Transcript

Bennie F. Johnson

Hello, and thank you for joining us for another episode of AMA’s Marketing / And. I’m your host, AMA CEO Bennie F. Johnson. In our episode today, we’ll explore life through a marketing lens, delving into conversations with individuals that flourish at the intersection of marketing and the unexpected. We’ll introduce you to visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know. Through our thought-provoking conversations, we’ll unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. Today, my very special guest is Kerel Cooper. Kerel is an award-winning marketing executive known for applying first principles thinking to transform how companies connect with audiences and drive real growth. He currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer for Marketcast, where he leads global marketing, brand, and communication efforts.

For one of the most influential research, analytics, and data science companies in media, entertainment, sports, and gaming. In his role, he’s focused on elevating MarketCast’s brand, deepening its category leadership, and helping clients make smarter, faster decisions through next generation research and data. Before joining MarketCast, he also served as CMO of GumGum, where he led global marketing for an AI-powered contextual advertising platform.

Prior to that, he was president of advertising at Group Black, which was a pioneering Black-owned media collective, amplifying diverse forces, and served as CMO at LiveIn, Live Intent, where he helped earn recognition from Business Insider as one of the hottest tech companies in 2019 and 2020. My friend, welcome to the podcast.

Kerel Cooper 

Thank you, man. I think I need to have you just introduce me every time, no matter where I’m at. That was wonderful. Thank you.

Bennie

My goodness. You know, I am taking you up on that job. I am happy I’m happy to be the hype man for you in there. But I want to jump in. One of the things that stands out, we always talk about marketing leadership at the top in our conversations. But it’s interesting going through your bio, you’ve been CMO not once, not twice, but for our purposes here, thrice, my friend. You know, I wanna just dive in on that.

Kerel

Ha ha ha. There you go, yes, yes.

Bennie

How much has the CMO role changed in the last decade across your roles? I mean, you’ve had a front row seat being a CMO at various different businesses. How much has the role itself evolved?

Kerel

Yeah, I think when I think about the CMO role and even just sort of the seats that I’ve sat in, obviously it’s about marketing first, marketing strategy, and all the things that come with it. but when I think about how that role has evolved, it has certainly evolved into a business leadership role as well, too. Right. So again, you know, understanding and and you know having top of mind things like demand gen and and product marketing and PR and comms and content marketing and all the the functions of a marketing organization. But I feel like in today’s day and age, from a CMO perspective, it is more about reaching out, reaching across the aisle into other departments, working with other leaders, making sure that the story connects to the commercial initiatives, the product initiatives, and really thinking about the business holistically from a revenue perspective and where the company is going. So that and so that’s where I feel that the role has definitely evolved into is much more of a business leader type of position. Yeah.

Bennie

Mm-hmm. When you think about that, you know, often marketing is set on the outside of business, although we’ve been the heart and the engine of business. You know, where have you seen that leadership really take hold? How you know you think about your relationships with your CEOs and your CFOs. Is as you’ve shifted into driver, are you seeing a different type of relationship there?

Kerel

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would say so when I think about the CMO role, first and foremost, I have to have a great relationship with the head of sales and the commercial organization. To me, that is super important. Sales and marketing have to work hand in hand, have to be on the same page and moving in the same direction. Because when I think about marketing from a B2B perspective, the three things that are most important is generating awareness for products and services, creating enablement. And when I say enablement, I mean making sure that not only your sales team and the people within the commercial org understand the products and services and have what they need to be effective in the market. But to me, enablement also means making sure that your customers have what they need and they understand how to leverage your products and services properly. And then the third thing is the pipeline, right? you know, the work that we do needs to lead to helping build pipelines and generating leads, right? So that relationship with the CRO or whoever is in charge of the commercial organization, super important, right? Also super important to have a great relationship with the CFO as well too. And when I say a great relationship, right, it doesn’t mean that you guys have to be best friends, but it means that there has to be a level of respect and understanding there and education on both sides of the fence, right? Because there is a give and take between the CMO and and and the CFO and then when it comes to the CEO, what I’ve what I’ve always strived to be with the CEO is to be a thought partner and a business partner with the CEO to wherever I can be helpful in strategy, in where we’re going as an organization, the things we need to get done, short-term, long-term, internal communications, wherever what whatever the CEO needs from the partnership, that’s where I try to learn is to be a thought partner there as well too. And so very three key relationships. There are others throughout the org that you have to have as well too, but that’s where I try to build those partnerships and those relationships.

