One project Odior recently drove that aimed to do both was the expansion of WhatsApp Payments, which allows money to be transferred directly between bank accounts in-app, to Brazil and India. The new functionality opened more economic opportunities for around 200 million people, she said.
She said parent company Meta looked beyond the U.S. and other Western markets, listening to users in emerging economies and responding to their requests.
“We think about every kind of user as we build, but we need to make sure that the users who have the least opportunity can function [easily] within WhatsApp,” she said, crediting tech like voice messages and its newly launched one-to-many broadcast service, Channels, with helping engage people across the world.
Connecting at scale with a global audience is high on Odior’s agenda, and she has built a diverse team with what she called a “multi-identity” understanding of themselves.
“We can’t just run multimillion-pound campaigns in every country that we’re in,” she said. “We wanted to find clusters of people around the world who looked different, sounded different or have a different outlook, and we found it within our marketing ward.”
This cultural crossover approach has led to creative output that better reflects WhatsApp’s role in people’s lives, ultimately resulting in “Horse With Hasan” from New York agency Translation.
The short film featured NBA player and WhatsApp brand partner Giannis Antetokounmpo along with comedian Hasan Minhaj, exploring the complexities of linguistic and cultural diversity.
“[Our team] don’t just bring diversity to the presence of room, but to the work itself,” Odior concluded.
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