Soyoung Kang (eos) | The Best Inspiration Can Be Found Very Close to Home

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. Are you struggling to keep up with the increasing demand to create content and feel like your content creation process is all over the place? Well, you're not alone. One of the hot topics on this show is content strategy. How to reach your audience, what content is relevant and whether to do this inside your company or to hire outsiders to help you. Well, Deloitte Digital can help with all of this. They understand the challenges marketers face when it comes to scaling content and they offer an efficient and sustainable way to create, deliver and analyze content at scale, all without hiring additional resources. With Deloitte Digital's integrated solutions, you can streamline your workflows and create relevant and targeted communications to help improve your business outcomes. Visit Deloitte Digital.com to learn how their content supply chain solutions can help you scale your content creation and could improve your customer experience. A couple of years before all of this happened, I was asked by my leadership to remove the word damn from an ad because it was too vulgar and too and now fast forward and we're putting F&Q on our product packaging. That kind of a journey, yes, it does take time, but I think that the ability for us to show and demonstrate real business results to the broader leadership team, to demonstrate that this was a positive thing for our brand and for our business was really imperative for them to come along that journey with us. Hi, I'm Jim Stangle and I help major brands find their purpose and activate it and the profits for seven years I was the global marketing officer for Procter & Gamble where I oversaw the marketing of hundreds of brands. You may not know it, but the CMO's 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 the show I delve into how they do it. My guest today in the CMO podcast is So Young Kang, the chief marketing officer of EOS products. The beauty brand famous for its colorful spherical packaging and its enthusiastic fan base. EOS, which is an acronym for Evolution of Smooth, is privately held and was founded by Jonathan Teller, Sanjeev Mera and Craig Dubitsky in 2006. Key product categories include lip balm, skin care and shaving cream. My guest So Young joined EOS in 2018 before that she worked at Bath & Body Works, Victoria's Secret and the Boston Consultant Group and is currently serving on the Board of Directors at Bob's Discount Furniture. So Young is a highly awarded CMO. She has been named an ad-week brand genius, Forbes most entrepreneurial CMO, and a business insider most innovative CMO. So Young was born in Korea, her parents emigrated to the U.S. when she was two years old. She went on to study architecture at MIT before earning an MBA at Wharton, where she was a Fulbright scholar. This is my conversation with the CMO who believes marketing should be like talking to a friend. We recorded this face-to-face conversation at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Here's So Young. Welcome So Young to the CMO podcast. It's always sunny and can and it's always sunny in Philadelphia. Would you agree with that statement? I would agree with that. It looks like you've done your homework. I have done my homework. You grew up in Philadelphia. I do. I grew up near Philadelphia. My parents met in Philly. I have a lot of family in Philadelphia. So I love having someone from Philly on the show. Well I love being someone from Philly. I think it gives me a certain level of grit. That's that's a good word for the town. So what do you love about Philadelphia? What do you miss? Oh I mean I miss my family. I have my my mother still lives there and all of the folks that I grew up with as a child and it's interesting. I've been reflecting a lot about my childhood and how it's sort of shaped me to be who I am and I don't think I knew that at the time. So there's another topic that maybe we can talk about but I think really fondly fondly back as somebody who was growing up in the Korean American community in like the late 70s and 80s in Philadelphia and it was really strong and it was very tight in it. I miss that. How do you think that experience shaped you as the leader you are today? I mean those early experiences are very fundamental right? They are. I really believe that actually. I think that one of the things that I've been reflecting on lately is how the things that I use to consider my unusual characteristic let's say like my background growing up in an immigrant family growing up with modest means and growing up in you know cultural circumstances that are really different than the the kind of like conventional typical kind of like mainstream household although I don't think there's even that anymore today in today's America but I think about how that's really shaped me to be a keen observer of human behavior. I'm somebody who really likes to assess and decode and deconstruct social norms cultural trends and I'm also somebody who I think because my background is less conventional tends to be maybe a little bit more unconventional my thinking and I bring that into my work and as a leader in particular I like to think that I think about talent in an unconventional way and I like to bring in people into the team who have very different sets of lived experiences as well. What brought your parents to Philadelphia? You were young right? I was. I immigrated when I was two. Economic opportunity. Both of my families grew up in post-war Korea and I was born there and you know they were here to seek a better life for themselves but mostly for their children and they really succeeded at that and I think a lot about how no matter how brave I think I am can you imagine being an adult with a toddler moving to a country where you don't speak a word of the language in order to seek a better future for your children? I mean that's bravery right there. Yeah it's courageous it's bravery it's risky yeah it's all those things so I I too admire my family came over away before that they fled Ireland during the you know the famine yeah yeah so my family moved