In data obsessed marketing landscape, Hinge CMO Jackie Jantos talks brand building

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Digiday Podcast - "In Data-Obsessed Marketing Landscape, Hinge CMO Jackie Jantos Talks Brand Building"

Hosts: Tim Peterson & Kameka McCoy
Guest: Jackie Jantos, Chief Marketing Officer of Hinge
Release Date: October 8, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of The Digiday Podcast, hosts Tim Peterson and Kameka McCoy explore the intricate dynamics of modern marketing in a landscape dominated by data obsession and digital transformation. The discussion delves into the challenges of ad saturation, the evolution of short-form video content, and the rising concerns around AI-generated misinformation. The episode culminates with an insightful interview featuring Jackie Jantos, the CMO of Hinge, who offers her perspectives on brand building within the competitive dating app industry.

Key Discussions

1. Ad Overload in the AI Era

Tim and Kameka kick off the conversation by addressing the burgeoning presence of advertisements in new digital terrains, especially within AI-driven platforms.

• AI-Powered Ads:
  Tim remarks, “Google is rolling out ads for its AI overviews and Microsoft is cleaning up the ad experience for its Copilot service” (03:54).
  Kameka adds, “Every time you go to search something, the first 10 things are just sponsored products” (04:54), highlighting user fatigue with pervasive ads.

• Impact on User Trust:
  Concerns are raised about the potential erosion of trust in AI interfaces inundated with ads. Tim questions, “Is there a risk of people seeing these as more ad-based experiences and not trusting the information?” (05:20).

2. Evolution of Short-Form Video

The hosts discuss the shifting definitions and formats of short-form video content across platforms.

• YouTube Shorts Expansion:
  Kameka points out, “YouTube is extending Shorts to three minutes. What even is a short-form video at this point?” (08:08).
  Tim contemplates the feasibility of integrating ads into longer short-form videos, stating, “With three minutes, YouTube can probably get away with putting an ad or two without annoying users” (10:20).

• TikTok’s Extended Video Lengths:
  The conversation touches on TikTok allowing up to 10-minute videos, transforming the platform's content strategy and advertising opportunities.

3. Meta’s Video and AI Initiatives

The discussion shifts to Meta’s strategic moves in the video space and the introduction of AI video generators.

• Meta’s Video Player Redesign:
  Kameka observes, “Meta is redesigning the Facebook video player to be full-sized, which could signal a more aggressive push into streaming” (13:07).

• AI Video Generators and Misinformation Risks:
  Concerns are echoed about AI-generated videos exacerbating misinformation. Tim muses, “If these video generators are so good, misinformation becomes an even bigger problem” (16:10).

Interview with Jackie Jantos, CMO of Hinge

The latter part of the podcast features an in-depth interview with Jackie Jantos, the Chief Marketing Officer of Hinge, where she shares her journey, insights on brand building, and the unique challenges of marketing a dating app designed to be deleted.

1. Professional Journey and Path to CMO

Jackie narrates her transition from traditional advertising roles to leading marketing at Hinge.

• Background:
  “I grew up at Ogilvy... navigated through to Coca Cola and Spotify” (21:46).
  Her diverse experiences provided her with a robust foundation in both creativity and strategic brand management.

2. Evolution of the CMO Role

Jackie discusses the changing expectations and responsibilities of CMOs in today's market.

• Strategic Orientation:
  “My role is to orient the organization’s strategy around long-term growth while staying connected to culture and audience trends” (25:17).
  She emphasizes the balance between immediate performance metrics and sustainable brand building.

3. Marketing Hinge: Designed to Be Deleted

Hinge's unique positioning as a dating app intended for meaningful connections shapes its marketing strategies.

• Success Metrics:
  “If we are successful in driving the outcome of getting people out on dates, the odds are people will find partners and delete the app” (35:38).
  This approach focuses on user success stories as the primary driver of growth.

• Social Impact and Diversity:
  Jackie underscores the importance of addressing Gen Z's challenges with loneliness and fostering diversity within the marketing team. “We need to be constantly thinking about whether or not we have enough diversity on our team” (46:16).

4. Balancing Brand and Performance Marketing

Given Hinge's mission, Jackie elaborates on how the brand balances storytelling with performance-driven objectives.

• Integrative Strategies:
  “We focus on brand marketing and social impact rather than strictly balancing performance marketing” (35:38).
  This strategy ensures that the brand remains authentic and resonates deeply with its audience.

5. Challenges Faced by CMOs

Jackie reflects on the inherent challenges in the CMO role, particularly in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

• Adaptability and Team Cohesion:
  “Staying focused, prioritizing, and fostering a strong sense of community within the team are key challenges” (49:28).
  She highlights the necessity of guiding diverse teams through constant change.

Notable Quotes

• Tim Peterson: “Ads have to go everywhere they can” (03:54).
• Kameka McCoy: “It's like that train... you really gotta hit page two” (04:54).
• Jackie Jantos: “If you focus on doing the right thing by your users, the growth will come” (40:33).
• Jackie Jantos: “Individuals can't date well if they're not feeling well” (38:13).
• Jackie Jantos: “If you’re not thinking about diversity and social impact, you’re missing deep opportunities” (46:16).

