The CEO’s Guide to Marketing

In this conversation I sit with Cannes Lions CeO Simon Cook, to talk about what we both heard at the Festival’s inaugural Global CEO Forum, which I moderated and facilitated. Some 50 CEO’s from around the world took part (Under The Chatham House Rule), and in this episode Simon and I explore what we heard from them, creativity as a financial engine, and why CEOs who don’t embrace it may be quietly choosing stagnation.

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In this episode I talk with Meta’s CMO and VP Analytics Alex Schultz, whose work has probably influenced the work of more marketers than just about anyone else’s over the past decade. Besides correcting my misperception about the origins of the “performance marketing” phrase, Alex explains why he thinks performance marketing should die, driving change, the value of full funnel approaches, and how to properly evaluate that ...

When I first heard Tomás speak at a conference about problem-solving and attribution, I knew I wanted to have him on the show. In this conversation, we talk about marketing's deep hunger for actual solutions, the cost of vanity metrics, and among other things, the difference between certainty and statistics.

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In this episode I talk with Hasbro‘s first-ever CMO Jason Bunge about working with the c-suite to build marketing capabilities in a 104-year-old-company, the different strategic roles marketing plays across different parts of the business, and the possibilities that can live within constraints.

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In this episode, I talk with Tim about creative courage, marketing to and with the Commissioner and owners, and how to both focus on and transcend the game.

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In the episode, Tim tells us the story of how Volkswagen’s 2011 Super Bowl ad, Darth Vader, came to be. And how it almost didn’t. See the spot that’s been credited with changing Super Bowl advertising here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpL...

In this episode, I talk with Jonny Bauer about his thesis on enterprise value creation, one formed by his years as Droga5’s Chief Strategy Officer and Blackstone’s Global Head of Brand Strategy and Transformation. Now, the founder and CEO of Fundamentalco, Jonny’s insights into the upstream role of brand in driving business strategy and not just downstream marketing outputs are well worth every CEO, CFO and ...

In this conversation, Seth and Chime CMO Vineet Mehra talked about the CAC (customer acquisition cost) valley of death, explaining unit economic payback, and how a CFO’s willingness to invest money—especially when they don’t understand the consequences of not investing it—can effect growth for good or ill.

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In this episode, Seth talks with Frank Cooper, who has been the CMO at Visa, Blackstone, and Buzzfeed about causation, correlation and dispelling the myth that marketing doesn’t drive commercial outcomes.

Here's a link to the article mentioned around 3:40: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethmatlins/2024/12/16/marketing-that-fails-to-consider-the-human-context-is-out-of-context/

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For this conversation, Seth sits with Ally Financial’s Chief Marketing and PR Officer Andrea Brimmer for a wide-ranging conversation about what can either facilitate or get in the way of marketing’s role in value creation, the false narrative that’s been painted of CMO tenure specifically and the CMO generally, and the relentless pace of change—cultural and otherwise—today’s marketers are supposed to keep up with.

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In this episode, Seth sits down with Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, CMO at DoorDash. Kofi’s perspective on what CEOs (and the rest of the c-suite) need to better understand about marketing has been informed by his years as a strategist at Leo Burnett and Weiden, and as VP of Consumer Marketing at Meta. Kofi talks about accountability, the challenges of serving a three-sided marketplace and, among other topic...

In this episode, Seth sits down with Andréa Mallard, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Pinterest. Dré has a broad portfolio and a relatively unusual breadth of accountability, overseeing teams responsible for marketing, comms, product design, UX and all go-to-market efforts for both consumers and advertisers. Among other things, her perspectives on how marketing earns the right to grow bigger and better, and wh...

In this episode, Seth speaks with Chris Davis, Brand President & Chief Marketing Officer at New Balance Athletics, not just because he is likely to be the family-owned private company’s CEO, but because as a marketer he’s acutely aware that he’s not just a brand leader but a commercial one, and because of his perspective on strategic and calculated risk taking. 

Chris Davis, started working at New Ba...

Despite everything that’s changed and changing, a lot of the c-suite still thinks marketing just means “advertising”—which is a pretty outdated perspective.

In this episode Seth speaks with David Droga, for decades a legend of the advertising, marketing and business worlds, to get the POV of a CEO who both understands marketing and who talks to CEOs who do not. Founder of the eponymous Droga5 in 2006, which has been named A...