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- [00:00]
Jenny Rooney
Did you know Influencer marketing drives twice as many sales as display advertising with a 37% higher retention rate. AWIN helps brands unlock the full potential of the creator economy with their influencer management solutions. Utilize their robust discovery capabilities and creator management tools to build your perfect creator roster and track full funnel performance. Visit AWIN Link Adweek today and start building high performing partnerships. That's AWIN Link Adweek.
- [00:34]
Katie Gohman
My greatest superpower is the ability to bring a really large, diverse group of people together, synthesize a lot of really crazy information and get everybody organized and moving in the right direction towards the goal of where we want to go. Listening with empathy and trying to connect to people and inclusivity and going along the way.
- [00:56]
Jenny Rooney
Hi everyone and welcome to the Marketing Vanguard podcast. I'm Jenny Rooney with adweek and I'm thrilled today to be joined by Katie Gohman. She's the CMO of Olaplex. Katie, welcome.
- [01:07]
Katie Gohman
Well, hi Jenny. Thank you very much for having me.
- [01:10]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah, it's great to have you. We have a lot to talk about. Exciting times at Olaplex. Exciting time for you. I think you just joined in July of 24, is that correct?
- [01:21]
Katie Gohman
Yeah, it's been about eight months at this point that I've been here and we've been busy.
- [01:26]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah, I would say. So we're going to get into that now. You came from Marc Jacobs where you were CMO there.
- [01:32]
Katie Gohman
I was, yes, indeed.
- [01:33]
Jenny Rooney
So talk a little bit about that. Talk a little bit about that experience and how leaving Marc Jacobs coming to Olaplex made sense for you, made sense for the brand and then also share with our listeners a little bit about you and your backstory previous to Marc Jacobs.
- [01:47]
Katie Gohman
No. So it's actually really interesting because I think I've been in the industry for 20 some odd years across a number of different roles across both fashion and beauty. Started in Beauty, worked for 10 years in the beauty space and then moved into fashion and was there for about 10 years. And what's been interesting about it is marketing plays a different role in both of those. Right. Because from a beauty perspective, I think marketing historically is consumer products. Right. So it's brand management. So it's a bit more, I'll say holistic to the overarching business aspect of the brand. And when you move into fashion, oftentimes from a CMO and from a marketing perspective, you're very much focused on the communications and you're focused on focus on the consumer, but there's a different team that's running product altogether. Right. And so I think for me, part of what I love being back in Beauty, but also really about Olaplex is I love being back in the center of business and being back as you are still as the chief marketing officer, the person that is responsible for the consumer and the consumer activation and the insights and the engagement. But also you ultimately are the brand steward and you are the one really responsible for saying, in five years, where do we want this brand to be? Where do we want it to be positioned? How do we want to get there? And how do you galvanize the entire organization, inclusive of your product and your innovation partners, your sales partners and everybody in order to really build towards that vision? So just slight nuances in the two. But I think being back in Beauty and at Olaplex in particular has been just such a joy for me.
- [03:14]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah, no, I think it's great. So look, Olaplex is. It's a brand that has been in the news in the last few years. Obviously it had a situation where social media took hold and created a negative narrative around the brand. Right. Which is something that I think a lot of brands have to deal with. This was attributed to ingredients in the product. Right. That people were talking about as having ill effects. Talk a little bit about the reset that the company had to go through and where it was in its journey. And look, every marketer is going to go through a challenge in the course of their journey. If you can't learn from those occurrences than it would have been for not. So talk a little bit about where the company was when you joined, coming out of that, but also how you've had to basically come in and take learnings from that experience as you move forward.
