An Interview with with Amanda Brinkman and Krystal Hauserman
In a hyperconnected world saturated with marketing messages, the quest for genuine brand connections has become increasingly important. Amanda Brinkman, CEO of Sunshine Studios, and Krystal Hauserman, a CMO and Strategic Advisor, recently sat down with Marketers That Matter® to discuss how brands can create more authentic and purposeful experiences for consumers.
Brinkman’s perspective on purpose-driven marketing is shaped by her journey from top agencies to corporate boardrooms. Her groundbreaking work on the Small Business Revolution show, created during her tenure as Chief Brand Officer at Deluxe, exemplifies her innovative approach to branded entertainment and meaningful content marketing. This Emmy-nominated series demonstrated how brands can effectively turn their purpose into tangible action, showcasing her commitment to making a real difference in communities.” At Sunshine Studios and as a well-known keynote speaker, Brinkman continues to explore how brands and individuals can contribute positively to society while achieving their objectives. Her call to find purpose and contentment in daily work offers a fresh take on modern marketing challenges.
Hauserman also brings a unique perspective, having made the transition from entertainment law to become a Forbes Top 50 Entrepreneurial CMO. She’s spearheaded innovative marketing initiatives for startups like Paris Hilton’s 11:11 and Fortune 500 companies such as Warner Bros. Discovery, positioning her at the forefront of Gen Z engagement strategies. Her campaigns for global brands like the NBA and Hilton Hotels demonstrate her ability to create authentic, revenue-driving experiences that resonate with younger audiences. Her insights on the resurgence of analog experiences among digital natives and the importance of community-building in both physical and digital spaces offer valuable guidance for marketers seeking to create authentic connections.
In this thought-provoking conversation, Brinkman and Hauserman delve into:
- The growing emphasis on purpose in professional and personal spheres
- Strategies for creating brand interactions that resonate on a human level
- Gen Z’s shift toward in-person experiences
- The evolution and future of experiential marketing
- Practical advice for marketers seeking to create more impactful work
As marketers navigate the intricacies of purpose-driven marketing, Brinkman and Hauserman provide a roadmap for brands looking to make a lasting impact. Their advice serves as a call for marketers to consider how they can inject genuine meaning into every touchpoint of the consumer journey – and also find greater purpose in their own work.
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What’s driving this renewed focus on people wanting more purpose, both professionally and personally?
Amanda Brinkman: I love that we’ve used this as our theme. “The Purpose Pursuit” is the name of my new keynote, created in direct response to speaking at companies about how brands can do well by doing good. It’s what my Ted talk was about and also what the Small Business Revolution demonstrates. Brand purpose is something I love to talk about. Everyone’s feeling a sort of post-pandemic slump, and we’re struggling with this hybrid work thing, quiet quitting, and presenteeism. We’ve always been concerned with how to have authentic employee engagement, even before the pandemic.
This led me to do a lot of work around what purpose means. Coming off a purpose-driven project like the Small Business Revolution, and then jumping into entrepreneurship, I started to question my personal purpose. Did I leave it in that role with that title on that project? To find answers, I became a voracious collector of ideas, reading books, listening to podcasts, even going on yoga retreats to the desert.
What I’m hearing from audiences is that this is a universal question we’ve always asked ourselves as humans: What is our purpose? What do we need to be doing? The pandemic only intensified these questions. It showed us how our lives could look different, and now we’re back to some version of a weird new normal.
“What is our purpose? What do we need to be doing? The pandemic only intensified these questions.” – Amanda Brinkman“
Addressing purpose is key to helping employees see why they’re important to their companies and find meaning in their work. We need to actively have these discussions. We can’t just keep saying people are bringing their whole selves to work without explaining what that means or how we, as leaders, demonstrate it.
In the past, talking about purpose was considered too soft for the business world. You wouldn’t bring in a speaker to discuss purpose or talk about it with your teams. But now, we’re seeing a shift. It’s a response to people wanting to be more intentional about how they spend their time and wanting to feel that their work and lives truly matter.
