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The dynamic future of marketing: lessons from the Teacher, the Optimist, the Revisionist and the Connector

Thinking about the future is daunting. There鈥檚 no way to precisely predict new developments in the marketing pipeline, whether in technology, theory, practice or career trajectory. But even if the details are unclear, we can always find solace in strong leadership.

This year鈥檚 batch of 4 Under 40 Emerging Leaders suggests a boundaries-defying future for marketing. The most striking characteristic of the group is perhaps how each individual represents four very different aspects of marketing. As the industry becomes more dynamic, so do its practitioners.

The 萝莉社官网鈥檚 2019 4 Under 40 group, narrowed down from a list of 87, consists of a teacher, an optimist, a revisionist and a connector. They鈥檙e each highly accomplished in their own right and are redefining what success in marketing means.

Mary Owusu: The Teacher

Mary Owusu isn鈥檛 just interested in solutions. She鈥檚 interested in the process鈥攁 trait that makes her a natural teacher. She muses on the lessons learned, a strategy she鈥檚 perfected as a search marketer, analyst and adjunct professor. Owusu wants to know what鈥檚 driving the customer or keeping a B student from becoming an A student. Her full story鈥攑rofessionally and personally鈥攊s rife with tales of 鈥渇iguring it out.鈥�

, who serves as vice president of analytics and digital strategy at , says her transition from search marketing to analyst was prompted by a hard lesson. In the first paid search campaign she ran, Owusu forgot to cap her budget. She went away for the weekend, and upon her return found that the entire month鈥檚 budget was spent over that short period. 鈥淚 had to call the client, tell them what happened, but also offer some solutions. 鈥楬ow many phone calls did you get over the weekend? How many different forms have been completed on the site?鈥欌�� Owusu recalls. The mistake prompted her to ask deeper questions about data and analytics. 鈥淚 realized there was so much more. I took that and started using it for other clients.鈥�

Her future as an analyst was set off by recognizing a teachable moment, and she鈥檚 spent her career sniffing out and pouncing on such opportunities. Her clarity and ability to make sense out of problems and data compels you to want to understand them better. You want her on your team.

鈥淪ometimes, analysts are stereotyped as number crunchers who find it really difficult to socialize with people,鈥� Owusu says. 鈥淏ut I think the glue that defines 99% of analysts is we tend to be very literal and highly logical people, very logic-driven. You present us with a situation鈥攍ike can you solve X or what is the outcome of Y鈥攁nd we鈥檙e thinking of all the factors that might affect the outcome of that situation. We鈥檙e inclined to peel all the layers back until we get to the root cause of something. Ultimately, the analyst鈥檚 desire is to understand how things converge: What is the final result we鈥檙e trying to produce? That holds true for teachers.鈥�

Prompted to describe an example when she helped a client refocus on the consumer, she gets right to setting the scene鈥攂ecause a good teacher is also a good storyteller, and you become transfixed by the experience of solving for X along with Owusu.

The client in her example is a museum, and she pauses to note how tricky it is to attract people to touristy venues. She presents the goals: 鈥淵ou want to get people aware, then you want them to plan a vacation in the city and then you also want them 鈥� to actually go to the museum while they鈥檙e there. You want the museum to be the hook.鈥� Next, she outlines some typical missteps a marketer could make at this stage, such as setting up a landing page that requests information from the visitor without offering them value. (She even admits to using fake email addresses in these situations herself.)

Now, the solutions: In the lead-up to an opening or release, marketers have an opportunity to create urgency and scarcity. Perhaps the museum could offer free admission to anyone who signs up in March. Maybe, in addition to a countdown clock for the grand opening, there鈥檚 one for when the offer of the month expires. But there are also bonus points. 鈥淧eople will self-select out of the process if the reward is not relevant,鈥� she says.

Her careful breakdown illustrates just how much Owusu thrills in the opportunity to teach. In addition to her work at Mower, where she鈥檚 served for almost five years, she鈥檚 also an adjunct professor at Canisius College and is frequently asked to speak at conferences. It鈥檚 not just her natural ability to educate or her search marketing and analysis expertise that move her to participate in events鈥攕he also sees her presence as a teachable moment.

