Ex-TikTok CMO (Spotlight): Your 90-Day Campaign Cycle Is Killing You

Summary

Marketing Trends Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode: Ex-TikTok CMO (Spotlight): Your 90-Day Campaign Cycle Is Killing You
Date: February 18, 2026
Host: Stephanie Postles
Guest: Ex-TikTok CMO (also President & CMO, First Round joint venture)

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Main Theme and Purpose

This episode dives deeply into the faults of the traditional 90-day marketing campaign cycle and how modern marketers must radically expedite, re-imagine, and even “reverse engineer” their objectives and processes to remain relevant and shape culture. Drawing from firsthand experience at TikTok and subsequent ventures, the guest shares how to disrupt organizational inertia, make virality a KPI, and empower teams with creative autonomy—positioning marketers as the new vanguard of company leadership.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Why the Old Playbook Fails in a Fast-Paced World

• Traditional Model:

  • Develop objective → Strategy → Brief creative agency → Produce campaign → Buy media → Deploy → Wait months for impact.
  • “You hope that it ends up working out after this two-to-three-month cycle…” (00:00)

• Reality Check:

  • Audiences now consume content in a rapid, social-first, short-form manner.
  • The slow, traditional cycle means by launch, "stuff you were relying on to be relevant no longer matters." (00:39)

• Insight:

  • Brands can’t claim to start or shape culture if they’re months behind.

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2. Reverse Engineering Relevance (Project Cheetah at TikTok)

• Flipping the Playbook:

  • Rather than using legacy inputs (awareness, impressions), TikTok focused on outputs that signaled true cultural impact:
    • Making someone famous on the platform
    • Getting creators onto mainstream late-night shows (e.g., “Jimmy Fallon”)
    • Inspiring SNL parodies and celebrity participation

• Notable Quote:

  • “Let’s just reverse engineer everything to win those [signals] and see if we could condense the campaign timeline from two or three months down to 72 hours,…” (02:15)

• How It Worked:

  • Created tailored campaigns (e.g., Project Cheetah) engineered to make virality happen, not just be hoped for.
  • Used all levers: late-night appearances, major ad spends, even film production for creator crossover.

• Results:

  • Reduced timeline: “campaigns that took 72 hours to bring to life, checked all those boxes and made a lot of people very well known throughout the US.” (02:53)

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3. Redefining and Selecting Meaningful KPIs

• Choosing the Right Signals:

  • Success is not just numbers, but perceptions—for example, creators landing real brand deals (03:58)
  • Use cultural markers as performance indicators.

• Collaborative Process:

  • “I don’t know if there was ever... full-fledged agreement. It was just instinctively what we thought mattered.” (03:58)
  • Even drew on lessons from the “plateau” of YouTube.

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4. Taking the Model Beyond Social – For Any Industry

• Universal Application:

  • “It seems like this could work for any company. I mean, B2B, B2C.” (05:00 - Interviewer)
  • Focus on customer hero outcomes, apply reverse engineering to make them happen.

• Brand Independence:

  • Many brands are too agency-dependent. Guest’s mission now: help companies build these skills in-house, reducing reliance on paid media and agencies.

• Long-Form Content:

  • Trend is shifting from just short-form social to brands embracing longer-form storytelling (mini-series, YouTube shows). (06:16)

• Notable Teaching Approach:

  • “Let me help you do that in that timeframe [3–4 months] and help you become less reliant on your agencies or on paid media…” (06:39)

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5. Bringing the Vision to New Roles & Overcoming Old Habits

• Current Role:

  • Now leading First Round (Diageo + Main Street Advisors JV), tackling industry inertia by recruiting risk-takers and people with high creative appetite.

• Network Effect:

  • Guest’s creative network is “unlocking a lot of possibilities that I didn’t know these brands had before.” (08:12)

• Notable Quote:

  • “A lot of it is unlearning the marketing approaches of the past.” (09:13)

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6. What Marketers Must Unlearn (Top Five Things)

1. Long Campaign Timelines:

• “Traditional campaign timelines are just out the window. If you’re still using that playbook... you’re going to be... behind…” (09:49)

2. Mistaking Measurable for Meaningful:

• Over-fixating on engagement, likes, and surface-level metrics has no correlation with real business outcomes.
• Story about a company spending on paid search in Mexico—seeing ROI, but it was all illusory because there was no competition. (10:09 – 12:21)

3. Chasing Short-term, Vanity Metrics:

• “Even the ones that are chasing metrics that look like they’re all positive… it could go down a pretty dark hole quickly.” (10:47)

4. Neglecting Internal Culture:

• “Places that focus... outside... don’t take effort into building up the culture inside are also doomed to fail.” (12:21)
• Critique of hustle culture and toxic expectations post-COVID.

