Brand New

It’s holiday shopping prime time, which means for many retailers and brands, this is business prime time too. (There’s a reason the day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday.) To give perspective to what’s going on out there and what we might expect, there is no one better than Marni Shapiro, the outspoken, in-the-trenches retail analyst behind The Retail Tracker. In this episode, Marni breaks down how the...

Terence Kawaja has mapped (literally) the chaos of media and marketing tech for decades. As many in the industry know he is somehow part investment banker, part prognosticator and part comedic showman (his musical parodies about Cannes and more are rather iconic). In this episode, Marisa and Steven get Terry’s take and where it’s all actually going from here. If the business of brands was once a combination of “re...

Here’s a question: if you were invited to a dinner party, at an anonymous stranger’s house, where you also didn’t know who else would be there but you believed it was going to be interesting… would you go? Behavioral scientist Jon Levy sought to answer that question for himself by starting the legendary Influencers dinner parties back in 2010. Now, 400 dinners and about 4,000 affirmative RSVPs later (includ...

Marisa and Steven are back after a hiatus, with this kick-off episode that takes the themes of seasons 1-2 and brings them right into the current moment. In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen so many examples of brands who found themselves caught in moments of unexpected cultural explosion. From Cracker Barrel to AE to Jimmy Kimmel to Tylenol and more, each of these have demonstrated how much the requirements of leadership h...

This episode comes with a guarantee: this conversation is NOT the same recap of the Cannes Lions that you’ve probably read multiple times by now in your feeds. Joined by leading industry journalist Suzanne Vranica, who has long covered media, advertising, marketing and tech for The Wall Street Journal with a clarity few possess, Marisa, Steven and Suzanne get underneath the real business that happens -and happened this year -...

A personal speech. A private AI summit. One powerful catch-up.
In this episode, Marisa and Steven reconnect in real life to reflect on two powerful weeks, from Marisa’s moving and bold speech at the UJA Marketing Leadership Awards in NY to Steven’s high-impact Alpha Board Forum in LA. Threading these two events with the larger themes of this season, the two talk about what it means to “stand up” - as prof...

If your work involves connecting with consumers, you’ve probably been influenced by Jim Lecinski without even knowing it. As one of Google’s early top executives, he was at ground zero for the digital revolution that rewrote marketing's rulebook, and coined the idea of a “Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT) which is now taught in marketing curriculae everywhere. Jim wrote a definitive book on AI in marketing - thre...

The question on every working person’s mind: how do I reinvent myself to stay relevant in this fast changing world? Surprisingly, one of the most erudite thought leaders on this subject says he personally hates change! - but it’s better than the alternative. 

In fact when it comes to navigating the business world and the impacts of technology, no one has navigated a more balanced view about how to embrace it while ...

After talking entrepreneurship in the last episode, Steven and Marisa are at it again with one of the most iconic and successful husband and wife entrepreneur teams: Kass and Mike Lazerow. From founding golf.com to going on to create Buddy Media, the leading social media marketing platform that sold to Salesforce for $745 million, this power pair has accrued a lifetime of stories from building their own businesses to helping others...

What happens when you’re a top media executive and you choose to leave the corporate world to start a food company… with no prior food experience?  What happens when you set out to build a brand based on passion and purpose, not playbooks?
If you’re Gail Becker, you turn cauliflower into Caulipower: the brand that invented a whole new category in an industry that can be a little … crusty. In this e...

We’re in the month that celebrates women… which always begs the question: why do we need a month? There’s no one better to talk that topic than Shelley Zalis, founder of The Female Quotient and a trailblazer in advocating for equity. At the heart of Steven and Marisa’s conversation with Shelley: the clear case for why women leadership in business is simply good for business. From reframing “diversity&...

 If it feels like a year has already happened in two months, for those in the world of business and brands, keeping a finger on the pulse of how consumers are feeling is as critical now as ever. Joining Marisa and Steven on this episode is the CEO of the famed Harris Poll, John Gerzema. In this current climate, will Americans “keep calm and carry on… shopping?” How can business leaders and particularly marke...

Marisa and Steven are back! With big (brand) new professional chapters underway, the co-hosts catch up on their respective journeys over the past few weeks: Marisa in the midst of a big corporate merger and Steven back as an entrepreneur in the dynamic AI landscape. With those developments as a backdrop, get caught up with them on what professionals - including boards - should be doing now about AI, and why the role of brands, and ...

Marisa and Steven close out 2024 with the inimitable Dr. Marcus Collins, award-winning marketer, cultural translator, and bestselling author of “For The Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be.” If you agree with Marcus’ thesis that “culture is the operating system of humanity,” what does that mean for how brands connect into culture - the right ways? Who does it well, ...

Back in 2009, famed author Michael Lewis wrote a profile of basketball player Shane Battier in which he dubbed him “the no stats all star.” What would make someone a no stats all star? An individual whose game play puts the team above himself (how rare is that)? It just took some deeper analytics to realize that how the TEAM performed (Sven even how the competition underperformed) came down to this one unassumingly shrewd variable....

Businesses that learn forward know that - after a big campaign, whether a big success or big failure - it’s wise to conduct a post-mortem to understand what happened and their implications. In that spirit, and just a few days after a resounding presidential win for Donald Trump, Marisa and Steven offer their view of 5 major learnings for all marketers and brands that we can draw from this election outcome. No (well, almost no) poli...

Marisa and Steven continue their recurring series on building understanding between the Marketers and the Money, when they sit down with private equity leader and former CEO Joshua Schultz to tackle this burning question: do finance leaders truly understand the value of marketing?  Together they get real about the tension between short-term financial performance and long-term brand building, and volley on marketing as an essential ...

In the course of just one week, Marisa and Steven each announced major career news. For Marisa, it was the return to serving as the brand and marketing chief for a big American retailer (but doing it her way, which she wrote about on LinkedIn in a piece called “Try it On”). For Steven, it is also   about doing it his own way by launching a new company (Alpha & Co) to help brands, boards, and business leaders navigate the comple...

One of the recurring questions on “Brand New” has been to what extent should everyone think of themselves as a “brand.“ When it comes to celebrities, it’s not a question; they know they are brands. On this episode, Marisa and Steven talk with renowned interior designer, lifestyle expert and star of Netflix’s “Queer Eye” about his journey of creating a brand first as an entrepreneur, and then experiencing its transformation through ...