The campaign comes as Tubi has reached a benchmark of 110 million monthly users (up 14% year-over-year), suggesting the streamer has gained enough mass to warrant a global campaign that maintains its already established brand personality, said Tubi’s chief marketing officer Nicole Parlapiano.

“Tubi’s scale and breadth give people permission to wander, try something strange, go deep on a very specific obsession, and change their mind without feeling like every choice has to justify a subscription,” added Parlapiano. “The opportunity now is to take the confidence and distinctiveness people already associate with Tubi and give it more strategic depth.”

The campaign includes nine brand films that depict how far people will go in search of a particular feeling. In one spot, for instance, a woman fakes her own death to receive the outpouring of love she would receive from friends and family. Other spots in the campaign depict a man sprinting toward mysterious lights in a field to experience the thrill of the unknown and trying to turn the exchange of insurance information after a car accident into a romantic “meet cute.” Each spot concludes with a simpler alternative, “Or You Could Tubi.” 

“The challenge is finding an idea strong enough to travel without flattening the culture out of it,” Parlapiano explained. “Tubi has grown dramatically, but we don’t want growth to dilute the personality that got us here.”

In the U.S., the campaign will also include a TubiFone activation through which viewers can call a toll-free number (833-605-TUBI) to find recommendations based on the feeling they are chasing. The activation is meant to evoke the 90s-era MoviePhone, where callers could hear about films in theaters and purchase tickets over the phone. 

While the trend toward all things nostalgic is part of the allure of the TubiFone, it was not the main driver, Parlapiano said. “The phone works because it’s familiar, slightly absurd, and immediately understandable,” she said. “But the more interesting part is that it turns a brand idea into something people can actually use and play with. TubiFone borrows something familiar from the past to make discovery feel different in the present.”

The post Tubi’s new campaign has all the feels appeared first on Brand Innovators.

Beginning with the brand’s history as a supplier of rugged vehicles for the military, the campaign draws a parallel between the brand and American history. “The company becomes the customer,” the spot declares before asserting that America “was born from a fight,” and like the country, the brand “learned how to take a punch and keep on going.”

The spot continues with such bold statements: “Out here, you don’t just pledge allegiance. You prove it.” and “The country wasn’t “built on playing it safe.” and features imagery of drivers and vehicles plunging through streams, deserts and other outdoor scenarios. Some of the footage includes historic imagery from the brand’s archives as well as user-generated content of real Jeep owners on their own adventures. “After 85 years of making America’s SUV, we’ve made a country of our own,” the spot concludes. “This is Jeep Country.”

“From its beginnings in 1941 supporting a nation forged by resilience and determination, the Jeep brand has spent 85 years building vehicles for those who refuse to stand still, back down or be confined by the horizon,” said Branden Coté, Jeep brand CEO, in a statement. “Built for a country that never settled for the easy path, every Jeep vehicle embraces challenge, overcomes obstacles and keeps its owners moving forward.”

The campaign includes a Spanish-language version.

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The humorous commercial, shot by acclaimed director Spike Jonze, depicts Pitt arising every morning to be greeted by a pack of sixteen dogs. As they bark at Pitt, he responds as if he can understand everything they are saying. (Subtitles are provided for those who don’t speak canine.)

As Pitt walks groggily through his living room, the dogs needle Pitt for getting up late (though he says it’s a normal time) and help him choose whether to make a hot or a cold espresso drink from his De’Longhi. As the events progress, the dogs criticize Pitt for being messy and tell him he can’t have his coffee until after he does the dishes. Finally, the dogs start a chorus of barked laughs when they think Pitt can’t understand the one-touch operation. 

At the end of the film, the dogs ask if he’s going to say his line;  Pitt denies he needs to say it, but heads outside to finally say, “Perfetto.” (The dogs do hear him.)

“At De’Longhi, we believe that Perfetto is the spirit of immersing yourself in your coffee moment, Italian style. But perfected to your taste,” said Aparna Sundaresh, global chief marketing officer at the De’Longhi Group, in a statement. “And who better to deliver that in a memorable way, but the duo [of] Brad and Spike?”

The campaign, created by LOLAMadrid, seems to have been tailor-made to capitalize on Pitt’s upcoming release “Heart of the Beast,” which depicts the actor trying to make his way through the Alaskan wilderness with a former combat dog. It will run on broadcast, digital, and social platforms this month.

The post Brad Pitt talks to dogs in new De’Longhi campaign appeared first on Brand Innovators.

Fasthosts, a UK-based web hosting provider, wanted a leader with a marketing background who understood small and mid-sized businesses. In September 2024, Bedell started the transition to an industry he wasn’t as familiar with but he says the skills learned over the years in marketing helped.  

