(MENAFN- PRovoke) For the latest edition of our CCO Podcast, I sat down with Leslie Cafferty, chief communications officer at Booking Holdings, to discuss how she manages a portfolio of technology-driven travel brands, how she balances the needs of different stakeholders and reaches them through a variety of channels, the challenges of working with influencers, and how the company is incorporating AI into its communications efforts.

Highlights of the discussion include:

On Booking Holdings:“Booking Holdings is maybe not a household name for many, but it is one of the biggest internet tech companies in the world, and we operate mostly online travel brands. So Booking com, Kayak, Priceline, Agoda-which is largely based in Asia-but we also own Open Table and then a number of smaller brands.”

On corporate brand and product brands:“When I joined the company at the Booking Holdings level, the way we were structured was I spent probably the majority of my time working thinking about Booking Holdings and the corporate reputation. And then within each of the brands, we had communications teams that were focused on the consumer.

“We've evolved a little bit. That structure still holds place, and there's sort of dotted line reporting between the brands and Booking Holdings. But booking is the biggest business, so sometimes Booking becomes the name. So the other brands will dotted line into me, and then I will manage the Booking Holdings corporate team and the booking team.”

On balancing protect and promote:“The 'protect' is you are always looking forward and ahead about what could potentially come around the corner, making sure you're prepared for that. And then the 'promote' piece of things is a more linear planning process.”

On her career path to the CCO role:“I had no communications. It wa\as not on my radar at all. I studied international relations. The first job I landed was at a company called IAC. They owned a conglomerate of big internet brands that people would know, like match and Vimeo. There was an opening in their communications function. And I found business, this business, the internet business, technology, really interesting. And so a role opened up there, and I didn't get it because they told me I had no communications experience.

“But six months later, they still hadn't filled the role. So I put my hand up again, and they gave me a shot. I spent eight years at IAC, learning everything from driving consumer brands, loving the pace of technology, corporate and crisis issues. We were sued by shareholders. We had a lot of things happening. We did mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, spinoffs. It was an incredible learning experience. So that was my start.”

On her studies in international affairs:“That experience has been critical understanding cultural nuances, how you communicate in different markets, how a message or a company, point of view, would be received in one part of the world versus another part of the world. I'm not the expert in every region, right? But understanding where I need to have team members who have expertise there, companies can make a big mistake if you are not really savvy to what's happening.”

On the breadth of her role and variety of stakeholders:“We do have a dedicated investor relations team that is the primary look into the financial community. But let's say we're putting out a product release about a new generative AI function we have across one of our brands. So you think usually through the lens of, we want our consumers to know we have this great new product. But one of the biggest topics, top of mind among our investors is, what is the impact of generative AI on big tech companies like us. So questions will come from our investors.

“So we have to be mindful as communicators all the time, that even if we intend for a message to land with one particular audience, once you put it out there, whether it's on social media or whether it's traditional media, or whether it's anywhere else, other audiences will see it. And so you have to think through the lens of, are we preparing for the questions that will come from those other audiences.”

On Booking's multichannel strategy:“I think social media is incredibly important. For corporate reputation, we are still looking at traditional media now, whether that's Wall Street Journal, or the physical paper. Traditional media still serves a very important base of audience for us reaching the business community, even the tech community.

“But when we think about our customers, we definitely are thinking social media as well as more consumer lifestyle focused traditional media. So for travel companies talking about travel and leisure, social media is definitely becoming a bigger and bigger piece. As our consumer audience is becoming more younger generations, that's where many of them get their news.

“It's constantly changing, and I think that's one of the most important pieces of our job is to constantly look who is our audience, where are they? Where are they getting their information, and are we there? And so how we tailor a message across those different channels for those different audiences may be a little bit unique, but we have to be conscious of where our customers are and make sure we're there, otherwise, we're speaking into a vacuum?”

On being data-driven:“I think when you're an internet company, you have so much that you can tangibly measure and look at in real time, that the DNA of our company is very data driven, and so it's unacceptable to come in and say we don't have data to really measure what we do, so we have to constantly look and think creatively about how do we measure.

“So if I use social media, that's a channel where it's much easier to look at some specific metrics. If we put a message out on Instagram or Tiktok, we can instantly see how many people are engaging with it. What is the sentiment of the comments coming back, how many people are liking it? So social media is great, because it's very measurable.

“When it comes to traditional media, we don't know how many people may have seen the great article on any site, because we don't have those metrics. Those are their metrics. But one of the ways we think about it with campaigns is we say, our budget is x, and we want to achieve a certain number of stories, of positive stories within this budget. We've been doing that for so many years and we've created a benchmark, how many articles we expect, and we can tell if the ROI is not there.”

On the company's first foray onto TikTok:“ That was fun, because we learned a lot, and we learned a lot very quickly in real time.

