Rewriting the Rules of Leadership: Doug Zarkin’s ‘Thinking Human’ Approach

Welcome to this episode of the Marketing Vanguard podcast. Today, Jenny Rooney speaks with Doug Zarkin, CMO of Take 5 Oil Change and author of "Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone." In this compelling conversation, Doug shares how he's transforming a commodity category into an emotional brand experience through people-first leadership.

Doug's career spans from the agency world at Saatchi & Saatchi and Grey to client-side roles at Avon Products and Victoria's Secret PINK. Most notably, he spent eleven years as CMO at Pearle Vision, an unusually long tenure, where he led a complete brand transformation that resulted in the company topping Entrepreneur's Franchise 500. Now, as the first-ever CMO for Take Five Oil Change, Doug is applying his proven "people, process, progress, profitability" framework to elevate a challenger brand in the oil change category.

What You'll Learn:

• The secret to achieving an 11-year CMO tenure in an era of short tenures
• The "people, process, progress, profitability" framework for success
• The brand value equation: Experience divided by price
• Challenger brand strategy for competing from fourth place
• Why "thinking human" transforms customer relationships

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