Episode Three (English): Agile Marketing Around the Globe with Andre Felippa

00:00:13 John Cass 

Welcome to the deep dive into agile marketing with John Cass. I'm your host, John Cass here in Boston, MA. Today I'll be interviewing Andre Felippa and he is the CEO of Felippa Consulting in Brazil. Andre provides agile marketing advice to companies there and today's podcast is a little bit different from my brand podcasts. Instead of interviewing Andrea about his work as a marketer and using agile, the focus is really on the state of agile marketing in Brazil. Why welcome Andre. 

00:00:51 Andre Felippa 

Well, thank you, John. It's a pleasure. It's an honor to be here on your podcast. 

00:00:55 John Cass 

Yes, I'm very excited about you joining us and in preparation for this call, we talked a little bit about your journey in using agile marketing. And so what I wanted to do was talk a little bit about that. While the focus is on Brazil, I think we should also actually start off with how you started in agile marketing. 

00:01:19 Andre Felippa 

Actually, I'm kind of an old executive from the old school joining Agile marketing more the recent years. So my 28 year's experience as an executive, as CMO of many more international companies brought me to a point in which I was seeing that it was becoming a bit slow, it was becoming a bit cumbersome, a bit hierarchical to pull. There was a big pressure in many different areas to change to, to transfer. 

Form and I came across. Actually I came across agile marketing specifically by seeing one of the posts of Andrea Fryrear. I know you know her and I heard the one of your post podcast has also last year John. So that actually triggered me to be became curious I want to read more and learn more about that. 

And I really digged into that last year, reading courses trying to learn from people who are doing it, who are trying to learn it, not as much in Brazil and will come to that. But in Brazil is still in the early phase of adoption in in agile marketing specifically. So what triggered my start in agile marketing were actually you guys in your provocations. So glad to be here. 

00:02:29 John Cass 

Can you tell me some of the companies who have adopted agile marketing in Brazil? 

00:02:35 Andre Felippa 

Yeah, absolutely. But before even I mentioned some of the company names and the the different areas and sectors. Let let me just explain a little bit how I see it. There are kind of three stages of company joining our joint marketing here. Brazil. One is the curious ones, the ones who are just trying to learn. What is this thing, how can it? 

Help me how could that be a road map of transformation for my marketing area and that's both on the industry side and the agency side. I see that that is the biggest block I would say. Then there's the second block of those who are experimenting. Third either deployed one of the pilot projects or one campaign they're trying in the small team. 

Then there's a third and smallest portion, which is the ones who are scaling up. So some companies will name. 

Of those already have like a hundred 150 guys already working agile in marketing, right? So a few names just will sound familiar for those on the ground here, maybe less familiar to those abroad, but like banks, big banks like Santander, Itau Bradesco, all these guys are already working with Saja marketing for a couple of years. Tech companies. 

So like Microsoft, SAP and the sorts and CPGS are moving also fast into agile adoption companies like Unilever, monopolies, Natura agencies like Ogilvy. So these are brand names which are already moving into the job market in Rio? 

00:03:58 John Cass 

What percentage of companies do you think are using our job marketing in Brazil? 

00:04:03 Andre Felippa 

Although there is no official figure, I haven't come across any data really solid data. My inference for having talked through a lot of companies here in Brazil over the last 12 months is that I would say about 30 percent, 1/3 of the companies are either learning or doing a pilot or scaling up. 

70% have probably never heard about it, so it's it's still on the early adoption curve. As I was mentioned before, huge number of companies still just blue ocean to to go into it. 

00:04:36 John Cass 

In our earlier conversation, you mentioned that you've seen a lot of interest in our job marketing from the finance sector. Why do you think Agile marketing works so well for banking and finance companies? 

00:04:47 Andre Felippa 

Well, look, I think they are. They have a few triggers which other companies may not have. One of them is the fact that they sit on data. So they're very data-driven inherently, they all they manage is data, customer data, consumer. 

And this makes it easy for them to quickly react based upon data and AP testing and all that sort of thing. They're already used to manage big source of data. The second thing is they're very pressured here in Brazil in particular. We see a lot of pressure from native digital native banks like bank original. 

Enter new bank. These banks were grown up from the ground as digital only, and these guys were thrown from the beginning as a child. But in all the functions, but also in marketing. So all the bigger brands are older. 

Brands of banks they're trying to follow suit and and really are very pressured on that. And overall you see a bigger adoption of digital marketing down here in Brazil. John, I would say actually for those who are less familiar with the market, it's very interesting to see the shift of adoption. I've seen big multinationals who are like 30 seventy, 30% was digital, Sandy was offline 70%. 

And now I'm seeing many of these companies shifting the other way around 73rd or even 100%. Big companies like Whirlpool here in Brazil are fully digital, 100% of the market is digital and that helps a lot in terms of accelerating that option of agile. 

00:06:08 John Cass 

What types of adoption have you seen with examples? You know Scrum, Kanban, scrumban, hybrid, etc. 

