Soul & Science: Fast Forward Your Marketing Mind

Magnolia Bakery is a popular destination in New York City, and it's common to find residents and tourists lining up to buy perfectly iced cupcakes and other sweet treats. Now, CMO Eddie Revis is helping turn Magnolia Bakery into a global D2C brand. Magnolia’s Breakfast Loaves video, a remake of comedian Liam Kyle Sullivan’s early YouTube hit, Muffins, went viral, immediately landing with millennial targets. Revis does it, in part, by daring his creative teams to pitch their craziest ideas. It’s no surprise that his career spans agencies, starting with a high-school internship, and big brands, such as Chobani. In this episode you’ll learn: If you have an idea that could be unstrategic but it’s wild and awesome, share it anyway The great thing about the agency side is you get to focus on impact As a client, you think about impact and the repercussions that making that decision is going to have across the business If you really want to learn about the company as a new CMO, share an office with the CFO Brought to you by Mekanism.

It can feel impossible to express the human condition, so we look to great artists, writers and even advertising creatives to do the job. Pranav Yadav, Founder and Global CEO of Neuro-Insight, saw how inconsistent people were doing field interviews–one memorable study tried to find out why people gamble in Las Vegas. A more innate truth was to be found in neuromarketing, which measures neural signals by electrodes to track emotional responses. Yadav brilliantly reads the data and helps marketers, including TJ Maxx and Anheuser Busch, make ads that both stir emotions and hit the right pitch. In this episode you’ll learn: What neruomarketing is and how it’s innovating the way brands are built. What people say in the first hour of a focus group is different from what they say in the second or fourth hour and it really doesn't correlate to actual in-market purchase behavior. Creative is an idea that engages people, but an ad has the additional responsibility of associating the brand at the peak emotional moment. The beauty of life is that if you are open enough to learning, it teaches you everything you need to know.

Seth Matlins, Managing Director at Forbes CMO Network, was only seven years old when marketing claimed his future. He was transfixed by the founder of the Pet Rock, who had brazenly turned construction rubble into a viral sensation, the tulip mania of the disco era. Matlins’ first marketing job was to be part of the team that was turning another earthly resource–water–into the highly valuable, branded asset, Evian. His career spans advising some of the world’s most iconic brands and promoting civic ideals, such as voting and truth in advertising. At Forbes, Matlins markets marketing to marketers, as more than a byproduct of data but a role that is vital to a company's future growth.In this episode you’ll learn:. While data is important, interpreting that data is the real magic. Why each and every employee at a company is responsible for driving the business forward. To be a great brand, you need to be both differentiated and valuable. Differentiation is easy, but how you express the value of that differentiation is the challenge. Brought to you by Mekanism.

In this special edition episode of The Soul & Science Podcast, Jason shares his discussion with author, zen teacher and monk Koshin Paley Ellison during the launch event for his new book, Untangled. Untangled is a welcoming guidebook to finding expansive ease and joy through the Eightfold Path, one of Buddhism’s foundational teachings. In his book, Koshin, shares anecdotes from his life dealing with abuse and discrimination as well as the path of teachings from Eastern and Western wisdom traditions. Together, Zen teacher and monk, Jungian psychotherapist, and the co-founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, Koshin Paley Ellison, and Jason Harris, Co-founder & CEO of creative agency, Mekanism, discuss how to incorporate these teachings of untangling our suffering and the path of freedom in our everyday lives.In this episode you’ll learn: When unfortunate circumstances arise, rather than ask yourself, “why me?” ask yourself, “why not me?” Slowing your mind and becoming more intentional are key to living a fulfilling life. It’s important to confront your fears, not to be enveloped by them.

To this day, investor, founder and dreammaker, Bing Chen fondly recalls his first big-screen experience. It was “Beauty and the Beast” and the movie, along with the Disney brand magic to make dreams come true, have inspired Chen’s own prolific suite of businesses: AU Holdings, a family of companies that incubates and invests in creators; Gold House, a collective of multicultural leaders who bring equity to multicultural communities through strategic investment and promotion; and Aum Group, a premier multicultural film fund. True to this era’s version of dream-making, Chen’s early career at YouTube was to develop and market online creators–and he has gone on to build influential audiences and support global feature films. In this episode you’ll learn: The hardest thing in the world is to be a digital creator If you have a platform, you have a responsibility Let your managers run their own teams but align around strategy and run air-cover for each other The difference between achieving success and being truly successful is relentlessness Brought to you by Mekanism.