- [04:02]
Katie Gohman
The answer in many ways is quite simple. It's like the same marketing principles that apply honestly when you start in any role applied here, regardless of what had happened before. So, joining in the middle of the summer, I work in very close partnership with Amand Baldwin, who is our CEO and has been here a little over a year, who's also a marketer by trade. But the first thing that we did is you have to understand where is the brand currently? Where is the brand currently in culture with the consumer. We happen to be a professional brand, so also we needed to understand with our stylists. And so the first thing that we did was we went out and talked to people and we fielded research to understand both quantitatively and qualitatively, like what are the barriers and what are the issues that we need to overcome. So what's the perception of the brand. Where do we want to go? We worked with some strategic partners to say, where has the brand been? Where do we think the opportunity is for us to actually expand the positioning of the brand and therefore what are the building blocks in order to get from the perception of where we are to the vision of where we want to go and what are the levers that we need to pull along the way and along that journey. So I think those principles really didn't change regardless of the industry and regardless of where the brand might have been at the time when I joined about eight months ago.
- [05:14]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah. And then for you personally, I mean, how did you regard that, both challenge and opportunity, right?
- [05:20]
Katie Gohman
Well, I think part of the amazing thing about it, Olaplex founded 11 years ago. Right. And I've been a user of the brand for many years, so I'd used it before I even started working here. The product is second to none. The technology that we own, the biz, amino technology and the roots of the brand from an efficacy perspective really can't be beat. And the consumer testing shows that, the professional testing shows that we've got other testing that supports it. And so it was really more the cosmetic part of the brand that needed to be elevated. Quite frankly, it's like we're a premium hair care brand, but we weren't really showing up in a premium hair care way from a visual perspective. So a big part of it was we've got the foundation from a technology and an efficacy perspective. We actually just need the marketing magic, which in some ways is a much, I'm going to say, easier marketing challenge than if you come into a product that actually is not delivering based on what the consumer says, based on what the research is showing. So again, going back to the fundamentals of brand marketing, we have a solid product. We just had an issue with our go to market strategy and how the brand was showing up and how the brand has been connecting or not connecting, quite frankly, in culture over the last couple of years.
- [06:34]
Jenny Rooney
And that's such a great call out. I mean, I do think, and the last quick question on this point is it is a wake up call and a reminder again about the power of social media in spinning narratives that can spin out of a marketer's control. I mean, listen, 20 years ago we were talking about the concept of crowdsourcing and that was a new concept and that the consumer owns the brand. There's been so much talk and conversation about that over the years, but it is a real thing. And if People choose to be passionate about something pro or con, social media is their conduit to share that narrative. Anything you would say now that you sit here as a CMO and you reflect on the way social media continues to evolve, change, shift, what are the watch outs and what are the sort of the ways that marketers in general need to make sure that they, and CMOs in particular need to make sure they are keeping a finger on the pulse of that particular aspect of their overall marketing strategy?
- [07:30]
Katie Gohman
Yeah, no, I mean, listen, it's a really good point. I think, number one, social media obviously has such an amazing power for the consumer to be able to say what they want about the brand. If you don't say anything else from the brand, all you have out there is what the consumer is saying about you. So I think again, going back to like the basic principles of marketing, it's what you as the brand are saying and then what your consumers and your constituents are saying about you as well. And I think one of the great fallacies of marketing these days is that like, oh, as the brand, I can just sit back and I'll just let the consumer do the work for me. And then to your point, like, you potentially have the possibility that you're going to get on the back foot and they're going to say things about you that actually are not the right things that you want them to be saying. So I think there always has to be this push and pull of what is the brand saying and then what are the advocates saying on behalf of the brand. And obviously the best is when it's married up and you're saying the same exact thing. But I think in today's day and age, you have to still be proactively saying things about the brand. And that's, I think, big part about this reset of the brand that we did back in early February because we haven't been saying a lot from a brand perspective. And so therefore the narrative on social is the only narrative that's been out there. So I think there's this idea of resetting and making sure there's a balance. And I think the other thing is with social media there is so much you can learn about what people are saying, both good and bad, about your brand. And you have to be constantly watching that and listening and engaging with the community so that you really can lean on the community to understand what they're saying, but also learn from them and address what maybe you aren't doing. That whether it's from a product perspective, from a marketing perspective, from a messaging perspective. And so I think being out and in the community and being active in the community is critical in today's day and age.
- [09:17]
Jenny Rooney
So we're in February. It's actually February 25th. So today is actually a big day for you. Tell me about now you're here. You've been here, what, since July? So that's essentially. I don't know. Do the math.
- [09:32]
Katie Gohman
Seven, eight months.
- [09:33]
Jenny Rooney
Seven, eight months. And here we are. So tell us about what was introduced today.
- [09:39]
Katie Gohman
So what we're doing today is it's really about the next chapter of the brand. And at the root of this next chapter of the brand, pun intended, maybe a. Is a scalp product. But no, the bigger thing is really this idea of taking the positioning of the brand, which historically had been rooted in damage repair and this idea that you use Olaplex at certain points of your life when your hair is really damaged, to this idea of actually what the product does and what the original product always delivered on is this idea of it actually repairs your hair to make it healthy. And so a big part of this next chapter of the brand is about foundational hair health and taking the roots of what this brand has always been about for the last 11 years, but marrying it with where the consumer is going in terms of health and wellness and wanting to feel healthy from the inside out. And the best way for many people to feel healthy is a great hair day. That confidence that they feel. Right. I mean, you're laughing the second I say that, but, like, I know it's true. Exactly. Everybody knows it's true. It's like that feeling when, like the spin of the chair, right? When they're sitting in the salon and they look at the mirror and they're like, oh, my God. First of all, they're like, why can't I do this at home? But the thing is, they're like, how did my stylist do this? And it's like that confidence that you feel when you step out of the salon. So I think for us, it's really about this bold new vision of where we want to take the brand. It's actually a new visual identity. There's a new logo that we've launched. We've redone all of our assets. You're going to see probably in about an hour. We're relaunching our website. We have new visual merchandising coming out. So we've been busy in the last couple of months.
- [11:11]
Jenny Rooney
You have been very busy. And talk a little bit about the work that went into that. Did you work with an external agency?
- [11:17]
Katie Gohman
So we definitely worked with an external firm from strategic perspective to help us do the overall kind of setup to the strategy. We worked with some previous creative partners to help us then translate that strategy visually into a new visual identity. And then actually we've got an internal creative team that we then had a number of agency partners that we worked with that obviously were specialists in the space, whether it was digital and E Com, VM trade show, things like that, that we then brought in order to help us bring the new visual identity to life across the different platforms. So it was a combination of an internal team with an external agency and independent partners?
- [11:55]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah. So the company is independent, is it not?
- [11:58]
Katie Gohman
We're a publicly traded company.
- [12:00]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah.
- [12:00]
Katie Gohman
Yep.
- [12:01]
Jenny Rooney
So there's a lot on the line. I talk to CMOs a lot about you gotta drive, not just the brand, but the business. You know, stock performance is something that you've got a lot of eyes on the company. So how do you think about that? What sort of financial acumen do you bring to bear with that? How are you frankly working with your CEO, working with your CFO to make sure that you are hitting the marks from a business performance perspective?
- [12:27]
Katie Gohman
So first of all, I am working with such an amazing team of people. Again, I know I've already spoken about Amanda, Amazing business acumen, but also a marketer at heart and by trade, but also an amazing financier. And she's got a lot of other amazing skills. Our cfo, who actually started around the same time that I did, I believe our announcement went out together. Katherine Dunleavy joining us, I believe most recently from away, but she also worked at Nike and other kind of big companies. Yeah, I think what's really interesting is I think that she is a finder finance partner. She understands branding. Right. And she understands that there is always a balance of like, what are you putting out from an upper funnel perspective that might take a little bit longer in order to gain traction. But what are you doing more kind of mid and lower funnel? And I know that in today's day and age it's like it's linear or it's not linear, it's not totally a funnel, but I think it still helps to think that way. But I think that she understands that and we've had a lot of dialogue about the fact, like, listen, driving short term performance is not going to build a brand for the long term and that we have to find the balance of investing for the long term so that we see results in the Medium and the short term. And that also I think with a lot of brands, right, you can drive a business with lower funnel, but you can't build a brand that way. But when you've been relying on that for a really long time, it takes time in order to shift the spend so that you are a bit more upper funnel balance so that you're really driving that kind of longer term view of the brand. So I think going back to your question of what kind of financial acumen do you have to have in this type of role, knowing that we are a public company? You know, I know I didn't necessarily say where I grew up, but I grew up at L'Oreal, which I think is, I'll still say some of the world's best cosmetics training ground. And you're trained to be a business person. You're a holistic general manager as a brand manager. And so I think that's the way I approach what I'm doing. And I think about marketing, like I said, as the brand steward, as a business champion, as somebody that has to think both brands, big brand, but also commercial, and has to think short, medium and long term. And I think having a financial partner, a CFO peer as well as a CEO that really thinks that way, I think just helps the entire conversation.
