Craft and Curiosity

 

Brian Irving, VP of Marketing at Meta Reality Labs, on striking the right balance between optimizing for the present and communicating the possible to bring more audiences into the metaverse.

 

Episode Notes

Whether you’re an early adopter or a skeptic of the metaverse and the technology enabling people to experience it—chances are it’s on your mind. And if you’re curious about where the metaverse is heading, there’s no better person to hear from than Brian Irving.

In his conversation with Jesse, Brian discusses how his distinctive combination of curiosity and a desire to do well by others led him down a marketing career path; why he thinks it's important for marketing leaders to have an appreciation of both craft and collaboration; how he balances an innate curiosity with the need to drive focus and pragmatism; the foundations of trust and respect that he believes the team at Reality Labs is built upon; the use cases he thinks will typify the early stage metaverse; and the role of marketing in telling a persuasive story about the possibilities for the future..

(2:13) Building curiosity and finding opportunity in Flint, Michigan

(7:02) Learning the tenets and importance of marketing craft at Apple

(9:02) Brokering healthy relationships between marketing and communications teams

(12:55) Why Brian joined Reality Labs, and thoughts on the metaverse’s early applications and long-term possibilities

(21:03) How Brian’s team is addressing the challenges of marketing the metaverse

(24:22) Targeting big outcomes, but celebrating small milestones

(26:17) The importance of saying yes to things that scare you

Guest Bio

Brian is the VP of Global Marketing for Meta's Reality Labs, where he leads the team responsible for marketing the company's AR/VR hardware and software products including Meta Quest, Meta Portal, Ray-Ban Stories, and Meta Horizon.

Prior to joining Meta in 2020, Brian was the Chief Marketing Officer at Eventbrite. Over the past two decades, he has led iPhone and iPod Marketing Communications at Apple, Global Marketing for the Google Play brand, and the launch of Airbnb’s repositioning from homes to trips as Global Marketing Director. Brian is no stranger to shepherding iconic brands, having spent the early part of his career at Levi Strauss & Co, GE and General Motors.

Helpful Links

+ Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Brian Irving: Sometimes you open the door and you think it's going to be a large room that you're going to stay in for quite some time, and you find out it's a very small room. And that could be disappointing, but you see two other doors that you would've never seen had you not opened that previous one. And so you just have to believe that the only way you could have gotten to that next door was through going into a room that was smaller than you thought it was going to be. Because these experiences are really just collections of our careers, of ourselves, and of life that we get to build upon along the way.

[00:00:46] Jesse Purewal: From Qualtrics Studios, this is Breakthrough Builders, a series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts, and ideas, fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands and experiences. Hey, builders, today I'm sitting down with Brian Irving, the VP of Marketing at Meta's Reality Labs. Reality Labs is a team of engineers, researchers, and developers guiding us toward a future that's more deeply and authentically connected. And Brian's a Michigan State Spartan, but I won't hold it against him. Brian's been a marketing and marketing communications leader at Airbnb, Google, Levi's and Eventbrite, and he was also director of Worldwide Marketing Communications at Apple where he led Marcom for the iPhone and iPod.

In today's conversation, Brian and I touch on a whole bunch of topics that in some ways are all about balance. We talk about how his distinctive combination of curiosity and a desire to do well by others led him down a marketing career path, why he thinks it's important for marketing leaders to have an appreciation of both craft and collaboration, how he balances an innate curiosity with the need to drive focus and pragmatism, the foundations of trust and respect that he believes the team at Reality Labs is built upon, the use cases he thinks will typify the early stage metaverse, and the role of marketing in telling a persuasive story about the possibilities for the future. Without further ado, I give you Brian Irving.

[00:02:13] Brian Irving: I grew up in Flint, Michigan, which notoriously gets a fair share of negative headlines, but I'm also really proud that I grew up there. I think that a couple things came from it. One is a real focus on foundational values and living the golden rule and all of that stuff, but it also forced a sense of curiosity that really shaped my life. I knew the world that I lived in and the bike paths that I rode on with my friends and all of that, but I also was an avid TV watcher, so I saw a world outside of all of that, that was starkly different than what I was experiencing, and so it certainly made me curious for what else was out there in the world.

