
Marketing Trends
What happens when marketing’s sharpest minds pull back the curtain? Hosted by Stephanie Postles, Marketing Trends drops listeners into the world of trailblazing CMOs, CEOs, and visionaries who share their journeys and groundbreaking strategies. From navigating the balance between automation and human touch to leading teams through unprecedented transformation, you’re getting an unfiltered look at the lessons and ideas driving the industry forward. Whether you're leading a team or aspiring to innovate, Marketing Trends is your new secret weapon.
Latest episodes

Feb 8, 2022 • 30min
How the Product Labels of the Future Will Change Everything with Francisco Melo of Avery Dennison Smartrac
In a world of increasing consumer awareness, creators are finding there’s a new, emerging factor that is important to target markets: transparency. People want to know where their goods are coming from: are they ethically sourced? Are they really made up of the materials they list on the back? How long was this product on the shelf? Businesses are finding that answering those questions has opened up an entirely new way of doing business. And for Francisco Melo of Avery Dennison – s a global materials science company specializing in the design and manufacture of a wide variety of labeling and functional materials – it is an exciting new frontier; an opportunity for businesses to be more accountable and sustainable. And Avery Dennison is more than up to the task. They’ve created an internally-built startup that has developed the world's leading connected product cloud, an end-to-end platform that can enable each and every physical item in the world to have a unique digital identity. You can see where your product was created, where it was shipped, and everything in between. More than that, it also allows you to find out the best way to dispose of it, should you need to. This entirely new way of approaching the supply chain is something that could – and, according to Francisco – will absolutely change the way we all approach buying things. “It’s about having that common vision and working towards it, and then understanding it’s the creation of win-win partnerships. This isn’t about me winning and your business losing… we both win because we create better evidence and we create a better future for tomorrow. We do something that’s right for the business and right for the planet.” To hear all about Franscisco’s bold plan for the future of RDIF and the implementation of this bold new tech into existing companies, be sure to tune into this week’s episode of Marketing Trends. .Main TakeawaysFind win-win partnerships. The business world will always be competitive – that’s the nature of the industry. But, there are ways we can work together – businesses, consumers, suppliers… everyone. And if we’re going to change the way we approach consumption on this planet, we are going to have to. Innovative concepts, such as atma.io, are just the start of the ways we can adjust. Keep a balance between optimization and velocity. The two concepts seem at odds – are you getting better, or are you going faster? But Francisco is adamant that striking a balance between the two is imperative in order to keep a company healthy. Find ways to make sure you’re doing the best you can with what you have now while also keeping your eye on the next big thing. You can have a preference of one over the other, but they need to work in sync.Digital identities are the future. While talk of the metaverse and avatars might be filling the airwaves, the real digital revolution has already begun on the supply chain, and it’s making everything more transparent. Bringing in everyone from the supplier to the retailer to the consumer makes for a more seamless shopping experience, while also helping everyone involved keep track of the environmental impact of the transaction. Key Quotes“I found that I really love being at the intersection between the technology element – the understanding of the technology and the marketing element. The value that it brings… that’s really what excited me the most through my journey through a number of companies.” “The easiest way to lead people is to come to a joint vision and be able to deliver on that without necessarily having the full ownership of that… your success is very dependent on everyone else’s success.” “I’m probably more towards velocity versus optimization. I tend to be asking… What's next? How do I drive it faster? How do I become more agile? How do we take it to the next level? Having said that… those things go hand in hand.” ‘It’s all about creating a smart retail lens, but I think more than that – what [digital identities] allow from a consumer standpoint is a smart supply chain. This isn’t just about retail, it’s about the supply chain. Because you can know what's happened to that product throughout its journey from the moment it was born…up to the retail and, potentially, beyond retail as well. I think it provides a level of transparency which is one of the key elements.” “I think the potential that lies ahead of us with a consumer element – not just potential from a business standpoint… can we help people make sure they know how to dispose of things? Can we help people to make sure they know what they should do with specific products so they don’t contaminate the soil?” BioFrancisco Melo is the vice president and general manager for Avery Dennison Smartrac. In this capacity, Mr. Melo directs and guides the strategy for digital ID solutions globally, working with brands and enterprise customers, to enable them to capture the benefits of enabling every item with a unique digital identity and digital life. Prior to joining Avery Dennison, Mr. Melo was a co-founder and CEO of Creativesystems (today part of Sensormatic), an RFID systems integrator and SW developer company. His earlier career includes extensive international experience in management, consulting, and business development with Synectics Inc. and Altran, as well as market development and product development roles at Royal Philips Electronics. Mr. Melo has a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and a Masters of Science in Instrument Design and Application, from The University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. He is passionate about how technology enables a better world, and how creativity is at the heart of disruption and progress, collaborating with the Porto Business School (PBS) at the University of Porto (Portugal) in the field of innovation and creativity.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Feb 2, 2022 • 41min
Why You’re Not Changing the World with Kim Caldbeck, CMO, Coursera
