Connect 4: How one Levi’s ad inspired a teen girl to ‘lean in’ (and become a leading Facebook exec)

Lady Nicola Mendelsohn is the European head of the world’s largest social network and “the most powerful British woman in the tech industry”

Four brands, four executives, one connection: platforms that changed the world. Welcome to Connect 4!

In a weekly series, I’ll be interviewing senior executives from four world-changing online platforms. In their own words, each brand executive will talk me through:

• How they came to work on their platform;
• The lessons aspiring business leaders can learn from their experience; and
• Hints and tips on how you can make the most of their platform.

This week, I caught up with Lady Nicola Mendelsohn, vice president of Facebook Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In 2015, The Telegraph referred to Mendelsohn as “the most powerful British woman in the tech industry.”

In our interview (which has been lightly edited), Mendelsohn talked about the TV advert that sparked her interest in advertising, encouraging the next generation of female leaders with the #SheMeansBusiness programme and meeting Sheryl Sandberg on her first day at Facebook. 

CREDIT: FACEBOOK

You have been the vice president of Facebook EMEA since 2013. Please provide a potted history of your pathway to this position.

I remember, very clearly, the advert that made me want to work in advertising.

A teenager in Manchester, I was watching TV when the [1985] Levi’s launderette ad [featuring the English male model, Nick Kamen] came on. It was innovative, fresh and evoked a strong emotional connection. The ad transported me to a world of 1950s America. I was inspired by the creativity and the use of music. It was a completely new way of advertising – through storytelling – all within 60 seconds. The ad’s influence went beyond that. You could see people reacting to it in the way they dressed and the music they listened to. 

That Levi’s ad is how I first learned about Bartle Bogle Hegarty – the agency behind this creative, which gave me my first job. I’ve since been lucky to hold a variety of roles in the creative industries – at Grey London, Karmarama, as President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and co-chair of the Creative Industries Council. 

Over the years, advising on digital and mobile advertising strategies became an increasingly important part of my role. So, five years ago, it made perfect sense to me to move to Facebook to be at the forefront of that innovation. 

One of the aspects I love most about my job is the opportunity it gives me to meet businesses and people who use Facebook to tell their stories and build communities all over Europe, the Middle East and Africa – from small business owners who use our platforms to reach their customers and find new ones to big brands that we help talk to their audiences in original and imaginative ways and the many thousands of Group admins who dedicate their time to bringing people together around shared passions and interests. 

Citing personal and/or professional examples, describe the impact (if any) that formal or informal mentorship has had on your development as a VP.

On my first day at Facebook, I remember coming out of the lift and being met by Sheryl Sandberg and Carolyn Everson, two incredible women who I’m privileged to continue to learn from. At Facebook, we have a culture of cultivating strong networks and I take every opportunity to learn as much as I can from them as well as trying to share from my own experiences.

Mentoring is definitely a two-way street, but mentors don’t necessarily have to be senior leaders. For me, it’s more important to identify a close group of people who will give it to you straight and who you can count on to be objective. Research we commissioned to inform our #SheMeansBusiness programme helped us articulate the importance of such groups as it showed that nearly twice as many female founders who are part of a business community are likely to forecast business growth compared to those who aren’t. That's significant. 

“Mentors don’t necessarily have to be senior leaders. For me, it’s more important to identify a close group of people who will give it to you straight and who you can count on to be objective.”

In a 2018 interview with ELLE magazine, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, singled out three businesswomen for high praise for their contribution to the city’s success and for their role in creating access to opportunities for women in business. You were one of the businesswomen mentioned. What plans (if any) do you have to build on this foundation and continue to advance the cause of equality of opportunity in business?

To encourage the next generation of female leaders, we all need to lead with courage.

While it’s incredibly humbling to be recognised by The Mayor, I’m only a small part of a much bigger picture. We all have a part to play. It’s only by bringing together individuals, businesses and industries that we can increase the rate at which we’re moving towards equality. 

There are so many forms that leading with courage could take and it’s a challenge for all leaders – not just women. It could be standing up for junior colleagues who are being spoken over in meetings, calling out bias or having those hard conversations around what equal opportunity does (and doesn’t) look like. Being brave enough to speak up and share your opinion is something we actively encourage at Facebook. 

