Scaling with empathy and AI: The growth balance most brands miss

Jason Hemingway: Welcome to In Other Words, the podcast from Phrase, where we speak with business leaders shaping how organizations grow, adapt and connect with their customers around the world. I’m your host, Jason Hemingway, and I’m CMO at Phrase. Today, we’re exploring what it takes to scale marketing across countries, cultures, and a wide mix of customer needs. It’s about winning hearts and minds and staying true to what makes a brand feel human. And joining me is Christina Bylin, CMO at CarParts.com. Christina has led marketing at global giants like Google, Twitter, and Procter & Gamble. And now she drives strategy for a $700 million e-commerce brand, all while keeping customer trust and brand purpose front and center. Christina, welcome. It’s very nice to see you. How are you?

Christina Bylin: I’m doing well. Thanks, Jason. Really a pleasure to be here and great to talk to you today.

Jason Hemingway: Great. Well, let’s get right into it straight away. And I always like to ask you the first question about your career. ]And you’ve had quite a diverse one. Can you just, kind of, walk us through your journey and how it shaped how you think about brand growth and meeting customer needs?

Christina Bylin: Yeah, thank you. I’ve had quite a diverse career in terms of industries. I’ve gone from Procter & Gamble to Google, Twitter, Visa, and now CarParts.com, which each step really taught me how to blend brand storytelling with measurable growth. I’d say having a career start at Procter & Gamble was a really great foundation because it really was a full funnel approach to the customer journey. I’d say upper, middle, and lower funnel because you’re in between brand building, but also kind of lower funnel retail marketing. And then since then, I’ve been able to learn how to do platform marketing on Visa, Google, and Twitter, really how to scale and reach customers globally, but really through a brand lens. And then now at CarParts.com, we’re really focused more on the lower funnel and how to drive conversion at the last step of the purchase path. So for me, it’s been fascinating to see how, even though as a marketer, the tool set really doesn’t change much, but it’s where you focus on that funnel that really matters and differentiates. So it’s been a fun career path, but certainly very different and diverse.

Jason Hemingway: Yeah, it’s always interesting to see where people kind of come from and then elevate to. So you’re now at CarParts, as you mentioned, and that, you know, there’s a crowded space, I would imagine, and relatively price sensitive. So, and you talk about bottom of funnel, which kind of gives a clue, but how are you structuring marketing? So it’s not just about transactions and conversions, but building loyalty that travels across different customer segments and even regions. How do you think about that?

Christina Bylin: Yeah, I mean, that’s where I’ve really been able to pull from my background in that when I first joined CarParts a year and a half ago, we were focused primarily on the lower funnel. There hadn’t been much brand building or retention marketing, or really loyalty-building efforts. And so the last year and a half has really been focused on revamping and totally transforming marketing, starting with building out customer insights, target segments, really starting with the customer and figuring out how do we meet them where they are along their journey, well ahead of them, even thinking about buying a car part. So expanding it to social media, expanding on to Reddit, really going into CTV, blogs, investing in, really, the brand, brand strategy for the first time, and then also working on building out a brand architecture that works to support the brand and its developments. We had over 18 different private label brands when I started. We’ve now really narrowed that down to 3, and so, really trying to build repetition and pattern over time in the minds of consumers in a way that speaks to their needs, but also is fun and differentiated for CarParts.com.

Jason Hemingway: Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? I mean, that sounds like a total transformation of kind of where you were thinking. Albeit, you often talk, and I’ve listened to you before, about that kind of idea that brand and performance marketing, as we kind of often call it, aren’t in conflict. So, talk us a little bit through your change agenda, and where you’ve seen them work to deliver both short-term and that long-term brand strength, especially in the context of reaching new customers or markets.

Christina Bylin: Yeah, I’d say it all starts with knowing the consumer and rooting everything that you do in data. It’s hard to argue with data when it’s, you know, you start with the insight and really figure out what is the creative that supports developing that story and that insight? So, connecting emotional relevance with sharp targeting, you get both strong sales today and a brand that people remember tomorrow.

Jason Hemingway: Yeah, I think that’s interesting. And you start with the insight. And I think that’s often a thing that people forget, or it’s easy to forget, is that you’ve got to start with, what’s the customer need, and what’s happening at the beginning, you know, that cycle? So you can build the kind of messaging, the positioning and everything you need to do on that customer insight. And that’s an absolutely fantastic way of thinking about it. And then when you’ve got that kind of stuff, you’ve often described also that CMO role is kind of a conductor of an orchestra, which I think, as a fellow CMO, I completely understand. Because there are so many, you know, channels, ideas, different teams, and even having to find budget for all these different things. How do you sort of approach that when you’re trying to scale, especially kind of, you know, maybe in your career, thinking about international markets as well? How do you keep everything aligned while you’re trying to scale?