Owusu鈥檚 family came to the U.S. from Ghana, and 10 years later her parents both had to return to their home country. Owusu and her siblings had to support one another, work hard, become vulnerable and rely on a network of friends and strangers. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about stepping away from homogenous thinking,鈥� she says. 鈥淎nd realizing that there are multiple ways to solve a problem, and that when you are operating within your own sphere of what you know, you won鈥檛 have those 鈥楢ha!鈥� moments. Somebody else might have a very unique approach.鈥�

Having seen the benefit of diversity in her own life, she tries to highlight the perks of broad thinking when she steps onstage.

鈥淲hen you have [diversity and inclusion], it opens up the conversation and possibilities become endless,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou find yourself being able to do things that you thought were impossible. You find yourself stepping outside your boundaries. You find yourself thinking differently. I put myself out there because I know that 鈥� I鈥檓 different, I know I am an immigrant, I鈥檓 a black woman, I鈥檓 in a unique field. Sometimes I talk about diversity but sometimes I just talk about analytics and best practices.鈥�

Owusu says her presence is important for the people in the audience, some of whom are in the minority themselves, to witness representation. But it also benefits the people who cannot relate to her gender, race or immigration story. She wants to trigger people to talk about inclusion within their company.

Wherever Owusu shows up, she does so to learn and teach. She has her own arsenal of mentors from diverse backgrounds, and she plays the teacher in the office, at conferences and in classrooms. People have a lot to learn, but she鈥檚 happy to make the time.

Pranav Yadav: The Optimist

Everyone wants to believe that, on some level, what they do or the way they work will make the world at least a slightly better place. For Pranav Yadav, that may actually be true. It wouldn鈥檛 be fair to call him an idealist, because he鈥檚 realistic about what currently motivates companies and their marketing departments. (Spoiler: it鈥檚 profit.) But he also sees what the role of marketing could be, and he鈥檚 optimistic about that.

is the CEO of , a neuromarketing and neuroanalytics company that helps organizations find what subconsciously drives consumers. 鈥淓ighty to 90% of your decision-making takes place in the subconscious,鈥� he says. 鈥淣ow think about the $500 billion that [is] spent every year in the world of advertising globally. The whole purpose of advertising is to influence people to be doing things that the brand wants them to do. 鈥� If the only way we are trying to measure how people would react to things in the market is a conscious way鈥攚hich scientifically and philosophically we know is only 10% of decision-making鈥攖here鈥檚 something very broken in that industry.鈥�

What Neuro-Insight does, according to Yadav, is decode human behavior. He鈥檚 been digging into the core of what drives people since he was young, pinpointing his first appearance in a play at 8 or 9 years old as the root. He played the role of Ram, an avatar of the Hindu deity Vishnu, who solves for humanity before solving for himself. Yadav was asked to act empathetically toward the other characters in the play, as well as the crowd. 鈥淭hat turned into a basic interest in the study of human behavior,鈥� he says. 鈥淗ow do people react to things? What makes them tick?鈥�

Early in his career, Yadav worked for Danish innovation strategy consulting firm ReD Associates, which purports to use 鈥渉uman science to put people back at the center of business decision-making.鈥� The job launched him into the practice of getting at the heart of why people did鈥攐r didn鈥檛鈥攁ct in a certain way. He was sent to India to find out why people didn鈥檛 buy air conditioners, despite temperatures hitting 120 degrees in the summer. He traveled to Las Vegas to understand the gaming industry and to Copenhagen to work on city design. At the heart of all this work was social scientific research: He would sit and talk with people for hours, trying to decode not what they were saying but what their actions suggested.

Yadav wanted to take his research into decision-making further, and that鈥檚 when he learned about neuromarketing. 鈥淚 became obsessed with the idea of, can technology actually provide a solution to understanding the human subconscious, the root of all greatness, that we have seen for the past few thousand or million years in mankind?鈥� he says. It led him to an Australian company, Neuro-Insight, which invented technology that could predict human behavior by looking at brain activity. Turns out, they were looking for a CEO.