Conclusion

This episode of The Digiday Podcast offers a comprehensive exploration of the current marketing landscape, highlighting the pervasive challenges of ad saturation and the complexities of evolving digital content formats. Through the lens of Jackie Jantos's experience at Hinge, listeners gain valuable insights into building a brand that not only thrives in a data-driven environment but also fosters genuine human connections. The discussion underscores the importance of adaptability, diversity, and long-term strategic thinking in navigating the ever-changing world of marketing.

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Timestamps

• Ad Overload Discussion: [03:54] - [05:20]
• Short-Form Video Evolution: [08:08] - [10:27]
• Meta’s Initiatives: [13:07] - [16:10]
• Interview with Jackie Jantos: [19:53] - [51:38]
  • Path to CMO: [21:46]
  • Evolving CMO Role: [25:17]
  • Hinge's Unique Marketing: [35:38]
  • Social Impact & Diversity: [46:16]
  • Challenges for CMOs: [49:28]

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Note: This summary omits advertisements, introductions, and outros, focusing solely on the substantive content of the podcast episode.

Transcript

[Tim Peterson]

This episode of the DJ podcast is sponsored by Yahoo dsp. Discover why Yahoo DSP is rated the number one platform by their customers with top tier performance and customer service. Advertisers achieve higher ROI compared to the competitive set and the industry agrees with Yahoo DSP winning Best Buy side Programmatic Platform at the 2024 Digiday Technology Awards. Learn more at advertising.yahooinc.com R DSP. Hello and welcome to the Digiday Podcast. My name is Tim Peterson. I am the executive editor of video and audio at Digiday Media.

[Kameka McCoy]

And I am Kameka McCoy, your co host, senior marketing reporter here at Digiday and Kumika.

[Tim Peterson]

You had the interview this week. I'm excited about this interview because you spoke with Jackie Jantos, who is the CMO of Hinge. Not excited because I'm not in the dating role. I'm excited because it sounds like the topic of this one was how the CMO role has kind of evolved and it feels like that's always an interesting topic.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that was an exciting one. I think the big theme here is that she is the CMO of the app that's meant to be deleted. So we'll get some more later in the episode, but it was an interesting conversation of how do you market something that's one meant to be deleted. And then you're also facing pressures as a CMO where we're data driven and data obsessed right now. So a good, good juicy scoop for you guys later.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, and I imagine also like probably nicely paired with the profile you just did of Todd Kaplan, who's like one of those kind of celeb CMOs.

[Kameka McCoy]

I feel like CMO Rockstars, I think, is what we've been. We've been calling them before, before the rocks, before rockstar became a dirty word. But yeah, CMO Rockstar.

[Tim Peterson]

Okay. Yeah, because. Which is funny because that makes me think of. So Digiday just published the Digiday Guide to Advertising Week going on and one of the things that's out this year is Rockstar cmos. And what's in is fractional cmos, which actually isn't a term I'm even all that familiar with. Fractional cmo.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's becoming a bigger part of the conversation just because, like I said, all of the ways that the CMO role is changing, but like, even the CMOs don't even get, like, to keep their title. You've seen like Chief Creative Officer and things like that, while all of these things still stack up to cmos. So I don't know, some real big changes in that space.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. So I'm excited for that interview. It also feels like a lot of a topic that's going to come up throughout advertising week and it feels like a lot of the news this past week kind of tees up advertising week in a lot of ways. And so before we get into the interview this week, we're going to talk about some of that news. What feels like ad overload with there was a lot of AI related ad news last week. There was. Meta had a lot of announcements on the video front, which was surprising because like, I don't know, I just feel like Meta hasn't come up so much in video in a while. Like it really kind of ceded that position to TikTok. So meta is very much trying to get back in the mix. And then YouTube, the video platform, also had some news on the short form side of things. But I want to start by talking about this ad overload because I've been feeling a bit of ad overload. And two of the bigger announcements this past week were Google rolling out ads for its AI overviews and then Microsoft cleaning up the ad experience for its Copilot service. And so both cases in which it's basically these chatbot or AI based search interfaces getting ads. It's kind of the, the new spot for ads to be going because it seems like ads just have to go everywhere they can.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah, we've written about that pretty extensively. You know, even looking at the growth of retail media networks, right, you go to a grocery site, you go to a retailer site, and beyond their own sponsored products, you're seeing other companies, endemic advertisers. So that's one landscape that's been dominated by ads at this point and a bunch of money being pumped into that. And now you're also looking at search AI ads which are being empowered. You've got perplexity. Reddit was thinking about inking a deal. TikTok has launched some search ads and whatnot. So, you know, everywhere you turn there's an ad. I think what's most interesting about that, when you talk about the fatigue ideas like Google search, adding sponsored product into their search functionality I think already caused a little bit of fatigue. Just, you know, anecdotally speaking where you go to search something and like the first 10 things on that page are just sponsored products towards, you really gotta hit page two, which God forbid anyone ever asked to do to find what you were looking for in the first place. So I will Say not even overloaded, just fatigued.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. And it's also interesting because they're putting ads in these experiences pretty early on. I don't know how many people are even using copilot or AI overviews at this point. And so I wonder if they overdo it, whether there's a risk of then people seeing these as more ad based experience of like, well, can I really trust the information that's coming through this or is this just like sponsored information every time?

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah, which I think was already a question that you saw people have with Google. So you know, given that they're adding these things to these other platforms like TikTok and Reddit and whatnot so early on, it'll be kind of interesting what that supply and demand dynamic then becomes.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, speaking of supply demand dynamics. So then Amazon had the news this past week about it's going to be increasing the ad load in Prime Video next year. Good, right?

