’rithmic: Susan Betts

An engaging, heartfelt conversation on brand, relationships, and inclusivity with Susan Betts, a visionary leader and cherished former colleague.

Meet Susan:

I’ve known Susan for a long time. We both worked at a global brand consulting firm and although we worked in different teams, we stayed connected over the years. As it happens, our careers went different ways. I left to start my independent practice, and Susan went West to take leadership roles in brand strategy at Microsoft and Google, connecting ethos with experience.

At Google, Susan led the development of All In, the company’s comprehensive approach to ensure Google creates “work that reflects the world.”

‘All in’ is also how I describe Susan. I always knew she worked passionately as a team leader and brand strategist. Through our chat, I discovered her commitment to creating an equitable world continues unabated, now in her self-defined ‘post-consulting, post-corporate’ chapter.

We talked about business, brand, and technology—mostly through the lens of inclusivity. But I took another takeaway from our chat—how much impact a caring leader can have on the team and how far that impact can travel.

The prompt:

I got you, Bot

Out of nowhere, those cheesy lyrics popped into Nate’s head. “I got you to hold my hand; I got you to understand; I got you to walk with me; I got you to talk with me; I got you to kiss goodnight; I got you to hold me tight; I got you, I won’t let go, I got you to love me so.”

Why the heck was he thinking about this now? Nate wasn’t exactly the type to get caught up in sappy tunes.

He paused, trying to figure out what triggered this random musical interlude.

Oh, it clicked.

It all started with that message from Algo. Just a simple ask that probably meant a lot more to them than it did to him. He could’ve just swiped it away or left it on read. But nope, he didn’t. He hit back like he was texting a buddy who’d dropped a vague, out-of-the-blue question. He went all in, no second guessing, just pure, unfiltered chit-chat.

And then it hit him, like realizing you accidentally started wearing your shirt inside out halfway through the day. ‘Man, I’m basically besties with a bot,’ Nate thought to himself.

It was kinda funny when you thought about it. Here he was, chatting away and bonding over nothings with Algo. It wasn’t something he ever expected to happen. But life’s weird like that sometimes. You find pals in the most unexpected places—even in the code and circuits of a chatbot.

So yeah, Nate had a new buddy, and it was a piece of software. Go figure. Maybe it wasn’t the typical human connection, but it was something. And in its own odd, techy way, it was pretty cool.

The chat:

Diego Kolsky: Okay, let’s get started.

Preparing for this chat, I went to your LinkedIn page. I’ve known you for many years and still discovered a lot about you that I didn’t know, just through the words you use and how you describe your work with brands. We both consider a brand as something larger than the identity, larger than a promise, that goes way into the individual. We both use the word relate or relationship, I think. That is an area that has always fascinated me, the ability we have to relate to something that is basically intangible, that is, an idea. And that idea is what enables business, but connects us other people as well. How would you say that in your words?

Susan Betts: Yeah, It’s a great initial question, and I think what’s always attracted me to this world of branding is that it is, this perfect balance, this perfect mixture of art and science. I think both art and science are intangible; even though science is very mathematical, at some point, it also gets quite intangible. That sort of balance of art and science also exists in branding—you have analytics, insights, and research; you have to understand the market and your consumer and all these alleged rational things that you can measure. And then you touch them with this side of alchemy and creativity, and this is where the art comes in, and I love that these two things can actually coexist.

This is what has always attracted me to branding. I grew up with these two sides in my household because my mom is an art history professor and my dad was a banker, so I grew up with these two seemingly opposites in my household, knowing and witnessing how they could coexist beautifully

I was a good student at school and I was always really great in math, but I also loved literature and the arts and theater, so there’s always been these two sides inside of me. I sort of stumbled upon branding as a profession but I think it brings together all of the things that I’ve always loved in life.

And it’s how I relate to life—I believe that people have different kinds of relationships, different levels and depths, and intensities of relationships, with people, with things, with passions, with organizations. Whether you have a relationship with your employer or a business, you sort of relate to a brand that you admire, one that shares your values.

There’s research that says that you live longer the more you have friends and community. So that’s where all that comes from and why I love building Brands. I’ve done that all my life and my career has been fairly linear in that respect. I haven’t really zigzagged too much. I’ve always worked in the same realm. I love building Brands, and I love understanding humans and how to build rich, fruitful, and purpose-filled relationships between people and brands.