[00:02:59] Jesse Purewal: It's so interesting, growing up in Toledo, I had the sense that there was this broader world outside of the 43617 ZIP Code, but I think I disclaimed my own ability to actually ever live outside it, until I got to school. This, despite going to India and the UK to visit my dad's side of the family, never made my way west of the Ohio border somehow. So yeah, I'm glad to see that the Midwestern curiosity seated in you led to things that are going on now in your life. If I'd bumped into you on one of those bike paths, or if I'd been on one of those rides with you, say 11, 12-years-old, who's the kid I would've met?

[00:03:45] Brian Irving: I think by that point I was probably the kid who knew that he was different than the other kids, but not quite sure that I realized that I was gay, and that that was the difference that I was struggling with. And so I think ended up being more like everyone else and really just starting to focus on trying to be like everyone else, despite feeling different. So if you had bumped into me, you probably would've thought I was just another kid on the bike path.

[00:04:18] Jesse Purewal: So tell me how it was that you started your career in the automotive industry. Perhaps it's the easy cliché to just go, ''Oh, from Flint to Michigan State to General Motors.'' But what was the subtext of the opportunity that you got?

[00:04:33] Brian Irving: Yeah, I mean in some ways it was clichéd. I mean, generations of my family had worked in the auto industry. My dad worked as a tradesman in the factory there, my grandpas both did. So there's a clear path to doing that. I was the first in my family to complete a four-year degree, so I was looking beyond working on the line. And I still had a passion for automotive, so it led me to an internship there and then eventually the opportunity to work at GM as well.

[00:05:06] Jesse Purewal: And Brian, you started your career as a marketer on the agency side, and you were on the agency side for a number of years. What do you think, as you look back on it now, turned out to be some of the key lessons, or modes of working, or philosophies, that you stick to, that you either developed or further honed in your agency days?

[00:05:24] Brian Irving: Yeah, I mean, interestingly and technically my career started in finance at GE, during the Black Belt days in Six Sigma and all of that. So I started off in a very rigorous world that I had a lot of appreciation for, but also realized I didn't want to dedicate the rest of my career to. So when I did start my marketing careers, you pointed out, really in the agency world, I think two things really fed that. One was my sense of curiosity that is carried through since I was a little kid and still to this day, probably also from being a kid who felt like he was different, trying to fit in. There was a deep sense of needing to please. And so working in the agency world, especially in client services, it served me well to really... I focused on the client and it was a deep sense to need to please them through the work and deliver it, and deliver it quickly, and with a high bar. So I think that was probably one of the bigger things I took from that experience.

[00:06:24] Jesse Purewal: I want to ask you about your time at Apple. You were at Apple a better part of four years, and I think one of your roles there was leading up marketing communications for iPhone and iTunes and a number of the critical franchises for the company. And so I wonder about that high bar you mentioned, and how to bring that high bar together with the storytelling and the audience engagement, but still stewarding a product that has such incredible craft. Going back to that family lineage on the line, was that a moment where things were starting to come together in this art and science way for you? Or how did you experience that kind of time in your career?

[00:07:02] Brian Irving: I think that's an amazing articulation of it honestly. I think my agency experience had really been, to this point, focused on CRM and database marketing, and digital. And it was moving fast, but the craft that I learned at Apple and the importance of craft as a meaningful differentiator for the brand as it thought about the entire customer journey. And I remember one of my first ''Aha'' and probably the most tangible moments of this was walking into a room as we were working on the next iPod launch, and this was early on at my time in Apple, and seeing a wall with hundreds and hundreds of arrows on them. And it was an exploration of which was the best arrow to help the customer know that this was how you begin the unwrapping experience for your new iPod. It kind of in that moment blew my mind, but also it was another experience that I got to collect of craft and needing to serve that the consumer actually meant.

