Episode 275 / Priscila Lopez / Louis Vuitton / Digital & E-commerce Manager
Implementing a Winning Team Planning Strategy
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Our latest podcast guest, Priscila Lopez, Digital & E-commerce Manager at Louis Vuitton in Mexico, has an unusual Shiny New Object: a monthly digital preparation for winners.
This is a process Priscila has designed to set her team up for success in data driven marketing. It brings them all together a few days before the start of each month to review targets, set goals, and get aligned on the upcoming opportunities and challenges.
"We review our targets on monthly basis, and we set ourselves up for success.” The preparation includes both quantitative and qualitative data. Priscila has her team document the current situation, upcoming launches, and commercial moments. But she also has them share "quick wins, learnings, challenges, and opportunities" from the previous month. This holistic approach helps Priscila's team make more informed, data-driven decisions.
"By doing this, they can they can have first hand data from, let's say, what the clients are doing when they are entering the website, what they are looking for in the internal search. It is aligned with the questions that the clients are asking when they are calling in or not." Priscila also emphasises the importance of creativity and inspiration in these sessions. "Every month, we start the session with this page that… somehow promotes the creativity, where they start sharing all the ideas that we could implement for the month ahead, based on their learnings, on their quick wins, and everything that they did the previous month."
This blend of data and inspiration crucially also uses insights from the customer service teams, so that no one is working in silos. And it works: "Somehow, they start connecting the data and dots and like, start perceiving trends and behaviours on clients that somehow they try to predict what the client is going to do in the next month."
Learn about how to take this approach into your own organisation by listening to the full podcast episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Priscila Lopez 0:00
We understood that I have done things kind of in a wrong way, let's say especially internally speaking. But then I was very grateful that I did it at the very beginning, because that allowed me to improve, especially with so sensitive information.
Tom Ollerton 0:22
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform. And this is a podcast about the future of data driven marketing. And every week or so, I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing someone interesting from our industry about their vision for the future of where this little niche is going. And this week's no different. I'm in Mexico City, and I'm sat in front of Priscila Lopez, who is digital e commerce manager for Louis Vuitton. So Priscila, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, could you give us a bit of background?
Priscila Lopez 0:59
Yeah, sure, absolutely. Thank you. Tom for having me. Yeah, I am Priscila Lopez. I am Mexican, living in Mexico City, and I am in charge of the digital and E commerce platform for Louis Vuitton in Mexico. And yeah, like going a little bit back on my, on my where my experience started. It was back in 2013 in New York city, where, where I first, I had the first contact with the digital ecosystem and the digital world in in a company that was called circle group, and they were basically doing like selling data for different industries, mainly the services industries. Then when I, when I came back to Mexico in 2015 I started working for Axa assistance, which is one of one of the world's leaders, providers of medical assistance and travel insurance. I was basically performing a marketing manager role for a while, and then a big party came in that was mainly, mainly like the main goal was to sell to the direct client, to the final client, as Axa Assistance is a B to B business. And I lead that project for Mexico and South LATAM. And it was a totally success. After that, I went to work for a retailer company in Bolivia in 2017 that would be like my second launch of an E platform, an E commerce platform for a retailer, the first time for a retailer. And I worked there for almost three years. We launched the E commerce platform, like, let's say, three months before the pandemic came. It was very challenging, but it was also very rewarding. And then I came back to Mexico in 2020 while still working remotely for a few months for the Bolivian company. And then in 2021 I started my journey with Louis Vuitton.
Tom Ollerton 3:01
Amazing. So to do 2 e commerce launches is really, really big. So you must have made some mistakes, right? Can you tell me about one egregious fuck up where you were, like, ah, but actually, in retrospect, you're glad that it happened.