00:06:18 Andre Felippa 

Well, Needless to say, most of it is hybrid. So, we see a lot of hybrid adoptions, but the way they come into slightly different. I see some coming from Scrum, so they either learn Scrum or data course or saw another company doing Scrum and they try to fully adopt Scrum with all these ceremonies and all the deliveries and all the artifacts. 

And they realize along the way that. 

A bit constrained sometimes for marketing and they relax a little bit. Their interpretation of scrum and make something. 

Hybrid out of scrum? 

That's route #1 #2, which I notice even more frequently, is those which come in through Kanban, so they have the processes. They just put a layer of Kanban on top of it, which already adds in terms of transparency. 

Indication everybody sees who else is doing what they're doing in different areas, which is already again and then over time they try to create a bit more of ceremonies, which sometimes they even import from Scrum and becomes something like a scrum band mix. 

In which they have adopted some of the ceremonies, like the daily standup from scrum. 

It's very often done with the Kamban sort, but they don't do any Sprint planning or Sprint review or Sprint retrospective from from, so that's sort of mixture is. And if you ask me, I think it's the most appropriate for marketing at the stage we see here in Brazil. It's some sort of scrum mix fiber. 

00:07:38 John Cass 

In Brazil, how has agile marketing adoption impacting marketing transformation? So how do C-Suite leaders react to the adoption of agile marketing? Is there more transparency and communication between the marketing department and those C-Suite leaders? 

00:07:56 Andre Felippa 

Yeah, I'm gonna start with the sad side and then switch to the good side. The bad side is that most sea levels haven't heard about agile market yet. They may have heard about agile and usually coming from software it something more operational and they're not seeing yet what it means for marketing specifically. 

The good side is for those who are implementing or starting to implement, I see a very close work from sea level down to director level to the agile teams on the bottom from the beginning on they are very committed. They are very upfront, involved in the whole transformation process to agile marketing. 

I would say the only observation I have. The only caveat to this story is over time there's a relaxation and they kind of. 

Move out a little bit. There's a little bit of the creeping of the old tendencies to behave as they were before, and they focus more on the short term and on the reporting and on the business side and they leave the teams a little bit. 

But I see a strong intention to participate, a good willingness to support good endorsement. 

Have these become the sponsors of the team themselves, but the only card that is this one which I mentioned is people overtime getting a bit more relaxed and letting the teams float on their own. 

00:09:16 John Cass 

In Brazil, what organizations are supporting our job marketing, you know, are there any meetups? Are there any groups? Are there online websites or or bloggers that you've seen across the the country? 

00:09:28 Andre Felippa 

Yeah. The good thing about the Internet there is that there's always a good connection that me that a small group of bigger group you see in formal groups happening. But if I look overall there's very little structures, gatherings and meetings, trainings, organizations happening related to agile marketing. And again agile as a discipline or even enterprise agile you see a lot of formal. 

Mutterings organization in marketing is still more income. 

And I see some individuals like myself coming up and trying to voice it and trying to spread it throughout the organization in, in the countries. But honestly, there is not a lot yet structure. I wouldn't even be able to name a few say Oh yeah. This site you have my own LinkedIn group. For those who are listening, who would like to join us. 

Just look for my name on the LinkedIn and we have a nice marketing agile marketing group on LinkedIn and WhatsApp, but very few structured things at this stage. I'm hoping I can push the envelope and get that wave of enthusiasts behind this. 

00:10:27 John Cass 

Absolutely. What do you think? Is the future for agile marketing in Brazil? 

00:10:35 Andre Felippa 

Look, John, I think the future of our job market is brilliant worldwide. And in Brazil, Brazil is very known for its marketing, creative excellence. So and that combined with increased volatility of the market of the context, competition etcetera, it requires more frequent and adaptive iterations in the marketing. 

00:10:54 Andre Felippa 

Work. So the brilliance of the historic market, the brilliance and creative brilliance in Brazil combined with the need for more agility I think creates the right bad for this to really become very fruitful for. 

Agile marketing will become more and more integrated also with enterprise agility. So I was mentioning that a lot of people I see a lot of movements in HR, in finance, in operations, in other areas, in the companies towards agile and I think having agile marketing bond with these guys and ride the wave. 

We will help to grow that therapy. I foresee 2020 is going to be a year of agile marketing. 

In Brazil, definitely those who haven't heard about it will hear about, for sure. 

00:11:36 John Cass 

Well, Andrew, I really want to thank you for doing the podcast today in both English and Portuguese. So that's really cool. And also for the opportunity to learn something more about what's the state of our job marketing in Brazil, which is, it's been a fascinating conversation about that. And I really appreciate it. 

00:24:15 Andre Felippa 

It's been my my pleasure, John. Indeed. And and and knowing you and and willing to contribute further with the agile marketing development around the world, just come to me here on the ground whenever you guys need anything. It's been a pleasure to be with you. 

00:24:28 John Cass 

Ohh, excellent. Well, thank you again. So thanks for joining us on the deep dive into our job marketing with John Kass. My thanks for Andre and we'll see you again next time. 

00:24:43 Andre Felippa 

Well done, John.