The one with DoorDash Chief Marketing Officer Kofi Amoo-Gottfried about the sum of all interactions and associations.

Summary

Podcast Summary: The CEO’s Guide to Marketing Episode: The One with DoorDash Chief Marketing Officer Kofi Amoo-Gottfried
Release Date: January 22, 2025
Host: Seth Matlins, Managing Director of the Forbes CMO Network
Guest: Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, Chief Marketing Officer of DoorDash

---

1. Introduction

In this insightful episode of The CEO’s Guide to Marketing, Seth Matlins engages in a profound conversation with Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of DoorDash. Kofi delves into the multifaceted role of marketing in today's rapidly evolving business landscape, emphasizing the importance of empathy, strategy, and cross-functional collaboration.

---

2. Defining Marketing and Brand

Marketing as a Growth Engine
Kofi begins by defining marketing as "a growth engine fueled by empathy, math, and magic" (00:01:57). This definition underscores the blend of emotional intelligence, analytical prowess, and creative flair required in effective marketing.

Brand as the Sum of All Interactions
He articulates a comprehensive definition of a brand: "the sum of all interactions and associations that people have with a product or service. So brand is everything and everything is brand" (00:02:10). This perspective highlights that every touchpoint, from customer service to product quality, contributes to the overall brand perception.

Notable Quote:

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (00:02:10): "A brand is the sum of all interactions and associations that people have with a product or service. So brand is everything and everything is brand."

---

3. Challenges Faced by CMOs and CEOs

Evolving with Culture and Technology
Kofi identifies the primary challenge for CMOs: "Being able to evolve at the pace of culture and technology and consumer society" (00:02:51). The fast-paced changes in societal norms and technological advancements require marketing leaders to stay agile and forward-thinking.

Accountability of CEOs
When discussing CEOs, Kofi points out that CEOs must "understand everything about this deeply complex business on a daily basis and be able to make decisions about every part of that system" (00:03:45). This immense responsibility often leads CEOs to micromanage areas outside their expertise, such as marketing.

Notable Quote:

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (00:03:45): "Being responsible for everything that happens in the organization. Right. So... being accountable for all of it."

---

4. CEO’s Reluctance to Defer to Marketing Decisions

Cultural and Organizational Bias
Kofi discusses why CEOs often hesitate to defer marketing decisions: "part of this might be wired in the cultural sort of fabric of the organization... If you're in a business where the leader sees their role in that way, and particularly for functions that they understand less well, there's an incentive for them to put their thumb on the scale" (00:04:38).

Lack of Marketing Background Among CEOs
He further explains that "90% of the CEOs of the world's largest companies have zero marketing experience or background" (paraphrased from 00:05:46), leading boards to favor leaders with numerical and operational expertise over those with marketing acumen.

Notable Quote:

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (00:05:46): "If marketing's job is to drive growth, why do so few chief executives come from marketing given that their job is to drive growth?"

---

5. Integrating Marketing into Business Growth

Marketing’s Role in Growth and P&L
Kofi emphasizes that at DoorDash, marketing is integrated into the company's growth objectives: "marketing owns a piece of that growth" (00:07:45). He provides a practical example where marketing contributes to a specific number of orders within a quarterly growth goal (00:08:05).

OKRs and Accountability
DoorDash operates on an Objectives and Key Results (OKR) framework, ensuring that marketing goals are directly tied to business outcomes. "Every quarter we will have a set of goals that marketing has to go hit... we have very specific goals within Marketing that ladder up into every business line's P.L." (00:08:36).

Notable Quote:

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (00:07:45): "Marketing owns a piece of that growth."

---

6. Demonstrating Marketing Value

Defining and Measuring Value
Kofi asserts that it's the CMO’s responsibility to "demonstrate that value... have a clear framework" (00:10:03). This involves aligning marketing activities with tangible business outcomes and maintaining clear communication with the C-suite.

Intangible Benefits
Beyond immediate sales, Kofi highlights the importance of intangible benefits like "changing a perception of the business" and "growing trust" (00:10:42). These elements, while harder to quantify, are crucial for long-term brand equity.

Notable Quote:

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (00:10:03): "You have to be very clear on what that thing is. You have to have clear alignment around the C-suite, that that thing is valuable to the business."

---

7. The Role of Strategy in Marketing

Strategist vs. Enterprise Strategy
Kofi differentiates between marketing strategy and broader business strategy. He defines strategy as "being really clear about where you are today, being really clear about where it is that you want to go, and then being clear about the steps between here and there" (00:14:09).

Importance of Diagnosing the Right Problems
He stresses the necessity of accurately diagnosing business problems: "if you have an hour to save the world, I'd spend 55 minutes figuring out what the problem" (00:15:41). Misidentifying problems leads to ineffective marketing solutions.

Notable Quote:

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (00:14:09): "Strategy is being really clear about where you are today, where you want to go, and the steps to get there."

---

8. Influence vs. Control in Marketing

Defining Brand Responsibility
Kofi passionately states, "brand is not marketing's job. Brand is everyone's job inside the company" (00:10:56). He believes that all departments contribute to the brand’s perception, not just the marketing team.

Influencing Other Departments
He explains that while marketing defines the brand, it must "influence those teams" outside its direct control, such as customer support and product teams, to ensure brand consistency (00:33:41).

Notable Quote:

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (00:10:56): "Brand is not marketing's job. Brand is everyone's job inside the company."

---

9. Navigating a Three-Sided Marketplace

Understanding Diverse Audiences
DoorDash operates a complex three-sided marketplace encompassing consumers, merchants, and dashers. Kofi explains, "consumers come to us for convenience," "dashers come seeking flexibility," and "businesses seek growth" (00:37:12).

Tailored Marketing Strategies
Each audience requires a distinct marketing approach. For instance, consumer campaigns focus on convenience, while dasher-oriented marketing emphasizes earning flexibility (00:38:22).

