Chaos, Creativity & Courage - how Tubi took on the streaming giants - Nicole Parlapiano

Summary

Uncensored CMO: Chaos, Creativity & Courage - How Tubi Took on the Streaming Giants with Nicole Parlapiano

Release Date: May 14, 2025
Host: Jon Evans
Guest: Nicole Parlapiano, CMO of Tubi

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1. Introduction and Background

In this episode of Uncensored CMO, host Jon Evans welcomes Nicole Parlapiano, one of the most entrepreneurial Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in the United States. Nicole brings a wealth of experience from her tenure at high-profile companies like WeWork and Tinder, as well as her entrepreneurial venture in the dating app space. Her recent nomination as Forbes' Entrepreneurial CMO sets the stage for an insightful discussion about navigating the volatile landscape of marketing in tech-driven industries.

2. Defining an Entrepreneurial CMO

Nicole kicks off by elucidating what it means to be an entrepreneurial CMO. She emphasizes a board-level vision and the importance of thinking beyond traditional marketing boundaries.

Nicole (01:10): "You're thinking with a board lens. You're thinking across the business... about how we're going to win in an industry, in a market."

This approach involves driving impact beyond marketing, incorporating the consumer's voice into product, content, and financial strategies, even if it means stepping outside conventional marketing roles.

3. Marketing Beyond Traditional Boundaries

Jon and Nicole delve into the expansive role of marketing, highlighting that it's much more than just creative campaigns. Nicole underscores the necessity for marketers to adopt a business-first perspective, being resourceful and flexible in the face of limited budgets and rapid technological changes.

Nicole (02:42): "You have to dig deep and you have to get that entrepreneurial spirit... to constantly challenge yourself."

This mindset fosters innovation and adaptability, crucial for navigating today's disrupted markets.

4. Nicole's Career Journey

Nicole shares her personal career trajectory, starting with her experience during the 2008 financial recession. Losing her job in private equity, she pivoted to marketing at eHarmony, marking her entry into the tech and marketing spheres.

Nicole (06:30): "I had to really think about what am I going to do to make money... from nannying to selling Christmas trees."

Her entrepreneurial spirit led her to co-found a dating app aimed at younger audiences, which was eventually acquired by Match Group, despite not achieving standalone success.

5. Lessons from WeWork

Nicole recounts her tumultuous experience at WeWork, witnessing its meteoric rise and dramatic crash. She reflects on the intense growth phases and the subsequent fallout when the company's valuation plummeted.

Nicole (12:07): "Going from a $4 billion valuation to barely 500 million is not an easy thing to experience."

This period taught her the importance of financial prudence and resilience, crucial traits for any CMO navigating corporate upheavals.

6. Transition to Tinder and Cultural Adaptation

Following WeWork's collapse, Nicole transitioned to Tinder just before the COVID-19 pandemic intensified the challenges at WeWork. She discusses the stark cultural differences between the two companies and the importance of reading the room when integrating into a new organizational environment.

Nicole (19:40): "I should have decompressed more... sometimes you need a little bit more tact and a little bit more grace."

This adaptability was pivotal in her successful shift to Tinder, where she could apply her marketing prowess in a more stable and innovative setting.

7. Creativity and Risk-Taking in Marketing

A significant portion of the conversation centers around embracing creativity and taking calculated risks. Nicole highlights the success of Tubi's Super Bowl ad, a disruptive campaign executed in partnership with Mischief, known for their bold and unconventional advertising strategies.

Nicole (35:22): "We'll get fired for the things we don't do and the risks we don't take... you might as well go out swinging."

This philosophy underscores the necessity of boldness in marketing to stand out in a saturated market.

8. Case Study: Tubi's Super Bowl Ad

Nicole elaborates on Tubi's Super Bowl advertisement, which featured a giant rabbit abductor navigating viewers to personalized content rabbit holes. The ad was designed to disrupt traditional streaming narratives and highlight Tubi's unique, consumer-driven approach.

Jon Evans (41:02): "The biggest antidote to neutrality was surprise."

This strategy paid off, as the ad elicited strong emotional responses, significantly reducing audience indifference and increasing engagement.

9. Brand Redesign for Tubi

Nicole discusses the comprehensive brand redesign undertaken at Tubi to align with the company's evolving ethos. Collaborating closely with design experts, they revamped the brand's visual and verbal identity to reflect values of being inviting, exciting, and mischievous.

Nicole (47:56): "When we really got in touch with who the brand was and what it meant to people, the design system did not reflect those emotions."

The redesign extended beyond digital interfaces to physical spaces and event representations, ensuring a consistent and emotionally resonant brand presence.

10. Innovative Strategies in Streaming and Advertising

In addressing the competitive streaming landscape, Nicole outlines Tubi's unique positioning as a free, ad-supported platform. She emphasizes the importance of educating advertisers on targeting capabilities and leveraging Tubi's diverse audience base, which includes 30-40% of viewers who do not consume other forms of streaming.

Nicole (48:19): "It is an essential part of your media buy and free streaming in particular, because it offers scale."

This approach not only broadens the advertising market but also enhances Tubi's value proposition by catering to underrepresented viewer segments.

11. Balancing Corporate and Creative Priorities

Nicole provides insights into maintaining a balance between corporate objectives and creative innovation. She stresses the importance of strategic alignment and ensuring that creative initiatives are grounded in business goals.

Nicole (60:19): "What are we trying to overcome and what's the challenge? And how does this creative deliver on those things."

This disciplined approach ensures that creativity serves as a vessel for achieving tangible business outcomes rather than existing in isolation.

12. Advice for Aspiring CMOs

Wrapping up, Nicole offers valuable advice to the next generation of CMOs. She encourages patience, flexibility, and embracing diverse career paths. Nicole emphasizes that resilience and the ability to pivot are critical for long-term success.

Nicole (64:19): "Take that pressure off, give yourself some grace. Where you start doesn't need to be where you end up."

She advocates for a varied career journey, highlighting that non-linear paths often cultivate the most innovative and effective marketing leaders.

13. Final Thoughts: Embracing Resilience and Creativity

In conclusion, Nicole underscores the importance of resilience and creative problem-solving in marketing leadership. She reflects on the collective experiences of navigating failures and successes, advocating for a culture that celebrates both.

Nicole (68:09): "There's more of that. More of the differences... More of the soldiers than me."

Jon Evans and Nicole agree on the necessity of recognizing and honoring the varied journeys of marketing professionals, fostering an environment where creativity thrives amidst constraints.

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Key Takeaways:

• Entrepreneurial Vision: CMOs should adopt a holistic, board-level perspective, driving cross-functional impact.

• Adaptability and Resilience: Navigating corporate upheavals and cultural shifts requires flexibility and mental fortitude.

• Bold Creativity: Taking calculated risks and embracing unconventional strategies can significantly enhance brand visibility and engagement.

• Strategic Brand Alignment: Ensuring that creative initiatives are tightly aligned with business objectives fosters sustainable growth.

• Educating Stakeholders: Effectively communicating the unique value propositions to advertisers and internal teams is crucial for platform success.

• Mentorship for Future Leaders: Encouraging diverse career paths and resilience can cultivate the next generation of innovative marketing leaders.

Notable Quotes:

• Nicole (01:10): "You're thinking with a board lens. You're thinking across the business... about how we're going to win in an industry, in a market."

• Nicole (35:22): "We'll get fired for the things we don't do and the risks we don't take... you might as well go out swinging."

• Nicole (47:56): "When we really got in touch with who the brand was and what it meant to people, the design system did not reflect those emotions."

• Nicole (60:19): "What are we trying to overcome and what's the challenge? And how does this creative deliver on those things."

• Nicole (64:19): "Take that pressure off, give yourself some grace. Where you start doesn't need to be where you end up."

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This episode offers a profound exploration of the multifaceted role of an entrepreneurial CMO, blending personal anecdotes with strategic insights. Nicole Parlapiano's journey exemplifies the intersection of resilience, creativity, and strategic acumen essential for leading marketing initiatives in today's dynamic business environment.

Transcript

[Nicole]

Foreign.