鈥淲e come in and try to understand how people would react to certain ideas, storyboards, strategy or even to finished commercials in the real world鈥攂efore the company actually spends all of the money on production or media buy,鈥� Yadav says. 鈥淏rands commonly use us to figure out how consumers are likely to react in the market so they can come up with products that consumers would want, and they can communicate about their products in a way that the consumers will understand and react to.鈥�

One of the great disconnects Yadav sees is between narrative and brand. He gives the example of the that ran during Super Bowl XLIX. The spot鈥攊n which a puppy makes a special connection with Clydesdale horses, who rescue the pup from a run-in with a wolf鈥攚as a top-ranked ad, but it didn鈥檛 lead to higher sales. Yadav identified three problems: First, advertising is not consumed in isolation, but ad testing is. Second, consumers engage in post-rationalization of why they did or didn鈥檛 like an ad, which doesn鈥檛 get at the subconscious reasons they found it appealing. Third is the myth that emotional advertising works. Yet here was a highly emotional ad, and it wasn鈥檛 driving beer sales.

鈥淯nless and until a particular piece of information goes into your long-term memory, you don鈥檛 have the information to react tomorrow, the day after or a year later when you actually want to tap back into it,鈥� Yadav says. The mistake many brands make is to tell a compelling narrative, bring people to an emotional crescendo, but then the music ends and another screen takes over with the branding. It鈥檚 a conceptual closure. 鈥淚f the brand only shows up after that point, your doorway of memory is no longer open to consume any new information,鈥� he says.

Another problem Yadav sees is when brands try to be the hero of the consumer鈥檚 story by listing all of its benefits. Imagine if humans did that to one another. 鈥淚f I were to meet you on the street and go up to you and say, 鈥楬ey, by the way, my name is Pranav, I鈥檓 the CEO of a neuromarketing company and here are the 10 accolades that I have gotten鈥擨鈥檓 worthy of your time. Please give me the attention that I deserve,鈥欌�� he says, 鈥測ou鈥檇 be like, 鈥榃hat a weird character. I certainly don鈥檛 want to give him any attention.鈥欌�� Soap or toothpaste may play some role in our lives, but they aren鈥檛 the heroes of our stories鈥攜et brands鈥� communication strategies often depend on the product being the hero.

Yadav says the most effective strategies are those that include the branding within the narrative and center the consumer at the heart of the story. He uses the 鈥溾�� ad as an example. The platform is used throughout the spot to help bring together two old friends in separate countries. The characters are the heroes, Google simply helps facilitate the emotional reunion.

Yadav doesn鈥檛 just see his work as a way to help companies make more money. Instead, he sees it as a way to help marketers have a greater understanding of the human subconscious, to better understand them and become more empathetic. Right or wrong, he says, marketing was handed the responsibility of setting culture and propagating behavior.

鈥淲e as marketers have the power and the money to influence culture and society and figure out a way and a direction in which to move the world,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e have a responsibility, a fundamental one at that, to be able to set culture a certain way so we as humanity can move in a certain direction, rather than thinking more short-term about the month or the quarter and the profitability and stock price. Those needs will be taken care of if we鈥檙e actually solving for the greater picture.鈥�

Erik Huberman: The Revisionist

Marketers have learned that people want options and flexibility. Gone are the days of being locked into a contract with your cell phone company. We鈥檙e entering the era of on-demand music, movies鈥攅verything. But somehow this new pick-and-choose economy hasn鈥檛 trickled into the B2B market.

鈥淗ow is it that all these marketing companies that always talk about the customer have never built a customer-centric agency where it鈥檚 about their customer?鈥� asks Erik Huberman. 鈥淚f you think about all the things that make agencies annoying, it鈥檚 to protect themselves, not the customer. Signing a three-year contract isn鈥檛 for the sake of the brand, that鈥檚 for the sake of the agency. That鈥檚 crazy to me. Can you imagine you walk into a restaurant and they say, 鈥極K, you can only eat if you鈥檙e going to eat here every week for the next three years?鈥欌��

saw a gap in the market, for which he introduced , an a la carte marketing solution. Whatever a company鈥檚 need, it can choose that exact solution from Hawke鈥檚 menu of marketing specialties.

It helps that Huberman doesn鈥檛 come from a traditional marketing background himself. (He initially thought he鈥檇 pursue real estate.) But after building a few e-commerce companies, he saw a need to tweak how the marketing ecosystem works. The operations side, which he calls reactive, was the easy part. But he found himself drawn to the challenge of marketing and sales. He dove into the profession and made a name for himself helping other companies with their branding strategies. Huberman became item No. 1鈥攁n outsourced CMO鈥攐n an eventual full menu of marketing capabilities that he would offer through Hawke.

