Shiny New Object

Marisol Saona is the Senior Brand Manager for Finish in Spain, where she brings a wealth of experience that began on the graduate scheme at Tesco and spans multiple brands and industries. This experience has taught Marisol about the importance of balancing performance, image and exposure (the PIE model), as well as the importance of continually studying and developing in the world of marketing. This is why her Shiny New Object is the Marketing Week MBA in Brand Management. Hear more details from Marisol herself in our latest podcast.

Pranay has 15+ years of experience in marketing across the world in companies like UL, Kraft Heinz, GSK consumer, Kimberly Clark consumer and ITC, India’s largest FMCG company. His philosophy has been about using fit to purpose technology as an enabler to provide marketing systems that deliver on ROI. This has helped me ramp up marketing capability efficiently.

Charles Steinmyller is the Senior Brand Manager for Tampax in Europe, working to reconcile consumer interests and expectations in a diverse market with many different cultural influences. This is why he strongly believes in a consumer centric approach to marketing, which starts with "being the comsumer."  His Shiny New Object is the circular economy and how it can be used in marketing to set an example for other brands. Listen to his views and more on the latest podcast episode.

Digital marketing has a bad reputation because ads are seen as an interruption, a incessant disruption in consumers' lives. What can brands do to change this? This is the question asked by our latest guest, Nathalie Bojkow, Senior Team Head Global E-commerce | Digital Marketing & Business Development, Growth Markets, at the PUMA Group. Find out how Nathalie proposes that brands refocus on people to make better marketing, in the latest podcast episode.

Sara Master looks after all things e-commerce for Constellation Brands, ensuring that consumers find their products online. However, she's not always set out to do this - her initial studies were in teaching! As Sara puts it, she realised that if she can persuade students to read Hamlet, surely she can persuade people looking for alcohol to buy a specific brand. But that's not all: Sara's approach is all about finding a value exchange for consumers - that's her Shiny New Object. Find out what value brands can bring to consumers and how to move away from disruption and be more consumer led, in this latest episode of the podcast.

In her role at Bravissimo, Julie Austin looks after the e-commerce and marketing for the brand in the UK and the US. Her approach to marketing is all about creating positive friction, i.e. an affinity with the brand that increases customer stickiness, lifts the retention and makes them come back as they are reassured about the brand's bespoke treatment of their needs. Listen to why Julie thinks friction is good for brands, as well as to her top marketing tips for students and for seasoned marketers.

As Marketing & Innovation Director for the DACH area in the Plant-Based division of Danone, Patrick focuses on combining commercial acumen with purpose and sustainability. This is the next big challenge for all brands according to him. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) has become a must-have element on brands' radars, but how can they make these concepts into products consumers can relate to? Find out Patrick's view and more in our latest episode.

Elizabeth Windram's career spans some amazing brands: she "ended up in marketing" after starting in finance and investment from business school, then went on to lead brands such as Barefoot Wines and JetBlue Airways. Elizabeth loves marketing books, so tune in to listen to some great recommendations from her. She also doesn't believe in Shiny New Objects! So, this episode is about being wary of new trends, testing them and finding out how they work for your core programme.

A computer engineering graduate with a passion for digital transformation and innovation, Fatima Baz is currently the Digital Innovation Manager in North Africa, Gulf and the Middle East for Unilever. She believes in the crucial power of innovation and AI in business and marketing, her Shiny New Object.  Listen to Fatima talk about how to harness the power of AI and what brands can do to make sure their AI works best for their marketing efforts. 

Sarah DaVanzo's title as VP, Consumer & Market Insights & Foresight (Futures & Cultural Intelligence), at L'Oréal Groupe USA, sounds impressive, but doesn't even begin to express the complexity and diversity of her activities. A "superforecaster" well versed in gathering insights and conveying data visually to then determine the future, Sarah talked to us about her exciting projects including Insight Alchemy and Curious Futures, and explained why her Shiny New Object is strategic imagination and applied curiosity. Listen to Sarah's top marketing tips and learn all about how to harness the full power of applied curiosity, in the latest episode. 

As Head of Pulse at draftLine Europe, Anheuser-Busch InBev's in-house creative agency, Jack Calderwood focuses on social and digital, spotting unplanned opportunities for their brands in Europe. These include exciting beers such as Corona, Budweiser and Stella Artois, and extend to new marketing experiments such as including digital assets in the metaverse and allowing consumers to interact with them. Find out why the metaverse is Jack's Shiny New Object, how AB InBev are tapping into its potential now, and what brands can do to seize its current and future value. 