Leveraging Overlapping Needs
He highlights the overlap where dashers are also consumers, enabling DoorDash to offer tailored rewards programs that cater to their dual roles (00:39:39).

Notable Quote:

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (00:37:12): "Consumers come to us for convenience... Dashers come to us because they're looking for the ability to earn on their own schedule... Businesses come to us because they're looking for growth."

---

10. Balancing Measurement and Empathy

The Pitfall of False Precision
Kofi expresses concern over "false precision" in marketing measurements: "none of these systems are actually perfect" (00:44:30). Relying solely on data can lead to overlooking the human element.

Maintaining Strategic Focus
He warns that an overemphasis on measurement can make marketing "more tactical and less strategic" (00:44:57). The core mission should remain "understand people and actually build things that add value or solve problems for them" (00:45:48).

Notable Quote:

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (00:44:30): "There's a lot of false precision... none of the measurement systems we have are perfect."

---

11. The Paramount Importance of Empathy

Empathy as the Foundation
In his closing remarks, Kofi underscores that "understanding people and actually building things... is the only thing that matters" (00:47:28). Empathy drives meaningful connections and sustainable growth.

Human-Centric Approach
He advocates for a human-centric approach, ensuring that both short-term actions and long-term strategies are aligned with human needs and values (00:48:07).

Notable Quote:

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried (00:47:28): "I honestly think it's the only thing that matters. Understanding people and actually building things that add value or solve problems for them."

---

Conclusion

This episode offers a deep dive into the strategic role of marketing within a major enterprise like DoorDash. Kofi Amoo-Gottfried emphasizes the necessity of integrating empathy, clear strategy, and cross-functional collaboration to drive meaningful growth and build a resilient brand. His insights serve as a valuable guide for CMOs and CEOs aiming to elevate their marketing efforts in an increasingly complex business environment.

---

Additional Resources Mentioned:

• Book: Measure What Matters by John Doerr
• Study: The Long and the Short of It by Les Binet and Peter Field

Transcript

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Foreign.

[Seth Matlins]

Welcome to Forbes, the CEO's guide to marketing. I am your host, Seth Matlins and with me today is Kofi Amu Gottfried, who is the Chief Marketing Officer of DoorDash. Welcome, Kofi.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Thanks for having me, Seth.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, I'm glad you're here, man. All right, I'm gonna do the reading of your bio here. So I have taken the liberty of making some edits. Please very few. Because as I was saying to you off camera, it's delightfully. Kofi Amou got Freed is the CMO at DoorDash where amongst other things, he's responsible for driving growth and engagement across all three sides of the company's marketplace. Consumers, merchants and dashers. Kofi leads a global multidisciplinary team of marketing strategists which we're going to talk about. Growth marketers, data analysts, content marketers and spearheads the company's marketing initiatives in order to foster and build a brand that remains culturally resonant at every touch points. Among so many other accolades in 2020, Kofi was named to both the Forbes Entrepreneurial CMO50 list. Or was that 23?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

I don't remember.

[Seth Matlins]

Well, that's the way it goes when you got a lot of accolades as well as the Forbes world's most influential CMOs list. And before joining DoorDash just over five years ago, he was VP of brand and consumer marketing at Meta. He served as met as head of consumer marketing for Internet.org and he spent years as a strategist on the agency side at publicist Leo Burnett, whose name was officially retired today. I think you that I did see that this morning. Rip and widening Kennedy just, you know, absolute, all legends of our business. Kofi, thanks for being here.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

It's a pleasure.

[Seth Matlins]

All right, man. As I think you know, we start all of all of our episodes with, you know, some, some rapid fire questions. So let's just get into it. First one is marketing is.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Marketing is a growth engine fueled by empathy, math and magic.

[Seth Matlins]

I like both the the the end and the means in your definition.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Absolutely.

[Seth Matlins]

A brand is.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

A brand is. So I feel really strongly about this one. I know you do. It's the sum of all interactions and associations that people have with a product or service. So brand is everything and everything is brand.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah. You shared that definition more or less on I think it was on LinkedIn a few weeks ago and I, I've cut and pasted it because I thought it was both as expansive and as specific and correct a definition as I've heard. And we're going to talk a lot about that. All right. The heart from your perspective, not thinking just about your job, but the job. The hardest part of being a CMO is what.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Being able to evolve at the pace of culture and technology and consumer society.

[Seth Matlins]

It's interesting. We talked to Andrea Bremer a week ago and she said exactly the same.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

It's impossible.

[Seth Matlins]

It's impossible to keep up with it. And in fact, you know, somebody, I think I referred to this on a previous episode, though can't be sure because I don't listen to me. Thank you to the audience for listening to me, at least for the moment. But one of your old colleagues, bosses, Antonio Lucio, said something to me about two years ago, which is today's CMO has to be the CEO of the function because it's so impossible to keep up or to have expertise, let alone keep up with everything. If that's the hardest part of being a Chief Marketing officer. What from back to your use of the word empathy, thinking empathetically and practically, what's the hardest part of being a CEO today?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Well, I think it's. It's related, but it's also being responsible for everything that happens in the organization. Right. So. And being accountable for all of it. So when I think about a business like DoorDash, complex multi sided marketplace, to have its CEO like Tony Xu, who has to be able to understand everything about this deeply complex business on a daily basis and be able to make decisions about every part of that system is intimidating.

[Seth Matlins]

Well, and. Or defer to the decisions that you make and others within the C suite. Why do you think? At the risk of digression, there is again, not within DoorDash, but broadly, why do you think there's a propensity. There's a common question across all of these episodes for so many CEOs not in fact to defer to the decisions their chief marketing officers make, and CFOs too, for that matter.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, I think part of this might be wired in the cultural sort of fabric of the organization. So I think most leaders generally think their job is to make all of the decisions. And I think if you're in a business where the leader sees their role in that way, and particularly for functions that they understand less well, there's an incentive for them to put their thumb on the scale. Right. So there's a counterintuitive thing where I would expect that for functions that, let's say your CEO came out of a finance background, they want to be heavily.