[Kameka McCoy]

Great.

[Tim Peterson]

So now I could sit through three minutes worth of ads before an episode of Rings of Power or something like that.

[Kameka McCoy]

That's good. That's good. That's exactly what I was looking for.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, but it also kind of, I mean it's interesting in a way because that's one of the issues in the streaming ad market for the past year and a half, two years or so. Especially this year though with Prime Video hitting the market is there's more ad slots available than there are advertiser dollars or advertisers willing to buy that stuff. And so now Amazon's just going to add even more inventory to the market. I guess the other side of that is prices came down fairly dramatically on the streaming side in the shears upfront. So maybe it's okay, we're going to lower the prices to sell more ads and so then it just becomes a volume play. But then it's kind of okay. How many ads are audiences willing to tolerate? Like, am I going to get to a point where it's just like, oh, I really want to watch this movie, but it's on Prime Video and I don't want to sit through five minutes worth of ads, so maybe I watch anything else.

[Kameka McCoy]

Well, also consider like the, with the CP. I mean the CPMs have come down, but still considering like how many advertisers are willing to shell out to appear in these streaming spaces because you end up seeing the same advertisers over and over again. So that'll also be something that I think will be top of mind. At least it's top of mind for Me when I'm streaming.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. See, one thing that's becoming top of mind for me is on TikTok, I feel like I'm running into ads more often and not like ads in general. Yes. Every time I open TikTok, I feel like I am shown that ad. Like probably most people are. But the post roll ads, which they rolled out like two or three years ago, where you watch a video and then an ad plays after the video and the creator of that video is supposed to get a share of that revenue. I don't know if I'm just watching more videos to completion than I had in the past, but I'm seeing more and more. The ad will start in 5, 4. It's just like I gotta get out.

[Kameka McCoy]

It's like an escape room game. Looking for that exit.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, but. And so that's got me then thinking about another piece of news from this past week of YouTube is extending the length of shorts to three minutes. Which one? It begs the question, what even is a short form video at this point? If we're going to three minutes.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah. Because keep in mind when vine, when the idea like short form first started, that's you going back to vine rip, you know, may she rest in peace. Six seconds. That's how long you had to get a piece of content out there. Six seconds. Now we've extended the definition to three minutes. Oh my goodness. And then you had platforms that were experimenting. I think it was TikTok with 10 minutes of content. But the.

[Tim Peterson]

I think that's official. Yeah, I don't think it's an experiment anymore. I think it's like you can do 10 minute long TikTok videos.

[Kameka McCoy]

I have actually seen full blown movies. I watched the Nightmare before Christmas on TikTok the other night. But wow.

[Tim Peterson]

See I always have to like, then find like, oh, what's the next scene? Or what's the next clip? And there's just like so much effort involved. Sometimes I watch like episodes of mad men through TikTok just by like function of it popping up in the feed.

[Kameka McCoy]

Just catching up on old episodes of Law and Order. It's a good time. But it does beg the question of like, what constitutes now as short form content? Because we've really, you know, extended that definition to where now something like, you know, for a short form content app like TikTok, you've now got 10 minutes worth of video is kind of becoming more present.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. And so, and it's funny how you bring up like vine with the six seconds because that's Kind of becoming one of the default ad formats for these video platforms is the 6 second. I think when YouTube first introduced it, they called it the bumper ad. And so that was kind of the other place my mind went when I saw the news about YouTube. Extending shorts to three minutes is like, oh, it's. That probably makes it easier to insert ads into shorts because they have the Rev share program. But I haven't talked to any creator for whom that's been meaningful. But I think if you start introducing like midroll ads, if it doesn't annoy people, as we've been talking about with like ad over overload.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah.

[Tim Peterson]

But okay, three minutes, you can probably get away with putting an ad or two in there, especially if they're shorter.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah. I mean, considering people's attention spans at this point, I don't know. Three minutes could be considered long form content, depending on who you're talking to. If it's a Gen Z, er, absolutely. Very slow video, then yeah, you could definitely get away with it. The, the question then becomes, you know, how. How many ads do you put in there? And do you give me a countdown so I can swipe away if I need to?

[Tim Peterson]

Mm. Right. Which there's always like good and bad to that of like, okay, at least you know it's coming. On the other hand, like, it's like that train, like you said, but then.

[Kameka McCoy]

Also, you know it's coming.

[Tim Peterson]

Exactly. But it'll be interesting to see if, like Instagram, because reels is still capped at 90 seconds. And so it used to be shorts was the one kind of maintaining the short form standard. Now reels is at 90 seconds. But at what point does that change? Because like meta had some video announcements this week and one of them was consolidating or kind of unifying its creator monetization program. Because it has, I think, like three different ways that creators can be making money from video through meta across its various properties. But you had to qualify for each of those individually. They're doing away with that, which seems like that should be beneficial, at least less of a headache for creators.