Priscila Lopez 3:16
Yeah, sure. Actually, I used to be, like, very ashamed about this fucked up that I that I made back in actually, it was in Bolivia when I started working there, like, since I have to do everything from scratch, and I was new in the country, I was getting familiar with the culture, the way you're working, how the how everything worked there, is pretty different from Mexico, even though it is Spanish, the language that they speak, the culture and everything were completely different. So yeah, after, let's say, two months that I arrived to the country, I was supposed to come with the first draft of the business model for the company. And I thought that I was doing an amazing job by doing the research of the of the market and also the internal assessment interviews and everything. But then when I came to the room in the meeting to present my first draft of what would be the business model, the stakeholders were surprised, because for them, it didn't make any sense, is because, and then after, after a long conversation, we understood that I have done things kind of in a wrong way, let's say especially internally speaking, because the approach that I use to gather All the information and data, it wasn't the right one, so I was getting fluffy information that I wasn't aware of. And yeah, somehow they understood, and they were patient, because I was pretty new in the company. I was the only foreign, I mean, inside there. And they took also the responsibility that they. Didn't brief me good enough to let me know that things were kind of different there. And yeah, I mean it honestly, it took me several weeks to recover me from this professional trauma, because I thought that it was the beginning, so I already messed it up, and I wasn't capable of doing like or playing that big role, and but then I was very grateful that I did it at the very beginning, because that allowed me to improve my work and to improve my methodology of assessing internal things, especially with so sensitive information. And I can see I took considerations that I wasn't thinking about before, and I made sure that everything worked perfectly in order to do a business model that could be scalable in the future, since the company wanted to be no just like an E commerce platform, but also a marketplace. So yeah, that was the one.
Tom Ollerton 6:01
That sounds, yeah, pretty, pretty hardcore, but I always think it's the it's the expensive mistakes are the ones that you learn from right? Mistakes that don't cost you very much, you just do keep on doing because it doesn't cost you, right?
So finally, we're going to talk about your shiny new object. We definitely not had this one before, but your shiny new object is your monthly digital preparation for winners, which sounds so cool. So what is that? What is the monthly digital preparation for winners and, and how, and why is that your shiny new object and, and how does that help the the future of data driven marketing.
Priscila Lopez 6:41
Well, I came with this new method, let's say, to prepare my team to win in the month ahead. So we review our targets on monthly basis, and we set ourselves for success. And also with all with this meeting, with this methodology, we try to see how much more we can stretch our goal, if it's possible, if we can commit realistically, to stretch it a little bit more and and it consists in a monthly meeting that we have a few days before the month starts. And I printed two pages for each member. One is divided in segments, and everyone needs to write down what is the situation currently so what the offer is looking for us in the digital part, and what are the launches that are coming in? What commercial moments do we have? And yeah, like all the big projects that we're involved in, and if there are going to be delivered in that month or not, and how they are going to impact the revenue directly. So by doing this, everyone is involved in all the from, I mean, in the digital part, and also the customer service part, because the digital business in Louis Vuitton and the revenue, it also comes from Customer Service Center, so they need to know what the offer is like, what the digital strategy we are working on, so we we can, like, be more aligned and like, very well informed about What's going on, like, what is the behavior or the of the user in web, but what is also the behavior or of the clients that are calling in daily in the Customer Service Center? So we can interact with all this information and all these insights on the table and and these somehow promotes data that data driven decisions, because on our daily basis, each role has access to certain point of data, of data, certain dashboards, certain reports, but none of them have access to the ones that their colleagues have access to. So by doing this, they can they can have like first, first hand data from, let's say, what the clients are doing when they are entering to the website what they are looking for in the internal search. It is aligned with the question that the clients are asking when they are calling in or not. And also, the customer service center manager can tell us what the most frequently questions people ask regarding the website, so our digital production specialist can take notes and can take like these insights to understand how we can optimize the website and also optimize the SEO strategies, sem strategies, SEO recommendation pages and everything. So this is the first part, and the second part, which is I find it more interesting, is the second page that I print is with everyone's name. I mean, it has the name. Of each team member. I gave this page to them so they can write down also. It is divided also into segments. They can write down all the quick wins that they had in the previous month, all the learnings, the challenges and the opportunities that they create. And there is one lesson segmentation that I think is the most fascinated one for me, because it's, it is about inspiration. So every month, we start the session with this page that talk about, like, somehow promotes, also the creativity on the on people's mind, and, yeah, they start sharing, like, all the ideas that we could implement for the month ahead, based on their learnings, on their quick wins, and everything that they did the previous month. So yeah, I would say that is my shiny new object.
Tom Ollerton 11:00
This episode of the shiny new object podcast is brought to you in partnership with madfest. Whether it's live in London or streamed online to the global marketing community, you can always expect a distinctive and daring blend of fast paced content, startup innovation pitches and unconventional entertainment from madfest events. You'll find me causing trouble on stage, recording live versions of this podcast and sharing a beer with the nicest and most influential people in marketing. Check it out at www dot madfest london.com.