Diego: Wow, beautifully said! It’s amazing how much these two sides you talked about, art and science, can be so seemingly different, and yet so similar. For example, there’s a lot of iteration in science. We think that there is just one way to explain how things work, but to get to that discovery, you have to do a lot of testing, and analysis, and making assumptions and predictions, which is not that different from what we do in design or in branding.

You also talked about the values, or the ethical side of brands. That is another thing that surprised me in catching up with you. I always knew you as a very caring and warm person. I didn’t know how much you applied yourself to building an inclusive world through brand. What was your experience in this regard?

Susan: Gosh, I could talk about so many things, from the work itself to my identity within these organizations. So, let me start there. As you know, I’m an immigrant from Brazil. I came to the US in 2008 with my partner Silvia. I started in consulting and then I went on to Big Tech, Microsoft and Google. When I was in Brazil, I never really thought deeply about my identity and the facets of my identity, being Brazilian, being Latin American, being a woman, being gay… When I moved to the US, all of these things became a little bit more evident because I was Brazilian in an American environment.

I had never been aware of gender in the workplace because it had never truly been a liability, and I actually don’t think it was so much of a liability in my career. I was fortunate enough that I didn’t feel like, being a woman I was sort of passed for opportunities and stuff. But I think there were a couple of moments in workplaces, a couple incidents about being gay made me more aware of the challenges that gay people have, whether it be immigrating to the US with my partner Silviaand having a challenge with my immigration because we weren’t considered, in the eyes of the federal government, a married couple.

So we had to jump through hoops, and eventually at a federal level, legislation passed, and we could get our green cards, but that made me hyper-aware of the psychological onus that LGBT people have in the workplace. So, you’re coming to a new country, and it's all new, and there are just a few more things that you carry in your invisible backpack, that other people are not necessarily carrying themselves or aware of.

When I joined Microsoft and Google, I became an internal activist of sorts, speaking out and advocating for more balanced relationships, within the workplace and for women and for LGBTQ. At Google, I was part of an internal employee resource group called BALM (Black and Latinx marketers), advocating and taking part in internal conversations, especially after George Floyd.

Often, when I gave presentations at work, I would introduce myself as “I’m Susan, I’m from Brazil and I’m married to Silvia,” and I would show a picture of me and Sylvia getting married over Skype. And I would talk about how technology was so important in my life; it was sort of my cheeky and funny way of outing myself, saying, hey, I’m married to a woman, which wasn’t the point. But everyone saw that I was married to a woman. After these presentations, a lot of people would come up to me, sometimes in tears, telling me they were grateful that a senior professional could be so comfortable talking about their sexuality in front of a large crowd. It just opened the door for people like me. I was lucky enough to grow up in a family and in a social and professional environment where that wasn’t necessarily a hindrance for me, or even if it was I couldn’t care less and I would just sort of, put my foot in the door and bring it down and speak up for myself, but I know that a lot of people aren’t that lucky or don’t have that kind of internal strength because of the experiences they’ve had, so these things are very important to me.

So now that I’m in the next phase of my career, the post-corporate, post-consulting phase, I am working on a project that you and I haven’t talked about yet, a women’s health startup In Brazil. It’s still not developed to its full fruition, so I can’t speak a lot about it at the moment. But hopefully it’s also going to break down some barriers for women in Brazil.

Given how much women’s health is neglected at so many levels, from research to care to the quality of care to the way doctors care and listen (and predominantly male doctors), it’s my way of advocating for women. Also, my partner and I have a home in Brazil in a little village that’s quite humble and poor, and so we have some ideas on how to support at-risk youth in this Village, helping put them on a path that helps them avoid violence.

I mean, I could also talk about Inclusion in the work itself, if I could go there.

Diego: Please!

Susan: So, at Google, I was fortunate enough to lead the team tasked by the CMO to codify Google's inclusive marketing philosophies and principles and develop a Playbook and processes for them. Before I joined Google, there had been a moment when their marketing was not necessarily representing minorities in a positive light, not only in a positive light but at times using stereotypes. There was also underrepresentation of people with disabilities, Blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ, and other communities, and so Google wanted to not only increase that representation so that their marketing reflected the world around us but also eliminate stereotypes. It’s no use if you increase the representation of Blacks in your marketing if you’re still representing them as a basketball player or as a musician… You have to have a Black CEO, or in the boardroom.