[00:08:11] Jesse Purewal: So there's a moment, I think it was when you went from Apple into Levi's where, at least by the reckoning of titles, you shifted from a communications, accountability more into marketing and digital marketing, and then eventually marketing leadership at Google, and Airbnb, and other places. And even though marketing and communications are if not siblings than at least very close cousins, within the operating rhythms of companies. Historically, it hasn't always been the case that the two sides have played so closely together that one can truly experience a permeability between the wall there. How did you experience that and did you have to intentionally say, ''Now it's broader.'' Or, ''It's different than comms.'' ''Now it's marketing all up?'' Or does it like, ''No, no, that's overthinking it Jesse, come on. You got to just be more like, 'It's external, it's customer driven, it's all these things.'''

[00:09:02] Brian Irving: Well, I will say that my experience at Apple was really about the marketing communications aspect of it. The comms team was yet a separate team as you mentioned. However, as my career moved on, and I think Levi's is a really good example, Eventbrite, it... In some instances, I actually had comms also as part of my remit there. And I think at the core of it for me has been identifying where the goals are similar and where collaboration is necessary, and then identifying where the goals are just different and we need to be complimentary.

And when looking at it from that perspective, I think that I've been able to broker healthy relationships between those teams, that as, to you point out, sometimes can be a little more adversarial. And really helped to break down the various goals from each of those teams as a starting point. Because leading crisis communications is, from a comms perspective, something that I have tremendous respect for and is just so different than doing consumer PR around a marketing campaign. And I think helping both teams to learn each other's worlds a little bit more has helped to broker that.

[00:10:23] Jesse Purewal: So channeling that curiosity that maybe has been resident in you all along, one might argue, at least a relative maximum, that finds curiosity expressing itself when someone steps into a role leading marketing at Reality Labs within Meta. I mean, it seems like you could run on large parts curiosity, in lots of different directions. In this kind of a role in this moment, how are you focusing your energy around the virtually limitless kinds of possibilities that you could go chase, with the story arc of the business, and the way that you invite the community, and customers, and partners to be part of this adventure? How do you allow pragmatism to be a balance on curiosity and then generate focus as you're going through this role?

[00:11:11] Brian Irving: It is probably one of the harder aspects of my job to be honest with you, because not only do I have my own curiosity, I have a team of incredibly talented marketers who are all also very curious, and then leaders that I work with who also are curious, and not everyone is always curious in the same direction at the same time. So I do also then tap back into a bit of my early days at GE of learning Six Sigma and process to balance out some of the insane and intense curiosity that we all have. And knowing that two things can be true at the same time.

So in a world where we don't have a playbook mapped out for us, where we don't have a roadmap, is working with my partners on insights on the product roadmap, on analytics, to say, ''What are the signals of things that do look familiar to a traditional playbook that we should try to institute? And then what are the things that just really don't? And so we should give a broader bandwidth to the teams to just go run and sort through.'' And so, again, I wish I had a perfect answer for it, there is no perfect answer. But really trying to lean into insights and analytics to help guide where is there a foundation, and then setting up some boundaries that might be a bit broader than normal for the, ''Let's go and try to figure it out.''

[00:12:37] Jesse Purewal: Let me even take half a step back from that original question and this part of the dialogue to ask you, how did you decide that this was where you wanted to spend the next portion of your career, that this would be the next door to walk through, out of all the ones that ostensibly were waiting as you were contemplating things at your last juncture?

[00:12:55] Brian Irving: There was a point in my career, and I think it hit me when I was at Airbnb, which is, I actually really love the technology industry. I really love marketing. And what I really cared about was focusing on opportunities where the technology and the marketing was actually trying to bring people together, and try to help improve society, humanity in some ways, or at least enable that to happen. And certainly that happened through travel with Airbnb, at Eventbrite it happens through live experiences. And then as I looked at this opportunity for Reality Labs, what I saw was technology having the opportunity to connect humanity in ways that were completely limited on before, and the feeling of being together, synchronously together, not just asynchronous. And so that really was a big motivator for me. And then when I did my due diligence on the opportunity, and I just found a culture that was good. So kind of came back to my Midwest roots, it felt very familiar in that. And just a lot of really fun curious people.

