Freddie Adenuga & Kaitlin Loomis (Kellogg School of Management) | Insights from Future Marketing Leaders
A recurring theme has started to pop up on the CMO podcast, Sustainability.
One of our recent guests even incorporated sustainability into his job title. He might not be alone.
According to Deloitte's 2023 Global Marketing Trends Report, sustainability continues to be a
focus for brands. While some organizations may want to pull back on sustainability initiatives in
times of economic uncertainty, consumers continue to stress that a brand's commitment to sustainability
is critical to their preferences. However, only 25% of brands that Deloitte surveyed
say their focus for 2023 is on urging consumers to take action. Instead, organizations are recognizing
that focusing on their own sustainability efforts can have an even more positive impact on the planet
and on their business. For more inspiration on how to make this year be your organization's
most impactful year yet, check out Deloitte's 2023 Global Marketing Trends Report at Deloitte.com
slash Global Marketing Trends. I want to know what the first
brand when you were a little boy that made an impact on you. I grew up in southeastern
Pennsylvania. So I would say there were two. One is a bakery brand called Tasty Cakes. It's kind of
still a regional bakery. My mom packed that in my lunch for me every day and wrote a note to me on
the Tasty Cake. The second one is a little bit more common perhaps, but I wore converse sneakers
as a kid. I remember when Adidos or Adidas came into the US with unbelievable basketball shoes
and the first time I tried those on and played in them, I felt I was jumping to the clouds.
Adidas and Tasty Cakes. There's a combo. Hi, I'm Jim Stangel and I help major brands find their
purpose and activate it and the profits follow. For seven years, I was the global marketing
officer for Prokka and Gamble where I oversaw the marketing of hundreds of brands. You may not know
it, but the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of all of your favorite brands are trying to connect
you with your favorite products and services through purpose. And on this show, I delve into how they
do it. Today is the third of three episodes inspired by the 2023 Marketing Leadership Summit at the
Kellogg School at Northwestern. The summit is an annual gathering organized by Kellogg faculty
with executives from Egun's Ender and McKinsey. I help design and participate in the annual gathering.
We decided for the 2023 Marketing Leadership Summit to invite MBA students and today I host
two of the students who joined our summit. My guests today on the CMO podcast are none other
than the co-presidents of the Kellogg Marketing Club, Kaitlyn Loomis and Freddie Adonuca. Kaitlyn
and Freddie are both second year MBAs. Kaitlyn interned at AB Inbev last summer and Freddie interned
on the Gatorade brand at PepsiCo. This is my conversation with two next generation business
leaders who are full of ideas, authenticity and optimism. Here's Kaitlyn and Freddie.
Well, this is a first, a special graduation edition. Welcome to the CMO podcast,
Kaitlyn and Freddie. Hello, thanks for having us. Absolutely. Now, as you wind down your time at
the Kellogg School in this graduation season, are you happy, sad or both? Kaitlyn, how about you first?
Definitely a lot of mixed emotions. I feel like I work so hard to get here and it's insane that
it's almost already over. It is just bittersweet. I've made such good friends here have grown and
learned so much while here. It's well sad to leave, but I'm excited for what's next and the
possibilities that could be out there. Sounds a good attitude. So Freddie, how about yourself?
Happy, sad or both? Yeah, I think similar to Kaitlyn. I think it's a mixture of both emotions. I know,
but probably more so on the happy side. We came in right probably around the tail end of COVID,
around fall of 2021. So we didn't know what type of MBA experience that we're going to have.
Are we going to be on Zoom the entire time? Are we going to be in person?
But what we realized, thankfully, was mostly in person and there was a lot of enthusiasm and
excitement to really kind of to return back in person and to kind of see how the world has changed
after this kind of once, hopefully, once in a lifetime experience.
One of your professors at Kellogg, Sergio Rabelo, has done research to show we remember the extreme
highs and lows in our life, and we forget about most of the rest. So are there extremes
from your time at Kellogg that you think you remember years from now? Freddie, we'll start with you on this.