to Philly following relatives I think in the mid 1800s that's a great American story right? Yes they are yeah they all are so we're in Cannes and you're active this week you're on panels I was following you you've been on multiple panels and you just got a great award right? Can you speak to that? Sure I was just at this I honestly did not ever expect that this would happen to me but I was just honored as being one of the ad-week brand geniuses this year and that is a big word genius I think all of those of us who are on the list are you know I think we're all in alignment none of us would have considered ourselves geniuses but I think that the genius really comes through in the collaborative work that we've all collectively put out there into the world that you know I hope is changing the landscape in the face of our industry and helping us be more brave more creative but also more impactful so that the work is truly driving the business. So what are you looking forward to this week most? So this week it's your second time yeah last year's your first time yeah and I thought last year would be my first and only time but you know when you get a brand genius award you just you gotta go you gotta go pick it up so so I decided to come and and I'm so glad that I did because I think that the thing that I find the most magical about Cann all two times I've been here are the sort of serendipitous moments when you connect with people and and make a connection at a personal level but sometimes also for things that can lead to great professional projects as well in the future and so that's what I'm really looking forward to the most I love all the great content and I think it's incredible how much people invest in bringing all of the thought leadership and the examples of all the great work that we do to this incredible festival but most importantly the thing that you can only do on the ground in person is connect with people yeah that's it that's what it's about it's the only place in the world where we all come together to around the world global I was here my first time 20 years ago this summer when I brought PNG for the first time so it was 2003 and I met Dan Wyden and I asked him to come speak to our group that was here we were not working with Wyden in Cannes at the time we decided to try it so we had a couple pilot brands and look it's what ha at since then right they've done the Olympics for PNG so they've been a really really big part of the culture there so that this is what happens in Cannes that's the magic yeah it's the magic the serendipity and and looking outside your normal partners normal circles I mean it's a good time to get together with your partners as well but also to talk to some people who work differently from you yeah yeah absolutely last year was your first time you had a piece of work that won just about every award and I think that was pure creativity yeah and in in what your company your team did with that so it's user generated content that went on to a package and became sort of a statement about your culture so could you talk to us a bit about that piece of work how it happened sure what your team did with it how fast they acted the impact on your culture at large and how you think about it a year later so what happened was you know as you mentioned it was user generated content it was not solicited it was not expected by any means and there was a a young woman who posted a tick talk about how she uses at the EOS shave cream which by the way was an under the radar product that we were not actively marketing for and how she uses it to shave her private parts but she did not use those words she said that it was the secret to how to bless your effing coach and that's not where it stops because she went into a unbelievable and hilarious and NSFW detail about how she uses this exact product to shave her private parts and it was incredible I mean the tick talk went viral immediately we were getting tagged in it immediately we wanted to reach out to her so that we could work with her immediately but the problem is that she was getting messaged so often she wasn't responding to us so we thought okay so how do we get a tick talker's attention well you do at them that's how you get on their right this is a this is a form of communication and tick talk people are talking to each other right and so we decided that we were going to create a product and if she worked with us great if she didn't work with us like the project would have to get scrapped but that we were going to create a product that took her exact words bless your effing coach and her exact instructions first you shave down then you shave to the side then you shave the other the whole thing and how that happened that idea was it some of your team that came forward or your agency so it was our agency so this is the way I think the you know talking about magic and serendipity I think sometimes you don't know what you can do unless you ask the questions right and for us because we were seeing this thing go viral but she wasn't responding to us we we reached out to our agency and we said we have to reach her how can we reach her and they came back in 12 hours with this idea so I think we reached out to them on a Tuesday night we met on Wednesday morning and we started producing all the product on Wednesday night I had mechanical drawings going out I have production starting on Wednesday night it was well wild and we hoped you know because we were leaning into this thing without knowing whether we were going to secure a partnership with her and frankly get you know have permission to use her intellectual property which are her words but she responded via the duet like I said this is how Gen Z is talking to each other on TikTok she responded and we were able to strike a deal with her that weekend and then we released our production and and and we were often running our business which was already starting to see a climb from the viral UGC basically kept climbing climbing climbing and stayed elevated for several months we doubled our business essentially in those few months we have since then maintained our elevated level of sales I think in the first