Christina Bylin: Yeah, great question. So yes, it’s being the conductor of an orchestra, but it’s also being a great partner to your CEO, to your CTO, to your CFO. I think one of my primary jobs is really working closely hand-in-hand with them to figure out what are the business goals? What are we trying to achieve this year in the next three months? And then how do we back out from that into tangible results that we want to build for marketing? So are we trying to grow certain segments? Are we trying to grow into certain markets? Are there certain categories that we’re expanding into? So it’s really about orchestrating data, creativity, and budgets so that teams can stay aligned globally while feeling empowered locally. You have to start at the top with a global insight and then figure out how it fits into, kind of, a localized, personalized level. That’s something that we’re really focusing on is not just, you know, what is the global aspect, but then how do you take that and really develop targeted messaging at the email, SMS, and push level?

Jason Hemingway: Yeah, I think that’s true. And you have to start, it’s a balance, isn’t it? In any marketing role is balancing, kind of, those customer needs against the objectives of the business, and then rolling that across different areas and regions is kind of the challenge, I guess, to most. And if you step back a little in your career, and you look at some of the other brands, you know, like Google, Visa, P&G, what stands out to you about how they approached growth and brand building across markets? It’s a two-part question. And what, from those experiences you’ve had, what lessons did that form that you then take into what you’re doing today?

Christina Bylin: You know, I think oftentimes at companies outside of those big companies, it’s easy to look from the outside in and say, “Oh, you know, they just have big budgets.” But I’d say what really sets those big brands apart, like the Googles and the Visas of the world and the P&Gs, is that they’re purpose-driven. And that oftentimes gets a bad rap of, oh, you know, who invests in purpose-driven marketing. But it really starts with understanding what are the values of the company? What do you stand for? What is your mission? What is your purpose? And everything else can back out of that from what product categories you’re expanding into, or what customers you’re targeting, or what products you’re rolling out. And that’s something that I’ve tried to bring to CarParts.com. It’s easy to start at the bottom and work your way up in terms of, you know, coming up with a great ad that drives conversion. But if you don’t start with the purpose and the vision and the strategy, you end up throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall just to see what sticks. But you really need that cohesive brand story, that purpose, that vision to guide everything that you do. And it then clarifies and makes everything easier in terms of what you focus on and what you choose not to focus on.

Jason Hemingway: Yeah, and you talk a lot about that idea of marrying the kind of heart and data. So I guess the purpose side is some of that heart, you know, that heart side, and then there’s data. So when you’re, I often find, you know, lots of people talk about purpose, and then we are always under pressure to deliver ROI, especially, you know, in lots of cases across international markets. How does that look practically when you’ve got very different kinds of customer triggers? How do you think about that?

Christina Bylin: Yeah, I mean, I think, again, you still want to start with that overarching purpose. And then, you know, I call it Marketing 101; it’s coming up with your positioning statement, but then the reasons to believe might be different. That’s where testing comes into play. One of the things that I’ve done and that I encourage all marketers to do, or all businesses to do in general, is do some sort of testing, whether that’s consumer insights groups or online testing. There are really great platforms, like Attest is one that we use. Where you can, within two days, get, you know, a statistically significant driven test result in two days to see what are the reasons to believe that resonate in, you know, Canada versus Mexico versus the United States versus Japan? And that’s what then becomes sort of the foundation for the marketing that you want to do or the messaging that you want to do in those markets. So the big idea is still the same, but the hook or the why people believe may differentiate between markets. And then obviously adding in the cultural relevance of those markets just supersizes or kind of supercharges that messaging, if you will.

Jason Hemingway: Just to paraphrase that, which is quite an interesting thing to think about. So you do a lot of thinking about how your message translates into other cultures and how it’s got cultural resonance. And you do that in an authentic way by testing a lot of tests. Is that kind of correct? How does that-

Christina Bylin: Yep, both pre-testing and then in-market testing, A/B testing, you know, from a media standpoint, every market is a little bit different in terms of what platforms people resonate with. And so, yeah, I think the best brands win by being consistent in purpose, but flexible in execution. So it’s kind of this, you know, global done right, go global, but local combined.

Jason Hemingway: And in your mind, are you always thinking internationally when you’re doing these things? How does that, is it built into the culture of the organization?

