The Scene
This is an excerpt from an interview with Visa Chief Marketing Officer Frank Cooper on the Mixed Signals podcast from Semafor Media. Listen to the latest episode here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Ben Smith: One of the things that comes up here I think is that it feels like you’re still reaching for and sometimes finding these big mass cultural figures at this very fragmented moment. I don’t know if you remember this, but I remember a meeting we had at BuzzFeed where you were suggesting we do something with Beyoncé. I think the sentiment from the other BuzzFeed executives was like, “Well, the internet’s bigger than Beyoncé. Who needs Beyoncé?”
Frank Cooper: Yeah, yeah.
I remember this slightly puzzled look on your face.
Yeah.
Does that ring a bell?
Oh, no, it rings a bell. It rings a bell because it hurts my heart to this moment. Let me put it in this way. There are times in which I think brands are so obsessed with making sure that they protect the brand from anyone else taking it over or having greater visibility or momentum, that they miss the cultural moment. There’s a moment in which Beyoncé was a voice and symbol for a new generation of women. If you recognized that piece of it, you could leverage that in a way that allows her to remain true to herself, but also to connect it to a brand. If the fear is, “Well, what if Beyoncé becomes bigger than the brand?” — my view on it is, so be it.
Yeah.
Because you can’t stop the momentum that happens in culture. You can only ride it, and hopefully participate in it, and hopefully give back to it. But you’re not going to stop it from happening, so you can watch it go by. I feel like we watched that one go by.
Yeah, that’s on my list of mistakes we made.