year we had something like it was close to 250 basis points of market share growth in that first year after that campaign by the second year continuing on this continued trend of real talk authenticity leaning into and partnering with creators to bring their own personal style of communication and education to the consumer and frankly just not taking ourselves too seriously and speaking to a use education that maybe not other brands were talking about we found that our business has continued to skyrocket and grow that's fantastic 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 and 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 as creative and marketers we understand the struggle to keep up with the ever-increasing content demands and the recent surge of interest among CMOs and chat GPT and other language learning models has added fuel to this fire today businesses should embrace streamline workflows and automated processes to step into the future of the content supply chain good news Deloitte digital can help their content supply chain solutions can help your business improve collaboration across teams increase efficiency and reduce costs all while maintaining high quality content with Deloitte digital solutions you can create more targeted and relevant content without having to leverage your internal resources visit Deloitte digital.com to learn more so the larger impact on your culture from that that unbelievable piece of work and the application of it and the relationship with your agencies you look at it a year later what parts of that have carried forward you're saying not take yourself too seriously but does it has it affected how you work and how you idiot tell tell us more about that absolutely so what I will say is that while we've always been a brand in our history and our original history that leaned into you know social first influencer marketing and really speaking directly with a young consumer I think that the piece that didn't click until this all happened was how different young consumers were today versus in the earlier years of the brand journey and I think that this notion of and the brand started what 2007 or so 2009 was the first year that we launched product I think it was an incubator before that before all of this happened I think we were maybe a little bit safer in the way that we were speaking to our consumers we were still really big believers in social and TikTok in particular in creator marketing but I think that our approach was perhaps a little bit more polite and and sort of shying away from guess what people actually talked to each other this way this is not about a brand bringing you know excessively vulgar language into the into the dialogue it's actually about talking to people the way people talk to each other and that's really fundamentally change our our brand voice and the way that we approach creative and how brave we can be how how much risk we can take on and that was a really important journey not only for our marketing team but for our broader organization at large I sometimes once in a while tell the story I'll tell you the story but a couple years before all of this happened I was asked by my leadership to remove the word damn from an ad because it was too vulgar and too edgy and now fast forward and we're putting effing kooch on our product packaging I mean like that kind of a journey yes it does take time but I think that the ability for us to show and demonstrate real business results to the broader leadership team to demonstrate that this was a positive thing for our brand and for our business was really imperative for them to come along that journey with us how do you capture so that your entire organization understands including your leadership team the kind of brand that you are trying to build yeah in this partnership with your your consumers and your agency do you have a brand book do you have a statement of values what do you use to keep everyone sort of understanding it and innovating based on that so we do have brand guidelines brand book and all of that what I will say is that we've evolved so rapidly in the past 18 months that I feel like it's been a bit of a moving target and I think that the best way for marketers to make sure that they're staying in lockstep with their broader team is to just ensure you're being incredibly transparent about the kind of work you're doing when you're doing it and why you're doing it and I think that while I while everyone loves a good success story I think that includes sometimes sharing some of the places where you don't succeed and so if you if you do something and it doesn't land right you should share that with your leadership team they need to be able to trust you as the steward of the brand and to ensure that you are being upfront and honest with them and clear with them about where the journey that you're taking the this brand on and I think that the work itself does more frankly than our you know possibly outdated brand book does sure sure you have a few as I was doing my homework on you a few I don't know life or business philosophies I want to interrogate a little bit you've already raised raised them in a way but I like to go a little bit deeper and the first one is that this idea of observing assessing recoding and reconstructing I've heard you use that you've already used in this interview a bit could you talk a bit more about that how you came to that and how you apply it and how you work on your brand and with your teams so thank you for bringing that up because what I will say is that that one goes all the way back as many things do to my childhood as an immigrant in this country I immigrated when I was two but I actually didn't speak English until I entered into public school so kindergarten I have lived a journey of always sort of being on the outside looking in and I think that when you're always on the outside looking in you can either sort of like lean into it and figure out how to survive or actually most of us just figure out how to survive I don't think there's another path but you know for me the survival mechanism that I really developed was being a really keen observer being a really