Laurence Paquette, former VP Marketing & Brand Vestas

You spent 15 years at Vestas, the world's largest wind energy company, rising to VP of marketing and brand. Can you take us through what you built in those 15 years? How was your journey? That's a good question. I will try to answer in a short answer. I mean, I started entry-level at Vestas as an analyst in customer intelligence team. And over the years, I've worked in communication, in marketing, in service commercial, in public affairs. So basically changing job every two to three years, internally finding new opportunities. And then I ended up four years ago as head of marketing for the company. And I think it's been a fantastic journey, but it's also been really good to learn from different parts of the company and to be able to do that over the course of 15 years. But it's been a lot of learning as you go and being in positions I had no idea what I was supposed to do and being uncomfortable and, you know, figuring out. Yes, for sure. Yeah. Well, Vestas is selling something that most people never see, right? Wind energy, infrastructure and industrial scale. How did video become part of the answer to that communication challenge? Yeah, that's a good question. I think it started first because a lot of our products are made on paper only first. So by that, I mean that we design them, the engineer team is designing them and they don't exist until they become prototype. And for us to really reassure the customers in the market that these products are real, that they exist, that they're robust, that they meet the criteria, the technical specifications that we've outlined. We've used videos to film the production, to film the first prototypes being built. So every time we release a new product, we do film the different milestones around the product to really showcase how the product is performing and that it's meeting the technical specifications that we laid out initially, sometimes two, three years before. So that's one way we've been using video. And then also we use a lot of video. We use a lot of videos to show innovation because some of the components we have, we built and what we have to transport is very big. Our blades are often 100 meters long. Wow. And transporting blades like that can be difficult. So we also showcase how do we transport blades. So for example, the video that we released not long ago where you can see blades being transported in Portugal and the roads are very curvy. So we have innovated, we've done innovation for the transportation. And the solution is that the blades are tilted 45 degrees angle to be able to go through these kinds of roads. And people really like videos of big machines. Like really do. It's a part of our niche. It's lots of engagement when we show how we transport big components. I mean, it's basically behind the scenes, all clear. Yeah, it's a little bit like Discovery Channel style of like behind the scene. How does this happen? How is this built and how do you do it? I love it. Yeah. And your rank campaigns have shaped EU energy policies. Yeah. That's a very different ambition than most marketing departments of the European operators. What does video look like when the goal is that big? Yeah, that's very different because when we want to move policies, when we want to accelerate, in our case, we wanted to accelerate permitting in offshore wind. We decided to use videos to basically poke at the policymakers and at the regulators to really try to pass the message that it's great to set targets, but if the regulations are not put in place, if the policies are not ready, then these are just targets. So we've decided to use videos to poke a little bit and create a little bit of provocation, if I could say, to really make the general public aware, but also to invite the politicians to act a little bit faster. And it has helped. But you need to be willing to be a little bit provocative. A little bit. Yes. You're part of a panel today called Video the Marketing Leader's Perspective. And I want to ask you a question about what CMOs and marketing leaders are actually thinking about video ownership. What is your perspective on video ownership? Yeah, I think from where I sit specifically, I think that it's very early, but I foresee that a lot of the decision makers in the industry I'm in are people that are slightly older than me. And as people are aging, as decision makers are becoming stronger, slightly younger, marketeers and video makers need to realize in B2B that we're going to have a bunch of decision makers coming in that are consuming content in a completely different way. They are, you know, on a short form. They're using 9:16, not 16:9 format when they consume content. And I think in the B2B, especially industrial B2B space, we're not ready for that change of decision maker, where the decision makers are used to very short form video content. And they get a lot of information through it. So I think we need to be ready to move, not necessarily towards B2C, but just in a different way of creating content for a different kind of decision makers. TwentyThree has been used to manage video across a global organization. What does it actually take to make video work at that scale? And how having the right infrastructure has helped you? That's really important. We use videos externally heavily, but also internally, so everyone in the company knows what's going on. We need to make sure everyone sees the new product, understand the evolution of our products and so on. So having an infrastructure internally that allows us to do that and to distribute the content to everyone has been super important. It's also made it much easier for us to control, to have it all in one place with only few people having access and being able to upload videos, manage videos. And that way we make sure distribution is right and also the control level is pretty high. So we don't have weird videos and weird things coming in. It's all managed and controlled centrally. I'd like to tweak the direction a bit, because you have a book coming up. Yes, this is called, Lead Anyway: 10 Rules for Leading When You Break the Mold. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Yes, so I have a book. I've been creating content online, a lot of video actually, personal videos online for the last five years. And the last year I decided to take all my content and figure out, could I convert that into a book? So I wrote a book. It's called, Lead Anyway. And it's basically for people who are working professionally in large corporations, but don't feel like they fit the corporate mold. And how then do you build a career? How do you, how can you be yourself in corporate if you are not the typical corporate person? And that's what the book is about. I love it. I hope to get my copy signed. Yes, of course. Of course. Yes. And well, on that note, you've built a personal brand of 85,000 followers alongside your corporate career. Make sure it's on a video of yourself. What does doing it yourself teach you about video that managing it doesn't? That's a good question. I think when you do video yourself, especially because I was doing it on the side of my, of my job and really it's more leadership, personal takes on, on different things. When you do it all by yourself, you also learn very quickly what works, what doesn't. It's very vulnerable to be alone in front of the camera and to publish it by yourself. You also learn what hooks work, what, what doesn't work, what people are engaging with. You learn also how to do good edits, bad edits and so on and so forth. So you really start appreciating what a good video is and how you can do it yourself, which when I work with my team, I don't need to do that. We have agencies, we have professionals in the team that do that. So I think for me, it's really helped me understand what speaks to people and how to especially create a good hook. And if you were to say one thing, yes, I'm on a voice here at TwentyThree Summit and one thing, and once you go back to the organization, push the video forward, what would you say? I think, I think with the rise of AI, I would say that I, I foresee a lot of, a lot, a bigger need for authenticity in video for real people, for real opinions, for real engagement. So I think people should go back to their organization and use AI for sure to automate anything that can be automated around video, but really focused on authenticity going forward because I think people are going to crave that even more than they are. They already do. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. Thank you for today.