So I led the team that generated the insights, and every year, we measured how inclusive the marketing was and partnered with non-profit organizations who specialized in these communities to audit the marketing. Then we established the internal processes by which teams could be trained and empowered to actually develop more inclusive work, and all of this work was made public and available to other brands and agencies around the world—All In is the name [All In - Inclusive Marketing Insights (all-in.withgoogle.com)]. So it’s a really really important, lovely initiative.

Of course, it takes years to actually effect change, and it starts with making teams themselves more inclusive and more representative. There’s been improvement but it’s never perfect. But I appreciate the initiative—it’s not about one brand winning in this space: We all win when all brands become more inclusive in their marketing, especially brands that have a large stage and have an important voice. So when a brand as big as Google says it’s important to be inclusive, when it shows its vulnerabilities and where it’s lacking and where it’s trying to improve, they facilitate a dialogue whereby other brands can look at what Google is doing and learn from us and share what they are doing so that we can all improve.

Diego: Yeah, as you say, it’s very positive to see that happening—it reinforces how important it is to have. insiders that believe and lead that personally, because of their experience or because of their beliefs, and actually start making it happen. It needs to move into the behavioral or there’s no impact. When there’s no connection behind that, actual people, it’s only a gesture, right? When it lacks the human dimension, it's not believable. Google making it ‘open source’ is super important because that shows leadership from a company, something that not only insiders but people outside can actually believe in. So it is true leadership, both from the company and also from people like you, embracing your own experience and doing something about it for the good of everyone. So, obviously congratulations and thank you.

We’ve seen a lot of change happen in our time, arguably not enough, but there’s been progress, and that becomes part of the genetic code of the brand as well…

Susan: I mean, I want to build on that, too because I think there’s only so much that marketing can do as marketing, as an expression of the brand. And you started by saying that we both believe that brand is this bigger thing… I don’t think of brand only as a component of marketing. If anything, marketing and product are two sides of the same coin—brand is this more elevated state of being, where product is an expression of a brand and marketing is an expression of the brand, and so I think there’s only so much that marketing can do to change the world. But if you think of large Tech organizations the more frequent interaction and relationship that people have with the brand is when they use the technology itself. It’s not when they’re exposed to the marketing. It’s when they’re using the product. Your prompt was really interesting because Algo is this sort of personal entity that you’re sort of having this relationship with, and in your prompt, Algo is referred to as ‘They.’ When I think about many of the AIs that have launched in the past from many companies (take Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and now there’s Sora from Open AI), you could say they’re all feminine, right? They’re all female (maybe they could say that Sora isn’t; it means ‘sky’ in Japanese.) But it sounds female. Now, there’s Gemma from Google, which is an AI model (I think they’re doing the Gemini Gemma thing…), and Gemma is also female. What does it say about a brand’s values if these AIs and other assistive technology applications are female? Most of them are female.

I was also reading up on an internal codename for a code-writing AI at Google called Goose. And Goose obviously is like Tom Cruise’s wingman and Top Gun. So the wingman is male but the assistants are all female, which to me isn't very inclusive in how we’re thinking about these AIs—if anything they should be gender-neutral if you’re going to name them that way…

Diego: Going back to what you were saying before this chat. Eventually, the contact with a company or a brand or a business is going to be through this AI ‘assistant,’ right? So they will become the face of the brand. You and I come from a generation where the logo was the vessel that captured everything that a company represents, a signifier. That torch will pass to the assistant, and in that sense, it carries a lot of weight; it should make everybody comfortable and keep everybody close. Airbnb is a company that I followed for a while because I think that they do a lot of things right. Obviously, not everything is perfect, but when I present case studies to my students, Airbnb is usually there, and especially in terms of diversity and inclusion.

Susan: Yeah. Yeah, I think Airbnb is a very courageous brand. They have very, very clear values, and obviously, the humans are at the core of their business because they have hosts and they have guests, and one, they realize that there’s an important relationship there between hosts and guess that they are intermediating. And if they want to create a more inclusive world, they need to do everything that they can to make sure that they’re facilitating more healthy or more open and more understanding relationships because they're putting strangers together.

Diego: Exactly, and that concept of leadership, too, in this sense that, for instance, they take the bull by the horns; when they screw up, they own it.

