Valuable Observations of Culture from Marketing Leaders

“Innovation sits at the heart of Google’s company culture. Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful; we constantly seek new ways to do that. Employees are encouraged to do ‘20-Percent-Projects’, where 20% of their time is dedicated to new, innovative projects outside of their core responsibilities.  

We also encourage our team to extract learnings from failure. By quickly acknowledging where things haven’t worked out, it encourages our employees to learn so that they can go into the next iteration quickly.” 

– Nick Drake, Vice President, Global Marketing, Google 

“When it comes to developing our teams for the future of marketing, there’s no doubt it is tough finding the best talent, and it is a super competitive field. We are lucky to have a great product and unique company culture that attracts top talent to Lucid. My job as a leader is to help them succeed, develop their career path, and help them have a long career at Lucid. We’ve done a lot of team building within our organization to build a culture of marketing that binds us all together.  

Having empathy for your teams and consumers and being aware of what is going on in their lives will lead you to understand the consumer, brand, and team dynamics that matter the most.” 

 – Jeff Curry, VP of Marketing and Communications, Lucid Motors 

“Beyond thinking about who Gen Z is, we need to go deeper by discovering what it is they want. They don’t want to watch things from the outside but want you to invite them inside. This methodology is a bottom-up revolution with everyday people, and we have to make sure our consumer is part of the journey. 

The American Eagle and e.l.f. teams share the magic sauce that allows us to galvanize this generation in a way that sets us apart from other companies. Our organizations operate with speed and innovation; we move at the pace of culture.” 

–Kory Marchisotto, CMO, e.l.f Beauty 

“Cultural credibility drives commercial viability. When you get a driving culture and a community behind a brand, their support can create a trajectory no marketing investment can deliver.  

As a marketer, whether you sell wine or widgets, you want to be culturally connected and relevant. Understanding the culture and having ongoing curiosity allows you to do meaningful work in consumers’ lives. I like to talk about the power of marketing with a big M: if it’s meaningful, and if it matters, it’ll move the metrics.   

Cultural competency is how a brand can communicate to the marketplace that they are here with a deeper and more personal objective; this posture will produce what I call ROI, a return on influence and impact.” 

–Kimberly Evans Paige, CMO, BET 

“Millions of customers walk through our restaurants every day. As you think about who you’re engaging with, finding ways to connect with them is crucial. You can’t create value for customers only through economic or transactional value; relationships don’t work that way. The value we get from those relationships comes from multiple dimensions. If you look at the work we’re doing to add value to our customers; it’s all fan-based insights.    

We called culture, culture leaned in, and they called us back. Now the bar is high, and we must consider how to stay in culture, so we’ve set an ambitious goal to become an iconic part of the culture by creating it, participating in it, and adding value to our fans.” 

– Tariq Hassan, CMO, McDonalds 

“Early in my career at the NHL, I received a letter from an 11-year-old girl. She heard that we were wanting to attract more Gen Z fans and wanted to help.  We invited her into the office to see the organization and meet the team. She came with a PowerPoint presentation filled with ideas and presented them with poise and thoughtfulness.

This one experience inspired the idea of our Youth Advisory Board, now called the NHL Power Players.

This initiative is a valuable time to deeply understand how the youth culture lives, how they spend their time, make decisions, and what they find interesting. Over time, you start to see patterns and trends emerge. We use our Power Players’ insights to validate or augment our strategies.” 

– Heidi Browning, CMO, National Hockey League 

My pops always told me, ‘The thing about culture is if you take something off the shelf, put something back of greater or equal value.’ If you are always thinking about growing and nurturing culture, it will give back to you. It’s a symbiotic relationship. If you blindly give, it will pay you back tenfold.

-Coltrane Curtis, Founder & Managing Partner at Team Epiphany