Jean-Gabriel: Branding, Building for Long-term, AI, Creativity

In this episode of Behind the Journey, Prateek, Employer Brand Lead, is joined by Jean-Gabriel Duveau, VP of Brand & Strategic Partnerships at GetYourGuide, to discuss brand building and creativity.

Jean-ga shares his perspective on brand building, drawing from over 15 years of experience at companies like Procter & Gamble. He discusses the importance of understanding your core consumer, building a long-term brand, and telling authentic stories. They also discuss data vs. intuition, generating ideas, and leveraging AI to increase productivity.

• (00:00) - Teaser
• (00:47) - Intro
• (02:21) - Working in CPG and finding GetYourGuide
• (06:03) - Why Jean-ga joined GetYourGuide
• (07:41) - Why does GetYourGuide exist as a product?
• (10:03) - Traditional vs modern branding
• (11:57) - Understanding consumers
• (16:09) - Telling authentic stories
• (19:10) - Failures and non-negotiable aspects in branding
• (22:33) - Building for long-term
• (23:59) - Data vs intuition
• (27:09) - AI's impact on Brand building and creativity
• (34:28) - Meaningful work
• (37:44) - Channeling creativity
• (38:36) - Role of sport
• (43:48) - Full-funnel thinking in Brand
• (46:07) - Favorite experience

GetYourGuide is hiring
Want to help travelers make memories across the world? GetYourGuide is hiring - visit https://getyourguide.careers/ to explore open roles.

Connect with Jean-ga on LinkedIn.

Follow GetYourGuide:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/getyourguide-ag 
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/insidegetyourguide

Creators and Guests

Host

Prateek K. Keshari

Comms & Product Marketing at GetYourGuide.

Producer

GetYourGuide

Unlock the world’s most unforgettable travel experiences with GetYourGuide.

Guest

Jean-Gabriel

Jean-Gabriel Duveau is the VP of Brand & Strategic Partnerships at GetYourGuide

What is Behind The Journey?

Listen in as we explore and uncover what it's like to build the experience economy by diving deeper into the journeys of people making it happen, and getting a peek into their careers in engineering, product, design, marketing, and more. A podcast by GetYourGuide Careers.



Teaser 

[00:00:00] Jean-Gabriel: When people come back from their holidays, very few talk about their hotel, very few talk about their flights, but they all talk about what they have experienced when they were on holidays. Those super rich emotional moments, these things that basically you keep with you for, sometimes the rest of your lives that is the true richness of travel in itself. And as a marketplace for travel experiences, our purpose is really to help fill the lives of the travelers and of the people with more of these moments of discovery and wonder. That feeling of joy when you make memories, with people, from different cultures and around the world, that is really what we want to make accessible to more and 

[00:00:47] Jean-Gabriel: more people. 

Intro 

[00:00:47] Prateek: How do you build a long lasting brand that connects emotionally with people? Why is understanding your core consumer key to brand success? What role does AI play in creativity? And why does a company like GetYourGuide exist in the first place? 

[00:01:07] Prateek: Hi, I'm your host Prateek and this is Behind the Journey by GetYourGuide, a show where we explore and uncover what it's really like to build the experience economy by diving deeper into the journeys of people making it happen. 

[00:01:20] Prateek: In this episode, we have Jean-ga, VP of Brand and Strategic Partnerships at GetYourGuide, and someone I deeply admire. Throughout our conversation, Jean-ga shares his unique perspective on brand building by drawing from over 15 years of experience and a one of a kind vantage point. 

[00:01:37] Prateek: This podcast is by GetYourGuide, a company on a mission to connect millions of travelers with some of the most unforgettable experiences around the world. GetYourGuide is headquartered in Berlin. And since its launch in 2009, travelers have booked more than 80 million activities through the platform. And all of it is made possible by a global team. 

[00:02:02] Prateek: So if you're looking for your next role and the thought of making an impact on how people experience the world sounds exciting to you, head to getyourguide.careers. That's getyourguide dot careers. Now let's unpack Jean-ga's brand building mindset. 

Working in CPG and finding GetYourGuide 

[00:02:21] Prateek: Can you tell us a bit more about your journey and how did GetYourGuide happen? 

[00:02:28] Jean-Gabriel: So, um, I'm Belgian , I come from a little town close to Germany, in the German speaking part of Belgium. 

[00:02:34] Jean-Gabriel: So not everyone knows that there is a German speaking part of Belgium. So I've been born and raised there studied commercial engineering in Belgium and in Spain. And then, during my studies that were primarily focused on kind of financial stuff company valuation and these kinds of stuff I realized, I didn't like that much that part of the... 

[00:02:53] Prateek: what was boring in it? 

[00:02:55] Jean-Gabriel: A lot of numbers, right? 

[00:02:56] Jean-Gabriel: Not so much creativity to , to my sense, but then in parallel, I was basically running a marketing company run by students. We were about 10 people and we were trying to offer marketing services to companies for a relatively cheap price because we were still students. 

[00:03:12] Jean-Gabriel: And as part of that, I really developed this passion for marketing questions helping, being in touch with bigger companies, being in touch with brands trying to help them resolve some of the challenges delivering, consumer data to them and these kinds of things. 

[00:03:28] Jean-Gabriel: And as part of that marketing company work, I got in touch with P&G, Procter & Gamble. As you probably know, one of the biggest consumer goods companies in the world. Brand is front and center for that company. So I started to work there actually right after my studies uh, 2005 did that for about 15 years. 

[00:03:46] Prateek: Yeah. And it was a long time. 

[00:03:47] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah, that's a long time. Actually, it's funny when I talk about 15 years at one company to, people in the tech industry, everybody looks at me ... like, with very big eyes, but it's no, it didn't get any boring. I moved from Geneva to Brussels to Rotterdam. 