“CMOs are some of the best-equipped people to take on a CEO role, and I’m really surprised that that doesn’t happen more often,” says Bedell. They know the marketplace, pricing dynamics, customer acquisition, communications, he says. And because they are responsible for revenue acquisition and marketing is often the biggest cost to the business, they understand the balance sheet, too. 

“They’re good communicators, they’re good on their feet, they’re good at inspiring people around them,” Bedell says. “These are critical things for a successful CEO, in my opinion.”

It is a move that more marketers are making today, and even more should consider it, say those who have done it. As marketing has become more complex and expands its scope, today’s marketers are armed with the skills to aim for the top spot. Many are encouraging young practitioners to think of themselves as CEO candidates and prepare. 

“It’s really important that we have these conversations because I think that as marketers, we’re often told that that’s not the career path,” says Melissa Grady Dias, CEO of Measured Wellness. 

Like Bedell, she had expected to spend her career in marketing until her advisory work with the healthcare company led to a job offer. The former CMO of Cadillac likes to remind young marketers that is an option.

“We’re starting to see that if you need a business to grow, the person who is really going to be able to grow it is the one who understands customers and how to attract customers into the brand,” says Grady Dias. And she notes that, as more private equity investors become involved in growing companies, this focus keeps growing. 

“It’s about having the conversation, marketing it as marketers: That we are really good at growing businesses,” she says. “The recognition will start to come as you start to see the results.”

“CMO+”

The marketing department has not traditionally been considered a steppingstone to the C-suite. The CMO-to-CEO move remains rare – a survey by Spencer Stuart found 9% of CMOs leaving their jobs between 2021 and 2025 moved up to CEO and 13% became division CEO, president or COO. 

But marketers need to see that path as a career option, as marketing has access to better metrics and data science that can show its contribution to the companies’ revenue growth and financial health. Like Bedell’s company, many organizations recognize marketers can drive the all-important revenue growth they need to show shareholders. 

“I think it’s something that we’re seeing because marketers are uniquely positioned to be able to hold more senior executive roles as stewards of the brand,” says Soyoung Kang, president of eos Products. Before taking on the position in Fall 2025, Kang had been the CMO of the personal care company since 2018 and oversaw its expansion into new areas of skincare.

“It’s an exciting time for marketers who are looking to take on new challenges, and it’s a trend that I believe is going to continue,” said Kang. She noted Kory Marchisotto at e.l.f. Beauty had a similar trajectory, becoming president of the makeup company in April, after serving as CMO for six years. 

The move is becoming more common in consumer-focused industries. Sean Tresvant, CEO of Taco Bell, moved on to that role from his former post as chief global brand officer and a number of marketing roles at parent Yum Brands. One of his predecessors, Brian Niccol, now CEO of Starbucks, was CMO of Taco Bell before moving on to the top spot. Starbucks International’s current CEO, Brady Brewer, was previously Global CMO. In August, Taylor Montomery, global chief brand officer at Taco Bell, was appointed president of QSR Jack In the Box, a new position charged with driving sales growth and franchisee profitability. 

Marketers have increasingly become what consultants Russell Reynolds tagged the “CMO+” with responsibilities over strategy and profit & loss statements that create “a pipeline to the CEO seat.” 

Simone Grapini-Goodman, CEO of Beyond Type 1, makes the argument that a modern CMO is a “chief multipurpose officer” whose job spans brand, communications, revenue, digital, partnerships, data and customer and community experience. Grapini-Goodman herself was appointed earlier this year to lead the community for people living with diabetes co-founded by singer Nick Jonas. (She had previously been the chief marketing and digital officer of the American Diabetes Association.)

Kang noted that while she was not a career marketer, eos’s founder and CEO Jonathan Teller wanted “an all-around business leader who happened to be able to flex into the marketing function” and spending time as CMO rounded out the skills for the next move. 

“I don’t think that it’s possible to be an executive at any company who isn’t someone who innately understands the power of brand building,” she says. 

Think holistically 

Well-prepared marketers will still negotiate an adjustment period, even those like Kang, who are promoted from within and have experience in other operational areas. Some disciplines will be challenging, such as legal and human resources, which traditionally are removed from the marketers’ remit. 

While marketers are more often in charge of their budgets and financial reporting within their corporations, they need to beef up their knowledge of the whole picture, say insiders. “It’s understanding how to read the PL, how the different levers function within the P&L and how the business actually drives,” says Kang.

When making the move, insiders recommend spending the early days listening to everyone, from front-line employees to director reports. It’s especially useful when changing companies or industries.

Bedell and Grapini-Goodman both went on listening tours around their organizations. Bedell had the benefit of having the outgoing CEO by his side, but he still started with one-to-one meetings with functional heads and spent time on the front line, listening into customer calls. This helped him learn how the industry worked, he says. Additionally, looking at employee surveys spotted low morale, which he as a marketer felt he could address. 

Grapini-Goodman launched an internal survey on her first week on the job and held one-on-one meetings to have “honest conversations” with the teams, she says. 

“I wanted to start by understanding, not assuming I have the answers,” says Grapini-Goodman. “Marketing has taught me the discipline to ask: What are we here to do? What is our why? What is our value proposition? And most importantly: is that reflected in our messaging and actions?” 

Anxiety and non-negotiables 

To prepare for this career path, marketers need to first see it as a possibility, then prepare accordingly, say insiders. 

“Broaden your exposure,” recommends Grapini-Goodman. “If you don’t already have this in your remit, find ways to own P&Ls, get closer to talent, operations, enterprise strategy and financial decisions.”

Insiders recommend making connections with peers in other areas, such as legal and finance to learn more about those aspects of the business.  Grady Dias recommends practicing walking a mile in the shoes of the head of Human Resources or General Counsel to get a feel for how to handle those responsibilities. 

“The first piece of advice I would give is: Whichever of those functions, whichever of those business partners you feel the most uncomfortable with, dive into that area first,” she says. “Whatever area is giving you the most anxiety as you’re looking at it, that’s the area that you should probably try to go learn first.” 

Understanding financial and profit-and-loss statements is a top priority. “The one non-negotiable is financial literacy,” says Kang. 

Most insiders suggest taking business and accounting courses and degrees to expand financial  knowledge, or online sources such as Coursera to beef up those credentials. Grady noted that while she was at Cadillac, she wanted to develop more financial knowledge, so she took courses and spent time in financial meetings to learn more. 

“It’s a skill to be learned, there’s nothing that’s scary about it,” she says. “It’s important for us as marketers to develop those skills, to develop those bridges, but to also know that it’s just a skill to be learned. And of course, CEO should be the career path for us.”

The post Why more CMOs are moving into the CEO chair appeared first on Brand Innovators.

Brand Innovators caught up with Marisa Thalberg, chief customer and marketing officer of Catalyst Brands, the company that owns Aéropostale to talk about the summer campaign.

What is the strategy behind the new partnership with Déjà for Aéropostale? 

Aéropostale has always been a brand inspired by youth culture and self-expression, and we’ve found the best way to stay connected to young consumers is to invite them into the brand. The idea first came to life with Demetra Dias in Season 1 of The Intern Diaries. We saw how strongly audiences responded to a creator having a real role in the business and creative process. With Déjà, we took the concept further, evolving it into a more entertainment-driven series that follows her journey through a six-episode format filled with challenges, behind-the-scenes moments, and creative milestones. By connecting her experience to a collection she helped influence, we’re creating something that feels authentic, engaging, and much closer to how young people want to experience brands today.

How do these types of partnerships help you reach new audiences? 

Creators like Déjà have built strong relationships with their audiences, and that trust is incredibly valuable. What makes this partnership special is that her audience isn’t just seeing a product endorsement, they’re following a story. They get to see her step inside the brand, learn the business, and contribute in a meaningful way. That creates a deeper connection and introduces Aéropostale to new audiences in a way that is natural and credible.

In what way are you approaching creators to help tap into youth culture? 

The most effective way to understand youth culture is to invite the people shaping it into the brand. That’s what makes The Intern Diaries so unique. Rather than asking creators to simply promote a product, we bring them into brands, such as Aéropostale’s actual internship program, and give them a meaningful role in the process. With Déjà, that meant giving her a firsthand look at how the brand operates and the opportunity to help shape the story along the way. Her audience doesn’t just see the finished product, they experience the journey with her. That level of involvement creates authenticity that resonates with today’s consumer.

How does this help drive foot traffic and sales at retail?

The Intern Diaries and the collection arrive as Aéropostale continues to gain momentum with young consumers. As Gen Z and Gen Alpha rediscover malls, we’ve seen more than 30% year-over-year customer growth. The series builds anticipation by giving consumers a reason to invest in the story before the collection even launches. Then, we brought that excitement into the real world through events in Los Angeles and New York, and a trend-forward collection timed to back-to-school. When customers feel connected to the journey behind a product, they’re much more excited to show up and shop it.

The post Inside Aéropostale’s Intern Diaries social series appeared first on Brand Innovators.

This news follows Dunkin’s seasonal menu drop two weeks ago, which includes a partnership with creator Alix Earle. Alix’s Earle-Y Riser Meal at Dunkin’ includes pumpkin lattes, as well as pumpkin muffins and pumpkin munchkins.

Dunkin’ is hitting the back-to-school post-Labor Day market looking to position itself as the go-to chain for pumpkin spice. Their ad drops a few weeks after Starbucks’ pumpkin spice spot featuring Martha Stewart. And at the same time McDonald’s announced it was dropping the flavor in favor of caramel apple. 

Still, the pumpkin spice market is valued at $1.25 billion and is expected to grow 8.5% annually until 2035 when it is estimated to hit $2.84 billion, according to Future Market Insights. Female consumers drive demand for pumpkin spice products, making up over 80% of online social media discussions and showing the highest purchase intent, per Captiv8. Both Dunkin’ and Starbucks leaned into the culture with these playful ads starring iconic women. 

To celebrate the campaign launch, Dunkin’ is giving away free medium pumpkin spice lattes.

The post Dunkin’ taps Spice Girls for pumpkin spice push appeared first on Brand Innovators.

Loewe is famously hard to pronounce, so much so that the brand created the “Decades of Confusion” campaign to teach consumers.

A new survey Duolingo conducted with YouGov found that 62% of Americans are confident they can pronounce Hermès, but only 15% get it right. 

“The best Duolingo marketing is entertaining but still has a real connection to learning. Fashion gave us both. People recognize these designer names, but even serious fashion fans aren’t always sure how to say them,” said Manu Orssaud, chief marketing officer at Duolingo. “Rather than create another pronunciation guide, we turned the lesson into a collection people could wear. It gave us a way to teach people something useful while making the idea fun enough to engage with.” 

Choosing Fashion Week is a nod to the brand showing up in the cultural conversations. 

“We try to show up in places people already care about and where Duolingo has a genuine reason to participate. NYFW made sense because the idea came from fashion’s real language barrier, not simply a desire for Duo to show up at Fashion Week,” explained Orssaud.

“Language was already part of the conversation. People know these designers, talk about them and aspire to own them, but that familiarity doesn’t always extend to knowing how to pronounce their names. That gave us a way to contribute something useful and entertaining that only Duolingo could do.”

The ad is aimed at consumers interested in fashion whether they are experts or just getting into the scene. “There’s a good chance you’ve seen a designer’s name dozens of times and still hesitate before saying it out loud,” Orssaud continued. “Some of those people may already be Duolingo learners and others may be meeting us for the first time. Either way, if someone walks away knowing how to confidently say a name they used to avoid, the campaign has done its job.”

The post Duolingo takes on hard to pronounce designer names for NYFW appeared first on Brand Innovators.

This comes at a time of intense uncertainty, of little collective agreement yet overwhelming anxiety about what the future should hold, while also feeling entirely unable to be present and grounded as globalization continues to dislocate us by ceaselessly tossing us between time zones. Its constant information circulation has destabilized any sense that our feet are firmly on the ground, violated the protection a home once offered as everyday life suddenly shifts on the whims of a tariff implemented on a country across the globe, and is increasingly monetized and captured for capital and content.

In this state, traditionalism has become a coping mechanism, nostalgia-riddled tactics used to feel in control of the world and reclaim a sense of stability and structure, graspable with our own two hands. Whether shaping the Earth into a bowl that will contain a meal; harvesting the fruits dropping from trees at the summer peak to transform into jam; or a table soldered from salvaged wood by one person in the town next over – our newfound endearment for objects and practices of an era prior harkens back to a time where how to “survive” was clear, based on adaptation to one’s immediate environment. Connected, grounded, contained; of a specific time and place.

In an era where artificial personas — individuals on an endless livestream or a sea of profiles available to endlessly scroll, whose core values are all too amenable to trends and brand deals, and who offer speculative expertise and opinions at best; or birthed from binary and coded, rendered, to our liking — are the norm, the “craft” object embodies specific expertise and authorship: someone who has focused, spent time honing a skill; and a sense of pure human discovery.

Bordering on fetish, the handmade object or service becomes a Puritanical vessel of Freudian projection, a means of satisfying our underlying pent-up lust for physical connection and substantial intimacy; a means of feeling cared for, safe, and secure in a hyper-visible and impersonally performative world. Where the promise of technological connection’s facilitation of “community” is only veneer, failing to deliver any sense of communion or pact of mutual support and reliance, craft implies someone else is thinking about you, cares about your life and survival.

It’s at this current moment that “traditional” qualifiers become aspirational, used by corporations and consumers alike to signal social status. Strategic tactics of differentiation after an oversaturation of direct-to-consumer brands built on the appeal of instant gratification, ease, and efficiency, whose cute, graphically designed sincerity revealed itself to be as human as its statistical findings: dehumanized hyperpersonalization. Others use them as a means to shield themselves as they enter a world in the shadow of a billowing AI industry. Brands use the concept of “bespokeness” — the handmade or “natural” object as evidence that consciousness and consideration were involved in the creation of this object — to elevate their products in the eyes of consumers. Consumers use them to signal their own access to security, both performing and purchasing “traditionalism” as a flex that one has the means and access to feel stable and the privilege to both be cared for and to act with care.

There are numerous ways to use “traditionalism,” depending on the value system and contextual needs. On one side is the physical – a tangible means of reclaiming connection and purpose through traditional processes – and on the other the ideological – reverting to known ideologies and social structures in order to find connection, stability, and commonality.

The hands-on “craft” of physical processes, of mingei, Japanese folk craft, and “fait maison,” homemade, offer a visceral, process-oriented means of reclaiming control over one’s time, environment, and safety. Craft is associated with high-caliber make, of substantial material make: high quality and longevity. The word “craft” is used to describe the ability to access a state of deliberate, focused attention, so alleviated of cognitive load and the realities of daily life that one can focus on one task, and enter a protected bubble where either the maker or the recipient of a craft experience can have an unmediated relationship with the physical world. A direct line to the origins of the object rather than lost in a sea of additive ingredients and a “made in” sticker which indicates nothing beyond NAFTA regulation requirements. Traceable. Grounded.

“Craft” splits into active and passive: crafted for you and crafted by you. In rarified circles, it can be found in the objects of the Loewe Craft Prize and expanding calming craft retreat category. An object crafted for you becomes a vessel of another person’s time, care, and consideration; an object crafted by you represents personal agency over one’s time, process more than product. Each embodies the privilege of access to not just time, but pace and cadence. These objects and experiences demonstrate that one has the autonomy and monetary means to buy the efforts of another, or to opt into this contained, controlled state of calm and tactility that is facilitated by others, like via writers’ retreats, craft tours of foreign lands, and breathwork classes. “Craft” signals someone else’s labor being done on your behalf: the object of craft imbued with the time and care of another, or the labor done by someone else to facilitate the sacred experience of crafting for you. The luxury is not simply the object. It is access to the conditions under which the object can be made, experienced, or appreciated.

Aesthetically, the idea craft has adopted a serene aesthetic, its simplicity and clarity a signal of one’s access to calm and transparency. It’s agency over labor which makes it an aspiration, but, for most, one is left to fend for themselves and self-soothe to feel as if they are okay in the face of precarity. Its veneer is a byproduct of that serenity: the insecurity of one’s survival is soothed over because the labor involved in craft often falls on the onus of others. Its aesthetic comes across as simple because it does not need to prove itself as “authentic” or “crafted,” which also makes it easy to dupe and ironically mass produce.

This simple aesthetic has become a signal unto itself that one is secure in their security while the items themselves are void of real craft’s substance. This aesthetic on the more Liberal end of the political spectrum is “Wabi-sabi,” “Scandi,” and derivatives of Minimalism, and, on the Conservative, toothpastes made in the kitchen and homesteading with your nine children. Ideas like “quiet luxury” become oxymorons as they scream that one is trying to prove their status and their security. A telltale sign that one is lacking security is the production of this aesthetic itself: evidence that they are actively fighting to survive, posting content with these descriptors as an effort of solidifying their status while also demonstrating their lack of access to the actual heart of “craft.” Images made with objects birthed from the faceless supply chains which empower the aspiration’s origins itself. An affirmation of craft’s elite status.

The other end of the Traditional spectrum centers on ideology and social structure, pining for and attempting to revive a world that’s already been lived through. Of infrastructures, environments, and threats that are familiar, seemingly navigable, because of their definitive place in the past. A known enemy with a proven trajectory to defeat and definitive end. On the hyper conservative end there is a determination to resurrect a specific temporal history that, in retrospect, feels stable. A simpler time where family structure was straightforward, where the nuclear family and meritocratic mythos of the American Dream reigned supreme; the trajectory of school to job to family to retirement felt guaranteed; where food didn’t include Red 40 by default; where the tensions of the political dynamics felt, with rose-colored glasses, known and solvable.