Bennie

Yeah. So, you know, let’s talk about what it’s like to drop in as a new CMO. So, you know, we joked about that a little bit before, but I think it’s something it’s so incredibly valuable your insight as to, you know, you come in and you’re announced as a new CEO, CMO. What’s your game plan? What other things are most important to accomplish?

Kerel

My yeah, so so my game plan and and I give this advice to anyone who asks me that anyone that’s new coming into an organization that asks me for advice, I try to follow the same advice that I give to them. And that advice is to come in and before you activate anything, understand the products and services, understand the company culture understand our customers, understand how we make money, understand where the challenges are. I think it is super important to build that level of foundation before you try to activate anything. And I’ve seen this time and time again across my career. The people who come into an organization and are brand new within that organization that come in and just think that they’re gonna take their 10, 15, 20 years of success that they had in other places and plug it in and go, they normally don’t do that well. But the people who come in and in many ways take a very humble approach of saying, okay, I’m new here. Let me learn the business, our products and services, the people the things that have worked well in the past, the things that have not worked well in the past, and why they haven’t worked well in the past, and then implement a plan, I’ve seen those folks have much more success, right? Because again, going back to like one of the things we talked about before we got started was people and and you know how I approach working with people and understanding people, right? If you think about it, no human who’s been at an organization wants to have someone new come in and in the first week tell them that this is the way we’re doing it from now on. Right. No one wants no one wants that. You’re just gonna, you’re not gonna, you’re gonna build walls instead of breaking them down. Right. So I I I you you gotta come in and approach these things with some empathy and understand the business and the company before you start to implement things. Yeah. And so that and so you know I’m I’m eight months into the role now.

And that’s what I spent probably the first three to four weeks doing before before I really made any moves or implemented or re wrote any strategy docs or anything like that. Yeah.

Bennie

I’m always humbled and excited when you come in and you’ll, you know, you’ll have your new ideas that you keep to yourself. But when you spend time listening and growing, you realize that some of your new ideas were ideas that your good people had before that were blocked or never had the oxygen to grow. And as a new leader, being able to come in and celebrate and see someone who wasn’t seen before and elevate it. So it’s not about it being my new idea. But I found a way that this idea was a good idea that has many that has many parents.

Kerel

Yes. Yes, absolutely. And as an executive leader at the company, part of my responsibility is to help unblock things, to help unlock things and and to put people in positions to be successful, right? That to me, that’s where the success comes in into play. But I will say one thing, right? One of the hardest things for me to do is to hold back. I know I got you know, so what I’m saying right now I try to live by, but it is certainly easier said than done. Yes. Yeah.

Bennie

Right, right. Well well, we’re in marketing for a reason, my friend. We get excited about the new and impactful, but you know, how do we build a team in that space in there? It is just it’s so much fun to think about it. So when you think about products, you’ve done a lot of really great marketing for products that may not be top of mind for our students and those who are starting a career in marketing. You know, we often get caught up in the big consumer brands. But so much of our marketing takes place in the other spots of the industry. Talk to me a bit about wanting to go back to your position before MarketCast. Talked a bit about being at Gum Gum, which was a global marketing role for an AI powered platform.

Kerel

Yeah, yeah. So I was at Gum Gum for close to two years as the global CMO. Gum Gum is a contextual advertising platform. And you know, our goal there, our mission there was to really elevate the power of context in marketing and advertising. Because if you think about it, you know, there’s so much focus on data and technology, and sometimes context gets missed, right? And it is still super, super relevant, right? And so the things that we were doing there was trying to bring context to the forefront, use artificial intelligence to do that as well, too. And you know, we worked with some of the they still do today, work with some of the biggest brands with respect to contextual advertising. From a marketing perspective, we did some pretty cool things there in terms of some of the activations that we did, how we showed up from a marketing perspective. And it helped us. We won some awards as a marketing team. And as a marketing leader, as a business leader, I remember joining the company and a few months into the company, we had our marketing team offsite.

