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What is the through line that I think is really interesting as the tools create greater ease and greater acceleration
00:00:05
and reduce barriers is I think the human piece is the most important piece more than ever because what matters judgment
00:00:14
taste point of view um ingenuity right those are the things that I I think will create sparks and difference in a world
00:00:22
where the tools become um more baseline where there's more access and those are
00:00:27
more standard um the the the brightest commodity will be that creative spark. And today we have a very interesting
00:00:35
guest. Christine Seagris is the global head of consumer and product marketing at Canva. Now, I don't know if you've
00:00:44
heard of Canva, but Canva is a global design platform that empowers individuals and teams to create
00:00:51
professional quality content quickly and easy. Um, it has a mission to enable anyone to design anything. Um,
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Christine, welcome to our show. >> Welcome, Christine. >> Thank you. It's so great to be here and
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speak with you this morning. >> Before we talk about you, which I'd like to know about your
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background because you do have an interesting background, but can you just do a better job describing camp? I
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played with it online so I kind of have a sense of what it is >> but like can you just describe what the
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mission is, what the product is, why we're excited to have you. >> You are right. Um Canva is an online
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design and collaboration platform. Uh we have the good fortune of serving 260 million people all around the world.
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Wow. And I think the way to think about Canva in the simplest terms is it allows
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you to take whatever idea you have in your head um whatever dream project anything you're kind of cooking up and
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to realize that in a design quickly and it was built um to really create that in
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an accessible way for folks. So a word we talk about a lot internally is the idea of feeling empowered. I think even
00:02:02
10 years ago, uh, the ability to to render something in your mind in a design, uh, was the domain of a few if
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you were a designer by trade or a a official creative. And now it's just the
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idea if you're a small business owner, if you're a creator, if you are an
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educator, if you work um, and an enterprise institution and you're like, gosh, no one reads my newsletter. Like,
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how can I just break through? It's just putting those tools in everybody's
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hands. I gota I just have to say I'm so excited to hear you talk about this because just last week I uh collaborated
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with two two academics in the field and we're putting together a proposal for
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one of our journals to study what AI design does from a consumer behavior point of view like how do consumers use
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it? How do consumers respond to it? How does it change? Um and we're going to
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try to do it. We're gonna try to do it to encourage new research, like new primary research on people thinking
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about it. But I was thinking you probably have some of those answers that we were
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my proposal to you and maybe you know the answer. Like one of the things we were thinking is how does a consumer
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respond differently to an AI generated design than they there's a lot that goes
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into that. They have to understand it's AI generated but can they tell that? And
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then if they can tell that, do they respond differently? I mean, there's a lot of things you might one might
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intuitively guess about it, but I'm guessing you have more than intuition. >> Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the way we
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think about it is AI is just a new set of tools at people's fingertips. And we
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try to pull it back to the idea of what are the goals people are trying to accomplish.
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>> You know, if you open up Canva, you have a goal. It might be a little goal to
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send out a birthday invitation for your son. It might be a big goal like launching a whole new business.