You know, I think the extreme is just the high in caution. So I think when we come,
when we first started with a lot of intention now, because we don't know when the world can shut
down again. So every interaction with somebody, either a professor or a guest speaker, your classmate,
you wanted to make sure it was meaningful. And I think that built a degree of really close bonds
with everyone, because you said, you never know, hey, this, we may go back to the only living in our
apartments going forward. So I think that those first kind of tenuous, curly weeks, early three
months of our program really, really kind of stuck out with us. And also, I think in a big,
part of business school, it is kind of the social experiences. I know for Kellogg, we have a quest
global experience where you get to travel the world with seven to 12 of your incoming classmates
and their partners. And you get to share a whole, kind of the unique part of it. You don't tell
anybody about your background. So like everyone's on the equal playing field, you don't know what
organization they came from beforehand. And that allowed you to really, really get to know
the people on this trip on a personal level. And business school, what is that Kellogg was
filled with experiences outside the classroom like that, really, I think, forged really deep
and personal bonds. What country did you go to Freddie with your group? Well, for us, it was
actually a local, it was domestic in the US. So we got to go to New Orleans. So it was definitely
a place to start your MBA experience. Absolutely. So Caitlin, how about yourself, in terms of
extremes, your time at Kellogg? What do you think it will remember years from now?
Oh, man, I think there's definitely some like highs of highs, lows of lows. I think
some of like the lowest points were just some of the craziness and business of the recruiting
season, especially for internships, just with everything jam packed in and running from class
to interview to prepping to interview to case prep. Some of that chaos was definitely something
that will stick in. But I think some of the highs are just the access that we've had here to such
inspirational leaders while at Kellogg. I know one of my top highlights has been the CMO Summit that
Kellogg hosted. And it was just such an inspirational experience just to hear these leaders share their
experiences and being able to connect with them just on a very personal level and see
that maybe someday I could be in that position and just taking away the impact from that, I think,
and just kind of being in the room and being like, oh, this is the chief growth officer of
Kimberly Clark. And oh, she's from Walgreens and all of these brands that you know, and you're
like, they're all here. So I think that's definitely one of the highs I'll remember.
Well, that's good to hear. We're going to talk a lot more about that in a few moments. But before
we get to that, a few more questions for you. You are both co-presidents of the Marketing Club
at Kellogg. So you were obviously thought leaders about the discipline, at least a Kellogg. What would
it take, do you think, to make marketing the top choice for more of the top students at the top
schools? We can never be complacent about attracting great talent to our industry. So what would it
take? Is it money? Is it career-pathling? Is it location? So what would it be to be an even more
desired career path for top students? I would say a big consideration factor for people coming into
business school is compensation. I mean, we are business school students. After all, we have taken
a couple of finance and accounting courses. We can crunch the numbers. And I think sometimes other
industries and fields are more lucrative in terms of their compensation packages. And people are
trying to make sure that they're getting the most value out of their education. But I think
something that I learned at the summit actually talking to a professional was that there's a lot
of valuable skills that you gain going into marketing right out of an MBA program that really do set
you up for longer term success. And so I think maybe leaning into more of the career development
opportunities that could be achieved going into a marketing field post MBA and how this will set
you up for future general management success later on. Freddie? Yeah. And I think the way to attract
top MBA talent, I think, is also putting a larger emphasis on the first-across functional skills that
you're going to be able to learn as a marketer that you won't just have with Caitlin Spoke
or early that shiny object syndrome where you're just going to worry about what's your
color brand's color palette or what's going to be the next big brand campaign. I think that's a nice
exciting element that you can now talk about. You can see a campaign with the television
say that you helped work on that campaign, but talking about more so that you helped develop a
new brand extension or new product or have tangible results that you can see in the market.
I think that's something that gets under emphasized. And also, I think many MBA students, they wonder
how can this experience becoming a marketer translate into the broader space? And if I go
become a brand manager at Procter and Gamble or PepsiCo or Kraft, am I going to be rather
stay in the consumer retail space if I want to go into tech? I want to go into healthcare? Are these
was this experience transferable to other spaces? And that's why I can emphasize, I think a greater
emphasis needs to be placed on brand managers are in reality product managers. And I think when
people hear product managers, their mind automatically goes into the tech space. But I think that there
are many cross functional parallels in terms of the work that brand managers and product managers
both do that I think if the people were to see those kind of overlapping skillset, they'll be like,
you know what? I think I'll be able to be more excited by the work I may do at a consumer retail
or a CPG company, because it'll be more, you won't be staring at your computer the entire
time, you'll be working on actual products that you see every day.
