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How to Build a Modern Brand: Purpose, Performance, and Culture in Action
Join Lee Roth, Co-Founder of The Actionists, and Nikos Bartzoulianos, world-renowned CMO with global leadership experience at companies including Samsung, P&G, Electrolux, and McKinsey, as they break down what separates modern brands from “campaign brands,” how CMOs can build marketing organizations that drive real growth, and why brand love is still one of the strongest long-term business advantages.
Marketing leaders, CMOs, brand strategists, and anyone looking to build a modern brand that drives real business growth through purpose, performance, and culture.
00:00 – Meet Nikos Bartzoulianos & his global CMO journey
01:01 – What actually makes a brand "modern" today
02:23 – The three skills every modern marketing organization needs
03:51 – Why brand strategy and business strategy must be one and the same
05:55 – Campaigns vs. systems: how modern brands are really built
06:41 – What a modern CMO actually needs to be great at
09:39 – Brand love is not a soft metric – it's a long-term growth driver
12:07 – The most common mistakes brands make today
13:42 – How to build a modern marketing organization (advice for CMOs)
15:57 – Using marketing to normalize sustainable everyday choices
Lee Roth (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of Breaking the Mold. My name is Lee Roth, co-founder of The Actionists, and today I have the great pleasure of speaking with world-renowned CMO, Nikos Bartzoulianos. Nikos, I say world-renowned because I really feel like you lived and really worked all over the world, from Samsung to P&G to McKinsey and Electrolux. Perhaps even more impressive though, and this is really the impressive part.
You've been able to deal with Pio at multiple stops along the way and you're still smiling. Welcome to the show my friend.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (00:34)
Thank you so much, Lee. First of all, congratulations on pronouncing my last name. You are one of the few that nailed it on their first effort.
Lee Roth (00:43)
I am famous for butchering last names, so I apologize.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (00:47)
You did well, you did very well. And secondly, yeah, no, I've enjoyed working around the world with PO both at Samsung and later and you.
Lee Roth (00:58)
You must drink heavily my friend. All right, well I'm excited to have you on the show because today we're going to talk about how to build and really grow a modern brand. And so I guess my first question, Nikos, is what do you consider to be a modern brand?
Nikos Bartzoulianos (01:01)
Yeah.
Sure. Well, I'm not claiming that I know how to grow brands just to be or I'm learning, right? And we all learn and that's something that we need to keep in mind. There's no playbook. There is no playbook and all marketeers, CMOs from the leader, from the leadership to the leadership team. We need to be agile and keep learning. Now, from what I've observed, I think.
Lee Roth (01:20)
Hahaha.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (01:45)
If could summarize it, a modern brand is not what the company says. It's not what the TV campaign says. I think what makes a brand modern is what people experience and feel and choose again and again and again. It's where you intersect purpose, performance and culture and show up consistently where it matters most in consumer lives. Modern brands earn relevance daily, not annually, in a report.
Lee Roth (02:23)
I love what you just said there, the intersection of purpose, performance, and culture. I think that's right. So as I think about purpose, performance, and culture, and really modern brands, what about the modern marketing organization? Like what skills do you even need today to have a modern marketing organization to build a modern brand?
Nikos Bartzoulianos (02:43)
Okay, let's start with the easy one. I think they need to be very fluent in data. So data fluently is key. You need to know your numbers, how everything happens, all the technology and performance metrics and understand your consumers in the tiniest detail. Then you need strategic clarity. And that's where the leadership comes in and modern CMOs also have to help.
Lee Roth (02:46)
Yeah.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (03:09)
And working very closely with the executive committee and the CEO to provide strategic clarity. I don't think there is a difference in terms of brand strategy and business strategy. They should be one and the same to be totally frank. Last but not least, I think modern brands need to have the core skill set of creative courage.
Because you need to stand for something unique and you need to challenge the way people think and the industry thinks. So for me, this has been paramount throughout the journey that I've had as a marketeer.