Education is something that is incredibly powerful. It changes lives, communities, even countries. But education is more than institutions. It’s knowledge, empowerment, and knowing how to take action on skills you learn. My guest today, Kim Caldbeck, CMO of Coursera, is using her marketing skills to make an impact on individuals to help empower them to make changes.“We did a campaign in the fall that was about rethinking possibilities and, and that, and, um, this year, uh, the campaign platform that we're really working through is, is all about that feeling. When, when, you know, you can ACE that interview, when, you know, you have the skills for the job, when you realize you can actually go dream like you could when you were a kid.”In this episode she talks about what it’s like working at an institution that targets nearly anyone who wants to learn. She discusses some of the marketing tech she uses, what she looks for in success stories, and how she creates passion in her team. When you finish this episode, let me know what you think by leaving a comment on Apple Podcasts or on YouTube. Alright, let’s get to it!Main TakeawaysSales is about teamwork. In the end, sales always comes down to the marketing team, and they should be working closely with the sales team to make sure they have enough potential, and knowledgeable, customers to execute on. Take advantage of internal and external talent. When you are a growing team, it’s helpful to bring on external talent to make sure you are completing the jobs in the most efficient manner, but when it comes time to scale you want to bring on internal hires. Having internal talent will help make sure processes are followed, and you have more control over the end result.Look ahead. It’s easy to get trapped in the day to day work grind, but you want look down the road. What will the next three years look like? What will the world be like? What goals do you have for the next three years?Key Quotes“I think marketing is an amazing field that allows you to combine that interest in understanding people and empathy and creativity and storytelling along with hardcore data and analytics and technology.”“If marketing's not doing the most effective thing to close deals, then we're not doing our job. And if sales is wasting energy by not taking the leads that we're providing, then either they're wasting energy on their side and they could be closing more deals or we're not doing our job. It's just that shared commitment to the end result.”“[When hiring] what's their why? Pretty much everyone at Coursera has some connection to our mission in a meaningful way. It is an easy one to get behind when you're trying to transform life through learning. Having people be able to articulate why that means something to them and why they're excited.”“[External vs internal teams] is definitely a nail and scale approach. I would nail with more freelance support and scale with more full-time support. But even within that, the larger equation is, how do we get the job done in the best way possible at the lowest cost?”BioKim Caldbeck is the Chief Marketing Officer at Coursera. Kim joined Coursera in April 2015 as Director of Brand and Product Marketing. Prior to Coursera, Kim spent five years at Facebook launching many of Facebook's first consumer marketing campaigns in over 60 global markets. She spent much of her time in the mobile space spearheading Facebook's internet.org launch to bring internet to the offline world, leading product marketing for Facebook for Android and Facebook for Every Phone, and developing the Facebook for Android beta program. She also spent two years in business marketing at Facebook helping advertisers build their brands and businesses in the digital world. Prior to Facebook, Kim worked in marketing at Apple supporting a network of over 100,000 app developers. She started her career in brand consulting and consumer research at Landor Associates working with many of the world's leading brands. Kim received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Jan 28, 2022 • 39min
A Driving Force Behind Digital Marketing Transformation at OneWheel Jack Mudd, Chief Evangelist, OneWheel
I have to tell you, I love all of our guests - but this one is a bit personal to me. I’ve been a big fan of the company for a while, and I LOVE watching their OneWheel Race for the Rail. Today I’m joined by Jack Mudd, Chief Evangelist. He’s the Chief Evangelist Officer, and you can tell his passion and love for his product. It’s infectious. “The valuable influencer marketing for us has been 1000% relationship based. And these are situations where, um, I will send product, not ask for anything in return, not have them sign a thing.I'm sure this is like all worst practices, but, um, but I, what I want to know is if you love it, then if you love it, then I'll, then I'll come, I'll come hang out with you. I'll go for a ride with you. Um, I'll go get coffee with you. We'll talk one wheel, we'll talk life, you know, and, and those are the relationships, um, like friendships. I shouldn't even, you know, it's like legitimately friendships that end up being, I hate looking at it in terms of value, but that's what it is.”By the end of this interview I know you will be a believer in not only his product, but his marketing style and leadership style. Hopefully there will be a part two next year, interviewing on a OneWheel adventure. Be sure to listen to this episode of Marketing Trends ‘til the end, because he knows how to make an impact.Main TakeawaysBe passionate about your products. If you are passionate about what you are selling, it shows. Your team will become excited, and that enthusiasm will roll over to your end consumer. Make and Impact with Your Marketing. Be creative and think of ways that you can really impact a community. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. For example, OneWheel found the most boring town in America, and brought their product there to make it exciting and received a lot of press. What can you do in a community?Create a community. When you build a community with your consumers, your marketing efforts will go viral. People will want to be a part of the community, and bring their friends to be a part of it as well.Key Quotes“We were looking at the companies in 2014. The GoPros and the Red Bulls of the world and thought this needs to be our approach. We need to build something that goes beyond the product. It's fun. It has personality.. It's something that people get excited about trying and riding and owning.”“On the retail side, demand has always been there. A lot of our retailers will almost sell out of OneWheels before their order comes in. Then their order comes in and then they call up their people and they come pick up their wheels and they order another batch. It's been a win-win. … I think we have 700 retailers in the US, but we also have a retail network in Europe and in Australia. And that's something that is really exciting to us too.”“I actually learned by doing everything myself, which I think is awesome because you learn every facet of marketing. Whether it's content creation, public relations, social, you learn it all. And then we hired folks that are better at that stuff than I was, which is always the goal.”“The valuable influencer marketing for us has been 1000% relationship based and these are situations where I will send product, not ask for anything in return, not have them sign a thing. I'm sure this is like all worst practices, but what I want to know is if you love it. Then, if you love it, I'll come hang out with you. I'll go for a ride with you. I'll go get coffee with you. We'll talk one wheel, we'll talk life, and those are the relationships, like friendships. It's like legitimately friendships that end up being, I hate looking at it in terms of value, but that's what it is.”BioJack Mudd is introducing the world to Onewheel. Helping to spread pure-joy and moments of oneness with the universe. In the business of making the future rad and having a grand ol' time doing it.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Jan 26, 2022 • 55min