[00:04:01] Jean-Gabriel: So in Geneva, we had European headquarters in Brussels and Rotterdam we had the Benelux unit. Then I moved to Frankfurt where I was working on the Germany, Austria, Switzerland business did a couple of categories started on laundry detergent, the biggest category for Procter & Gamble, the biggest brands. 

[00:04:18] Jean-Gabriel: And then after five years moved leading the Pampers brand, another, icon. And the last five years in Germany, I was working on beauty and grooming. So Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Pantene also some beauty brands, Olay. 

[00:04:30] Prateek: There are multiple brands over the course of 15 years. 

[00:04:32] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah. It's about between 20 and 25 brands, I would say most of them were always market leaders. 

[00:04:37] Jean-Gabriel: So, you know, well Established brands with a lot of history proven recipe for success. So that is essentially what you learn which is very strong heritage lots of frameworks very strategic approach to brand building and basically carrying kind of the the history of those brands and trying to bring them into the future. 

[00:04:55] Jean-Gabriel: And then, after 15 years I really felt like doing something different. I wanted to do something which was more fast paced something which was more in the tech scene, because I was really triggered by kind of marketplaces e-commerce kind of something which is a little bit more intangible, right. 

[00:05:13] Jean-Gabriel: Versus, the, physical goods and the products that you see on shelf. And yeah, that's how um, one evening uh, I got in touch with Johannes, Johannes Reck, uh, our CEO, he called me and we had a conversation about GetYourGuide and we had a conversation about the aspirations of GetYourGuide in terms of brand building. 

[00:05:31] Jean-Gabriel: And, Johannes is very convincing, right? Has a, has obviously a very strong vision for the company a very convincing vision about where he wanted to get the brand to and when I hung up. I actually realized, before the call, I'd never heard about GetYourGuide. 

[00:05:45] Jean-Gabriel: And I realized I had the GetYourGuide app on my phone. And I thought, Hey, that might be an interesting challenge for a brand builder, right? How do you make that more conscious? How do you drive that awareness for for the brand? And then, yeah, the rest is history. 

[00:05:59] Jean-Gabriel: Here I am. It's been three and a half years and it hasn't been any boring since then. 

Why Jean-ga joined GetYourGuide 

[00:06:03] Prateek: That's quite a journey. Take us back to that time of it, what resonated with you the most for GetYourGuide specifically and convinced you that GetYourGuide should be your next destination. What was Johannes very convincing about? 

[00:06:16] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah. So what was very important for me at that point in time was a couple of ingredients. The first one is I wanted, to feel boldness in the brand building vision. So I didn't want to join a company that was basically saying, yeah, we're interested in doing some of the brand work and let's see where it gets us. 

[00:06:36] Jean-Gabriel: I got really excited about basically Johannes telling me, look we have come until here with a form of recipe for our business and a certain form of business model. What we want to do now is build a household brand for travel experiences. And we are extremely ambitious about it. 

[00:06:53] Jean-Gabriel: It's something we all convinced about it. We just need somebody who shows us the way and this conviction was, very important for me to hear. The second thing is obviously travel and travel experiences. I've been selling diapers and shavers and shampoo before. 

[00:07:08] Prateek: Different ball game altogether no? 

[00:07:09] Jean-Gabriel: Different ball game. It's like completely different aspirational category. Something that people love to talk about, something that people love to experience. Incredibly emotional. That was obviously that was obviously also very important for me. 

[00:07:22] Jean-Gabriel: And then. I think the third piece was that I felt that there is so much do in this category, people don't think this way there is no real established player in the category. So it's this super high potential open field and yeah, that, those three ingredients were like critical to me and sounded extremely convincing. 

Why does GetYourGuide exist as a product? 

[00:07:41] Prateek: Wow. Yeah. Coming to GetYourGuide again, I'm going to ask you a very existential question. Why does the company exist? Why should a company like GetYourGuide need to exist in the first place? And if you can elaborate a bit more on both as a brand and a product that millions use at this point to book experiences all over the world. 

[00:08:01] Prateek: What's the vision like? 

[00:08:04] Jean-Gabriel: There is this sentence that, our leaders often say, which resonates a lot with me, which is that when people come back from their holidays, very few talk about their hotel, very few talk about their flights. But they all talk about what they have experienced when they were on holidays, those super rich emotional moments, these things that basically you keep with you for, sometimes the rest of your lives that is the true richness of travel in itself. And as a marketplace for travel experiences, our purpose is really to help fill the lives of the travelers and of the people with more of these moments of discovery and wonder. That feeling of joy when you make memories, with people, from different cultures and around the world, that is really what we want to make accessible to more and more people. We want to make sure that we elevate the travel experiences, that we make sure that, more and more people come back feeling energized feeling inspired by those experiences when you travel. It's not easy to find them. It's not easy to trust that you will get good experiences. 

[00:09:16] Jean-Gabriel: You don't know where to look for them. You don't know how to build your plan when, it's a lot of searching, lots of websites, lots of information. There's a lot of also noise out there. 

[00:09:25] Prateek: There's a lot of so many options. 

[00:09:26] Jean-Gabriel: Absolutely. Lots of options. 15 different helicopter ride suppliers in New York, which one is a good one, right? 

[00:09:33] Jean-Gabriel: So there is so much to do to, there's so much problems to solve in this category. And I feel like. With the expertise of about now 13 years and with all of these great people in the company, we can solve that problem and we can promise more memories and more unforgettable travel experiences. 

[00:09:50] Jean-Gabriel: And that is really the purpose of this company. And I feel like if we can solve this we're going to get a lot of, positive and highly, emotional customer feedback, because that is basically what enriches your travel experience. 

[00:10:03] # 

Traditional vs modern branding 

[00:10:03] Prateek: can you go deeper and compare for us the difference between building a brand where there is a clear playbook, like. A hundred years worth of learning and more. Vs a tech company, like, GetYourGuide as we were discussing before. Where your approach may naturally be a bit more different. 