keen analyst to be able to kind of see okay so this is why this person does this and then if I do something if I say something this way they will respond positively to me and then over time you just get so good at it that it it becomes a part of who you are and I think that it's at its core it's essentially pattern recognition and I think pattern recognition is something that has been an incredibly important asset to me throughout my career whatever the job has been because I haven't been a marketer my whole career in fact actually this is my first and only real marketing job that I've ever had and prior to this I've had other kind of commercial roles but pattern recognition is always good because if you can immediately enter into an amorphous chaotic environment and add structure to the chaos and then understand how you can move on from there you become an incredibly valuable asset no matter what the job is no matter what the company is that's an incredibly valuable thing to do now the difference in marketing is now you have to remix you're not just doing pattern recognition and repeating because that doesn't work in the world of marketing you have to remix you have to come up with something fresh you have to come up with something different and that's what's so fun about this job and why I think it's the ultimate ultimate embodiment of this philosophy that I've had since I was you know a child do you train this with your people or is it something that you think about more personally and how you look at things and how you lead I wish I could say that I had an official training I think my people hopefully would say that it's very much embedded in the way that I direct the work in the way that I lead the work I'm always looking for the what's next so there's a lot of sort of you know hey we just completed a project let's hindsight what worked what let's hindsight what didn't work let's break it down into its like core structure and now what are we going to change about it the next time and to me that's like the fun part it's the remixing I the next one I want you to talk about is this quote I read where you said you've you spent 10 years learning how to do strategic thinking and strategy and you've spent 10 years plus on paraphrasing and learning how to understand the brand story and create a brand story so could you talk a bit about that as your evolution as a leader I know you started your career early in consulting right I did I was a management consultant or even a how strategist for the first 10 years of my career and I think that and it across industries across disciplines like everything from like operational efficiency to procurement strategies very different than what I do in the day to day right now but I think that what it did was it really sharpened my ability to you know do what I just said which is like get the lay of the land and create order out of chaos and that's just fundamentally what the great skill and the great training ground of it being a consultant is and then going from there and kind of prioritizing the work and figuring out where to go next the next sort of you know 10 plus years of my career were spent in retail and the thing that I love about retail even though I'm not in retail specifically now is that there is no place where you I think get closer to your consumer then in retail more broadly but in specifically where I was you know the company that I worked at where the notion of knowing your customer like your best friend was actually a mantra from the leadership level top down and where we didn't do customer insight we did customer intimacy because it was really about understanding what your consumer customer would know and want and think before even they do and that was unbelievable training to then layer on to sort of like the strategic and analytical framework that I had for my first 10 years of consulting and then I came to EOS my first marketing job and it here it's been I've been on this learning curve journey for the past five years I'm having a blast because I'm learning every day and I think that that has been that's what gives me like fuel and fire but the notion of actually then taking a fresh innovative brave creative lens how you bring your story applying analytical skills strategic skills layering on top layering on top insight know your audience know what your problem salt what you're trying to solve is a problem and then on top of that now at a creative spin and do it in a way that no one else can so that you cut through that's been sort of like this you know the triple different sandwich right right exactly so I have to ask you how did you come to EOS I mean you were you were you looking for a CMO job did it did you have a friend how did it happen so it actually came to me through executive search but I wasn't looking at CMO jobs I was looking at merchandising jobs because I thought that I was going to go down that path when this appeared I thought this is interesting this is a brand that I've been following for a while that really was just sort of part of the cultural zeitgeist it was a similar category so I was in personal care before in retail and this is personal care as well and I think that what was the most intriguing to me if you haven't already guessed is I'm somebody who likes to learn and stay curious I find myself itching to do something new where I can kind of stretch my brain and I always think about roles the best roles are a given a get you get to give of your expertise something that you have uniquely that no other candidate has but you should be getting something to and for me as an executive at this point in my career where I've been working for a long time what I wanted to get was I wanted to learn something completely new that I'd never done before it and unfortunately most companies will not just hand over a CMO title to somebody who's never done it before but they were willing to do it because they really wanted the give that I had which was strategic commercial and category focused expertise and they were willing to take a chance on me that I could figure out the marketing as well it's a great story the third area I want you to go to is this idea