We also look for ways to help women believe in themselves and for girls to understand that the sky is the limit. For International Day of the Girl last October, I was lucky enough to host a group of ambitious young women at our office as part of the #Girl2Leadercampaign, an initiative run by the Women Political Leaders Global Forum. It aims to provide young women with role models, inspiration and an insight into life as a leader to help address the deficit of women in industries like politics and those relating to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). After a day of being told that they can achieve whatever they set their minds to, it was inspiring to see how motivated people were. 

According to Facebook, #SheMeansBusiness is “a space for entrepreneurial women to make valuable connections, share advice and move forward, together.” You were instrumental in launching the SMB campaign, which has spawned a number of success stories. Which one has particularly caught your eye and why?

In 2016, we launched #SheMeansBusiness after our research found that, while one in 10 women in the UK were thinking about starting a business, they hadn’t yet done so and that, for many, this was owing to a lack of confidence. To help address this, we set-up the #SheMeansBusiness programme to provide these would-be female entrepreneurs with skills and confidence to help them succeed.

Since then, we’ve launched #SheMeansBusiness in six other countries across EMEA and trained over 20,000 women in the UK and over 50,000 globally. It’s been great fun meeting some of the women benefiting from this support, hearing about their business ambitions and the positive difference that running a business is having on their lives. 

One of the first women I met was Mel Bounds. She was a new mum looking for people to go on runs with, so she set-up a Facebook Page as a community for mums who were also looking to get more active and make new friends. Today, her page has over 14,000 followers and Mel also sells sports clothing under the ‘This Mum Runs’ brand. Mel’s story has really stayed with me as it’s not only an example of growing a brand on Facebook, but also an example of how our platforms can help build communities. 

Mendelsohn at Women Leadership Day. CREDIT: FACEBOOK

Business leaders often have to make forecasts of various kinds. What opportunities and threats do you see on the horizon in the tech industry and how do you plan to meet them?

Tech is probably the world’s fastest moving industry. When I joined Facebook five years ago, we had only just acquired Instagram, hadn’t yet bought WhatsApp or Oculus and the separate Messenger app didn’t exist. 

You don’t have to look that far into the future before you start talking about exciting new technologies, like augmented reality and virtual reality, and how they’re going to revolutionise everyday life. We’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s possible with things like Live, Stories and 360 Video. 

At Facebook, our focus is on taking these new formats and technologies and thinking about how they can have a positive real-world impact on people, communities and the planet. It’s moving the conversation on from what’s innovative and “cool” to what’s useful and will help connect people. 

As the VP of a world-leading brand, you have invaluable experience of leadership in both good times and crisis moments. If you were to distil your “lessons learned” log into three pieces of practical advice for would-be business leaders, what would they look like?

Firstly, people matter. This can often be forgotten in the rush to keep up with the pace of innovation, but remembering this would be my first piece of advice. You need to ask yourself if you’re doing enough to invest in your people and if you’re giving them the resources they need to invest in themselves. Great leaders treat people as people, look after them and encourage them to bring their whole selves to work. 

Secondly, we must remember that unequal is unacceptable. When I told an old boss of mine that I was pregnant for the third time, his response was, “how many more times must we have this conversation?” I’m sure this was meant in jest, but it didn’t make me feel good. Thankfully, times have changed, but we still have a lot of work to do. It’s why we have training programmes at Facebook, like ‘Be The Ally,’ which helps provide people with the common language and understanding to support each other and challenge bias. 

Finally, we have to embrace creativity. As our industry and technology evolves, we need new and ever more creative solutions to business challenges now and opportunities in the future. It’s the responsibility of leaders to create an environment that liberates creativity from the fear of failure and from the face of judgement. 

“It’s the responsibility of leaders to create an environment that liberates creativity from the fear of failure and from the face of judgement.”

Please share some little-known hints, tips or advice on maximising the use of the Facebook platform for starting and/or growing a business.

It’s perhaps not little-known (since we know one billion people are sharing Stories on our platforms every day), but the power of real-time storytelling can’t be underestimated. Since Instagram launched Stories in 2016, their use has grown exponentially as a fun and fast way for people to share glimpses into their lives.

They’re great for brands, too. If you’re starting or growing your business, Stories are one of the best free tools available for building a more intimate relationship with your customers. They’re also fun. We’ve introduced so many creative features, like Boomerang and poll questions, to help you explore what works best to engage your audience. 