5. Limiting Ambition – Why Marketers Should Lead Companies:

• “CMOs also are reluctant to take the top spot... For marketers... the best leaders for tomorrow will actually be the ones that had to deal with all those inconsistencies and evolve over time…” (13:16)
• Argues CMOs are ready for the CEO role.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Speed:

  • “Condense the campaign timeline from two or three months down to 72 hours.” (02:20)

• On Engineering Virality:

  • “…you can actually make your own virality.” (02:38)

• On Reverse Engineering Success:

  • “Figuring out, like, what would actually look like success for our customer? What would make them feel like the hero?” (05:07, Interviewer)

• On Culture and Fun:

  • “When you have fun doing it, the work just feels different than if you’re... afraid, anxious, and just trying to make sure you don’t fail.” (09:35)

• On Metrics:

  • “They had now been optimizing towards spend in Mexico... but... every dollar they put in was a dollar wasted.” (11:28)

• On Leadership:

  • “The best leaders for tomorrow will actually be the ones that had to deal with all those inconsistencies and evolve over time.” (13:21)

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Key Timestamps

• [00:00 – 02:20]: Breaking down the traditional campaign cycle and why it’s obsolete.
• [02:21 – 05:00]: Birth of “Project Cheetah” and the shift to engineering culture-shaping outcomes.
• [05:01 – 06:39]: Universal lessons and bringing learnings in-house.
• [07:49 – 09:13]: Tackling agency dependency and resistance to change in big organizations.
• [09:41 – 13:38]: The five things marketers must unlearn right now.

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Takeaways for Marketers

• Traditional campaign timelines and definitions of brand success are obsolete—speed and cultural resonance are now table stakes.
• Build new success metrics based on real-world signals, not just digital engagement.
• Bring creative skills internally and empower teams to move fast without fear.
• Marketers must unlearn outdated lessons, prioritize culture, and set their sights on leading companies, not just brands.

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Episode is insightful for CMOs, marketing leaders, and anyone seeking to future-proof marketing strategy in a social-native world.

Transcript

[Marketing Executive]

If you think about the original playbook, it's. You have this objective, and sometimes they say increase brand recognition, drive brand awareness, do whatever these things are. And then the way they go about doing it traditionally is you take your team, you come up with your objective, you then develop, like a strategy against that. You then brief your creative agency with your business objectives, they come back with your creative campaign, you then go produce that creative campaign, you, you go buy media against it, and then you deploy that, and then you hope that it ends up working out after this two to three month cycle has gone through that process.

[Interviewer]

Which still sounds normal for today.

[Marketing Executive]

Yeah. But it's not gonna work anymore.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Okay.

[Marketing Executive]

Yeah. Because the world moves so quickly and people don't consume content in the way that this model was built for. They're consuming most of it in the world of social and short form, that if you engineer everything in this manner, by the time it gets to market, the stuff that you were relying on to be relevant no longer matters to people. So what we had to do at TikTok was realize that the strength of the brand was in proving the point that culture starts on the platform. And I can't prove that culture starts on the platform. If I'm going through that whole process and then showing you something two months later, and then you thinking, well, that happened so long ago, you clearly aren't on top of what's happening in culture. I should go find out what's happening on other platforms. So the way that we reversed engineered everything is like, okay, if people see certain signals as being indicators that something has gone viral or is culturally relevant, let's just take those as the actual objectives. So one of the things I found out was that people thought that if you became famous on the platform, that would mean that the platform had done what it's supposed to do and that culture starts there. So I would have that as a little box. Okay, how do I make someone famous? Next little check was like, okay, if you were to take a viral, you know, video, what would that look like? And how does success manifest itself for that person? Well, they'd end up on like a late night talk show talking to, like, Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel or whoever it is. And that means that, okay, that viral video is so significant that they ended up on a talk show. And then seeing it in culture, whether it's parodies on SNL or parodies through other creators or celebrities, these are all, like, indicators that something was truly viral. So what I told the team at the time was if those are our new inputs. And those aren't just outcomes of being successful. Let's just reverse engineer everything to win those and see if we could condense the campaign timeline from two or three months down to 72 hours, with the main goal of getting someone to show up on late night, have someone have a video that is parodied by a bunch of celebrities, and then ultimately making that person famous. And then if you actually think about that, if you have the resources, you can actually engineer that altogether without needing it to actually be done on its own so you can actually make your own virality. So we did that a few times. We called it Project Cheetah, and we ultimately came up with a bunch of campaigns that took 72 hours to bring to life, checked all those boxes and made a lot of people very well known throughout the US Leveraging different mechanisms as placing them in the TV late night TV talk shows, or buying advertising that would put them in front of millions of Americans every night, or doing those things that would help them become famous, or even in one case, executive producing a film that allows one of the biggest TikTok stars at the time to actually be in a film to show that they transcended social media culture and are now in real films. So, like, all those things were stuff that we were playing with and again, like working backwards and flipping the playbook upside down.

