Visa’s Frank Cooper III on Purpose, Culture & Building Iconic Brands

Great seeing you as always.

I never knew I was going to be a marketer. Didn't really know what marketing was when I went to undergrad. I was at Berkeley, went to Harvard Law School and loved the law actually. And it was in my second year of law school, had this incredible experience. I was working on this litigation around the game Tetris and my partner pulled me aside and said, 'So tell me why you want to practice law and what you want to do with your career.' And he said something that changed the trajectory of my whole career. He said, 'Look, whatever you do, look first at what are the things that energize you? What are the things that make you feel fulfilled and then couple that with your career? That's what's going to make you feel you're going to be successful no matter what.' He said, 'But the thing that would actually make you feel fulfilled is by tapping into those things that energize you.' And what I learned over time was that what I like doing is I like building things that actually help brands grow, companies grow through stories, experiences, creating memories, building relationships. And it so happens that thing is called marketing. And so I didn't know it at the time. And so people say, 'Well, man, damn, you wasted three years, right? You were in law school for three years.' And I'll tell you, every single day I feel like I use that law degree because it's not so much about learning the letter of the law. It's a way of thinking. How do you identify issues and analyze those issues and come up with solutions? That's what the legal process and legal thinking is all about. So, I'm very grateful for the legal background. And by the way, there are many lawyers who have made that transition. You know, Ken Chenault at American Express, he went into marketing, became the CEO of American Express. Clive Davis, legendary music mogul, law degree. They make that transition. It's those who kind of think about the law process and the way of thinking about the law and applying it to different areas that can transcend it.

Yeah. It almost pissed me off at first because I was like, 'Oh god, you finally got to Harvard Law. It's like I'm here and then I'm like the pathway is clear, you know?' It's like, you know, there's an easy, the path of least resistance would be either go into a law firm and go on the partnership path or go teach somewhere. Path of least resistance. But it rang true to me and I got to tell you it was tough and it wasn't like a singular evening of introspection. It was really going deep and thinking about what are the things, what do I actually want to become? What are the things that actually inspire me? What throughout my life has given me like these moments of joy and it's not always work. It's like how do you interact with people? What are those moments that actually bring that joy to you? And it was a tough thing. It was really tough. And I can't say I landed on it right away that I suddenly popped up, you know, after a deep dream one night and then said, 'Here's exactly what it is.' But it became clear to me that I love this idea of helping expand the potential of people both individually, but also collectively and particularly people who have been historically marginalized. I love giving any kind of opportunity for them to advance. And so that's been my source of inspiration as I went from job to job. I always went in with that lens in mind and I knew the things I had to do in order to perform that job well in relationship to the other executives. But I also kept in mind my own personal sense of kind of purpose and mission and my intention. And so it was extraordinarily helpful but it was introspection and it's constant and it evolves over time and it's not easy.

I don't think it ever ends. I think the core doesn't change very much but how it manifests itself has to change because the world around you is changing but the core doesn't change.

Not too many. Look, and at that time people thought you're absolutely crazy, right? But I actually went to Motown first. So I was very fortunate in retrospect. I worked at two of the most iconic urban labels, but definitely maybe even record labels in the world, right? Started at Motown and then went to Def Jam. But part of what became clear to me was that, and I had played music before and I knew a lot of people in the entertainment industry, but it became clear to me that who's shaping people's perception, who's shaping culture. You know, why do people freak out when they see a musical artist come, a musical star compared to any other star like a big celebrity, a big film star? People like it and they cheer and they go a little but they actually lose their minds when they see a musical artist. Why is that? And it became clear to me that music was a vehicle for changing the way people think about themselves and the world around them. And I loved Motown because Motown did that in terms of you in the era of integration. It took black culture and said, 'Hey, I can actually shape black culture and music in a way that is digestible by a wide range of people and I can elevate everybody through that.' Berry Gordy's genius was that and he did that across the board whether it was the Temptations, Diana Ross and Michael Jackson all the way up to the 90s, you know, Boyz II Men and Shanice Wilson and others. And Def Jam did the opposite thing. They said what the world needs right now and culture needs right now is when you have falling institutions, when people are losing trust in institutions, people are like, 'How do I do it myself? How do I operate outside the mainstream?' And hip-hop was a manual for that. That's what it was all about and it's all about finding your community of people that are going to help you move along. And so for me, those were like the sources of inspiration because if you want to expand potential of people you have to give them both the confidence that they can do it but also the mechanism, the systems to do it. And so I think music was for me at least, the way I perceived it, the most powerful vehicle to do that and I just kept applying that even when I went to Pepsi and other places.