Ryan Serhant rose to fame on Million Dollar Listing: New York. Now running his own luxury real-estate company, SERHANT., he is the star of his own billion dollars in listings. From building a personal brand, de facto for CMOs, to creating a global business and writing best-sellers, Serhant is an intuitive marketer. “The greatest businesses of the next generation aren't going to be those that are disrupted purely by technology, they're going to be those that are disrupted by marketing,” he says. Forged by downturns–as a young soap actor, his character was killed off by 2007’s writer’s strike–Serhant became an agent, just as the mortgage crisis tanked the market in 2008. Starting SERHANT. on pandemic’s eve, his hedge-funder’s brain continues to find opportunities where others flee. In this episode you’ll learn:• How people are given amazing opportunities, but do jack shit with them• Be the best when everything (and everyone else) is the worst• Take care of the work and the work will take care of you• The 3Fs: Follow up; follow through; follow back• Expand and brand–focus on that every dayBrought to you by Mekanism.

CAULIPOWER, the first to-market, cauliflower-crust frozen pizza is a major player in the growing “good for you” food category. Chief Marketing and Growth Officer Stuart Smith joined the nascent company in 2019, which was founded by his wife, Gail Becker. After baking countless cauliflower pizzas from scratch for their children, Gail noticed the need for a quality frozen cauliflower pizza. The brand was brilliantly launched leveraging the buzz-building skills of the pair - both Stuart and Gail had successful careers at global PR giant Edelman. Stuart uses his PR savvy to shape a broader marketing plan - such as elevating campaign ideas that prove memorable enough to earn their own media. Smith tells us his unique origin story- he is our first Oxford PhD scientist turned marketer - and shares how data brings clarity to decisions.In this episode you’ll learn: Good strategists create clarity out of noise, they recognize patterns in data A sales team will get you on the shelf, but you need marketing to get it off The next great CPG idea is being shared now on social media in the form of recipes, meal preps and healthy-eating hacks To think through something or seize a new idea, spend more time talking to people A big idea should be good enough to earn its own media placementBrought to you by Mekanism.

Tero Isokauppila grew up in a fairy-tale setting on land his ancestors settled on 13 generations ago in Finland. The family farm forms the roots of his company, Four Sigmatic, a highly functional foods business that helps people focus, gain energy and relax. But this Finnish nomad strayed far from home to build it. Through careers in consulting and online marketing, across continents, Isokauppila has made mushrooms, some native to Finland's deep forests, and other nutrient-packed ingredients, into a functional foods mainstay sold at behemoth retailers like Target and Walmart. He talks about marketing research on PubMed and Amazon reviews, his love for podcast advertising and a career journey befitting a storybook.In this episode you’ll learn: If it’s good enough for a Viking, it’s good enough for a banker Read your 3-star reviews on Amazon, they wish you were better No one cares about the mushrooms or the coffee, it’s how it makes them feel You don’t tattoo Harley Davidson on your arm after your first ride Basic nutrition is the white belt, sleep the purple, mind health the black The Four Sigmatic name is part of an ethos of nerdy and geeky Brought to you by Mekanism.

Shira Feuer is the CMO of Trinny London, the social-media driven beauty brand founded by entrepreneur, CEO, and style icon Trinny Woodall that generated $72m by December 2021. For the last four years, Feuer has helped build the global brand and its passionate following, the Trinny Tribe, overseeing revenue growth, customer acquisition and retention, brand and product marketing and prolific, highly engaging digital content. After a career round 1 in banking, which served to establish the Canadian in London (Feuer could tell during the job interview finance wasn’t for her), she started over as an unpaid agency intern, graduating to social media and digital marketing positions at Burberry and Walt Disney.In this episode you’ll learn: Decisions start in the heart but are rationalized in the brain To market to women, understand what they want, then meet those needs Sell products that are good and worth it because people will talk Cross-platform marketing spots don’t have to be twins, but need to be siblings Sustainability is quickly moving from hook to table stakes Brought to you by Mekanism.

In a special live recording from New York’s Advertising Week, the week’s episode features Shake Shack CMO Jay Livingston. Livingston, who has held top marketing roles at Bank of America and BarkBox, is emulating Shake Shack’s foundational, high-low strategy of elevating basic fare and democratizing fine dining on a national and global scale. It was a pattern set by founder, New York City restaurateur Danny Meyer, whose first Shake Shack was a cart in a park across from his Michelin-starred restaurant. Now, Shake Shack is well on its way to becoming a billion dollar burger brand. Seeding each restaurant in local chef and art cultures, Livingston upholds Shake Shack’s emphasis on quality ingredients and premium experiences. He’s also venturing toward a mass advertising test, morphing Instagram fame to TikTok and putting a virtual Shake Shack in Sims 4.In this episode you’ll learn: It’s tempting to stick with what works, but dabble in what’s new. Great companies build marketing and product development side-by-side. Listen to what focus groups tell you, but don’t let them run the company. Think before you quit, you might be leaving a good network and foundation. Shake Shack’s new drive-throughs prove the adage, never say never. Brought to you by Mekanism.