You're both good ambassadors for the functions. So well done, President of the Marketing Club.
As a marketer, our job is to be creative. But what does that mean? I love George Lois's
definition of creativity. George is of course a famous art director. And he said, creativity can
solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality overcomes everything.
I love it. The way I think about creativity, I love George's definition, but I think of it as
fresh and unexpected ways to solve a problem or to discover new opportunities and new approaches.
In the world of business, however, creativity can be a scary word, but it doesn't have to be.
In the 2023 global marketing trends report, Deloitte surveyed more than 1000 top executives
from today's top brands to understand how they plan to meet their customers' needs this year.
Turns out, some of these high growth brands are reimagining creativity in their organizations.
At a time when we're seeing a shift from creative skills to analytical skills in marketing,
these brands are often doing the opposite. And some CMOs are discovering creativity
can be their superpower. Are you looking to make a meaningful impact in your organization in the
year ahead? Check out Deloitte's 2023 global marketing trends report today at Deloitte.com
slash global marketing trends.
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One last question before we jump into the summit, learnings. As you think about your
careers going forward, you're leaving school now, you're starting another phase in your life in
your career, tell us what are the top two or three most important criteria for you
when choosing a company or an organization? I recently had to make this decision myself. I know
for when I have the opportunity to work at PepsiCo on the Gatorade team, it was an incredible experience.
I mean, it's one of the most iconic sports brands or brands in general that exist, and truly it was
my dream job. But when I'm graduating, I'm actually going to be working at Deloitte. I'm going to
consulting, which if you look at modern career reports, we're approaching nearly 50% of MBAs
are going into the consulting space. And for me, one of the big opportunities is, again, the ability
to really make sure that I'm exposed to what does marketing look like across different industries,
and definitely the career growth ability. My goal in 10, 15, 20 years to hopefully be a CML of major
brand. And yes, you need to make sure you have your fundamentals, understand brand insights,
brand fundamentals. But also you have to have that strategic lens of where is markets growing,
where is new growth opportunities? How is consumer mindset shifting? So making sure that
organization has opportunity to develop that strategic muscle, that was very important for me.
Caitlin, how about you? Top two or three criteria in choosing a company?
Yes. I think one of the top things is just a company that's really going to be investing in
micro-urban development. The learning doesn't stop. I was STEMBA by any means. And if anything,
I've learned that there's a lot more I need to learn. And I want to be at a company that really
encourages me to grow, not only in the discipline, but in my managerial skills and my leadership
skills and working with a variety of team members and really pushing me to grow.
And I think the second thing is just a good culture. I mean, it's very simple. It's very
basic. But I think it's something that a lot of companies struggle with at times,
just having a collaborative culture that really makes you enjoy coming to work every day.
And yes, there's going to be hard moments. But if you have good people around you that support
you and encourage you to keep on pushing through the hard times, then it does make
work and life more enjoyable. What for both of you are the signals of a great culture?
How do you know when you're looking at a company, talking to its leaders, thinking about its messaging
and products it takes to market? What is it? What are the signals that a culture is really
the right one for you? I think for me, at least when I was going through the recruiting process,
you can tell by the excitement, by how someone describes that they are, they're not kind of reading
from a script that was given by their recruiting team. And like, talk about that we lead with,
these are our values and they need to re-epricize it. When they talk about stories that reflect
the culture, that when they have to take time off, or when they had an idea that they weren't sure
that was kind of very outside the box, but they were encouraged. So I think hearing the genuine
stories and the enthusiasm that they have about coming to work is definitely a good marker. Also,
how long they've stayed? If you see on average, if you just go scroll across LinkedIn and see
people are staying, or three, four, five, 10, 15 years, that's a good marker of that people
want to stay. At least for me, I love to see when people boomerang, when they start an organization,
they go somewhere else, and then they end up coming back to the organization. I'm like,
all right, that's a great sign that they love this cool culture so much that they want to come
back and come back around to work for it. Caitlin, how about yourself?
