful answer. Thank you so much for it. I have so many questions about it. I’m not sure exactly how to. I guess I’m curious about, usually in this, at this point in the conversation, I’ll ask, what did you want to be when you were a child? And I wonder, yeah, when you were young, what did you what idea did you have about what you wanted to be when you grew up?
I didn’t, I mean, it’s probably. Okay, that’s a hard question. So honestly, I don’t know.
I can’t really recall exactly. I know. I’ll tell you what I wish I did instead of what I’m doing.
But I think early on, I definitely didn’t want to become a princess or unicorn or any of these things. I remember that I was most, I don’t know, lost, immersed in the flow when I was playing kitchen with my friends, not kitchen, but cooking, cutting little whatever, leaves and grass and ingredients and pretending to be cooking. I think I remember that.
But then I, as I was growing up, I have this bad thing, and bad thing is that I have this constant need to do the most difficult things in life and prove to myself that I can do it. And in every single aspect of my life. And I remember, anyhow, when I was at one point in time, I was swimming, training, swimming.
And I remember that I was always choosing the most difficult techniques because I was just not interested in being in the easy stuff. I had to be the best in the hardest thing. So I applied that kind of thinking everywhere. And then eventually, as I was growing up, that most difficult thing for me to dedicate my life to became philosophy.
And philosophy in a sense of not so much philosophers, this and that. Yes, I mean, I was absolutely in love with that. But more as a need to know everything and to answer the meaning of life.
I mean, let’s not kid ourselves. I just wanted to understand the meaning of life. But in a sense, you started with that big question, which is seemingly very simple, but it’s also very deep.
So, I wanted to go the deepest I could under everything there is. And to answer that, I don’t know, primary, initial, first question. So, that’s what really brought me to philosophy.
Now, I don’t practice philosophy now, even though that remains my biggest love in life. But I do apply that way of thinking, the rigor, the curiosity, the need to go beyond the obvious, because I believe the obvious is probably one of the biggest dangers of our lives, because so many people settle for what’s the easiest, what’s the most convenient truth, what’s the obvious truth. I always to push, provoke people to, just to see things from the other perspective.
So, anyhow, it was philosophy. So, I always wanted to be a philosopher, and I would say specifically, I wanted to be a philosopher in ancient Greece, and sit under the olive tree and think about life. So, that would be my ideal life situation.
But then, there is something else, which is an even bigger truth, if you can imagine that. So, as I said, when I was a little girl, I loved cooking. Now, when I’m, now that I’m a big girl, I love cooking probably even more.
And it is, I don’t know whether to call it a passion, I don’t know what to call it, but it’s not about that I’m good at cooking. Yes, I am, but that’s a by-product of it. But it’s really the process of cooking that is the only activity, well, maybe not only, but one of the very few activities in life that puts me immediately into the state of love.
And this is when I feel free, this is when I feel myself, this is when I feel happy. And I believe, it’s interesting, because I kept saying about philosophy, how I love philosophy, and how I specifically love the Greek philosophy. Now, when you think about the Greek philosophy, the one, western philosophy, there is one specific idea that really defined that approach to life, which is the supremacy of mind over matter, or mind over body.
And it is that idea that the intellectual, the abstract, the ideal world, will always be something to strive for, something that will always be superior to the physical. And for my entire life, I believed in that. And which, in turn, made me live in my head, in my mind.
And I was absolutely, not only content with that, if I could even boost it even stronger, I was why would you even need this, earthy, bodily things, it is really just about ideas, the plateau. I mean, I am striving to understand it all. I want to touch the real thing.
But then, the cooking does the opposite to me. And again, I am saying, it is not about the product of cooking. I do not care.
I to believe that I cook well, and I love to eat it. But it is not about that. It is still about slicing, dicing, touching, feeling, tasting, smelling, it is really engaging.
