Marketing Today With Alan Hart

Geoff Cottrill has been named one of Forbes’ 50 Most Entrepreneurial CMOs, one of Business Insider’s CMOs to Watch, and currently serves as the Chief Brand Officer for Topgolf. In this role, he leads all aspects of their global marketing, experience design, partnerships, consumer insights, communications, charitable giving, and retail and membership programs. He joined Topgolf in 2021 with a passion for building diverse and talented teams and a reputation for innovative thinking and creativity. Before joining Topgolf, he was Group Director of Entertainment Marketing at Coca-Cola, where he led the strategic vision for all marketing channels and sports entertainment properties. Before that, he was the General Manager and CMO for Converse, a division of Nike, and has also served in leadership roles at Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, and the global advertising agency MullenLowe.In this episode, Alan and Geoff discuss what Topgolf is doing to drive diversity and fun in the sport, how their partnerships with the Speci

Mike Sanders is an avid freediving fisherman, self-proclaimed crypto nerd, and Chief Marketing Officer of Kaseya. Mike started his career as the head of IT for a private brokerage firm, but after a few years, he left to start his own business. He quickly learned that being an entrepreneur meant he would have to be able to do a little bit of everything, and he discovered a knack for the sales and marketing side. He followed that passion to a sales job at Kaseya in 2005. He stayed with the company for nearly 10 years before he left and started another new business, Cenersys. Eventually, that company was acquired by Kaseya, and Mike was brought back to launch and run Unitrends for them. After a while, he started to get more involved in the product marketing and sales side and was brought on to his current role as CMO in 2023.Mike has found that his entrepreneurial background serves him well as CMO at Kaseya, where his responsibilities are broad and reach across demand generation, product and customer marketing,

Doug Zarkin is an avid tennis player, retail and brand marketing expert, and author of “Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone: A Modern Day Guide to Strengthening Your Brand’s Value Equation”. He went straight from undergrad at George Washington University to graduate school at American University and knew from the start that he wanted to run a business and lead a brand. After graduation, he started his career in the agency world with the Youth, Entertainment, and Lifestyle Marketing Division at Grey Advertising, where he had the opportunity to work on brands like Harry Potter, W Hotels, and Reebok. After that, he became an “Avon Lady'' for a few years, then moved on to Victoria Secret and the fashion world for many years, and most recently served as the Chief Marketing Officer of Pearle Vision for EssilorLuxottica. In May 2023, he decided to step away from Pearle to pursue authorship and serve as an Executive Advisory Board member.Doug tells us he decided to leave the front lines and write his book in ord

In this episode, Alan speaks with fractional CXO Nicholas “Z” Zeisler and fractional CMO Muriel Lotto about how they met, what they have learned by combining their expertise, and how those lessons can help you rethink the way your marketing, brand promise, and consumer experience factor into your business decisions.Nicholas “Z” Zeisler uses his Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Process Engineering expertise to help brands improve their customer experience as a fractional Chief Customer Officer. He’s on a mission to help organizations better align their CX with their brand promises by figuring out where they’re falling short, taking decisive and deliberate action to improve how they do business, and finding efficiency in the process to drive brand alignment. Z served in the US Air Force and Reserves for nearly 30 years and is currently a professor of statistics at the US Air Force Academy. He is also a Professor of Practice at Michigan State University’s Eli Broad School of Business, focused on customer experience

Kristin Pagano started her career as a media planner with Starcom Worldwide, where she had the opportunity to move back to LA and take on their Walt Disney account. She shifted to the client side at 20th Century Fox but felt a need to broaden her view of the overall marketing mix. After returning to school and graduating with her MBA, she started at Intel and then transferred to Activision. At that point, she had a 6-month-old and was presented with the opportunity to work for Munchkin. Starting as a senior brand manager in 2012, she worked her way up and became VP of Marketing in 2018.As the Vice President of Marketing, Kristin oversees all strategies and tactics designed to grow the Munchkin business. Munchkin was founded in Los Angeles in 1990. Last year, they sold 47 million products in the US, which translates to almost 13 products for every baby born, showing just how massive the brand is today. Operating in over 50 countries with six offices and almost 400 employees worldwide, Munchkin was named #8 on

