Marketing Vanguard: "When Your Brand is Core to the Growth Engine, You Need to Learn How to Drive"

Guest: Caryn Wasser, Chief Brand Officer, Little Spoon
Host: Jenny Rooney, Adweek
Date: December 22, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features Caryn Wasser, Chief Brand Officer at Little Spoon, discussing her unique journey from agency roots to building a breakthrough kids' nutrition brand from the ground up. The conversation dives into Caryn’s leadership style, strategy for brand-led growth, the role of brand in fast-scaling companies, and the evolving nature of marketing leadership. She shares transparent insights about moving between industry extremes, creating a distinct CBO role, building a connected marketing team, and bringing disruption to legacy-dominated retail shelves.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Caryn Wasser’s Career Journey & Brand Philosophy

[01:33–04:33]

• Agency upbringing: Caryn began her career at traditional agencies (Gray, Anomaly), working on brand launches and refreshes for notable clients:
  • “I got lucky that the accounts that I was working on were these really juicy briefs of refreshes. The brand, the business was having some issue or decline and they needed to kind of reset and re understand what needed to happen on the brand side.” [02:03]
• “Nosiness” as a superpower: Her desire to see and influence the entire business ("the whole pie") eventually pushed her from agency to client-side roles.
• Startup leap: Moving from Budweiser to startups (“Chopt”, then Little Spoon) was risky but formative:
  • “When I decided to make the jump to Little Spoon, I was taking a significant pay cut... My dad said to me, Caryn, you're getting paid to go to business school. Take the job.” [06:23]
• Building from scratch: Caryn was the second employee at Little Spoon, starting in a “windowless WeWork room.”

2. The Role and Evolution of Chief Brand Officer at Little Spoon

[08:11–12:41]

• Defining the CBO remit: Water had a blank slate to define her role, letting company needs shape her responsibilities rather than adopting a borrowed title or remit:
  • “You literally let the business dictate the role full stop.” —Jenny [12:09]
• Brand as core growth engine: The Little Spoon brand is considered an enabler of business growth, not just a halo:
  • “We are brand led, our growth is because of our brand… Marketing exposes the role that we play. But for me, truly it's about every surface, it's about every touch point.” [09:36]
• Customer empathy: Water emphasizes the importance of rooting decisions in current parental realities—dual-income households, tech integration, and higher food literacy.

3. Little Spoon’s Team Structure & Internal Culture

[13:52–17:20]

• Connected full-funnel marketing: 25+ team members operate as “a single operating system,” breaking down silos:
  • “The way that we think about brand is that brand is very much core to the growth engine and therefore every marketer on this team needs to be connecting the dots.” [00:41 & 14:37 (reiterated)]
• Data as human proxy: Caryn insists that every data point is a real person and encourages the team to pursue deep, human-centric insights.
• Cross-functional detective work: Team members at every level are encouraged to “treat themselves like detectives” and actively share insights between org silos (organic, paid, community, creative). She celebrates the “gold” found in places like TikTok comments and cross-pollination.

4. Retail and Omnichannel Strategy

[17:20–19:50]

• Target launch: Little Spoon entered 1,900+ Target stores just a month prior, expanding from an exclusively DTC business to omnichannel retail:
  • “We launched in six different categories, six different aisles across baby to big kid and 23 products total… We wanted to show up as a brand at shelf.” [18:31]
• Retail approach: Selected products for Target that represent the breadth and experience of the brand, including strategic add-ons and exclusive SKUs.

5. Competing with Legacy Giants & Market Disruption

[19:50–21:35]

• Little Spoon’s impact: Noted the market shift as consumers demand “better-for-you” options, with legacy brands in decline:
  • “You see decline from these legacy players. You see that consumers are voting with their dollars for truly like better for you options.” [20:24]
• Acquisition speculation: Despite being an attractive acquisition target, the team remains focused on “replacing status quo at shelf” rather than pursuing quick exits.