In her role as Global Digital Transformation Manager at Unilever, Myriam Estanboulie creates links between the technical team and the rest of the business. She strives to simplify how technical processes work and relate them within the broader business picture. Ultimately, this lines up perfectly with her Shiny New Objecti, which is simplifying things. Inspired by Richard Branson's saying that "simplification is the utmost level of sophistication," Myriam thinks that we overcomplicate and make things too complex thinking that would make them better, but this is not the case. Listen to how she advocates for simpler messaging, as well as to her top marketing and well-being tips, in the latest episode.

As Senior Community Manager, DTC Division, at Constellation Brands, Katie Puccio-Williams is an active advocate of TikTok and social media more broadly. Her Shiny New Object is how TikTok saved brand voice thanks to giving the internet a much needed return to levity and shedding light on what everyday people find interesting as opposed to curated, hyper-aesthetic content from other platforms. Listen to her fascinating account of how social media has evolved and what brands need to know about it.

Rustom Dastoor enjoys living between cultures and countries. This has led him to travel the world and experience exciting new opportunities, as he new heads into a new role as Executive Vice President, Integrated Marketing and Communications North America at Mastercard. Through being open to new opportunities and always looking for new challenges, Rustom has discovered that marketing is about connecting with people, and that’s helped him be successful in his career. It’s also connected to his Shiny New Object: loyalty in the post pandemic era. Find out how Rustom sees the brand-consumer relationship evolving and why loyalty will go beyond transactions to include user experience, trust and generosity.

Miguel Magalhães is the Brand Manager for Tampax UK & Ireland at Procter & Gamble, as well as a marketing lecturer passionate about sharing his research and insights with students. Thanks to Miguel's interest in academia, we have a new and interesting Shiny New Object in this episode, in the guise of "market orientation." While not an entirely new concept, Miguel explains why most brands and organisations don't actually act in a market oriented way, or at least not completely. Listen to his advice on how to do so, as well as to Miguel's top tips for students and marketing beginners, in our latest episode. 

Ricardo Rey is the Head of Digital Consumer MAZ at AB InBev, leading the brand's digital consumer strategy in the middle Americas and investing in new technology to connect better with data consumers. As part of this search for a better connection, Ricardo makes great use of AI in A/B testing. This is his Shiny New Object, enabling him to understand what strategies are performing well and learn from themes and data gathered from consumers directly. Find out more about this and Ricardo's top marketing tips on the latest episode of the podcast.

Rebecca Dibb-Simkin is the Global Director of Product & Marketing at the Octopus Energy Group, combining the origination of products with the marketing and having an end-to-end experience of the energy contracts the brand offers consumers. Without having planned a marketing career from the very beginning, Rebecca moved into the industry after having been seduced by an Ogilvy graduate scheme ad. She then became quite critical of what marketing is, shaped a different sort of role, and now her Shiny New Object is “all marketing jargon should go in room 101.” Listen to why that's the case in our first episode of 2022!

The Director of Go-to-Market Strategy for The North Face, Jennifer Mohammed has been working in DTC (direct-to-consumer) for about 16 years, gathering a wealth of experience with brands like Puma, Guess, the Arcadia Group and The North Face. Her Shiny New Object is remote working, as a massive benefit to organisations as well as employees. Jen believes that remote working has enabled brands to access a wider pool of talent, and has also given workers more autonomy. Going forward, the winning combination should be leaving employees to make the decisions about how they work. Listen to Jen give her top marketing advice and tell us why she loves remote working.

For Viktor Nebehaj, investing is becoming normalised. This is why he and Adam Dodds co-founded Freetrade, allowing access to investment accounts for more people. In the future, he thinks, it will be as normal to have an investment account as it is to have a bank account. This is why Viktor's Shiny New Object is crowdfunding, as marketing and fundraising in equal measure. Find out how Freetrade use crowdfunding and why it's part of the future of marketing in our latest podcast episode.

As the Interim Head of Ecommerce Middle East for the PUMA group, Roy Wentzel is currently focusing on building the brand's presence in the region, starting in the UAE and working towards launching in Saudi Arabia. Beyond a very long and illustrious career in e-commerce, Roy is an advocate of progress when it comes to the development of websites for brands' shops and consumer experience. His Shiny New Object is headless e-commerce, a new way to design e-commerce beyond the traditional back and front-end connected by a lot of code. Listen to Roy talk about how e-commerce makes websites more flexible, more consumer friendly and easier to find through Google, as well as about the potential downsides of headless e-commerce, on this latest episode of the podcast.