Along the same lines of Freddie, I think it's a lot of hearing what these companies actually do
versus what they say. So when you're talking with people, just asking about the different
challenges they've experienced and seeing how the company reacts to it, if there isn't
personal issue going on at home, how did the company support you if you were needing to take
some time off or come back? How did they encourage you if you were interested in a new area of the
business? Were they excited to see you learn and grow and give you some more exposure to that,
or were they trying to keep you in a box because you need to do your job? And so I think
actually hearing what the company does is important because people talk a lot and what really it
comes down to is the actions. Now Caitlin, you said a few minutes ago one of your extreme highlights
of your time at Kellogg was the marketing leadership summit that you both attended a few weeks ago
and you attended with a whole bunch of your classmates and this was the first year we did that
and this was the 12th year of the marketing leadership summit. The first time we had
a group of MBAs in the room which I think made it so much better. So what I'd like you to reflect
about you both spent a day with us. You heard from a lot of different people, you heard a lot of
discussions, panels, keynotes, etc. etc. What did you see? What did you feel? What did you hear
that was particularly inspiring or helpful to you? That level of transparency and hearing these
big leaders who you hold in such high regard in the steam talking about their challenges,
their problems, how they're overcoming it and I feel like it just humanized that role and that
position so much more and made it seem like it would be so much more achievable to go into and
be able to get into that position later on. But I think it was really interesting how
what it really came down to with these great leaders was just how they led their people
and their people skills and being able to motivate and encourage and rally their teams to get things
done. It wasn't, yes, I'm sure they are all very brilliant marketers with marketing minds
that would blow us all away but it really came down to those relationships and the people and
I started seeing how important those just leadership skills are and how important it is to continue
working on that and being able to develop your talent and your team in that way.
Yeah and also building off that point, I was shocked about how grounded and approachable
all these senior marketers are. Again, many of us, I'm 29 and when you have a meeting and you see
that there's a senior vice president of marketing or chief marketing officer, you have to feel
you need to break out the Queen's English and make sure your executive presence at level 10
and to make sure because you really want to be in an impressive mode. But at that summit where
what was so encouraging is that everyone, they started, how are you doing? They were
genuinely excited about where we were about to begin our careers and it unlocked the insight that
what makes senior marketing leaders special was the ability to make people comfortable, the ability
to draw out those true unique assets and those best ideas out of people by making them comfortable
and allow them to trust that they care about what you have to say and then them giving real
insightful insights, not just giving platitudes of saying, oh that's a nice idea, actually giving
useful challenging questions for you to really think more critically about any idea you may have
but giving you the encouragement that you're on an interesting path and everyone at that summit
had that special appeal to them, that special aura about them that making people feel so grounded
and approachable and that's a good sign of something that I hope to be able to give that
effect to others throughout my career. So that was a surprise for you Freddie.
Kaitlin for you, is there anything in the summit that surprised you that kind of,
I think Freddie used the word shocked, anything surprised you? I think for me, I was definitely
surprised and impressed which is how authentic these leaders were. I think
MBA, sometimes you get imposter syndrome or especially when you're in the recruiting season,
you're trying to make a good impression and you think, oh I need to be a certain way to impress
this person but no, every single one of these senior leaders just owned who they were and they
were so confident and assured of themselves and I kind of want to know their secret and how they
do that because I definitely struggle with that some days but I was just so impressed with how
genuine and authentic they were and I think that might be a little bit of the secret sauce to how
to get people to rally behind you and really believe in you and push things forward so work it on it.
We had a reception at the end of the day and there were lots of people chatting and the noise
level was high and everyone was enjoying a glass of wine and sharing insights. What was the buzz among
your fellow students from the program? Was it similar to what we're talking about now?
There are the buzz was when we were surprised how many of the mark of the senior leaders were
pulling us aside so tell us what do people really think about us? It's like what is the question
you're too afraid to ask publicly? Is it the compensation? So because they wanted to make sure
that they're getting kind of the real honest thoughts of us fresh MBAs, fresh MBA graduates
so that they can keep a pulse on what the new talent, new brand managers, marketing managers
are really thinking. So the excitement that again not everyone has this austere kind of distant
perspective that they don't really want to get to know what we're thinking. They really want to
make sure that they see what are the barriers to entry or what are the challenges that the industry
needs to work on to keep attracting top talent and that was definitely a breath of fresh year.