How Panasonic Became a Marketing Powerhouse with Brian Rowley, Vice President Marketing, Panasonic
Being in a leadership role isn’t easy. One recurring theme I hear about being an executive at a company is that you need to listen to your team. It’s simple - not easy - but simple. That doesn't always mean listening with your ears, sometimes listening is seeing people’s habits. Brian Rowley, Vice President Marketing, Panasonic spoke with me today about how important it is to make sure your team is finding a proper balance and watching for their needs.“I'm a big person for balance. Because there used to be a time when we used to push people to the extreme where they break and then okay, take a couple of days and sort of come back and, whatever. There's so many people who you hear over the course of time that say, oh, this person's in the office from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM and what a great employee. And I always look at that and say, really like that job really only requires seven or eight hours. Why is it taking that person 12 or 13?”In addition to teamwork, we also dove into why and how Panasonic made a shift to a B2B focus, and what it’s like to work with so many different divisions and shareholders across such a diverse company. Really, they make everything from computers and tablets, to manufacturing and food processing, to professional video equipment. Be sure to stay tuned, this is an episode of Marketing Trends you don’t want to miss.Main TakeawaysImportance of listening. It’s easy to get caught up in just paying attention to stakeholders. Be sure to listen to your team, and their insights. You need to make sure you find balance, but be sure to trust in your team.Make sure people understand the impact of your ask. When you approach someone with a task, it’s incredibly powerful to explain why you are asking this of them, and what the impact will be. For example, instead of just asking for a change to the site make sure you say it’s because the result will be people spending x amount of time on the site.Everyone is a consumer. Whether you are in a B2B or B2C environment, remember that you are dealing with people. People want to hear a good story, and have their problem solved - so don’t focus too much on B2B or B2C. Focus on listening to the needs of the end consumer.Key Quotes“I wanted to be the type of leader that I wanted to be led by. So for me, I sort of focused on the skills that were important to me and made sure that those have always come through in the teams that are reporting and working for myself today.”“[Leadership is] the ability to be able to listen to what people have to say, make sure that you're acting with the best interest of the organization, but also trying to balance the needs of all those stakeholders.”“I'm a big, big person for balance. Um, because you know, there used to be a time when we used to push people to, you know, to the extreme where they break and then okay, take a couple of days and sort of come back and, and whatever. Um, for me it's really about, that's not as important. Um, you know, I always look at, you know, there's so many people who you hear over the course of time that say, oh, this person's in the office from, you know, 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM and what a great employee. And I always look at that and say, really like that job really only requires seven or eight hours. Why is it taking that person 12 or 13?”“At the end of the day, we're all consumers. How you tell your story again, it goes back to that relevant piece. What is it that you're trying to solve for? Because I might be in a business environment, but I'm gonna go home tonight and put on my consumer hat and through the age of digital, I'm gonna be served a variety of different content on my device. I don't know, necessarily, that the conversation is as much about B to C as it is B to B, but really being able to understand the needs of the customer and then be able to tell the story of our offerings.”BioBrian Rowley is the Vice President of Marketing for Panasonic Systems Solutions Company of North America and has extensive experience across partner relationship management, digital marketing, lead generation, and product management. As one of your hosts, he focuses on digital transformation and encourages discussion on what businesses need to be successful and how to deliver on the human experience to create a more meaningful connection, a sense of community, and to foster loyalty.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Jan 21, 2022 • 50min
How to Stand Out in a Global Market with Steve Mosinski, Global Head of Marketing, Fox Rent a Car
Leadership is something a lot of people think is about bragging rights, or being the face of something. In reality, it’s far more about encouraging teams and including others than it is about you as an individual. That’s one thing that Steve Mosinski, Global Head of Marketing at Fox Rent a Car has worked hard to do. “It's not my department, it's our department. So I'm going to make sure that's echoed throughout the organization, because when you share that and people realize that marketing isn't just Steve. … Otherwise, if you're trying to grow a team… if they view it. ‘Well, Steve is just gonna get that done. Cause Steve's always gotten it done because that's how Steve represents himself.’ The goal is to always, always pay it back to the people that actually help,give credit where credit is absolutely warranted and trumpet their successes”Steve has been through it all. Starting in the low ranks of marketing, to heading up global operations. He’s even gone through the good, bad, and ugly parts of acquisition - while keeping his eyes on the goal of reaching his customers in human ways that makes his entire company happy. Be sure to listen to this episode, as he shares some important insights for how you can bridge the gap between departments on this episode of Marketing Trends. Main TakeawaysGet customer feedback. The last thing you want is for a customer to blast you on Google or other review sites. It’s better to get that feedback directly from the customer, so your team can try to take action - and apply the lesson for future problems.Communicate with other departments. Usually in marketing, you are ether first line of contact, and a sales team executes the deal. Take the time to talk to the salespeople, see what friction they are having. Find out the feedback from customers and develop ways to improve the customer experience to get rid of the headaches early.Know your target. If you are aiming for a high-end client or an average person - this can really affect your strategy. Really be true to yourself, are you competing against a luxury brand? Once you know that, look at where you can find them in an everyday situation (where they will actually be) for your products to make an impact.Key Quotes“The biggest thing for me, historically, has always been blending the online and offline. So making sure that you always stay connected with that piece. The marketing department doesn't own the end transaction, our corporate operations team owns that interaction with the customer. Largely the history has been the marketing leader does not get involved in any of those conversations. Stay in your life type of thing. I've never been to one to be like that. So I have I have regular calls with the operations group going, okay, how can I help you? What's something that I'm not doing on the front side that's causing you a headache on the backside?”“The most difficult aspect for, is allowing somebody else's input and effort to actually help execute on something that I have as far as a vision. I've had to figure out how to articulate that thing in such a way that they can grasp it and still allow them the levity to put their own spin on it, but end up accomplishing the goal that we have in mind. The hardest part is stop being a doer as much as being a strategizer behind the doing.”“Customers want to be recognized. They want to be known that, ‘Thanks ,John Smith, for coming in today. We're, we're glad that you're here. Ee see that you reserved a compact car with us.’ That's what I view as a frictionless experience. You're not surprised that I'm here today to do a transaction with you.”“The biggest aspect of anything in car rental is the website, because that's our gateway to the customer. That's what the customer sees, whether it's under mobile device, tablet, phone, and all that. That's the biggest shift is that 98% of our transactions are done online. So only 2% are done in a call center environment. So, that's exactly where I looked at my team and went, okay, I need somebody dedicated to looking after the website alone and all the pieces that go into that site and maintaining it day in and day out.”“Historically being an entrepreneur organization, you can't really build a franchise network. There’s a lot of overhead, there's a lot of governance, there's a lot of cross-checking and everything else. So what we looked at is, what's the quickest way to get a global presence? And what you find is local market heroes.”BioSteve Mosinski is the Head of Global Marketing at Fox Rent A Car and has succeeded across multidimensional roles. He believes he has to perform as a leader in order to call himself one. It's with that drive that he pushes to find ways to lead by example, inspire and be a change agent. Of course, this is only possible with experience to back it up. He has held many hats in his career -- Marketer, Advertiser, Analyst, Salesperson, Brand Innovator, Operations Manager, Trainer, Coach, Financial Analyst, Product Manager and Digital Marketing Executive. As a result, he has the unique ability to manage multi-dimensional projects and complex challenges. ---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Jan 19, 2022 • 44min
How Insurance Can Elevate Your Business with Tim Metzner, Co-founder, Coterie Insurance
When it comes to taking care of people, everyone in business says they want to, but very few people put together action steps to taking care of their team. Tim Metzner, Co-founder of Coterie Insurance, makes it his mission to build a culture where people not only want to work, but feel inspired and energized at the end of their day.“It's a big part of what drew me to this company, to this opportunity, to this industry. There's just such a chance to build a great long-term legacy company. I just love seeing people come alive in their careers because it trickles over into their personal lives and vice versa. Treating people as humans, building a great place for them to work. If you can do that, the impact you can have on a community is massive because we all become better humans when you know that 40 plus hours a week that we're dedicating to work is enjoyable. When we leave energized at the end of the day, when we leave actually wanting to come back and do more work. We have so much fire, to go do other good stuff in our lives.”You might think of insurance and groan, but Tim shows how a solid insurance company can really elevate your business. His team leverages their expertise to make sure business owners work on a company, not just in a company, and are able to keep their companies going strong. Be sure to listen to this episode of Marketing Trends to hear his secrets of satisfying and exciting both customers and employees. Main TakeawaysYou have to be adaptive: When marketing to new customers, you need to be ready to go to where they are, and speak a language that they understand. The best way to achieve this is to build a team of people who are smarter than you in new areas you don’t know about.Put your products in places of relevance. Your customers shouldn’t have to hunt down what they need. You want to make sure it’s easy to get what they need, where they need it. For example, by putting the option to buy insurance on jewelry right when you buy it - it increases those sales (and eliminates fraud). Think about where you can present your products where customers already are. Start your culture right away: There are a lot of leaders who think culture can wait until you are larger, but the truth is culture is going to be there either way. You want to be intentional about it right away. If you want to attract people who are talented and great human beings, you need to have a vision for the type of company you want to build early.Key Quotes“Some people will tell you until you've got a company, don't worry about things like culture and don't focus too much on values and vision and some of that. I just think that's the wrong approach. Because if things do start to take off and you make it, you're going to have a culture either way. You can either be intentional and create that, or it can kind of happen on its own. I just believe, if you want to attract people who are not only really talented, but just great human beings, you got to have a vision for the kind of company you want to build and you want to attract them to that.”“As you scale, it gets really easy to lose sight of what's happening on the front lines. What's that customer service, that customer advocate hearing and seeing and feeling? One of the things we implemented is called core coaching. Every three weeks, everyone in the company has a one-on-one with someone more senior in the company, and that entire one-on-one is focused on hearing from them. Hearing about what they're seeing, feeling, thinking we need to do better and also just about them in their career.”