Pivots & Passion — Stories to Change the World

Marcella Sullivan
By
January 20, 2025 ·

A Candid Conversation with Marcella Sullivan

“The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists. (…) The starting point is curiosity: pondering why the default exists in the first place. We’re driven to question defaults when we experience vuja de, the opposite of déjà vu. Déjà vu occurs when we encounter something new, but it feels as if we’ve seen it before. Vuja de is the reverse—we face something familiar, but we see it with a fresh perspective that enables us to gain new insights into old problems.” — Adam Grant, “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World”

That’s the essence of this new series. We’re chasing that ‘vuja de’ moment — when someone looks at a best practice and goes, “Why do we even do it this way?”

Spotlighting unconventional thinkers who are reframing the way our industry approaches protocols and ideas. Folks who aren’t afraid to poke holes in mainstream theories and reject defaults.

Come along for the ride?

Marcella — tell us about your background. Where are you from and what led you to experimentation?

It’s best to start from the first thing I was passionate about as an adult, it goes back to something a world away from experimentation. I began using debate teams as a teenager as a way to improve my ability to make arguments and get exposure to public speaking. You are often asked to research and defend or argue against rather controversial topics – which, in my opinion, is an excellent way to broaden your worldview. In the course of doing this, I built up an understanding of the flawed and harmful ways in which law is applied surrounding human trafficking and prostitution in this country. With this new understanding, I left school on a mission to become a barrister specialising in this area. The first step in this process was going to university to study law.
As with many things in life, the reality was different from my expectation. I continue to be passionate about the beliefs that brought me to wanting that career path but studying it and shadowing the barristers that at one point I hoped I would become made me realise it wasn’t the right path for me.

In these situations where we hold not just an investment of our time, but an emotional and morally based investment, I think it is the most difficult to pivot. I questioned whether I was choosing a way out because I didn’t have the skills to be a lawyer. After lots of reflection, I realised I made the right decision and I know that to be true. This also taught me a lesson in not choosing your career path based on the (often perceived) opinion of others, you are the one that has to spend a big part of your life working so make it something that you want to do, not the career you think you should have.

Marcella with her dog Otis

So, how does that bring me to where I am today? Alongside studying law I did some jobs like device testing and user research. When I reflected on my three years doing this I realised that I had developed an interest in the “why?”. If you are an experimenter it is a question you ask yourself often. Why did that variant win? Why did the research show that? Why did that behaviour change when we implemented this?

These questions, and many others about how we navigate and interact with the world led me to study psychology. Within the first few weeks of starting my psychology degree, my worries about leaving behind a career in law dissipated. I felt that passion again that I had as a teenager. My mind was filled with questions, applications, and the desire to know more.

Alongside my psychology degree, I also got a business diploma with the view to conducting a piece of research that brought these two worlds together. My research ended up throwing in a third thing special to me, gender equality. I won’t bore you with the details but when we picture job roles we use something called role-congruity theory to ‘match’ the visual of the person we imagine to stereotypes surrounding the job role. This means that ‘male jobs’ are advertised using men and vice versa. My study looked into the question “If we use counter-stereotypical genders in advertising does it negatively affect purchase intent?”. The case for doing this takes me back to a Billie Jean King quote “If you can see it, you can be it”. When a young person’s first job role interaction often comes through the media, don’t marketers bear some responsibility to make sure they can see the things they might want to be?

I am lucky enough to be able to use these passions and curiosities every day. My work spans strategy, marketing and research – there are so many questions and finding out all the answers is what I love about it.

Every person has a pet peeve. Every industry has something to change. What would you like to change about the space you work in?

Firstly, female speaker representation. They are out there, they are skilled and they are waiting to speak at your conference or event. Despite making progress, I still see events without proper representation. If you are organising a conference or you see one with a lack of representation, then reach out to me, Daphne Tideman or Lucia van den Brink. Together, we are the board of Women in Experimentation and one of our (many) missions is to prove that “we couldn’t find any good female speakers” is an invalid excuse, given the talent out there.

From left to right Marcella, Lucia and Daphne - the Women in Experimentation board
From left to right Marcella, Lucia and Daphne – the Women in Experimentation board
Marcella Sullivan interviewing Marina Ostrowski at Experimentation Elite. They bonded over their shared law background!
Marcella Sullivan interviewing Marina Ostrowski at Experimentation Elite. They bonded over their shared law background!

Secondly, I know I am not alone in having a pet peeve for this: the clickbaiting of experimentation. No – your pack of templated AB tests will not make me £10m this year. A lot of the proliferation of this is driven by LinkedIn algorithms which reward controversial or evidence free content, as long as it looks easy.  I think it tries to overly simplify the complexity of running experiments.

Comment “sharing is caring” for my PDF of opinions.

How important is pivoting – in optimization & in life?

Pivots in life are hard because we make an investment – mental, time, or money – in choosing a particular direction and people don’t like to change once they are on that path.

Sometimes it feels easier to accept things as they are or to accept what is familiar, when the alternative may be less comfortable. The distance you have travelled along that path is not a reason to stay on it if it isn’t what you thought it might be or hoped it would be.

In optimi(S)ation – haha – it’s something I have learnt a lot about from my colleague at Creative CX, Chris Gibbins. He introduced me to and we wrote a piece about prioritising customer problems before even reaching ideation. While problem first prioritisation has many benefits, I see most often its ability to allow us to pivot to trying a different solution (hypothesis) when one we test isn’t successful in solving the problem. We are not losing sight of the problem, we are going back to the core research or insights to look at other potential solutions to shift behaviour.  With immersion in the research and understanding of the problem, it’s not hard to pivot to another solution, because you are experimenting around the understanding of the problem. One foot firmly on the problem, one moving to another solution – the perfect pivot!

Marcella with her team at Creative CX
Marcella with her team at Creative CX

Outside of work, where do you experiment the most and what have these efforts taught you?

The very first experiments I ran were in my father’s garden. Things like counting the yield on two different plant varieties or training methods. One of my first memories is putting the raspberries onto my fingers to check for bugs and be able to count (eat) them quicker. He would encourage me to think about why one yielded more than the other. All our time spent together in his garden fostered in me a curiosity about nature but also a love for plants. Differently to those that know him reading this, to me he isn’t Craig Sullivan of Optimise or Die – he is my dad, my longest mentor and someone who has supported every pivot and passion I have had in life.

Marcella and her father Craig in the garden where the experiments began

I don’t have an outdoor garden now (I live in London, they are hard to come by!) but I still have my own little garden of indoor plants. I experiment with succulents. Soil composition, artificial light intensity, different plant feeds. All the types of plant are unique in their needs and reactions to the things I change – I won’t labour the obvious comparison! I also find caring for them meditative, and we all need a little more of that kind of peace.

Want more of Marcella’s unconventional insights? Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Know someone who’d be perfect for this series? We’d love to hear about them! Reach out to our editor Carmen on LinkedIn with your recommendations.

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Written By
Marcella Sullivan
Marcella Sullivan
Marcella Sullivan
Convert’s In-House CRO Expert.
Edited By
Carmen Apostu
Carmen Apostu
Carmen Apostu
Head of Content at Convert

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