Marketing Vanguard

EVP, GM, or CMO - why pick one when you can be all 3? In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, Keisha Taylor Starr, EVP, CMO, and General Manager of Scripps Networks, proves that intersectionality and a diverse skill set can take your marketing game to the next level. Tune in for their discussion on how strategic repositioning can drive record-breaking audience engagement, why marketers must balance creative risk with financial rigor and the leadership moves required to shape an industry built for diverse voices.

Keisha Taylor Starr is Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, and General Manager of Scripps Networks at The E.W. Scripps Company, bringing expertise in media marketing, brand strategy, and P&L management. With a career spanning agency work at BBDO, leadership roles at CNN, Turner Broadcasting, and Warner Bros. Discovery, as well as experience in collegiate sports marketing, she has consistently driven innovative transformations across news, entertainment, and sports properties. Her leadership in ION's rebrand into a general entertainment network with pioneering women's sports programming has resulted in record-breaking audience engagement and Google TV's most-watched free live channel designation in 2024, demonstrating how CMOs can balance creative vision with financial accountability.

What You'll Learn:
How to transition from CMO to General Manager by gaining P&L ownership
Why sports franchises are essential programming investments
The strategy behind rebranding a legacy network for new audiences
How to balance creative ambition with financial rigor as a CMO
The importance of diverse representation in leadership and decision-making
How to expand sports definition and create inclusive programming
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A new age of Super Bowl marketing has dawned upon us, and it’s time to embrace it. In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, marketing leaders from Meta, Instacart, and Chime reveal how their brands are redefining Super Bowl marketing by prioritizing social-first strategies, earned media, and authentic creator partnerships over traditional metrics. Tune in to learn why the biggest marketing opportunities now live in subcultures and algorithmic feeds and how to tap into conversations happening off-screen.

What You'll Learn:
How to shift from awareness metrics to earned social conversation as your primary Super Bowl success measure
Why a social-first strategy is non-negotiable and why niche communities outperform monoculture campaigns
How to design ads that crack culture through hyperbole and surprise
The strategic partnership framework beyond logo placement
How to unlock innovation by protecting brand fundamentals while experimenting relentlessly
Why in-house creative teams, powered by AI, can deliver portfolio-defining work at a fraction of agency costs
The non-negotiable marketing-product alignment tactic

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Surely a legacy brand like Crayola has done all it could to grow, right? Wrong. In this episode of the Marketing Vanguard podcast, recorded live at Brandweek in Atlanta in November 2025, Victoria Lozano, former CMO of Crayola, proves that the growth work of even the most iconic brands can and should never stop. From how nostalgia can be leveraged to the advantage of expanding into unexpected categories, this conversation covers it all.

Victoria Lozano, former Chief Marketing Officer of Crayola, is renowned for her expertise in brand strategy, category expansion and omnichannel marketing across iconic consumer brands. With a career spanning Fortune 500 CPG companies including HBC, beverages and confectionery, she has built a diverse track record in product innovation, location-based entertainment, and educational strategy. Her work at Crayola demonstrates how legacy brands can evolve, redefine brand categories, unlock new consumer segments and build enduring marketing strategies that transcend traditional product boundaries, all while maintaining emotional resonance.

What You'll Learn:
How to merge nostalgia with future-forward relevance
Why a CMO's role with high-awareness brands requires category expansion
The framework for segmented messaging across stakeholder groups
How to unlock hidden revenue streams in plain sight, like recognizing that 57% of Crayola purchases are made by adults without children
The power of branded sensory identity as a defensible competitive advantage
Why ecosystem thinking matters more than individual business unit performance

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How can you sell water in a can successfully, without making it a gimmick? In this live episode of Marketing Vanguard from Brandweek Atlanta, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Benoit Vatere, Chief Media Officer at Liquid Death, to explore how he, as a non-traditional entrepreneur with an engineering background, is scaling a cult beverage brand through unconventional media strategy, retail partnerships and aggressive upper-funnel investment while protecting the brand's core mystique.

Benoit Vatere is Chief Media Officer at Liquid Death, where he drives growth strategy and media planning for one of the most distinctive brands in the beverage industry. With a background as an entrepreneur and engineer who spent 25 years building ad tech products in Los Angeles, Benoit brings unique expertise in bridging creator marketing, retail commerce and consumer conversion. His work at Liquid Death demonstrates how data-driven media strategy, disciplined creative positioning and deep retailer partnerships can scale challenger brands into category leaders while maintaining distinctive brand equity

What You'll Learn:
How to shift from DTC obsession to retail-first strategy
The frequency-over-reach principle for mental availability
How to build a tech stack that bridges awareness to retail conversion
Why a CEO-CMO creates organizational competitive advantage
The conquest strategy in competitive categories
How to maintain brand mystique while scaling

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Taking risks and having them pay off in an industry as regulated as fintech can seem like an impossible task. But Coinbase’s success in bold and unique marketing proves it isn’t. In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, Coinbase CMO, Catherine Ferdon, reveals why bold creativity matters when it comes to marketing intangibles, how to build financial brands that don't feel sterile and the key strategies behind Coinbase's high-profile Super Bowl and Oscars campaigns.

Catherine Ferdon is the Chief Marketing Officer at Coinbase, bringing nearly fifteen years of fintech expertise to one of crypto's most established brands. With a background spanning Square, Cash App and Afterpay, she has built her career giving voice to complex financial products through bold, unconventional creativity. Her work exemplifies how CMOs can translate intangible, complex products into compelling narratives that drive mainstream adoption - a critical lesson for marketers navigating emerging technologies and regulatory constraints.

What You'll Learn:
Why understanding intangible products in depth is the key to marketing them successfully
The risk-taking framework for breakthrough creativity
Why educational complexity requires participatory, not didactic marketing
How to design media moments for their environment
The leadership principle of strong opinions, softly held
Why AI amplifies human creativity rather than replacing it

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