Building Better CMOs and Marketing Leaders

Full transcript Getting the right health insurance is serious business; it's the number one reason for bankruptcy in America, says eHealth Insurance CRO Michelle Barbeau. But when she joined eHealth — which helps consumers compare and select providers — she realized that scaring people into action was not a winning strategy. "What we found was, it's all about transparency," says Michelle, who initially served as eHealth's CMO, and is now a CRO who also oversees marketing. "We had just never told the story. And so that's where our campaign was born. Our strategy was 'Your remarkably transparent advisor.'" Today on Building Better CMOs, Michelle and MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart talk about her transition from CMO to CRO, the importance of stepping out of one's comfort zone, and the role of marketers as change agents. They also discuss brand-building from scratch, consumer research, and how unifying marketing efforts can lead to significant growth. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Michelle's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript Marketing measurement is a complex puzzle—especially when it comes to balancing long-term brand-building efforts with short-term performance metrics that will please stakeholders. Tailored Brands CMO Carolyn Pollock acknowledges that CFOs may be skeptical of matched market testing and other tools for measuring brand-building impact, but that long-term may have an edge. "The consistency and the continuity of showing up with a message over time, you think back to almost every brand example," Carolyn says. "The ones that are really strong and bring long-term brand value, they've delivered something very consistently for a reasonably extended period of time. And I think what happens nowadays is people don't have that same level of patience or tolerance, and our attention spans are shorter, and we feel the need to be constantly changing things up." Today on Building Better CMOs, Carolyn and MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart talk about the complexities of building a modern marketing technology stack, the exciting potential of AI, and operating effectively inside of a private equity company. Carolyn also talks about why even subject matter experts need to gain a holistic understanding of their whole organization. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Carolyn's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript It's easy to say you want your decisions to be data-driven. But as Salesforce CMO Ariel Kelman has learned, hard data doesn't tell the full story. Often, you also need to consider the qualitative. "Let's say you go and do some executive event series, where you have 30 people come to each event," he says. "It's not like if we want to go draw conclusions from, let's say, Dreamforce, we had 45,000 people. You've got a lot of data to work with there." Ariel previously led worldwide marketing for Amazon's cloud services business, AWS; his boss at the time, Andy Jassy, recommended that he call up a sampling of the participants in a niche program to determine its value to the company. "Of the 300 people in this program over the year, we went and called up 20 of them and we got pretty consistent information: This part of what you're doing is super impactful to getting us to do more. This part [is] irrelevant, waste of time. This part, I don't care ... When there's areas of your business that you can't measure precisely, if you come up with three different imprecise, imperfect measurement techniques that are very different, then you can see it can actually end up being useful. If they're all aligning, your chances of them being statistically flawed in exactly the same way are pretty low." Today on Building Better CMOs, Ariel talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about the transformative role of AI in modern marketing and Salesforce's innovative Agentforce platform. They also discuss prioritizing customer experience, the challenges of adopting deep learning models, and misconceptions in marketing measurement. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Ariel's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript Automotive marketing is fiercely competitive, and even though she's excited about the potential of AI, Nissan's Global CMO Allyson Witherspoon says an over-reliance on technology could be dangerous. She believes the safer bet is to continue to embrace creativity and a strong brand identity, even in an era dominated by AI and data-driven tools. "If everyone is using AI and the data set is the same for everyone, then what's going to be differentiated?" she asks. Today on Building Better CMOs, Allyson talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about how she adapted her leadership style for a Japanese team, the art of impactful messaging, and the importance of flexibility in the workplace. They also explore how marketers can better communicate their value within organizations and why listening is a crucial and sometimes difficult skill to develop. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Allyson's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript Manolo Arroyo, EVP and global CMO of the Coca-Cola Company, believes there are three types of leaders: One type lacks confidence in themselves and frequently changes the strategy; another buys time for themselves by changing the team around them; and the third decides to commit to the strategy and the team and get the work done. "[They] roll up their sleeves, having the confidence that the strategy is the right one," he says. "The team fundamentally is the same. It might not be perfect, but they're willing to roll up their sleeves and build the capabilities together and go through whatever it takes to learn every day and continue to encourage and inspire the teams to go faster." Today on Building Better CMOs, Manolo talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about leveraging AI for brand innovation and the importance of personal well-being for peak performance. He shares insights on the evolving landscape of marketing measurement, and highlights Coca-Cola's enduring Olympic partnership, aligning with the brand's values and global reach. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Manolo's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript Today on Building Better CMOs: Andy Rebhun, the chief experience officer at the fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant chain Cava, talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about the importance of consistent authenticity, how to thrive in the C-Suite, and "bringing the weather" for everyone — including Uber Eats drivers. "We welcome everyone to our table," he says. "It should never be that DoorDash or Uber Eats driver is anything different from one of our other customers. Because again, if we do a good job with a handoff, they're likely going to do a good job with the handoff to the customer." Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Andy's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript GE has changed a whole lot since Global CMO Linda Boff started working there, more than 20 years ago. It was once a sprawling portfolio company that made everything from microwaves to television shows; recently, it spun off its healthcare, energy, and aerospace divisions into three distinct public companies, and executives like Linda take these core areas of focus very seriously. "We are a company, I like to say a capital-P Purpose company," she says. "A third of the world has power because of GE. Planes with our engines take off every two seconds. So as you and I are talking, there are probably, give or take 900,000 people in the sky right now with our engines under wing. And our health care equipment, MRIs and CTs and so much more, touches 2 billion patients a year." Today on Building Better CMOs, Linda and MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart discuss how to punch above your weight with a smaller marketing team, why B2B businesses don't have to be boring, the importance of communicating to the rest of the C-Suite in their language, and more. Plus: Why you need to separate stories from facts. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Linda's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript It doesn't matter how good your marketing is if you can't communicate its impact to the larger organization, says Charisse Hughes, senior vice president and Chief Growth Officer of Kellanova. Her firm spun off of the Kellogg Company last year to manage iconic brands like Pringles, Cheez-It, Pop-Tarts, Rice Krispies Treats, as well as breakfast cereal outside of the U.S. Those have been household names for a long time, but Charisse says that across the marketing world, it's easy to lose sight of the long term. "Marketers are missing the mark in terms of our communication strategy within the organization—as well as how we look at, measure, and think about immediate versus long-term business results or long-term brand equity," she says. "I feel like we, as a marketing community, have to get better at educating our organization, our CEOs, our CFOs, on what is the value of a click today, what is the value over the course of time, and what tradeoffs are we making here and why?" Today on Building Better CMOs, Charisse and MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart discuss all of that, as well as how to unlock the value of brand marketing, purposeful career pivots and getting to the C-suite, balancing hard truths with optimism, and more. Plus: What makes a Chief Growth Officer different from a CMO? Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Charisse's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript Some marketers think of themselves as operators and some see themselves as visionaries. But only the great ones, says Ulta Beauty CMO Michelle Crossan-Matos, understand that they have to be both. Just before the POSSIBLE conference in Miami, where she spoke to MMA CEO Greg Stuart, she was in Orlando, working to inspire 3000 leaders from Ulta's massive retail operations. "But when I get in the office tomorrow, it is about how are my sales doing? How can I pivot? How can I get even more this Friday?," she says. "So ask yourself deeply right now, how comfortable do you feel between that toggle? And if you don't enjoy that, that's okay. How can you learn to enjoy it?" In this special live episode of Building Better CMOs, Michelle and Greg also talk about her unusual path to the C-Suite, managing a gigantic loyalty program, creating your own framework, preparing for every scenario, why every marketer should take a stint in retail, and more. Plus: How business leaders can prepare for unexpected scenarios like COVID. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Michelle's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript Marketing is both an art and a science, but unless the science is sound, the rest of the company won't believe that you're driving results. So says Morgan Stanley Wealth Management CMO Andrea Zaretsky, who has devoted her entire marketing career — starting at American Express in 2003, with stops at Sephora and Toys-R-Us in between — to improving measurement. "From the beginning, it's been really important for me to understand how to use analytics," Andrea says. "How to make sure that we're setting up the right test and control, how do we ensure that we're getting learnings and cascading them, and then how do we scale wins to truly drive growth for the company?" Today on Building Better CMOs, Andrea talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about the three things companies can do to measure better, how to work with non-native marketers, and why the Super Bowl really matters. They also discuss the underrated importance of customer experience to business results and — most importantly — how E*TRADE makes those talking baby ads. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Andrea's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript "At the end of the day," says Impossible Foods CMO and Chief Creative Officer Leslie Sims, "we're helping save the planet, we're helping the environment, but people don't necessarily want to hear that when they're eating a cheeseburger." The arrival of the plant-based meat industry came in the form of a scientific breakthrough: Foods made from plants that behave like meat when cooked, which have been steadily added to restaurant menus around the world; in the case of Impossible's chicken nuggets, many critics have declared them "better than the real thing." But our emotional attachment to the foods we eat means that, if Impossible wants people to make different decisions in the grocery store, Leslie and her team have their work cut out for them. Today on Building Better CMOs, she and MMA CEO Greg Stuart talk about her background working at ad agencies, the disconnect between CMOs and CFOs, and her guiding philosophy that marketers must always remember the human on the other end of their work. Plus: The danger of over-reliance on data, and the enduring power of the Super Bowl. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Leslie's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you like Building Better CMOs, we think you'll also like "Stories and Strategies For Public Relations and Marketing," hosted by Doug Downs. In this episode, originally released in May 2021, Doug interviews Ogilvy UK vice chairman Rory Sutherland about nudge theory — the behavioral science concept popularized by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness." We'll be back in two weeks with a new episode of Building Better CMOs! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript By her own admission, First Command Financial Services exec Kellie Richter's official title is a mouthful. It's "EVP, Chief Marketing and Client Experience Officer" — but those aren't empty words to her. The clients who First Command cares about are military service members, veterans, and their families; even more than a regular financial services customer, Kellie says, "they do their research ... they're protective of their services and they should be." Having Client Experience in her title gives Kellie an added layer of accountability, and serves as an invitation to anyone researching the privately-owned firm to reach out about their experiences, good or bad. "A lot of times, it's not about getting a one or a five star," she says. "It's about, are you listening? Are you paying attention to the feedback? And are you responding to that? And that's what people want to see." Today on Building Better CMOs, Kellie talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about how First Command's mission motivates its employees, why marketing can't fix a broken client experience, and why she believes some of the best marketers in the business are at Trader Joe's. Plus: What happens to military families during a government shutdown? Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Kellie's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript To connect with their customers, companies have to understand them. But current approaches just don't work, says Anywhere Real Estate CMO Esther-Mireya Tejeda. Breaking those customers into demographic groups obscures important differences, and psychographic profiles are not easily targetable. The missing link is an emerging neuroscience-backed framework called emographics, which explains why people do what they do. "The majority of human behavior upwards of 95 percent is actually emotionally driven by the unconscious," Tejeda says. "The closer we get to actually understanding that unconscious persona — and we marry that data set with the demographics and the psychographics — now we're talking about a truly 360 robust understanding of that person. Now we can understand what makes that person tick. Now we can start building personalized, targeted, precise campaigns." Today on Building Better CMOs, Esther-Mireya talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about why no one is "just" a marketer, the irreplaceable human element in real estate, and why the era of "one size fits all" marketing is over. Plus: How technology is simplifying the home-buying experience, and how brands can respond to an era of widespread distrust. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Esther-Mireya's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript Laura Jones is Instacart's CMO and was previously the former global head of marketing, but she never explicitly set out to get jobs like those. "How did I end up here?" she asks. "It really centers on proactively seeking out learning opportunities." After stints at Deloitte, Visa, and Google, Laura's last two job hops were both motivated by a realization that she had learned what she could from those roles and "that I wanted to continue pushing myself ... every day has been hard. It's the opposite of comfortable." That helped her reach the C-Suite because, in marketing, you need to be able to talk to all types of people — designers, data analysts, CFOs, and more. Through it all, she has been grateful for the opportunities to learn, and loved the challenges thrown at her daily. Today on Building Better CMOs, Laura talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about the convergence of commerce and video, customer-centric design, and building different products for different marketer objectives. They also discuss the challenges of today's AI, developing a unified marketing voice, and the differences between pre-IPO Uber and post-IPO Instacart. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Laura's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript When Aron North was hired to lead marketing and creative at Ultra Mobile — the fastest-growing private company in the world, in 2016 — he had no idea what would be waiting for him on day one: The outlines of a new prepaid cell phone plan aimed at consumers, then called Mint SIM, which would be sold online only. Aron was blunt with the company's president: "Oh, this is incredibly interesting. Unfortunately, this is never going to work the way you've laid it out. There's no chance this succeeds." At the time, the consumer proposition of what would eventually become Mint Mobile was confusing, and it wasn't clear how consumers would benefit from switching to Mint. Aron and his team worked until they arrived at a clear insight that would define the company's early years: "How can it be any good if it's this cheap?" Today on Building Better CMOs, he talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about what happened next, why marketers' opinions of a product don't matter, and hiring fiercely competitive “killers." They also discuss the importance of failing often, and the benefits of playing "jump ball" with creative teams. Plus: Why AI is overrated. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Aron's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript The "brand versus performance" marketing debate happens in all industries, but no one appreciate the value of brand as performance better than Zena Arnold, the CMO of Sephora US. Her job requires her to balance the demands of both online and in-store operations ("I get emails every hour during our great sales," she notes), so performance means more than just clicks. "One of our key roles of marketing and retail is driving traffic, whether that's into a store or whether it's to our site or our app," Arnold says. "And it's pretty awesome when you turn things on to see that having a direct effect almost immediately ... One of the things that's been growing for us a lot is buying online, picking up in-store. So people are thinking about it, they want something maybe right away, they know the store's on the way home, but let me just order it, have it waiting for me, I can run in quickly, grab it and go. So that blurring of the channels has been really good for our customer client experience." Today on Building Better CMOs, she talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about her background in computer science, her past roles at firms like P&G and Google, and why you need to learn and adapt constantly to thrive in senior executive roles. Plus: What is the future of AI in marketing? And how do you turn customers into brand ambassadors? Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Zena's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript "We have this East Coast, West Coast dynamic going on in our industry," says Vineet Mehra, the CMO of Chime. But rather than 2Pac and Biggie, the split is between brand marketing and performance marketing — which Vineet says shouldn't be mutually exclusive. "Instead of integrating our worlds and realizing that all of this is now marketing, we have marketed marketing in an absolutely divisive way," he says, "and actually split the community as opposed to recognizing that there's just a new way of marketing and these two things need to be integrated and live together." Today on Building Better CMOs, he explains his vision for that new, integrated way, which he calls "Performance Storytelling." Vineet and MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart also talk about treating everyone as a future customer, building credibility with your CFO, and hiring for more than culture and fit. Plus: Why everyone who wants to be a marketing leader should aim to be an executive in both a big public company and a private PE- or VC-backed firm. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Vineet's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript One of the three core principles of successful marketing operations, says McKinsey & Co senior advisor Rebecca Messina, is articulating and keeping to a clear mission. Sometimes, companies already have one, but "engagement in the mission is low." Other times, business leaders may think they have a mission, but it's wildly inconsistent across the organization. Formulating a proper answer to the mission question means asking some fundamental questions. "It's based on the bigger question, which is where in the value equation are you?," says Rebecca, the former global CMO of Uber and longtime marketing leader at the Coca-Cola Company. "Are you that exchange company? Are you that engagement company? Are you that experience company? ... Whatever you are, how is it that you uniquely create that experience? How is it that you're going to uniquely deliver on engagement?" Today on Building Better CMOs, Rebecca talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about cultivating the right mindset for marketing, the complexities of changing strategies, and what it takes to get into leadership roles. They also discuss the softening of the brand vs performance debate, how Rebecca redefined herself outside of Coca-Cola, and the dangers of opening a car door in Amsterdam. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Rebecca's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Full transcript “You need content to deliver a good customer experience.” Sounds obvious, right? Except in today's marketing environment, says Adobe's chief brand officer Heather Freeland, one campaign can require 5,000 unique assets: Consider every possible channel, multiply that by the number of audiences you're trying to reach, and that by the number of customer segments within those audiences, and that by the number of markets you're launching in. "It is virtually impossible to keep pace," she says. "So we've had to fundamentally rethink how we're building content to keep pace with this. And if we didn't have a solid operational backbone, we'd be hosed." One saving grace, though, comes from Adobe itself: New generative AI solutions like the image model Firefly, which can make in seconds multiple versions of an asset that might have once needed hours of tinkering. "We need to help the rank-and-file marketer scale and move faster and accelerate workflows," Heather says. "And we need to help people find new ways to accelerate their thinking and think even bigger." Today on Building Better CMOs, Heather talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about the challenges of keeping pace with technology, what everyone can learn from how Disney World operates, and the difference between a career ladder and a career jungle gym. She also looks back on her time at Facebook, where her first product was launching mobile ads, and explains why the most over-hyped thing in marketing today is advertising itself. Follow or subscribe to Building Better CMOs Rate & review the podcast Links: Heather's LinkedIn Greg's LinkedIn This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices