Soul & Science
Does marketing live in the heart, or in the head? Should you trust your instinct, or your integers? If the answer is both, should you lead with one more than the other? As an independent creative agency, Mekanism has been asking these questions of ourselves and our clients for over 10 years. Join co-founder and CEO of award-winning creative agency Mekanism, Jason Harris, on his quest to answer these questions with the world’s leading marketers from the brands we’ve all come to love. Named CEO of the Year by The Drum Magazine, Jason will draw from his experience during these easily digestible 20-minute episodes to explore the Soul of these famous brands and the Science of staying relevant, exploring how they’ve become culture defining emblems in our modern world. Brought to you by Mekanism
Episodes
February 27, 2023 • 28 min
Jesse Bongiovi’s Hampton Water rosé is as much a lifestyle brand as it is a Wine Spectator darling. Bongiovi started the company with his Notre Dame college roommate, Ali Thomas, and the brand took off through spot-on social marketing that included Happy Half Hour livestreams during lockdown. There’s another co-founder at Hampton Water, Bongiovi’s famous father, Jon Bon Jovi, whose love of the “pink juice” during their Hamptons sum...
Mark as Played
February 13, 2023 • 30 min
Before any consumer product or service comes to market, there is a history of B2B activity that’s already taken place. Supplyframe CMO Richard Barnett serves the full range of engineers, manufacturers, supply-chain experts and B2B brand leaderswith a continuous loop of online resources, such as Hackaday for engineers, business connections across manufacturing and supply chains and predictive trends that go on to imbue new applicati...
Mark as Played
February 6, 2023 • 27 min
Magnolia Bakery is a popular destination in New York City, and it's common to find residents and tourists lining up to buy perfectly iced cupcakes and other sweet treats. Now, CMO Eddie Revis is helping turn Magnolia Bakery into a global D2C brand. Magnolia’s Breakfast Loaves video, a remake of comedian Liam Kyle Sullivan’s early YouTube hit, Muffins, went viral, immediately landing with millennial targets. Revis does it, in part, ...
Mark as Played
It can feel impossible to express the human condition, so we look to great artists, writers and even advertising creatives to do the job. Pranav Yadav, Founder and Global CEO of Neuro-Insight, saw how inconsistent people were doing field interviews–one memorable study tried to find out why people gamble in Las Vegas. A more innate truth was to be found in neuromarketing, which measures neural signals by electrodes to track emotiona...
Mark as Played
January 23, 2023 • 27 min
Seth Matlins, Managing Director at Forbes CMO Network, was only seven years old when marketing claimed his future. He was transfixed by the founder of the Pet Rock, who had brazenly turned construction rubble into a viral sensation, the tulip mania of the disco era. Matlins’ first marketing job was to be part of the team that was turning another earthly resource–water–into the highly valuable, branded asset, Evian. His career spans...
Mark as Played
January 9, 2023 • 37 min
In this special edition episode of The Soul & Science Podcast, Jason shares his discussion with author, zen teacher and monk Koshin Paley Ellison during the launch event for his new book, Untangled. Untangled is a welcoming guidebook to finding expansive ease and joy through the Eightfold Path, one of Buddhism’s foundational teachings. In his book, Koshin, shares anecdotes from his life dealing with abuse and discrimination as ...
Mark as Played
January 2, 2023 • 29 min
To this day, investor, founder and dreammaker, Bing Chen fondly recalls his first big-screen experience. It was “Beauty and the Beast” and the movie, along with the Disney brand magic to make dreams come true, have inspired Chen’s own prolific suite of businesses: AU Holdings, a family of companies that incubates and invests in creators; Gold House, a collective of multicultural leaders who bring equity to multicultural communities...
Mark as Played
December 5, 2022 • 29 min
Ryan Serhant rose to fame on Million Dollar Listing: New York. Now running his own luxury real-estate company, SERHANT., he is the star of his own billion dollars in listings. From building a personal brand, de facto for CMOs, to creating a global business and writing best-sellers, Serhant is an intuitive marketer. “The greatest businesses of the next generation aren't going to be those that are disrupted purely by technology, they...
Mark as Played
November 28, 2022 • 29 min
CAULIPOWER, the first to-market, cauliflower-crust frozen pizza is a major player in the growing “good for you” food category. Chief Marketing and Growth Officer Stuart Smith joined the nascent company in 2019, which was founded by his wife, Gail Becker. After baking countless cauliflower pizzas from scratch for their children, Gail noticed the need for a quality frozen cauliflower pizza. The brand was brilliantly launched leveragi...
Mark as Played
November 14, 2022 • 29 min
Tero Isokauppila grew up in a fairy-tale setting on land his ancestors settled on 13 generations ago in Finland. The family farm forms the roots of his company, Four Sigmatic, a highly functional foods business that helps people focus, gain energy and relax. But this Finnish nomad strayed far from home to build it. Through careers in consulting and online marketing, across continents, Isokauppila has made mushrooms, some native to ...
Mark as Played
November 7, 2022 • 28 min
Shira Feuer is the CMO of Trinny London, the social-media driven beauty brand founded by entrepreneur, CEO, and style icon Trinny Woodall that generated $72m by December 2021. For the last four years, Feuer has helped build the global brand and its passionate following, the Trinny Tribe, overseeing revenue growth, customer acquisition and retention, brand and product marketing and prolific, highly engaging digital content. After a ...
Mark as Played
October 31, 2022 • 27 min
In a special live recording from New York’s Advertising Week, the week’s episode features Shake Shack CMO Jay Livingston. Livingston, who has held top marketing roles at Bank of America and BarkBox, is emulating Shake Shack’s foundational, high-low strategy of elevating basic fare and democratizing fine dining on a national and global scale. It was a pattern set by founder, New York City restaurateur Danny Meyer, whose first Shake ...
Mark as Played
October 24, 2022 • 29 min
There’s an alchemy to relationships, including the ones between co-founders. David Lester, co-founder at good-for-you-soda company, OLIPOP, first heard about his future business partner, Ben Goodwin, while he was quitting his 10-year job at global beverage giant Diageo. His then boss thought they’d work well together. The first meeting between entrepreneurs was memorable as Ben showed up with a bag of home-made soda. The pair went ...
Mark as Played
October 17, 2022 • 29 min
Shoestring marketing budgets are common at startups and create an environment of innovation. Andy Pearson, VP of Creative at the water brand Liquid Death jokes he was given a $0 initial ad budget to launch. He knew the name, along with the arresting skull-festooned cans, would have to do most of the talking. When the marketing money began to flow, Liquid Death bought Tony Hawk’s blood and his soul (and maybe yours) online. In this ...
Mark as Played
October 3, 2022 • 29 min
Everette Taylor, the CMO of the online art-collector’s marketplace, Artsy, is “just a kid from the hood,” which is not the typical profile of a global art dealer. His fast-track career is not based on connections but on something far more valuable–inner drive, creative risk-taking and listening to mom. Taylor grew up in a neighborhood where many were trapped by a cycle of street life, drugs and prison, so his mom nudged him to inte...
Mark as Played
September 26, 2022 • 28 min
The creator economy has been valued at $100 billion, so it is easy to forget that a decade ago, it was dismissed by many as people listening to themselves talk on YouTube. Jim Louderback recognized what video technology and expression could become. He helped build VidCon, the professional conference and fan fest, into global preeminence and now chronicles it all through his weekly newsletter, Inside the Creator Economy. Louderback’...
Mark as Played
September 19, 2022 • 29 min
Is Selena Gomez the next beauty billionaire, gliding along a path set by Rihanna, Kim and Kylie? That’s what Skinnygirl mogul turned TikTok beauty influencer, Bethenny Frankel, believes. Katie Welch, CMO at Gomez’s Rare Beauty, is helping build the brand along a purpose-driven platform that welcomes all and supports good mental health. Welch, who has marketed Bliss, Burt’s Bees and Hourglass Cosmetics, discovered beauty could be a ...
Mark as Played
July 25, 2022 • 29 min
As CMO of Proximo Spirits, Lander Otegui markets a host of spirits, including Bushmills Irish Whiskey and Boodles British Gin. But the most renowned brand under Otegui’s watch, legendarily comes from Mexico. Jose Cuervo is the world’s No. 1 tequila, and the first tequila brand on Earth. Now, it’s also the first tequila distillery in the metaverse. It’s one way Cuervo remains relevant with consumers. Sustainability is another. Agave...
Mark as Played
New Balance is not only “the shoe brand of choice for film stars, athletes and supermodels,” according to Urban Journal, it’s the brand for “the biggest, hype-inducing names on the street right now.” As CMO of the hotly resurgent brand, which was born in 1906, Chris Davis applies a risk/innovation model which puts 50% of the marketing budget into proven, demand-creation tactics, 30% into calculated risks (NFTs, for example) and 20%...
Mark as Played
July 11, 2022 • 29 min
Growing up, Ricky Engelberg loved both computers and playing baseball. While your basic 1990s high schooler would say the two sit on opposite sides of the cafeteria, it was the perfect mix for Nike, where Engelberg worked for almost 20 years after college. There at the dawn of the internet era, Engelberg helped Nike create digital products for athletes and sneakerheads alike, including Nike Plus Running, nurturing passionate commun...
Mark as Played
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