Lee Roth (03:51)
I love it. I also, you know, it's funny. I really like that you called out that the brand and the business strategy is one the same because there have been so many times in my career where we're working on a brand strategy and they're like, no, the business strategy is over there. You're like, wait a minute. No, the business strategy can't be over there. The brand strategy can't be over here. The brand strategy is to deliver the business strategy. Therefore, it is one, right? It's one strategy. It's just
Branding and marketing is part of the tools you're using to execute that business strategy.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (04:22)
And that's the big risk. That's my advice to CEOs or what I'm looking at CEOs when, you know, we work with many, I work with many companies. Do you understand the role of marketing? It's not competing against finance. It's not competing against product and R&D. Magic happens when all the function come together. It's not
Lee Roth (04:38)
Yeah.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (04:49)
Sales versus marketing versus product. It's all together. That's why in companies like FMCG companies, right? I started at Procter & Gamble. You see marketing being the connecting thread across function, bringing everybody together towards one strategy, brand and business strategy. But even if we go into marketing, just to finish up on your question, the magic in marketing happens not when performance marketeers compete with brand marketeers. Brand performance and technology come together, work as one team and complement each other. That's something very important to remember.
Lee Roth (05:33)
100 %, 100 % everyone has to work together the second you have people working in different silos There's no consistent experience to the consumer So as we think about modern brands, how do you think they're different compared to like the OGs? How they used to do things back in the day?
Nikos Bartzoulianos (05:55)
Think for many years, brands relied heavily on campaigns to express themselves. And I think today it's more important to understand that modern brands are built on systems. It's not about big moments in the time, the Super Bowl ad, for example, but more about cumulative experiences over time, where the brand can show up consistently in consumer lives and moments of truth. Consistency, speed, and relevance, cultural relevance, matter way, way, way, way more than perfection.
Lee Roth (06:41)
I agree And let me ask you another question like very often I kind of think of the CMO as the field general of marketing, right? But when you ask a CEO what that field general needs to be great in right? There's such a huge range of answers. I've heard everything Hey that to be the voice of the customer. They have to be the cultural expert They have to be the tech expert the brand expert the e-commerce expert oh, yeah, and also drive sales and the list keeps going on and on and on
As the CMO of a modern marketing organization, what do you think you need to be an expert in?
Nikos Bartzoulianos (07:17)
Certainly you shouldn't be the smartest guy in the room. I would say you should be the dumbest guy in the room. Meaning, always focus on hiring people who are smart, capable, and they are subject matter experts. And we can talk about leadership in general, but it's you deliver through your speed, Through your team.
Lee Roth (07:24)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (07:46)
You delivered through your team. So who you hire, who you trust is absolutely critical. To your question, I think the modern CMO doesn't need to be an expert in every field, but he needs to be really, really good in connecting the dots. holistic view, excellent business judgment. Again, marketing is not the coloring department or the campaign department...
Lee Roth (08:03)
Mm-hmm.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (08:15)
...development department. It's a key business partner that can be a key contributor to business growth. And I think a CMO should ideally connect consumer insight into growth, creativity into commercial impact, not creativity for a kind of work and brand into business value.
So at the end of the day, the CMO role is leadership,
Lee Roth (08:49)
I also like how you're really putting emphasis on growth and commercial activity. I know that sounds obvious, but we just don't see that enough these days. think marketing overall has gone so lost in tactics and short-term thinking that we forget marketing is there to serve the business. So I really appreciate your answers because you clearly see it the same way.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (09:12)
Absolutely. Otherwise, there's no need to be there. If you could grow a business through an algorithm, through AI, then everybody would be growing or half of the business that don't use AI would be out of business, fortunately or unfortunately, it's more complicated than simply...
Lee Roth (09:22)
Yeah.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (09:35)
...creating nice campaigns that fit into the brand playbook.
Lee Roth (09:39)
Yeah, agreed. And where do you think brand building and brand love fits within this equation, right? And what's a modern way of going out and building brand love these days?
Nikos Bartzoulianos (09:50)
Well, brand love is not something romantic, even though I'm very romantic. I think brand love is not a soft metric. It's a long-term growth driver. It's the secret ingredient that can help businesses protect their profitability, have customers that stay loyal, and shape future growth.
Lee Roth (09:54)
Yeah.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (10:16)
Look, let's take an industry most people understand, the auto industry. You see what's happening now with the Chinese brands that offer sometimes more specs in better prices, especially electric vehicles. Some of the European, even American brands are struggling. What do you think is the number one metric that can protect them?