Christina Bylin: Yeah, I do. You know, one of the things that really attracted me to marketing and brand building in general was my own personal background. I grew up in the U.S., but my parents are from Sweden. And so I always had this sort of international lens. And I think the best brands in the world have the ability to create a new language that translates borders or, as you say, transcends borders. And so for me, I’m always thinking, okay, how can this message resonate deeply both, you know, in one market, but also another? And what is it that ties them together, but also makes them unique?

Jason Hemingway: Yeah. And I think that’s the challenge, isn’t it? It’s kind of finding that golden thread between the message without diluting what you want to be saying and actually engaging with the customers globally. So, yeah, interesting. So, look, we often ask our guests, this is a bit of a pause in the kind of business [00:12:00] speak, but we often ask our guests what we call the inbox confession. So I’m going to, you’re no different than any other guests, I’m going to ask you the same thing. And it’s really about what’s the one thing you wish you could automate in your workday as a CMO?

Christina Bylin: You know, I say with the advent of AI and ChatGPT, which I tend to still use, I know there are others out there. I feel like I have the best assistant in the world now because so much of what I do is automated and has been, but I do think sometimes automating meeting prep would be great. Every CMO dreams of fewer decks and more decisions, and just speed to market and speed. So, sometimes automating meeting prep, and also testing, you know, we still have to, you know, it still takes sometimes two to four weeks to test certain concepts. It’s certainly gotten much faster. But certainly, when it comes to performance marketing, those in-market tests, we still allow for some time, which I wish we could speed up.

Jason Hemingway: Yeah, I think speed’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? Especially, you know, there’s lots of productivity savings, but I think, you know, one of the benefits, the general AI, you know, GPTs and things like that can give you is that speed of production. But I think there’s always a place for strategic thinking. You’ve got to put some thought behind it. So it’s automating what you can automate, but fantastic answer. And actually a really good segue into kind of where we’re going to kind of talk next, which is about AI and how it helps in marketing. So, at scale, AI is kind of helping how we scale marketing, and where have you particularly seen how it can improve customer experience across different audiences beyond just making that, beyond just speed or more efficient? Are there any other areas where you see sort of?

Christina Bylin: Yeah, I’d say we’re just scratching the surface, but we just launched our shopping assistant ‘Spark’, and that’s just helping from a customer service experience. We’ve outsourced most of our customer service to the Philippines. And what’s interesting, this is a little insight, most of our customer service agents don’t drive, you know, they’re taking public transportation. And so now with AI, and not to say that we don’t train them, but now that we’re training our Spark, our shopping assistant on, you know, using agentic AI and looking at blog, we can have probably better and sharper answers. And so we’re seeing that we’re getting fewer customer service calls to our customer service centers. And, you know, AI helps us match the right part to the right driver faster, which is important. Our catalog has over a million products and something like 40 million SKUs. And so to be able to process that kind of data just within a matter of seconds has dramatically improved people’s online shopping experience of car parts, specifically, which can be quite complex and sometimes intimidating for people.

Christina Bylin: I

Jason Hemingway: can completely empathize with that. And it definitely does help with that kind of scaling issue, doesn’t it? And actually giving people a body of knowledge to look at. So that is very good. And you’ve led kind of a transformation at CarParts. What matters most in this kind of transformation, using AI to make sure everything still feels that personal and authentic, especially as you go global, other than the testing, but what sort of actually keeps mattering?

Christina Bylin: Yeah, you know, I always say AI is an amazing tool, but you still need great people who know how to use the tools appropriately. So you don’t want to replace the human voice. I know right now it’s really popular to create brand personas using AI. And I think that might be helpful to a degree, but I always say you have to start with a human. We need to do real consumer insights testing. People may argue with me, but I really stand behind that. We’re still trying to reach the human on the other side of the computer at the end of the day to buy our parts, so you don’t want to replace the human voice that makes a brand feel real. And also in terms of our creative output, there’s a fine balance between doing fully AI-generated content, which, you know, people are pretty smart. I think most people can sniff out, “Oh, is that a real person or not in the ad?” So I’m really just challenging my team to make sure it’s human, it’s authentic and making sure that we strike the right balance between being forward thinking and efficient, but also human-centric.

Jason Hemingway: So, let’s explore that a little bit more. How do you do it? So you challenge a team. So what are the kinds of checklists? What are the things you think about when you’re trying to build in that creative authenticity and storytelling without losing any cultural nuance or the human side of it? Because that’s the bit that builds trust, right? What you don’t want to lose is trust with customers, so how do you kind of think about that? Is there a checklist you use or some things you think about?