of you should market to people like friend to friend talking and I think it's a beautiful metaphor for your company of course and I think you're you're executing that really well but I love it as a metaphor for almost every piece of marketing we do I remember when I went back when I was a PNG we said are we if we're trying to build relationships shouldn't we be measuring the output of our marketing in terms of the relationships we build yeah what are the characteristics of a great relationship so I think it's a beautiful way to have a mindset about marketing and so I'd like you to talk about that how did you arrive to it how do you execute it in your culture how does it affect how you measure your work or the quality of your work I by the way I love that that thinking about it more broadly because what I would say is you know if I think about my time in retail and how important it was to get close to the customer what what we had to do actually literally was I literally worked in stores every three to four weeks I put on an apron went into stores and sold the product and for anybody who's worked in any sort of service retail that is the hardest job out there to sell and the only way to do it is to make personal connections with people and the most effective people at doing it are making those personal connections now the big question in marketing is how do you scale that you know how do you take that so it's not a one-to-one but how do you bring it to the broader work that you're bringing out to the marketplace and I think that it's something that is become more apparent to me that I needed to take it from selling on a personal level to sort of speaking on a personal level through the thank frankly the the influence that thinking about Gen Z is had on me and thinking about this demographic that through the advent of like technology and you know digital disruption and the fact that they're so native to all of this they speak to each other in colloquial and real and frank and honest terms stranger to stranger across you know all of this media and I think that brands that can really embrace that and be people in the conversation instead of a brand talking at people can really you know disproportionately cut through in all of sort of the chaos that exists out there do you have any brand you admire who do that well I love what Duolingo is doing I have to be honest because they're also I mean I'm gonna bring up examples that probably are within my kind of like competitive set from an inspiration standpoint you know approach like targeting younger consumers like kind of social first I love what they're doing because they just get it they really get who their audience is and they get how they can speak to their audience in a way that is welcome instead of intrusive and that's what really great advertising should it does right it should be it's not most of the time yeah yeah it should be yeah so I want to talk a little bit more about your CMO role the first one you've had you've been in at five and a half years or so how has the job changed from when you took the leap became a CMO to today I think that I think that the job when I first came in it was it was my first CMO role and I think that you know there had already been talk about like the this this role being one of the toughest out there it's really hard to pin down it means so many different things and so many companies and oftentimes when I'm meeting other CMOs it doesn't stop at the M there's always an and there's an ampersand and another letter attached to it it's like it might be customer it might be commercial it might be growth it might be revenue experience and I think that the the fact that the role itself is so stretchy as part of what makes it incredibly exciting but it also is what makes it really scary because if you don't know what are the boundaries of the game you're playing then how do you know how to succeed and how do you know when you're failing so I think for any individual really understanding what determined success in the organization for which you are the you know the the voice of the brand and the the most steward of the brand I think is really incredibly important but beyond that I actually think that the role is is also the most exciting because because it's the most stretchy you're thinking about not only um external stakeholders but you're thinking about internal stakeholders you're thinking about culture again externally and organizationally within your own um within your own company you're thinking about commercial imperative growth imperative and so I find that the role really challenges me in a way that I've never I've never been this challenge before in my life and I love it is it a larger scope than you thought you would have as you came in I certainly have been um growing my scope I mean I took on e-commerce a couple of years ago as well and you know as you rightly mentioned as the as the role changes I sort of find myself like picking up things odds and ends here and there but I think that the the scope is it's probably less that it's a larger scope and it's a little bit more that I'm starting to learn how to be I've been learning along the way how to be effective in it and how to be the kind of leader that I want to be to really fulfill sort of all of the ways that I can be a good CMO for the organization how did you align your CEO with uh work that you felt needed to be done because I think this is an issue often the CEO and the CMR are not on the same page that's why turnover at CMO is lower than we'd all like to see there are lots of exceptions but slower than we'd like to see the average but it sounds like you got a clear idea of where you can add value to this company and organization and your CEO is probably very supportive of that and maybe you co-created it with the CEO so could you speak a bit about that yeah I think that you know for for me because I oversee both the marketing side and the product side I find that I um I have some portion of what I'm you know you know sort of talking about the organization being a very direct impact on commercial impact on top line measurable thing which is I make product it sells and that's