Isabelle Guis was born and raised in France but has lived in Silicon Valley since 2001. She was trained as an engineer, with a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Supelec and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She strives for perfection as a ballet dancer, a pilot, and in her dual roles as Global CMO and CEO of North America for Brevo. Before joining Brevo, Isabelle was pivotal in leading Salesforce's $5 billion Sales Cloud Product Marketing organization, which grew by $1 billion under her tenure. After that, as Commvault's CMO, Isabelle and her team transformed traditional perpetual software marketing into best-in-class agile SaaS marketing. Most recently, she served as the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Egnyte, where she successfully launched a new content protection solution, expanding their Total Addressable Market (TAM) by a factor of 10x up to $25 billion. Isabelle also shares her expertise as a Marketing and Business Strategy adjunct professor teaching graduate students at Santa C

Angela Voss majored in mass communications and got her first job out of college in digital marketing. She started with Marketing Architects in 2007, when they were solely operating in radio. About a year after she joined, Marketing Architects announced they were going to enter TV. With a love of television and no fear of a challenge, she worked for many years to build out the TV team and identify how Marketing Architects would compete with differentiation in media buying. She ran that team until 2015, when she moved to lead the client management team. In 2023, she became CEO, and today she leads 125 employees in solving TV's pricing, measurement, and scale challenges.Marketing Architects is a full-service TV agency that places ads in both linear and streaming formats. With an All-Inclusive TV model, their clients only pay for the media budget, and Marketing Architects invest capital in all of the other necessary elements such as strategy development, brand positioning, creative conception, pretesting, full pr

Carl Loredo used to go to Wendy's for dinner every Friday night with his mother when he was growing up. Fast forward to 2016, and he carried those memories and experiences into his work as Wendy's Vice President of Brand Marketing, then US Chief Marketing Officer, and eventually into his current role as Global Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to coming to Wendy’s, Carl held marketing roles at Dell and PepsiCo before he went over to the agency side. Carl combines his passion for marketing with a love of storytelling in service of Wendy’s mission to be the most talked-about brand in the world.In this episode, Alan and Carl discuss how his nontraditional career path serves him in his current role, the balance between global brand building and local adaptation, the evolution of social media strategy, and how Wendy's is using new technology to drive transformation for digital and physical experiences. Wendy’s was founded with the intention of being the antithesis of what was available at the time, and it has maintai

Aron North is a lifelong Lakers fan who has been doing epic things as the Chief Marketing Officer at Mint Mobile since 2019. He joined Mint Mobile in 2016 (during the "pre-Ryan years") as the SVP of Marketing and Creative, where he spearheaded the initial development of the brand's marketing department and creative efforts. The early half of Aron's career was all agency-side, while the second half has been client-side, first with Taco Bell and now with Mint Mobile. Through all of it, he's learned that marketing is critically important to all businesses, but it is never a one-person show. It's a team sport made up of the people you work with every day and the relationships and partnerships you build along the way. Aron has leveraged those relationships to launch countless buzz-worthy campaigns and initiatives and drive Mint Mobile to 90,000% revenue growth over the last five years.In this episode, Alan and Aron discuss the hypotheses Mint was built on, how they were operating and gaining traction in the early

Stacey Andrade-Wells joined Liquid I.V. as Vice President of Marketing in January 2022. Before that, she spent over seven years at Procter & Gamble working on a variety of brands like Mr. Clean, Swiffer, and Gain. As a second-generation Colombian, she is passionate about driving diversity in all aspects of her work. This passion lends itself perfectly to her work at Liquid I.V., focusing on using hydration as the entry point to making wellness accessible for everyone.Liquid I.V. is a wellness company based in Los Angeles. In 2020, Liquid I.V. became part of Unilever's companies through acquisition. Their product lines are non-GMO electrolyte drink mixes designed to deliver rapid hydration utilizing a proprietary technology they call cellular transport technology. By increasing the absorption of water and other key nutrients into the body, the end result is 360-degree wellness. According to Stacey, the functional drink industry is expected to develop at a rate of 6.5% between 2023 and 2032 and reach a size of