[00:14:09] Jesse Purewal: I think some people would be surprised to hear that. What are the things that you would analogize between how you frame good, or what you were looking for in your heart, and your gut, and your mind as good, and what presented at this opportunity?

[00:14:23] Brian Irving: I think that the people that I've had the opportunity to work with at Meta... And I'll tell you, I started on March 2nd of 2020, so I had four days in the office, and then have been a remote worker ever since. And so what I found is that it's a welcoming environment. People are just genuinely happy when people join. And despite the fact that we're working from home and don't have those traditional water cooler moments, we've been able to build solid working relationships that are built on trust, and are built on respect for capability, and genuine interest in what people have to bring. And so I resonate with that a lot personally. I think smart is baseline for a lot of the tech companies, but good is not, and respectful is not always there. And for me, that's been something that's been persistent in my time at Meta.

[00:15:19] Jesse Purewal: Well, I think it's important for people to hear that. So I'm glad you talked that through, that none of us is an expert in where this will go. We have to have healthy debate and discussion, and we have to listen first, and we have to build off one another's ideas. And maybe those ideas can come from anywhere. Maybe what you're doing in effect is building a culture that goes back to your Apple days where you're respecting the craft, and going back to your youth, in terms of just being vigilantly curious about everything, and seeing where that takes you in the team.

[00:15:49] Brian Irving: Yeah, I mean I certainly hope that at my best, that's what I'm doing as a leader. And I think going back to even Connect last year where Mark unveiled the vision for the metaverse and talked about it. He talked about it from exactly that respect. We uniquely have not only a point of view, but an experience around connecting people, and we have the lessons that come from that as well, that we get to carry with us into this. And we also can't do it alone. We need to and want to partner with others. And there have been a number of examples of that, both from a technology perspective, as well as from a marketing perspective. And I think that with those partnerships, we've not only built great marketing, we've built great relationships to build this, together. And so I hope that as a leader, I exude that curiosity, empathy, and determination, while not letting that come at any cost.

[00:16:50] Jesse Purewal: So you talked about the thesis here at Reality Labs of better connecting humanity, bringing down barriers, allowing people to connect with each other and experience things together in ways that they couldn't before. But unpack that a little bit for me if you would, like what are the kinds of things that we might imagine as potential experiences we are not having now, that we could have down the road if in the early years of this you see some success?

[00:17:18] Brian Irving: Yeah, I think I'll start with kind of a simple one, of playing games. So much of that experience with friends or family, especially for me, is you are not together in the room experiencing it. And I think one of the coolest things around the metaverse is that it becomes synchronous and you are doing it together, and whether that's... For me, I love Beat Saber, it is one of my favorite things. I think even if I didn't have this job, I would spend as much time as I do playing it. But being able to do it with someone else is just really cool. It just ups the connection quotient for me, especially because my brother lives in Chicago, my mom is still in Michigan, my friends and family are kind of distributed.

So that's kind of a simple case. But even today, where we have meetings and certainly video conferencing is a far improvement over a traditional conference call, having the ability to be in the room together, in a virtual environment where we're sitting around the same table, looking at the same screen, and have spatial audio that adjusts for the distance between us. And the fact that a colleague is sitting to the left and when they speak, I can hear her out of my left ear, not just straight at me. We can share the same whiteboard in the room at the same time. We're no longer independently working from our separate spaces. We are working together on the same things, at the same time, in the same room. It's mind blowing. I don't know what it is, but it does something to us physically as well, to have us feel as though we are together. And those are some of the signals for me that get me really excited about all of this.

[00:19:10] Jesse Purewal: Well, I think the overriding point that I detect in that articulation is the importance of synchronicity. And I think if you can go from synchronicity into focus, you can then go from more focus to more creativity and collaboration. And that's where you get to better outcomes. And those better outcomes are making us feel better, about ourselves, and the experience of being together. And so while I appreciate the flexibility and the freedom, and the agency that a remote-first society ultimately will give those of us that can be knowledge workers in this world, I think there's some accountability on the other side of that agency that we have to each other, where what you are building probably is going to close a pretty important gap.