And as we were getting towards the end of the off site, I said to everyone in the room, I said, our goal, well, the output of what we do at the end of the year, we’re going to win a marketing award. And I remember the team kind of looked at me like I was like I was nuts. And one yeah, and and and one of the most rewarding experiences that I had while I was there was…

Bennie

You called out your shot. You called out your shot, my friend.

Kerel

Having our comp or having our marketing offsite a year later and being able to walk into the conference room and put that award down in the middle of the table for my team. And I wanna be clear, it was never about winning the award, but it was about doing award winning work. And that’s what we did while I was there.

Bennie

Right. Right. I dug into that part of the bio only for this reason, because it’s a great example of the work you were doing there was for a company, a concept and an idea that didn’t even exist when we were in school. Right. But you think about that power of change and space in there. And I and that’s you know, my mad scientist there was like let’s talk about that for a second, because when we really step back.

Kerel

yes, yes, yeah, you’re right. Yeah, yes. Ha ha ha.

Bennie

When we think about being open for change in the marketplace, I tell everyone that we’re listening to, no matter where they are in their career, you’re gonna open yourself up for things that you may not even have imagined.

Kerel

Yes, it is so true. And I know you know this, but part of what I do professionally is I teach, right? I’m a college professor at Kane University and I teach leadership business and marketing classes. And I’ve been doing it for two years, and one of the main motivating factors for me getting into teaching was exactly what you just said there, w is the idea of making sure that the next generation, the students that are coming, understand the full sort of landscape of the different types of careers that you can go into from an advertising and marketing perspective. I think so much emphasis usually gets put on, okay, I’m gonna graduate and I’m gonna go work for a big agency, or I’m gonna graduate and I’m gonna go work for a big brand. And to be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

At the same time, there’s so many different avenues in which you can take a marketing and advertising career. And to your point, there will be more opportunities in the future for things that probably don’t even exist today for marketing and advertising. I think back to when I graduated and I’m gonna date myself here, but 1998, right? none, none of what I’m doing right now was even thought of at that moment. Point in nineteen ninety-eight.

Bennie

It is so true. You have those moments and you’re like, this is what I imagine as a career. And then looking in the mirror and seeing this is what a career can be. Right. And in the space in there. You know, when you think about the work you’ve done now and you’ve been in a lot of different spaces, I, you know, think about your work coming in and getting recognized by Business Insider as a hot tech company. That’s kind of one of those high point moments. But as you said, It’s not the winning new award, it’s doing the work over and over again.

Kerel

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and and that’s where I try to keep our team focused. Going back to my point earlier about there’s three things I care about as a CMO, awareness enablement and pipeline. and that’s where I try to keep the team focused and doing really good work in those areas, doing very good creative work in those areas. And then you do the work, then the recognition will come. It’ll come. Yeah.

Bennie

Right. So there’s often, you know, we get questions a lot, not about creativity on the consumer side, right? Not about creativity on the media side. But sometimes there is a gap of thinking about creativity on the B2B side. Which I and I know you would as well. Some of the best creative stuff is happening in that space, but people don’t often think about B2B as creativity. What drives and motivates your creativity for your teams in these B2B spaces?

Kerel

Yeah, it’s a really good point. One of the things that I love to say to my team to get them sort of just thinking outside of the box is that even though we are a B2B marketing organization, I want us to think like a B2C marketing organization. And what I usually tell folks to do is think about in their own personal lives who’s their favorite brand.

And why is it their favorite brand? What is what emotionally draws them to the product and services? And usually it’s gonna be the messaging. Usually it’s gonna be how that brand presents itself, right? And that’s what I think I always want us to do. You know, sometimes in the B2B world, we get caught up in, you know, data and performance and job titles, which are all important things.

But we lose the fact that even though we’re B2B, we’re still marketing to humans. Regardless if it’s the CMO at a brand or the head of insights at a company and a different company, it’s still a human that we’re marketing to. And so we have to figure out ways in which we create that emotional connection. We draw them in, making them understand how our products and services are going to help them in in their in their day-to-day. So that’s what I try to get my teams to think about. For me personally, the way I try to stay creative, a lot of that happens outside of the office. I think sitting in the office, you get so caught up in your day-to-day and meetings, so on and so forth, it’s very hard to be creative in the office. And so I try to think about putting myself in different spaces. So

Going back to teaching, that’s a place where I can be creative and feeling the energy from the students in the classroom and how they’re thinking about things. That’s a place to be creative. You know, I host my own podcast. That’s another place where I can be creative. travel, we just talked about we both got back from Cannes and then I took another trip. Travel is definitely a space for me to kind of relax and then get those creative juices flowing. I heard a great quote the other day. Someone said, I don’t hang out in the world that I hustle in. And I love that quote, right? Yeah. I love that quote because it j it to me it speaks about what I just said. You can’t be creative in the office. You gotta get out, right? And so you you you you you gotta be you gotta put yourself in different places. And then watching sports, right? We got the World Cup going on right now. We got, you know. Just looking at how the fans are drawn to their team or drawn to different brands, like that’s another place where you can get ideas and be creative. So I probably went on and on about creativity there, but it’s just that there’s a lot of different places where you can be creative. And I don’t think sitting in the office is one of them.

Bennie

No, I and it’s I mean, that’s the power and I love that in the question and in the answer, right? ‘Cause we’ve got to find how do we find the endless fuel source for that creativity. You know, that’s the superpower that drives what we do on the marketing side. Let’s talk a bit about, you know, challenges. When you think about the marketplace today and you’re working through the you know, what are you seeing as the greatest emerging challenges. And I I’m going to give you a nod on this one. You don’t have to say AI. So outside of AI, what do you see as the the biggest challenges for for our marketing discipline today?

Kerel

Ha ha ha. I think I think there’s a few. I I one of the ones that comes to top of mind is attention. There’s so much coming at people these days from all different places, whether that be brands or social media or the teleport, whatever it may be, right? Getting people’s attention has become harder and harder, which means going back to the point earlier, you have to be more creative than ever to get someone’s attention. And you also have to realize that you only have a person’s attention for a very short period of time. So how do you make that count, right? Yeah.

Bennie

Right. I was gonna ask you that question. You have my attention. Now what are you gonna do with it?

Kerel

Yeah, yeah. It’s one that I’m always sort of thinking about. There’s different ways to go about getting folks’ attention. I think it’s a mix between creativity, being entertaining, being educated, being educational, and drawing in on some level of emotion, right? So I I I think that that is

That’s a big part. If I could throw out two others for you too. I think in this world, and again, we just came back from Cannes. It seems like everything is getting more and more expensive, yet marketing budgets are getting smaller and smaller. So that’s a challenge, right? as well. So I think those are two that are certainly top of mind for me. Yeah.

Bennie

Right. So, you know, when you talk about that space, it means we have to be more certain in our bets, if you will. In the product issue, what role is data and insights coming in and helping brands make those bets smarter? I know some of the work that you do at Marketcast is about that.

Kerel

You do. Definitely. So you know, I am at Marketcast, we really try to think about it is we help measure the emotional and rational forces behind a brand’s marketing investment. Right. So you think about television commercials or CTV commercials or online video or social. Brands invest heavily in those spots, right? We are there to really help them understand the decisions that consumers are making, but also why they’re making the decisions that they’re making, right? So understanding their ad being is it engaging? Do people like it? Do people remember it?

Are people able to connect the product messaging with the brand, right? All those things that I think marketers should care about with respect to the investments that they’re making. And going back to my point earlier about you know, our clients are the brand and their consumer, right? and so that’s why the work that I think that we do from a measurement and insights perspective is super important. Because we’re helping brands understand how their consumers are feeling about the messaging that they’re putting out.

Bennie

So we look about did you ever think that consumer sentiment and voice would be so powerful in the work we were doing?

Kerel

Yeah, you know, yes. And I and I say yes and I pause a little bit because if you think about it, it it advertising and marketing at the end of the day, it’s always been about that, right? It’s always been about making a connection. It’s always been about making sure the consumers, either not making sure, but understanding if consumers like your products, do they remember it are they more likely to buy after they’ve seen a commercial? It’s always been about that, right? Now, but today in today’s day and age, technology is better. We have more data than ever before, right? So it in many ways, it does in some respects, it makes it easier from a marketing perspective, but also it makes it harder, if that makes sense, because you have so much more information at your fingertips these days.