how we make money um and I do find that that oftentimes gives me quite a lot of credibility across the entire scope of what I do um I know that not every CMO has that that mandate and so it's not exactly the same thing but I do think that as CMOs you know if you are getting pushed to you know to kind of like to fork on the credibility front or or just sort of like how you step up I think really being a business partner to the C-suite and showing up as somebody who cares about the business fundamentals the business health and letting the investment in the brand to sort of be part of how you drive business health versus being purely about the brand the long term brand I think it's just helpful because you're just at least speaking to your audience in a way that they want to be spoken to and I think that just flipping that narrative a little bit and then the priority really helps for credibility because you are at the end of the day a member of the C-suite before you are the marketing member of the C-suite and that's really the way that the priority should come so five and a half years in where you where are you now personally focused where are you spending most of your time so you know I'm always spending time which is why I love marketing thinking about what's next in the landscape of marketing so it's part of what I personally love about my role is that because the landscape is always changing there's always something to learn right now I'm kind of fascinated about you've probably heard this a lot applications of AI and what that's going to mean for the future but beyond that for me like truly at a personal level I've thought a lot about and I've been trying to work a lot on how I can take what I've been so blessed to receive in this world and in this life through this industry and pay it forward and I think that for me what that means is getting more involved with the causes that are near and dear to my heart for me the two causes that are near and dear to my heart are diversity equity inclusion and young talent and mentorship of young talent and those two things are really how I sort of prioritize how I'm spending my extra time and by participating in various industry organizations or joining boards of organizations that I really believe in I think that that's sort of my way of continuing my personal growth you're also in the board of directors of a company right yes I am how has that experience been it's been incredible it's such a fascinating thing to see and be part of a completely different business different business model furniture business right furniture business a national retailer and it's also incredibly helpful for me to continue to learn about what's happening out there more broadly in the world because no matter whether or not it's a similar industry or not I think always thinking about what's happening across like macroeconomic conditions is just helpful it's also helpful to understand sort of what's happening organizationally and how how they're dealing with certain things and how I can bring some of that into my day job and vice versa but it is a very different role sitting at the board level is a very different perspective because you you you need to be sort of you know fingers out from the day to day the organization so I think a lot about how I can add value I like to reflect on your career path for a bit it's an unusual one you've already referred to that for a CMO but you started you went from Philadelphia supposed MIT for for for your degree and you received an architecture degree yes what were you thinking back then I don't know what I was thinking was it did you like the field or did you think you wanted to build a career in that or I um okay so I don't know what um 17-year-old research in colleges decides they're only gonna apply to architecture schools like I don't know what I think I I've said this once before and I actually think this is true I think I just had a crush on mr. Brady who was an architect on the Brady bunch and I think I wanted to to be an architect but you know and then beyond that I I grew up as somebody who absolutely loved math and who absolutely loved art and I kind of you know and in my in my young kind of like teenage brain it made sense that architecture was sort of the marriage of art and math what's fascinating is like now it's like many decades later and I think marketing is the perfect marriage of art and math you know or like it is as well soul and science and art and whatever however you want to think about it but but so I I ended up at MIT because they actually have the um the oldest and most esteemed undergraduate program in architecture and I did do a number of internships I actually worked in architecture firms throughout all of my summers and then ended up doing even post undergrad I did a full-bright fellowship on architectural history and theory and career so I moved to career for a year and did a fellowship research fellowship there with university um and then came back and started my career well fantastic is it still in interest of yours I mean it's a bit of a side hustle it is as much as as much time as I have for side hustles but it's obviously I'm more of a spectator in this in this now so whenever we go to travel I love seeing beautiful buildings my my family and I we just went to Korea not too long ago and the amount of unbelievable explosion of fabulous architecture and soul is is really inspiring how about your home did you design your home I wish I wish I live in New York City if you could design your home what kind of home would you design I'm a really big fan of um of mid-century modern I I really love all the architects from that era and so that would probably probably probably it would be more modern than that but it would probably have elements of that we just my wife and I just had dinner with a couple who all right the husband of the couple grew up in a Frank Lloyd Wright home oh my goodness and that's a trip because you become sort of a tourist attraction in your home no kidding so and he was he had the opportunity to buy it when his parents passed away and he decided not to because he did want to live with that sort of responsibility