We'll break the rules because we're rule breakers
20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:
It was one of those things where I've always believed that you need to look inside yourself and figure out will you regret saying no to this one. And this was just one of those ones where I said yeah, this one is something I have to do.
Global marketing director for De Beers diamond jewellers, an LVMH company, an amazing kind of training ground, because if anyone knows how to do luxury branding and marketing, it's LVMH.
Going into the hotel industry, I thought, oh you know, I stay in hotels all the time I totally know what goes on. But no, mornings I was with housekeeping, I was with banqueting, I was with kitchens, I was with stewarding, all these functions I didn't even know existed in a hotel. In the afternoon I did my job but, so it was a bit of a hotel school in six months that I got to do.
As Hong Kong started selling out of masks, I decided to go to New Zealand on the beginning of my sabbatical year. The sabbatical year didn't turn out exactly as I thought it was going to be, so I quickly kind of hurried back to Hong Kong as the pandemic expended around the world.
It was 20 jobs in 9 years for me.
If you want to make change, you have to figure out how the actual organization is structured.
I actually took a step backwards role-wise, but it felt like the right thing to do, because it felt like a really smart humble group of people, that were trying to do things really differently. And that began my almost 9 year journey at Netflix.
The way we live, the way we work is fundamentally different now, so I think retirement is now or never.
ON TOPIC: The world of travel and entertainment
If you look at travel and entertainment, we've gone through a boom and a bust exactly in inverse order.
The world of travel and entertainment do mix very, very well together, as evidenced by the White Lotus, and how everyone's obsessed by it.
The intersectionality of opening people's minds, whether it's via travel or telling stories from around the world and really, I think, Netflix allowed people to travel when they couldn't.
The thing right now is that everything changes so quickly and believe me, actually the hotel industry in general is not one for fast changes.
Every trend inspires a countertrend and so we will soon crave human contact and we will soon crave personality and senses of humor.
ON TOPIC: Entertainment, Netflix, AI and more
What's been so much fun about Netflix was just the tech forward mindset of it.
Netflix had been one of the early pioneers of pivoting and changing and starting new formats.
We pivoted probably every six months and with that came a reorg probably at least once a year, if not more and figuring out what skill set do we need from our team.
Netflix has been using AI since we started the service. All it did was that was what gave you the recommendations and it's a learning engine.
In some ways the future is the past
ON TOPIC: Marketing and branding with a capital B
I think everything that a company does is marketing and branding, right?
This advent of CMO to CEO starting to pick up speed is pretty prevalent
There's also a very kind of numbers and data-oriented nature in marketing. Being a very data-driven marketeer has served us both very, very well
Authenticity is never a bad value to have
References, mentions:
American express, LVMH, Peninsula, Rosewood hotel and resorts, Michelle Goss, Levi's, Starbucks, GAP, Vodaphone, Netflix, Mr Beast, Kim Kardashian, Anna Karenina (LeoTolstoy), The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Charlie Mackesy), Enlightenment Now (Steve Pinker), Tim Cook, Apple, Taylor Swift