鈥淚 had a bunch of clients, both big and small, that I was consulting for,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hen I鈥檇 try to hire people that execute for them, I was disappointed over and over again and got sick of it, and decided to hire my own team. I grabbed a bunch of really good marketers in their specific fields. I got a Facebook marketer, an email marketer, web designer, etc. But I kept everything a la carte, month-to-month. The idea is we鈥檙e cheaper than hiring in-house, but you can spin off exactly what you need, when you need it and you know that they鈥檙e managed, trained, peer-reviewed and constantly learning more.鈥�

Hawke Media is essentially the streaming video service of marketing agencies: You watch what you want and get personalized recommendations. Because Hawke has managed more than 2,000 companies鈥� data鈥攊n the same way streaming services have viewers鈥� data鈥攖he agency has done well using insights to know what works and what doesn鈥檛.

Huberman doesn鈥檛 seem to take anything too personally. Maybe you need his company this month, but you want to get a marketing team in-house by the end of the year. That鈥檚 OK with him. Perhaps you鈥檒l need some specialized digital marketing assistance for next year鈥檚 holiday season. Give him a call then, no pressure. Everyone needs something different at a different time, and he鈥檚 willing to be flexible.

This approach is undoubtedly disruptive, and it replaces the way a lot of firms used to do business. But it鈥檚 also disrupting the way marketers themselves work, as his employees are essentially menu items. 鈥淚t appeals to the person who wants to work on a diverse group of clients,鈥� Huberman says. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e an email marketer, you can go work internally at a company, do the same stuff every day and build out emails for the same fashion brand that look the same and do it for three years until you get bored or want to go to the next one. Or you can come here and, on average, work on six to eight companies at a time. Those also rotate out. You鈥檙e constantly changing what you鈥檙e doing. The person who likes a little more diversity in their work, it鈥檚 a huge opportunity and the right people seem to love that. It鈥檚 a preference.鈥�

As he reimagines the marketing ecosystem in an on-demand world, Huberman鈥檚 approach also opens the opportunity for greater accessibility. He looks to the big consultancies, such as Deloitte and Ernst & Young, as models. 鈥淔or them, it鈥檚 accounting and management consulting,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hat I want to build now is the same thing, but on the growth and marketing side.鈥� He wants Hawke Media to be a place where a company, an entrepreneur or marketing lead can seek help for a strategy or individual execution items. 鈥淥ur full mission is around making marketing accessible and really helping companies get access to that. And that鈥檚 for anyone, whether it鈥檚 a Fortune 100, a tiny startup or anything in between.鈥�

If Huberman sounds as though he鈥檚 rushing toward the future, riding the on-demand trend, trying to fix a broken system鈥攈e strikes a balance with a healthy dose of skepticism. Yes, he believes in a more flexible future, a combination of agency and in-house, but he doesn鈥檛 think freelancing is part of the solution: 鈥淚鈥檝e watched the frustrations and problems that come from that. That鈥檚 not scalable.鈥� And while Hawke Media has an initiative of becoming 5% more tech-enabled each year, he鈥檚 cautious about how beneficial cutting-edge technology is. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no artificial intelligence yet,鈥� he says. 鈥淚n fact, machine learning and automation are still not even at a point that it鈥檚 actually more lucrative than having a manual person do it.鈥�

Huberman is poking at the status quo, seeing what works and what doesn鈥檛. His solution isn鈥檛 exactly new, but it has been reimagined. He thinks it could work for you, and if you change your mind鈥攏o problem. 鈥淭hat doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean that I think the way everyone else is doing it is wrong, it鈥檚 just different,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 agree with it, I don鈥檛 prefer it, but I鈥檓 not the only opinion in the world.鈥�

Carolyn Tisch Blodgett: The Connector

People love to talk to Carolyn Tisch Blodgett about her work.

鈥淚 go to kids鈥� birthday parties or dinner parties, and all anyone wants to talk to me about is ,鈥� she says. They tell her that the brand, for which she serves as senior vice president and head of global brand marketing, changed their life. With its Wi-Fi-connected stationary bikes, treadmills and digital app, Peloton bridges its users鈥� harried lifestyles with a love for boutique fitness classes.