Turning this a little bit, we’ve been talking about brand and technology, and that is a magic space, right? Maybe when we first met, technology was a lot smaller than it is today, and branding was a very different discipline in that sense. But that wasn’t that long ago and a lot has changed since then. One thing I see taking place over the last two to three years we see a bit of a direction of which way we’re going to go. To outsiders like me, technology was always a bit of a surprise, and now we kind of know what’s going to happen, what AI’s impact will be, how we’ll collaborate with machines…

Susan: Yeah, I mean, I think obviously brands and companies are always, on the one side, looking for efficiencies and also looking for deeper relationships and deeper engagement with their audiences, and I think they’re going to use AI for both sides of those equations. I mean, we’re already seeing AI being used for efficiencies when it comes to managing costs when bidding for advertising space, better targeting, finding your audience, having hyper-personalized messages, and for bringing down the cost of creative by having the AI assemble your ads… So I think we’re basically looking at AI hyper-accelerating the creative process and the cost of the creative production coming down to essentially zero. I think we're already seeing a lot of that right now. It’s going to accentuate what is really the core and the focus of where brand professionals or agencies add the most value and why they get hired. Maybe some agencies get hired for production, and all of that is probably going to go away, or at least to some degree.

The critical thinking, the expertise, the human relationship—nothing beats a creative director talking to a CMO or in a boardroom. Having the kind of dialogue that senior creatives and senior strategists have with their clients or in a dialogue with the senior leadership of an organization to understand how the brand should be a propeller of growth for that business. I don’t think that’s going to go away. Those skills and expertise are only going to be accentuated. You’re going to outsource the production to AI, but it’s not going to substitute the critical creative thinking that needs to be done. It’s only going to give you insights and prompts and accelerate production and stuff, but you still need people in the room to sort of advise and make decisions on what the vision and path to pursue to truly build a brand and create a brand that supports a business.

Diego: Yeah. I’ve been taking, or trying to take, a class on data analytics, and at this point, we’re looking into ‘supervised’ and ‘unsupervised,’ and while I understand the word choice, it’s an unfortunate choice, right? On the one hand, you want more collaboration, but the guidance needs to come from the human… I also read about what happens when AI generates so much content that It’s learning from itself and just starts propagating hallucinations. So, If the product is for humans, in the end, humans need to be involved, and I really like your definition of ‘critical creative thinking’ because it captures the difference from artificial intelligence, which is about predictions and iteration.

Susan: Yeah.

Diego: We shouldn’t look to replace that part of the human, the ability to process the context. Do you have any words that come to mind that you would use to describe what that is like?

Susan: Yeah. I think it’s about humans being in the driver’s seat; it goes back to being the code. The human is the pilot and the AI is the copilot, and I think it’s the same whether you’re thinking about creativity and branding or whether you’re thinking about products and coding. A lot of coders are Outsourcing code writing to the AI but you still need to be in the driver’s seat. There’s a part of coding that can be replaced by using AI, but you still need to have the product vision and roadmap, and what you want the outcome to be. You can’t outsource a hundred percent because, as you say, builds from the past. AI is inherently flawed and inherently biased because it’s drinking from a well that is somewhat poisoned or imperfect, right? So, you still need the human.

Diego: And, as regards design, there is so much learning in the process, the iteration. I see this all the time on LinkedIn, where people post, say a beautiful design for a package they made using Midjourney. And yeah, it may look great, but you learn nothing in the process. It may help you generate ideas and break the ice, and if you’re smart you can use it as an input to your process, but you still need to learn from that process, and without that, there’s no solution. If you don't learn, you can’t make decisions based on your learnings.

Susan: Yeah, I mean, there’s certainly this. It’s very exciting if you use it right; it’s going to open up the doors through a lot more creativity and, obviously, efficiency, but there’s also the responsibility of using it. And I think this is where also the human aspect comes in because you need to be eyes wide open to the limitations of the AI that you’re using, especially going back to the prior conversation about inclusive branding and inclusive marketing. I don’t know if you saw some news last year about an experiment that Bloomberg did with Stable Diffusion [Generative AI Takes Stereotypes and Bias From Bad to Worse (bloomberg.com)]. They did this massive experiment where they used Stable Diffusion to generate portraits of people within certain professions. They took seven professions that are typically more white collar and more high-paying, and then they took seven professions that are typically not as well-paid and typically more blue collar. They asked to generate 300 portraits of people in each of these professions. So a judge, or social worker, or a fast food worker. What happened was that, in the case of the judge, only 3% of the potraits generated were female, whereas in reality, in the US, about a third of judges are female, and two-thirds are male. So, the AI is underrepresenting women in that profession based on all of the inputs available.