[00:19:51] Brian Irving: Creation and collaboration, to your point, creativity, design, brainstorming, we are no longer limited by that distance, as one of the things that is a barrier for collaboration and creativity. And so I think you're right, you have to put intention behind that responsibility to bring people together and collaborate. And the fact that we can do it in a way where it actually feels like we're in the same room together doing it, using the same tools, is where I think the return on that intention becomes much higher. And through that we have growth, we grow when we have these meaningful experiences. It's, for me personally, why I wanted to not only work on virtual reality and augmented reality, but why I wanted to do it here, because it is through the lens of like, ''How do we use technology to help create more of those opportunities?'' Not just, ''How do we create the technology for the sake of it?''

[00:20:50] Jesse Purewal: And Brian, what are the biggest marketing challenges you find you're facing, as you try to bring this vision, and this set of products, and these set of experiences out into the world?

[00:21:03] Brian Irving: Stepping back from the more technical ones, there are two things that could be at odds with each other or are not necessarily completely the same goal that we are needing to balance simultaneously. And one is context on the broader intention and the broader vision of not only what the metaverse is as a whole, but Meta's role within that. And to do that, you have to be pretty forward-looking, and lean into the imagination, and lean into the possibility of what could come, while at the same time trying to get people to consider using their hard-earned money of today to consider a virtual reality headset. Because there are things that are totally possible today, like the examples, whether it was Beat Saber, or using workrooms to hold a meeting. Those things exist today and so you can use them. So those two simultaneous things are really what we're trying to tackle at the moment.

[00:22:03] Jesse Purewal: And Brian, how are you thinking about the development of and the continued growth of the marketing team? What needs to be true, both in terms of mind, and soul, and spirit, but also just in terms of some of the capabilities that people have to bring to the table to invent this world as you go?

[00:22:21] Brian Irving: I think really curiosity and the ability to not only adapt with, but thrive in change, is critically important, because the market, the customer or the products, the technologies, the supply chain, there are so many factors that are unpredictable. And if there's not a growth mindset and a willingness to maybe not only just adapt, but thrive and drive change, then it's probably not going to be a happy experience for that person. So really trying to identify those that have a passion for thriving and change is super important. And then really being outcomes-focused. Because the roadmap is not very clear, and if one is more focused on the deliverable than the outcome, they're also probably going to be challenged, because we need to continuously change and adapt in tune to what's happening in the world. Whether you are a designer trying to experiment with augmented reality, or you are a producer, or a marketing manager, those traits are really a consistent across the board.

[00:23:29] Jesse Purewal: And at Qualtrics, we're fond of framing breakthroughs in two different ways. One is more incremental, those 1000 steps that you take on the journey, and then the more monumental ones where the world sits back and takes notice. I think we would count the number of breakthroughs that had to happen between, for example, Kennedy's speech in 1960 to July of 1969, lands on the moon, probably in the millions. But then what people talk about and remember is July 20th. And so I'm curious how you guide the team to think about incrementality versus monumental. And in general for people who are thinking about stepping into something slightly less defined, or more ambiguous, just how to measure progress and feel like you can come home on a random Wednesday, and get the sense that you did something, but at the same time never really be satisfied until you get to that higher ground.

[00:24:22] Brian Irving: Yeah, I think that that's where the notion of outcomes over actions is really important. And so if we're clearly defining the vision of where we want to get to, and then identifying, at least based on the information that we have, what are the milestones we need to hit in order to get there? And then celebrating each one of those as critical achievements along the path. And I think those are the moments where you can go home on Wednesday and be like, ''Cool, I am both working on something that is going to change the world, and we have the vision for it, and we're not going to get there for five to 10 years, and I have achieved something in my job.

That sense of achievement, even in micro doses, is so critical to personal satisfaction. I wish I was better at it, to be honest with you. As a leader, I wish that I was better at celebrating those moments along the journey, and it's something that I'm continuously trying to improve on. And both from, what's the marketing that's going to be necessary to bring the world along for a five to 10 year journey, but also connecting that to the products that are being invented along the way to hit that five to 10 year journey.

