CMO Spotlight | Don McGuire - Qualcomm

Hey, thanks for having me. Good to see you.

Sure. Well, if you're unfamiliar with the company, we're a large technology company. We've been around for about 40 years. This is our 40th birthday this year. So old by some standards, still new by others. We started by inventing some of the most amazing wireless technologies that the world has ever seen. And then we've sort of grown and diversified and innovated from there. And now we're this sort of multifaceted technology company that's really on a mission to deliver intelligent computing everywhere. And so we are right in the middle of the AI revolution. We are across so many different business sectors. I get to be the CMO of an amazing company that's always changing and morphing and growing. And I get to steward kind of three major brands, and the Qualcomm brand obviously being our master brand, and our Snapdragon brand which is more of our direct-to-consumer brand portfolio, and then our Dragon Wing brand which is really all about industrial IoT and robotics and autonomy in some of those areas. So a really vast portfolio of products and solutions. And you know, most people don't realize this probably, if they walk around their house or their office, they probably have at least five to 10 products that they use every day that are powered by Qualcomm in some way, shape, or form. So, a really cool company, fun time, and it's great to be the CMO.

Sure. I mean, like the company, the role has evolved. I became CMO a little over four years ago, about four and a half years ago, actually. And we've really sort of introduced or evolved the concept of what really marketing could be at a technology company. You know, we've been rooted in engineering, we've been rooted in invention and innovation, and when companies sort of start from that point, sometimes the discipline of marketing is really not well understood or not well practiced. And so it's been kind of a journey for the team to not only build the discipline and connect the dots for the company on how important the art and the science of marketing is in achieving our business objectives, but just then to also build the capabilities up of the organization so we can deliver for the business. You know, I mentioned the business continues to grow and morph and diversify, and we need new marketing ideas, we have new audiences we have to talk to, and we have to explore new ways and new parts of the marketing mix in order to achieve those objectives. So, it's really been an area of the business that has grown and developed and matured specifically over the past four years to be, you know, not unlike a marketing organization that you'd see at more of a consumer-facing company. And we're practicing the same types of activities and initiatives that you might see at a CPG brand in a lot of ways. And so, that's been exciting. It's been fun. It allows us to explore our business side and our consumer side. And it's also allowed me to bring on some really talented people and to do some great stuff.

Yeah, you know, I've sort of always, I kind of grew up in tech. And I started my career in sales, like a lot of people who major in marketing out of college. At least back when I graduated, there weren't a lot of sort of marketing jobs that were entry level. And so most of the recruiting opportunities and most of the job postings that were sort of available to me and people who graduated on that track were really sales jobs. And so I started in sales, like a lot of marketers do in their career. And I really liked the fact that I got to experience that part of the art and science of moving products and goods through sort of from the company to the manufacturing process all the way through to the end user. Because sales is a discipline that teaches you a lot of good skills. You know, it teaches you how to handle rejection, how to overcome objections. It really helps sharpen your interpersonal skills, your relationship skills, how to read people, how to sort of interact with people and bring yourself to different levels in order to make that connection. And so I think it's made me a better marketer for sure to have had that sales experience. So that's what I started, and yeah, I started working on the wireless side. You know, graduating from college, didn't really know what I wanted to do, and it was actually my father who sort of convinced me to look at this new kind of burgeoning area of cellular and wireless technology. And so I applied for a job and got it and started selling, you know, cellular service and devices for an operator here in the US, and then sort of just grew up within that environment. And then made the transition sort of broad across the ecosystem to different parts of the technology space, which led me through various pathways and amazing experiences working for amazing companies and not so amazing experiences working for not so amazing companies, which is all part of the journey, right? And then landed here like nine and a half years ago, almost 10 years ago now, here at Qualcomm. And as you said, I'm a native San Diegan, and so it's been great. And I've actually lived back here in San Diego since 1996. But it's been great. It's been great to work at such a great company who's founded here and who has its roots here in San Diego. And so it's a privilege, really.

Absolutely. Always be selling.

We're all in sales.