[John Evans]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored cmo. Now in this episode, I'm talking to one of the most entrepreneurial CMOs in the US right now, Nicole from Tubi. She has an amazing background and track record, having worked in some fascinating businesses like WeWork and Tinder and before that even having her own startup in the dating space. I love Nicole. She has so much experience, so much wisdom, and there are lots of lessons from her journey that I think you'll find absolutely fascinating, not least what she's doing on Tubi right now. Here it is. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Uncensored cmo and I'm delighted to be joined by Nicole from Tubi. Welcome to the show.

[Nicole]

Thank you for having me.

[John Evans]

Very excited, very excited to have you. And I must start with congratulations because you've recently just been nominated. Not nominated, given Entrepreneurial CMO of Forbes, which is fantastic.

[Nicole]

It is. It was one of the ones I've. Not that I'm not proud of them all, but I feel like entrepreneurial CMO is one of the bigger things you want to be known for. Yeah.

[John Evans]

100%. Dying to ask you then, what makes an entrepreneurial CMA?

[Nicole]

I think first and foremost you're thinking with a board lens. You're thinking across the business. You are thinking about driving impact outside of marketing. You are bringing the voice of the consumer into the room for product, for content, for your cfo, for your CEO. A lot of it can be uncomfortable because I think you have to be comfortable stepping out of your lane and maybe stepping into on other people's toes. But if you see a business opportunity, maybe it's not necessarily something that marketing can solve and drive, but there's a bigger business opportunity. Doesn't mean you can't be spearheading an initiative that is product or content driven and championing people to get on board, you know, so it's really, I think, thinking about the business from all angles and not just thinking about how marketing can drive the business, but how the business can move forward and taking a long term lens on how we're going to win in an industry, in a market. And sometimes that might not be a marketing initiative.

[John Evans]

I love that answer, actually, because like so, so much of marketing I think is beyond what people traditionally call marketing, don't they?

[Nicole]

Yes. It's not just creative.

[John Evans]

Yeah, I know. It's like we seem to go default that.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

But if I look at the, the big transformations I've had in my career, most of them aren't traditional marketing. It might Be, you know, business, organization, change or kind of sometimes I've had no budget and been able to do things on no budget or their ways of getting products into distribution that, you know, didn't happen before. But I think it's so important, isn't it, as marketers to think, think from a business first point of view rather than just going, oh, what's the marketing? Answers this question I've got.

[Nicole]

Yeah. Or you could say, you know what a non entrepreneur is like, oh, I don't have the money to do this or I can't compete because I don't have the things that other people have. Like you have to dig deep and you have to get that entrepreneurial spirit of like maybe there's a partnership, maybe there's another brand or business and you are that person reaching out on LinkedIn and it's a strategic partnership. So I think that it really has to do with what, you know, not looking at your, you know, your weaknesses as reasons why you can't break through or do the job traditionally you have to constantly challenge yourself and you know, marketers, whether it be no matter what you're marketing, we are at the forefront of technology and change. We have experienced so much disruption, technological and cultural where every day something can happen and the way that it's landing with consumers and how they're feeling is not how it was yesterday. So I think that like you just have to be nimble and you have to be flexible and you can't be too like married to a creative campaign or promotional calendar. You have to really be responsive. So I think that all those elements come to play. And you know, a lot of the businesses that I have worked for have been either sometimes very culture forward like entertainment dating or not as culture forward office based financial services. But still you have to kind of know the sentiment of consumers and overall what's going on and what they need to hear and what your. How your business plays a role in that moment.

[John Evans]

Yeah, exactly. There's a lovely quote actually from Corey from Elf, who I had on the podcast last year and she said kind of success is defined by the distance between the C suite and the consumer and from the time between insight to action.

[Nicole]

Yes.

[John Evans]

I thought how a brilliant summary of exactly that, isn't it?

[Nicole]

It is.

[John Evans]

We represent the customer, don't we? Effectively in the organization.

[Nicole]

We do. And people would, you know, comparing it to a restaurant. We're front of house.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

We are the hostess and the weird. We, we are talking to everyone, making sure they're comfortable, making sure they're happy dealing with complaints, dealing with good things, bad things, timing. And then you think about the rest of the organization. You have your chef who is like, you're talking to the chef about what the consumers want, what they like, what they sent back. So we play a really important role. And I think just, I think that is our job is to make sure that the viewer or the consumer never gets lost in everything that we're doing.

[John Evans]

I mean, talk about staying in your lane as well. The other thing I notice is that entrepreneurial CMOs rally entire organizations. They're not just sticking to this is the marketing plan, but to create real change and have a vision. You've got to get everybody on board, haven't you? And I think we've got roles internally probably as much as externally to communicate to the business about how we're gonna achieve our goals.

[Nicole]

Yeah. And what role, like brand isn't just creative campaigns. Brand is a North Star. It's what we all operate from. It's who we believe we are in the marketplace and it's how we deploy products, content, services. It's everything. And everything has to be wrapped around that. And you have to really question organizations. If there's initiatives that fall outside of serving the brand and the difference and the role that we play in the market, should we be doing them right? It does. It can drive a lot of energy and a lot of focus in an organization because ultimately we're the ones that are partnering with the CEO to what is our mission? What do we mean in the world? And then everything cascades, you know, from that.

[John Evans]

There's a lovely little phrase you use, I think in the write up about the entrepreneurial 50, which you talked about your career being chaotic.

[Nicole]

I love chaos.

[John Evans]

I know, which doesn't surprise me. And you referred to being in some uncomfortable or pushing yourselves, yourself in some uncomfortable positions. So how important is that chaos been in terms of your learning and what have been the most kind of chaotic moments that you've had to embrace?

[Nicole]

I would say, like, you know, I'm not. I always haven't been as comfortable with it. I would say the pivot point for me was really in 2008, I was working in private equity. I was going back to school to get my mba and we were dealing with extreme. It was the recession. I worked in financial services. Like it was chaos. And I had to really. I lost my job during that time. I was in business school and I had to stay in la. So I had to really think about what am I going to do to make money full stop. And that involved everything from nannying to selling Christmas trees to like. I mean, that's a humbling experience. I'm someone that is getting a master's degree in business, slinging Christmas trees on a lot because that's what I needed to do. And in that time, I had to make a switch. There was no jobs in financial services, certainly not in LA at that time. And so I took a chance on taking a job at eHarmony, which was my first marketing job. And that was uncomfortable because I had never worked in tech. I had never worked within a marketing organization. I started way at the bottom, and so I just absorb everything like a sponge. And I'm a super curious person. And if I'm interested in a business model, I find it very energizing. And dating in 2009 was like, you know, before the iPhone. I mean, it was like this idea that technology could help connect people romantically was extremely interesting to me because it's. It's not just a tech product. The psychology of how people are compatible and what makes them happy long term is like, it's so interesting. So that's why I took the job. And that was my, you know, first cutting my teeth in tech and first cutting my teeth in. In marketing. And I was doing, you know, I was on the acquisition marketing team. So it was similar that you're thinking about capital deployment. How are we driving, you know, qualified registered registrants? Which means, like, they had a real intent to meet somebody on the product. They took the time to fill out a great bio. It wasn't just measuring on how many overall Reggies we got. It was the quality of these people and what they do to an ecosystem and community. That actually is what makes the product successful. So that's where I started. And then after that, I mean, when I graduated business school, I started my. I had two partners and we started our own dating company because we really felt like there was a gap in the market for younger people. Everyone, I mean, you had match and eHarmony, which were the bigger players then, and they weren't really suited for younger people. And dating and being in a city like la, that's a little bit more isolating than New York, it's very hard to meet people. This is also pre Uber. So, you know, it was a dating app that helped you plan your night out based on neighborhood and the guy type that you were interested in. So it would say on Thursday nights, if you want to meet that Hollywood agent, that Ari Gold type of person, go to this Bar on this night and you're gonna find that. That person. And it was very fun. So I had the experience of building a product, trying to raise money, pivoting product because investors at that time were telling us, well, it should be this or that. And of course it was a lot of male investors that aren't single. And so you can get rattled and try to pivot your product or you can stay true. We struggled and ultimately we did get bought by Match Group and we didn't make our own app.

[John Evans]

Oh, no.

[Nicole]

Yeah. So like that, those.

[John Evans]

Despite them buying.

[Nicole]

Yeah, yeah. We just, we didn't hit. We didn't, you know, that's how earn outs work. And so. And then I went agency side during that time because I had to. I could only do that for about nine months to 12 months before I ran out of money.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

And I had to work. So I was. Then took a job on the agency side.

[John Evans]

Yeah, yeah. I so resonate with that. I did. I left a big corporate job maybe 10 years ago and put all my life savings into management. Buy out of a small. A small drinks business.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Sims you actually, despite smashing the targets, they move the goalposts for the earn out. So. I know.

[Nicole]

Can they do that?

[John Evans]

Yeah. Well, when you're a minority shareholder, you realize they could do anything they want. Read. Read the small, read the fine print.

[Nicole]

Right.

[John Evans]

Honestly, I had a meeting with a lawyer and the manual, the. Not the manual, sorry, what is it called? The investor agreement or something. I can't remember the official term for it. It was like a book. And then, you know, the lawyer sort of said, you know, marked it all up and said, right. There are 15 things you need to pay attention to. These are they? And I don't remember anywhere in that conversation.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

That they could change the goalposts.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

And the one that really caught me out was if they sold to another private equity company, they could roll over my investment without me taking money out.

[Nicole]

Okay.

[John Evans]

When I, when I worked that out four years in, I'm like, hang on a minute. So I could be, I could be subject to a change in ownership, have no control over who we sell to and my investment go into that new company that I have no, you know, no influence over at all. It was a tough, tough lesson. It's why they kind of say you always make your money on your second deal, not your first deal. Definitely just fast track this little bit of learning, you know.

[Nicole]

But I think it's also like just what we've experienced in the past 10 years is everyone thinking going into startups that it's a win, win all the time for everyone. We don't often talk about the failures or the difficulties, we just talk about the unicorns that were successful. And I happen to be tied to one of the biggest ramp ups and crashes and falls in tech, which is WeWork, which I was there before the first round of SoftBank money came in. We were on this incredible run. 120, 130% year on year revenue growth, opening buildings in new markets globally, adding 60 to 150 new buildings monthly.

[John Evans]

Monthly.

[Nicole]

It was insane. And then having to shelve an IPO and then try to evade bankruptcy and that whole thing crashing. Going from like a $4 billion valuation to barely, you know, 500 million is not an easy thing to experience. But I think it's a, it's a learning lesson and that was a, you know, kind of a very visible one that it's not always going to win, it's not always a smash hit. Your first business isn't always the one that succeeds. Just constant repetition. Right.

[John Evans]

How do you pick yourself up off that? Because it's quite hard, isn't it, when you put a lot of your experience, expertise, your identity, even, you know, into something like that and then it doesn't work.

[Nicole]

So I would say because I have an MBA and because I had worked in private equity, I had a very realistic view of the numbers and the valuation and I pulled money out every tender offer, every time SoftBank gave us money, I cashed in all my chips. I didn't take most of my comp in equity like other employees did. And every time that I said I was, you know, I'm gonna take the tender offer, they're like, but they're only offering like $50 a share. I said, I think that's fair, I think that's a fair price. I'm gonna, you can hold, but I'm not going to because this is a costly business to be in. There's not a lot of scale here. We haven't developed a lot of tech that's gon us scale. Subleasing buildings, building them out as short term rentals. It's very capital intensive business. And so while I thought it was a valuable company, I don't think the valuation ever matched what it was. And if there's a book on WeWork and I'm in one of the chapters because one of my emails had gotten leaked during the crash, like when we shelved the IPO and everyone internally when we released the documents was so excited they were like, did you see it? It's a beautiful document. Did you see the pictures we put in it? And I was like, this is going to the financial community. And we have pictures of massive festivals and concerts we've had with Adam on stage with celebrities. And you put that into the S1 filing. And so I sent an email because I had to shut down all of my campaigns in search and in social because we were just getting dragged. And people were clicking on WeWork because they were looking for information on the company, but they weren't. Had no intent in buying the product. And I had sent an email asking corporate to kind of change some things on the course site, executive bios, clients, that we have something other than elevating the world's consciousness because this is making us look worse. Someone leaked that email and I think they said it was the first signs that, like, someone internally had said, like, this is not a good thing for us and it's not going to go well and we're not going to make this ipo. And when we. The IPO date was in September and I told them, I said, I'm gonna go to Italy for two weeks. They're like, you're gonna go away during the ipo. And I was like, this IPO isn't happening. I'll be in Italy. Lo and behold, I was in Italy. And they're like, it's not happening.

[John Evans]

Best place to be when something doesn't happen in Sicily.

[Nicole]

Yeah. So I just kind of. I just think while like, you know, most startups and most organizations like that, it is so culture driven, it is so mission driven, but you have to pay attention to the P and L.

[John Evans]

So much in what there. I mean, I mean, I mean, weirdly, I got a finance degree and I did finance and economics for university and then went into marketing after that, which is a bit weird at the time, but I actually am very grateful for that because as you were saying earlier, marketing is about moving business forward and understanding the financial implications of what you do is critical. So you had that belief in the business, but also a realism informed by your understanding of finances. But I'm intrigued that get getting your email leaked in such a highly sensitive moment where there is so much money at stake for so many people. How do you respond to that? I mean, do you know how it.

[Nicole]

Happened or, you know, the people that are on the email and it's about, you know, somebody on the email and, you know, corp comms gets involved and, you know, there were so many things that were leaking at that time, this was, like, low on the totem pole they were dealing with.

[John Evans]

There's another crisis worse than mine.

[Nicole]

I felt like such a violation because it's internal communications. Somebody clearly leaked it to the press. I don't know what the intent was. So you're thinking, like, who can I trust? But that was an organization that. It was like the Hunger Games of jobs. You really couldn't trust many people. But I just remember it being a time where every day we were in the office, it was very hectic, it was very stressful. It took a massive toll on me. And even though I was a part of the retention team after the crash and incentivized to stay through it, I physically and mentally was so exhausted. And, you know, you're letting go. We let go of 2,000, 3,000 people one day in New York. You know, it was. When you're there after something like that, the teams that are left behind, you know, I think everyone was like, oh, all these people that got laid off, they're mostly. They're most spared the people that are left behind to pick up those jobs and kind of move it forward is really hard. And I just, you know, didn't. I love the business, but I didn't have the heart to stay in it. And I had. Tinder had been recruiting me for a few months, and I said to my husband, I think it's. And it wasn't just moving to Tinder. We moved back to la. I was like, get me far, far away from here. And, you know, sometimes it is okay in life to run from your problems. People, I think, you know, say you need to stay somewhere and stick it out and wait until it gets better. But, like, sometimes it's okay.

[John Evans]

You have to call it sometimes.

[Nicole]

No, you have to call it. You have to say, you know, I. The athletic term, I left everything on the field.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

I didn't have anything really more to give in the sense that I could have.

[John Evans]

You know, I think that's a really good judgment, isn't it? Because, like, you understood the business, you'd made your contribution, you knew the business inside out and what could and couldn't happen. So to have that judgment to go, do you know what? Staying won't actually benefit me or the business.

[Nicole]

Yeah. And I had the opportunity to go work for a company and a product that I intimately know because that's where I started my career. And I vividly remember the first time I opened Tinder product. And this is when we had our dating startup and I opened it up and I was like, oh, my God, this is incredible. Like, it just changed the game for dating. It brought a whole new generation of daters forward. And so it was an interesting opportunity, and it felt like a welcome change. And it ended up being the gangster of all gangster moves. Because I left WeWork in January of 2020, started Tinder in February 2020. And nothing could have been worth worse for Weworth than the pandemic and Office Space no longer, of course, so they only. They got that team that I had.

[John Evans]

The IPO failed, and then you had Covid next and then Covid next.

[Nicole]

So everyone that stayed deserves a gold medal. And if anyone can recruit people from WeWork Marketing, they should, because that is a ton of resilience and a ton of grit of just who goes through things like that? I mean, talk about just absolute disruption, right?

[John Evans]

Yeah, it's amazing. How do you, like, you know, how do you kind of deal with the, I guess, the perception of, like, being on a team? I know everyone listening to this would be bored of me saying how I got fired twice in a year. I make so many jokes about it. But, you know, it's hard sometimes, isn't it, to kind of tell the story and explain how these, you know, how these things happen. So how did you approach kind of leaving there and starting a new job?