[Kameka McCoy]

When I've talked to creators, it's been a sticking point trying to navigate that space, what platforms are offering what, and specifically when it comes to Facebook and Meta, like, which of these offerings still stand, which ones have gone away, how do I apply for these and things like that. So kind of streamlining that process, I imagine would be a win for four creators.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah. And then another thing that they just announced is on Facebook, they're going to redesign the Video player in the video tab to be a full sized video player, which is also one of those things. Why did it take this long? I think 2014 was when Facebook really started making a push for video and for video creators and video publishers Pivot to video. Ten years. Yeah, 10 years. And now like the redesign with the full player in the video tab, I don't know what that's about. I also wonder because Meta for Facebook had like talked about or maybe launched a like CTV app. But this was. Yeah, this was VidCon in like 2016, maybe something like that. Like a while back, back when Fiji Simo was running video over at Facebook and I don't think anything came of that. But maybe this is kind of precedes more of a streaming push from Facebook.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah, I was just going to say that that seems like a way, a route to get into that. And then also if other platforms are pushing into longer form content, whether it be 10 minutes or an actual streaming platform or something like that, it seems like a push to play a longer game here to compete. And then also you're going up against again Gen Z and kind of where they spend their time. And I think Facebook has spent a long time trying to clamoring, you know, clamor back and could be back in the youth's good graces. So this could be a play for that as well.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, maybe if they start putting video in Marketplace. Because my sense is like that's what Gen Z's and Facebook for. It's their new Craigslist 100%.

[Kameka McCoy]

I am not a Gen Z, but that is absolutely where you'll find me on Facebook. Give me that. Good, good furniture for cheap.

[Tim Peterson]

I don't, I don't trust like, I don't not even like Facebook Marketplace specifically just like anything Craigslist, like any of the like secondhand, even ebay.

[Kameka McCoy]

I'm just like, that's me.

[Tim Peterson]

Do I, do I know that like I'm actually going to be getting the thing. I think there's just been too many horror stories.

[Kameka McCoy]

That's me with TikTok shop. I can't be convinced that which live shopping and social shopping is a conversation we could save for another day. But the trustworthy. I don't know. You can't get me. You won't get me.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, she and save it. You're not getting in my wallet.

[Kameka McCoy]

You won't get me. You won't get me. Speaking of trustworthiness, Meta and one of their other announcements was AI which you know, a lot of the conversation that we've had, Tim, it has been less about, like, AI innovation and more about trustworthiness and whatnot. So tell me a little bit about the AI video generator that they're announcing. I think Snap announced something similar back a while ago, maybe September.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, that was last month when the Snap had its partner summit. And then obviously open AI with Sora is the big one out there. But you also have Runway LTX Studio. There's a whole number of AI video generators. And so Meta is now joining that fray, which is kind of. You would expect all of these companies to get into that. YouTube has done things and there's respect to. Although I think it's next year is when the big push on it's AI generated video really comes. I think so far it's been more about generating backgrounds and things like that and labeling, all of that. So, yeah, now Meta's getting into the game. What's gonna be interesting with all of these things is just, are these videos going to be good or is it going to be the kind of thing where the real art of it is people using these AI video generators to generate absurd videos, where it's clearly AI because it's just entirely outlandish what they're putting together. The risk is always, if these video generators are so good, that misinformation becomes an even bigger problem than it already is.

[Kameka McCoy]

Which I was just going to say, when you talk about AI and misinformation, I think Meta, specifically Facebook, kind of becomes the poster child for that. Right. Any stories that I've written, a lot of the AI generated, I think, what's the word that they've been used? AI slop. Right. The idea of like, you've got a picture of like a person with like three arms and things like that, and people being, you know, sharks in the sky and people being like, oh my God, I can't believe this happened during the latest, you know, natural disaster. So it's. I don't know what direction this now pushes us in that you now have made a motion picture out of these photos, but, I mean, that's where we're going.

[Tim Peterson]

Yeah, it's one of those things where as much as there are things that are being done to label AI videos or to have it tagged in the metadata videos, I almost wonder whether Meta and everyone else who has an AI video generator shouldn't just have a quirk of those generators be like, hands have to have six fingers at all times. Because that's always the thing with. That was the early thing with AI is Like, you know, it's an AI video when you look at a character's hands and maybe that could be like, let's just be clear about this. Look at the person's hands clearly AI video. So we'll have to, I don't know, we'll see. That's not a story that's going to stop and I imagine it's going to dominate Advertising Week. But, but I want to get to your interview with Jackie Jantos who's again CMO of Hinge and you talked about the CMO role, which plenty to be talking about there.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this was a good conversation. Like I said, the big theme here, which I think it'll probably show up at Advertising Week as well, is there's marketers are one increasingly be asked to do more with less budget. Right. While at the same time you've got these lofty brand goals that now exist because people aren't going to buy your product if they don't know who you are. Right. So the so called marketing funnel has collapsed, meaning that there has to be a better balance between brand and performance. So storytelling of the brand and getting people to buy your stuff and as a cmo, your brand, your storytelling brand narrative is now increasingly being tied to the business. So it's a tough predicament to be in. I talked to Jackie kind of about that and what that looks like in her role. And then like I mentioned at the top of the conversation is this idea of like for a product that's meant to be deleted so people, you know, get in a relationship and live happily ever after. How do you then monitor, you know, monetize that space? What do KPIs look like? It's different for a CMO of a dating app than it would be of, you know, like a standard retailer or something like that. So it was an interesting conversation and I'm excited to get to it. Before we get into the interview, if you're looking for a DSP that delivers exceptional performance and customer service, look no further than Yahoo DSP recently awarded the best Buy side programmatic platform at the 2024 Digiday Technology Awards. Yahoo DSP clients consistently rate the platform as their number one dsp, citing higher ROI and satisfaction satisfaction compared to the competitive set. Whether you're a current client or new to Yahoo, experience the difference that makes Yahoo the top choice for advertisers. Elevate your campaigns and see why Yahoo DSP is the preferred platform. Visit advertising.yahoo inc.com/dsp to learn more. Hello Jackie, and welcome to the Digiday podcast. So glad to have you. How are you today?