[Seth Matlins]

As most do, many of Them do. Yeah. I shouldn't say most. Many is more accurate.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Finance or operations finance or ops. But I think you tend to find that on the less well understood functions, because the CEO has more anxiety about not understanding the function, they're much more likely to weigh in.

[Seth Matlins]

That's really interesting. Yeah. To control what they can't correct or to seek control of the control. Why do you think so? So if, if. And the data is quite clear. Right. 90% of the CEOs of the world's largest companies have zero marketing experience or background.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Right.

[Seth Matlins]

If marketing's job is to drive growth, why do so few chief executives come from marketing given that their job is to drive growth?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah. I think it's probably a function of skill sets and sort of what the market values. Right. So when I think about how boards think about companies, it's through the lens of shareholder value. Right, Right. So a board's job is like, how do I grow the value of this company? That's a deeply numerical exercise. And so. And I think there's a bias.

[Seth Matlins]

Is it a numerical exercise or a numerical measurement?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Because the numerical measurement is the right way to frame it.

[Seth Matlins]

Right. But isn't. Isn't the CMO's job as well to figure out how they grow the value? Stakeholder shareholder value.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Without question. But I think most boards, when they're thinking of the metric, the bias is to go to the people that have run ops, that have run finance, that have been accountable for the full P and L of an entire business.

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Versus the marketing function that has a piano within it. But it's not the same as managing the piano of a business model. If that makes sense.

[Seth Matlins]

It absolutely does. And while it's not on my list of, of questions, you bring it up and it reminds me, which is one of the. I see a lot of spec sheets in my job at Forbes for CMO roles. I have never rarely seen one that has PNL responsibility. If a marketer's job is to drive growth, and of course everybody's job is to contribute to the driving of growth, why do so few CMOs have PNL responsibility, let alone insight into sight of line, rather into the company's pnl. How do I drive growth if I don't understand how growth is driven?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah. I mean, it's a fantastic question. I will say that I'm in the privileged position where I do not have that problem because the way we think about our business is that our job as marketing is to contribute to growth.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

And so we have very specific goals within Marketing that ladder up into every business lines P. L. So if I look at a business line's sort of waterfall chart of how they're going to grow the business year over year, marketing owns a piece of that growth.

[Seth Matlins]

Can you, can you give us a. Just a really practical tactical example of what that looks like without getting into.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Sure. So, you know, I'll do the most basic version of it, but when we think about the number of orders that we expect to generate in this quarter and that's owned by a GM on let's say the restaurant business, and so he has a volume goal which is I'm going to generate a million orders for the sake of this conversation. In that goal though, that go be broken down by where is that growth going to come from. And so in that waterfall chart, one of the things will be marketing that says marketing is going to contribute, let's say 250,000 of these orders.

[Seth Matlins]

What else contributes to it?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

There will be things like, yeah, sure, there'll be some things that are organic growth that are baked into the forecast or current course and speed, but then there'll be other things that we're doing that might be a product change.

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

There might be a, we are bringing on a new restaurant onto the platform and that's going to grow, that's going to drive growth. So there'll be things that are not marketing specific and then there'll be things that are marketing specific.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about marketing specific and marketing at Jason.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct.

[Seth Matlins]

In a little bit. But getting back to kind of the core questions which I'm really terrible at sticking to as our listeners know, what do you see as the biggest tensions between a CMO and their C suite colleagues? Speaking broadly and generally?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, I think the biggest tension is that if you're in a situation where marketing isn't able to demonstrate its value or prove its value to the business, then you're sort of in this, you can be in this seat where your job is poorly defined in terms of the impact that you drive. So people understand broadly what marketing is in the sense that like, hey, we're going to, you know, in the simplest terms, because this is not what marketing is. But in the eyes of other C suite executives, we're going to put out some campaigns out into the world that say XYZ thing about the business.

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

If that's how your job is defined, then there will always be attention because it's not clear what that is driving for the business.

[Seth Matlins]

Whose responsibility do you think that ultimately is? I put a lot of that on the CMO themselves.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

It has to be. Yeah, you have to be able to demonstrate that value. You have to have a clear framework. And this is different for each business. Right. I think a lot of times when we have this conversation, people are thinking about sort of the cash register. So, like, the amount of sales, but there's other value that might be intangible. There's value in changing a perception of the business. There's value and growing trust. But whatever it is that you're signing up for, a, you have to be very clear on what that thing is. You have to have clear alignment around the C suite, that that thing is valuable to the business. And then you have to show over time that you're making progress against that goal.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah. We'll talk a little bit about how you measure for that as we get into it. But if you could, between now and then, if you could wave a magic wand and address one C suite misconception about both marketing and marketers, what would it be?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

I would say there's probably two things. One we started to chat about a little bit. The first would be that, like, brand is not marketing's job. Brand is everyone's job inside the company. You and I were chatting about this before we got on. So, you know, if the marketing team is out here talking about DoorDash being the most reliable service, and we'll have you every time something goes wrong and you have an order that goes wrong and you call customer support and you don't get the help that you need.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Guess what? That's a brand impression, and it's a super negative one.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

And we see that that leads to churn, that leads to a degradation and retention. All of these are brand impressions. So I think one of the most important things that I would want CEOs and C suites to think about is, like, what is the collective responsibility we have as a business to build this brand? And what are all the sets of decisions that we must make across the entire system to build the brand that we want to be? True. And then the second one I would say is thinking of brand thinking of marketing not as a. As just an output, because in a lot of ways, marketing teams are the ones that are closest to the customer. But thinking of marketing really as an input into shaping the business strategy and the product strategy and the innovation strategy, because in a lot of ways, the marketing team tends to be closest to, like, where consumers are and what they need next.

