Marketing Vanguard

Playing it safe is expensive when nobody notices you.

Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with Tyler Stewart, Head of Marketing at Gopuff, for a play-by-play on how a challenger brand competes in one of the most crowded corners of commerce without trying to outspend everyone else. Tyler gets into why Gopuff’s real edge sits in its first-party logistics, how competitors can also become distribution partners, and why “instant” means more than shaving minutes off a delivery.

Tyler Stewart is Head of Marketing at Gopuff, where he leads marketing across the business as the company continues to expand what instant commerce can look like.

His career started in sports entertainment and talent representation before moving through media and integrated marketing roles at GQ, The Players’ Tribune and Bleacher Report.
That mix of sports, media, entertainment and startup experience now shapes how he approaches Gopuff: find where the brand can create attention, build partnerships people actually care about and turn the company’s operational strengths into something culturally relevant.

What You'll Learn:
Why Gopuff’s proprietary logistics are central to its competitive position
How competitors can also become valuable distribution partners
Why instant commerce is about convenience and access, not speed alone
Why dense urban markets matter more than rapid geographic expansion
How Gopuff uses partnerships to create unexpected customer experiences
Why challenger brands have to be more resourceful when they cannot win on spend
Why Tyler would rather have Gopuff debated than ignored
Why fewer, deeper creator partnerships can beat a stream of one-off posts

This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Brandweek 2026 and presented in partnership with Tatari.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most CMOs are trained to make the brand the loudest thing on the block. But what if the brand isn’t supposed to be the star?

In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, Jenny Rooney sits down with MDVIP CMO Alyssa Schaefer to unpack what marketing looks like when trust sits in the relationship between a doctor and a patient. She breaks down the strategy that built 33% unaided awareness from an imperfect starting point at Laurel Road, why MDVIP’s doctors and patients are unusually aligned and how she balances hyperlocal physician marketing with broader brand investment.

Alyssa Schaefer is Chief Marketing Officer at MDVIP.

Before joining MDVIP, Alyssa served as the first CMO of Laurel Road, where she helped rebrand the company for a national audience and built strong awareness among physicians. Her career spans American Express, fintech and healthcare, with experience across brand, product, partnerships, direct marketing and general management.

At MDVIP, she now leads marketing across two connected audiences - doctors and patients. Her focus is on growing the business without losing sight of the human relationship at the center of the model.

What You'll Learn:
Why a strong brand can be built even from imperfect starting conditions
How Laurel Road reached 33% unaided awareness among its target doctor segment
Why aligned incentives between doctors, patients and the business matter
Why MDVIP deliberately keeps physicians at the center of the customer experience
How hyperlocal and national marketing work together in MDVIP’s growth strategy
Why performance marketing alone may not be enough for the company’s next phase
How cultural health trends influence messaging without dictating clinical decisions
Why AI needs experienced operators in both marketing and medicine
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The best creative risks should make you a little nervous. But they should never make you ask why your brand is taking them.

Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with Rankin Carroll, Chief Brand Officer of Mars Snacking, to unpack how brands like M&M’s, Snickers and Skittles stay culturally relevant without treating boldness as an excuse for chaos. Rankin takes us behind the scenes of the 2023 Snickers AI experiment that felt “potentially crazy” at the time, and gets candid about Mars’ creator learning curve and the responsibility marketers have to the next generation.

Rankin Carroll is Chief Brand Officer of Mars Snacking, where he works across some of the company’s most recognizable brands, including M&M’s, Snickers and Skittles. He has spent more than 20 years at Mars across marketing, advertising, general management and global and regional leadership roles. His career has taken him from Toronto to the UK and at one point, included running an ice cream business along the way.

Today, Rankin focuses on what he describes as the stewardship of distinctive, iconic brands: protect what makes them valuable, make them stronger than when you received them, and still create enough tension to keep them culturally relevant.

What You'll Learn:
How Mars pressure-tests risky ideas before putting iconic brands on the line
Why the 2023 Snickers AI experiment required legal, security and agency teams to take the risk together
How “Why us? Why this brand?” separates bold creative from stunts
Why brands have to earn the credibility to participate authentically in culture
Why Rankin believes transformation now has no end state
How Mars is learning to loosen control in creator-led marketing
Why marketing leaders need to rethink how the next generation is trained for an AI-shaped industry
Why CMOs need to own the AI agenda instead of leaving it to scattered pilots

This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Brandweek 2026 and presented in partnership with Tatari.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Attribution’s a tricky thing. It can help marketers make better decisions while simultaneously making their strategy worse.

Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with Amanda Teder, CMO of Generac, to unpack what happens when marketing gets too focused on what is easiest to measure. Amanda breaks down the full-funnel operating model she has built at Generac, why demand generation is only the opening move in a high-consideration category and why some purchase journeys need nurturing for months or even years.

Amanda Teder is Chief Marketing Officer at Generac, an energy solutions company serving both residential and industrial customers.

Before joining Generac, Amanda spent roughly 20 years at Procter & Gamble, where she worked across brands including Oral-B and Febreze, before moving to Michelin.

Across those very different categories, one theme has stayed consistent: understand what actually drives the business, then build the systems that can turn customer insight into repeatable growth. And, at Generac, that has meant connecting demand generation, nurture, sales enablement and post-purchase support into a more complete customer journey.

What You'll Learn:
Why Generac treats marketing as a connected operating system
Why high-consideration categories cannot stop at demand generation
Why email still matters when a purchase cycle can last months or years
How Amanda applies lessons from P&G across very different categories
Why B2B and B2C marketing share more strategic DNA than most people assume
Why strategy should come before deciding what AI should automate
How attribution can push teams too far down the funnel
Why Amanda’s “builder” mindset shapes the roles and brands she chooses

This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Brandweek 2026 and presented in partnership with Tatari.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the age of AI, marketers still have to answer one big question: “Why should anyone choose you?”

Live from the Marketing Vanguard stage at Brandweek 2026, Jenny Rooney sits down with Ameetess Dira, CMO of Petzey, for a conversation about the decisions that become even more important as marketing gets easier to automate. Ameetess breaks down why purpose alignment is a non-negotiable in her career, why she deliberately pushes marketing into product, technology, and finance conversations and why some of her strongest brand partnerships looked strange on paper.

Ameetess Dira is Chief Marketing Officer at Petzey, an on-demand pet telehealth app with more than 1,000 pet professionals across the U.S.

Her path into marketing has crossed broadcasting, radio, print, agency leadership, technology, and international market expansion across Asia and the United States.

Her move into pet health was deeply personal. After losing her senior dog, Ameetess deliberately sought out work that could improve access to care for animals and the people who love them. That purpose now shapes how she thinks about everything from partnerships and crisis response to the role marketing should play inside the wider business.

What You'll Learn:

Why purpose alignment is a non-negotiable for Ameetess when choosing where to work
Why underserved problems can create stronger brand opportunities than obvious ones
How unexpected partnerships can work when the underlying values make sense
Why marketing should be embedded in product, technology and finance conversations
Why AI may make storytelling more valuable, not less
Why long-term brand trust can matter more than short-term revenue
How CEO trust gives CMOs more room to take meaningful risks
Why leadership has to change depending on the people and market involved

This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Brandweek 2026 and presented in partnership with Tatari.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.