6. Defining Success, Differentiation, and The Path Forward

[21:55–23:30]

• Platform differentiation: Little Spoon is not just a single-product competitor, but a platform that supports families through every childhood milestone:
  • “We don't have a competitor as a platform that allows parents to start and grow through each milestone.” [22:35]
• Product innovation & engagement: Ongoing commitment to new products and deepening engagement within the Little Spoon community.

7. Influencer, Creator, and Celebrity Marketing

[23:30–24:43]

• Avoiding superficiality: While the brand works with influencers, authentic need and organic usage trump celebrity deals:
  • “We get much more excited when we see, like, a celebrity has signed up for us or they've reached out to us because they need us. They actually really need us in their house. And that's the endorser that we want.” [23:54]

8. Leadership, Team Culture, and Caryn's Reputation

[24:43–26:06]

• Briefs and context: Caryn’s team jokes that she always says, “You are only as good as your brief.” She stresses the importance of context and empathy in leadership.

9. The Reality of Startup CMO Influence

[26:06–29:31]

• Industry thought leadership: Caryn describes feeling “in the mud every day,” focused on building rather than external influence:
  • “I'm trying to grow something from a literal non place, and it's just a different kind of a challenge… I'm down in the ground in the mud every day, which just makes the war stories different.” [28:38]

10. Who's Next?

[30:03–30:35]

• Caryn nominates Becca Milstein (Founder, Fish Wife) as a future guest, praising her as a disruptive, brand-centric thinker.

Notable Quotes

• On Career Risk and Value:
  “You're getting paid to go to business school. Take the job. And that was the best advice that I could have gotten.” —Caryn [06:24]

• On Brand’s Role:
  “What we’re trying to do is show people why we exist, why we matter to them and resonate with them. And so we just get in our own way sometimes... it really is that simple and we just need to root ourselves in like what is the truth and how do we tell that story the best way.” —Caryn [11:10]

• On Team Culture:
  “We really try to push that... because philosophically, like I want the associate marketer and I want the coordinator on these teams to understand like you're not just doing something in a silo for your channel. Like you are actually affecting the entire funnel.” —Caryn [15:26]

• On Authentic Influencer Strategy:
  “The endorser that we want… they actually really need us in their house. And that’s the endorser that we want. We don’t want to just kind of have some shiny object.” —Caryn [23:54]

Timestamps for Important Topics

• [01:33] Caryn’s agency and client-side career path
• [04:33] Early days at Little Spoon, company growth
• [08:11] Defining the Chief Brand Officer role
• [13:52] Building a full-funnel, non-siloed marketing team
• [17:20] Retail and omnichannel strategy—launching in Target
• [19:50] Competing against legacy players; acquisition speculation
• [21:55] Defining success and competitive differentiation
• [23:30] Influencer and celebrity marketing approach
• [24:43] Caryn’s leadership style and team reputation
• [26:06] Challenges & realities of influence for startup CMOs
• [30:03] Who should be next on the podcast?

Memorable Moments

• “Your job is to keep each other incredibly well informed and challenge yourself. Can you cultivate big idea thinking from this?... I think I'm bullish about that and I care about seeing them succeed.” —Caryn [25:18]

• “Dogs are the best ever, but like babies, you should be rooting for them.” —Caryn, on category innovation [20:27]

• Leadership Insight: “I definitely function like a business owner... I am heads down and I do think that for people similarly in my position, it just limits our ability to be like out in the world.” [27:45]

Takeaways

• Great brand leadership interweaves empathy, data, and internal collaboration at every level.
• Brand must be at the core of the growth engine, not a surface-level add-on.
• Startups provide unique opportunities—and demands—for marketing leaders to forge, not inherit, their own playbooks.
• Authenticity (to the consumer, the product, the influencer partnership) trumps scale or celebrity every time.
• Success in modern brand-building depends on the ability to adapt to business needs, foster cross-channel insight-sharing, and remain relentlessly connected to the customer’s evolving life.