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>> So, what we want to do is give you the right tools where it just feels really
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easy. >> So, you can drag and drop something. You might have something in your mind and
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you just want to write a prompt to see it, you know, magically come to life. >> Like maybe it's a it's a unicorn um
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dejing on Mars. Like I could pump that in and and there I would see something rendered. But one thing that we think is
00:04:22
important is this idea of having um human in the loop. you know, how do you keep the human very very centered? Not
00:04:30
just from a perspective of their imagination driving the whole process, but also the idea of getting an image or
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um an output that you can edit and that you can manipulate and that you can shape because I think people really do
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want to make things their own and they have a sense of pride when you say, "Gosh, I made that. I can't believe I
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made that. Look how great that looks." That AI is just another tool or an accelerant to get you there. So, that's
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that's really our view is that it's just coming back to goal accomplishment
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>> is just another um tool and a bit more wind at your back to help you get there
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faster. >> Nice. I love that point, Christine. There's two things that jump out at me
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when I hear you make that commentary. It's really nice. The first has to do with this idea of not being seduced into
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trying to use AI in a mindless way. In other words, as some kind of hammer looking for a nail. In other words, I
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love your point about, you know, there's a goal that needs to be achieved. There's a problem to be solved. How does
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AI facilitate that? That's point number one. Point number two, which I want to
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get your reaction to, is stepping a little bit back to Barbara's point about
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I love this because >> back to my point, too. >> She's she's, ladies and gentlemen, she's
00:05:43
always making connections. She's always connecting the dots. It's like six
00:05:46
dimensional chess here. But, um, I love this point because when Barbara said like the democratization of creativity
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Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but I do I'm I do want to double down on that
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because I do think people will react differently if they know it's AI. I mean, I think that's what you're saying
00:06:04
also, Americas. I hear you. I like what you're saying, but I do think there is
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something different if AI designs it versus a creative soul does it. And some people are creative and some people
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aren't. And you're that's what you're talking about the democracization
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of now everybody is creative like that you've added that dimension no but you've added that dimension to my point
00:06:29
like I was saying >> everyone can create is I >> right but that is what essentially what
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happens is the the differentiators in in people's identity go away um and at some
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point people might react to that >> yeah I mean it's that's a really meaty
00:06:47
topic I I would say that you're looking topics here in marketing. >> So many so many of your toys into this
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topic. I would say a few things. Um >> I would challenge the idea that not
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everyone's creative. Um I I think people >> get it beaten out of them early. Um
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whether it's through school or maybe you don't draw well or maybe it's you know
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you feel it's very vulnerable the act of creation, right? to >> put yourself out there and to to make
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something. But I think a lot of ways people talk about being creative um might be through the lens of well I
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solve problems or I'm making this output for this like logical cerebral thing.
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But at the end of the day you are creating there's a there's a spectrum.
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Now that said, um we have incredible respect and obviously rever um designers, creatives, I mean, you know,
00:07:42
creativity and design is in our DNA. We just think that it's a broader landscape
00:07:48
of allowing more people to bring their ideas to life. And >> um you know, our origin story, our
00:07:56
founder um Melanie Perkins, she was teaching design tools at a university in Perth. And what she was observing is it
00:08:03
was just so hard for people. You know, folks having to do such an upward um curve of learning and they were spending
00:08:09
so much time trying to um massage the technology that they just weren't getting in flow. Like they weren't they
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weren't getting to their ideas. So it all really came from how can we put all
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of this into one page, make it really easy, really intuitive, um and just invite more people to to see their ideas
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come to life in a world that's inherently visual. I mean, we all engage with visuals um in a
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>> I know I actually teach a course on visual marketing, so I couldn't agree
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more on this, Barbara. It's, you know, before your cerebral thinking brain even
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clicks in, you're having a reaction, you're getting tons of information and
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we're just hardwired for it. And it felt like that should be an opportunity for
00:08:49
everybody to have communication and a visual conversation with others. >> Yeah. Let me ask you this question,
00:08:54
Christine, because again, I'm trying to kind of connect the dots here, which I
00:08:59
think is super interesting. This idea of how many f how many sub um members, subscribers? I did I hear the number 260
00:09:07
million? Did I hear that correctly? >> That's right. Yeah, >> that's shocking. So, congratulations.
00:09:11
>> When was your company started? >> Um, we were started a little over 10
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years ago. So um a lot of the growth has been >> you know word of mouth honestly for for
00:09:22
a large period of the company where people people were just sharing they had a great experience they were able to
00:09:27
make something. >> Yeah those kind of moments of pride and then more recently
00:09:32
>> um I would say even over the past >> let's call it so let me just get to my
00:09:36
question real quick. >> Can I ask one question Americans before you go into your question just on this
00:09:40
point of your description? How much of your uh customer base is like consumer versus enterprise?