But it is not only about engaging the senses. It is connecting the senses with your mind, because you cannot, I do not cook by the recipe. I cook by the intuition.
And what that means is you imagine, I do not know where exactly, but somewhere, you imagine the taste. And then, you cook the taste, idea of taste. And you cook towards that, until you reach it.
So, if I could do everything over, I would definitely become a chef. Because that is where the happiest version of me exists.
It reminds me of, it is a little pat or cute, but there is a wonderful quote, a moment in, with Joseph Campbell interviewed by Bill Moyers. And he says this thing where he says, “People say that what they want to know is the meaning of life. I do not think that is it. I think what they want is the experience of being alive.”
Oh, Peter, do not get me with that. I was reading somewhere, and I cannot remember where, probably it shocked me so much that I forgot. There was this question, when you are smelling a rose, are you smelling a rose or are you smelling the idea of what the rose should smell?
And I was oh, my God, I do not know. I really do not know. And I was scared that I actually do not smell the rose.
And, yeah, I mean, now, opposite to my whole Western philosophy background, if there is one thing I want to do, I want to escape from the, I do not know, the prison of my mind.
Yeah. How, tell what, so where are you, and let us talk about work. How do you think about, how do you talk about what you do for people that do not know you Where are you, and what is the work you do? A hard transition.
Okay. So there is a simple story. There is a complex story.
So the simple story is I am a classically trained marketeer. And for the most of my career, I believe that is a good thing. Now, I do not know anymore.
But as I said, I have a philosophy background, not marketing background, but I carried over all that critical thinking, curiosity, and creativity that comes, and curiosity and understanding of human condition, I believe. And I brought that over to marketing. I worked, at first, I worked at the agency, Saatchi and Saatchi.
But then, very soon after that, I, and Coca-Cola was one of my clients at that time. But then very soon, I moved over to the client side. And I stayed with Coke for 18 years.
And everything I learned about marketing, I learned there. And, I mean, Coke is obviously the best school of marketing there is. I can confidently say that I learned a lot.
And then, then after that, I left. And we can talk about the hard transition. But for now, I’ll just give you a simple story. So I left. And for a couple of years, I was working as a consultant. Then I moved to Miro, to lead, to lead the brand marketing at Miro.
And I stayed, stayed there for four years. And, and since then, I am working now as a fractional CMO, or fractional, whatever you need me. And really, working with the companies to solve their biggest problems, or to help them remove the, I would say that the biggest obstacles, to identify and then to remove the obstacles for the growth.
So that is a simple story. The more complex story is, I reached the point, most, partially because I had, I was exposed to my co-career, and it was a wonderful career, local, regional, global, on all different levels. And, for a little girl from Serbia and Belgrade, I moved to the global team and had a senior role in the global team.
I to believe that I achieved a lot. But anyhow, it was just a wonderful place to learn. But, yes.
Can I ask you about Coca-Cola? I’m wondering, because you’re, what are the hallmarks of a Coca-Cola approach? What does Coca-Cola do?
What do you carry with you from that time that feels like it’s a particular way of thinking about the market, or going out into the market, or learning about the market that seems like this is how Coke does it. Is there a Coca-Cola way of doing it?
Oh, yes, yes. There is a Coca-Cola way to everything, yes. So we had a very comprehensive, complex curriculum, Coca-Cola way of marketing, which, I don’t know, for good or bad reason, I still think it’s the most progressive and sophisticated thing that I ever seen, which is sad, because the time of the world moved on.
And it’s still the best I’ve seen. But, okay, so how do I describe this? I would say the most important thing, two most important things.
So Coca-Cola believes in a brand, and Coca-Cola believes that the brand is the most valuable, although intangible asset for the business, for all the reasons that I’m sure everyone understands and knows. But I’m just saying that’s the first postulate that they believe in brand. I would just qualify this.
And this is probably one of also the most important things to understand. When they said Coca-Cola believes in a brand, that doesn’t mean that Coca-Cola does not believe in product. I mean, it is one of the most, the best, the most valuable products in the world.