鈥淕ratifying is too soft a word, but it really does feel 鈥� I get very emotional when I hear people talking about Peloton,鈥� Blodgett says.

The brand is personal for Blodgett, who calls herself the target audience for Peloton. (鈥淭his product changed my life,鈥� she says.) But she wasn鈥檛 always so personally intertwined with the brands she worked for. In fact, she says she always felt that you become a better marketer when you鈥檙e not the target audience. That was certainly the case at her previous employer, PepsiCo, where she worked on the Mountain Dew brand.

鈥淢y family just didn鈥檛 have soda in the house growing up, and I didn鈥檛 really like caffeine,鈥� Blodgett says. 鈥淢ountain Dew was sort of the last thing that I would ever drink.鈥� Yet there she was, working on a higher-caffeine version of the beverage. Her role as a marketer comes first, though, and despite bringing Peloton into her personal life, she dons her marketing hat before she clips into the pedals.

To listen to Blodgett discuss her work, you can hear the way she can scan a table of loose puzzle pieces and snap the matches into place, watching the picture come together.

The first puzzle piece was realizing that, despite her declared liberal arts major, Blodgett found herself drawn to business. 鈥淚 was always fascinated by how brands connected with some more than others,鈥� she says. She delved into a brand she loved鈥擜merican Express鈥攁nd worked for the company鈥檚 advertising agency at the time, Digitas. She sought to experience being in a client-service role, something she says has helped her to understand what a good brief looks like and how good management works. She returned to school, studying at Harvard University, and returned to the client side with PepsiCo. With every experience, she found another piece of her marketing acumen clicking into place.

Her time at PepsiCo guided a lot of her work at Peloton, where she鈥檚 helped to grow the company from a small start-up to an international fitness brand. She essentially helped to start the young brand from scratch, but didn鈥檛 hesitate to use the tools she acquired while working on Mountain Dew. The difference now is her personal connection to the Peloton brand鈥攂ut she doesn鈥檛 let that overpower the importance of data and insights.

鈥淚鈥檓 not successful at my job because I鈥檓 in the target [audience],鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 just icing on the cake. We need to use data to tell us if something鈥檚 working or not working. We may feel so passionately about some marketing, like a new ad campaign that we want to launch. We fall in love with it and we think it鈥檚 fantastic, and then we bring it into testing and consumers don鈥檛 like it. We鈥檙e not going to produce it. 鈥� That鈥檚 where having the balance of, yes, we all feel so passionate about this product and this brand and this experience and community, but we have to use data to validate whether or not we鈥檙e making the right decision every day.鈥�

Not that an emotional connection to the brand must be at odds with datasets and customer insights鈥攁 combination of the two has been Blodgett鈥檚 strength.

Peloton is still a very young business, and that means there鈥檚 more than enough work to go around. (Peloton has filed documents for an initial public offering as of press time and is expected to be valued at about $8 billion.) But Blodgett has found her calm within the storm, often relaxing at night by scrolling through Peloton鈥檚 Facebook page to see how users connect with the brand.

As she鈥檚 connected the puzzle pieces in her own career, a fuller picture has emerged that hints at the future of marketing. Blodgett believes the best route forward, the way for companies to stand out from the crowd, is to blend performance marketing and brand marketing. 鈥淣ot many companies can do both,鈥� she says.

At a certain point, a marketer can鈥檛 just focus on brand or performance; If you want to be a senior leader, you must understand how the two work together. Everyone at Peloton is a brand ambassador, Blodgett explains. She references the company鈥檚 field ops, drivers and delivery people. Their tasks would appear to be relatively mundane: Get the product from the company to the customer. But Peloton saw an opportunity to reinforce its ability to blend brand and performance. When someone from the company shows up at a customer鈥檚 door, they spend time making sure the user knows how to adjust their seat, connect to Wi-Fi and log in to the platform. It鈥檚 another chance to make a connection.

鈥淭he future of marketing is that [brand and performance] don鈥檛 need to be in conflict,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou can tell a great story that also happens to do the thing your business needs to do. For us, that鈥檚 selling bikes and treads and digital subscriptions. For a different business, it鈥檚 something else. But the fact that you can do both of those at the same time is the future of marketing.鈥�

Illustrations by Eugene Smith.