00:09:47
>> Well, we we really grew up more um consumer, you know, more focused on having strong product market fit with um
00:09:55
you know, again like SMBs, creators, teachers are really really important um uh group for us um to serve. But
00:10:03
increasingly um in the past two years we've also been looking at what are the
00:10:07
goals people want to solve at scaled um at scaled companies um at large organizations. So we've launched an
00:10:15
enterprise offering formally and 24 >> um and we launched it in a really kind
00:10:21
of fun unorthodox way um but it's really trying to understand >> everybody wants that sense of ease but
00:10:28
what are the problems that are unique to enterprises as well. So that's a growing
00:10:31
part business. So you have the enterprise component you grew up with on the consumer side,
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>> right? >> That's 260 million people. 260 million that's a lot. And so I'm thinking like
00:10:39
how do you this is like maybe a design question for the design gurus. How do you since you have like you know someone
00:10:47
who's just getting started just trying to create something cool versus a really
00:10:51
wellskilled well-trained designer you have this spectrum. How do you design the website to be able to be most
00:10:58
accessible like to present itself across a in a you know a wide swath of wildly different types of design acumen let's
00:11:08
say how do you figure that out and how does that evolve and emerge with the >> or any of the marketing
00:11:14
>> yeah yeah how do you how do you do that >> I mean it's set up by design to address
00:11:20
a lot of different use cases and we're always going backwards from goals and
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we're always going backwards from our community and our community serves very
00:11:27
diverse groups of people. So if you're a teacher there's a certain journey and we
00:11:32
have content templates um >> that's nice things that you can do to to bring
00:11:37
learning to life for your classroom. I see >> you are um a marketer or a saleserson
00:11:44
working in a large organization, there's going to be other tools for you >> to be able to for example um connect
00:11:50
directly to Salesforce to populate your presentations and do that with great ease.
00:11:55
>> Yeah, it's >> it sounds like in the in the old days when you used to have what was that
00:12:00
called? Clip art that you could put on your PowerPoint. You know, I mean >> Barbara is dating herself. No,
00:12:07
>> there was a little Microsoft paper clip. >> I was clippy was in my mind as you were
00:12:11
saying. >> Clippy. >> So, it's kind of like a more sophisticated clip art in a way, but I'm
00:12:16
sure it's way more sophisticated than that. >> Yeah. I think, you know, and then to
00:12:21
your point about um all the way through to pros, um we recently acquired a company called Affinity. Uh they're in
00:12:27
the UK and they have the kind of powerful tools that a designer >> would need, right? vectors and layers
00:12:35
and um just working at that high end of the craft. >> That's interesting.
00:12:39
>> So, we're we are really trying to serve that broad spectrum all the way from
00:12:43
prod. It's very broad, but it's really in our mission. We truly want to empower the
00:12:50
world to design and it's it's literal. It's literal. We just think this should
00:12:54
be in everyone's hands and we're just trying to meet people where they are.
00:12:57
>> This is another thing we talked about in our proposal when we were putting it
00:13:00
together. Um and I'm curious how you define it. the difference between design, drawing, aesthetic, like you're
00:13:08
you're using the word design and so is that something different than aesthetics
00:13:13
or drawing or like how does all that come together? >> Yeah, you know, design actually it's a
00:13:19
word we do use um and we care about design and uh our our systems and tools are all trained on good design
00:13:26
principles to help people make the best possible output. Um but I feel like sometimes the word design can be a
00:13:33
little high flutin. I think people do come to this tool just to make things to build things um to have an output. Um
00:13:41
and you know I I do think about it a little bit in historical context when you think about you know who could
00:13:47
communicate visually over time maybe a draftsman maybe um someone who's a skilled artist. I mean the world lost
00:13:55
their mind when there was photography right what does that mean for art? >> Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:59
to have uh the ability to capture a picture. Everyone could do that. >> And then
00:14:05
let's not forget clip art. Barbara, obviously a huge milestone, you know, >> Clippy. Yes.