[Nicole]

I probably didn't take off enough time to decompress. And I'll say that I think when you're in an organization for so long and you're going through such stressful situations, I do think there is a sense of needing to decompress. And I think in retrospect, when I started at Tinder, I had that we work mentality of like, kill or be killed. Let's move forward. I came from a hyper growth organization. Tinder was at a different stage at a different time. And so I learned, and I think so much of what we do is reading the room and understanding the organization you're in and what's the culture and what's the operating model versus being kind of a bullet in a china shop. And it was very different. WeWork was an open, combative environment. Executives would yell at each other in boardrooms, and that was fine and everyone was okay after. Not everywhere is like that. So I think I should have decompressed more. I think maybe initially came in a little hot on some things because I was just hungry and wanted to move things forward. All I saw was opportunity to change and kind of continue for Tinder to chart this just incredible course. And I think you need to have a little bit more tact and sometimes a little bit more grace in those situations. So that's how I reflect on it. So I think my advice to anyone would be, is just to take a beat and listen. And I think there's so much pressure for leaders in marketing and CMOs to come in and make immediate impact. Right. Because our tenure is short. Right. Tends to be. And the things we do can be immediate, but a lot of the things we do do take time. So you're constantly trying to balance the short term, improving yourself to building something long term that is sustainable. And so I think we have a lot of pressure and sometimes that pressure can make you want to move too fast and break things. And you know, that's not always the best approach.

[John Evans]

Yeah, you're so true, aren't you, about balancing that? Like there's a theoretical right, things to do as a cmo, isn't there, in terms of growing the business and then there's a how you get things done in an organization given the culture and how decisions are made. I remember chatting to a CMO recently and she said, I think for the first maybe 90 days, but she went and interviewed everybody and just said, what would be, what does success look like and what would you advise me to be successful in this organization? How decisions get made and what's your perception of marketing? And I just thought that's a really good thing to do.

[Nicole]

You should do that in the interview phase, not when you start.

[John Evans]

Yeah, true.

[Nicole]

I wouldn't take the job if we can't answer those questions. Right. Like with all of the C suite, you should be meeting with everyone and understanding, do they all agree on what this role is? Do they all agree on the scope if they're not aligned, how do you get alignment and how do you get clarity? Because sometimes we don't know what we're walking into. And a lot of organizations have very different perspectives on marketing. Almost Most of the CMOs I know our remit is different. Underneath us, the things we do every day can be different. I oversee communications. That's not the case for other CMOs. So what is the CMO scope? What are we going to be judged on, on what time frame? And you need that from your CRO, your CEO, your cfo, your cpto, and understanding the relationships they've had with marketing in the past and what needs to be improved. And even just talking to the marketing team about where do they think they could be doing better? What are the tense relationships they're having with other organizations? Or you can do more of that work when you get there to help the marketing team kind of be more evangelized with the rest of the C suite. But I think you have to ask those things before you take the job because how many people take these jobs? And it seems sexy and you're working on this big brand and you have this big budget and then you go in and you go, oh, and I like to see a three year plan. I don't want to know just what the first, like where does this business want to be in three to five years? What are we gunning towards? What is the big moment for the CEO? Is it a sale? Is it getting acquired? Is it ipo? Is it a certain revenue target and EBITDA target it? Is it a global ambition? What does that look like long term that we're building? And then you can work back for how do we build towards that? But you have to, you also can't take too long. You have to have short term wins because you got to build trust.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

Right.

[John Evans]

Yeah. It's a classic nice day thing, isn't it? Like get strategic wins under your belt really, really early.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

To make an impact. I've seen about half the jobs I've had. I'd even go as far as to say I don't think the organization even knew what marketing was or the, or the extent that the marketing can impact. Because like you say in some companies it's, it is comms quote, unquote.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Other companies it's like turning up at events and building a stand and like giving brochures out. You know what I mean?

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

So I think part of the, the challenge of our job compared to say a CFO or something like that is it's much less clearly defined and varies depending on the sector you're in and the context you're in as well.

[Nicole]

100%. It's not the same. You could walk into any CMO job and it can be completely different.

[John Evans]

And also life cycle as well. I mean, whenever I worked at kind of startups, like going back to my private equity point, I was the first marketer the organization had ever employed. And I would say 90% of my job was not what people call marketing. It was, you know, going out and convincing customers to stock our product or sorting out industrial disputes on the production line and stuff like that, because I was a part owner as well on.

[Nicole]

The private equity side. I'm curious as to how that was for you, like, because I don't. I often thought when I worked in private equity they didn't pay enough attention to the marketing and how that plays a role in their success. You're. You're operationally and financially ripping the company apart and thinking about supply chain and those types of things, but you're not necessarily thinking about your marketing budget, how you market, where your customer is, how to move it forward. I didn't see that in my time there.

[John Evans]

I found super fascinating. It's one of those things where two things can be true at the same time. I think so again, just my experience in the private equity business I was in, but they had a real respect for brand. As in, as in their view would be we are buying an asset which is undervalued because it hasn't established the brand. So they would. Their advice is threefold. Number one, employ the best design team you possibly can in the world and nail your proposition from day one. And be very clear about who you are, where you're going and your vision and your brand and how it communicates. Right. Number two, invest in capacity to forex the business in the next like three years so that we sell future capacity and all that sort of thing. Number three was hire a team. They called it two levels above. So basically they say higher expertise in every key position, identify which their positions are, get people ranked 2, 2 levels above in terms of experience and all that kind of thing. So I was the marketing 2x higher. Right. So having said that, so they. And then the fourth thing they did is they wrote the exit memorandum on day one, which I thought was really good.

[Nicole]

Yeah, I love that we do that too. And I actually am a big believer of putting something like that on paper. Does manifest it into existence.

[John Evans]

I know. And it was so simple. It was one page and it was like, financially, what is the story going to tell? Brand, what is the story going to tell people? What story are you going to tell? And I think the other one was, might be markets, expansion or innovation or something like that. Anyway, it was so super clear. And you're like, we kind of work back from. Well, if that's. For that to be true, this must take place within three years.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

For that sake, place what has to happen. So on the one side, in terms of two things being true, they were definitely brand led. They definitely respected marketing. However, when it came to investing in.

[Nicole]

Marketing, people love the word brand until you ask for money for brand. I find that also very interesting. They're like our brand, our brand. Not investing in your brand. Your brand exists in your mind and internally. But like the brand has to be Present for people. People have to feel it, they have to touch it, they have to understand it. If you're not investing in it.

[John Evans]

Exactly. So I turned up. I know. So I turned up on day one. I do not have a budget.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

So I'm like, what am I doing? You know, how does this thing work? And so everything I did was either for free or created with a budget of zero. Or I had to build a business case, which usually involved earning it before I spent it.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

So I had to reduce the cost of production per unit by X amount so that I could then argue that three pence in every pound would get reinvested into marketing. And then when we got to a certain point, I could spend it.

[Nicole]

Yeah. So.

[John Evans]

So I was forever negotiating. So what I did is I did the positioning, the branding and all that sort of thing first. But my thought process was, how do I make this brand design so good that the top 10 customers in the UK will ask me to list it so that then we generate whatever, millions of pounds turnover that will then release a budget later on? Or I had to go to those customers and go, here's what we will be doing. If you agree to stock us, you know, sort of thing. So you play a bit of that game.

[Nicole]

Game.

[John Evans]

But actually, I have to say, in all honesty, it forced the level of creativity. Probably the best creative things I've done in my entire career were in those moments where I had no choice but to push the boundaries of creativity in terms of my thinking and think to myself, who can I partner with that I can bring value to that they will give me media for free.

[Nicole]

Yes, yes, exactly.

[John Evans]

You know what I mean? That's what I was doing. Right? So I remember partnering with this. They don't exist anymore, but this augmented reality business called Blipper, where they. You put your phone over a pack or a bit of print or something and it would just come to life in front of you sort of thing. Now, this is 2013, right. So the technology was just nascent. Just literally at the beginning, they were one of the pioneers. So I went in and I pitched them and I said, look, I can get you on the pack of every bottle of Coca Cola in the world, right? And they were like, and I work for a little juice brand that no one ever heard of.

[Nicole]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Evans]

They're like, how are you going to do that? I said, because if you partner with me, improve the technology on my brand and I end up in store next to Coke, you're going to get a call at one point from the Coke team going, we want what he's done, right?

[Nicole]

Yep.