[Seth Matlins]

I want to come right back to that, but just to Finish the questions. Brands and businesses grow when.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Oh, that's a good one. Brands and businesses grow when they create value for customers and they solve problems for people.

[Seth Matlins]

Do you think that our focus on solving problems sometimes mitigates the inclination to look for creating opportunities?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

I think you can do both, and I think you should. And I would say that I actually find that sometimes we're not even solving problems. Yeah. So, like creating opportunities. Fantastic. Sure. But I find that there's a lot of marketing that is like a solution. Looking for a problem. Yes.

[Seth Matlins]

Yes. All right. This. That actually brings me back to where I wanted to go, which. And you were just talking about it, the difference between being an output and an input where I want to start, kind of the broader conversation is, is your time. And that time isn't over just because you have a CMO title, but your time as a strategist. I tend to think that even within marketing land, broadly, if you're not inside an agency or haven't grown up in and around, that you may not understand the real important function of a strategist. And I'm wondering if you can share for our audience kind of how.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

What.

[Seth Matlins]

A strategist is and does, how that both differs to and connects with enterprise strategy. And then we'll. I'll follow up with a couple.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

I mean, this is a big question. Let's see. So the way I guess I think about it is in the simplest way, strategies for me is like a. From to exercise.

[Seth Matlins]

Exactly.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So it's being really clear about where you are today, being really clear about where it is that you want to go, and then being clear about the steps between here and there and what will get you from where you are today to where you want to go.

[Seth Matlins]

Can I tell you? My first exposure to a strategist was three years into my job, my career, and I was launching a new brand of bottled water in the United States inside of the avion company. And we worked with. We were the first client of Mercury Newman Hardy. Sure. And the Newman in Mercury Newman Hardy was Jane Newman, who's oftentimes considered the godmother of strategy and planning in the United States. And there's one chart she put up for me because I didn't know what the I was talking about or even thinking that was. You got a. If you can imagine your typical PowerPoint slide, you box on a square on the left side of the page. A square on the right side of the page. Left side of the page, it says where we are. Left side of the page says where we're going in between was the staircase how we're going to get there.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yep, that was it. That's it for me. That's always been the best definition.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Of what really good strategies and it's, it's one of these things that is simple to explain. It's actually hard to do really well.

[Seth Matlins]

So hard to do what gets in the way of it being simple to.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Do one I think you have to be super clear eyed about where you are. Many people are not. There's lots of things that gets in the way of you being realistic and true and truth seeking about where the business or the brand is today.

[Seth Matlins]

Do you think that winds up showing up as solving for symptoms rather than problems?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, I think it does a couple of things. It solves for symptoms rather than problems but also doesn't grapple with what the actual problem is.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So if you're not dealing with the real thing. So you know, for example, you'll know this. You'll see a lot of briefs as a marketing strategist that are about I want to grow awareness of X thing. To which my answer is like I'm aware of a lot of things I do fuck all about.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah. So that's not like what's the efficacy of. Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

And what does that matter to the consumer? Awareness is a business problem. It's not a consumer problem. It's your problem that you don't have awareness. But it does nothing for me, it solves nothing for me. It creates no opportunity for me. So being able to get really crisp about like where is the business today? How does that relate to where the customer is? And then how do you build the path to where you're trying to go? And so I think there's a block first in that first stage of like diagnosing the problem. You know, there's that famous like Einstein quote. It was like if I had an hour to save the world, I'd spend 55 minutes figuring out what the problem. Yeah, I think we're wrong a lot of times on what the question is. So I think that's the first thing. And then I think even if you get the question right, the path from here to there usually requires like a bunch of really hard choices that again, not everyone is willing to make. Because I think true marketing strategy or business strategy or enterprise strategy is not about marketing. Usually it has to do with other things that need to be true inside the business. Right. So when we think about things like doordash, one of the things we focus on is like how do we drive more affordability for our customer?

[Seth Matlins]

I would appreciate that.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct. But you have to actually do that. I cannot just tell you that this is a more affordable service. There's no marketing answer.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

In terms of a campaign to that I have to change something fundamental about product. I go build Dash Pass as a subscription product that saves you money. I have to build a promo engine that gives you offers when I think you need them. I have to do a bunch of things that are changing the actual nature of the product.

[Seth Matlins]

And how does. How from your perspective. And let's not make it about doordash. But. But using those, those use cases, those need states as reference. How do you think marketing should connect into solving for those problems? And where do you think marketing should? Not broadly.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, it's a good question. So I think ideally what I would love to see marketing do is to be able to be the voice of the customer into the organization, to be the people that say, look, here's what we understand what's going on with the world. Here's what we understand about where customers are. Here's what we understand about what they need today. Now, some of those things may be things we have already, in which case, fantastic, then our job is just to tell customers we have that thing. So if you didn't know that I have groceries and you need groceries, I should probably just tell you that. But there are things that people might need that we have not yet built. In which case then our job is to go advocate inside the business. So, you know, I don't sit inside a CPG company, so I don't control the full stack of the product. So then my job is to say, hey, here's this really interesting insight we found product teams, ops teams. How might we build something around this insight that solves this customer need? Because we think there's a massive growth opportunity if we can do that.

[Seth Matlins]

I don't know how many clients you must have worked with in your time on the agency side? Dozens, if not hundreds. Do you think most organizations. And let's. Let's go client side organizations at this point are designed to accept or design both designed and understand how to accept that input from their marketing organization. Because I don't think they are.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

No, I don't think that they are. But I think that is, you know, I tend to take this position that like, it's the job of the person doing the convincing to be a good convince. Yes. So like sometimes you'll win and sometimes you won't. But like it's your job to pound the table and make the case for why that is the right investment, or to go off and run some sort of experiment that gives us some signal that says actually if we did invest product resources behind this, if we did build a product, it would deliver, like bring something back to the business that helps the business understand the value of what you're proposing. I mean, every business has different currency. You know, I work in a business where the currency is going to be like, we need data. So go run an experiment, show me that there's a there there. And if there's a there there, then people are going to be willing to listen. You know, and sometimes you're lucky to be in a business where the strength of your convictions is enough, but a lot of times you need to do more than that.