[00:10:26] Prateek: Are the recipes to tell a compelling story to inspire people different in both cases, or would you say they're largely the same. 

[00:10:35] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah. I think there are two pieces in your question. The first one is, comparing CPG with the travel experience. And actually to be honest, it is not that different. 

[00:10:45] Jean-Gabriel: The purpose of Pampers is not just, to keep the babies dry at night. Yeah. The purpose is by doing so you're basically contributing to the happy and healthy development of your baby. This elevation into something that is truly matters for you is one of these success recipes, which, I've taken in my little toolbox out of these 15 years. 

[00:11:09] Jean-Gabriel: Now, transposing is to GetYourGuide, obviously, right? Step one is to inspire people, is to tell them, look, you can do more out of your trip. You can elevate that, you can make memories, right? That's our, that's the elevation. That's the inspiration we are trying to give to to people. 

[00:11:25] Jean-Gabriel: And so I would say, on an emotional level, there are some joint recipes that we can apply. And I would say what I took with me is um, is looking at brand building in a very strategic way applying frameworks and and recipes that, work for any brand, for instance, starting with a proper consumer segmentation, understanding the needs of your consumers, right? 

[00:11:50] Jean-Gabriel: Starting with truly the consumers in mind and not just defining what you would like to be, and then just trying to see if there is anybody who is interested in that. 

Understanding consumers 

[00:11:57] Prateek: Go deeper on that. What do you mean? What do you mean by that? 

[00:12:00] Jean-Gabriel: You hear a lot um, a lot of people talking about consumer centricity, but many use it only as a buzzword. 

[00:12:07] Jean-Gabriel: I think few really start with that. And we have taken the time during the pandemic to actually really go deep into that, proper consumer segmentations with thousands of consumers trying to understand what are the subgroups out of the total population? What are their needs? what are the commonalities between those groups? What do they want, right? I mean, There are people who, just want to relax and lie on the beach somewhere. But there are others that really truly want to immerse themselves into a culture, into a city. 

[00:12:36] Jean-Gabriel: So really trying to understand, what are the audiences and what are the ones that resonate most what kind of the product that we sell was step one based on those consumer needs defining, Hey, what do we want to stand for? What is our brand equity? What's our purpose? What's the essence of our brand, what our values what our functional benefits what our emotional benefits, what we call traditionally USPs. What is the brand character and the incredibly strategic. piece of work which we did like with the leadership of this company during, the first during the first year of the pandemic. And that serves as the North star for us as we go and execute our brand in the different geographies. 

[00:13:18] Jean-Gabriel: Whilst we, we take the strategic part and, and really go deep on consumers and on, on brand equity definition, that's the guardrails. Now building the recipe, the tactics, how we do this, what are the media choices we make? 

[00:13:35] Jean-Gabriel: How we, how we design our creatives, what are the ideas that we are pushing forward? That is something where there are actually less boundaries than what I was used in P& G with a hundred years of history. And that is what is liberating here is like, we are a bunch of, I would say extremely talented marketing folks and experienced brand people. 

[00:13:53] Jean-Gabriel: And we have now the opportunity to, within that framework, within that strategic guardrail, To think about how do we bring, unforgettable travel experiences to life for consumers? What are the stories we tell, and across, what type of channels can we reach those audiences in the best possible fashion? 

[00:14:09] Jean-Gabriel: And we can experiment, we make mistakes. We have successes fundamentally it's it's an absolutely um, liberating exercise versus. You know what I've experienced before where obviously the boundaries were much tighter based on, all of this past past learnings that a company has. 

[00:14:27] Prateek: So building one core, north star of your brand, and then thinking of tactics, creative tactics to execute on the promise. Is that a correct assessment of how you would look at, for example, building a long term brand? 

[00:14:43] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah. Yeah. The long term direction shouldn't change, right? The purpose and the essence, the character of your brand shouldn't change. It's a very strategic decision that honestly needs to be executive team CEO signed off because it should be the guiding principle or the North star for the entire customer experience. This is not a marketing gig, right? It's not because, we want to stand for unforgettable travel experiences that we just say it in our advertising. 

[00:15:18] Jean-Gabriel: From that moment on everything that we do needs to deliver against that promise. Otherwise authenticity of your brand is just, it's not given, you need to be authentic in everything you do with a customer journey. The customer experience needs to be true to, through that promise. And as you say, within those strategic guardrails, how you execute is obviously something which is where our teams have freedom to experiment freedom to test. 

[00:15:49] Jean-Gabriel: The one thing that is non negotiable, at GetYourGuide, which I think is has been also mind opening for me is you have to learn, you have to learn as quickly as possible. So it's all about, getting those learnings as quickly as possible to keep on improving the recipe over time. 

[00:16:06] Jean-Gabriel: And that is what we are trying to do. 

Telling authentic stories 

[00:16:09] Prateek: How do you tell these authentic stories to, people out there in the world? And I think it's more to do with building that emotional appeal, right? 

[00:16:19] Jean-Gabriel: You go back to the essence of your brand, and then, together with, our team, we define different ways of how we could do this. One of the ways that has proven successful for us, that we're continuing doubling down on is Originals by GetYourGuide. What are Originals by GetYourGuide ...those are experiences, once in a lifetime experiences that, we can enable, we can unlock, and that are fantastic stories, very inspiring stories to tell to our customers that bring that essence to life. Give you an example. The first one we launched was opening the Sistine Chapel with the Clavigero. 

[00:16:57] Jean-Gabriel: So the key keeper of the Vatican early in the morning before people join just absolutely, out of this world experience, I had the chance, the privilege on my role to be able to be one of the first ones to test it. 

[00:17:09] Prateek: I remember you had come back from it and you told me You had goosebumps. 

[00:17:13] Jean-Gabriel: I've even now talking about it is, it's one of these memories that,, I won't forget. 