[John Evans]

18 months later that happens now. Not in every pack of Coke in the world, but they launched this music thing where basically you put your phone over it. You know, augmented reality brings it to life. You can choose this music, do all this stuff, right?

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

So they gave me all the technology for free and all the media around it and all the press and all that kind of thing simply because I went to them and said, look, if you do this for me, I, I think it's going to lead to good things happening for you.

[Nicole]

I mean, creative deal making it is deal.

[John Evans]

Yeah. It was the hustle. This is the thing, isn't it? I think this is what Marxists forget is the amount of hustle involved when you're working on a startup and scale up.

[Nicole]

Yeah. And even like, I mean many organizations still have zero based budgeting yet a business case for, for everything and you know, be really accountable even though you don't know yet what exactly that is. But you know, the creative is the biggest variable. It is the biggest variable in everything. And so we pay a lot of attention to that. And it really depends on again, different organizations have a different creative tolerability. And I think most CMOs want to do breakthrough work. It's just internally there is a lot of challenges to that. And I think something I work a lot on is how do I get people to embrace the creativity and not be afraid that maybe aren't in the marketing organization. How do you get your CEO to want to take this swing with you above that person too and you can be in places where, I don't know, creative has to go through five people that aren't marketers to get over the line. I mean that's like crazy. And again, they're not operating with the consumer lens. So I think it's a difficult job and how we all navigate getting bold things over the line. Because, you know, and I've worked on the agency side, every client wants something bold, but then when you bring them something bold, they get scared or they can't do it, you know. So I just kind of have spent so much time thinking about how do I get people behind an idea and how do I lock them into the strategy and really get them to understand the consumer before we even go through creative, like, do we align that this is the business problem? Do we align that these consumer insights are driving this initiative? Do we align that the message should be this and this is what we're gonna overcome and this is how we're gonna measure it. Once there's understanding there, then the creative should make sense no matter how wild it is. Right. But that's why I spent a lot of time on the strategy and bringing everyone in versus if you go into that room and you're just going to show them the commercial you want to shoot, you're going to be dead. Upon arrival. Everyone's opinions come into the room. People don't know what context to take it. They're often not the consumer of the product. And I think that's where things go wrong.

[John Evans]

Yeah. I think everyone listening will resonate with that.

[Nicole]

Right.

[John Evans]

Because as marketers we love the creative part of the role, don't we? That's the bit that gets excited and then, and the amount of times I've, I've had this amazing session with the agency and got super excited, by the time I get to a cold industrial estate in the middle of nowhere on, on a damp Monday morning and I'm sat in front of the grown ups, you know what I mean? So here's my idea that it's like tumbleweed.

[Nicole]

Yeah. Yes.

[John Evans]

And the room goes dark and thunder starts.

[Nicole]

Somebody goes, why wouldn't we just do this?

[John Evans]

Can we just do a half price promotion? John?

[Nicole]

Yeah. When the room starts creatively brainstorming like they're creative directors, you know you're losing the room, something went wrong. Abort, you know, that's what you want to avoid. And you want to give people input, you want to make them feel heard, but you also want to go in with passion and with conviction. And most times what I've found is like, that is infectious. If people can tell that you have conviction, that you are willing to put your neck on the line for this work, that you are ultimately gonna be accountable. They'll bet on you, they'll bet on you. But if you're coming in, they can smell fear.

[John Evans]

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

[Nicole]

So you just gotta really mentally get ready for that.

[John Evans]

When you're applying for a job, you know, your passion is as much as what people are buying, isn't it, as your skills. Do I believe this person believes what they say? Do I believe they want it enough to do the job? And it's the same when you pitch an idea into a business. People are looking for, what's your level of conf.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Now you're working with, I think one of the most creative agencies in the US probably in the world at the moment, with mischief. In fact, a slight side note, I love Greg's quote about what would you do if you weren't afraid, which I think is. In the situation you're talked about, is a really good undermining, kind of not under. Sorry, undermining. Revealing tactic, isn't it? To say. To say to the audience, okay, well, what would you do if we weren't afraid about the consequences? Just to open our minds up to kind of creative ideas.

[Nicole]

Yeah. You know, Greg should find out what is the response to people. What would be everyone say? Because I think what we would say and what we do are two different things. I met Mischief at my time at Tinder and we never got to do. We were too afraid to do probably the type of work that I was wanting to do, that I thought we needed to do at that time. And so when I had this opportunity at Tubi and I had a CEO that was wanting, he wasn't afraid. We're talking about an entrepreneur who started a business who everyone told him wasn't going to work in streaming. It was never going to work for a very long time. And so I loved that underdog spirit and I loved that he wanted to go there. And so when I brought them in, it was a completely different relationship because we didn't operate with a ton of fear. And I think sometimes when I've said that, it gets misconstrued that I don't care about losing my job or do I come from like a trust fund or something, which I definitely do not. Like, how could you not be afraid? But I find that like, in this business, we'll get fired for the things we don't do and the risks we don't take. As much as we'll get fired for the risks we do take. You might as well go out swinging.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

Yeah. You know, like, I mean, if you think about it, like, much can be lost on the other side too. And how would you. What are you comfortable with doing? And I just. It was my first CMO job and, you know, I had an executive tell me probably two years prior that the reason why I was getting passed up for a CMO role was because I hadn't done big brand creative in like super bowl on the. On the client side that I was a good growth marketer, good TikTok marketer, understood the kids. But like, I didn't have that pedigree. And I thought, well, I just had never have never had the opportunity. And so I'm kind of. Can be spiteful and I always love to like, kind of on the. That stuff really motivates me. So I'm like, I'M going to do my first super bowl, and I'm going to show everybody, like, let's, let's. I'm really going to lock into this. And it ended up being, like, beyond my wildest expectations about what I. What I thought I could do, what people thought to be. Could do on that night. It was incredible.

[John Evans]

Now, which one was your first one? Was it the rabbit hole?

[Nicole]

It was rabbit holes and the interruption spot.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

And so, you know, thinking about, you know, you're. You could talk, you know, you have to give the context on Tubi and what we're up against. This is 2023. This is after Netflix just delivered their worst quarter ever. Louisiana Is shaking. Everyone is thinking, you know, we're talking about the streaming wars and who's going to win and is it profitable and how is it going to shake out? And when I got the call about this job, I wasn't familiar with Tubi, and I thought, that's weird because I hold a marketing budget, so if this was a place that I could be putting money, why don't I know about it? And I thought, do I want to enter the streaming wars with a player that I've never heard before when I know how big the competition is and how much they spend? Initially, I asked the recruiter, you can throw a rock on Pico Boulevard and hit an entertainment marketer. Like, why are you calling me? Why are you calling me? There's so many good people in market. Like, I'm not the right one. And she was like, they don't want anyone with an entertainment background. Just like, just meet the founder, just hear what he has to say. And I've made a lot of decisions based on people. And I really liked him and I liked his perspective. And I thought the business was in this very unique place to win, not only because it's free and accessible, but because the way that they approach streaming and the product and the content was very unique. This idea that we all have individualized, you know, kind of viewing experiences and things we want to watch, and it's not really about what Hollywood is telling you to watch. And this idea of prestige and IP and being so content forward is not necessarily what is a good business model, and that people are actually watching very different things than we would think they do. So I thought that it was really interesting. And so when we were started, I brought mischief in. We knew we had to do a Super bowl ad. And you're looking at the cultural context of where media is going and the fragmentation, but not only the fragmentation like younger audiences and younger viewers sort of identify, you know, in these micro cultures and they kind of take pride in the things that are different. And there's all these sub communities and subcultures. Think about the social brands and which has had the most organic growth. You're talking about, you know, the Reddits, the discords, the TikToks that are interest based graphs. And so I thought taking that lens of like what's going on in the media landscape and how younger viewers consume content, what Tubi had to offer by having this incredibly deep, rich library, very deep cuts, things you can't find anywhere else, things that are really based on your unique interest and then you look at the competitive landscape. That's all very IP driven, very title driven, very show driven. And I think previously Tubi had tried to compete in that and you just can't compete there. And again, like those companies and those brands are building ip, but they're not doing anything for their brand. We don't know any of these shows, what streaming platform they're on. We really don't. And that entertainment has not invested in their brands. What does it mean? And they've got some very strong brands, but I don't know that any of us can say what they stand for, believe in and who they're exactly for. Right. So for super bowl we thought we have to come out in a very disruptive fashion and show the ethos of tubies. So having, you know, a giant rabbit abducting people and throwing them down, metaphorical personalized content rabbit holes felt like, I don't think anyone else is gonna do that on that night, I think that's fair to say. And I just like, I just was like, this is something. And when we first went through the creative, I was a little bit horrified and disturbed and for a minute I was like, did I make the right choice in choosing Mischief? But it was the script that I couldn't forget. The next day I was like, I still remember it. And so I think it surprised me. I didn't know if I liked it or I didn't like it, but I remembered it. And that's kind of the way that I review work. And then the disruption spot was really just a way to hack the screen. We know Reddit has done it, Coinbase has done it. And to end that night fake, like someone sat on the remote and have that incredibly viral moment was just insane. And I think the barometer of some of the work that we do is if you make something that elicits such a Surprising reaction that people are then capturing content or imitating what it's like. We have people uploading their ring camera footage of their families just screaming at each other, you know, and so what's. I think the most beautiful thing is you put something out to the world and everyone is doing their own version of it.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

And showing it through their lens and making it their own and making it their own experience that they remember. I mean, like, what an incredible gift.