[Jackie Jantos]

I'm well. Thanks for including me.

[Kameka McCoy]

Of course, of course. So, as always, we'll start this episode with a fun question. As the CMO of Hinge, I'm excited to ask you this fun question. So I'm going to have you tell me the most interesting date that you've ever been on. And was it on a dating app?

[Jackie Jantos]

I love this question. I don't get a chance to answer it often enough. I met my husband on a dating app. I met Scott on a match.com about a year before Hinge was invented. Yes, our first date was very memorable. We were living in Atlanta. I was working at Coca Cola at the time, and Scott was getting his Ph.D. at Georgia State. He came to meet me across town on a Sunday at a bar in Little Five Points. And unbeknownst to me, Scott did not have a car. So he was on bike, which that is not a short ride, but not a long ride either. And it started raining halfway through. So he arrived to the bar soaking wet and I drove him home. So that was, I think, an unusual way to start a first date. It was both surprising, but it was also very humbling. And, you know, here we are almost 13 years later, married in New York.

[Kameka McCoy]

I love that story. And for those that have never visited Atlanta, biking, hoofing, hoofing it anywhere. It's an adventure within itself, let alone biking through the city. Oh my goodness. Bless Scott. I'll get right into it as the, as a CMO of Hinge, October makes it three years for you, and you've worked, like we mentioned, on some pretty big brands. You just mentioned Coca Cola. Your background has Spotify in it as well. So talk to me. How did you come into the role at Hinge? How did you become cmo, CMO here?

[Jackie Jantos]

Absolutely. Well, I have always played a role in the intersection of business and creativity. I grew up at Ogilvy, the advertising agency in the New York office, and I navigated through to Coca Cola and Spotify. I did some consulting work and arrived at Hinge at a time period where the brand and product were doing well. But it was really time to grow and in particular to grow beyond the core English speaking markets where the app had existed and launched. So I met Justin McLeod, the CEO founder, about three and a half years ago and we just started talking about the potential for this brand and this business. And I have never been in this space before. The relationship space is eternally interesting. Filled with such fascinating, rich, very human insights and challenges. And I was just drawn to the opportunity to come into this organization, one that is very much CEO, founder, led, exists within a strong set of values and principles. And it just felt like a really interesting place for me to be. So I joined almost three years ago and really we've done some really incredible work and we've grown quite significantly since then. And we launched outside of those core English speaking markets that I mentioned earlier. So it's been a really amazing journey.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah. Talk to me about that transition. Right? You're coming from a place like Coca Cola where there's like a physical product, right? And you're moving to a relationship based space kind of. What was that position, that transition? Excuse me?

[Jackie Jantos]

Like, you know, one of the things that I often tell people about Coke is that it's a great example of working on a product that literally does not change. I had worked on brand Coca Cola for most of my time there. And so the only thing that does change is how the brand sort of represents itself and finds relevance with each new generation. And that basically puts you into a world where you're acutely focused on human beings, what motivates them, and also thinking a lot about culture and where culture is going. And so when you're paying attention to insights at that elevation, you just really become a marketer who's very focused on culture, very focused on brand relevance and finding meaning and finding that connection between a product, a brand and an individual in a really compelling way. And so moving into hinge, what I bring with me is that focus on how you help a brand develop and connect with culture, connect with new and modern audiences and ultimately serve their needs. And what I have loved about being here is that the product itself is helping people find relationships and find love. And there is no more powerful category I think to be in right now.

[Kameka McCoy]

I actually want to talk about the role of a CMO. I think right now CMOs have found themselves back in the spotlight, right? It's a highly debated place to be. Gap recently brought back the role of the CMO after a two year hiatus. Hyundai, however, is choosing to face that role out. So what do you think the role of a CMO looks like in today's landscape?

[Jackie Jantos]

It is interesting and I think CMOs take on many different shades within the organization where they're based. For me, I think as a cmo, my role is to orient the organization, the strategy around long term growth and to be paying attention to where consumers and audiences and culture is going. I think Ultimately, the CMO and their team are the ones who are the closest to the audience themselves. They're the most connected to creativity. They're most connected to how culture is taking new shape and where audiences are going and where sort of the world is evolving. And so in some ways I see myself and I see my team's role as really staying connected to how we best serve this next generation of daters as we think of Gen Z, what products might be more useful to them, how might we offer advice and guidance in all of our brand and media ecosystem and really staying tapped into that, because I think it's easy to be distracted by really short term goals and short term metrics. But ultimately, if your goal as a CMO is to build a sustainable long term business, then you need to be shooting the arrow sort of 10 years out and better understanding how your product will navigate that and how your brand will stay relevant along that way.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah. Which no easy task, right?

[Jackie Jantos]

No, but it's. There are ways into doing that work that are acutely connected to creativity and audiences that are creating and making culture. And therein lies a whole host of innovation and work that is very enriching.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah. I want to delve back into kind of how you came into the role of cmo. I think one of the things that's important to note, or interesting rather, is this. I. Like a couple years ago, I think we debated when social media managers first became more widely recognized as a necessity as opposed to a nice to have. Right. And it was debated like, does a social media manager, can that be on track to becoming a cmo? Right. So talk to me a little about what your pathway to CMO looked like. What skills do you think kind of came into play there and like, what that looks like for somebody who would want to be a CMO of a major company in the future.