Christina Bylin: Yeah, so I love that idea of developing a checklist. So I’m going to take that back. But first and foremost, our product shots have to be real. We never do AI-generated shots of our parts. That’s a core kind of mandate that we have. In terms of scaling, yes, we do use AI sometimes to create, call it more culturally relevant or localized backgrounds. But we try to make them true to each market. So, yeah, just to ensure that authenticity. The other thing that we do is, again, AB test in market, so we’ll launch small social media tests. We’ll do match market testing, and then we’ll do a lot of measurement on top of that, just to make sure that there’s relevance, conversion, click-through engagement, all of that is critical to making sure that our pieces are localized, but still authentic to the brand and still have that human touch.

Jason Hemingway: Yeah, I think that’s some good, I mean, you’ve definitely got the makings of a checklist there for sure. So I love that. So, you’ve done lots of car parts, you’ve led lean startups, big global teams, if you had to give a CMO, another CMO, me, for example, a piece of advice about how you scale internationally while staying kind of connected to the customer and being authentic and human, what would it be?

Christina Bylin: I think the best growth comes when you balance bold ideas with measurable impact. So we are living in a world where we’re so focused on measurement, and that is critical, but don’t forget to try to be different, break through with bold ideas, and those bold ideas usually scale across borders and countries and markets. And so, yeah, don’t forget to think different, as Steve Jobs would say.

Jason Hemingway: Yeah, no, I think that’s good advice. I think one of the problems with the growth in the kind of performance marketing focus is that you lose some of that boldness, the ‘ability to be’ boldness, and you mustn’t just focus on the numbers in the dashboards and try and have those bold ideas because they’re the things that cut through. They’re the things that build connections, aren’t they?

Jason Hemingway: Yeah.

Jason Hemingway: So talking of dashboards, my next question is kind of about as teams get bigger, as you scale and build things in, how do you keep teams close to the real customer experiences on the ground, especially as you think, you know, you talk about the G-Local kind of idea, but how do you keep teams grounded in their markets or, you know, their regions?

Christina Bylin: I think one of the most critical things that I do is really pushing teams out into the field, listening directly to customers, even going to repair shops in our cases or visiting competitors to see what they’re up to, you know, insights don’t live in spreadsheets or just online databases. They’re out in the real world, especially when it comes to something as tangible as car parts, something that you’re using every single day. And so, you know, listen directly to customers, listen to your own experiences and get out there, go to conferences, all of that.

Jason Hemingway: I think, yeah, listening is a good one. And it sounds like, you know, from our very beginning of the conversation, it said you’re very focused on that customer insight. But marrying that insight that can be, you know, you can develop that from research. But actually getting first-hand insight is really important, isn’t it? Absolutely. Cool. So, let’s just shift back a little bit to that AI kind of idea, and I know we talked a little bit about how you used it and what you’re doing at CarParts. But how do you see it changing? If you take a level up, and it’s, how do you see it changing marketing for brands trying to scale internationally? Is it mainly about tailored personalization, or do you think there’s another different big shift that’s coming? What’s your thoughts on that?

Christina Bylin: Gosh, you know, I think it’s going to impact most of the areas that we’re working in, whether it’s, you know, we talked about going to market faster, being able to process data more quickly, whether that’s, you know, we’re using, we’re building agentic AI media models. And so, looking at market data to figure out what’s the best media strategy in this market and how do we spread our budgets to scale more efficiently and drive better profitability. Other areas are creativity. We’ve already talked a little bit about that, but being able to develop creative that’s balanced with that human touch a little bit faster. So, I think it’s speed to market, it’s the ability to process data without necessarily having to go into and investing a ton of time in those markets, you can probably do a lot more, a lot faster. And we’re starting to see that. It’s just the scale, the speed, and, honestly, keeping up with the competition.

Jason Hemingway: I think that’s interesting, isn’t it? It can be a competitive edge to do all of these things and harness it, and you don’t want to get left behind. Just sort of a supplemental question to that is, do you provide your teams with time to go and experiment, to go and test, to go and do stuff? How do you work that into the kind of day-to-day that everybody has to do? I’m asking because I find it always a challenge to give people enough time to go away and do that research without, you know, the plane’s got to keep flying. I’m happy for you to go and experiment, but we’ve got to do the day job as well.