[John Evans]

Yeah. You know, I mean, you talk about coinbase hacking as well, but I think the thing that you got right is it wasn't obviously a hack to begin with. Do you know what I mean? That was the clever thing is you're going, oh, has someone changed the channel? What's going on here? Sort of thing. And you still see the presenters for a couple of seconds as well, don't you?

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

See, like, oh, hang on, where's the. The remote? Yeah.

[Nicole]

I was like, wait, who's navigating to, like, tubing?

[John Evans]

Are we switching channels?

[Nicole]

Yeah. And we got a product demo out of it, so it was awesome. So it was a one, two punch of like, you know, getting attention, but also telling a brand narrative through rabbit holes and then showing a bit of our personality through the hack.

[John Evans]

It's really interesting how you described it just before when you described it as. I didn't know if I liked it, but I didn't forget it. Right. Because I got. I ran the data through System one on this, actually, just to have a look before. Before. Before chatting and I really fascinating because. So last year we did a study called the Extraordinary Cost of Being Dull.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Where the big. I mean, again, to quote Greg, the biggest risk you can take is to be ignored.

[Nicole]

Right. Yeah.

[John Evans]

The number one emotion globally response to advertising is nothing at all. Neutrality. People feel nothing. Right. That's the battle. I know we spend all this money to all this marketing and most people ignore it, don't feel anything. Right. Anyway, so. And we. And we found in the study that the biggest antidote to that was surprise.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Now looking at the graph on. On your. On your spot, it has almost zero neutrality. Right. Literally nobody is left going, I don't know how I feel. And what you get is you get the biggest emotion is surprise. And then there's a bit of fear coming in as well.

[Nicole]

Right.

[John Evans]

And as people are going, what's going on?

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

These people get abducted, you know.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

And then it kind of resolves at the end as you are. Right, okay, I get it. Right. This is what's happening.

[Nicole]

And We've continued to do work like that. Like, I'm always prepared every time we do a campaign that. That people. There's gonna be people that aren't gonna like it.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

That we might get dragged for something.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

That there is gonna. People that are. Maybe the people that are gonna be as vocal champion it. There's gonna be as many people not liking it. And, you know, that's. That's a hard pill to swallow. Like, people just absolutely trashing your work or, you know, not, like, not understanding the lens in which it's operating in. But you have to be brave.

[John Evans]

You do.

[Nicole]

And you have to just, like, kind of not care what other people think, as long as it's driving the business, you know?

[John Evans]

Totally. The other thing I noticed in the data, it was quite interesting, is we measure emotional intensity, so how strongly people felt. And that was off the scale.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

So basically it wasn't just people felt indifference or I felt a little bit happy. They're like, no, I felt a lot.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

As well. And there's a close correlation between not only surprise, but emotional intensity and likelihood to go and act afterwards. Click or view or whatever sort of thing which presumably came through in the results.

[Nicole]

Definitely.

[John Evans]

As well.

[Nicole]

And even just this past super bowl, we did, we had a new character which was a cowboy with a flesh cap.

[John Evans]

That was surprising.

[Nicole]

And the cowboy was. I couldn't have anticipated that the cowboy would be as polarizing as he was.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

People felt very strongly he was either nightmare fuel for some people, or there's a whole Tumblr community that's obsessed with him. His backstory, how was he birthed, how does he sleep at night with the flesh hat? It's like, crazy.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

But you almost don't. You know, you don't know how people are gonna react. And it's. I just find it very funny what certain people are offended by at this point.

[John Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just an advert.

[Nicole]

Yep. Yeah.

[John Evans]

Now we've got. I don't know, anyone watching on video will be able to see, hopefully behind me and behind you, we've got some new branding as well that you brought out last year.

[Nicole]

Yep. Last year.

[John Evans]

What's the thinking behind the branding? And it looks very, very good as well. But what was the process to go through for that?

[Nicole]

We. In that first year, it was like, figure out who the brand is, put out a Super bowl ad in a World cup campaign. And when we really got in touch with who the brand was and what it meant to people, the design system did not reflect Those emotions. So at Tubi, we like to say we are inviting, exciting and mischievous. And we had not updated our brand design system in years. And it was to the point where it was so inconsistent across product growth, teams, distribution that there was just no consistency because the system wasn't designed to be that flexible and it wasn't designed to elicit emotion. So we, you know, had our brand book, our brand beliefs, our purpose, you know, the role we play in the world. And then we really worked closely with Dixon Baxie to figure out, okay, like, how does this visually and verbally come to life? Even I think my favorite part of the rebrand is the mnemonic. So when you open the Tubi app and it sings our name, Tubi, tubi. Like my 3 year old kid, he sings it and he looks up and we had a big debate of like, should it be a sound? And I'm like, we're welcoming, exciting and inviting. And also I'm a challenger brand. Anytime I can sing my name and say my name and that memory and that reinforcement instead of just a tech sound, I'll call it, for lack of a better word, I'm gonna do it. And like every single touch point is that deliberate. And this was a, this was a project that I worked closely with, had a product design because I think I can't do anything that isn't going to flex to the product. All the screens and surfaces we operate on, how is our content going to look in it? What is the experience going to be? How does the design system unlock the product innovation within streaming? You know, how is it going to unlock opportunities in our grid, in our homepage and how is that going to evolve? And are we building something that this product can continue to evolve in? So we worked really closely together and it is a beast. Anyone who's done a brand refresh, I mean, these are, and like also lots of feelings and we did lots of, lots of testing along the way with consumers, with advertisers. Because I think what often isn't talked about is half of my headspace, figuring out advertisers and what they want and need from, from a media product. And you know, the thing is, is that I, you know, I know a lot of CMOs, I know a lot of heads of media at agencies. I've worked those places. And the esthetic and the design is important to us. It's, you know, it has to be intentional. There is even when we go to events or we go to Cannes, how does this design system look in a physical space? You know, so you have to stretch it that far. And it was great, but it was a lot of work and we're all really happy and just at every event, whether it's an internal company event or you know, a B2B event or even yesterday, our newfront to see this visual, visceral brand with all these tones and things to play with and the rabbit holes kind of being this thing that is inviting you in. It's, it's imprinted everywhere and I love to just see that, that stretch and that flex and be able to take two be there.

[John Evans]

It's a good point actually. You got two audiences. Really haven't you got. Obviously you're bringing entertainment to a broader audience by making it free. Obviously. But then obviously to pay for the free, you need advertising.

[Nicole]

I make my money off advertising. Right.

[John Evans]

So that's the deal. Yep. But I think I read somewhere that 30 to 40% of your audience don't consume other forms of streaming, is that right? So you're also extending who what gets to watch.