Where did this come from? Like this is really unusual to me, and I love the balance that you've got your kind of page one, which is your data and your and you're obviously consciously taking, like quant stuff from the website, but also about qual stuff that's coming from the from the customer service, which is, it's very rare to meet a marketer who wants both of those things, certainly on the show anyway. So you've got this kind of this basket of data, and then the next page, with your quick wins and your challenges and your opportunities, like really getting to the point, but then the final inspiration and creativity. It's a very comprehensive, but also quite an exciting way to plan the month ahead. Where did it come from?
Priscila Lopez 12:17
Well, I think that I started like detecting that my team somehow were working in silos, let's say, and they couldn't identify certain things that the other area was doing and that and could directly impact in their work. So now that they have this broader view and big picture of what's going on around all the business, the whole digital business, somehow they start connecting the data and dots and like, start perceiving trends and behaviors on clients that somehow they try to predict what the client is going to do in the next month, depending, I mean, based on all these data that we are sharing, and I think somehow that they are listening from, I mean, in from the from the customer service center manager and from the digital team, what's what is happening that they weren't aware of before? Somehow, like, like, I don't know something, something inside them, I wakes up and, yeah, they start just like, coming with ideas.
Tom Ollerton 13:30
And how does it actually work? So you say you print it out on paper. Yes, two pages the first day of the month, you put it out. And is it a pre read, or does everyone read it together.
Priscila Lopez 13:40
No, it is already scheduled, actually scheduled for the rest of the year. So I took one like two hours of their time few days before the month, the month ahead start so and we opened the session first with the learnings from the month before.
Tom Ollerton 14:00
One on one?
Priscila Lopez 14:01
No, no. This. Everyone there, everyone there. So everyone can hear and actually they feel very comfortable like sharing all their new ideas and also the pain points that they had in the previous month.
Tom Ollerton 14:13
And so what? Obviously, we can't talk about any commercially sensitive information here, but I'm curious to know what, what has come out of this process that surprised you the way you thought, Oh, I'm glad we did that, because I wouldn't have known it otherwise?
Priscila Lopez 14:28
Yeah, let's say, mainly in the merchandising position, I would say that somehow the offer that we had, it wasn't completely aligned with the market, but it was kind of difficult for us to understand, like, why? If, I don't know if last year was working well, so we tried to replicate almost the same. But yeah, so with this, these meetings and this preparation, we realized that somehow we were, like, misleading. The offer, and, yeah, the e-merchandising, especially, like, realized that the offer was lacking, or certain categories that were weaker and that they need to, like, somehow be richer for the audience out there.
Tom Ollerton 15:15
So how would you advise someone who's listening to this podcast, including myself, who thinks that's a really good idea, my brain's going well, how could we do something similar at Automated Creative. What are we not doing? So it's got me thinking. But what would the advice be on how to start this process? How do you get it set up?
Priscila Lopez 15:38
Well, of course, it depends on how large is your team. In my case, I have a small team, so that gives us the opportunity to everyone share, sharing their thoughts and their inspiration and their challenge and everything. But I would say that first of all, like, be aware of how large your team is, and also like, who would be like, the the more open people in the in the inside your team to share, to be willing to share, first the information, but also their ideas.
Tom Ollerton 16:11
And what hasn't worked in this process. What do you wish you'd done differently?
Priscila Lopez 16:18
I think since it was kind of some idea that, like, I don't know, came to my mind, like, suddenly, I didn't structure that that well in the first month, you know? So, yeah, it took us around more than three hours. Let's say that's a lot of time. So in the coming months, I try to down it to only two hours, maximize maximum and yeah, like I tried, I understood, like, what they were more excited about. And, for example, they were more excited about inspiration. So I tried to concentrate more on that and less on the other segments.
Tom Ollerton 17:04
So unfortunately, we're coming to the end of the podcast now, but thank you so much for sharing both the monthly additional digital preparation for winners. I just love the positivity of using the word winners in the title of this process. It's brilliant. If someone wants to get in touch with you to discuss anything that we've covered in the podcast today, where is a good place to do that, and what makes a message that you will actually reply to?
Priscila Lopez 17:25
I think the best channel is LinkedIn. For me, you can find me as Priscila Lopez. There is a bunch of Priscila Lopez, of course, but if you just type Louis Vuitton, you just find me right away. And I would say that if you ask for some kind of advice, a genuine in a genuine way, I will definitely reply.
Tom Ollerton 17:48
Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time.
Priscila Lopez 17:50
Thank you Tom.
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