Yon Raz-Fridman is an entrepreneur, repeat founder, and technology executive. Originally from Israel, he went to London to start his career, met his wife, and moved to New York. Eventually, they moved back to her hometown and are now based in Columbus, Ohio. In college, Yon was part of an entrepreneurial academic program where he developed a passion for blending expression, creativity, and digital products.Supersocial is the number one developer, publisher, and operator of premium virtual worlds on immersive social platforms like Roblox and Fortnight. They create engaging games and experiences that focus on bringing joy to next-gen digital communities using their IP and IP from some of the world's most innovative and largest brands and companies. After seeing the rise of Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnight before and during the pandemic, Yon began to believe virtual 3D worlds would be the next frontier of the consumer internet. There are two generations (Z and Alpha, born after 2000) that have been born into a s

Brigitte King moved around a lot when she was young, and she credits this global, multicultural upbringing for the broad worldview and unique perspective that has served her throughout her career. She was traditionally trained in marketing and packaged goods early on but eventually pivoted to digital when it was first emerging. Over the years, she has learned how to utilize digital while leveraging her roots by keeping brand growth top of mind.Brigitte began her career at L’Oreal, where she spent 13 years progressing through increasingly senior roles, including Vice President, Deputy General Manager, and Chief Consumer Officer for the United States and Americas region. After L’Oreal, she went on to be the Vice President of Marketing for Kao Brands, then Chief Consumer Officer for Calvin Klein, and Executive Vice President for North American Digital Operations for the parent company, PVH Corp. In 2020, Brigitte joined Colgate as their Chief Digital Officer and now leads the Global Digital Organization, which i

Dave Skena remembers having his first Krispy Kreme doughnut at age 13, and even back then, he knew this company wasn’t like the others. In college, he thought he was going to be an economist, but through his first job at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), he realized marketing was where he really wanted to be. After going back to school, he began his new career at Kraft Foods, then went to PepsiCo for over eight years, where he led brands such as Lay’s, Ruffles, SunChips, Tostitos, and Lay’s Dips. He left CPG when he became Chief Marketing Officer at Ruby Tuesdays, where he helped them transition from public to private. Then moved on to his current role as Global Chief Brand Officer at Krispy Kreme. As a 20-year "performance-driven" innovator and marketer, Dave has flipped the script regarding traditional marketing in the category for an underdog brand by putting a premium on insights and creative-driven earned media strategies.In this episode, Alan and Dave discuss the uniqueness of the Krispy Kreme brand

Sarah Acton is the Chief Marketing Officer at BILL and brings more than 25 years of experience in marketing and brand-building work in both consumer and business markets. She had an interest in marketing early on and started her career in media buying, then went back to business school, moved into consumer packaged goods, spent some time on the agency side, and eventually opened her own small business. After that, she returned to technology, where she was responsible for global brand oversight during pivotal periods of growth at LinkedIn and consumer marketing leadership at Yahoo!, then led both marketing and sales at Athos, a wearables company in the athletic performance space. She has now been with BILL for the past 18 months. Sarah believes one of the roles of marketing is to build and reinforce trust with your customers and the market at large, and she is grateful to be immersed in a culture of people who have a shared respect for small businesses as well as a shared connection to the mission and values t

Kadian Langlais is the Chief Marketing Officer at Renfro Brands, a 100-year-old legacy sock and hosiery design and manufacturing company. In her role, she oversees Renfro’s diverse portfolio of brands and maintains its position as the largest manufacturer of socks in the U.S., producing three million pairs per week. Kadian grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, where she developed a love for interior design and has always had a passion for fashion. After immigrating to New York, she initially planned to go into investment banking but decided to follow her passion instead and enter the business side of the fashion world. Prior to joining Renfro, she consulted with leading brands and retailers on their e-commerce and digital marketing strategies.In this episode, Alan and Kadian discuss her pathway to becoming the CMO at Renfro, the role of DEI and how she’s focused on it, and an initiative she helped launch called Project Footprint. When Kadian joined Renfro in 2018 as Vice President, DTC and Digital, she was tasked wit