Krystal Hauserman: The good news is that doing good is also good business. An exciting part about my conversations with marketers now is they often say something like, “I’m helping sell more of XYZ, but what is that really doing for the world? Should I go become a yoga teacher in the middle of the jungle?” But where I’ve gotten more excited is this: I think you can unearth and find purpose at a deeper level in your day-to-day work as a marketer, no matter where you sit in the company hierarchy.
“The good news is that doing good is also good business.” – Krystal Hauserman”
One of the things I frequently talk about is finding purpose as marketers. There’s this idea of, “Oh, I’m just here to sell things people don’t need.” But the modern marketer understands that we’re here to connect people to products that enrich and enhance their lives. As you go down that road and understand how your brand is living in that mode, you start to find the everyday things where your contribution makes a difference. Maybe your addition to people’s lives is a dose of humor. For me, a big driver is how the brands I’ve worked for can create communities of real-life humans that get together. Today we’re really counteracting one of the biggest loneliness epidemics seen in a lifetime. Whether that’s through running clubs or brand experiences, brands can really foster human connections.
Yes, what we do is commercial, but it can also be very purposeful in helping people connect, be seen, and have new experiences. As marketers, we can take pride in how we lead our organizations to show up for our consumer communities in a way that reflects who we are and what we stand for.
How are Gen-Z consumers migrating back to analog and in-person experiences, and what does it mean for marketers?
Krystal Hauserman: Gen Z is the most connected human population on planet earth, yet they’re facing the biggest feelings of loneliness and isolation, and feelings of not having purpose. I’m interested in how we’re showing up and course-correcting around that.
From a brand perspective, I’ve been advising many clients to focus on building community-centered brand experiences and in-real-life (IRL) events. How brands show up in the real world and create experiences is going to be increasingly crucial – whether that’s retail experiences that go beyond stuff hanging on a hanger or how brands are building community. For example, one of the biggest things going on in L.A. and other big cities right now are chess clubs where young Gen Zers are getting together to sit with each other and play chess games. It’s become this whole movement. We’ve also seen running clubs gaining popularity.
As marketers, our product and messaging must be on point, and how we show up on social is still critically important, but to me, the passion area is the human experience. How can brands facilitate people feeling less lonely, having more connection and more purpose in their life? How do we help them come together with other like-minded people? I’m predicting we’ll see more brands investing in community and experience areas in response to people feeling fractured and isolated.
Amanda Brinkman: I love that Gen Z has made a return to in-person values. They have self-prescribed that as a path back from this ultimate state of loneliness. I’m seeing a lot of walking away from some social platforms, or at least not letting them have such power over them. And I think that’s really healthy.
As humans, we always have these pendulum swings. All of a sudden, social media came into our lives and it became the only way we communicate and connect. Then we see the risks and dangers, and we come back. There’s probably an in-between that we will end up at. And I think Gen Z will save us. They will help us figure out what that balance is supposed to look like. The fact that they are so thirsty for understanding their purpose is beautiful. Curiosity doesn’t mean they lack the capability of finding or identifying that purpose; but it’s a lens through which they’re looking at things.
“I think Gen Z will save us. They will help us figure out what balance is supposed to look like.” – Amanda Brinkman
We’re going to credit a lot to this generation in getting us back on track. We did move away from in-person interactions, and there is nothing like being in person with people. As a speaker, I was over-presenting on Zoom. You miss the energy of in-person connection and I think we need that back.
This is what you see in discussions and debates about hybrid work environments. The in-person connection is also a brand insight. How can you create experiential things that create opportunity for people to connect in person? We’re so digital as marketers, which is great because there’s scale and reach, but there’s also depth to in-person experiences.
How can marketers find deeper meaning in their day-to-day roles?