Christina Bylin: Yeah, I’ve always followed a rule of thumb, and maybe this is something I learned at P&G back in the day, but earmarking about 10% of the budget for testing. Obviously, that varies depending on what your focus is. But I always try to keep that in mind. I say now more than ever, testing is critical because AI isn’t fully developed. We’re all still testing new tools. And so, you know, people come to me and say, “What’s the one thing that my team wants to learn?” It’s AI. “Okay, well, what area?” Go experiment. And it is me constantly reminding the team to do that, which, to your point, it’s hard to do when time is limited. And so what I found works well on my team is partnering with our big partners like the Googles of the world to come in and do AI trainings, tangible trainings where we’re using the tools. Because it’s one thing to say, go test out AI tools, but where do you even begin? And so as a team, we’ve sort of come together as a marketing team, and other teams internally are doing this, where we’re kind of laying out, here are the tools we want to test. Okay, let’s carve out an hour or two once a month, just tangibly test the tools to see is this something that’s going to work for us or not? And then the other thing that I’m doing is just bringing in a lot of AI partners. I know we all get bombarded with emails saying, “Oh, we’re this AI agency.” Great. Let me talk to you for 15, 20 minutes to see if there might be a fit. And then we’ll usually do anywhere from a three-week test to a three-month test to figure out if it’s a partner that we want to bring on.

Jason Hemingway: Yeah, I love that. I love that idea of partners that are from your ecosystem already. That’s a really good one. I didn’t think of Google. Maybe we’ll give them a call as well. But I think that’s really good. And I think the point there is just trying to find that, giving people permission to have that time. And actually, what you said, which is absolutely pertinent, is following through on it and actually saying, “Have you done it? Are you doing it?” But also giving them some parameters and guardrails to help them go away, because there is so much noise around it. And you’re right. It’s not fully baked, not fully developed in lots of areas. So it’s actually getting people to focus on the right things and partners is a fantastic idea.

Christina Bylin: I forgot to mention, just building it into performance goals as well. That’s something I started doing this year because I did see that even though I encouraged people to test it, they weren’t. And so now that I’ve built it into performance goals, I’ve seen a deeper level of commitment as a result of that.

Jason Hemingway: No, I think that’s good because then it becomes part of the culture, doesn’t it? As you start putting it on people’s reviews and talking about it. Not to check up on people. I think it’s just to help, you know, it’s to give them the permission to do it. Well, good. Fascinating conversation. We’re sort of now at the last bit with the quickfire round. And there are just three questions really for you here. Firstly, if you can, what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned across your career?

Christina Bylin: Probably that, you know, growth comes when you balance bold ideas with measurable impact. I already said that before, but it really. Don’t be afraid to be different, to carve your own path and to test. Test, learn, and fail your way forward.

Jason Hemingway: Yeah. And I think that one of the things you said is really good about that. I think that’s a perfect way of thinking about it. But it’s making sure that you have kind of the CEO or the C-level’s alignment to do those kinds of things, to be bold, suggest ideas. And that’s really, I think, when you get to kind of a CMO level, that’s what you’re thinking about is how do I get the business to agree with taking these bold stances, taking these moves? So yeah, interesting. Love it. Global growth in one word. How would you describe it?

Christina Bylin: Connection.

Jason Hemingway: Very good. Very good. Very good. And finally, we’d like your tips on who we should speak to next.

Christina Bylin: There are some fantastic CMOs out there that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Laura Jones, who’s the CMO of Instacart. She and I used to sit across from each other when we both were young brand managers at Visa. And I think what she’s been able to do over there is just phenomenal in terms of growth, leaning into bold ideas. She’s a phenomenal CMO, and it’s been exciting to watch her career.

Jason Hemingway: Brilliant. Well, we shall probably give her a call in the near future. For now, let me just say, look, thanks for that. Absolutely fantastic. Love the idea of balancing that brand and performance, data and creativity. And the whole idea of keeping things human and authentic is really good in a world where you can get into kind of, you know, there’s explosions of content, but how do you actually make things resonate with audiences across the globe? So brilliant. Thank you, Christina.

Christina Bylin: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure being here. And it was great talking to you.

Jason Hemingway: Well, that’s it for another episode of In Other Words, a podcast from Phrase. I’ve been your host, Jason Hemingway, and a huge thank you to Christina Bylin for sharing such sharp insights on building marketing that scales responsibly, leverages AI effectively, and keeps customers at the center no matter where your business grows. If you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe to In other words on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform. You can also find more conversations on leadership growth and what it takes to really scale globally at Phrase.com. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.