“Many people don't start a business because they're great at starting businesses. It's because they have a thing they love doing. Or they realize they're really good at a thing. So we want to help educate them on, what does it look like to actually work on the business, not just in the business. How can we use some of our own past experiences as business owners to help educate people along the way? Not just about insurance, but about making their business a better business.”“We built Coterie as a remote-first company from the beginning. All three of us co-founders agreed that there's no reason to limit ourselves to talent just in Cincinnati, Ohio. As much as I love Cincinnati, there are amazing people all over the place who want to have freedom and flexibility to work for a great company right from where they are.”“Build a scalpel, not a Swiss army knife.”BioTim Metzner is co-founder of Coterie, an API-based commercial lines insurance startup. Coterie empowers agents and brokers to secure coverage for small businesses faster and easier than ever. Previously, he was co-founder of Differential, a leading digital product studio and of OCEAN, a faith-based non-profit organization that teaches, mentors, invests in, and gathers entrepreneurs around both business and biblical principles critical to their success. Tim is currently an active member of the Board of Directors for all three organizations. In addition to his direct contribution as a co-founder, collectively OCEAN and Differential have spawned dozens of ventured-backed organizations that have raised millions and created hundreds of jobs.Tim is very active in the Cincinnati entrepreneurial community which, among other efforts, has included bringing Startup Weekend to Cincinnati, serving on the Advisory Board for NKU’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, serving as an EIR for the University of Cincinnati’s Venture Lab, as well as being an active mentor to entrepreneurs and students in the region.In addition to his volunteer and entrepreneurial endeavors, one of his greatest joys and challenges is co-leading his four young children (Nolan, Owen, Faith, and Emma) with his wife, Kristy.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Jan 14, 2022 • 47min
Jumping on Opportunities Through Rapid Expansion with Christine de Wendel, Co-Founder and CEO US Sunday
There is an old saying that in every tragedy there is an opportunity. Sometimes it’s our darkest moments that we find a way to make the world a better place, and that’s exactly what Christine de Wendel, Co-Founder and CEO US Sunday sought out to do during the pandemic. Today marketers are all trying to create a frictionless experience. Or simply, a better buying experience for the consumer. But what is less seamless than waiting on the person to bring you the bill? Sunday sought to rectify this, and they did. “We said, if we want to get to market really quickly and take advantage of this incredible wave, and this opportunity that has come out of the COVID pandemic, we need to make [payment] really easy. And so our solution is we put a QR code on the table. We map it to the point of sale system. It allows you as a consumer to scan the QR code on the table, see the menu, order like many restaurants already had, but then pull up your bill and pay. And so we're transforming something that used to take 15 minutes and we're turning it into a ten second experience” Sunday’s technology is simple, but has innovated the restaurant industry in ways that has staying power.. Not only is it creating a smoother process for consumers, but it also has the possibility to give businesses a better sense of who they are working with while also creating more personalized experiences.. On Marketing Trends, Christine takes us through the process of jumping on an opportunity, how to scale quickly while finding good candidates regardless of market, and, the importance of a strong central branding and so much more on this episode of Marketing Trends.Main TakeawaysQR Codes should be an important part of your business.They help make payments smoother for your consumers.It’s important for a start up to over invest in brand identity.Hiring local experts when expanding globally is important to understand the culture and mindset of customers.It’s important to have a strong central brand, but allow for flexibility in local markets.When you’re an entrepreneur, you’re going to have extreme emotional highs and lows as you see your idea come to life.Key Quotes“We said, if we want to get to market really quickly and take advantage of this incredible wave and this opportunity that has come out of the pandemic, we need to make it really easy. And so our solution is we put a QR code on the table. We map it to the point of sale system. It allows you as a consumer to scan the QR code on the table, see the menu, order like many restaurants already had, but then pull up your bill and pay. And so we're transforming something that used to take 15 minutes and we're turning it into ten-secondnd experience”“As an early stage startup, you over-invest in brand.”“We've had great traction and great partnerships with most of the point of sales because they realize that it's a very fragmented market and that working with us means that we're really building something that's going to address 70, 80, 90, 100 percent of the market, as opposed to just their customer base.”“Entrepreneurs will tell you this every day, it is full of challenges and the ups and downs of building a company like this are incredible. Seeing your product live is so rewarding and the stress and the anxiety of making sure that you're building a really robust product that won't disappoint is also extremely nice. I love the enthusiasm we're getting, and am extremely appreciative of my teams because I never thought it would be such a roller coaster in terms of emotions. It's really a call out to other entrepreneurs that this is exciting, but this can be so hard. BioChristine de Wendel is the co-founder and CEO of Sunday, a QR-based payment platform that improves the ease of the guest checkout experience. Prior to Sunday, Christine became an expert in European E-commerce. Between 2020 and 2017, Christine was Chief Operating Officer of ManoMano, one of France’s fastest growing tech companies and Europe’s leading online platform for home improvement. Prior to joining ManoMano, Christine spent seven years at Zalando, Europe’s largest online fashion retailer, where she built up the Paris office and managed Zalando’s French business. Christine began her career as a consultant with Bain & Company in Paris and New York. She is currently working on a new venture.Christine holds a BSc in International Affairs from Georgetown University, an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and an MBA from INSEAD. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Christine has American, French and Austrian citizenship. She currently lives in Atlanta with her husband and three children after spending 15 years in Paris.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Jan 12, 2022 • 55min