Matt Lattman is an avid traveler and serves as the Senior Vice President for Card Acquisition Marketing at Discover. Prior to Discover, Matt was Chief Marketing Officer at Zero Financial, a financial technology startup. He also spent six years at Capital One in various roles, most recently as Head of Acquisition Marketing for their Consumer Bank. He joined Discover in 2019 as VP of Marketing, Pricing, and Product Strategy in Personal Loans. With his start date being just 4 months before the pandemic, Matt quickly got to see firsthand how Discover helps its customers through hard times, meets their needs, and keeps empathy at the core of the brand and operations. Now, he is working to optimize the discovery of Discover through the journey of customers getting their cards, both through cross-selling and net new acquisitions, to ensure people find the products that are right for them.In this episode, Alan and Matt discuss how he conceptualizes Acquisition Marketing at Discover, the critical aspects of getting Ac

Joshua Hollin is the Digital Associate for the Born This Way Foundation, where he executes digital content in service to the mission of building a kinder, braver world. He's passionate about combating the stereotype that young people are lazy, apathetic, or indifferent to the world around them by showing that they are empowered, resilient, and creative.In this episode, Alan and Joshua discuss Born This Way Foundation initiatives, the impact social media has had on young people, and what the Foundation is doing for the LGBTQ+ community. Founded in 2012 by Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, the Born This Way Foundation is on a mission to support the mental health of young people and build a kinder and braver world. They aim to make kindness cool, validate the emotions of young people, and eliminate the stigma around mental health.In this episode, you'll learn:How is the Born This Way Foundation supporting the mental health of young people and working with them to build a kinder and braver world?How c

Lauren Weinberg is a proud boy mom, a loving dog mom,and currently the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Square, driving global marketing and communications strategy. She started her career by measuring media metrics, then made her way into b2b media, and eventually moved over to the consumer side of marketing strategy. She spent some time running her own consulting business, then landed at Square where she has been for the past 6 years. Previously, she held leadership roles at Yahoo!, MTV, and AOL. Lauren sees marketing at Square as the growth engine, and her team is responsible for the brand, the perceptions, and the acquisition of new customers. In this episode, Alan and Lauren discuss Square's business model, how it has dimensionalized and expanded over the years, the impact of data on Square's marketing efforts, and the incrementalism and principled risks that marketing organizations need to take in order to be competitive. Square started in 2009 with the purpose of enabling any individu

When Amrita Mathur joined Superside as their first marketing hire in 2019, there was no product, no platform, and no recurring revenue. She is no stranger to being called in when companies are at a strategic inflection point with their growth strategy, so she did what she spent a career in B2B marketing learning how to do: implement a marketing-led growth strategy that translated into $8 million in subscription revenue in the first year and 400% year-over-year growth since then. Amrita is passionate about community, but she denotes an important difference between community building and a sense of community. For her, it’s about a sense of goodwill and feeling like you have someone in your corner. Now as VP of Marketing, with that sense of community top of mind, she and her team are revolutionizing design at scale for ambitious brands like Amazon, Meta, Shopify, and Coinbase.In this episode, Alan and Amrita discuss her journey from developer to Marketing VP, the moves that played a key role in taking Superside

Raj Pudipeddi currently serves as the Chief Product and Marketing Officer for Align Technology, makers of Invisalign, and its Managing Director for the Asia Pacific region. Through his dual roles, Raj has global responsibility for product, marketing, strategy, and clinical teams, as well as for the market development and commercial execution of all Align Technology products and services in the Asia Pacific region. Raj is an engineer by training who spent nearly 22 years at Procter & Gamble after he received his MBA. Today, he considers himself an "accidental marketer" who gets his joy out of serving the business and believes that ordinary people can deliver extraordinary outcomes when they are empowered to do so.In this episode, Alan and Raj discuss the first steps he took when he arrived at Align Technology and how he has transformed the organization to deliver on the brand purpose. Align Technology encompasses several brands (Align Technology, Invisalign, Itero, and Exocad) that combine to provide end-to-en