Lee Roth (10:24)
Yeah.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (10:43)
And compete with the Asian players? Brand, brand love. If somebody goes for a certain vehicle, this is the single most important parameter that can help them protect and build a body. I mean, obviously the product needs to come up as well and to be at par, but brand is absolutely critical. And it's the secret ingredient for phenomenal growth.
Lee Roth (10:47)
Yeah.
I agree. I completely agree and I love that analogy. I always think about the Chinese companies as very much a manufacturing society. The second they figure out brand building though, we're all in trouble. But right now they still have that manufacturing mentality, which is why you're right, the European and American cars can really still exist and fight back.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (11:31)
Yeah, go to the fashion industry. Why there are people paying few thousand pounds, dollars, euros for a Zhenya t-shirt when you can buy for five dollars, right? There is something, there is something there. And I'm not claiming I'm buying such a t-shirt, but this is all based on brand, brand building.
Lee Roth (11:47)
Yeah, it's a- Yeah. Well, we can talk to Pio about overpaying for t-shirts.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (12:04)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Lee Roth (12:07)
On the flip side, what do think the most common mistake brands make are today?
Nikos Bartzoulianos (12:13)
I think, I think the number one mistake is understanding, the role that marketing can play or cannot play, limiting themselves, about, about the role of marketing. Then underestimating the, intelligence of the consumers. They are smart. They know where a brand promise is delivered and not delivered. Not just through the product, through the communication, through customer service, even through internal employee engagement sometimes. So a brand promise in marketing has a bigger role to ensure that all the journey from even before the product is conceived, till the second
Third, last moment of truth a consumer has with a brand and the product are consistent and deliver on the brand promise. Those are not separate experiences and there needs to be something consistent connecting them throughout.
Lee Roth (13:25)
Because you've shared a lot of wisdom already, but if there's any advice you would give to a CMO who's trying to, he or she is trying to really look to build a modern marketing organization, what kind of advice would you give them?
Nikos Bartzoulianos (13:42)
I would say first of all, always start what you stand for and what you're not willing to compromise on. You will have to make some compromises, but clearly define them so you're very clear. Secondly, teams. Absolutely. If anyone believes that they can do everything by themselves, no. Sorry to spoil that. And again, I've been a first time CMO and I immediately realized from the first weeks that it's the team.
That I'm gonna work with and I need to rely. But how you build teams is very important. Build teams that combine curiosity with accountability. You need high performers, owners, people that are thirsty for growth, for winning, but are also curious. I have said many times in many of my HR business partners, I am willing to forget if somebody has a weakness in a certain skillset. I don't I hire for their attitude, their winning mindset, their collaboration mindset. The rest can be trained. Okay, somebody has less experience in performance marketing. Fine, I'm sure we can get them up to speed in no time because the leadership traits and leadership.
Leadership exists in every level of the organization. It's not just the C level suite. Even the intern can show and demonstrate leadership, thought leadership, problem solving leadership. And I think something that is very important to keep in mind for CMOs is that ⁓ culture scales much faster than any other org chart. So do not underestimate the power of the culture you're building in the team.
Lee Roth (15:36)
Great advice as always. Okay, my last question that I ask everyone who's on our show, and I love this question, so I apologize for everyone who has to hear me ask it over and over again, but if you could take on any issue in the world and use marketing to help solve it, what would be the issue and how would you use marketing to help solve it?
Nikos Bartzoulianos (15:57)
Ha, many, I can think of many, but I will...
I will refer to my sustainability hats I've had in the past. I would say I would focus on helping people make more sustainable everyday choices without guilt or complexity. think marketing has the power of normalizing better behaviors by making those behaviors more desirable, accessible and aspirational. And I think this is
Lee Roth (16:07)
Any?
Nikos Bartzoulianos (16:33)
Why I love working in marketing is when done right, it has the power not to just sell, but to shape habits.
Lee Roth (16:44)
Love that normalizing behavior. Agree with you. That's what we should be focusing on as marketers. Nikos, thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your wisdom and your antidotes. I'd love to have you on the show. We'll have to do it again, hopefully in the very near future.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (17:01)
Absolutely!
It has been a pleasure and a good year end.
Lee Roth (17:06)
Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Nikos.
Nikos Bartzoulianos (17:08)
Bye.