Marketing Vanguard

When every company starts looking like a tech company, a media company and an entertainment company at the same time, brand clarity becomes mission critical.

In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Grace Kao, CMO of Snap, to talk about what it takes to build a brand people actually understand and want to spend time with. Plus: a breakdown of Snap’s push toward chat, real-world connection and why marketers should be asking the question, “How do we actually add something?”

Grace Kao is Chief Marketing Officer of Snap, where she leads marketing across Snapchat and the company’s broader brand portfolio.

Her career began almost by accident after she stepped away from graduate school and joined BBDO as an executive assistant on the Apple account. From there, she built a career across agency and brand roles spanning PlayStation, Yahoo, Pandora, Instagram, Spotify, and Snap.

Across those chapters, Grace has consistently gravitated toward brands with strong identities, youth audiences, and clear points of view. At Snap, she is focused on keeping the brand rooted in friendship, creativity, and real connection while exploring new ways for brands, creators, and communities to participate on the platform.

What You'll Learn:

Why brand clarity becomes more valuable as businesses stretch across categories
How relationships and people can shape a career more than a perfect plan
Why challenger brands and youth culture have more pull
How Snapchat is moving beyond passive consumption toward active participation
Why brand marketing has to match the creative standard of the community
How chat, Maps, and IRL experiences can create new roles for brands
Why unexpected partnerships can make audiences see a brand differently
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

CMOs are being asked to do something increasingly absurd: deliver more growth, with less budget, while marketing gets more complex and more expensive.

In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Jessica Apotheker, CMO of Boston Consulting Group, to unpack what it actually takes to survive and matter in the modern C-suite.

Jessica Apotheker is Chief Marketing Officer of Boston Consulting Group, where she leads the BCG brand while continuing to work directly with clients on marketing, digital transformation, and growth. Before joining BCG, Jessica worked in product marketing at L’Oréal.

Her approach is grounded in one principle: strategy only matters if it survives execution. Whether she is advising clients or leading BCG’s own marketing agenda, Jessica focuses on measurable impact, stronger capabilities, and making sure marketing earns its place as a growth driver.

What You'll Learn:

Why granular execution is what turns strategy into actual impact
How to think about marketing through orchestration, art, and science
Why BCG increasingly sees itself as a force multiplier, not just a consultancy
How the impact, asset, and muscle model creates measurable client value
Why CFO and CIO relationships can determine whether a CMO succeeds
What makes the CMO role uniquely vulnerable in the C-suite
Why AI should be positioned as a growth lever, not just an efficiency play
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mary Yee, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Sony Interactive Entertainment, started her career in accounting, not marketing. And, yet here she is.

In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Mary to unpack how a career that moved from finance to Clorox to PlayStation to the CEO seat at Tatcha (and back to PlayStation) shaped her view of what great brand building actually requires.

Mary Yee is Senior Vice President of Marketing at Sony Interactive Entertainment, where she oversees the PlayStation brand globally across hardware, peripherals, network services, subscriptions, digital retail, and games.

Her career began in public accounting before she moved into brand marketing at Clorox. She later joined PlayStation during the PS4 era, helping build the brand through a major period of category growth and digital transformation. In 2021, she became CEO of Tatcha, where she helped expand the luxury skincare brand across channels and into 34 countries before returning to Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Across gaming, beauty, and CPG, Mary’s approach is rooted in the same core idea: understand the business, understand the consumer, and build brands around real human connection.

What You'll Learn:

Why financial literacy can make marketers stronger brand builders
How analytics and creativity should work together, not against each other
How Tatcha used communities, creators, and retail to fuel growth
Why Mary defines herself, first and foremost, as a brand builder
How cross-media IP expands reach beyond a brand’s core audience
Why PlayStation anchors products, games, and IP under one master brand
How curiosity helps leaders move successfully across categories and roles
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when consumers love the idea of your product but freeze when it is time to choose?

In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Andy Lopez, CMO of Behr Paint, to unpack how Behr is turning consumer friction into brand opportunity. Andy shares why “color paralysis” is one of the biggest pain points in the paint journey, how Behr uses insight to build confidence at the point of decision and why the strongest marketing ideas start by solving something real.

Sparks President and Chief Client Officer Melissa Levy also joins Jenny for a mid-episode sidebar discussion on trust, measurement, and the future of experiential marketing. Sponsored by Sparks.

Andy Lopez is Chief Marketing Officer of Behr Paint, where he leads an integrated marketing organization spanning brand, product marketing and commercialization. He began his career agency-side, including at Saatchi in Los Angeles working on Toyota, before moving to Behr more than nine years ago.

At Behr, Andy has expanded across brand marketing, product and broader marketing leadership, bringing together consumer insights, innovation and go-to-market strategy. His perspective is shaped by experience on both sides of the agency-brand relationship, as well as Behr’s long-standing exclusive partnership with Home Depot.

What You'll Learn:

Why the best agency partners behave like extensions of the brand team
What AI still cannot replace in strategic marketing relationships
How to use AI to create capacity instead of simply cutting costs
Why consumer confidence matters as much as consumer inspiration
How Behr identifies and solves “color paralysis”
How exclusive retail partnerships work when both brands plan together
How Behr’s Color of the Year connects trend forecasting to actual consumer behavior
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do agency leaders need right now? According to Ross Martin, maybe “a sanity check and a lobotomy.” Funny, yes. Also not entirely wrong.

In this special episode of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney spotlights the launch of Adweek’s Agencies Vanguard program with three founding members: Jessica Henrichs, CEO of DonerColle Partners; Ross Martin, President of Known; and Chioma Aduba, President of Droga5. Together, they unpack why agency leadership has become one of the most complex jobs in business, why competitors need spaces for radical honesty, and why the future of agencies cannot be solved in isolation.

Jessica Henrichs is the CEO of DonerColle Partners and one of the founding members of Adweek’s Agencies Vanguard program. In this episode, she brings a clear perspective on adaptive leadership, the value of peer support and why agency leaders need to build belief through change rather than pretend they have every answer.

Ross Martin is the President of Known and a founding member of Agencies Vanguard. Known for his candid take on the agency industry, Ross brings a sharp view on the structural challenges facing agencies today, from outdated business models to the bigger question of what the industry wants to stand for next.

Chioma Aduba is the President of Droga5 and a founding member of Agencies Vanguard. In this conversation, she speaks to the value of transparency, cross-agency community and creating an industry that feels like it is in good hands for the next generation of creative talent.

What You'll Learn:

Why agency leaders need perspective, not just certainty
How leaders can build organizations that adapt through change
Why agency executives need safe spaces for honest conversation
How competitors can collaborate on shared industry challenges
Why agency business models are facing structural pressure
What diverse agency models can learn from one another
Why the industry needs to decide what agencies should be known for next

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.