And the brand can never exist without the product. And Coca-Cola is super aware of that, and it’s never, ever, ever trying to separate the two. So that’s the first thing.
The second thing that I learned that was very important for who I am as a marketeer, is accountability. And yeah, that’s probably interesting. The first time, the first, I don’t want to exaggerate, maybe it was not the first day, but very early in my career, I found this quote, or maybe it was, I think it was actually a part of our onboarding booklet.
And the quote said, the quality of your decisions will make or destroy the value for the company. And maybe it’s not word for word, but that’s what I now can recall. Because it is that understanding that whichever part of organization are you at, you are making decisions that will create or destroy the value for the company.
So they don’t treat marketing as this fluffy layer that is free from accountability. And yes, maybe you cannot measure every single thing with a yardstick, but there are ways of knowing whether something is working or not working. And also, as a marketing company, Coca-Cola, which is in essence a marketing company, the biggest, that is investing, I can’t remember now the percentages, but probably more than 50-60% of the budget goes to marketing.
So, when you’re investing so much money, you need to know whether it’s working or not. You cannot let go these people off the hook of accountability. So, accountability is built into the marketing hook, but not the same accountability, not the last-click attribution type of accountability that we have now.
Now, the reason I’m saying this is important for me, because I learned one thing, or that’s the way I work, that you need to link up every single thing, you always, always, without exception, start from the business problem. You need to understand what the problem is, what are the barriers for growth, what is preventing, what are the hurdles, what do you need to change, or what are the opportunities. And even today, I say, behind every brief, marketing brief, or advertising brief, or whichever brief you want, there is always a people problem.
There is always someone, somewhere, doing or not doing what you want them to do. So, you need to go back to that business problem to understand what is preventing the growth, and who are these people, not your target audience, behavioral audience, who are these people that are not doing what you want them to do. And then link up everything else, so that you are addressing that specific problem.
And again, that’s not the performance marketing, I’m just saying that everything we do, or what I learned, that everything we do needs to be in a function of business. And later on, in my consulting career, and when I’m doing workshops, etc., I’m saying, yes, brand love, wonderful, Coke has the highest brand love in the world. It’s all, I mean, maybe not, but that’s why we do things that we do.
But marketing, my job as a marketeer is not to build a brand love, it’s to translate that brand love, to use brand love as a tool to make company the money.
Yes.
And I think it’s that understanding of how everything connects, and not doing marketing in isolation, not doing advertising in isolation. I used to say, the best, the most creative idea you can imagine, that is not solving the right problem, is wasted. Which is sad.
So I’ve been trained my whole life to think about that, or to think in that way. And that’s what I call classic marketing.
Yeah, so I want to, there’s two things I want to do, and I want to do this one first, which is, I’m always, this is a very selfish question, but as somebody who’s a qualitative researcher and an ethnographer who believes in what qualitative and face-to-face stuff can do, what’s the role that, how do you think about, and what’s the proper role of qualitative or ethnographic research in what you do, and how you do what you’ve just described?
Oh, Peter, what a wonderful question. So let me start with qualitative, typical focus group type of things, which I hate and I don’t hate. And I hate because people either read, whatever, the transcripts, learnings, whatever, reports from the qualitative focus groups, or they sit and watch people, in some sort of a zoo, that are talking about your brand.
And they’re writing these quotes, etc., and they’re taking everything, the most usual thing is that people, clients, are taking everything on the face value level. And that’s a complete waste, because people obviously never say what they think, but, because they don’t know how to say what they think, that, I mean, it requires meta thinking, thinking about thinking.
And most of people, especially people that we recruit for the research, are not able to express. So, the real value is really about trying to understand why people are saying the things that are saying, what is behind it.