Legacy Brand Evolution for a New Generation with Mayur Gupta, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Gannett
Technology has been disrupting the journalism industry to its core for decades. As younger generations come of age, the need to keep them informed in ways that reach and speak to them requires moving into new verticals, and maybe even thinking about who your competitors are differently. After all, what is news today? How is it consumed, ingested, and most importantly where is it coming from? Mayur Gupta, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Gannett, knows this because he’s living it, and if there on thing he’s focused on now, it’s reaching that younger generation.“We want to continue to index younger and younger. That's the growth segment we want to penetrate. So we are evolving and making a lot of investment in evolving our experiences, our content, the verticals. We are using a lot of those signals to identify what are the types of content? What formats, what type of experiences should we mark premium? At the same time, what does a premium experience look and feel like? And we know that as a user, you are living in this world where there's no dearth of great content. We don't compare ourselves with other journalism brands. We compare ourselves with the Netflix’s, the Apple’s, the Spotify’s of the world because in the end, it's all content. Their world perhaps begins and indexes more on fiction. If you ask me in one phrase, my vision for the company, me personally, I would love to build a Netflix for non-fiction content which is the premier source and destination.”Building a new brand identity in an established empire like Gannett is no small task. Mayur, listed as one of Forbes World’s Most Influential CMOs, explains how he taught marketing to himself while on the road for another job. In this episode he shows how he’s taken the helm at one of journalism’s most respected brands, and is driving the company towards reaching younger audiences as a growth strategy. He gives some insight into his strategy on unifying large and non-monolithic systems that have been in place for years. Plus, he shares some of the big lessons he learned at companies such as Freshly, and Spotify. All this up next on Marketing Trends. Main Takeaways:Index to a Younger Crowd: One of the best places to go when thinking about growth, as a legacy brand, is thinking about how to reach a different demographic or population with your product or service. Change the format, the style, the content itself, and then begin testing and looking at the numbers to find what’s working. Get creative with how you see yourself as an organization to open yourself up to more opportunities for expanding into new verticals. Building a Strong Brand: Also a unique challenge for legacy brands is thinking about how to quantify and show the metrics on an audioce that’s been following you for decades, and that you’ve never-before had this kind of understanding about. You just need to get creative with the numbers to help show the ‘top of funnel’ investment impact on efficiency of your growth marketing efforts. The Challenge of Unifying a Non-Monolithic System: One of the challenges in working with a company that has over 100 years of brand history and legacy also means that there might be a lot of piece-meal tech in place that you have to address. Updating the infrastructure for content management, and implementing a universal tech stack for the data ecosystem might be the best first step to take in order to have trust and confidence in your data moving forward. Key Quotes:“There was no marketing for dummies. I would go back because I would be into so much pressure talking to these guys who build these ad servers that are serving hundreds of billions of impressions. And they're talking about pixels and encryption, I had no clue. I didn't even know what a publisher was, what a target is, what a venue and a placement is because I'm coming from a totally different world. So I would go to Wikipedia. I would go back to my hotel, and I would understand, ‘oh, this is what they mean.’””There is something inherent for kids at least in my time who came from countries like India and many more where you have way more number of people and applicants than the opportunities that are within the ecosystem where when you get an A your parents don't get a back then the parents would not get excited. You got an ‘A’ grade. They want to know who else got an ‘A plus’ because [unless] you are coming first at something, you don't really have a shot at getting anywhere because they're just not enough resources.”“It’s an unusual challenge and a role that I took on and feel very grateful and fortunate to have been given the opportunity. It's an evolution from a hundred-year-old legacy advertising-led media business that has been typically obsessed with eyeballs and traffic to now fundamentally pivoting, to becoming a subscription content business that needs to be obsessed with user value and no longer eyeballs. That's a 180 degree turn all the way from what data you store and what KPIs and what north star metrics are relevant to the mind and the culture and so on.” “When you build that strong brand, that is culturally connected the challenge that we have on our site that we have to own is ‘how do you prove that incrementality with data, not just with emotion, how do you get creative with data and prove that the growth of your top of funnel investment, the growth in that brand of affinity actually has an impact on the efficiency of your growth marketing efforts in terms of efficiency in your cap, in terms of incrementality in your retention rate or a higher lifetime value until we bring that data.”“We are investing just as much in data engineering and cleaning that up and looking for an organization like us, which is a portfolio of 260 brands within local markets. That's the massive challenge because this company has grown with a series of acquisitions and mergers over the last four or five decades. We are not on a monolithic system. We've come a long, long way. We now have a universal content management system. We now have universal instrumentation and we are now getting a universal stack when it comes to our data ecosystem. So that's the mechanical part, building the muscle to understand how we apply all these different levels and variables to predict the future.”