[Jackie Jantos]

Yeah. Well, you know, one thing that some people don't know about me is that I grew up in Tokyo and so I feel really comfortable being dropped into an environment where I don't necessarily fit in or feel like I immediately belong in finding my way out. And a lot of that is through watching and learning and being deeply curious about things that are happening around me. So my first role outside of college at Ogilvy was really mostly the new business space. And in those types of roles, you are supporting very seasoned and senior leaders in the organization who are essentially pitching for new clients. And so it was a masterclass for a period of time at Ogilvy just watching all of these different discoveries Disciplines interact, show how they did their work, pitch their work to new clients. And I think in some ways my role there really was about being useful to them, doing their work, and therefore gaining access into the room to watch and learn. So I've always encouraged people to start someplace you find interesting. I found the intersection of art, creativity and business fascinating. And having grown up overseas, seeing global brands that were very familiar to me in some of the markets and areas of the world I was visiting as a kid that were not was actually a huge reason why I started paying attention to global brands and thinking about them in more thoughtful ways and being curious about how that happens. That I see Coca Cola in remote areas of China where there are so much unfamiliar things around me, there is this one thing that I really recognize and feel comfortable and confident about. So I think I always tell people, find a place to start, any place. Don't put too much thought into it. You really have so much to learn in the early stages of your career and listen and learn and be useful. I think I was so useful to the people around me and I was so willing to try different things along the way that I just got pulled in to so many places and mostly through my career, I've been pulled to new roles and pulled to new opportunities. And I think that usefulness and that constant learning is really, really important. I always encourage people to just start there.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah, that's, you know, when I've had similar conversations about my own career and I always tell people like, I've always, I've always just kind of like stumbled into my jobs of, you know, I've developed a skill set and then said, hey, this would be useful here. And then just kind of like taken the leap, gone into that role and then, you know, build another skill set and move there. That being said, you know, do think there is any trajectory to becoming a CMO or does just kind of depend on, you know, how you, how you stumble through it?

[Jackie Jantos]

I'm not sure. In truth, when you started the question you asked about social media managers, you know, we don't have any social media managers at Hinge because we don't manage our own. Hinge owned social channels. So if you were to go to INE on Instagram, you would just see a single tile that says the dating app designed to be deleted. So we have creator marketing managers as one example, because creators are how we get to our core Gen Z audience in social media. And the way that we bring them in is quite unique. And the way that we do work with them is quite unique. I would look at the own, my own marketing team and I could easily see a path to CMO from multiple members and multiple disciplines. Because I do think particularly now more than ever technology is changing the way brands and humans are interacting. And so the channels and ways we're going out to market today are so different than when I was at Spotify, are so different than when I was at Coca Cola, are so different when I was in college and didn't have a cell phone. So I think you have to have this curiosity about where the world is going and how you serve people's needs within that because change will be constant. If you imagine there to be a direct path or a set of lessons that a university can teach of how to be a CMO right now, they will be, I promise you they will be irrelevant in 10 years.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If even. 10 years. If even.

[Jackie Jantos]

Well, I'm trying to think that, you know, the journey to becoming a CMO post college in tiny organizations could be 10 years. But yes, I don't know that that would be the. I don't know that there is a playbook. But certainly being a self starter and always being curious and always staying connected to people is a great start point.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah. You mentioned the idea of change and I think that is notorious with the role of a CMO. Right. I think the 10 year last time I checked was like two, three years just because there's so much change that happens in that space. But talk to me a little bit how the changing definition of cmo, you know, arose by any other name. But whether it be Chief Growth Officer or Chief Strategy Officer and the list goes on. How does the changing definition of a CMO and what the expectations are around that role change how you approach your work at Hinge?

[Jackie Jantos]

Right. Well, I think for me the CMO role, its naming and also its remit in general should be both a healthy mix of short term and sort of immediate goals and priorities. But importantly, it should also be a very healthy mix of long term goals and long term priorities. And one of the challenges with the short tenure is can you see impact to a brand at global scale based on sort of harder and longer out things to measure like reputation in a year's time? I don't know, you can. So I think in some ways if you really are focused on the long term, you, you tend to be perhaps the kind of CMO who wants to stick around for a period of time to see that through fruition. Because you know, one of the things that we do At Hinge is we don't have short term or spike oriented campaigns. We build platforms that we can build on over time. So everything from Hingey, this furry icon who represents the app, getting deleted every time a couple meets, meets on Hinge. Hinge been around, I think since 2019 predates my arrival to Hinge. And we continue to build on that story over time and see the equity continue to grow. Other platforms that we've stood up this year, for example, our social impact platform, one more hour, that's also something that we iterate and build on over time. And so I think you really miss the opportunity to develop Iterate and learn from those types of programs with your audience. If you're making such short term knee jerk decisions and not letting things kind of play out, adapt and grow in the way that can provide some really sustained long term growth.

[Kameka McCoy]

You bring up a really interesting point because I think one of the pressure points that CMOs are facing is the, the idea of marrying brand and performance, right? We want the creativity, but we've also got to make sure that the numbers are there. Brands want sales and subscriptions. But you guys are at an interesting crossroads because Hinge is the app that's meant to be deleted and people are supposed to, you know, be living in couple bliss and not necessarily coming back to the app. So talk to me a little bit about how do you guys measure success? What does success look like for your role?