We’re already seeing so many brands making the most of this. In fact, half the brands on Instagram are using Stories to create authentic and creative content. As a lot of us try to lose our post-Christmas pounds, one example that comes to mind is Gymshark – a growing UK-based fitness wear brand, which was founded just six years ago. The brand has a huge following on Instagram but, when it came to Black Friday 2018 – a pivotal moment in the year for the business – they needed something to set them apart from the other brands vying for consumer attention on the platform.

So, they worked with our Creative Shop team to create ads in Instagram Stories – with a whole new creative designed to surprise (and catch the attention of) both loyal and new audiences. The campaign was a huge success. It reached 16.4 million people and Gymshark achieved a 6.6X return on its ad spend.

With so many options to create engaging content and a growing number of people engaging with them every day, placing ads in Stories is a great way for brands to drive results. 

4 ways Facebook has changed the world

CREDIT: FACEBOOK

The Harvard University quintet of Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Andrew McCollum launched Facebook on 4 February 2004. (Although McCollum isn’t credited with a founder bio on the Facebook site, he was nevertheless a member of the original founding team.)

As of the third quarter of 2018, Facebook had 2.27 billion monthly active users. Here’s four ways that the social media giant has changed the world as we know it:

1.     Facebook changed how people connect with each other

Facebook’s mission is to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”

In a shade under 15 years, Facebook has indeed made the world smaller so, to this extent, its lofty mission has already been accomplished. The social networking tool is universally woven into the social fabric of staying in touch with friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances – both near and far.

Before Facebook, few people took (let alone shared) “selfies,” pictures of their dinner, images of their cats and so on. In the Facebook era, pretty much anything goes and it’s not just limited to people’s personal lives. Facebook users post videos, sports results and all sorts of news – you name it, they share it.

CREDIT: FACEBOOK

2.     Facebook changed how people consume news

Before the internet, people got up to speed with what was happening in the world by watching television, reading various print publications and listening to the radio – in that order.

This has all changed. In 2016, Facebook was noted as the global go-to platform for news distribution on the internet. In 26 countries, almost half the population (44 per cent) used Facebook as a primary source of news, according to the Reuters Institute/YouGov.

A 2018 survey carried out by the Pew Research Center found that roughly four in 10 U.S. adults (43 per cent) get at least some of their news from Facebook. In fact, Facebook is, by a considerable margin, the most popular social media site as a pathway to news on U.S. soil. (The next most popular platform is YouTube where 21 per cent of U.S. adults access their news.)

Today, Facebook makes the news, breaks the news and, in some instances, even determines what the news is.

CREDIT: FACEBOOK 

3.     Facebook changed how people engage in politics

During his campaign for the U.S. Presidency in 1960, the late John F. Kennedy (JFK) recognised the “revolutionary impact of television” – 90 per cent of the American public had televisions in their homes. So, he capitalised on his statesman-like prowess in front of the cameras and emerged victorious over Richard Nixon to become the 35th President of the United States.

If JFK was the master of the analogue age, former President, Barack Obama, was unquestionably the master of the digital age. In 2008, the young Presidential hopeful prevailed over his older rival, John McCain, to become the 44th U.S. President.

Facebook was the game-changer for Obama who had more than two million American Facebook supporters while McCain had less than one-third (600,000). Obama used Facebook to connect with a tech-savvy younger generation of voters – gaining almost 70 per cent of voters under the age of 25 – the highest proportion since U.S. exit polling records started in 1976.

With his significant Facebook following in tow, Obama’s message to the electorate was loud and clear: “Yes, we can!”

4.     Facebook changed how people organise revolutions

In 2010, a number of protests and demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa regions started, which collectively became known as the “Arab Spring.” The uprisings were a reaction to oppressive regimes and a low standard of living. The result was that previous government leaders were ousted from power and new heads of governments installed in four countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya.

Facebook was arguably instrumental in toppling these governments, principally as a vehicle for the protesters to organise demonstrations and direct action. According to the Arab Social Media Report (produced by the Dubai School of Government in May 2011), nearly nine in 10 Egyptians and Tunisians surveyed said they utilised Facebook to organise protests or raise awareness of them. Significantly, only one of the protests called for on Facebook failed to materialise on the streets.

So, there you have it. From simple pastimes (like posting sports results) to complex activities (such as organising political revolutions), Facebook has indeed changed the world.