Ideological Traditionalism’s appeal is both big-picture and quotidian: the safety of knowing a narrative’s trajectory and the ability to have daily consistency. The appeal of knowing what will happen and how it will end (the certainty of history) and the simplicity of living life with a stable routine, of church and state, unencumbered by the constant buzzing of globalization’s information exchange and the pressure of a constantly arriving, ever-volatile future.

There is a similar dynamic of crafting for versus by you within the ideological manifestations. The aspiration is to be able to have a household infrastructure so strong it can withstand the wild winds of contemporary globalization. Its walls are fortified by the stability of childcare and sure income; the stronger these support networks, the more one can take the time to leisurely perform daily activities. It’s reserved for those who can afford, or are born with, the aesthetic requirements to fully embody idealized gender physique, of both wellness and Botox injectables. The upper eschalon of the ideological Traditional world are those who have the privilege of consistency and know, with such certainty, that precarity is never even a thought that crosses their mind. The longing for an ease of living, the aspiration of having the certainty of an inherited future: of school, college, work, marriage, children, numerous houses, and retirement.

They are able to take larger leaps in their ideological “traditionalism” knowing they have the security of a safety net. The more radical the demonstrations, the more elite, whether materially, like competitively spending money to get into the most elite schools or taking the time to make elaborate breakfasts every morning for their families, or ideologically, like not vaccinating their children because of their unquestioned access to medical support.

There are numerous denominations of ideological “Trad” falling across the political spectrum. On the conservation range of the political extremes, there is MAGA, which preaches a return to hunter-gatherer dynamics and biological roles between genders; the aspirational imperialism of American freedom and global prowess as seen in yesteryear; and a rejection of modern medicine in favor of nostalgic misinterpretations of naturalism. More moderately, there is the Trad of TikTok, of romances based on heteronormative dating dynamics, of boys with broccoli cuts and “maxxing” their bodies dating girls in their Alo sets cooking protein-dense meals for their man. And the more toxic misinterpretations found on pages preaching tactics on how to get a finance bro and how to neg women, either to make them swoon or, far darker, because they believe they deserve it. More Liberal iterations are derived from hippie pasts, of medicinal herbs over modern medicine and naturalist schooling over nurseries. Even seemingly future-driven cultures like biohacking can be understood as a form of ideological “traditionalism,” controlling the body to retain and maintain past ideals of health and definitions of “human.” A fixation on the human as is, of fulfilling our ideal version, rather than the reality that new technologies and climate change will impose, forcing us to adapt against our will, forcing us to capitulate control.

Like process Traditionalism, ideological Trad is another form of resurrected survival tactics, structures, and processes of the past. These old structures, hierarchies, definitions almost act as mantras, the process of repetitively performing formerly defined gender roles and social dynamics to give oneself a sense of stability, certainty, and calm.

Some do this as a more inflamed defensive response: the MAGA sphere, the former majority now finding themselves on the outs, employ exaggerated interpretations of Trad to reclaim security. A lashing out, overasserting their ideologies as a means of feeling secure again, latching onto the memories of their former power. Whereas others, like homesteaders, lean into bucolicism and the repetition of daily tasks from a simpler time, of roasting a potato just pulled out of the soil or placing a billowing clafoutis on a farm table for family brunch, as a means of grounding, of reclaiming control of the only domain they can: their own body, home, and family.

Across the “traditional” spectrum, one can find the security of a process to follow, a defined cycle that can be repeated and a process that has proven itself to provide a sense of control. They give us processes to follow, feasible steps and purpose in living with a sure goal that feels attainable. Assurance that we know how to fend for ourselves in a culture where personal agency is applauded but also a mandate.

In a time when we don’t know what survival will require, these nostalgic techniques, derived from past circumstances, give us a sense of control of the endlessly spinning world around us. The repetition of these processes’ steps and cyclical performances of “Tradition” become looping mantras to convince ourselves we will be okay, we can conquer this on our own, when the future is largely out of our hands.

When very big questions like intelligence, life, and the idea of “human” itself are being opened and reconceptualized, traditionalism’s nostalgic comfort serves as a coping mechanism for modern instability. They allow us to escape into fantasy, where the environment was familiar and we successfully navigated it. A future to return to when no other proposals are currently being proposed.

—

At the end of this era of organizations trying to be everything to everyone, and two decades of hyper-extroversion, hyper-extension, hyper-visibility, and hyper-growth, and turning on a dime to keep up with the attention economy, it’s time to not just pause and “build,” but to make hard decisions with conviction. To retire aimless, artificial aspiration, inspiring consumer salivation for the sake of purely gaining attention and relevance.

The insights and strategy world is increasingly reorienting itself towards the direction of “why.” The trend is moving away from metric-growth and attention-capture to a more qualitative approach, asking what does growth mean for your organization specifically? What impact do you want to have? And impact awareness: what values do we have? What is our purpose?