[00:17:17] Jean-Gabriel: And I certainly will, talk all the time about more than reason probably. And this story resonated with so many people, watching that, ad or that creative or that piece of content about this experience. Had so much success. And we thought, Hey, let's double down on that. 

[00:17:35] Jean-Gabriel: Let's create those experiences. There's originals by GetYourGuide, let's make more of them. Another example we recently did was Sagrada Familia, , one of the most. Visited attractions in Barcelona. The moment they close their doors Juan de la Rubia, the the organist, chief organist international artist welcomes, a handful of people and guides them through, the empty Basilica and tells the story of sound in the concept of Gaudi's Basilica, and then place this private organ concert to these a handful of people. That is also an experience which, stays in your mind that hasn't happened a lot of time in the past people who experienced this, basically advocate that this has been one of the, absolutely life changing experience for them. 

[00:18:21] Jean-Gabriel: And those are the kind of experiences we try to offer to our customers. Not everyone can make them, they also stories and content that we produce, which people love to watch. And that truly embodies our brand, right? That's very authentic with the promise we are trying to bring across. 

[00:18:38] Jean-Gabriel: So my answer sorry for, a long answer to a short question. My answer would be, we need to make sure that we stay true to the core of our promise, and as long as that's the North star and as long as this is, guiding our decisions. 

[00:18:54] Jean-Gabriel: I believe that we will be authentic. As soon as we feel like we are deviating from, that promise, then, we're going to be obviously spotted by consumers as trying to tell them something which doesn't necessarily belong to our brand or to our brand's essence. 

Failures and non-negotiable aspects in branding 

[00:19:10] Prateek: I want to go back to the non negotiable expectation you mentioned that you have, not just for people that GetYourGuide, but probably in your larger career as well about continuing to learn as fast as possible. 

[00:19:25] Prateek: A big chunk of that comes from failing at things. What have been your biggest failures? And more recent failures in particular. 

[00:19:35] Jean-Gabriel: So I must say the, the mandate to learn is something which is very deeply rooted in the DNA of GetYourGuide. So I hadn't seen that to that extent in my previous career. 

[00:19:49] Jean-Gabriel: We like to talk about that failures are okay, but It wasn't, lift the way it is lifted to get your guy, which is truly about getting better and better over time, taking the learnings, moving on and improving our execution or our strategy. So far in the last, I would say three and a half years we have been for sure doing, a lot of mistakes experiments, a lot of experiments, reframe that. 

[00:20:17] Jean-Gabriel: I would say the one thing and most of them, were luckily relatively small ones involving a little bit of, a little bit of money, which we could have better invested. There are some creative learnings, there's some media learnings, nothing I would really call out as one thing that went completely wrong. 

[00:20:32] Jean-Gabriel: I would say probably. The one to call out is more on a behavioral on a behavioral level, which is called patience or impatience. 

[00:20:43] Prateek: What do you mean by that? 

[00:20:44] Jean-Gabriel: What I mean with that is tech and marketplaces and growth companies. I think we are obviously, we want to go fast, we want to scale fast. 

[00:20:54] Jean-Gabriel: We want to make sure that . We keep on having the foot on the pedal and speed our way through the developments of the company. Rome wasn't built in a day. 

[00:21:04] Jean-Gabriel: You know, we are talking about travel. 

[00:21:05] Jean-Gabriel: So let's talk about Rome, right? It wasn't built in a day. It's the same for brand building. So sometimes wanting to be too fast makes us to actually Make a little bit more of a, short term decisions or to not necessarily execute with perfection. I think, we have been rushing here and there a little bit too much into the executions too fast because we wanted to hit a certain deadline. 

[00:21:29] Jean-Gabriel: That was probably the case in 2021, when we started a little bit of our brand play in the US .Just a couple of weeks between taking the decision to move forward and then executing in the market. When you look across those executions today. You'll probably say, Hey, we could have, they were not bad, we could have spent a minute more in, in just trying to figure out what is the best way forward. 

[00:21:52] Jean-Gabriel: And then also in, in how we appreciate results or not appreciate results, it's brand building is a long game. Some of specifically in the category that has relatively limited frequency. So you don't travel, in CPG, you basically buy diapers every week. Or shampoo every second week. 

[00:22:08] Jean-Gabriel: You don't travel every week, right? You do it a couple of times a year at best. So the chance to actually see your brand building efforts drilling down the funnel and having really somebody convert harvesting that takes time. And. Appreciating the impact of your brand building efforts requires us to also take, to give it some time. 

[00:22:28] Jean-Gabriel: And so sometimes we pivot maybe a bit fast based on more short term type of decisions. 

Building for long-term 

[00:22:33] Prateek: How do you balance between building for long term versus short term impact. 

[00:22:43] Jean-Gabriel: Um, that's a very good question. I unfortunately don't have the the perfect solution to that. Or to, or yet I would say let's put it this way. 

[00:22:54] Jean-Gabriel: We need to look at, we need to look at KPIs that have a longer term impact. For instance, how does your awareness develop in a given market? Cause the hypothesis is the more people know your brand. The more they will, be receptive to the rest of your communication, engage with your brand open the app, convert, whatever comes down the funnel. 

[00:23:22] Jean-Gabriel: But you obviously need to have some shorter term guardrails for instance or very importantly, you need to make sure that, you see some lift happening in a certain period of time, call it six months, 12 months because obviously, you need to get some return for your investment, right? 

[00:23:41] Jean-Gabriel: So basically the way we look at it is we try to maximize for longer term KPIs, but we put some shorter term guardrails that should, indicate whether we are hitting some thresholds. That's how we are trying to organize our thoughts. 

Data vs intuition 

[00:23:59] Prateek: I like the framing a lot. And a bit of that is also, I imagine most of it, is also relying on data to guide you. And when you're building a long term brand, how do you balance intuition with data? Um, Or do, or do you actually look at both at all times? 