[00:25:37] Jesse Purewal: We're in a time in the economy where a lot of people are seeking to reoptimize what they're doing in their careers by putting their life at the center, more so than, ''Well, let me put my career at the center and hope the cards fall in the right ways around life.'' And there's a lot of experimentation and a lot of, I think, bravery that's being shown around the workforce, and trying new things. And as I look back at some of the moves that you have made, how intentional versus serendipitous would you describe that route having been for you? And as you reflect on that, what guidance would you give people who are in this moment trying to think about what's now and what's next?

[00:26:17] Brian Irving: Serendipity is probably one of my favorite words, just because I really have to believe that it has played such a big role in my career and in my life, given the fact that where I grew up and just the limited exposure to have as planful of a career as I wish I could say that it was. And it really was serendipity. And I think a lot of that came from the fact that I said yes, but when I said yes, it was usually to something that scared me and felt a couple of sizes bigger than what I had the confidence for. And oddly, it's kind of where I've been the most confident in life, is putting on that shirt that's a couple sizes too big that I need to grow into. I think believing that with good intention and that forward momentum of wanting to put the work in, that saying yes helps to lead to new doors that open.

And I describe this analogy a lot, which is sometimes you open the door and you think it's going to be a large room that you're going to stay in for quite some time, and you find out it's a very small room. And that could be disappointing, but you see two other doors that you would've never seen had you not opened that previous one. And so you just have to believe that the only way you could have gotten to that next door was through going into a room that was smaller than you thought it was going to be. Because these experiences are really just collections of our careers, of ourselves, and of life, that we get to build upon along the way.

[00:27:55] Jesse Purewal: And what's got you most excited, if you think about... And I know it's, as you said, not a highly defined roadmapping. But whether it's about what's on your leadership agenda, or the excitement you're feeling around the culture, what are the things that if you look ahead, let's call it two to three years, have you simultaneously the most excited and also the most scared?

[00:28:14] Brian Irving: I don't know that it squarely fits in the two to three year roadmap, but hopefully you'll give me some grace on that one.

[00:28:21] Jesse Purewal: Oh, for a metaverse, yeah. I'll double the grace, at least.

[00:28:24] Brian Irving: Is, I do think that augmented reality is one of the areas where I see has the potential to give people superpowers, whether that's to help augment a deficit that we might have... I mean similar to what glasses themselves did for those of us, like myself, who have really bad eyesight. It was like a superpower when spectacles were invented. And so I think that augmented reality has that similar possibility, and so it gets me really excited. The only reason I think it gets me scared is then as a marketer, how do we help people understand that. And how do we help give them the experiences, even starting today, that bring them along the journey, so that it's not a light switch that was just turned on one day and we're having this, ''Ta-da, here they are.'' But they're also anxiously anticipating being able to have those superpowers.

[00:29:27] Jesse Purewal: It's a beautiful response and one that's deeply authentic to the conversation we've had. So Brian Irving, I want to thank you for your time and your wisdom and your candor, and we're looking forward to doing it again sometime soon.

[00:29:39] Brian Irving: Thank you, Jesse. Honestly my pleasure, and thank you again for the invite.

[00:29:44] Jesse Purewal: Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and a review, and tell a friend. Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtric Studio's original, hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal. An awesome team of people puts this show together, including our show writer, Todd Bagnull, and our head of social media, Chelsea Hunersen. From StudioPod Media in San Francisco, our show coordinator is Nicole Genova. Editing and music are by producer Sterling Shore and executive producer Katie Sunku Wood, with Sound Engineering by Ryan Crowther. At VaynerTalent in New York. Samantha Heapps, Hannah Park and Ivana Lynn provide publicity and promotional support. The show's designers are Baron Santiago and Vinsuka Chindavijak. Our website is by Gregory Hedon, photography by Christie Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, Ben Hawken, John Johnson, and Kylan Lundeen.

Season 5Jesse Purewalchief marketing officer, connectivity, virtual reality, brand experience, metaverse, marketing, advice for cmos, collaboration, communications, facebook, meta, reality labs