[Seth Matlins]

So I want to talk about data based on, you know, riffing off of what you just said, which is data can sometimes tell us there's a there there and the data is wrong. Correct is there when either the data was wrong and you're like, fuck, we listen to the wrong thing or the data told us the wrong thing, or where in fact your gut was such that you're like, I don't care what the data says. I know there's an interest, I know there's opportunity here and any story you can share.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So I'll give an example of places where we don't have good data. So when we're thinking about things like sports partnerships, would you do a fair amount of a doordash? Those are going to be by definition very hard to measure. Right? So like our partnership with the NBA, hard to measure. Like what's the value of that in the way that I can with a Facebook ad or Google search or whatever it is. So I think when we first pitch that to the business, the understanding was to say, look, we will not have high measurement fidelity on this out of the gate, but we have a lot of conviction and a lot of other third party data that tells us that these behaviors are like correlated.

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

We understand that sports and we have a lot of anecdotal evidence and people can think about their own lives. If you're going to sit on the couch all Sunday afternoon and watch football, being able to order things to your home would deliver value to you. When we think about things like gamers and how endemic delivery is to them, we don't have like data on that out of the gate. But that's a pretty good case that we can make.

[Seth Matlins]

So if unpacking what you said, what I Hear is you look for those opportunities where the need state.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct.

[Seth Matlins]

Is tangible.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct.

[Seth Matlins]

And measurable.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct. Correct.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

And then you can sell the business in that and say, hey, we will invest here. Just contextual, contextually, it makes sense.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So we don't have the data yet to prove that this is going to pay out as an investment, but we feel very confident based on what we understand about the need states that there's a there there. And so we will invest in the absence of having.

[Seth Matlins]

So, so let, let me ask a question because obviously that contextual needs state isn't unique to your business.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct.

[Seth Matlins]

It's specific to a competitive set. A category or multiple categories.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

That's correct.

[Seth Matlins]

So if we use the super bowl and I'll, obviously we'll, we'll think about super bowl last year as reference. I think I, I think, you know, your two closest competitors, at least as I would define it as a consumer. Instacart and Uber Eats both advertised as did you inside the Super Bowl. So if, if everybody's identifying, if the category is using the same moment of context and needs take, how do you differentiate, how do you stand out? Like, how do you get to a place where, you know you're going to be standing, you know, a minute apart or 15 minutes apart.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Sure.

[Seth Matlins]

And, and, and drive the, the, the business value that you are held to account to for spending, you know, $7 million for 30 seconds or whatever it is.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah. I mean, so I actually think this is true not just in Super Bowl. I think this is true all the time.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, for sure.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Like, right. If you think about most categories, you're talking about multiple brands competing in the same arenas for the same types of customers around the same need states. So we happen to operate in a highly competitive category. And so that's not going anywhere, whether it's super bowl or Valentine's Day or frankly just today, later tonight in New York City to get dinner. And so I think there's a number of things. If you take the moment itself of super bowl or any consumer moment, I think the key thing you're looking for there is creativity and breakthrough because you know you're going to be up against other people that are competing in your category. And I think you have a couple of choices. So one is you can compete on the message. Is your message going to be different, but you don't control that. You don't know what the other person's going to say. So sometimes you might go into the super bowl where you're pushing a totally different angle than they are, and that's fantastic because then you're automatically differentiated. But other times you might both be coming in and saying, we sell a fizzy drink. So if we both sell a fizzy drink, then the job there is that, like, how can I be more compelling in that moment about the thing that I am trying to deliver for us? Last year we wanted to really communicate that Doordash delivers everything. And we came up with this concept that we're really proud of, which was how do we every brand in the super bowl to deliver everything from the super bowl to one viewer? And it was more than the spot, right? The spot.

[Seth Matlins]

Well, the spot was the expression of an idea, of an insight.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct?

[Seth Matlins]

It worked.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Seth Matlins]

And I would think that the measurement of its working was. Was both relatively fast and relatively easy to see.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yes. So we try to do two things. You know, you and I were chatting about this a little bit before, this notion of the long and the short. And we try to not trade out.

[Seth Matlins]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but for those, for those less familiar than Kofi and I are, in talking about the long and the short, we're referring to the study and booklet by the long and the short of it by Les Binet and Peter Field.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah. And we try to not trade off.

[Seth Matlins]

I'll drop that in the show notes, by the way.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yes, please. It's a great paper. We try to not trade off between those things. We try to build things that will have an immediate short term impact. Because the best way for us to understand, particularly today in a digitally connected world, the best way for us to understand if our work is resonating is if it's. People are engaging with it in some way.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Now, that may not mean that we're going to see sales on the day that the thing launches, but we launched that thing and we saw 8 million entries. That tells us that people are engaging with us. Yeah, immediately.

[Seth Matlins]

I mean, I don't want to throw off your numbers, but I was 6 million of those because there you go.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

You did all over and over and over again. I want to win all the things. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But like, we saw that level of it. So, you know, you have like immediate engagement. And even before the entries, in all the work we had done leading up to the game, we saw a ton of engagement all across social. So we're always looking for like, in the short, are we seeing people engage with what we're creating? And then over the long term, we would think about, you know, the entire purpose of that campaign and really all of last year was like, how do we get people to think of doordash as more than just restaurants and to use doordash recently? And then we get to the end of last year and we go highest ever level of people transacting in non restaurant categories. So like fantastic. We know that we have opened the aperture about how people use the product.