“We want to continue to index younger and younger. That's the growth segment we want to penetrate. So we are evolving and making a lot of investment in evolving our experiences, our content, the verticals. We are using a lot of those signals to identify what are the types of content? What formats, what type of experiences should we mark premium? At the same time, what does a premium experience look and feel like? And we know that as a user, you are living in this world where there's no dearth of great content. We don't compare ourselves with other journalism brands. We compare ourselves with the Netflix’sthe Apple’s, the Spotify’s of the world, because at the end, it's all content. Their world perhaps begins and indexes more on fiction. If you ask me in one phrase, my vision for the company, me personally, I would love to build a Netflix for non-fiction content which is the premier source and destination.”Bio:Mayur Gupta served on Gannett’s Board of Directors from October 2019 to September 2020, when he was named Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer. Prior to joining Gannett, Mr. Gupta was Chief Marketing Officer at Freshly, a growing food-tech company. Mr. Gupta has led digital initiatives at several companies, including VP of Growth and Marketing at Spotify and as Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer of Healthgrades, a healthcare scheduling platform. Mr. Gupta was the first Chief Marketing Technologist at Kimberly-Clark. In 2014, Mr. Gupta was recognized as one of the “40 under 40” leading marketers in the industry by Brand Innovators.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Jan 7, 2022 • 42min
Designing the Best Employee Experience with Amy Frampton, Head of Marketing, BambooHR
Your employees are arguably the most important part of your business. Giving them a good employee experience means keeping up-to-date on important HR deadlines and notices, such as giving raises, as one example. Amy Frampton, Head of Marketing, BambooHR, wants to help both parties, employers and employees, navigate the sometimes frustrating process of onboarding and managing staff. “Everyone's worried about onboarding now. Folks who are in construction or retail may be worried about onboarding remotely, and on-site versus in a home office. We break it down into [questions] What are they most worried about? They're worried about their culture. They're worried about their experience, and people being connected. They're worried about things that are just mandatory to get. Making sure people get their time off and making sure they get paid well, and all those things are pretty consistent.”Keeping your employees happy and feeling valued will keep them around longer, and that’s good for the bottom line. In this conversation, Amy goes over her thought-making process behind its current channel mix, and how she thinks about aligning her strategy to customer signals. How BambooHR is getting creative with the nudges they’re able to program into apps such as Slack to improve employee experience. Think more about how you might be able to relieve onboarding stress at your business for both your employees and your managers in this conversation with Amy here on Marketing Trends. Main TakeawaysBots at Their Best: A.I. can be used in a variety of ways. One such use case is to nudge employees and managers to help them stay on top of their game on HR tasks, thereby creating a better employee experience. Making those important connections about pay, benefits, or time-off is easier when you don’t even have to remember to set a reminder. Onboarding Overload: The workplace has changed for many the past year and a half and as many companies are staffing back up in a big way, fears about onboarding new staff are mounting. Each industry has its own concerns about best practices around even just the most simple things, such as staying up to date on benefits and time-off.Notice Shifts in Your Customer’s Patterns to Keep Providing Value: The best brands and marketers stay agile because people are always evolving and changing themselves. To serve their needs, you need to think about the ways that major world events are impacting their lives and the ways they interact with your content. Key Quotes“We're looking at how we think about nudges employee experience is the ultimate goal of those that use Bamboo. My company's growing super fast. I need a great employee experience. We know there's the ‘great resignation’ going on, but we also just want a great employee experience better for our teams, better for our customers. So we are looking at A.I. nudges right now within slack and in other places where we can say things like, ‘Hey, did you know, so-and-so hasn't had a raise in a year. You might want to look at that; or [they] haven’t taken time off or, ‘Hey, I saw you just got a raise. You might want to look at your 401k contributions.’ Automating some of those nudges so that it gets easier and easier to make those connections.”“Our partnerships are super important. Our HR users can do everything they need. Our payroll is U.S.-only so we've got great partners in Canada; we've got great partners in the UK etc. We've got a hundred partners in our marketplace through API and they can basically build a custom platform for their country.”“Everyone's worried about onboarding now. Folks who are in construction or retail may be worried about onboarding remotely, and on-site versus in a home office, but they're still worried about onboarding and we break it down into [questions] What are they most worried about? They're worried about their culture. They're worried about their experience, and people being connected. They're worried about things that are just mandatory to get. Making sure people get their time off and making sure they get paid well, and all those things are pretty consistent.”“You have to think about what little nuggets can you give people during their day to allow them to engage with your brand without assuming that they're doing all the things they used to do. [For example,] right now I personally love a shorter podcast because I'm not driving to work. I used to drive an hour and 15 minutes each way.”BioAs head of marketing at BambooHR, Amy focuses on creating compelling marketing experiences with the product, people, and brand together. Amy joined BambooHR in April 2020, bringing with her almost 20 years of marketing and leadership experience at several companies including Smartsheet, Microsoft, HPE, and Vulcan.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Jan 5, 2022 • 42min
The Challenges of the Modern CMO Addressed with Ingrid Burton, CMO Quantcast