Like our fears, our concerns, our worries are being thought about and all the way to the top of almost
these top brands, these top iconic brands. So honest curiosity, right?
And just to add to that, I mean there's just so much energy and excitement after that. I think
people left feeling inspired, motivated, excited about what's to come, relieved to hear that there
are a lot of marketing leaders that are thinking about some of the bigger challenges and really
working toward developing long-term sustainable solutions for those. And I think people were just
really excited to be able to meet people that they admire and inspire them. Was there a specific,
I don't know, thought, idea, lesson that you took away from this at this point in your
burgeoning careers? You're both young, you have decades of interesting career ahead of you.
But was there something you took away? Something a person said, something's a
some enroll model, a lesson that you wrote down that you want to be reminded of as you
move through your career. Anything for each of you?
Yes, definitely Alison Lewis, Chief Gerd officer, Kimberly Clark, she had this phrase that I feel
like she coined the intellectual humility. And I just loved that. I want to see that in my future
leaders. I want to be that for my future teammates that I lead and really being able to be curious
and not discount anyone's opinion just because they're younger, just because they're new and
really pulling out great ideas from any level of the organization and just genuinely being
curious about what different departments and what different team members have to offer.
It's a great principle intellectual humility wherever you are in your career, by the way.
You know, one reason I love doing this podcast is it keeps me intellectually humble and curious
and learning because anytime you open up someone's life like we're doing today with you two,
you learn something. Freddie, how about yourself?
I know for me it is that they were often saying to make sure that you volunteer for unique
experiences. I know Iris Diaz, I think this Chief Marketing Officer of the Dallas Mavericks,
she was thinking about how if you volunteer for a project abroad, you volunteer to lead a new
marketing campaign, you are going to be exposing yourself to skills and talents that you didn't
know that really excites you, that can shape your career so that yes, you can have a future goal,
future position bookmarked, but there's not a linear path to get to that goal. So maybe along
the way that you see an assignment that people aren't necessarily raising their hand for,
that you don't know the personal learning that you'll get by just saying yes to opportunities
that you have the bandwidth to do or even you don't have the bandwidth, you want to stretch yourself
to do and then you find yourself fitting into that role more comfortably than you may have even
imagined. And that oftentimes people say that the most transformative roles tend to be the one
that they didn't initially think have on their career path is that they either got ball and told
to do or they thought I want to do this a stretch and they end up realizing that while this is where
I can really make my mark. I want to flip into the creative brief section of this podcast where we
learn more about you and some of your creativity and some of your ideas and we expand on some of the
things we've been talking about. And we're going to do this a little bit differently today. I'm going
to ask you a question that I'm going to give each of you a chance to ask me a question. So whatever
you want to ask related to the summit or anything else in the marketing and culture and business
world. So the first one's an easy one. We're going to start with that. I want to ask each one of you
what your favorite course was at Kellogg and why. Definitely ethnographic consumer insights with
Professor Gina Fong. It was really an experiential class where we got a real client in the CPG space
and we had to do ethnographies and spend an hour and a half with real life consumers interviewing
them. Whether at their home or in a shop along in a grocery store and really try to dig deeper and
understand the deeper motivation and insight. And it was a hard class. It was a lot of work.
Professor Fong tells you that from the very beginning. But it was one of those courses that
pushing outside of my comfort zone and it gave me some really tactical hands-on experience to be
able to do insights work in the future. Fantastic. Freddie, how about your self-favorite course?
For me, it's called omni-channel marketing strategy taught by Professor Jim Lizzinski.
And it's often when on our first day of the course he tells you right now in what 2023,
probably the buzzword of the year is AI. But in 2022, probably the buzzword of the year was omni-channel.