But adding friction for friction’s sake is superfluous and doesn’t help address the real issues at hand. The true problem we have is that there’s no one presenting a path forward, truly into the future, with novel, rather than nostalgic, steps to follow. No uniting mission to galvanize behind, that we can contribute to.

Asking “what is our purpose?” is a start, but is predicated on the present and past, truly asking “where do we fit in the current context,” rather than taking responsibility over the power and exponential impact many brands have in the world. They are often the ones responsible for stagnation and the current cultural state of repetition and sameness we live within.

Organizations need to put the world as we know it aside. We don’t need another deck that took three months to create, informed by an insights report predicated on past data mined three months ago in order to gain relevancy for the sake of it. Nor another product derived from making up a fake white-space by process of market elimination because there’s a data-derived audience to be taken advantage of, or micro-splintering a product to suit everyone’s preferences.

This leads to decisions predicated upon a world of the past, of filling gaps in the market rather than trying to understand what people will truly need given the future we’re heading into.

We need an approach to production and creation that thinks about what kind of future we want and moves from a function-first response. Asking both: what future do we want to be a part of, and how can we uniquely facilitate this based on the tools at our disposal, our expertise, and capabilities?

Organizations and individuals need to invite challenge into their doors to expand their thinking beyond the familiar and known, into uncharted territory. Rather than holding onto the comforts of familiar terms, welcome risk and chance, vulnerability and imagination. Embrace the discomfort of the adaptations we will have to make as opportunities to invent and expand what we could become.

Take the responsibility and power they have sought for the past decades – to gain notoriety, dominance, and growth – with conviction, realizing they have the power to shape what is to come. To take the onus to offer us a clear path to follow into the future.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author, Gray Broderick and do not necessarily reflect the views of Brand Innovators.

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“IRL is the ultimate destination,” says Cheever. “We’re designing the exit. We don’t want you to stay here all day. We want you to spend some time here, get what you need out of it and then we want you to go out there and do it.” 

In the spring, Pinterest launched a new brand platform that calls consumers to get off of social media and go outside. The effort has supported a number of campaigns including a :60 film called “How did they do it?” featuring old home movies and photos submitted by Pinterest employees from before the Internet. Another ad called “Get Outside,” shows a search on Pinterest for outdoor camping ideas. The tag line, “The best thing you can find online is a reason to go offline.”

“It is really about building the story of how Pinterest as a platform helps you create the life that you do want to live in the real world,” explains Cheever. “The campaign makes that stake in the ground of how we feel about that role between people and technology and then tells how the platform helps you make those positive choices so that you can get offline – go take a new trip or share a wonderful meal with someone that you care about.”

Brand Innovators caught up with Cheever from her office in Seattle to discuss the brand’s new platform, the company’s experiential activations and how working at Amazon taught her that without marketing, it would just be “a warehouse full of stuff.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Talk to me about Pinterest’s brand mission and how it shows up in the creative.

We have always been an inspiration company, but the second part of creating the life you love is really getting harder and harder to do in the world of technology from the internet showing you all of these things you’re supposed to be like or how you’re supposed to live. The idea that you’re living your life online instead of living your life offline, the real life that’s all about you.

We really are that bridge from the online to the offline in the best possible way. For 640 million global users, 96% of top search results are unbranded. Consumers are in this very open state of mind, but they also have a lot of intent or over half of our searches have a lot of commercial intent. They’re looking to build and buy and try things. They’re looking to make choices. It’s really that mission that we brought to life in our campaign was first recognizing we’ve all given up on social media. We have been pretending to live a life versus living the life that we really want.

Can you talk about the importance of showing up in culture and how you’re helping the conversation in culture? 

You always want to be positioning your North Star on something that’s very timeless. Ours is something that’s going to endure over time. Part of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is to have that self-actualization. But then we think about the context in which we show up. We want it to always be relevant. It’s one of the reasons we do go to Coachella. In Europe, we do music festivals. It’s one of the reasons why we’re showing up in women’s sports with our sponsorship of the New York Liberty, because fandom is such a rich part of culture. 

Then also just the way the stories that we tell and the way we want to show up and just those everyday moments, whether it’s about picking an outfit or planning a meal. We have Pinterest Predicts. We analyze billions of keyword and visual searches. We look at all the data and rich signals we get from all the things our users are pinning and collecting and look at the patterns. We pull it from 24 months of trailing data. That gives us this rich view of the culture of what’s going to be popular and trending over the next full year. 88 percent of these predictions have come true over the past six years.We can really see from our own internal signals how people are creating their own culture and creating their own meaning. 