[Jackie Jantos]

Yeah, well, you know, I will say Hinge as the dating app designed to be deleted. That is not just marketing positioning, that is also how our teams think when they're building the app itself. So, you know from features like your turn limits that help you hone in on who you're conversing with and actually start to determine limitations to how many messages you can have open at any one time. Because we want you to close out a conversation. Because if you're keeping a conversation open, there's another human on the other side of that who's waiting for you to respond. So the product itself is also trying to encourage you to move through the experience to get out on a date. And marketing supplements and reiterates that message in all other spaces. At the end of the day, if we are successful in driving the outcome of getting people out on dates, the odds are people will be really successful in finding partners and deleting the app. And that is the most potent organic marketing one can ever have. A product that works. And there are so many people who are looking for relationships. So it's really cool. When you see people find relationships and being at hinge, when you meet someone who met their partner on hinge, it is such a powerful moment because to impact someone's life in that way is quite profound, particularly in a world where we know that people are feeling acute levels of social isolation and loneliness now more than ever. And we can talk about that in a little bit too. So I think in some ways we of course look to grow the number of individuals coming into the app to try it. And that is primarily what most marketing organizations and CMOs are held accountable for driving growth. And I think for us, we also, you know, I'm not as concerned about balancing performance marketing and brand marketing. I've sort of moved forward to a place where I'm trying to balance brand marketing and social impact. An area that is even further out and may not even be directly tied to the idea of getting people to date in romantic ways, but is still doing a job at helping your core audience feel a certain way, believe in your brand in a certain way, and hopefully you're impacting their social and emotional health in a way where they're able to have a better experience on your product and through your brand. So those are sort of higher elevated areas of extreme focus for me right now.

[Kameka McCoy]

You have ventured us into a new dimension here, so I, I want you to talk a little bit more about that. You know, the. For the idea of like social impact, how do you, or do you at all attach KPIs and things like that? So when you do walk into a boardroom meeting and you've got key stakeholders wondering about said growth and things like that, how do you then tie those two things together, if you do at all?

[Jackie Jantos]

Right, right. Well, it's, it's definitely challenging and I think you need to have a founder, CEO and a leadership team and myself that believes in the value of impact. There are a couple ways we tie into it. One is individuals can't date well if they're not feeling well. So it is core to our business to empower people to feel healthier and to feel motivated to meet each other in person, because that's what our app is trying to encourage people to do. And so that very much ties into serving the needs of our core Gen Z audience. And that is really important. And you know, I think the other reality is we know that Gen Z audiences feel more connected to brands that are doing right by the world and doing right by them, and they are more connected to brands that share their values. And so I think if you're A marketer focusing on a Gen Z audience or a product developer focusing on a Gen Z audience. If you're not also thinking about their whole lives and how you can better serve them and serve some of the most impactful sort of realities that are shaping how they're feeling and showing up every day, then you probably won't be likely to play a really relevant role in their life. And therein lies sort of the conundrum. You know, for us, we want to be in service of this audience because to do so means that we're more credible to them, more more relevant to them, and they're more likely to trust us when they are ready to have a relationship. To try dating on Hinge so it.

[Kameka McCoy]

Does kind of tie into that word of mouth marketing that you were kind of talking about in attracting new users just by having that social impact backing.

[Jackie Jantos]

Absolutely. Hinge is the fastest growing dating app, has been for a couple of years. We're number one or number two in almost all of the markets where we operate based on downloads. And we have just had incredible growth in a category that has remained relatively stagnant. So I think the proof is in the growth and it is really inspiring for me to show a category that is not particularly focused on growth and has been more focused on engagement and revenue for a number of years. To show that growth over time is the most important thing that comes from actually serving your users needs and serving the outcomes they're looking for and revenue and all these other things follow. Hinge has had this belief since the beginning that if you focus on doing the right thing by your users, the growth will come and the revenue will come. And we just fundamentally believe that.

[Kameka McCoy]

Yeah, I want to keep on that thread. Right. Typically being an executive at a brand means people are buying the product and coming back to it. That obviously looks different for a dating app. And then you've got Gen Z, which, you know, based on headlines, is a little disillusioned with dating in general, let alone dating apps. So talk to me about what does marketing at a dating app look like for you? Kind of, what's the strategy? How do we do that effectively?

[Jackie Jantos]