And that’s very difficult, and it’s very rare, and it really depends on a researcher, interpreter, to make it valuable, by translating the face value quotes, into something that really can change, the things for the business. So, in that sense, I believe it’s very valuable, but I think it’s very often misused, or misunderstood, or, I don’t know, just wasted.
So, that’s what I think about the qualitative research. I love it, I enjoyed it, and I didn’t see many people around me using it for, in a way that it should be used.
Now, you asked me about, I’ll tell you about the ethnographic research, but before ethnographic research, I’ll tell you something else. So, when I was at Koch, we used to have this thing, I forgot how it was called, but it was basically, once per quarter, or two times per year, whatever the frequency was. We were supposed, we, marketeers from the ivory tower, we were supposed to go to the store to merchandise the point of sale, and shelves, and fridges, and all that.
So, that was a mandatory thing for us. And I mean, it was, it would, in a way, it was a fun day out of office, you go with a bunch of people you are working with, you go there, you make jokes, you have fun, you work for a couple of hours, and you go home. But, underneath all of that, I think it was a very important lesson.
It was, if nothing else, it was a lesson in humility. It was a lesson that, whoever you are in a Koch system, you have to go and roll your sleeves, and wash the shelves, wash the fridge, restock, the shelves, the fridge, etc. Turn the bottles to face the label, to the front, etc.
So, that had to be done. The other lesson, especially for me, who was always responsible for communication, advertising communication, any single touch point between the brand and the consumer, how much money Koch is spending into producing the in-store material, point-of-sale material, a huge amount, absolutely huge amount. And we do it, it looks good on a screen, PowerPoint, this and that, the bottler prints out, you come to the store, and whatever it is, a shelf talk, or this or that, it cannot fit the shelf.
And then you are throwing money out of the window, but not by not being connected to the reality, because in our minds we have some illusion about how the stores look. And we don’t create stuff for the real life. I mean, this is extreme. Honestly, it doesn’t happen.
But it’s a wonderful example. It’s so clear how the lack of awareness of the reality costs when you make something that doesn’t fit.
And it costs, you bring it to the store owner, whatever, they throw it away, and it’s all lost. But not only that, then the most important part is looking at the people buying your product. And there is a lot of arrogance in marketing, and we all love to believe that we are the smartest and the best, and all of that.
And that salespeople are people that go and execute, so it’s a different class. But I also read somewhere, and I keep saying this, I am just an overpaid salesperson, because my job is to sell, the same as the job of whatever sales rep is to sell, I’m selling just on a different level. So, meaning, you go to the store, you observe how people buy, how do they choose between different brands, and then you realize that actually this point of sale material does matter, and for the big part of my career, I thought it’s just an unnecessary nuance, it’s something that you have to do beside all these flashy advertising campaigns.
But, again, someone recently told me, and I’m like, it’s the best quote someone ever told me, is that my job as a marketeer is to move someone’s hand six inches to the right, to grab my product. It all comes down to that.
And, perhaps, the point of sale material that we all as super clever, creative, intellectual marketeers are always going down at, that is going to move someone’s hand six inches to the right.
Yeah.
So, anyhow, so that was not exactly ethnographic research, but it’s kind of.
That’s perfect.
And that was very important.
So, we have about 10 minutes left, and I want to give you this space to address what I think you’re addressing, and certainly in your writing at your substack, and you set it up before that, you’ve said earlier that you’re classically trained, you have lots of respect for everything you learned at Coca-Cola, but you’re, we’re at a point now where you’re not sure if that’s enough, and your writing is calling everything into question a little bit, I mean, more than a little bit.
You’re going right at a lot of the assumptions about what it means to build a brand. And so, I just wanted to open up the space and just say, yeah, how are you feeling about, what does it mean to build a brand now, and to what degree have the rules changed?
Yeah. So, when you ask me where I’m coming from, and I said that I’m coming from a place of being lost and confusion, I think this is now a good example to repeat that. So, yes, I’m totally confused and lost, because on one hand, I truly believe in all these rules, laws of classical marketing.