What is your approach to working with brands and helping them connect to new audiences? 

We’re always looking for brands that share a similar affinity for helping people be who they want to be and helping people develop their creativity. That’s why women’s sport is such a great partnership for us because it’s so much a part of fashion, music and women’s health. It really has this larger point of view about how to have a life well-lived. At Coachella, we might come in and bring that point of view in a more pointed way and that’s where our audience is. Music festivals are so great because there is this freedom of self-expression. What a 16- or 18-year old might wear to Coachella is probably not what they’re going to wear to school. They spend a lot of time figuring out what their outfit’s going to be. That self-actualization and self-expression is really looking for brands that can do that.

We’re also looking for any brands that are really hungry to figure out how they can build that URL to IRL journey. It ranges across so many different categories from fashion to travel, even things like financial services. Our North Star is broad enough that we can really have a lot of different partnerships with brands. 

You mentioned Coachella. Pinterest also activates at Cannes. Can you talk about why IRL matters and your experiential marketing strategy? 

It’s really the ultimate destination of where people live their lives. You’re not actually living online. The data shows that the more time people spend online, the more they feel drained, the more they feel like they’ve wasted their time. Forty percent of Gen Z now report that they wish social media had never been invented. That’s a pretty powerful stat. For us, the IRL is where life is lived. Obviously we are a digital platform. So how do we connect to IRL? It is about starting online and then building that bridge and giving them all the tools they need. 

How are you thinking about Gen Z?

They’re on this really early journey of developing their taste. Developing your taste is really defining who you are. You develop it over time. If you see one black t-shirt, you might know if you like it. After you see a thousand, you really know what kind of black t-shirt is you. For young people, it’s the safe space where they’re not being influenced by others, they’re not being shown a perfect life that’s not something that they really can or want to have. We hear that Pinterest is my quiet place. We really think that a healthy part of mental wellbeing for young people is to be able to develop that sense of who they are. It’s a really important audience for us because they’re beginning to form those early brand preferences, but we really want to build it for the things they really want and the things they really care about. 

Talk to me about how your past at other brands like Amazon helped shape your perspective where you are today.

I’m always looking for a story to tell and for brands that are really differentiated and have the courage to pursue that point of view. At Amazon, the story was about selection and convenience, but it was still an emotional story. How do we tell that in a way that reminds people of a brand that they’ve gotten so used to. It’s so omnipresent that we want to reignite that relationship.

For Pinterest, we have a strong point of view and a really great story to tell. Then it’s about getting that story out to more people. I love refreshing people who may not have an up-to-date understanding of where the brand or the business is at, that constant reconsideration. As marketers, you’re never done. People don’t walk around thinking about brands. They just don’t. We always have a job to do, which is reminding consumers of who we are and what has changed. 

We have users who’ve been with us on a whole journey of life stages. Maybe they joined when they were planning a baby shower and now they’re at a different phase in life. We want to tell them we’re here for meal planning or for planning an outfit for the weekend. It doesn’t have to be a big project. It can be little ‘c’ creativity. It was very similar to Amazon. Without marketing, it’s just a warehouse full of stuff. You really need to tell that story.

Are there any marketing challenges keeping you up at night? 

No matter where you are, no matter how big your budget is, there’s always more things that you can and want and probably should do than you have resources, time and money to do. It’s always an exercise of constraints and trade-offs. That’s always the toughest part of the job. You can come up with 10 really big priorities and they’re all the right things to do and you really are only going to be able to do five of them. I’ve found that when I’ve had massive budgets, I’ve found that when I’ve had not so massive budgets. It’s always the same exercise of portfolio planning and trade-offs. So it’s challenging. 

I also find that really exciting because it really builds trust and it really brings the team together when you can put on that bigger hat and say, okay, today I work for the Pinterest pinner. What’s the best decision for that person and for those 640 million people? It’s hard because you leave stuff on the cutting room floor that would be awesome.

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In the newly created role, reporting directly to KFC’s global chief executive officer Scott Mezvinsky, Ellis Durini will lead KFC’s global brand strategy, overseeing brand, loyalty and retail, as well as new concept development and innovation. 

She joins KFC from Taco Bell International, where she most recently served as chief marketing and strategy officer. 

Ellis Durini’s appointment comes on the heels of news that global chief marketing officer Taylor Montgomery is leaving Taco Bell to join Jack in the Box as president.

Before joining Taco Bell in 2021, Ellis Durini spent eight years across KFC Global and Latin America & Caribbean. In the new role, she will also work with CMOs in local markets.

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