[Nicole]

Yeah. So you're extending, extending the streaming landscape.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

Really the interesting conversation in streaming and ad supported streaming is I think typically the way marketers and media buyers were looking at it as an extension to tv, like an incremental audience. But it is, this is not an emerging space. This is just how entertainment is now consumed. It is an essential part of your media buy and free streaming in particular, because it offers the scale. You're not only unlocking non linear audiences, you're unlocking audiences that aren't on other streaming platforms for whatever reason. Right. The US market is mostly subscription based and we've entered into the space of you're paying a subscription and you're also seeing ads in that subscription tier. So there's not really YouTube being probably the most prevalent of pure play free streaming, but we don't have that for the entertainment space. So I think with advertisers it's getting them to understand how they can activate audiences on the platform. What are the benefits of that? It is a lot about the ad product and the ad roadmap because CTV is, the expectation is it is going to be as sophisticated as Meta and Google's stacks at this point. It can't just be bought on a show basis or on a genre basis or on a broad demo basis. It can, but it can be much more effectively bought. So I think it's that and I think traditionally you look at entertainment and you're selling the shows, not the audience. That's how TV was bought. Right. You want to run within this show block A because it does have your audience overlap, but the streaming consumption is so much more fragmented and people are consuming all sorts of things. So I think you can't look at it as just the content and the original content only.

[John Evans]

It's very exciting if you can match the targeting of, say, the meta platform with the rich richness of attention and emotion that comes with like, you know, entertainment and tv. Yeah, that's the holy grail, right, to blend those two things.

[Nicole]

It is the holy grail and I think, you know, you, you have that attention and, and I'm a big proponent of social. But sometimes you don't know what you're running next to or what mental state people are in when they're on those platforms. Usually when they're in streaming properties, they're relaxed, they're watching something they love. We know this from like emotional sentiment tracking, you know, versus when you're on a social app or an entertainment platform. The mindset is different and it is about your message and your creative, but it is also the mindset of the consumer and what they're seeing in and around it that does impact the effectiveness.

[John Evans]

You know, I mean, I think one of the most wild statistics I saw was Karen Nelson Field from Amplify did this. She's looked at attention by platform and by creative and the difference in attention of, you know, in terms of attention of the advert varies by. By platform is huge. You know, it's like, like 12 or 13 times from a in. In social feed versus kind of TV and TV is wildly different. And then the elasticity of that attention based on how good the creative is.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Gives another percentage altogether sort of thing. So you then. So once you start waiting for attention and waiting for the creative, creative quality, you end up with a wildly different media plan.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

When you started with.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

And it slightly blows my mind, but if you work back from the creative and the attention gained by the platform, you'd make some very different investment decisions.

[Nicole]

You definitely would. And I think like, that's why you have to be very deliberate about what platforms you're operating in and what the contextual is. And I think, you know, there's still a battle to like when you're doing a big campaign to not to make sure that the messages you're putting out are right. It doesn't all need to be matching luggage. You can be responsive, have a ton of stuff in your creative bank that's within the vein of what you're trying to communicate so that like if you're getting signals on something, you can see what's working and move on. But so much of those, like, you know, go to market playbooks with, like, this hero asset that then scales down to this channel and then that channel. And it's just like you're resizing things that, like, strikes a very bad chord with me.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

Like, because I think then you're not. You're losing the essence of the. Of the context and the environment and the behaviors you want to elicit in that context and in that environment.

[John Evans]

Yeah. Makes complete sense. Now, talking of social and being fan first, I think one of the coolest things you've done is studios. So I'd love you to explain for anyone listening and watching, doesn't it? I didn't know what that was actually, until I discovered it. It's a really cool kind of bit of innovation you've done in terms of bringing content from groups that maybe haven't kind of had a chance to get their content out there before and also allow fans to interact with that content.

[Nicole]

Yeah. I think the fan. I think there's two things. Like, there's so much in the creator economy, and studios is actually a labor of love that took even longer than the brand redesign. And I started on that immediately on stubios or something in the creator space immediately when I started, because the way that I was looking at consumption and trends and perhaps coming from a place like Tinder, I pay so much attention to what younger audiences are doing because I think it actually dictates what the future holds. And so when you see, you know, the role that YouTube and social and you really. If you've ever been to a VidCon or worked with any influencers and experienced the fans of these humans and these individuals and these creatives, it is real, and that is the new celebrity. And so it's felt like there was an opportunity. And this is not for every creator, but there are a lot of creators who are Personas online who are doing, you know, vignettes and skits. They're essentially acting because that's the only way that they know they just want to be seen and they're making content. And social has given them an outlet that is outside of the Hollywood veneer. Right. Like, how do you start in Hollywood? I, like, I don't know how. If you're not related to someone and you don't live in la, it seems very daunting. You know, Issa Rae, who was a mentor in the program, she's one of the few stories of Someone who started an episodic series on YouTube that then got picked up by HBO. I mean, but there's not as many.

[John Evans]

Examples of that, are there?

[Nicole]

Not many.

[John Evans]

It's really surprising given like the scale you can get to on YouTube and the revenue potential is just mind blowing.

[Nicole]

But it's what we. You have to kind of drop the conventional wisdom of what you think quality content is, Right?

[John Evans]

Yes.

[Nicole]

And the quality of the creators are doing is very high. So it wasn't just that. It's not. Wouldn't like we be the first people to work with creators. But the idea was to give them a little bit more autonomy. And so we created a product where creators can put their project up and if their fans want the project to be greenlit and they show up for the green light, we greenlight their first project. And along the way, because people are very interested, how do things get made? Pick up behind the curtain in Hollywood and see what does it take to make a movie or TV show? What is it like on set? What is it like for someone who's a first time doing this in a professional manner? And so they post like updates and they get feedback from the community and the project gets platformed on Tubi and if it hits certain viewership and engagement rates, you unlock a second green light. Because even in Hollywood you can have one success, but one success does not dictate a second one. Right. So kind of having these. And that's where stuios was born from. The name is like these little micro studios that are really, you know, fan fueled and driven by the fans and the creators are, you know, they're the EPs of their studio. I think in the future these individuals don't even have to be in front of camera talent if they don't want to be. And I'm just so inspired by what I've seen with younger generations and the lengths of creativity and the things that they're able to do. Like we used to have to get like real cameras.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

And they all can edit now. And AI is only going to amplify really all of their tools. So it was this idea that the people make the choice, the viewer makes the choice on what gets made. We're platforming new voices in Hollywood. We're giving people up at bats. And that's very in the to be ethos because most of our content library does come from independent production companies and directors in markets outside of Los Angeles. And they are able to make complete living off Tubi and they get to do it in their voice for their Community, maybe things that wouldn't be platformed or wouldn't get greenlit through the traditional system. And they get a ton of viewership on Tubi. And we are just like, our core strength is being able to help people find their stories and help stories find their audience. And I don't think that that is, like. That is very unique in Hollywood. It's usually like, we have the story we want you to watch. How do we get you to watch it?

[John Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nicole]

And if we have an idea, we're the arbiters of cool.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

And we are gonna push that down. And I think we see the world very bottoms up. Like, whatever the viewers, like, we're gonna do more of it, and we're gonna double down. Like, I'm fans of the fans. Not that I don't enjoy watching content or movies and TV shows, but you have to take that personal lens of what you watch and what you want to watch. And then the funny point on advertisers that I always think is interesting. I had someone once tell me that, like, for us to get advertisers to advertise on our platform, they'd have to be 2B viewers. And that was such a red herring thing to say, I think, because if we as marketers are deploying capital based on where we watch.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

We should be fired.

[John Evans]

Totally.

[Nicole]

Right. Like, just because you and I love White Lotus doesn't mean I need to go, like, you know, partner with White Lotus. If we have your consumer and we can drive a valuable connection between your brand and this consumer, why wouldn't you advertise with us? It should have nothing to do with content that you like to watch. And we're coastal beings, so our consumption tastes are very different. So I always think that that is the one thing that we are continuously trying to educate advertisers on.

[John Evans]

My favorite quote of all time, I think, in marketing is Sarah Carter, who said, you are not the customer. And it's like the thing you have to remind everybody all the time. Everyone makes decisions based on what they think, not on actual customer. And very few of us ever represent our customer personally. We're not in the market.

[Nicole]

It'd be impossible to. Right. And that consumer is changing, so it's changing over time. So that's interesting about having a media platform is just, like, how much personal bias still goes into this whole process.

[John Evans]

You know, you've done a lot of cool stuff on the brand over the last couple of years. What's. What's your advice to sort of balancing out the kind of corporate versus kind of creative. Because we started the conversation to being an entrepreneurial cmo.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

How do you, you know, how do you get these ideas through an organization and help. Help them come to life? Because I think that's, that's something, I think navigating that. And you know, an idea is nothing without execution, is it? And I think a lot of the job is trying to execute things.

