Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins

Adobe's Lara Balazs On Orchestrating Value Creation

This week, one of the central ideas of Create or Destroy gets flipped: namely, that product is marketing. Every single product decision is ultimately a marketing decision, and it either contributes to value creation or value destruction. Lara Balazs, Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Global Marketing at Adobe, agrees with that thesis, but says we need to think of marketing as product too. And like a physical or digital product, you have to "ship" your stories and narratives to create true meaning and relevance with your customers. Lara speaks from a heralded track record of driving massive enterprise growth. Prior to Adobe, she was the CMO and GM at Intuit, ran worldwide marketing for Amazon Prime, and drove iconic brands like Visa and Nike. In a world where marketing has long since moved past isolated campaigns and channels, Lara views the craft as a discipline powered by deep systems thinking. Her job isn’t just managing a department; it’s orchestrating the many moving parts of a massive corporate ecosystem so that every single piece performs as if it is one unified whole. Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins is produced by Wisdomous and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Follow the podcast on Instagram / TikTok: @createordestroypod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

Paulie Dery on Why Every Decision is a Brand Decision

From Yeti to Uber and now as CMO of global wellness company AG1, Paulie Dery has built value for companies whose products could easily be commoditized, but weren’t. Having started his career on the agency side as a copywriter, Paulie understands that to stand out in a sea of competitors, you need a strong brand and creative, to maintain customer trust and to instill pride in the building. A strong brand allows performance to take care of itself at a much lower investment. And failing to maintain the brand destroys value, diminishing the product, and diminishing the pricing power. From Wisdomous and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Follow the podcast on Instagram or TikTok @createordestroypod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

Soyoung Kang on the Architecture of Value Creation

Well before she was CMO, and now President, of eos Products, Soyoung Kang was an architecture student at MIT, where, she tells Seth, she learned less about buildings and more about how people move through space. She's been applying that same lens to building value creation systems ever since, across a career taking her from BCG to retail operations at Victoria’s Secret and Bath and Body Works, to leading a brand and business turnaround as eos's first CMO. The throughline is her conviction that value gets created when you design every decision around how your customer experiences what you build, and destroyed when you design around what your competitors are doing instead. Soyoung explains about why empathy is the most undervalued operating system in business, why any disconnect between how customers talk and how companies talk is an opportunity, and why she believes fresh perspective is worth 60 IQ points. From Wisdomous and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Follow the podcast on Instagram @createordestroypod  and TikTok @createordestroypod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

David Axelrod on How to Rebuild the American Brand

Fundamentally, a political campaign isn’t all that different from a business – it’s an enterprise where every decision either builds value with voters or destroys it, and the voters are customers who only get to buy what you're selling, on just one day. This week’s guest is legendary political strategist David Axelrod, who was President Obama’s chief strategist and senior advisor. Currently he’s a senior political commentator for CNN, and the co-host of the Hacks on Tap podcast. In over 140 elections, Axelrod has shaped the story of a candidate and the choice voters face in the polling booth. As a self-proclaimed idealist, he sees the American brand as having been devalued, but not beyond repair.  Produced by Wisdomous and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Follow the podcast on Instagram / TikTok: @createordestroypod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]

Nick Tran on How One Marketing Decision Created More Value Than Any Campaign

Nick Tran has been one of global marketing's most influential voices for over a decade, from Taco Bell to Hulu and serving as TikTok's first Global CMO when it became Ad Age's Marketer of the Year. Now, as both President and CMO of the joint venture relaunching Cîroc Vodka and Lobos 1707, he's rebuilding a brand whose defining association became a liability while scaling another. For Nick, the value creation equation can look different from the CMO's and President's seats, even if maybe they shouldn’t, and often requires unlearning and breaking old models. From Wisdomous and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]