Yeah, you know, I was at a conference down on Wall Street and at the time I was in the music business and there were probably about eight people on the panel and two of us were saying, 'Oh, no, no, no. It's over.' Like the original way in which we actually produce and distribute and market music, that world is done. And we were the outliers on that. And so we went up and we talked to Nicholas Negroponte who was a co-founder of the MIT Media Lab and he started showing us around and giving us his view of the future. So I said, you know what, I got to get deeper into technology. I had an unsuccessful startup in ubo.com but it taught me so much about the way in which technology and culture were coming together. And that's what I wanted to do when I came to AOL, short stint at AOL because I got a call from this guy named Clarence Avant who's probably one of my lifelong mentors, Clarence Avant. And there's a film on him on Netflix called The Black Godfather. But Clarence actually called me and said, 'Hey, I know you're probably enjoying what you're doing, Frank. I know you want to, you know, technology culture, but I got out of this meeting and people were saying the way things are going to move now is going to be much more about technology. It's going to be much more about culture. It's going to be much less about just celebrating the celebrity and we're going to try to shift our marketing toward that. I think you should come in and talk to Dawn Hudson who's the president of Pepsi-Cola North America at the time.' And that was my switch. I had no experience in CPG. Had no intention of going there. If you asked me at the time, I would say it's technology and entertainment is my sweet spot and my passion. And so I kind of stumbled into it until I had that conversation with Dawn.

Yeah, I mean Pepsi was I would say the most formative period of my career in terms of how I think about marketing. And Matt, it's in part because of all the change that happened. But here's what I kept in mind. I said, you know what, most of my counterparts right now, they're looking at the industry. They're analyzing the industry, the competitive set. They're looking at traditional marketing levers and they're trying to improve those things incrementally. I decided based on what I learned through music and what I learned through the tech companies, I decided to start in culture first. So I said let me look at how are things happening within culture. How are people grouping themselves? And it's always vastly different from any of the research organizations I went to. I was like, the cookie cutter demographics. I say, you know, what I know for sure is that those traditional demographics of age and gender and income and geographic location and ethnicity are no longer great proxies for how people think and feel and behave. I said, I know that for sure. And then so then they, if you remember, then they came the psychographics and all these kind of weird terms. Hey, these are limits for Sierra Mist lemon lime. Can someone show me a limit head like in person? Can someone show me somebody who actually self-identifies as a limit head? And you can't do it. What I did know is that people were starting to group together based on shared values and shared aspirations and passions. And that to me was the link. And so I started to look at things. We took, you know, the street skating to the next level. I looked at music again and leveraged music, but it was always around this idea that culture is going to inform how we communicate to people and how we build products and how we market to our core targets.

Yeah. First of all, so think about the Mountain Dew brand. It's crazy. It's crazy that I was running a Mountain Dew brand because Mountain Dew is the name is a euphemism for moonshine, right? We grew up in the hills of Tennessee. And if you look at the earliest logo of Mountain Dew, it's a hillbilly charging up a mountain with a shotgun going towards the shed. It's the first logo of Mountain Dew. And people, well, how do you get from that to this kind of a do-it-yourself platform, which was, I think, on the leading edge of what was happening and a precursor to the maker movement and a lot of the economy, all those creator, all of that. And what stood out for me is that the values of that brand was always about do it yourself, operate outside the mainstream and remain true to yourself, right? And when you had Mr. Youth, we just carried that forward and said like now how do you apply that in today's world and that was one of the great projects I thought was a lot of fun and had an impact on the business. So it was great.

Yeah, that was a remarkable experience I tell you. And again, knew nothing about investments. You know, at the time, but what I did know, my whole career has been built around this idea of change, right? So, what are industries that are undergoing significant change and who are companies and leaders that actually want to lead the change? And investments and finance in general felt like it had escaped the digital economy in many respects because they could still muscle things through. Highly regulated too, hard to make change, barriers to entry are difficult but then it started to happen. Number one, and so I said okay change is happening. Number two, for someone like BlackRock, you know, BlackRock grew. When I joined there were probably about $5 trillion of assets under management. It's hard to be quiet and invisible when you start to hit those marks and when I left there were 10 trillion of assets under management. And so it became apparent that they were public but no one knew who they were, why they existed. Were they making a positive contribution to the world or were they in some ways, you know, similar to how people had perceived Goldman Sachs years before? And so it became clear that they needed not only to amplify their brand, but to decide how are we going to build this kind of base of customers and stakeholders in a way that they support us. And so I saw that as a fantastic challenge. But there's one more thing that you, I started off with what my own personal sense of purpose was, this whole notion of expanding potential in people. And the thing that I had not thought about until I started having the conversations with BlackRock was that, you know, we think about health and nutrition and physical fitness and mindfulness and all that and we say this is part of our overall sense of well-being. The thing we never really talk about is money. And our relationship with money and how you earn it and spend it and borrow it and invest it and give it. Which also impacts relationships too. 100% right. And it became clear, I said, well, you know, that frontier, you know, no one's ever explored it. We don't get taught, no matter what level of schooling you've had, you don't really get taught anything about financial literacy. And then if you walk into a place where they're teaching financial literacy, your eyes will gloss over and you'll pass out, right? Because it's like so boring and jargon-filled. And so I just saw it as an opportunity to bring some of that again that cultural dimension back into finance, which had historically thought of itself as being divorced from that. To bring that back in and do some things that could actually I thought help communities and hopefully large groups of people.