I still truly, deeply believe they are right. But at the same time, I’m not sure this is still relevant when you, in today’s world to build a brand. And in one of my articles, I wrote, it’s like, imagine, all the entire toolbox, that your marketing toolbox is still correct.
It’s still right. And yes, you can debate and argue, brand versus performance, this versus that, these endless, pointless debates, you can still do that. But, in the meanwhile, the space, the entire world in which this toolbox exists, have changed.
So you might have the right toolbox, but in a different world. And what I’m saying by a different, what I mean by a different world is not, I’m not one of these, oh, the everything is changing the fastest ever. And, people now can buy through my single click and this and that.
I mean, these are just circumstances, yes, of course, people are behaving differently. But deep inside, they are still the same people. So, I don’t believe in this, the world has changed, but something else changed.
And I was writing about this. Firstly, I was writing, what I said about, the one thing that makes me different is that I always go back to the business problem and I try to solve the business problem with the right tools. Now, the underlining assumption behind that is that marketing and brand creates value, by making people buy and buy more often, your brand versus other brands, at premium.
Now, the financial conditions underneath that value chain have changed. Including that margin, and margin is not the margin that it used to be before. So, therefore, the brand marketing or the marketing does not work the same way it worked before.
Because I was saying, I was giving example, of a story that I heard, someone was telling me that, and I’m talking about the FMCG, I’m not even talking about B2B, but FMCG, that companies stopped believing in brands. Basically, they are just launching things, riding this wave of innovation, curiosity, newness, and harvesting, harnessing, harvesting, the impulse to try something and to buy something new. And when that impulse stop, I mean, when that product stops being new, they launch something else.
So, the companies, because of the P&L, not because of anything else, the margin system does not work. So, they don’t believe in a long-term brand building, they believe in rotation of brands. That will create profit fast, and then they will just launch something else, I guess, because the cost of entry, the cost of production, the cost of innovation, all became very low.
And that’s the better way of creating margin, than investing in a single brand long-term. So, I’m just saying, and I don’t understand enough of it, but I’m just saying, the entire financial conditions of the value chain have changed, and that requires a different thinking about the brand. So, that’s one thing.
Wait, I want to... We’re very near end of time, and I want to ask one final question with the two minutes that we have, which is one of my favorite ones to ask, which is, what do you love about the work? Where is the joy in it for you?
Okay, I need to tell you one more story. So, when I was at Koch, and now the World Cup is coming, World Cup is coming to the US, so it’s a relevant story. I used to be responsible a couple of times for leading the trophy tour, which is an experiential event that Coca-Cola has with FIFA, where they are, or where Koch is taking the trophy, around the world and making it accessible to people to come and see.
Now, I’m not a soccer, football fan, so I was never able to really relate to that passion, and I was like, okay, fine, trophy tour, great, good, let’s do it. It costs a lot of money, I thought it was a waste, but anyhow, you have to do it. So, I was doing this, I was leading that event, and then, when you are organizer, it starts very early in the morning, so, one day, around six o’clock, you come there, and you’re thinking, oh, my God, it’s snowing, it’s cold, who is crazy enough to come under this weather, to come to the event that we paid so much money for? And then, and then the event started, and people started flooding in, and not only flood, people flooding in, but what I experienced in this moment changed my perspective forever, because you see people’s faces, and you see people’s faces change, you see the transformation, you see the smile, you see the delight, you see the energy, you see, making their dream come true. And I love seeing the brand create value for people, making something that will change them, that will turn them for better, to give them something, whichever way that is, whether it’s experiential, whether it’s idea, whether it’s a TV spot, whatever that is, I love the moment of brand touching people and creating something good.
That’s beautiful. I want to thank you so much. It was a pleasure sort of meeting you here and diving into this conversation with you. I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Peter. It was a pleasure. Thank you for wonderful questions.
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