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things core to our strategy. One is a principle we call with not for, and that is really about engaging with Gen Z and subsets of Gen Z in deeply rich and relevant ways by making sure we have enough representation at the table when we're developing marketing programs and building them. So they are really thoughtful in terms of how they're engaging with a particular audience. So for example, some work we were doing to engage the trans community required more representation inside of our four walls. So we brought in an organization, Transtext Social, to help complement our team in doing that work. So we are always looking at the work we're doing and making sure that people doing the work very far upstream, all the way through execution, are representatives of the audiences we're hoping to engage. So that I think is a really, really important piece, particularly in the relationship space where messages and communication that we put into the market need to feel highly relevant. And so if people don't feel seen or heard in our work, that is a very quick break in our connection with them. And the other thing I would say is we really focus on going to audiences where they are. I mentioned we don't use our own social channels. We do a lot of our work through creators that we partner with. And so how we engage with creators and how we work with them is really, really important. You know, we want to work with creators where we're potentially the first brand they've worked with. We want to work with creators who bring credibility to their audience and are going to want to engage with us with a high level of emotional intelligence because we're in a category that really demands that we want to work with creators who are really telling their truth. And so this means that we have to be constantly innovative. We need to innovate on talent writers, how we work in flexible ways to meet creators needs, how we pay equitably across the board, all these sorts of things. And, and I think in some ways the how Hinge does work is really what's differentiating our work from the category. Things like we just put into the market a zine called no Ordinary Love. And this was a story of unexpected love stories of six couples who met on Hinge, told through the voice of six really strong, well known writers. And that's an example of work where we were looking at TikTok, we were looking at Book Talk, we're looking at the reemergence of romance lit and we're tying together what we know about couples expectations of meeting and trying to encourage the chaotic, unexpected moments, because that is very real. We're looking at what type of content that audience is engaging with. We're looking at relevant channels, we're watching the emergence of physical artifacts and ephemera coming back into the world. And we're tying together all of these insights of where the audience is and trying to meet them there in a way that feels really creative and unexpected. And Then of course, when we have done that, we can use all of our other channels, be it digital, social, out of home streaming, to amplify those campaigns. But we kind of start with this pure essence of trying to find the most compelling way to go to them where they are in a way that feels really relevant and credible.

[Kameka McCoy]

You've hit on the idea of social impact a couple of times and I want to lean into that. Right now you're seeing a lot of brands lean out of that, right? Have made statements saying we are pulling away from social justice, we're pulling away from social impact, we're pulling away from De and I. Right. Why lean into social impact when others are leaning out?

[Jackie Jantos]

Yeah, I mean, first of all, if you're marketing or building a product for Gen Z, you should know that one of the major things happening in their lives is that they are facing an acute crisis of loneliness. The Surgeon General in the US called this an epidemic. And in many ways it is fueled by the reality that they are spending a, a thousand less hours per year in person with others. When you break apart a 365 day year, like that's two plus hours a day not spent with a parent, a caretaker, a sibling, a friend, a romantic partner, you know, all of it. So they are acutely lonely and feeling isolated. So it's really, really important that we acknowledge that and that we acknowledge how they're feeling in order to show up for, particularly when you're in the relationship space. Because again, people cannot go into relationships unless they feel the confidence and open mindedness and all of these sort of this energy to sort of try. Right. Because it's hard. Dating is not easy and it's not straightforward. So I think we first know that we need to be having impact on people's lives beyond the impact that our product has and that that's really, really important to us. Also, I think if you're trying to engage Gen Z, it is a very diverse audience every generation. You know, behind my own is more lgbtqia, defining just so many nuances and identity that are becoming more and more progressive. And in order to stay attuned to that and attune to people's needs, you really need to be constantly thinking about whether or not you have enough diversity on your team, whether or not you are including all of the right people, all of the creators, really the wealth of perspectives. You know, I'm constantly reminded that my own lived experience is only as broad as my own lived experience. And so in many ways if we're not Embracing more diverse lived experiences inside our four walls. We're missing deep opportunities to learn, to grow, and to create programs for modern audiences that need them in order to feel connected to your brand. So I think we are not living in a time where now is the moment to step back from DEI and from thinking about social impact. Now is the moment, particularly if you're trying to build a sustainable long term business, to drive right into that and have the really hard questions along the way.

[Kameka McCoy]

Absolutely. The last thing that I want to ask you is kind of a culmination of our conversation, right. We talked about having to maintain attention, especially online, right. Where there's so much noise happening all the time. We talked about the pressures around DE and I, we talked about the pressure around brand marketing versus performance marketing and whatnot. So kind of, you know, all that considered, what would you say is the biggest challenge that you are facing in your role as a CMO and then also that CMOs are facing?

[Jackie Jantos]

Well, I love my job. So when you say challenge, I think joy. It's really fun to be challenged and it's really fun to be, particularly working inside of a relationship space where you so want to support people in finding partnerships because relationships at their core, at their core are, you know, the essence of life. And I feel a deep privilege in being able to sit and think about this type of work every day and work with an incredible team. I think all marketers are always facing a ton of change, whether it's organizational or media related or audience related. And I think the eternal challenge is just staying focused and being able to prioritize and being able to help guide your team around where to focus and where to let distractions just kind of of melt away and sort of, you know, be put on the sidelines. For now, I think, not so surprisingly, when you're working with really dynamic, diverse teams, it's also important that there is a sense of community built between that team because it takes so many different disciplines and lived experiences to pull off some of the greatest programs and programming in the marketing space that happens. And so just constantly trying to bring people into conversations. And as a cmo, my focus is really the group of people I'm accountable for helping grow. And so I spend a lot of my time focused on the team, focused on how to coach and support them, how to open doors and how to encourage all of us to take risks along the way where we might not know what the end result will be, but we know we're going to learn a lot from it. And then sharing those learnings and continuing to plod forward.

[Kameka McCoy]

Absolutely. Listen, Jackie, thank you so much for stopping by the Digiday Podcast. It's been a great conversation.

[Jackie Jantos]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Kameka McCoy]

Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of the Digiday Podcast. Thank you to everyone for listening. And please don't forget to share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it. You can even rate us and leave us a comment on Apple Podcasts. We'll be back next week with another episode of the Digiday Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.