00:14:10
>> Don't sleep on Clippy. And then now moving into what is a world driven by AI
00:14:17
creation. But what is the through line that I think is really interesting >> as the tools create greater ease and
00:14:23
greater acceleration and reduce barriers is I think the human piece is the most important piece more than ever because
00:14:30
what matters judgment taste point of view um ingenuity right those are the things that I I think will create sparks
00:14:39
and difference in a world where the tools become um more baseline where there's more access and those are more
00:14:46
standard um that the the brightest commodity will be that creative spark. So, we're interested to see how that
00:14:53
plays out. >> Love that. >> But I do kind of like to look back to look forward, right? Because it just
00:14:57
reminds me we're just in another cycle of innovation right now. >> Interesting. Real quick question. So, I
00:15:02
I love this Barbara what she said because I was like trying to like how do you boil the ocean of like all these
00:15:07
possible things and she has a strategy. It's very clear which is say we we do
00:15:11
segmentation America. So, in other words, these use cases are just segments, right? There's a teacher,
00:15:16
there's a designer, there's a so and so blah blah. So you have this portfolio
00:15:19
which I find super fascinating. Christine, talk a little bit about new use cases that are emerging. In other
00:15:26
words, has AI created now a new cluster of you know different design components that would show up as a use case or like
00:15:37
how does this happen? like what are the newer use cases that and maybe a use case that surprised you a little bit
00:15:42
with respect to the Canva port uh Canva portfolio. >> Yeah, sure. I mean I think we're seeing
00:15:48
use cases increase in video certainly video is becoming more of the the language
00:15:54
>> across everything. So that is increasing and of course I you know just the idea
00:15:58
of using AI of prompting to create an image. Um yes we we've had over 20 billion uses of AI on our tool which is
00:16:06
wild. Um, and people I don't know even know if they're even thinking, oh, I
00:16:09
woke up this morning, brewed a cup of coffee, and I'm going to go do some AI.
00:16:12
You know, I don't think that's really the mental model or gosh, I I would love to make this
00:16:18
background disappear. I would love to add um some new kind of element um to this this design to match what's in my
00:16:27
head. So, that that's how we're seeing AI, you know, come come to bear. The the
00:16:32
other thing I think we're seeing a lot is um shifting expectations around things that used to be hard that
00:16:38
shouldn't be hard anymore. >> And um two use cases I would give you on
00:16:43
that is we work with a lot of brands and those brands are creating tons of content uh because it's just like the
00:16:49
hungry cookie monster of the world wants more content all the time. And >> I think the expectation is that can all
00:16:54
be created on brand. The right colors, the right tone, the right photography, >> the right tone of voice without having
00:17:02
to, you know, carefully um develop each individual asset, but that you can do that at scale really
00:17:09
quickly. You can apply your brand system, your brand hit to develop things at scale. So you're spending less time
00:17:15
um making the technology work and more time on how do you get an idea and really scale it into all the places and
00:17:21
spaces you need to be. The other expectation we're seeing shift is >> um this idea that you're going to go to
00:17:28
all these different tools to accomplish uh a workflow. Particularly in marketing, we're seeing that
00:17:34
>> there's this sense of I want to create here, I want to refine here, I want to
00:17:38
scale the content here, I want to publish here. >> So we will make partnerships with folks
00:17:43
like LinkedIn. So you can make a LinkedIn ad or post, publish directly, >> get insights and then bring those
00:17:50
insights right back into creation. So, it's going from like a linear flow, >> a lot of switching and baton passing to
00:17:57
a closed loop flow, and we're seeing that expectation more and more um with the the folks using our tools. Can I can
00:18:05
we shift gears just a little just because I know you have some really interesting background um and just talk
00:18:11
a little bit about how you got here and your personal story why you're at this
00:18:17
new platform and in this new place because I know you were at Facebook or Meta for a while and so you have a
00:18:23
technology background. So I'm curious how like your personal journey brought
00:18:28
you to where you are now. >> Yeah, absolutely. It was Facebook when I joined and meta when I left.
00:18:33
>> Now Meta got to change your CV. >> That was the journey. I mean um Meta was
00:18:40
a great experience and learning how to serve people at scale. Um I was there when we launched I worked a lot on our
00:18:46
video products. Um so bringing those to to market >> um and then you know just kind of
00:18:53
working on the brand work there. you know, just understanding kind of what brings all these disparate pieces of the
00:18:58
product together, which is this idea that people can do more together than alone and finding opportunities to bring
00:19:04
that to life um in places like Facebook groups, for example. >> But I think when I learned about Canva,
00:19:12
um what really floored me was how that felt like a gap in the market. This this sense that, you know, we live in a
00:19:20
world that demands visual communication. We live in a world that demands a constant and increasing um influx of
00:19:27
content to be competitive to um be effective, especially as a marketer. And there was this tool that was literally
00:19:37
um allowing, you know, people to do that who were outside of maybe the four hardworking folks in the design team.