[Nicole]

I mean, it's exactly what I said before. It's understanding what drives the business. Understanding and having an honest conversation about what are the tensions in moving that forward. I think sometimes as companies and brands, we're not honest about what we're not good at and we're maybe not honest about what we are the best at. And you have to confront it. So I think. And then you have to diagnose can marketing play a role in overcoming this challenge for the business? And that's not always a yes. And I think marketing not signing up to solve business problems that marketing can't solve. And I don't mean that a CMO can't help solve that problem, but maybe it's not a creative campaign or a creative execution. So I think being super crisp and clear and all businesses are facing a multitude of problems. What's the most important to tackle at this moment in time? What's the one we're going to tackle next? And you kind of have to chart that path. So I think getting really clear on the business, what are we trying to overcome and what's the challenge? You know, what are we challenged with the viewer? What's the cultural challenge? What's the competitive challenge? And then like, how does this creative deliver on those things? But if you're not clear about that strategic upfront, I don't think you can let creativity live because then it just feels like creativity for the sake of psych.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

And it's not going to work.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

And then, you know, as hard as it is to attach KPIs to some of these things, you have to do your best to forecast and give executives idea of like, what signals are we going to see that says we did our job? And you know, that is modeling. It's no different than it is in private equity where you're like, well, I think I know brands got this. So if we do this, we're going to make this assumption and this is where we're going to. I mean, I have models that have been wildly off, but they get better and they get more refined over time. But you've got to put Your neck on the line also for the numbers and you got to sign up for something and then sometimes you have your tale in between. Like. Like this assumption was off. You know, we weren't able to achieve that. And I've always found that that is warmth and welcome in the room. To just be honest.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

And not sign up for goals that are just easy to achieve. Sign up for real fucking stretch goals.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

You know, like, let them, like. And you can caution for the stretch goal. But like, I find Sometimes people put KPIs that they can easily hit and that feels.

[John Evans]

That feels as usually the sales department do that.

[Nicole]

Right.

[John Evans]

The marketing department do the unrealistic ones. The sales team.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

We use the phrase sandbagging the uk. I don't know if it's used in.

[Nicole]

Yes, yes.

[John Evans]

Sandbag it. I love your word signaling, actually, that. Because most things really worth doing take time.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

And most real success comes through compounding over time. Right. And most businesses don't have patience to wait. So in an ideal world, what you're doing is you're looking for little signals that directionally this thing is gathering momentum or you're getting velocity or you're getting. Each time it's getting better that it's worth the patience to hold out. So that's part of the challenge in marketing, is we're the one of the departments that's looking beyond the next quarter's sales. Right.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

And it can be hard then, can't it? Because we often have to defend what we're doing before it's even had a chance to work.

[Nicole]

And that's why you have to be really, you know, you have to be very flexible in your planning. You're going to get signals in the first quarter that might blow up your second quarter plan. And so that's why it's like you do have to have a plan that you can follow. But I always tell the team, we reserve the right to change investment. We reserve the right to do different things because if the signals are telling us something different, the worst thing you can do is just bulldoze through your annual plan and deal with it later. Right. Like, you have to be nimble in that way. And I think that flexibility is also appreciated at the executive level to say, hey, these are the signals we're seeing. I've done things like at Tinder, I took my marketing budget, lowered it because we were having some issues on the customer support side, which didn't sit under me. And it was bubbling into social in such a way that it was actually Very hard to run the social channels. And I said, I will give budget to hire more customer support people so that we don't this the company and the brand does not have this problem. That's how I see it. So you also have to be willing to say, like, if marketing isn't the problem. Right. Can marketing help finance fixing the problem? And that might mean giving money to other markets, other teams, so that the product experience can be what it needs to be. So that the customer support can be what it needs to be. Because ultimately those are all brand touch points. And we can be saying whatever we want to say. If that's not the experience we're delivering, we're never going to be successful as a collective organization. So, you know, maybe you don't do your flashy campaign and it's very spent in a very unsexy way that the business just desperately needs. As an executive leader, it's your job to raise your hand and say, we can do, you know, maybe we're not going to do this.

[John Evans]

So how many times you've seen a really sexy campaign for an airline and then you've tried to log in on your app and then it's like you can't even like choose your seat or whatever.

[Nicole]

Right. Or the lines were long or nobody got back to you.

[John Evans]

Exactly.

[Nicole]

It's like, you know, that is the core of the business that we deliver on is. And there's no, you know, there's no salience in the message if it's not what people are experiencing.

[John Evans]

Yeah. All goes to waste. So let's maybe finish up on if you were to give some advice to the next generation of CMO coming up next, what would your bit of advice be to them?

[Nicole]

You know, be patient and be nimble in your career and don't be so hard on yourself. I think I meet with so many college kids and they're business majors and they're not sure what facet of business they want to go into and they're really stressed out about making that right choice. And is it analytics? Is it creative? Is it agency side versus client side? Is it finance and not marketing? I think that it doesn't matter. You just have to have a start and you have to be tenacious and you have to put yourself out there. I mean, we both have just had a chat about like our careers did not start in this. And where you start doesn't need to be where you end. And you can lose jobs, you can pivot. And I think that ultimately makes the best CMOs because you're not. You're an entrepreneurial ones because you're not just coming from a place of doing the same thing and maybe just leveling up at that thing. And you look at business problems very differently.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

So I think that's what I would say is like, take that pressure off, give yourself some grace. And where you start doesn't need to be where you end up. I think a varied path and being open to other opportunities is really important. Our careers are so long. I can't the next chapter of art, like, what am I going to be, a teacher? I don't know. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. But I think, you know, I don't. But I think we all have. And I think there's just so much urgency when you're young. Because what we've idolized, at least in America, is young people that are brilliant under the age of 30. And someone asked me when I was at USC a month ago, they said, are you on any of the 40, under 40 or 30? No, I wasn't and I'm not. And I'm older now and I don't like the ageism in it. Totally. Right. Like it's. It gives people this pressure that early on you have to be this thing. And nobody knew who I was until like two years ago.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

And I'm fine with that. I didn't go to Cannes or do any of those things. I still, you know, I'm a successful person. So like, I just think that taking that pressure off and I think as an industry, we've got to recognize more people that maybe aren't at bigger brands, that aren't doing the flashy work, but are still doing the work and doing cool stuff and like doing with what they have. Right. With what they're given. And I don't know that we honor that enough and that we make space for those either heads of marketing or, you know, VPs of marketing that are at challenger brands or startups. And you know, it's different. But I think we can do a lot for the industry, you know, very, very well said.

[John Evans]

And I've been pitching can to create the zero budget lion. Because you're so right. Right. If you got a sexy brand, lots of money, an amazing agency, you could do stuff that's award winning. Right.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

But I really, I'd love to see, you know, the people that had no budget, had to hustle their way to success, pulled off incredible things.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

You know, that they shouldn't have done.

[Nicole]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

I mean, that's what I want to learn.

[Nicole]

From within constraints can come mass creative creativity.

[John Evans]

Totally.

[Nicole]

And I think the abundance. And like you, we said you can pay your way to many things. Actually, if you have that much money and you're still fucking it up, there's a real problem. Right. And, you know, maybe we should celebrate the losses. I don't know. But I do think that that is an important conversation we need to have in more of those circles.

[John Evans]

You know, that's another idea. Yeah, yeah. Return from failure line as well.

[Nicole]

Yeah. How do you overcome. How do you overcome? Or, you know, the brand turnarounds and the brand revivals are just, I mean, something I have so much respect for, you know, whether it be a Stanley cup or Crocs or the things that you thought were, you know, you haven't seen or thought about in 30 to 40 years that are now cool. Like, that's hard Uggs, you know, like, I could name many that like, were a thing and then not a thing. And like, to revive and resurge the brands is. Is an incredible feat. So I think just more. More of that. More of the differences, you know, Definitely.

[John Evans]

I said the I Survive WeWork Award as well. We'll get them out of wherever they are now.

[Nicole]

Yeah, there's many. There's many of them. There's more soldiers than me.

[John Evans]

Amazing. Nicole's been.

[Nicole]

Appreciate it. This was fun.

[John Evans]

Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do to. I'm over on X CensorCMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.