“So when it was very clear that Tiktok was emerging as a huge platform attracting tons of eyeballs all over the world and going back to being where are our customers are, we realized we needed to be on TikTok. We had a pretty scrappy budget and we had, at the time, a relatively small team on social media.

“If I look at say Facebook, which is an older platform, and then when Instagram came around, we realized that the content needed to be different on both, but not wildly different. So we would tailor a little, and we had some learnings. So then we thought, here's this new, emerging social media channel, we'll just take some of that content and put it on TikTok.

“And we learned very quickly that what you put on Instagram does not work on TikTok. But again, going back to the data driven mindset, you have these metrics in real time so you can see what works and what are the best things.”

On the importance of-and limits of-creative ideas:“I think one of the best aspects of this job is how we tell creative stories from a marketing or branding lens. Everybody has ideas on what they think will work. This is going to be the best idea. I love this idea. It's very subjective.

“And then you put it out, and then you watch it totally just, you know, dissolve into the ether. We've come to learn, it's never based on our ideas or what we think is a good idea. It's based on what the audience tells us they like. And what we've learned on TikTok, it's a very entertainment-forward platform. So people go there and they have small moments in time, and they want to be entertained. So putting a more traditional brand message or product message that does not work well.

“And so we've had to try to get creative, to sort of get our message out, promote the brands, but in a way that is seen as entertainment for consumers.”

On being culturally relevant: “When we are hiring on the social media team, y you don't want an academic who has studied and learned what these channels do by reading about them. You want people who are living in these channels. Because they know the trends. I always say to the team, never source an idea from me, but if you need help with ideas, I'm happy to ask my 13 year old daughter, and she can probably tell me.

“Trends can come and go within 24 hours, right? So we have people living on the channels.”

On working with influencers, and vetting creative partners:“I think it's more art than science. So you have an idea and ask who could we work with, people that are connected to this topic?

“The first thing is diligence. So we do a thorough look across their social media channels. We'll have our legal teams take a look, because you are inevitably giving up some control of your brand to somebody outside of your company. So diligence is just the first, baseline step.

“But I think one of the art versus science learnings that we've come over the yearsis there has to be some kind of connection. So you have a conversation with the influencer or the influencer's agent. Do they seem genuinely interested in the project, because a lot of these influencers, especially the bigger ones, they have a lot of opportunities, and if they're not interested in what we're putting forward, they're not going to be giving it their best.

On giving influencers freedom:“One of the other things that we've learned is with influencers, if you try too much to dictate to them, here's what we want you to say and do, they can do that because you're under an agreement together, but it doesn't usually work well. You have to give them some creative flexibility, because they've built a following based on their own personality, the stories that they tell and how they tell their stories.

“It's really hard, because you're taking your brand and giving it to this person who doesn't work at your company, hasn't lived your brand the way you do, but they need to have some creative flexibility/”

On adopting AI in communications:“So we are a technology company, and that is the core of what we do. We have a an AI objective, a company objective, which is, how in every department, every function. how are you going to leverage AI to do your job better, to work faster, to be more productive?

“So in communications, we've built a tool that if we're helping to prep our executives, if they're going on stage and speaking somewhere, and we want to give them a bit of a prep document, we built a tool that will now can produce that in less than five minutes.

“We get thousands of inbound media inquiries every week from journalists all over the world asking questions, and right now somebody looks through that and checks them and makes sure we're responding. We're looking now at testing a tool that will automate that and tell where this email is coming from and who it needs to get routed to. And so rather than a human checking the inbox all day and forwarding and routing, we're testing AI. And you can take you know that work off and put that person on something more effective.”

On being ethical and authentic with AI:“Wwe have a whole unit focused on ethical use of AI within the company. So any tool we ever launched, or any product that we would launch to consumers, is vetted by the ethics AI team, which consists of lawyers, technologists, to make sure that it's passing the bar.

“And we definitely still have a component of human checking on things. If our Gen AI tool has produced a briefing document, we're not just going to send that. We're going to look at it.”

On whether team members are excited or wary:“I think is a mix of both. Probably. I think, the immediate reaction, is AI going to take away my job? Am I going to be out of a job if we use this? But I think people are getting more comfortable with it, and those fears are subsiding. Because, in the example of the human who's had to check that media relations inbox all day, that's not the most fulfilling use of time. So if we can automate that, it's not that that person is leaving, we can now put that person to do more interesting, stimulating things.

“Our CEO is a big advocate of technology. So from the early days there have been trainings for our employees, and everyone has AI goals. I was scared in the beginning, I'm not a technologist. How am I going to teach all of my people how to use this technology?

“But as we've gone on the journey, people are getting more comfortable, and we built a team within communications that is focused on innovation for us. They work with our technology teams who help build these tools, look at what we need, and then train us on them. And so the more we're seeing it and using it, when you see its capabilities, I think people are getting really excited about what it can do.”

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