00:19:43
And I thought, well, this is this makes a ton of sense business-wise. This is a really unmet need. Um, then I used the
00:19:49
product and it was so dead simple that I could use it. Okay, I'm the bar. I'm not
00:19:54
I'm not the designer here, right? I'm the marketer, not the designer. And um,
00:19:57
I fell in love with the product experience. And then the third piece, and and we probably don't talk about
00:20:03
maybe that as much in in a a podcast like this, but there's a real values-based um anchor of that organ of
00:20:11
Canva, and it's very simple. Um, you'll hear from our founders, they say, "We
00:20:15
have a two-step plan. Step one is to be the most valuable company we can. Step two is to do the most good we can.
00:20:22
>> And um you know I was a little bit like all right I'm coming here in Silicon
00:20:25
Valley. All right everyone has a corporate responsibility. But I think as I met more folks on the team um and
00:20:33
really understood what that meant in terms of >> programs to eradicate um extreme poverty
00:20:40
in terms of sustainability efforts in terms of empowering educators like they walk the walk. This is real. this is
00:20:46
real and I thought I you know we all work hard at work and putting a lot of sweat equity I want to be part of
00:20:51
something >> that is letting people bring your ideas to life and is you know making some real
00:20:57
good to the world and >> I don't know it it >> those those were all the confluence
00:21:01
factors that um really enticed me um to start the journey with Canva. You know what's interesting about what you're
00:21:07
saying is with all the push back some companies are getting on DEI initiatives and social responsibility and things
00:21:13
like that. What you're saying kind of reminds me of when I used to talk to Neil Blumenthal from Warby. Um, and it's
00:21:20
interesting because, you know, he's eyeglasses letting people see and your people creating what they can see, you
00:21:26
know, like the design that they can see, but it was always part of his mission to
00:21:31
give back, to give people glasses and things like that, which it was very authentic to him as well as I hear you
00:21:36
speak about it. It sounds very authentic. And what he would say, especially in today's day and age when
00:21:42
people are trying to decide what to do about some of these values that they had in the past and what he said was, you
00:21:48
know, it's less of a marketing play for us and it's more of an HR play the kind
00:21:53
of people we get to work at our company and the kind of corporate culture we want to create. And I think that's an
00:22:00
interesting way for people to navigate in some of these political situations right now. You know, whether or not you
00:22:06
wear your values on your sleeve in terms of your marketing and branding, that's
00:22:11
one thing, but it does create a certain kind of organizational corporate culture
00:22:16
that could be as important because you've got to deliver customer experience. And that's um that's what I
00:22:22
hear you saying like even as you mention it, it it was your motivation to join the company um and what made you feel
00:22:30
comfortable there. It's kind of interesting. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And
00:22:34
you know, when you have these long-standing values, commitments, um, whatever you
00:22:40
want to call them, I think they transcend politics hopefully because >> they're just so core, right? You might
00:22:47
have different administrations, you know, we work in markets all around the world, but this is true of us everywhere
00:22:53
>> around the world. And I love what you said about culture. I mean, culture is
00:22:56
really everything, I think, at a company. It's culture is a competitive edge as well. and people do self- select
00:23:02
to be part of a mission driven culture like that. So, I love that Parker um parallel.
00:23:07
>> Yeah, I love that example as well too because I feel like it's it's an under
00:23:11
estimated power of creating a kind of kinetic energy for the community because when you show up and you're living in
00:23:18
purpose, I your work lands on you totally different I would think. And this is the reason why Barbara's
00:23:23
pointing out as an HR play perhaps more potently than in addition to I guess I should say you know a marketing play but
00:23:30
I want to get back to 20 billion AI you said this okay that was incredible talk to so
00:23:40
>> help me understand Christine as you're watching people use the platform you're
00:23:45
learning about things that they're doing that is giving you a cultural tell >> let's Okay. Talk about that process of
00:23:53
like looking. >> That's an interesting question. >> How's that for me?
00:23:57
>> Yeah, that's good in meeting. >> You talk us through that though because
00:24:02
that's an amazing insight to be able to look at all of these creatives and like
00:24:06
try to understand where is this more meta thing happening, >> you know, as I'm as I'm watching them
00:24:12
create. Can you give us an insight into that? >> Oh, that's a wonderful question. Hard to
00:24:16
answer, but wonderful. >> Very hard to answer. We are community obsessed. We're
00:24:21
obsessed with our community. That is how we decide what we're building. It's how
00:24:25
we iterate. It's how we build our marketing. That is our anchor. Much more than anything external. We're always
00:24:31
going to go back to them. And one of the magic um elements of using Canva is that
00:24:36
we have templates and content. So, you're not coming. Um, and a lot of what we really focus on
00:24:46
is the idea of how we can have that content be really really local everywhere around the world. So it will
00:24:53
feel right to you if you're in Manila or Sa Paulo um, you know, or Delhi, you
00:24:57
know, but so it's it's going to feel that it was made for you. >> Uh, and a big way we do that is yes, we
00:25:05
do work with AI um to scale and to understand design logic. Um but we also work with um creators and creators make
00:25:14
nine out of 10 of our templates um uh that we have. >> So it's a combination of working with
00:25:20
truly local um creators and uh design to see you know what is meaningful in each
00:25:27
different region. So whether it's something like I I think in France last year rumés were our biggest use case um
00:25:33
that people were using or where we saw the phenomenon of presentation nights. You know, friends would get together and
00:25:39
do presentations or they would do things like my dating wrapped. >> Barbara doesn't want to be around
00:25:47
friends that are presenting. >> No, they they've they've popped a bottle
00:25:52
of bubbly. They're sitting back and they're really >> they're presenting.
00:25:56
>> I love that. >> Exactly. So, you know, we see these trends happening organically and then we
00:26:00
just kind of lean into them and how do we help to give them more more fuel, but it still starts with people and I think
00:26:06
the AI piece of it is um we built um an LLM last year uh the Canva design model which is
00:26:15
>> focused on you know we have all this great templates and these presentations
00:26:18
and it's it understands design logic and I think that's what's unique about it.
00:26:22
So, if you're building something, let's say, you know, Barbara's um making a a
00:26:27
beautiful um uh cover or something for this research study she's undertaking,
00:26:32
you can actually kind of jam and work with this u alm like a partner, you know, to say, "Oh, is this composition
00:26:39
off?" Are there colors that make this feel more like warm? So all all of that
00:26:44
um intelligence is based on this corpus of >> templates, creativity, designers um that
00:26:51
we want to nurture that get royalties actually working with Canva. So a lot of them are, you know, it's it is a whole a
00:26:58
whole creator ecosystem that we're nurturing, but we're also using it to
00:27:02
make >> your AI harder. Very interesting. >> It's one fuels the other.
00:27:08
>> Super interesting. Oh, well Christine Secrets, we can talk to you all day, but
00:27:11
it is the end of our time. I'd like to thank you, global head of consumer and
00:27:16
product marketing at Canva for being with us today. And can you tell our listeners where they can go to find out
00:27:22
about you or where there's information about your platform? >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think just
00:27:28
go to Canva and have a play is what I would tell everyone. Just go make something. Um, and that's the best way
00:27:34
to dive in. And the best way to find me is on LinkedIn for things that are serious and meaningful and I'm on
00:27:39
Instagram for all the silly stuff. So >> nice. >> That's where that's where I'm located.
00:27:44
>> That's awesome. >> Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time.
00:27:49
>> We really appreciate this. >> That's all we have time for today. We'd
00:27:53
like to thank producers Dion Simkins and Marissa Rena. Thank you all for listening. We'll be back next week. Till
00:27:58
then, this has been Marketing Matters on the Wharton Podcast Network. I'm Barbara
00:28:03
Khan here with America's Reed.