Right. At all. I mean, it's partly a failure of the schooling system overall. I think since they're really designed to create people to work in corporations for the most part and they're doing a better job at that now in teaching people more about entrepreneurship. But that's a gaping hole in terms of anymore. How do you build a healthy relationship with money across that full spectrum?

Yeah. Yeah. We could spend an hour on that podcast because first order business though, pay teachers more. And continue to attract I think a new set of thinkers into that profession.

Yeah. I mean, it really is. And it's funny because I thought about that way, but I didn't realize until I got there like how true it is. You know, it has the lifestyle aspect and the cultural aspect of Pepsi, the social media perspective from BuzzFeed, the B2B aspect of BlackRock, all that coming together. And people say, well, what about music? And again, to me, that was my deepest training I had in cultural branding was in music. And I feel like all that's coming together now. So now if I look at Visa and I look at a property like FIFA, World Cup, I look at it both through the cultural lens, but also the industry lens, also the B2B lens. And so, it's been a great ride so far. It's a great company, great brand, but it's also an industry that's undergoing massive change, right? Payments technology and solutions, you know, with the rise of FinTech with more people using their mobile phone as a device, right, for any kind of value exchange. And then you have a whole new layer of value exchange happening. It's not just about paying for something that you see within a store or on an e-commerce site. It's what's happening in video games. It's how creators are getting paid. Musicians in their platform, you know, what are the rails that are allowing them to get paid and to pay other people. And so, it's a fascinating time. And again, I love this moment of change, you know, and change is happening in that industry and I'm very excited that Visa wants to be on the leading edge of that.

Yeah. I mean, you know, so I've been fortunate to move across various industries and a few things I've learned is that before speaking to anyone trying to just understand how is money made, you know, just like where is the money and how does it move within that industry. The second thing I try to get a snapshot of the ecosystem of the industry, who are the players and how do they relate to each other. But really I spend 90% of my time at least in the first 60 days just talking to people and listening, right? And many times they want to hear, you know, my story or want me to share something about what I've learned. But I try to resist that as much as possible because I'm just trying to understand how they think, how the business works, what's not on paper. And what I find is that by having the conversation more than, and I'll get all the documents and I'll get the full download. I got binders and stuff and, you know, they're sending me folders and email and that's great. What I find is that most of the real answers aren't written down anywhere. You know, how do decisions get made? It's so interesting. You know, what do you see around the corner? What's preventing us from innovating? I see changes happening in the industry. Do we see those changes? And if so, why are we not on the leading edge of that? What's our plan to react to them? Exactly. Right. Exactly. Right. And so, I just ask a bunch of questions and I try to do it at all levels and across all regions. And so I'm not just talking to the CFO, you know, I want to talk to somebody who's recently hired the past three years or something like that and get their perspective. You know, why did you come? What do you see? What are you disappointed by? So, I just ask a bunch of questions and listen and try to digest. And one of the things I think I'm pretty good at is then taking all that information and pulling out of that some key insights, some key ideas about, okay, here's where I think there are some opportunities and more important, here's how marketing can help be a growth engine for profitable growth for the company. So that's kind of what I do.

Well, so one I definitely don't do it alone. So I don't go into the basement and come out with the plan and say here it is. What I try to do is find a group of people and make them my leadership team, different thinkers, different capabilities and put them together and start thinking about what are the things, here's our ultimate goal. Our ultimate goal of marketing should be to help the business drive profitable growth. Here's my understanding of how we historically have driven that growth. What do you think we need to do to change? And I just ask that question and I'll have some ideas about what we can do. For me, brand always has to come up at some point. And then on brand, I just push hard on going back to kind of the founding ideas. And we're lucky at Visa because Dee Hock, you know, who was founder of Visa was so far ahead of his time, you know, and when you go back, you start to see the seeds of who we are today. And so get rid of all the taglines. If you go back, Dee Hock said things like if you remove friction from money, ordinary people can do extraordinary things. And that was like for us, oh that means there's possibility in what we do. It's not about the credit card. It's not about Visa as a payments technology. It's really about how do we help people move forward. And so for me that's like a rich gift. And so we did a whole dig around the brand ethos and our brand belief and we're repositioning the brand based on that.