Amanda Brinkman: What you’re doing and who you are really matters. You are in your particular job or role or season of your life for a reason. You just have to trust the process. Clarity and understanding sometimes come later; you might be building skills right now that you’re going to need to get into a role that allows you to bring all the magic together.
I think we have made the word purpose too big. We’ve given purpose a capital P and we use it like a verb. What gives me comfort and helps me feel like I’m living and working in my purpose on a daily basis is by thinking of purpose with a lowercase p, thin-slicing my life moment to moment.
It’s about being mindful of the ripple effect you have and the superpowers that you uniquely possess. It’s about focusing on the things you’re good at, and seeing and celebrating that that is your purpose. Your job is not your purpose and you will never find a job that is your purpose. You are your purpose.
We’ve overcomplicated it. We need to realize our purpose is more about how we move through the world, how we interact, and how we use our skills than it is the destination.
Krystal Hauserman: It goes back to this question: Can you be a brand that adds to and enhances the experience of everybody coming through the door in a really fun and unique way? How do you create something that’s really valuable in that moment? I love the exploration around those questions, and I have a deep affinity for experiential marketing. We’ll be seeing more and more of it.
“It’s about thinking in a hybrid way: fostering digital communities and then you take the communities and extend them into real-world experiences.” – Krystal Hauserman
It’s about thinking in a hybrid way: creating and fostering digital communities to increase touchpoints and engagement with your brand. Then, you take the communities you’ve built online and extend them into real-world experiences off-platform. Marketing teams that are thinking about how their brand shows up in purposeful ways are probably building on both tracks, with the focus and purpose of giving back value to that community.
As marketers, we’ve attained the ability to tell a story, connect with an audience, create entertainment, be a thought leader, present new ideas, and understand the human condition and psychology. What’s most exciting about our profession is our ability to adapt and flow into different opportunities.
About the Visionaries
Amanda Brinkman, CEO of Sunshine Studios
Amanda Brinkman has built a reputation as a revolutionary brand marketer who has the ability to foster creativity from the inside out. Building on her years in the creative world at advertising and marketing agencies, she cultivated that same level of passion within her marketing and creative departments in the corporate world. In executive leadership roles, she has built marketing departments from scratch, turned struggling departments into award-winning teams, created innovative products and turned around a 100-year-old brand via a ground-breaking content marketing campaign that yielded 14x better ROI than traditional advertising and was nominated for two EMMYs. She believes that all companies can “Do Well, by Doing Good” and is passionate about helping brands realize their true brand purpose and turn it into real brand actions. She is actively involved in the community through board service and volunteerism and is regarded as a brand and marketing expert in the media.
Krystal Hauserman, CMO and Strategic Advisor
Named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Entrepreneurial CMOs, Business Insider CMO to Watch, and Brand Innovators’ Industry Innovator, Krystal has helped scale and lead marketing for innovative emerging startups like Paris Hilton’s 11:11, Terry Crews’ Super Serious & Fullscreen, led teams within large Fortune 500 enterprise companies like Warner Bros. Discovery, and helped launch fresh, revenue-driving marketing campaigns and platforms aimed at a Gen Z audience for top consumer brands like the NBA, Hilton Hotels, Taco Bell, L’Oreal, Nike, Apple, Uber, Klarna and many more. Her remarkable work has been featured in Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Forbes, Ad Age and Adweek, has received two Cannes Lions shortlist nods, a Clio Sports Silver win and Ad Age’s 2024 Social Campaign of the Year. She is an active mentor to early and mid-career marketers across multiple organizations, including Adweek’s Mentorship Exchange, and serves as a Marketing & Growth Advisor to select legacy brands and growth stage companies in entertainment, wellness, travel, food & beverage, lifestyle and beauty.
Interview by Kathy Hollenhorst, Marketers That Matter® Advisor & Chief Community Officer
Visionaries airs live on Zoom every month and is brought to you in partnership with The Wall Street Journal. In each episode, two new Visionaries share their game plan and how that impacts today’s teams, talent, and you.
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