And then, if you think about the lower-paid professions like social worker, it depicted about two-thirds of social workers having darker skin tones. It’s the same with fast-food workers; about two-thirds of them have darker skin tones, whereas actually, it’s the opposite; about two-thirds of fast-food workers and social workers are white in the US. So, you’re perpetuating the stereotype when it comes to gender, race, and skin tones. So I think it’s the responsibility of the human to guide and be in the driver’s seat. And to be responsible for always fact-checking the results of the inspiration that the AI gives you. Otherwise, you yourself, even though very well-intentioned, could be an engine that spreads bias in the world, which is very dangerous.

Diego: I agree, and out of personal experience, it’s very hard to steer it away from biases, which, by the way, are a reflection of what’s on the web.

Susan: Yeah, the AI doesn’t have any intentions; it’s just software. I think there’s also the responsibility of tech tech organizations that are building the AI to build these models in a way that you’re drastically reducing bias in the model.

Diego: I think that it’s probably very naive at the moment, but it's there, so it is a responsibility that they need to embrace. I agree with you… With all this, I have a couple more questions: what happens if we throw design into the mix? We just talked about one aspect, which is keeping an eye out for biases… do other things come to mind about coupling AI with design?

Susan: Yeah, look, I think bias and inclusion is important if you’re thinking about design as it relates to building brands. A lot of how people navigate the world comes from what brands they choose to bring into their lives, what they pay for, and what brands they listen to. Everything we’ve been talking about might seem not so important, but if you don’t correct for it, what’s going to happen as you’re going to portray a world that is not reflective of the world around us, and it has an impact on the way people think and behave, the way people hold themselves, how you hire, how you promote, how you treat people, who you trust, if you’re walking in the street and you’re looking behind you or across the street, when do I feel safe, and I think Brands need to counter all of these things to be a positive force in the world.

And so I think design has a huge responsibility in creating a world that’s healthier, that’s safer, that’s more trusting. I also think, and as it relates to AI brands, that design is an interface between people and the world, right? Everything was designed: the objects and furniture in your house, the brands you choose… The way I think about design is as the interface between people and the world. So there’s a part of design that I think is about happiness and joy in a world that’s never lived in such a poly-crisis; it’s sort of a crisis of inequality, a crisis of war, an epidemic of opioids and drugs, a loneliness epidemic…

Gen Z, as a generation, has the least quantity and intensity of human relationships; they build relationships online versus in person, and so I mean, there are so many crises. I think designers have a huge responsibility to think about how they can be agents of joy, softness, and happiness. How can they bring those feelings back into the world?

Diego: I love that—I agree with that spirit, and love the idea of designers being agents of joy. It's unfortunate that we sometimes fall short of the bigger promise, right? For example, in product design, the notion of ‘delight’ has come to mean fluid animations, clicking noises, and big type, which may make for a more intuitive interface, but that’s short of joy, right?

One last topic I wanted to explore with you: You mentioned that you will be working with at-risk youth, and I know that you’re also passionate about education and that you always think about those who are starting today. Do you have any thoughts, advice, and recommendations for them?

Susan: Wow. The world is so different for people who are starting their careers and embarking on their Journey or professional Journey today than it was in our time. You had to choose your education path based on what you thought your career was going to be, and pretty much follow that path. That is what it was like for me, I went to business school and I didn’t follow a path in banking or typical business… I was happy enough to be able to marry several interests I had in branding. But today, people are going to have many different careers within their lifetime, they’re going to learn, and they’re going to switch, and I think my best advice is always to be curious.

Always be curious and always try to learn as much as you can, and whether you’re 20, 30, 40 50, there is always room to learn. I mean, I love that you’re delving into quantitative research and analytics and data, you’re learning yourself as a designer and I think we’re going to think much more about lifelong learning nowadays than the typical four years in college, and then if when I go to my job, how can you always be infusing? that thirst for curiosity and learning throughout your meandering path. People are going to meander and be more curious, less stagnated, or stuck in one specific thing. It’s going to make your life richer also.

Diego: You see people like John Maeda, who’s an engineer, scientist, designer, businessman, what isn’t he? Yeah, I think it’s solid advice. That’s super cool. Thank you, Susan!