[Seth Matlins]

In an inputs and outcomes construction. What do you all see as the value and measure and how do you measure different types of engagement? Right. Too often we see too many marketers thinking engagement is a like on an Instagram post, which has not necessarily any efficacy to the bottom line. How are you looking at it?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, so we, we are, we tend to actually look at like short term, not on the daily basis because it's not. Doesn't work like that for us. But we will tend to look at like, is this driving actual business impact within the quarter? Right. So the activities that we do, whatever they are, are going to be gold against how many orders that we drive this quarter, how many DashPass subscribers that we get to sign on, how many orders that were non restaurant orders that we drive. So we're looking at all of those types of metrics over the course of a quarter and that's what we're ultimately gold on. Now there'll be other inputs to that like, hey, this competition drove 8 million entries. It drove 12 billion impressions, it drove a ton of social engagements. All of those tell us. But that's not ultimately like what my bosses are going to ask me about.

[Seth Matlins]

Okay, so measuring those things makes sense. What are you doing to find the attribution? Right. To what to attribute those measurements?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah. So we do a number of different things.

[Seth Matlins]

So I'd say like you guys KPI based or okr.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Well, okr.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Where we are. Doordash is a doordash's superpower is that we execute better than any organization I've been in. And that's driven by having a culture that's like goals, accountability, ownership.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So everyone has a goal and everyone has the autonomy to go figure out how to hit that goal and they'll be held accountable to hitting that goal.

[Seth Matlins]

I'll also drop into the notes a book I read over the holiday that is really the book on OKRs, John Doerr's book on Measuring what matters. I think it's version of that.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Measure what matters.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, Measure what matters. So I'll drop that, a link to.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

That in the notes. And so we're a very OKR driven organization. So every quarter we will have A set of goals that marketing has to go hit. But then we have the freedom within that we have a budget, we have goals and we have constraints. And within that envelope we can then figure out how we're going to deploy the money to do that. So we would have had a goal, for example, at the end of Q1 last year that said we want X amount of people transacting in new verticals. We decided as a marketing organization that the super bowl was one way, amongst many other things we did in that quarter, to go hit that goal.

[Seth Matlins]

And so many CMOs would not have, do not have the permission internally to pull the levers they think are most valuable. There's data, I think it's out of McKinsey. If I can find it, I'll link to that too, in the notes. That shows that, you know, some absurd percentage of organizations and marketing organizations within enterprise find that they are not given the resources to deliver against agreed upon strategies. Which is kind of like punching yourself in the face. Correct. Why do you think that is?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

I mean, I.

[Seth Matlins]

Well, let me ask a different question because, yeah, who the fuck knows, right?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

It seems counterintuitive to me.

[Seth Matlins]

What would you say to a cfo, let alone a CEO, about understanding or deferring to the expertise of this chief marketer whom they've hired.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct.

[Seth Matlins]

To pull those levers in order to drive enterprise value and growth?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah. I think the thing that we have found works, and I think is true actually in any company that does this well, is if you have clear goals and you have clear accountability, then that is the framework within which people should be able to operate. Now, what that means is that like, for me, as a cheap market, I don't get to say, well, it didn't rain this week and then that thing happened over there and you know, we weren't able to ship that thing in time and we thought we would sign that merchant and they didn't sign. Like none of those things matters. Like that scene from the mob movie was like, fuck you, pay me. Like, it doesn't matter, it's irrelevant. Right. You have to own it. And so I think having that ownership and accountability and having a culture that enables that is what makes it work.

[Seth Matlins]

Right. But there is something in, in the, the examples that you're not able to point to that speaks to kind of a prevalent macro condition, which is so much, at least from my perspective. Tell me what you think. So much marketing is outside of the marketer's control. When you, if you bring to marketing a definition that says back to your definition of brand, it is the sum of the parts, 100 sum total of your experience with. And that includes what your customer service team is doing.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct.

[Seth Matlins]

In the moment of customer engagement. And it includes as well what your HR assistant may be saying to her neighbor.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Totally.

[Seth Matlins]

How do you deal with so much out of your control? Is it the difference between control and influence?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

100 so I think there's some set of things that are directly in our control. And I'll separate brand out from marketing impact. Brand is absolutely not directly in my control.

[Seth Matlins]

Correct.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Because it's everything.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Marketing impact directly in my control. Like we can say if you give me $100 and it should deliver 20 new customers. Assuming that you believe attribution which we can get into, we can prove that we were able to do that in the court. Like that is in my control.

[Seth Matlins]

But under. Not just understanding. Agreeing with you. Brand isn't in your control. Marketing is. But that. That seems to be creating a dividend. Not a divide but. But a tension between brands role in marketing.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

No, not necessarily. And this is where influence comes in.

[Seth Matlins]

Okay.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So I think there's two things. One is do we have a clear understanding? I think it's marketing job to define what the brand is.

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So do we have a clear positioning.

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Of what? What do we want DoorDash to be in the world? What world we want DoorDash to occupy? How do we want DoorDash to show up or insert whatever brand that is. Once that is defined and agreed on, how do we then influence the organization? And there'll be all sorts of things. So like going back to our customer support. Let's say we think that like hey, DoorDash is the way we define it is that like we want to be the antidote to the complexity of the modern world. Right. That's how we think about our brand. Like there's a lot. Life is hard, it's complex. There's lots of stuff going on. We can be here to be like a 247 assistant. Whether you're someone who's looking to earn, whether you're someone who's starting a business, whether you're someone who just needs something delivered to you. But that has to be true at every point.

[Seth Matlins]

So if someone comes in trouble, ask question. What I hear in that is the opportunity for lines of business you're not in today. Right. There's extraordinary elasticity.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Massive in.

[Seth Matlins]

In that.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Massive.