[Interviewer]

Wow. I mean, one, it's amazing thinking about having a KPI, but then also knowing you can hit that KPI internally.

[Marketing Executive]

Yeah, of course.

[Interviewer]

But when you come up with those metrics, I mean, how did you figure out, like, those are the ones that matter? Did you? Yeah. Tell me about the thinking behind that. Like especially coming to agreement on, yes, those are the goals.

[Marketing Executive]

I don't know if there was ever like full fledged agreement. I think it was just instinctively what we thought mattered. And it turns out it was the case. The other one that people love to see as an indicator is if a creator started to get a lot of brand deals, it meant that they were successful and that they had gone beyond the world of just social. So we would also help push a lot of our clients and partners to then partner with certain creators and do brand deals. So, yeah, those were all things that we did early days to try to engineer the idea that culture starts on the platform. But yeah, it wasn't as complex as you might think. It was just like a few of us discussing, well, what are the things that people look at and what are signals that, you know, the platform is successful. And we also took what YouTube had done up until then and then where they kind of like plateaued and then thought, like, what would that evolution have looked like if the YouTube stars of, you know, a decade ago, it actually transcended culture and became mainstream? Like, that was sort of where we were also noodling around and brainstorming.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I love the idea of finding the signals. I mean, it seems like this could work for any company. I mean, B2B, B2C.

[Marketing Executive]

Like, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Figuring out, like, what would actually look like success for our customer? What would make them feel like the hero?

[Marketing Executive]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

How do we reverse engineer it and actually make sure it happens? And I mean, have other companies come to you and ask you to help them? I assume they're gonna be like, hi, come over here and do the same thing.

[Marketing Executive]

Not as many as you think. And ironically, there are some brands that I was just obsessed with where I'd reach out and say, I know what you're dealing with, I know what you're trying to accomplish. Let me just come in and help. I know the platform in and out. And they would just basically ignore me, which I was shocked by. But then there are other folks that were like, we know you know how to do this. Can you either consult or help us build this? And my realization during this sabbatical that I took was that a lot of agencies will tell clients they know how to do this. And when I see their methodology, I instinctively know that they're just throwing spaghetti on the wall and they don't actually know. So I made it a point to reach out to some of my friends who are either CEOs or presidents or CMOs of different companies and say, hey, I. I'm taking a little bit of time off, but I think I could train your team internally to learn how to do what we did in three to four months. And the whole proposition was, let me help you do that in that timeframe and help you become less reliant on your agencies or on paid media, specifically paid social. And sure enough, it ended up working for a lot of these folks. So it was a fun time just teaching and training up folks. I think the same thing can be applied to long form content. So right now you're seeing this shift where a lot of the short form stuff, stuff that you're seeing in market, is starting to evolve into brands taking a risk and doing longer form content. And they're either putting it out on their social channels or on YouTube or in some cases even piloting their own, you know, little miniseries and shows. So I think that there's probably a way in today's world where you could take those learnings that I had from, you know, being at these various companies and then teaching brands how to do it internally rather than them relying on an agency to do it in perpetuity and then getting those learnings and being able to be self sufficient and put money into doing more fun things than just putting it into a retainer. So I definitely believe that there's a new era where brands can take a little bit of the responsibility and bring the creativity and the short form and the long form creation in house. Just learn how to do it and then just run it on their own.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Okay, so if you were to go and do, let's say, a larger company now, what does that look like, working with a team? What things are you having to train them on? What are things that you didn't think you'd have to train them on? Like how does it, yeah, how does it work?

[Marketing Executive]

I mean, I'm going through it right now like I'm starting, you know, a new role, is now president and CMO of First Round, which is a joint venture with Diageo and Main Street Advisors. And in this, you're certainly battling some of the, you know, idea of, well, this is how it's been done in this industry and this is what works and this is what we need to be playing into. And it's no surprise that I recruited a couple folks that are, you know, people who've worked with me at either TikTok or Samsung or Hulu and who have that appetite for, one, taking risks, two, moving quickly and then three, recognizing that my biggest advantage, which I've leveraged here and there throughout my career, but I'm really doing it now. Our network and group of like friends that we've been able to do some fun things with throughout my career, they're now coming and reaching out and saying, I love the way that you think about things. Would you want to partner with one of your brands now and create something really special? And that's where it's unlocking a lot of possibilities that I didn't know these brands had before. Because people are actually practically reaching out and saying, I want to partner with Ciroc or I want to partner with Lobo 1707 and I want to do something that's innovative and fun that hasn't been done before and we know you know how to do that. So can we leverage the partnership that we might have to bring some of that to life and that's some of the stuff that we're. We're working on. So a lot of it is unlearning the marketing approaches of the past.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Marketing Executive]