[00:24:25] Jean-Gabriel: So that's another good question. And again, there is probably no Perfect recipe for that. GetYourGuide is, in my opinion analytically savvy and focused. We also have access to more data because obviously we are, prepared. It's a proprietary marketplace. Yeah. So we know we know a lot of things, which obviously is more difficult to know when you have retailers in between. So data is omnipresent and dealing with that data extracting I would say. 

[00:24:52] Jean-Gabriel: Actions and directions and learnings from the data is something which is obviously front and center. For GetYourGuide. So that's the same for, same approach for brand building. We need to make sure that we build a very sound KPI framework. That we have a very sound drumbeat of, when we look at what from shorter term indicators, like for instance, branded searches, we know at any point of time, any point in time if our brand is being searched more or less than. The time before up to longer term KPIs. I was talking about, whether it's awareness or consideration. And then obviously also saw a number of KPIs that have some financial implications. 

[00:25:38] Jean-Gabriel: I was talking before, the ROI and the impact of different channels on that error. So there is a, you need to have a very sound. KPI framework, yet you need to leave space to gut feel and intuition. When you select for, when you go for specific ideas, when you go for specific creatives when you develop certain campaigns, when you engage on certain partnerships it's important that obviously we leave some space for conviction for gut feel, but then when we execute those, we then relatively quickly pivot in into measuring, and trying to detect the signals of what they do. 

[00:26:19] Jean-Gabriel: And if we feel like, they are not delivering against those signals that we would be expecting, we obviously ask ourselves the right question, why that is, and potentially, iterate or pivot relatively fast. So Very concrete examples. We virtually test all of our creative executions. 

[00:26:35] Jean-Gabriel: Some up front, some once they're in market. Either via brand lift test. The ones we test up front is through, tailor made conceptual or ad research. So we try to balance our creative intuition the conviction that a certain media recipe is right. But then we have basically a whole set of of tools and of measurements that indicate whether it's moving in the right direction or not, which helps us to pivot and integrate relatively fast on those, and then try to get them back on the on the trajectory we expect. 

AI's impact on Brand building and creativity 

[00:27:09] Prateek: It makes a lot of sense. And I think it also beautifully transitions into what I wanted to ask you next, which is AI and the human intuition, where we are, how we are looking at it creatively. We all know it's everywhere and it's creeping into creative work as well. You've seen the likes of ChatGPT, Midjourney bunch of tools out there right now. 

[00:27:37] Prateek: What role do you see it playing specifically for creative work in the coming months and years? And in a setting like brand where human intuition like we are talking about plays a strong role. 

[00:27:53] Jean-Gabriel: So I'm venturing into a field, which is obviously your expertise Prateek so, um, you know, 

[00:28:02] Prateek: Not my expertise. I'm just passionate. 

[00:28:04] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah. Very passionate about, and certainly also a great source of of learning for us. To quote you and that fundamentally shows into how we are leveraging AI technology in our brand organization right now we are very much moving into an AI assisted world and not into an AI dominated, right? 

[00:28:25] Jean-Gabriel: I like how you framed it as we, talked about the topic a little bit up front. Why AI assisted? Because the technology is going to help us to become more productive and faster in how we are doing things. It is not going to replace and take over our creative work. 

[00:28:47] Prateek: Can you share some examples? 

[00:28:48] Jean-Gabriel: So for instance, when we create content we are creating, hundreds of pieces of content, articles, destinations about points of interest. And we are pivoting from, writing articles from scratch, which obviously is very tedious and takes a lot of time to having developed a very, I would say advanced and well functioning prompt that gives us, a very good base to start from in terms of articles related to a destination or point of interest, which then our writers focus on with our brand lens and your understanding of, our brand essence back to the strategy writer, back to the North star focus on tweaking, changing, amending, perfecting, so that it fits our point of view. 

[00:29:38] Jean-Gabriel: And that just makes us more productive because instead of, spending a lot of time and just putting it up from scratch, we can, leverage the expertise of our people to tailor make those to our point of view and have a faster output. So that's one example, which is very top of mind. 

[00:29:56] Prateek: Would you, in that case, Say that in the most near term, the major uplift that you see is productivity gains. Is that a correct assessment? Yeah, 

[00:30:07] Jean-Gabriel: That would be how I believe it's AI is going to impact us. Again, I'm certainly bigger experts than I am but I believe that, my observation is this is. 

[00:30:16] Jean-Gabriel: This is how it's going to to help us moving forward. 

[00:30:20] Prateek: I remember in, this was I think a few months back, we were talking about this in one of our coffee chats. And you mentioned that you saw something that chat GPT has produced. I think it was a concept if I'm, if I remember correctly. And yeah, you found that really impressive as well, right? 

[00:30:33] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. I must say at times it's scary. It's scary what the tool is able to do. I have one, one personal example. I I was best man at the wedding not so long ago. And I wanted to do something extremely personal and I. Started to rewrite a song from Charles Aznavour and I tried to rewrite it with obviously. 

[00:30:54] Jean-Gabriel: Sentences and words that were reflecting my friendship to to the friend who was getting married. And it took me like, like an incredible amount of time. And then a couple of months after the wedding, I was just on the walk and I was just thinking back about that moment. And I opened the chat GPT app. 

[00:31:13] Jean-Gabriel: And, without giving it a lot of details, I was starting to put in a few anecdotes. And I asked Chad GPT to rewrite the song based on the anecdotes I was mentioning. And it did something like in five minutes, which was like scarily good. And I thought Oh my God, that would have saved me like weeks of worrying about how I was. 

[00:31:31] Jean-Gabriel: I was going to to get, to get that task done in the best possible fashion. So you know, very personal anecdote, but it's it's impressive what obviously the tools can do today and not only everything that is text, but then also obviously we are we are experimenting a lot with videos and imagery and. 