[Seth Matlins]

I'll circle back. Okay, I'm sorry, I interrupted.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

No, no, not at all. But then what that means is like if someone shows up to our customer support, we have to lean in with that same mentality. Right, Right. So then it's our job to say like, I don't control customer support, doesn't report to me. I don't control the product teams or insert any team here that's outside of marketing. But my team's job is to influence those teams. Right. And to bring those teams along on that journey and work with those teams to say, this is our brand. Let's have a conversation about, like, how should that interaction feel?

[Seth Matlins]

Why? I've talked about this on a few previous episodes, a couple of them anyway. Which the customer service is a moment when you absolutely. In a battle for attention, in the moment of engagement with customer service, you have full attention 100%. Why do you think so many customer service orgs sit outside marketing's control, not just influence?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, it's a really good question. I think it's because intrinsically the things that customer support, but the way that those teams are built and what they optimize for and the skill sets for that are not necessarily the ones that like marketers grow up with. Now you can say like, that doesn't matter. And you could obviously have a going back to Antonio's quote that you shared earlier, which is like, you're going to be the CEO of a function, so if you have another function that's not something you've directly learned, you should be able to manage it. But I think it's quite specific. Like when I think about Doordash's customer support, it's massive, it's scaled. That's not necessarily expertise that I have.

[Seth Matlins]

Right, right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So I think like finding people that are good at each of these things is what businesses are trying to solve for. Like, how do I build a world class support function? I would be crazy to tell you that I'm the person to hire to build a world class support function. I would not be.

[Seth Matlins]

Yes.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

And so I think that's why you end up with it sitting outside of the market.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah. I mean that makes all the sense in the world. And yet it's, I think my push on that, agreeing with it. My push would still be, sure, you shouldn't be the one to hire for the, to find the right person to run it, but you shouldn't be divorced. And I guess you're not. Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

We're not. Yeah. We're absolutely not.

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

We're absolutely not.

[Seth Matlins]

And yet I think many organizations could. They are.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah. Okay.

[Seth Matlins]

I'm just conscious of time and, and I Want to ask you about your three sided marketplace and to use it as kind of illustration for a lot of what we're seeing in business today, which is, you know, you reference kind of a CPG past. Right. You know, B2C used to be distinct. Now there's so many B2C companies that are B2B 100, B2B2C and vice versa. Well, actually every B2B company is a B2C company. The business is run by an individual. How do you look at kind of the, the inter, the how. How do you see the interrelationship? Was that a word? Did I make that up? Yeah, we'll take it. Whatever. Everybody knows where I'm going. Of the three sides of that marketplace. And, and how, how do you figure out where to focus? Because you can't focus on everything.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, yeah. So, so I think there's two things. One to say if you, if you buy that. The, the premise we talked about earlier, which is the like, ultimately businesses are going to win if they create value and solve problems and find opportunities for people. Then in our marketplace, the things that these audiences come to us for are actually quite different. Right. So consumers come to us for convenience. That's why they're coming us. So when you pick up your phone, you need to know that when I order this thing from DoorDash, it's going to show up and it's not. It's going to make my life more convenient, not less. So like that's one job. Dashers come to us because they're looking for the ability to earn on their own schedule.

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Businesses come to us because they're looking for growth.

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

How do I reach a customer that I could not have reached by myself? How do I take my business online when it's just a sort of physical real world business? And so what's in sometimes with the.

[Seth Matlins]

Rise of ghost kitchens? Not even that.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct. And so what's interesting about that is you actually have these audiences that are all coming to us for very different things. Which means that like we actually need to build our team in a way to respond to their needs. Right. So I can't like, while the DoorDash brand is one brand, what it does for people.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Is actually very different. So when you go back to the definition being expansive, it's deliberately expansive.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

When we say we want to like be a 247 assistant, that's true. Whether you're a business, whether you're a consumer or whether you're a dasher, we want to be able to be on demand to help you with whatever it is that you need. So that part has to be true. But the way we show up for each of these audiences has to be different because they're looking for different things. Like my advertising to dashers is about are you looking for part time work?

[Seth Matlins]

Are you looking for the different needs.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

State, different ones for consumer? Are you looking for. You know, we did a bunch of stuff over the holidays that was super fun, which is like, you know, you're trying to live in this moment of owning the last minute gifting use case. Because turns out a lot of people actually, yours truly included, don't do their Christmas shopping until like the week before Christmas. Doordash is really good at that. So how do we help you do that?

[Seth Matlins]

I did mine on Christmas Eve.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Well done.

[Seth Matlins]

Not terribly, if I'm honest.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

You know, if you're gonna do that, you gotta be really good at it.

[Seth Matlins]

You gotta be really good at it. There are a number of IOUs and a lot of cash.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

But like you, I think the job is like you have to figure out each of these audiences are distinct but then they're also interrelated. So I'll give you an example. Like we have a lot of dashers that are also consumers.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So how do we think about that overlap? Like, yes, I'm talking to you as a dasher. And so a few years ago we had actually built this thing where we're thinking of them so distinctly that we weren't serving consumer offers to our dashers. So they were like, actually we should just break that. And not only should we serve them consumer office, we should serve them richer office. Because these are people that are going in and out of these stores all the time. And we can actually build it into a rewards program for the dasher.

[Seth Matlins]

I'm wondering, it's so interesting. I'd not thought of it that way. And I'm wondering if you've gotten any insights from your dasher as consumer that have influenced product massively?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, massively so. Our dashers are so important to our business because they are out in the real world seeing everything as it happens. So like even really deeply operational things like around holidays. Holidays are tricky because a lot of stores close and they don't tell you that they're closed. So how do we know that a store is closed? Turns out a dasher can tell us that. Yeah, right. So there's all of these things that you build and you start to say, okay, like this, they can actually serve a totally different set of functions and contribute a ton of value to the business beyond the delivery. And so how do we think of them in that lens? How do we think of them as consumers when they come back to the app? How do we work with partners to actually give them specific offers for going to a particular store? So then you start to bring together the dasher, the merchant and the consumer.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So there's lots that you can do. It's complex, but there's a lot of fun to be found in those intersections. And then we do a lot between merchants and consumers. We do a ton of co marketing with our merchant partners to say, you know, how do we help you think about, you know, your Starbucks and you're trying to achieve this particular outcome or your Aldi and you've launched on DoorDash and trying to.