Marketing leaders are faced with a litany of challenges, an ocean of tools, and seemingly infinite amounts of data, which can all get a bit overwhelming. Ingrid Burton, CMO of Quantcast, is passionate about the industry and on Marketing Trends she discusses with me some of the obstacles the modern marketer faces. “The challenges of today's CMO are very different than the challenges of even five years ago, 10 years ago. It is such a fast-moving space and CMOs have to be well versed in strategy and data in understanding the market. It's such a big job now. I wonder how my fellow CMOs are doing, because like I said, I started my day at four-thirty this morning because I lay awake at night with all these asks and I [wonder] how am I gonna get it all done? Do I have the right team on the field? Can we really execute this? Can we measure our results and make sure we're getting the attribution that we need. We need to be thinking about how we make sure CMOs don't burn out. How do we make sure CMOs are able to lead through this? And how do we make sure that the expectations are realistic?” There will never be an end to all of the additional things a marketer does, another channel to add to the mix, but be careful not to push yourself or your team beyond your limits. In this episode, Ingrid unpacks what they mean at Quantcast when they talk about providing a free and open internet. She delves into her passion and in-depth knowledge of machine learning, and how marketers can best utilize their endless amount of tools. She also explains why ESG is going to be a main driver for them next year and how they’re ensuring true Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion. There’s so much to enjoy, up ahead with Ingrid here on Marketing Trends. Main TakeawaysThe Challenges of the Modern CMO: The rapid pace of the software-driven industry is a lot to keep up with. Getting more data and analytics capabilities has driven a lot of growth in the last 5-10 years. The constant rush of information combined with the constant demand to put information out can lead some of even the most passionate marketers to burnout. Guarding against that is going to be what separates the leaders of the future. The expectations of many CMOs and marketing leaders are very high. The Value of a Free and Open Internet: The value of having clear and factual information widely acknowledged and accepted in culture is essential for unity. The internet disrupted the journalism industry, and this change has brought about the conversion to subscription fee-based models over the traditional ad-based mode. This means that some people don’t have access to the factual information they could be learning their news from. Machine Learning - The Power of Noticing Patterns: Pattern recognition is one of the most useful tools in leadership and in scaling business. Machines that can be taught to recognize certain patterns can do so and scan the entire database instantaneously. If you can notice patterns in marketing that can help you predict what your customers may be interested in or looking for at certain times of the year, times of day, devices, or locations. The power of machine learning in marketing is just in the early stages.Key Quotes“Hopefully I don't say ‘I’ too much. I always want to say ‘we’ - We did this. We did that. I'm just the guide; here's the north star we want to take. Or as I put it, here's the mountain we need to take. I put that out there very early on. I think my team here was very surprised. And when I showed them just a few baby steps of how you're gonna climb small hills to get to the top of the peak, they saw that they could do it. They accomplished it. Some of it's confidence-building and having them believe in themselves.”“Who can afford to subscribe to all these news publications. There's gotta be a different way. I'm afraid for a society that if we charge for every piece of content, what's going to happen to people that can't afford it [is that] they're gonna be left behind. They get left behind because they're not getting the right news. The internet is a great equalizer and we need to make sure that it's not a fee-based internet.” “One of the things that's unique about Quantcast is we have this unique, real-time data set and it's one of the largest in the world behind Google and Facebook. Since we started the company, we have established a relationship with all the publishers out there. This is Hurst which is huge, Conde Nast...we have a hundred million websites. Their data is feeding into this anonymized data set. That is one of the largest actually running in the Amazon cloud, one of the largest that they have. We're using machine learning to find patterns and make predictions about the behavior of what's happening in this data set.”“The challenges of today's CMO, are very different than the challenges of even five years ago, 10 years ago. It is such a fast-moving space and CMOs have to be well versed in strategy and data in understanding the market. It’s such a big job now. I wonder how my fellow CMOs are doing, because like I said, I started my day at four-thirty this morning because I lay awake at night with all these asks coming at me and I [wonder] how am I gonna get it all done? Do I have the right team on the field? Can we really execute to this? Can we measure our results and um, really make sure we're getting the attribution that we need. We need to really be thinking about how do we make sure CMOs don't burn out? How do we make sure CMOs are able to lead through this? And how do we make sure that the expectations are realistic?”BioIngrid Burton is a unique leader in the world of tech as she bridges the gap between technology and marketing in leading teams to unparalleled successes driving strategies for market trends including AI and machine learning, Java and HANA technologies, SaaS, Cloud Computing, Open Source, Internet of Things (IOT), community engagement and Big Data that have had a positive impact on the evolving technology landscape.Ingrid’s career includes her role as a member of the board of directors at Extreme Networks. She also held the role of Chief Marketing Officer at H2O.ai, the open source leader in AI and machine learning, where she led marketing teams while positioning the company through its growth stages. Prior to H2O.ai, Ingrid advised companies including DriveScale, MapR (acquired by HPE) and Paxata (acquired by DataRobot). She was CMO of Hortonworks, a Big Data company, where she drove a brand and marketing transformation, positioning the company for growth and subsequent acquisition.Ms. Burton led the Product and Innovation marketing team at SAP, where she was the marketing leader of SAP HANA, analytics, and mobile offerings, and where she co-created the company Cloud strategy. As CMO of pre-IPO Silver Spring Networks, she positioned the company for their IPO as the leader in energy networks. While CMO at Plantronics she reshaped a 50-year-old brand into a modern and exciting communications model for both consumers and business.Previously at Sun Microsystems, Ingrid held various leadership roles including head of marketing for the company, driving both the company and Java brand, global citizenship, championing open source initiatives, and leading product and strategic marketing teams. Early in her career, Ingrid was a developer.Ms. Burton actively engages with and mentors people in both technology and business functions, and provides guidance for them in their careers. She has received numerous awards including the 2005 Silicon Valley TWIN award.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.
Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.