[00:31:50] Jean-Gabriel: Obviously the tools are a little behind, but then, catching up quickly. And I believe that with the millions of assets we are producing to play across all of the different channels that we have across the marketing funnel. This is going to be also a game changer in, in our ability to respond to that in a very quick and automated fashion. 

[00:32:11] Prateek: Are there any more examples that you could think of specifically when it comes to imagery and videos or is it more in exploration mode at the moment? 

[00:32:18] Jean-Gabriel: I would say it's more in exploration mode at the moment, even though our imagery manager recently Was showing us like a few iterations that we had done based on some imagery AI tools. 

[00:32:31] Prateek: What do you think of them? 

[00:32:31] Jean-Gabriel: I think they were they start to look like extremely good. So, you know, It's. 

[00:32:36] Prateek: How do you differentiate in these cases? We briefly talked about. Authenticity in brand-building. So with the rise of AI produced content imagery, and. Um, videos in particular. How do you see authenticity play a role? They become so good. You can't differentiate. How do you continue retaining what the brand stands for? 

[00:32:59] Jean-Gabriel: I would say that you need to have your brand personality clearly defined, based on this Northstar brand equity work, the next step was obviously to translate that into what's our tone of voice. What are our imagery guidelines what are sound guidelines, what basically stick, what are the iconic assets for the brand, right? 

[00:33:23] Jean-Gabriel: What is it that we want people in a twinkle of an eye at a certain point to associate to our brand? And we define very clearly a number of principles around imagery which basically is our point of view, how visual should look like for experiences and these kinds of things. And so when our imagery manager works with AI tools, same like with text he gets back a number of, iteration and executions, which look great, but then his work is essentially to make sure that he tailor makes it and that he prompts it in a way that it really surfaces. 

[00:34:02] Jean-Gabriel: Our brand essence and those imagery principles. And that is basically the added value work that is irreplaceable and you basically can't, can't do or anyone can do except the people that understand and know the brand is you take the output, but then you bring it to the next level, making sure that it really takes those guiding principles so that it really belongs to your brand. 

[00:34:23] Jean-Gabriel: That is really what should guarantee authenticity. 

Meaningful work 

[00:34:28] Prateek: What gives you the most satisfaction in your job? 

[00:34:31] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah, it's, you know, I think it's the satisfaction comes from really seeing the progress that we are making. 

[00:34:40] Jean-Gabriel: When you start to see all pieces of the brand building puzzle falling into place from. Really understanding what our consumer actually, what they need, what they want us to deliver to them. And then when you start seeing all of these stories of these ads the right media mix the impact and you basically see that, it's resonating with people. 

[00:35:04] Jean-Gabriel: The feedback you get, whether it's qualitatively or or you see the brand searches going up that you see that you start to build relevance for the for your audience, for the outside world. That is extremely satisfying and then, more in the day to day, this is really about seeing how our, creatives like the folks that are basically behind the ads and creating and crafting the ads. 

[00:35:29] Jean-Gabriel: Together with our brand managers that are basically defining the right strategies for the market. And then all of the channel leaders that are there to execute onto the channels, whether it's social media, display offline influence or whatever it is, it's becoming like a big orchestra that plays like one amazing piece of music, right? It's that's very well put. And it is really what is happening right now. So there's the biggest satisfaction in one line is seeing how, all these individuals with their respective talents and their respective responsibilities Turned into one big orchestra that plays like a wonderful partition. 

[00:36:13] Jean-Gabriel: And that gives, me personally, but I think everyone in the team, like a lot of satisfaction. 

[00:36:19] Prateek: How do you ensure that, that orchestra keeps playing, that music keeps on being out there. 

[00:36:24] Jean-Gabriel: Actually the question would be like how do you make sure they don't stop? And to be honest I think now that team is, playing that partition and that everyone has fun doing it it's just about giving the space and fueling it. It's I almost feel like it's unstoppable, right? 

[00:36:41] Jean-Gabriel: We won't stop until the brand is known by everyone. So I think it's, I think we have, we are getting into a place where, music is going to play on and it's about fueling it with more ideas, more creativity and giving the space to everyone to do what they do best. 

[00:36:58] Jean-Gabriel: I think that is, that's really what we are or we're trying to do. So you need a bit of, you need a bit of processing. Everybody needs to know what their, what their contribution is. And obviously that has been a big learning for us because you need to get, all these people to play that partition together as we've worked a lot on that. 

[00:37:15] Jean-Gabriel: And, but it's also not getting over processed. I've, sometimes in my past life have been in situations where, sometimes we had a bit too much silos or a bit too much over processed. And that is obviously what we should not get get to, right? That is what we need to prevent. 

[00:37:31] Jean-Gabriel: But right now I feel fueling it with more ideas course correct here and there depending on what we read from the markets, what we get from the back from the consumers, but it's about, basically fueling and giving space. I think that's what it's all about. 

Channeling creativity 

[00:37:44] Prateek: How do you channel creativity? In day to day work what, what's your process like, let's go back to how you zoom out sometimes and put yourself in those creative modes. There could be many ways, right? So my best ideas come when I, when I'm out there for a walk. No phone, no disturbance, just out there thinking through things. How do you channel that? 

[00:38:12] Jean-Gabriel: I Usually have that as well. When I, do sports or when I run, I like to run a lot. This is the moment where I basically get my mind cleared. 

[00:38:20] Jean-Gabriel: And then. All of a sudden, there are lots of ideas that basically, come into my mind and I try to set, I try to prioritize and select a bit and not throw them all throw them all to the creative team. But it's it's also when I do sports, when I'm outside, when I'm running it's usually when I get a clear mind. 

Role of sport 

[00:38:36] Prateek: Can you elaborate a bit more on, on sport particularly, because that influence also shows up in the kind of work that we are doing at the moment. . 