oh I know you think it'd be very romantic but when it comes down to it a lot of maintenance yeah I would imagine so and then it has to sort of be open because people want to see it is it a landmark I think it is yeah yeah yeah probably can't even touch it yeah right right yeah so so then you went got your MBA at Wharton and then you started this career in consulting and you went to several fashion places so what attracted you to that career path yeah you left consulting went into fashion you ended up at EOS what what was your what was your motivation so you know I've always been really fascinated by consumer businesses and I didn't even really reflect on this until later in life but like my parents is sort of you know immigrants when they first came to this country they were street merchants and then eventually they worked their way up they saved enough to buy a store and I worked at the store every summer and every weekend and I never really thought about that as being sort of my first entree into retail but now I actually realize that maybe all along I've just in sort of my the arc of my journey has been heading that way because I've just I'm fascinated by retail and consumer and sort of like interacting with people one-on-one and so you know even though I was in consulting actually a lot of the work that I was doing was with fashion retail and consumer clients that was the work that I loved the most and so when the opportunity came to be doing it like all the time instead of project-by-project I just jumped on the opportunity of all the locations you've lived what is your favorite personally yeah oof I I would say right now I live in Brooklyn and I love Brooklyn before my current apartment I lived in Dumbo I don't know if you know the area in Brooklyn it was before all a lot of the construction started more in more recent years was like sort of a quiet enclave by the water and my children were young and so I just have such fond rose colored memories of living in Dumbo years ago with my young children that's sweet okay let's move to the creator brief and we're in can so this is going to be sort of focused on creativity of course how do you demonstrate to everyone you work with that you value creativity oh that's a good one and that's what I do yeah I'm like searching my soul right now for the answer I you know I I don't know the answer to that I mean I'll I'll give you a few examples of sort of the way that I would think about things or talk about things I well I think number one if you know anything about the work that we've done you probably already know that we're willing to kind of go there yeah so we're probably already bringing in people who are interested in working whether it's on my team or outside partners with with someone who's who has a little more appetite for creativity but beyond that I I often do if I feel like the the teams need a nudge I will ask them to bring me work that will scare me a little because it's easy to bring something back it's really really hard to take something that's too safe and push it out so I would much rather see the extent to how far we can go and then figure out what's the rights where do we want to land ultimately then to have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing how do you know your organizations moving forward on creativity what what you what you are the measures or the signs or the characteristics or the signals I think that creativity for the sake of creativity might be the same as art for the sake of art and I don't think that creativity in and of itself is the end goal that which is why like thinking about things like effectiveness creative effectiveness and we've done very well in terms of receiving many honors and accolades along along those lines and I think that that tells you that you're leveraging creativity to solve a problem and I think that's the necessary kind of appendage onto the word creativity as a marketer versus you know if I if I were a performance artist I could do whatever I wanted but as a marketer I really need to deliver impact how do you keep yourself creative oh I do try to absorb as much as possible that would be similar to what my audience is absorbing and if that means I have to watch a lot of you know young adult television then that's what I do if it means I have to spend hours and hours and social media that's what I do if it means that you know whatever it takes I sort of try to keep myself in the mindset of my end audience which is you know it has been something that I've kind of always done throughout my career no matter what my job has been but it sure is more fun when you market to Gen Z yeah do you feel creativity can be learned taught coached I do I do I think it's a muscle I do I think that everyone can be the same level of creative maybe not but I think that it is a muscle and I think that maybe the lesson there is that as leaders we need to be better at figuring out how to get people to exercise that muscle so they can learn as much what what the bound like how far can they go and that's our responsibility as leaders yeah how do any any thoughts any tips anything that's worked for you in teaching creativity we like to get out into the world as a team and so we spend time actually a couple of times a year out let we take our whole team and we go do things that have nothing to do with our business we go to museums we go to the slime factory we go to stores that have no products related to anything that we sell we go to cultural experiences and we just use that opportunity to see if we can spot the connective tissue across everything that's happening Fernando Machado does that too you know our famous marketer from Burger King and Activision and Unilever and others so it's a it's a good thing to do so many levels so many levels first brand that you remember as a young girl in Philadelphia triggering your creativity oh triggering my creativity that's the that's the ad I think it would probably be re-bock because I wanted those re-bock aerobic sneakers so badly and I wanted to style them just the way I saw and I'm TV so badly and watch the Brady Bunch with those papers on you all know how old I am now the most