And he often says that he wanted to kind of demystify that like,
what people can think as multi-channel having a product and two different channels,
different from omni-channel, we're having the consumer experience seamlessly integrated
all throughout the consumer buying journey from shopping online to shopping in retail to shopping
in an intermediary. And it really kind of gave you kind of the broad definition of what marketers
need to know out of where to position your product so that it can reach your consumer no
matter where they're at. And I loved it because it was so hands-on. It was so specific. And
Professor Lizzinski wanted to make sure that we kind of we go into whatever organization with
kind of toolkit of resources and tools that we can bring to our organizations. So that class was
one absolutely I feel like open my eyes to be able to be on day one of my next job to add value.
He's a great professor. In fact, before the marketing leadership summit, I took a mini
course with him on AI. Fantastic. Fantastic. He just released a book on AI.
And I don't know right now is being referenced a lot. And that's kind of a big thing that Kellogg's
moving into that with the integration of AI into consumer insights in the chain. And how does AI
going to change retail? So he's one of the leaders that we're so excited to have in faculty.
Yeah. He demystifies the whole concept, gives you practical advice, ways you can use it tomorrow.
It's just terrific. He's a very gifted teacher. Your turn, Caitlin, you get a question for me.
So if you had to design a course for NBA Kellogg students, what do you think are some of the top
things you would teach marketers of today? It's a great question, Caitlin. You should be a podcast
host. I mean, I'm happy to guess podcast. We may work on that. We may work on that. No,
that's a great question. And there's a few things I would say to that. I think there's still room
to teach marketers more about the CFOs world. And I know you take some basic courses at Kellogg.
I just think working in a highly integrated way with the CFO to bring your business, your brand
to life in a way that provides a return to your shareholders and all stakeholders is still
something not enough CMOs are great at or senior marketers are great at. So I would do something
very practical, very down to earth on how to work well with your finance function partners.
A second one, I'll go to where you went. When we talked about the marketing leadership summit,
most of your language was about authenticity, leadership, people management.
The great careers are the ones where you work with others, who you respect, admire,
maybe even love, and you help them live to their potential. And I think, again, you probably have
courses in that. If I were to go back to a business school and design one, I would probably start
with that. What does it really take to be the kind of leader who you spent the day with at the
leadership summit? I think many of those things are teachable. And the third course, you know,
I'm a big believer that if you understand the purpose of your brand and yourself in the world,
and you bring that to life and all you do, you have a very successful business.
And I think that's an evergreen topic. We can always get better. There's always new ways to do
that. So I would create a module around bringing a purpose to life within your organization and
for your stakeholders that makes a difference in the world and leads to a sustainable, profitable
business. All right, Freddie, your turn. Question for Jim, the interactive creative brief.
Yeah, so I'm curious is, I wonder if you do you see a trend or maybe an evolution of kind of the
chief marketing role, something that I noticed at this marketing summit is that you saw a lot of
marketers with non-marketing title, you saw chief retail officer, chief commercial officer,
chief product officer, and you see that many organizations are wanting to more so align their
marketing function to more clearly be identified as a product or a commercial or revenue center
or revenue driver. Do you see that trend? Yeah, I do see that trend, Freddie. I believe
most senior marketing roles, I'll call them CMO, but they do have lots of names. I think CMO is
still the most general one. I think they are becoming broader. They're becoming more integrated.
And it reflects, I think, what we need of business, the consumer, the customer, is experiencing us
in many, many ways as a brand, as an entity. And they don't see us in functions or disciplines.
They see us as an experience that we provide for them, whether it's a product or service.
So you're seeing some CMOs having customer experience under them. You're seeing some of them
having obviously digital is mostly under CMOs now. You're seeing public relations, social media,
some have sustainability and innovation, the big innovation, the products and services that
the company will be working on in the future in their remit. So the job is becoming bigger and
broader. It is becoming more integrated with the growth strategy of the enterprise. And I think
these are a lot of issues 10 years ago that we're not on the radar as much. So I think scope,
scale, integration into the strategy of the enterprise are big trends. And that's very healthy.
That's good for the discipline of marketing. My turn. What's your greatest hope for your
generation of business leaders? My generation, we screwed some things up, right? But we also
brought forward a lot of world changing technologies and some brands that are making a large impact
in the lives of people. So what's your hope? I don't know, 20, 30 years from now,
your generation has its impact moving through the business world.