[00:38:44] Jean-Gabriel: So, um, you know, There are more and more people that travel for sports events. 

[00:38:50] Jean-Gabriel: It's one of the, greatest source of traveling actually many people do that. And they do that because. There are few categories that drive so much passion as sports do for many people, right? Obviously not for everyone, but many people are extremely passionate about sports events. 

[00:39:08] Jean-Gabriel: So by nature, I think it's, it makes a lot of sense to. Offer experiences that kind of relate to these sport moments or these very high passion moments. So yeah, recently we have been obviously we have a lot of offerings on our platform and we used to have lots of offerings like stadium tours and other things in that direction. 

[00:39:29] Jean-Gabriel: But recently we have been going a little bit deeper again with origins by get your partner with McLaren. Opening up the McLaren technology center, which is like almost a cathedral of sports. Whoever is into racing knows that, that place is a very special one. And it's not open to public. 

[00:39:45] Jean-Gabriel: But, we are exploring other dimensions. For instance, we have another experience, which is, sailing on an imoca boat. Imoca boat is known as the formula, one of the seas. It's a sailing boat of highs technology. It's the boat that is being used for this for this race, which is called Vendee Globe. 

[00:40:01] Jean-Gabriel: uh, which just happened every four years. It's so low around the round the Globe tour or race. And one of the sailor is partnering with us to actually get, passionate sailing people on his. Emoka boat, which is also something that you basically can't really access freely in the market to experience, the power of sailing and sailing at the edge. 

[00:40:25] Jean-Gabriel: So that's another sport experience, which is working very well for us. And yeah, we're exploring other directions. Now I might feed a lot of sports ideas into the creative team because I'm extremely passionate about sports. Sometimes I can feel the energy of it. So I get a lot of feedback about that, which is okay, hold your horses. 

[00:40:44] Jean-Gabriel: Let's talk about a couple of other directions like food, culture, nature, adventure, which are all fantastic categories as well. And we are obviously working a lot of concepts there as well, I can't, I, I don't want to lie, a lot of the sports thing is also coming from a personal passion of mine. 

[00:40:58] Prateek: My personal best experience so far was, is, and it's related to sport I had an incredible opportunity to work with as part of my previous, one of my previous jobs and the opportunity to work with Manchester United. So I got the opportunity to play at Old Trafford, be at Old Trafford, meet some legends. 

[00:41:21] Prateek: And that experience still stays with me. Yeah. And I can totally understand when you say how people are so passionate about. Yeah. These two categories. Experiences in sports in particular. Yeah. 

[00:41:31] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah. Fantastic experience. Wow. You're one of the lucky ones. Was it on the, in the so called future of dreams? 

[00:41:37] Jean-Gabriel: Yes. Yes. Wonderful. Amazing. Yeah. I'm very jealous. 

[00:41:42] Prateek: Yeah. It was, like I said, it was a phenomenal experience. Something I'll probably, that'll stay with me for a very long time. 

[00:41:48] Prateek: And that's why the concept of making memories finds its pinnacle, right? It's that's about making memories. 

[00:41:53] Prateek: Those are travel experience you won't forget, right? 

[00:41:56] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah, for sure. For sure. What's that one piece of advice that you would give to someone who's looking to pursue a career in brand marketing? Actually, more specifically, looking to join a tech Company with a strong brand marketing function, like GetYourGuide, what would you tell them? 

[00:42:18] Jean-Gabriel: I think, having seen CPG and tech is something I'm extremely happy about. Took me quite a long time to move from CPG into tech, right? 15 years. But the reality is, I think both are, almost like two sides of a metal of one coin. One is much more a little bit more traditional, very strong frameworks brands that have been established over decades very strong school to learn fantastic people and, and very perfected recipes. 

[00:42:52] Jean-Gabriel: The other side is, much more of, obviously of an adventure liberating where you can apply all of these frameworks faster, much more focused on rapid learnings iterating faster and obviously, with a very high level of ambition as well, which is about building those brands from scratch. 

[00:43:11] Jean-Gabriel: So my advice would be, don't limit yourself to one type of experience. Go and see what's out there. Take some, take some very good learnings from, some of the best schools in the world, I would say in practical schools in that sense. And then. Come in and put them into practice and learn, maybe a bit more of this full funnel approach. 

[00:43:32] Jean-Gabriel: For me, joining GetYourGuide, I learned a lot about performance marketing, growth hacking and this kind of mindset and tactics, so, you know, my advice would be, collect experiences, go for, go for different types of business models, different types of companies and check it out by yourself, learn. 

Full-funnel thinking in Brand 

[00:43:48] Prateek: Can you go deeper on full funnel thinking, what do you mean by that? 

[00:43:53] Jean-Gabriel: So, um, you know, In a company like like GetYourGuide and Marketplace You really have a very, I would say, we have a great opportunity to connect all of the steps of the marketing funnel, which goes from awareness, right? 

[00:44:08] Jean-Gabriel: Consideration, like people know your brand and then start considering your product. Then there is an intent. Level deeper is, people are really interested and start to play around with it and probably put a few things in in in their checkouts and then conversion they buy and experience and then eventually they repeat, right? 

[00:44:26] Jean-Gabriel: So you really have. Like all of these steps of the funnel that you can seamlessly connect from offline to online channels, it is, it's with a, with a very high, obviously analytical connection between those, because, a lot of data, right? You see a lot of behaviors live on your platform. 

[00:44:47] Jean-Gabriel: It's also a category when we talk about get your guide that has obviously, so at the highest level of intent down in the funnel, obviously people know, they want a ticket to the Louvre and we can match that fantastically well with our product, right? So there is a very strong connection between the marketplace and kind of the queries that you see in the market that is, very strong. 

[00:45:09] Jean-Gabriel: The company is, I think, GetYourGuide is a master in kind of building that, that lower part of the funnel. We are now adding the the upper half of the funnel to really complete that and build a fantastic model. And demand creation and acquisition model . And CPG is different. 