And ensuring that you enable the team to feel confident enough to, like, move quickly and make some mistakes, but also get a lot of wins along the way. And then. And then, you know, realistically building up a culture internally where people are having fun and developing work. Because when you have fun doing it, the work just feels different than if you're, like, afraid, anxious, and just trying to make sure you don't fail.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Marketing Executive]

So we're working on all that stuff right now.

[Interviewer]

So. Fun.

[Marketing Executive]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so you. You mentioned unlearning.

[Marketing Executive]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What are maybe five things in marketing that marketing leaders should unlearn right now?

[Marketing Executive]

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's quite a bit. I think traditional campaign timelines are just out the window. If you're still using that playbook, regardless of the industry you're in, I think you're going to be, you know, just a bit behind when it comes to what's happening in culture and what's relevant. You said five, so I'm gonna actually try to do five.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I get it.

[Marketing Executive]

Second one I'd say is people were chasing the things that they could measure so aggressively that they started to actually build out processes and put things in place that just yielded better numerical numbers but didn't actually move the needle on the business. So at a superficial level for social media, people were saying, let's drive up engagement. Let's try to make sure we get all the views and all the likes and all the comments and whatever else there might be, only to find out that you could be amazing on Twitter, Slash x/TikTok, and see no impact to your sales.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Marketing Executive]

So that's like, second thing where they're chasing on things, even the ones that are chasing metrics that look like they're all positive. I think it could go down a pretty dark hole Quickly, where I had an example where I won't say the company, but this one company, they were spending money in Mexico on paid search and driving a lot of what they called roi. One quick look at what they were doing made me realize that the team had now been optimizing towards spend in Mexico because whenever they, quote, unquote, put a dollar in, they'd get $4 back. So in that paid world, it looked really ROI. What they completely neglected was that there was no competition in Mexico, so they were essentially a monopoly in that specific country. And every dollar they put in was a dollar wasted because all those customers were going to go to that one site to buy that one thing anyways because there was no one else they could buy from. So it's so interesting that a CMO will see those results and the paid search team will see that impact and they're getting bonused off of efficiency and roi and they're showing their boss or their manager like look how great we're doing. And the boss is like, I can put that in front of the CFO and justify more spend for the marketing department. Let's go all in on that. That they are now doing something that's actually diluting, like diluting their value and not investing in the things that will build their brand and build the value over time because they're chasing these short term metrics that they think are yielding roi. So that's definitely one that I think is not great. So that's three. I think places that focus on all these elements that are outside the walls and don't take effort into like building up the culture inside are also doomed to fail. I've heard so many companies over the last few years, especially post Covid in this whole return to office situation take like such a hard stance and forget about the employees and like the, the stuff that they have to do. And I hear these new lines out in the you know, LinkedIn world where that's like there is no work life balance like or you have to love what you do. Like all this is a little bit like overwhelming. And I think this idea of needing to be on all the time and always be working and grinding and hustling, I don't know if that's like what's going to drive greatness or the best creative or the best success. So that's probably number four. Now I gotta think of a fifth one.

[Interviewer]

You're just so great.

[Marketing Executive]

We're so close to number five. I think what is another thing that CMOs are chasing that they shouldn't be chasing? Oh, I don't know if this fits with your answer, but I'm going to throw it out there. I think CMOs also are reluctant to take the top spot in businesses and in companies. So they sell themselves and their team short. Because for marketers you now see the CMO suite or the office as being the end game. And I don't think people realize COOs, CFOs and those folks that traditionally take on the CEO job, their jobs haven't changed that much in the last 10 years. Like a CFO is still doing what most CFOs had done 10 years ago. When I look at like what a CMO does today, the job has evolved so much. We have to account for so many new factors like how people consume content, what's happening in culture, what matters to people, all these macro trends that are feeding into it and really changing the way that we think about what we do. And looking at data and customer insights and performance marketing and the balance of brand and all these elements that I feel like the best leaders for tomorrow will actually be the ones that had to deal with all those inconsistencies and evolve over time and make those changes that I would love to see more marketers step up into the helm and lead a company. And we have some great examples today of a few that are doing it and doing it incredibly well. And I think if we can continue to see that trend, you'll see a lot more heart and empathy and brand brought to life in a way that I think would look bold for 2026, but actually should just be table stakes.