[Seth Matlins]

And are you doing that as an ABM system or like, are you account based management?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, in some ways. Yeah, in some ways. But also working directly with those brands, Right? Yeah.

[Seth Matlins]

So let me ask you two questions to bring this to an end. And one is we got way off track, but it's important enough that I want to bring it back, which is what's, what's the difference between strategist, as you practice it and have practiced it across your career and business strategy and what's the commonality? Converge, Diverge.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Yeah, I would say the commonality is the framework that you and I set up at the beginning, which is the from to. That doesn't matter whether you're talking about brand strategy or whether you're talking about business strategy. The from to is the same, which is you have to know where you are today and you have to know where you're trying to get to.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah. Or as the Alice in Wonderland quote says, all roads lead there.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct. You know, when I worked on Bacardi many years ago, off from, and I'll try and remember this, it was like it's a prevailing perception is that it's a manufactured pseudo Latin made up brand drank by douchebags who don't know better. So that was literally the from. That was the from. That's like this is where this thing is today.

[Seth Matlins]

And a lot of upside from that upside.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

And the two was like, this is actually 150-year-old rum created handcrafted by this Cuban family. But that's not just a communications exercise. There was actually a lot of things we had to go do in the product to make that. So because at the time the brand had proliferated with 800 flavors. It was just like all of this stuff that was distracting.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

From the core proposition.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So it wasn't just like a comms exercise, was like, you know, you have to revamp the portfolio, you have to change the liquid, you have to change the product. You have to do all of these things to get you from the. From and to. So the commonality, I'd say, is the framework. And then the business versus marketing part is just what are the levers that you get to pull?

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

It is.

[Seth Matlins]

It is that hard and that simple, isn't it? One of the first times a strategist defined her job to me was, she said, very simple. She said, my job is to interrogate brand and business. And. And what I think I'd add to that today is interrogate brand and business. So, you know the levers to pull as you go from. To.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

That's right.

[Seth Matlins]

So a last question for you that I haven't asked anybody else, but, you know, you're. You're so very good at what you do. Thank you. And you're welcome. Is there anything in the art and science of this practice, this. This role inside of enterprise marketing that as it evolves, you're wrestling with and struggling with?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Oof. There's a lot there. I will say that the thing that I think keeps me up at night somewhat is that there's a lot of, like, false precision.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

You know, so, like, look, as much as I feel really good about the impact that we drive as a marketing organization, as good as I feel about our methods for, like, attribution and incrementality and testing, and so we do all of this stuff to triangulate exactly what it is that we're driving. I also think there's a lot of unknowns there. Right. Because, like, none of these systems are actually perfect. None of the measurement systems we have up. It doesn't matter what it is. Even last click, it's not perfect. Yeah.

[Seth Matlins]

You may recall that in Aspen at our Forbes CMO summit, we. We had a panel. It's even possible you sat on it. I cannot remember anything anymore. That where I. I stole a Rory Sutherland quote, which he referred to the false God of perfect measurement.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

So I think that I would say, like, in the art and science of this, like, I think this is both math and magic. And so I think you want that to be true. And I'd say the other thing is that I think we've gotten. As you become more obsessed with measurement, the function becomes more tactical.

[Seth Matlins]

Yes.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

And less strategic.

[Seth Matlins]

Yes.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Because everyone's just looking for what's the, the thing that I can point to that something moved.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Versus, like the third thing I talked about up front, which is the empathy. Like, for me, the thing that makes this job fun is understanding people.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

The core of this job is like, understand people, understand what they need and then if you can deliver it, you win.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

And if you deliver more often than the other guy, you are going to gain share. And I think that strategic discipline and the customer connection I think gets lost the closer we get. Sort of obsessed with the perfect God of perfect measurement.

[Seth Matlins]

I don't know if you, you'll remember this, but I think it was the first time we talked. I told you that somebody had nominated you for the entrepreneurial CMO list. And as, as I kind of, you know, did the beginning of due diligence, I, I looked you up on LinkedIn, which is where everybody goes these days. Right. Quite a, quite a journalist.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Deep, deep interrogation there, Seth.

[Seth Matlins]

Well done. It's my strategy background. And you know, well, everybody else talks about being a visionary this or transformative, that you are a human, a father, a brother, a son. And it really stuck out to me because as you've heard me say elsewhere, I think too often in these designations of consumer, customer, vendor, client agency, we lose the humanity 100% and you never lose the humanity. And I'm glad you brought up empathy at the end because you talked about it in the beginning and I wanted, I wanted to spend more time there than we got to. But. But if you had kind of a parting word for our audience, but the marketers and the rest of the C suite about the importance the strategic business, building importance of empathy, what would it be?

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

I honestly think it's the only thing that matters. Like, I think understanding people and actually building things, forget marketing. Building things that add value or solve problems for them. Like, if you think about any great business in history, all the large businesses that we all think of, like, fundamentally, that is the thing that they have done. And I think when you lose sight of the person, when you lose sight of the human, this is, you know, you think about short term and long term. A lot of the conversation is about. Because people are doing things to drive a number in the short term and it doesn't pay off over the long term. Anyone can move a number in the short term.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah. They're marketing to the cfo, not the human.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Correct.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

And I think just don't like whether you're business leader or a marketing leader. Just don't lose sight of like, that's actually why we're here.

[Seth Matlins]

Kofi, thanks for being with us.

[Kofi Amu Gottfried]

Thank you.

[Seth Matlins]

Appreciate.