[00:45:24] Jean-Gabriel: It's much more interrupted because you obviously have retailers in between and you don't know everything. And it's less of a digital world, but more of a, physical goods world. So there are much more interruptions into this funnel. And what is. 

[00:45:41] Jean-Gabriel: Performance marketing at GetYourGuide is, in store shelving promotions and checkout with checkout this physical checkout display in the retail world. So you have less of this seamless kind of customer journey. Um, And so, yeah, they're just different facets of marketing. And and again, my advice is don't limit yourself to you know one of these worlds, just, try to experiment a bit across all of them. 

Favorite experience 

[00:46:07] Prateek: Great advice. 

[00:46:08] Prateek: Yeah. And I'm happy that you applied that advice as well. 

[00:46:13] Prateek: I'm happy to, I'm really happy to. 

[00:46:15] Prateek: Cool. What's been your favorite experience? And we've talked about making memories and our own experiences of things. What's been that one experience that has stayed with you? 

[00:46:25] Jean-Gabriel: Before joining GetYourGuide it was an experience which I did in Cape Town, South Africa. 

[00:46:31] Prateek: One of my favorite cities, by the way. Absolutely love it. 

[00:46:33] Jean-Gabriel: Absolutely wonderful. Um, And um, you know, we visited , during our honeymoon. And we made this Day trip to Robben Island where um, you know, very famous because there was a jail on there where Mandela was prisoned for many years. 

[00:46:50] Jean-Gabriel: And the tour was unforgettable because it was run by a former prisoner who was in the in the cell close to to Mandela's. And. The story was incredibly authentic. It was obviously, colored with, his own point of views and his own experiences and, but it was giving so deep insights about the place about the, the dynamics between the prisoners with the guards and also giving a lot of insights on, his his soul, so to say, and his own takeaways and his own griefs I think, everyone left like completely yeah, completely in thoughts with everything that has been said and that the guy basically shared with us. So that was definitely one I'm not going to forget. Since I, you know, I joined Get Your Guide, I had obviously the chance to experience a lot of amazing things. 

[00:47:51] Jean-Gabriel: I quoted the tour of the Vatican before might sound boring, I'm going to repeat it. I said boring because I said it before, but I just can. Can't stop talking about it. It was like, the sun goes up and you get, one of these 300 keys in your hands. Clary Joe has been there for 25 years. 

[00:48:07] Jean-Gabriel: Johnny, he's called, has seen many popes come and go, tells you the stories that you cannot hear in the audio guide that you won't have a guy telling you like his personal observations meeting some of the popes at night in the alleys. Some of the conversations you have had with them some of his personal experiences in those in those alleys, in these rooms giving you the keys, opening the doors, putting the light on, walking through those those halls, which are completely empty, of course which is, already something incredible. And then now entering and opening and entering, putting the lights on the Sistine Chapel, sitting there on the ground for about half an hour. 

[00:48:48] Jean-Gabriel: Usually when you take that tour, you cannot stop. You have to continue walking. So you can just like. Throw an eye right and left and just, probably 10 seconds and then you're out again here. You basically sit there and discuss with him and he tells you all of these stories. And I must say it's just been, just been fantastic. 

[00:49:06] Jean-Gabriel: Now the common thing between both tours is the guide, right? It's the storytelling, it's the authenticity of what they tell you, it's their personal experience that they share with you. Going on to Robben Island without this guide. It's probably impressive, but it's something that, it's probably less, much less deep than basically going it with the story of someone who has gone through this very painful and life changing event going to the Vatican, even if you're all by yourself is probably amazing. 

[00:49:37] Jean-Gabriel: But listening to the stories of journey, feeling his presence and, in getting this immersion into kind of the inner life of the Vatican is what makes it really special as well. 

[00:49:48] Prateek: Take us back to that moment where you truly felt that this was an experience of a lifetime. That one moment for you in Vatican. 

[00:49:59] Prateek: How were you feeling? What were you feeling? 

[00:50:00] Jean-Gabriel: Yeah I was just feeling totally at peace. I was feeling I was feeling obviously privileged, but I was feeling just so relaxed and immersed into that place and into like solely focused on. The stories and his voice and what he was telling us. 

[00:50:18] Jean-Gabriel: It was actually the moment we were sitting in the Sistine Chapel. And we were just like, I don't know, we were maybe 10 people. And he was he was explaining, he was actually speaking in Italian. I don't speak Italian. We had one of our team members Marta, who is who isn't obviously Italian and could translate for us and knew the Vatican and that experience, like Inside out, because she has been on all of the tours from the club, so at the end, she, she was like almost his right hand and she knew the stories before they came. 

[00:50:51] Jean-Gabriel: And we were just, we're just there and it was very peaceful very immersed. It was a very very contemplating was cool. It was really great. 

[00:50:58] Jean-Gabriel: Amazing. That sounds like an experience that everyone should get to have at least once in their life. Yeah. One last question for you. What are you most looking forward to the next few months and years as a brand marketer? 

[00:51:14] Jean-Gabriel: I'm so proud about the journey so far and what what the team and what the brand org has, we call it a brand org, brand organization what we have built everything that we have learned and kind of everything that we have put in place and the strong results we have seen across the market. 

[00:51:30] Jean-Gabriel: And I'm just. I'm looking forward to to double down on the things that have worked well to show our brand to more people because I feel like we have a lot of things to show and we have a fantastic story to tell. So I'm so looking forward to do that. 

[00:51:45] Prateek: Amazing. Thanks so much for your time. It has been such a wonderful conversation. 

[00:51:49] Jean-Gabriel: Thank you Prateek. Yeah, all pleasure is mine. Awesome. 

[00:51:52] Prateek: Thanks so much, Jean-ga. 

[00:51:53] Jean-Gabriel: Thank you.