I think my greatest hope is that we almost accelerate the trend of wanting team members
of organizations and bringing their whole selves to work. I think the big evolution, the four kind
of conformity and meeting the company standard was the big pressure of like, how can you align
yourself with the cultural norms of your organization? We're now with the push for diversity, equity,
and inclusion and making sure that we're hearing multiple voices that may have not really been
celebrated or heard in the past. I think that now recognizing that we now have the capacity and the
desire to hear different stories and to see what new insights can lead to new product innovations.
So I think that starting in the 2010, there was the big recognition that this was a need. We're
starting to see the product realization of many kind of market forces of what more people speaking
about about different workplace cultures and product gaps that exist in the retail landscape.
And I hope that accelerates more by people feeling comfortable being their whole selves
in the workplace. That's a great hope. And I am actually hopeful that hope comes to life
from what I see in your generation. I am very hopeful that becomes just part of how we do business
and how we live. Caitlin, how about yourself? Greatest hope?
I would like to see us really just finding a way to better the lives of the consumers that we serve.
And I feel like that can be in so many different facets, whether it's delivering an exceptional
brand experience and really needing that customer need, or it's connecting with them and authentic
and genuine why, or it's investing in causes that are meaningful to the consumer. I think
there are sometimes companies in the past few decades that have just been chasing profits and
just continuously focusing on that and kind of forgetting what they're actually all about.
And it's really serving that in customer. And I think there's a lot of different ways to do that.
But I think that ultimately make a better customer experience, but also just a better world to live in.
Where companies really are just getting back to the heart of what they're there to do.
I think that's a great deal.
Very hopeful. And I hope that happens as well. And I also hope
I think one trend is we're starting to think of sustainability as built into brands.
You know, I did an episode with P&G recently about sustainability and brand building. And I've
had a couple other episodes more focused on sustainability. I do think your generation is going to have
the opportunity to make that happen. So sustainability is not a bolt on. It's not something on the side.
It's a part of how we build brands. All right, your turn. Freddy.
Yeah, I'm curious to, it was a bit ambiguous given that many MBAs I'm going to be listening to this.
And many a big career choice of MBAs, whether to go into consulting or to go into industry.
But what is not clear is from a marketing perspective, to one degree, do you decide that
a piece of work is better suited to work with external client, to work with a consulting firm.
Rather than to work on an internal team to work on a project. That one, how do senior
senior leaders, senior marketing decide to work on a project with an external firm
rather than take it on internally? Yeah, I mean, I think every manager is
working through that every day, every month, every year. The principle that has served me well,
and I think has served a lot of senior marketers, figure out what you really want to be great at.
As an organization, like what is our superpower, our special sauce, our point of difference,
whatever you want to use, whatever lingo you want to use. But what is very precious to us,
and then get very good at that inside. And something that you would never want to outsource,
that it's that important. And if you use, you know, I spent 25 years at PNG, if you think about PNG,
they actually want brand strategy and customer insights, consumer insights to be something they
keep inside. And they want their brand marketers to be consumer oriented. They want them to be
business leaders. They want them to be great, great at competitive strategy. They want them to
be great at people development. So that's not something they would outsource. Now,
once you do that, then you say, okay, what is something that will never be world-class at?
That we need another organization to stimulate us to bring a capability that will never be leading
edge on. And then you go to the best in class for those services. So that could be, gosh, it could
be some part of operations. It could be some part of most companies generally outsource media,
planning and buying because that changes all the time in terms of technology, speed,
partners to work with. So I think it comes down to that exercise. And the answers will be different
by company and by category. So good question. Caitlin, your turn.
When thinking about launching, say, a new brand equity campaign, whether it's through every
positioning or just a refresh, why do you feel like marketers often overlook or don't spend
enough time really focusing on? I think they generally don't look enough at history,
the history of the brand and the company. And is what you're bringing to market respecting where
you've been? I've been part of brand launches and restages that wanted to disrupt everything,
change the game, new direction, find new customers. Okay, those are good objectives, but they walked
away from so many of the historical assets and equity of the brand that consumers get confused.
