Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
During his prolific acting career, Idris Elba has played a homicide detective, a drug lord, an all-seeing Marvel superhero, and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela. But the British actor, who also runs a production company and has cofounded a creative agency and a skincare line, appears particularly at ease playing a CEO in a new marketing campaign for ServiceNow, the cloud-based software company.
A new commercial, debuting on Christmas Day, features Elba as a fictional chief executive walking through his company, highlighting all the different ways ServiceNow’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology is supporting employees in human resources, IT, and customer service. The campaign is the latest product to come out of a partnership Elba has forged with the tech company and CEO Bill McDermott, which also includes a commitment to work together to bring energy and clean water resources to Sherbro Island off the coast of Sierra Leone.
From introduction to action
In an interview with Modern CEO, Elba underscored that he’s not merely a spokesperson for the product. “When the [ServiceNow] team came to my offices, I said, ‘I need to use the product,’” he recalls. “I have a small workforce across various different verticals. And I needed to understand the product so that I can be a part of a genuine partnership. So, I’m integrating it into IE7 and the Akuna Group, which are my parent companies, so that when I’m in these commercials I have a much better sense of what I’m saying and why I’m saying it.”
The collaboration between Elba and ServiceNow reflects the changing nature of the relationship between celebrities and brands. Actors, athletes, and even influencers don’t just endorse products, they are frequently customers and shareholders in the brands they represent—and they often seek support from those brands for their charitable endeavors. LeBron James was an early role model, investing in bicycle maker Cannondale in 2007 and securing donated bikes for an annual charity bikeathon. Travis Kelce is an investor in Kodiak and joined forces with the food company to donate meals to school children in Kansas City.
Aligned in purpose
Elba and ServiceNow’s McDermott quickly bonded over Elba’s work to develop Sherbro Island in West Africa as an eco-friendly, self-sustaining community. The Elba Hope Foundation has announced plans to build a wind farm on the island to provide electricity and collect data to support additional renewable energy projects. The project aligns with ServiceNow’s efforts to bring infrastructure to parts of Africa in the hope of stoking economic development. ServiceNow also has a partnership with GivePower, a sustainable energy nonprofit, which aims to provide clean water to up to 600,000 Kenyans for 20 years. “It’s like magic when we’re together,” McDermott says of spending time with Elba. “We’re both purpose-driven people, and ServiceNow is a purpose-led company.”
The new marketing campaign attempts to bring to life McDermott’s push to turn ServiceNow into the “control tower for AI transformation” from its humble roots as an IT service management company. The ads featuring Elba highlight ServiceNow’s AI agents, which use generative AI to identify and automatically solve problems. ServiceNow, which integrates with major AI players such as Google and Microsoft, promises to help AI agents collaborate across departments.