Oh, wow. You know, I think regardless of the career choice that you're making, just one of the things that I would advise or a piece of advice I would give would be to, you know, just don't be afraid of opportunity. I think, you know, especially when you're starting out, there's a lot of unknowns, a lot of uncertainty, and so I think you just realize that your first job is not going to be your last job. Right, that's a rarity in this world. And so, you know, get some experience, dive in, right? Get the process started. And then also just always be in control of your destiny. You know, don't let someone else control where you go and what career paths you may want to choose or not choose. If you stay in control of your destiny, I think you can stay true to yourself and you can kind of get where you want to go. Sometimes it's hard because sometimes when you get into a work environment or a job, sometimes that overwhelms, it kind of takes over your life and then you feel like you're not in control anymore and you've got things and forces around you that are kind of manipulating your thoughts and your ideas because, you know, especially at big companies, the goal for the company is to sort of keep you doing what they want you to do. And oftentimes, you know, that may not be what you want. And so I would just give that advice or offer that advice. I'm a little envious quite frankly of this new generation of workforce in a lot of ways because, and I know every generation has challenges and opportunities, but Gen Z is so unafraid of charting their own path because there's never been more options for someone to earn a living and to make a career for themselves. You know, the shared economy didn't exist when we were coming out of school, and so they've really embraced that and entrepreneurship in ways that we never, you know, we were like, got to get a job, got to go work for a company, got to get stability, you know, those were the things that we focused on. And I think this generation is all about exploring what they really love to do and their passions and then finding a way to make a living at it. And so I think that's pretty cool and, you know, like I said, I'm a little envious, but even in that environment, still, you know, be in control of your destiny and don't be afraid to see opportunity as opportunity.

Ah, superpower. Wow. I don't know if I would describe it as a superpower, but I've been told by especially people close to me that they're envious of my ability to compartmentalize.

Well, I think if you can sort your thoughts and sort your emotions and sort your reactions to things into buckets, right? And avoid sort of crossover which can get you in trouble or can be dangerous sometimes. And if you can actually compartmentalize things, you can kind of get through difficult times or you can find a way through a challenge. And it's when things get mixed together and you can't sort of separate things that, you know, things tend to go wrong sometimes. And so, or if you're facing adversity and you have the ability to compartmentalize and to sort of focus through that adversity, I think is a skill that sort of can not only help you survive that adversity, but even thrive and come out of the other side of it, you know, in a better place than you were before. And so that's sort of, you know, something I've just been able to do. I don't know if it's from just early childhood and the experiences that I had which sort of forced me to be able to do that or triggered that in me, but that's something that people have told me that...

Yeah, I think if you can compartmentalize in a positive way, it can build resilience for sure. And so, I mean, it's not a bad skill.

Yeah, I think that there are a couple things that I would say, and one I think has evolved and become more important since the pandemic situation that we all lived through, right? And that is the idea of empathy and really from a leadership perspective being able to really empathize with people's situation. And I think the pandemic brought out a lot of challenging situations that we hadn't experienced as a society or as individuals or as families or as colleagues. And that really sort of tested a lot of things. And I think it made empathy that much more important because you had to understand individual situations, their home life situation, their ability to be productive when, you know, you have to be remote or feeling isolated and not feeling connected because, you know, we were told to stay away from each other. And if you didn't live in a family household or you didn't have a family or whatever, you know, it did create a lot of really isolated environments. And so I think it made empathy, it brought empathy back probably into the leadership sort of ecosystem where it may have sort of become less of a priority before that. And I think that's one thing that I found that has been really important. And then I think the second thing is transparency. You know, even when things are going bad or if there's a problem, I think it is difficult for people to surface problems and to bring them forward because, you know, people are afraid, right? They fear that they're going to get in trouble or that they're going to be looked at differently or that they're a failure or whatever it might be. And I've always been like, just talk about the problem, bring it forward, right? Be transparent. But also, you know, think about solutions and bring solutions forward. You know, the old saying, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. So, I don't mind, you know, problems. I really don't. Like, people can come to me and say, 'Oh my gosh, this is messed up, or that's messed up, or this happened, or that happened.' And it's not about whose fault it is or who's to blame or whatever, but it is about like, okay, let's as long as we understand the problem, then let's talk about solutions and, you know, there's a solution to every problem. So that's another thing I would say I would encourage people to think about, but also I probably would say that I sort of require that, you know, that spirit.

Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Sure. Well, we work with many marketing agencies. I think every situation is unique based on, you know, your resource makeup within your company or wherever. And my current situation with my team here at Qualcomm, you know, we are, I would say, significantly under-resourced as a marketing organization. If you look across my peers, if you look across my competitors, and you look at the sheer size of my organization versus those other companies, I'm on average about a third of the size. And this is, and I'm talking about a company that's in like nine different businesses, right? So...

And so definitely under-resourced. So one way I really depend on my agencies is to supplement my team. I have about as many people working on my business that live and sit inside of agencies as I do on my team. So if you took my team plus my agency partners and the people working 100% dedicated to my business, it would double the size of my team.

That's a reality that I have to live with. I don't necessarily believe it's the healthiest mix. Because, you know, obviously you're paying for those services, which I don't mind paying as long as they're good, but you also risk that intellectual property, that experience that these people are gaining on my business being lost in a blink.