So when you're taking a sharp right or left turn, or you're trying something new, be sure you're
respecting your past, bringing forward the best of your past and not losing your consumers as you do
that. Very well said. If you're launching a new brand, it's different. But every brand has some
dormant equity, if it's a successful brand. And there was something about that brand that built
that equity. What is that? I get a lot of kudos for being part of the team at PNG. I was the CMO
at the time, so I could credit to the team who did it. But we took old spice into a whole new area
of growth because we stopped being embarrassed by its past and celebrating its funkiness.
And that took the brand to great new heights. And the team was highly courageous in doing that,
but it began with, okay, what made us who we are? And how do we modernize that? Who has been the
greatest inspiration for you and your young lives?
It's not a bit cliche, but it's definitely my dad. He often told me a quote, he just like,
do not let the appearance of success stop you from actually being successful. It is that,
just because you stumbled doesn't mean that you actually have to fall. As long as you show the
traits of hard work, the traits of learning from past experience, the traits that you're able to
grow and make yourself and those around you better, that was something that my dad definitely emphasized.
So it was just, emotionally, being genuine with that struggles is common. Something you should be
afraid of, but an opportunity to learn and to embrace it and then try and always make both
yourself and those around you as great as they can be.
Your dad's a wise advisor. Ask him to listen to the podcast, please. He'll be very proud. Oh, yeah.
Caitlin. Oh, man, this is a tough one because I feel like I take pieces from a lot of different
people that I interact with that kind of meld it into one. But if I had to pick one, a business
leader that I'd love to have dinner with someday, like one of those kind of style questions is Sarah
Blakely. She's just one of those factors that has such a genuineness and authenticity and really
built this brand of Spanx around a purpose. And it's just everything she did, she wasn't afraid to
walk the boat and try something new and out of the box and just buck the system. And I admire her
bravery and courageousness and approaching, breaking through the barriers that she did to
launch Spanx. But then just owning who she is and not being afraid to show up genuinely and authentically
in every situation that she's in. She is amazing. I was with her a few years back at the Microsoft
CEO Summit where they bring a bunch of CEOs together. And I saw her in action with a lot of
high powered peers. She is who she is. She's authentic. She's smart. She's human. She's a lot of things
we talked about throughout this podcast. Hey, last word to you. One quick question for each one of
you for me before we sign off. This has been a great discussion. I want to know what your
childhood brand is that is made of impact on your own life. I don't think I've ever heard that
on your podcast. I want to know what the first brand when you were a little boy that made an impact on you.
I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania. So I would say there were two. One is a bakery brand
called Tasty Cakes. It's kind of still a regional bakery. And my mom packed that in my lunch for me
every day and wrote a note to me on the Tasty Cake. So that one is a very special memory.
And the second one is a little bit more common perhaps. But I wore converse sneakers as a kid.
And I remember when Adidos or Adidas came into the US with unbelievable basketball shoes. And the
first time I tried those on and played in them, I felt I was jumping to the clouds. So that brand,
you know, I still remember putting those on the first game I played in them. It's just so different
from the converse I love too. But this was a very different experience. So Adidas and Tasty Cakes.
There's a combo. All right, you two, all the best during graduation, all the celebrations,
all the fun times with your friends. Thank you for being with us. This has been a marvelous
discussion on so many levels. You've been very generous with your insights and your
thoughts about honestly the future of marketing, the future of branding, and I think the future
of being great leaders. So thank you. That was my conversation with Caitlin and Freddie.
Three takeaways from this one for your business brand and life. The first one is how critical
culture is for young people who are deciding when their career and the company they want to join.
Both Freddie and Caitlin talked about the signals of a strong culture, what they look for when they
interview and how important this is. Second takeaway, own who you are. Be intellectually humble as
Alison Lewis at Kimberly Clark talked about. These two students were so impressed with the leaders
at the summit about their ability to be genuine. Third takeaway, say yes to opportunities. The way
we grow and develop is to be available to take on interesting assignments and interesting side
hustles. This was a principle that we talked about at the leadership summit and one that Caitlin and
Freddie both talked about in this great interview. That's it for this episode of the CMO podcast.
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