- [14:29]
Jenny Rooney
You had to have done a lot of vetting and you said you in the interview conversations. I have to think, correct me if I'm wrong, but you were probably interviewing them as much as they were interviewing you. Because any more we hear about, you know, we don't want CMOs to feel like they're in hostile territory.
- [14:45]
Katie Gohman
Right.
- [14:46]
Jenny Rooney
They need to be able to come into an organization and feel like they're supported, to do their best work. And obviously that's going to drive the business. I just, I'm a firm believer of that. So was that important to you that Amanda had that marketing expertise and background as you're thinking about choosing roles for yourself?
- [15:04]
Katie Gohman
Yeah, it's interesting. I think I underestimated in the best way how important it was to have an ally in that role and again, have like really supportive leaders. Not only my cfo, who's amazing, but also my peers who run product and innovation and the chief legal counsel. It's like what I think is really amazing about what we have here is we have a leader that believes in brand and that understands we need to build innovation and build marketing capabilities for the long term. But we have a group of leaders at the C suite level that also believe in the same vision and I think I haven't always had that in my past and I think I underestimated how important that really is in the ability to do really great work.
- [15:48]
Jenny Rooney
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- [16:49]
Katie Gohman
Supported when listen, we're going to try some things. Not everything's going to work. We know that, right? And everybody always says, oh, test, learn, fail quickly, move on whether or not people actually like, allow you to do it. And embrace the fact that we launched two products right after I started that obviously had been in the pipeline for a while. And the next board meeting I went out and I said to the board, I was like, listen, this was a really big success for these reasons. This one over here was not a success and this is what we learned from it. I said that to the board of a public company and they were like, but I did it in a one page, a dashboard. It was metric driven. It was very clear. And I was like, and this is what we're going to learn differently about what we're going to do in 2025. And they're like, that's the best part. So I think it's about really being surrounded by community of people that really have the same belief in how to build a business and build a brand.
- [17:37]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah, a hundred percent. Talk a little bit about what does that mean for your team and for talent internally. Have you had to make some additional hires? Have you had to reorg and think about the skill set that you want on your team and how important is it that the people have sector experience. I'm just genuinely curious. When you're at a beauty brand, do you necessarily need a team of people who know the beauty category or are you looking for sort of a diversity of perspective and coming from many different types of brands and bring that expertise.
- [18:11]
Katie Gohman
To bear I will say I have been quite fortunate in that the team was quite solid when I got here. And I had been told this again during the interview process that there were certain people in the organization that were really solid. There were certain pockets that needed to be shored up. And then there was a couple of areas within my world specifically that needed to really be built out. And so really the one that needed to be built out was digital marketing and media, which really just, you know, what we had in place was not really what was going to take us forward. But otherwise, like the brand marketing function, very solid. The pr, consumer engagement, the creative function. So it's like a lot of the building blocks were there. So really the media and digital marketing function is really what I've been building out. And I brought in a new media partner at the beginning of this year. I brought in a new team. We're building out an analytics function, right? Because again, going back to what I was saying about social media and social listening, like, you need to be able to understand what those people are saying and how does that bolt on together to the entire marketing and creative organization so that it builds kind of one cohesive unit, so a little bit of building. But overall, I think it really was much more about bringing out the best in the people that I had and creating connectivity across the teams, just because there hadn't been a leader in place for six months. And so the teams were just not as connected as they needed to be in order to come across as an integrated brand. But I think your question about sector experience, I don't know if it's necessarily always beauty experience per se, but I do think there's a taste level that's needed, and I think there's an attention to detail that is required. And I do think whether it's in beauty or in luxury fashion, other spaces, you have to look at every single small detail. And you have to, I think, just have a passion for doing that that not everybody does. And listen, also, in beauty, it's art and science, right? You need to inspire people to buy the thing that they don't really need. And listen, we're in the premium hair care business, right? The great thing is, from a category perspective, it's like 95% of the world has hair. 90% of them actually wash and condition their hair every day, right? So it's like, that's as a total addressable market, that's a great place to be. Now, when their biggest option is 299 at the drugstore, do they need to be spending $30 on a shampoo and $30 on a conditioner, which ps$60 for those two things. Not necessarily. So you have to build desire for something at a price point that quite frankly, again, they don't need. And so that's the taste, the elevation, the little sparkle that you need to inspire of the consumer in order to get them to either give you different share of wallet or expand their purchasing power.
- [20:42]
Jenny Rooney
I love that you just explained that because it is very nuanced, but it really is a thing and it's no discredit to anybody who doesn't have that sort of attention to detail, as you said, or able to bring that sparkle. Because I do think these brands are different and I'm not going to go through all the litany of other a million products and brands out there in the world, but I completely hear you on that very nuanced soft skill, frankly. Right. That you as a CMO need to make sure you're curating as part of your talent set.
- [21:13]
Katie Gohman
I think that's a really good way of putting in terms of that curation. And again, one of the places that I worked in my past life, the entire fundamental of the company and the brands built around the idea of desirability. Right. Because that's what you as the marketer are needing to inspire in the consumer. And that's actually going back to also what you were asking about in terms of like how do you hold yourself accountable for what you're doing? Yes, absolutely. Do we look at the sales every single day, every single week, every single month? Absolutely. But where are you tracking from a brand perspective on brand desirability and other brand metrics in terms of the qualities and the values that you want to inspire in the consumer? That's still a leading indicator of where the brand is going over time. So it's still about brand health. Tracking and understanding where your brand is coupled with social listening and looking at social metrics every single day along with sales. Right. It's like all those different things combined.
- [22:10]
Jenny Rooney
And again, I think for beauty brands in particular, I have a 16 year old daughter and I know firsthand like it is such a competitive category, full stop. Cosmetics, beauty, even wellness. You mentioned the word wellness, which I think is really interesting to me. That's an expanded view of where you play and where you sit and the consideration set you want to be in. But I mean you're vying for attention at every turn, especially I would argue with the younger generations, you know what I mean? And so it's just a lot of competition. Right. There's a lot of noise. And so first of all, who is your target market? Because I'm sure one size doesn't fit all with that. I mean that you probably have a very specific target that you're going for. And then how do you make sure that it's probably the work you're introducing today, but how do you rise above noise? That's in the category?
- [22:59]
Katie Gohman
Listen, that is probably the single toughest question that you have asked today. It's like the thing that all marketers have to grapple with. And I think one of the things that's so interesting in today's day and age is let's stay with kind of the premium hair care segment, right? By default, based on the price point of the products. When you do the research, the target consumer is, let's call it 35 to 45 and has a disposable income over $100,000. The reality of who is driving the heat in the beauty market though, is my 10 year old daughter and your 16 year old daughter. So it's like how do you speak to the multigenerational consumer? How many weekends do you spend going into XYZ store with your daughter? I joke about this all the time that like I take her in and.
- [23:43]
Jenny Rooney
Yes.
- [23:43]
Katie Gohman
Does it help that I'm doing it for work? Absolutely. But she saves up her money and she's got her allowance and she goes in and she buys her 30 XYZ at whatever store that we're at. And I'm sitting there looking around at all the other tweens and teens driving the market. But then you go in line and the moms are in there buying things for themselves as well. Right. So I think it's about when you look at what we're doing today in terms of the new kind of visual identity of the brand, I think it's about being inclusive enough that people honestly of all ages, of all ethnicities, of all kind of shapes and sizes can see themselves in the brand because again, hair is actually universal. So. And even premium hair, which is a newer kind of phenomenon, again, it's universal. So I think for us it was about brand elevation and establishing an identity that feels timeless and modern, but also speaks to the pro, which is our muse and shows great healthy hair. But hair that actually moves, right. Like traditional hair ads, everybody's very static. Showing this kind of like healthy hair out in real life, but then doing it in a way that activate on social and activate on TikTok YouTube shorts. All the places that young People are learning about brands, but also that you're talking from a media and a PR perspective with the core consumer for premium hair care. So that I think that you're hitting both ends, if you will.
