👋 Hey, it’s Sundar! Welcome to a  paid subscriber only article of experiMENTAL: a weekly newsletter on B2C Marketing & data science how-to guides, frameworks, and stories from 15 years including early Uber. Free tier subscribers can continue reading for limited preview of the article.

I started as an analyst at Uber for the DC, Maryland, and Virginia team. Back then, I was one of the few analysts that analyzed the demand or rider side of the business. Everyone else was a Driver Operations Manager. I then moved to lead Performance Marketing Analytics for US / Canada and eventually led International Growth Marketing Analytics (now called Data Science) and built Uber’s Brand Data Science team. I’ve been lucky enough to see Uber’s entire Marketing funnel. Throughout my 5 years, there was one consistent theme:

The tech was good. The mission was better. The people were best.

It’s been over 3 years since I left, but I finally decided to reflect and write down the biggest lessons I observed watching alongside 100+ of the world’s best Marketers. I can’t promise everything will work for you, but I hope you can take some of these lessons and apply to yourself, team, and organization.

Surround yourself with genius to create it

The image above has nothing to do with marketing. It talks about the startups that the alum from Uber have created, but, you can extract how the same thing applies to the marketing team at Uber.

Marketers came from legendary companies like Nike, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Facebook. and are now Marketing leaders at Apple, Instacart, Netflix, Booking, Meta, Google, and more.

In order to create genius you have to surround yourself with it.

How did Uber find genius?

• Filter: The interview process was a gauntlet. It involved a series of interviews, case studies, more panels, and on and on. Nowdays that process would show up on LinkedIn with 100 people complaining about how difficult it is. But, it worked.

• Test: Uber threw Marketers into a crucible. Marketers were always competing with Ops and Product teams for resources and had to navigate a complex political environment where most PnL owners thought Marketing was a costly line item. This made the cream rise to the top.

• Reward: I see a lot of job postings now for Marketing roles where the salary is just appalling. “You must be an expert in understanding customers, crafting compelling stories, building beautiful creatives, and analytically savvy. Salary: $20 bucks”. Uber took the opposite approach.

⮑ Winners aren't taught to win

A sublearning here but the most successful Marketers just had an aura to them. They may have been taught how to communicate, analyze, and create briefs but they weren’t taught how to win. They have an innate drive that made them win.

Start with insights and build forward

Focusing and aligning on a customer insight is the single most important step in making a marketing brief. It’s why you see some campaigns that spend millions flop while some campaigns that seem so simple skyrocket. For years, Uber’s best performing Performance Marketing Ad simply said “Push a button, get a ride”

It highlights and addresses the pain point of having to flag down, call, locate, and hail a cab. It also indirectly addresses a Reason To Buy: convenience. But it all started with an insight which is that the customers love the CONVENIENCE Uber provided and so the ad naturally did well.

Become a paid subscriber to continue reading.