creative person you've ever worked with I would say the most creative person I've ever worked with would be probably some some of the creative folks that worked at Bath & Body Works with me and I think that the if if I'm taking my team out a couple of times a year when I was there we were going out I think we we went around the world six to ten times a year well and this immersion this this sort of constantly fueling the creative engine was a huge priority in the organization and and to be honest I feel like I only take a drop of that and bring that to my team just out of necessity and prioritization but it really fueled an unbelievably creative environment you work with one of the best most trendy agencies in the world now mischief at no fixed address what about that partnership works so well what what's going well what how did you build it yeah what are the some of the challenges so when we first met with them they had no portfolio of work to show because they were new they were brand new and we were looking for something like I said my first brief to them was I want you to scare me and I said you know this is a shot we're just we're gonna we're gonna date a little while and during this dating process I want you to show me what you can do so don't hold back and they really brought it I mean the amount of creative horsepower but not even just creative for creativity sake because we just said has to be creative and impactful creative and effective the amount of creative horsepower that exists within that agency and the fact that I trust them and they trust me is a huge enabler to having the most fruitful partnership um so so I have to trust that sometimes they know what they're talking about and go with it and I have to be the person who um puts my neck on the line for some of that and they have to trust that sometimes when I say we can't go there and we can't do that that it's for a real reason that is a business driven reason and through that process I think we've really developed a strong um you know back and forth process that has led to some really great work so you didn't pitch it you said let's go on a date and see how it works we went on a date it's a nice model and we stopped dating like we just I'm meaning like we just kept dating yeah and somehow we found ourselves in this long-term serious relationship yeah that's a nice alternate model because you know a pitch yeah just takes so much you know and it was during COVID and during COVID my my whole approach to COVID was we were laying low our budgets were sort of like you know pretty tight sure and I took that opportunity to start you know seeing poking my head around to see what it's what's out there um and that led to this partnership most creative initiative you've ever been associated with it would definitely have to be the bless or ask a coach yeah yeah I don't I think it's it's because it's not only bold and brave creative but I think that the speed with which we acted I think that the the complete like no hesitation no holds barred kind of approach to the whole thing it really just builds on the creativity and and really that that work will always be near and dear to my heart as some of the the thing that I'm the most proud of what did you learn about creativity from your parents hmm I think that from my parents um I I would not necessarily say that I learned about creativity directly but what I will say is that I think oftentimes creativity with resource constraint is the best kind of creativity because creativity when you have unlimited resources is sort of like I mean come on can't everyone can do that the most amazing thing about creativity is like when you're forced into a box and you still make more happen than you could possibly have expected with the resources that you're given and that's like every immigrant story so if I kind of use that as like a corollary to how I like to think about what my imperative is today as a marketer leading a smaller challenger brand then um then I think that that that lesson really is something that I took from my parents have you told your mom about the brand genius award I didn't I didn't guess I'm gonna I'm gonna show her the the big thing it's like weight like 20 pounds I'll carry that back no no they're gonna send it to the office and so when I get it I'll I'll share it with her make sure you send her a picture yeah no congratulations on that and everything oh thank you I mean your career is inspiring the work you're doing is inspiring the awards have gotten set a great tone for the industry so thank you so much for sharing thank you for doing what you do and welcome back anytime oh thank you so much this was like really an honor to speak with you and I'm so glad that we have the time to do it that was my conversation with so young Kang three takeaways from this one for your business brand in life the first one creativity creativity is a muscle it can be developed organizations can get better at creativity so young believes in this passionately she thinks the leader's role is to encourage our teams to exercise that muscle she says to her teams bring me work that scares me that says a lot about where her standards are and creativity second take away and this one we haven't heard from other CMOs she talked about pattern recognition as her superpower and the importance of observation and curiosity so young is very good at looking at things how they're happening adding some structure to the chaos in which we all live she thinks this superpower helps her prepare herself for the future and helps her develop winning strategies third take away inspiration can be very close to home so look for inspiration in your family in your friends it's there we just need to be looking for it that's it for this episode of the CMO podcast if you found this helpful and entertaining I would be so grateful if you could share our show with your friends and I would be super happy if you subscribe so you can be updated as we publish new episodes and if you really want to help leave us a five star rating and a positive review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen the CMO podcast is a gallery media group original production