- [25:03]
Jenny Rooney
Yeah, it's an and not an or. Do quickly speak a little bit more about that wellness thing, because I do think that's an important. I mean, wellness has become such an important category in general. And I certainly know that in my Instagram feed and everywhere else, nutritional supplements and sleep and certainly exercise and all the things that I think people are paying attention to. And this feels like a tired question now because we're really five years away from it. But Covid, a lot of people used to talk about that as being an inflection point where people cared a lot more about their personal health and wellness, and not just physical, but like mental wellness and mental wellbeing. Why do you think you want to make sure, even if it's just adjacent or like an association with wellness, that is something that you want to make sure people associate with the brand. And why now?
- [25:51]
Katie Gohman
I think there's two reasons. I think, number one, again, it's a very natural territory for the brand to be based on the original attributes the brand delivered on when we first launched 11 years ago. Again, this idea that, like, yes, we happen to mess message out of the gate that we repair damage. But the key insight at the very beginning was the fact that we allowed a stylist to do the unthinkable. We allowed a stylist to color hair and have the hair come out healthier afterwards than it was on the way in. So from a number one perspective, it's like supernatural and organic, like the original positioning of the brand. It just helps to broaden the aperture maybe a bit more from this kind of niche of damage repair that, again, is inherently like a one time and done versus we want to be a part of somebody's lifestyle from an everyday perspective. But I think the second thing is, yes, it might feel like a dated reference, but it's not. Right. Like, Covid changed everything for all of us. And I think this idea of wanting to be healthier, wanting to think about health from the inside out, it's here to stay. And it's not a trend, it's not a fad. It's the way the consumer is moving. And so I think Amanda has said this many times, right? It's like you have to know where the puck is going, right? From a business perspective, from a brand perspective, from a consumer perspective, it's where the Industry and where the consumer is already heading. And so I think for us it's a natural adjacency. It happens to be where everything's going. So it's a great fit.
- [27:15]
Jenny Rooney
Well, yeah. And actually back to your point about you're asking them to part with not just five or six dollars, but $30 and even double that, like at least that provides for them some justification or rationale that they're actually making an investment. That money well spent. Talk a little bit about what does success look like for you? Again, you've been in this role 7, 8 months. First brand refresh announced and introduced today. I can't wait to go to the website and actually see that updated. Super, super exciting. But like for Katie, what does success look like? Certainly for the company, but also for you, what do you want to be able to look back and say, I did that six months from now, a year from now. What are those milestones?
- [27:56]
Katie Gohman
Such a multi layered question. I can think about it from a business perspective, obviously, what does success look like six months from now, a year and a half from now, three years from now? It looks like, you know, the business doing this right, and getting the business back on track, having steady organic growth, obviously, like all the things that you would want, great social metrics, things like that. I think as a student of business, the idea of putting a brand back on the map in today's very cluttered cultural landscape, that's like an HBR case ready to be written. I want in three to five years for people to be like, wow, look at what Olaplex did. They were this amazing success story, had a couple bumps, but then this new team came in and they were able to completely take the business to a new level. So like, that's like the business geek in me. But the real measure of success, honestly, will be in a year when my 10 year old is like, every single one of my friends wants Olaplex for their birthday.
- [28:51]
Jenny Rooney
Seriously.
- [28:52]
Katie Gohman
I mean, listen, I will tell you, like, because that is the ultimate measure of success because they are the ones influencing the rest of the industry, right? So it's like one of the things that I learned definitely in my time in fashion is this idea of like sources of influence, right? And it does also happen to be that I moved into fashion at the advent of social really like gaining traction. But it was like we built all these different customer models to explain to somebody, board members, usually that, listen, this might be where the volume is from a business perspective, but you need these very niche people here talking about your brand and getting excited about it because they then cascaded these people and then the volume hits, right? Versus, like, if you go after the volume, particularly in my category, you should probably be distributed elsewhere and you should probably be running a different brand. So it's like understanding the ecosystem or the flywheel effect and who it is that really starts the energy so that others can reap the commercial benefit. So that's the way that I would answer that in a couple of different ways.
- [29:48]
Jenny Rooney
You hit all the layers. So I appreciate that. Last couple quick questions. One, I just have fun with this question, but imagine a soccer field. You're a player on the field. Are you the striker trying to score goals against the competition at every turn? Are you the midfield line trying to be that connective tissue between your offense and defense? Or are you at the back protecting the goal at all costs from the onslaught of your competitors?
- [30:11]
Katie Gohman
As a leader, am I going to cheat and say I'm the coach?
- [30:15]
Jenny Rooney
You can do that.
- [30:16]
Katie Gohman
And I think this is one of the things, again, one of my past lives in a in fashion during the interview process, it's somebody who's very senior asked me, it's like, what's your superpower? And I said, I was like, listen, my greatest superpower is the ability to bring a really large, diverse group of people together, synthesize a lot of really crazy information and get everybody organized and moving in the right direction towards the goal of where we want to go. Listening with empathy and trying to connect to people and inclusivity and going along the way. But I think I'm much more of a conductor and an editor than the individual contributor that I would say I probably was for the first 10 years of my life. So I'm going to go off piste and say the coach.
- [30:59]
Jenny Rooney
I love it. And I have a theory that it's not very brilliant. It's just an observation, but sometimes when you think about things differently, you see things differently. I really think chief marketing officers are really chief optimism officers within their organizations. And I can feel your optimism. And when I interview cmos, it's just. Just there is a champion within any given organization and I would argue it isn't always the CEO, it's probably not the cfo. So you have to bring the optimism. You know what I mean? You have to bring that energy. And so I certainly feel that in you. And I'm excited to see where you continue to take the brand. Certainly exciting time. The last quick question is, who's next? Who's somebody that you admire can be A peer cmo, somebody that you know really well, or it can be somebody that you admire from afar, either a CEO or a CMO that you think is doing incredible work that I should have on the show.
- [31:53]
Katie Gohman
Oh, my gosh. The stumper of all stumpers. Gosh, Listen, when I think about people that I really admire and you probably have had some of these people on, Right. It's like I look at Corey at Elf, right?
- [32:07]
Jenny Rooney
Yep.
- [32:07]
Katie Gohman
I think about what she and her team have been doing.
- [32:10]
Jenny Rooney
I haven't had her on yet, but I would love to.
- [32:12]
Katie Gohman
So, I mean, that's where I feel like where I would pass the baton. What they've done over the last five or so years is admirable and in many ways. Right. Like, they're a public company. They started off in one category, they've expanded to others. They started off in the social space, but now they've really focused on building a big brand, and they do big, big, bold things that really speak to a community at large. So that's who I would recommend.
- [32:38]
Jenny Rooney
That's a great recommendation. Corey, if you're listening, I'm going to reach out. But, Katie, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure, truly. And I just hope that the next time we talk, it's in person somewhere. So hopefully we get together soon. And in the meantime, congrats on today's news and best of luck as you move forward.
- [32:56]
Katie Gohman
Thank you. And thank you so much for having me, and it's been great getting to speak to you.
- [33:00]
Jenny Rooney
Likewise.
- [33:01]
Katie Gohman
All right, thank you. Thank you for listening to Marketing Vanguard, part of the Adweek Podcast Network and Acast Creator Network. You can listen and subscribe to all of Adweek's podcasts by visiting adweek.com podcast. Stay updated on all things Ad Week Podcast Network by following us on Twitter Dweek Podcast. And if you have a question or suggestion for the show, send us an.
- [33:23]
Jenny Rooney
Email@Podcastdweek.Com thanks for listening.