But I think if you think about the essence of marketing, it’s been the same since the beginning of time.

Bennie

Right. So I’m gonna ask you this question. You’re now a professor, but you’re a professor at the university that you attended. How is that loop? You know, having that moment of being the student and now being the teacher.

Kerel

It’s one of the most rewarding experiences that I think I’ve ever had throughout my career. to be back on the campus that I used to run around on you know for four years, to be back on the campus that really helped shape me and give me the foundation to help launch my career. And now to be standing at the front of the classroom, you know, playing my little role in helping do that for others, it is absolutely amazing and it’s a joy. And I’ve been doing it now for two years and the way I approach the classroom is very much from teaching from my experience, my 25 years plus of experience, right?

I think in today’s day and age, most people don’t learn from sitting in a classroom and having a professor speak to them for two hours and just regurgitate what’s in a textbook. Most people learn and engage today from hearing about experiences, being able to ask questions, and really being able to have a conversation. And so that’s how I shape my curriculum. That’s how I shape how I teach. I leverage my network. I bring in a lot of guest speakers that are relevant to whatever I’m teaching in that particular class as well, too. And I and I think that that helps. I mean, I’ve had some students get internships from some of my guest speakers as well, too, which is great. You also I’m learning as well too, right? I’m learning how to teach, but I’m also learning and understanding what the next generation is thinking about as well too, right? How do they think about approaching their careers? What do they think about marketing and advertising? What are the types of brands that they like? Those sorts of things. So in many ways, I’m learning and it’s case studies for me as well, too.

Bennie

Right. Yeah, you know, we talk about the power of learning for profession and at AMA we’re always talking about this continuous learning. And that’s why I love this conversation about you teaching in the place that you started learning. You’re still learning, right? You’re still looping in there. To that point though, with the students, what I’m curious, what’s the most enduring question that you hear that from your students of the last couple of years? What are they constantly asking of yourself or of your special guests? What what

Kerel

They yeah, yeah. It is usually about the direction in which they should take their career once they get out of school. A lot of students are thinking about that, which is amazing. I mean, you know, If you have graduate students, of course, they’re thinking about it, but I also teach undergrad and to hear a sophomore or a junior thinking about what’s next for them Is amazing. Because I gotta tell you, when I was a sophomore or junior in college, I was not thinking about not yet. Not yet. So it’s great to hear them them thinking about it. Obviously there’s concern about things like the economy and what AI means for the workforce and those sorts of things as well, too. But consistently it is about students figuring out how they position themselves for that next step, right? And positioning themselves is what should their resume look like? What type of intern they should get? How what types of jobs should they have right now? those sorts of questions. asking a lot of questions from the people that I bring in as guest speakers as well, too. How did they get started in their career? How did they reach the level that they’re at now? It’s a lot of these sort of like how to type questions.

Bennie

Well, I’m gonna ask a question for you, a a personal one, my friend, a very personal one. When did you know you were a chief marketing officer? And not not when the title told you, not when someone else told you. When did you know that you were a chief?

Kerel

Ooh ooh. Yeah. When did I know? I think when I really knew so I went to school for marketing. So it’s been a full circle experience for me. I went to school for marketing. I spent the first fourteen years of my career doing ad operations at publishers, right? So implementing ad campaigns, data management platforms, so on and so forth. When I knew was probably my time at Live Intent. So I was at Live Intent for seven years. And I and I like to tell people I had three different careers over that course of seven years. The first couple of years I was the head of account management. Then I moved into a product marketing role and built out the product marketing team there. And I think it was right around that time where I was having some success as the product marketing leader when I started to like think about marketing overall and seeing myself in the position of a CMO. I think it was around that time. Yeah. Which then ultimately led to me becoming SVP of marketing and then promoted to CMO.

Bennie

You know, it’s one of those things that we talk about that internalized belief. We’ve gotta believe and know we’re something before we become that, right?

Kerel

Yeah, no, you’re you’re you’re absolutely right. And if I’m honest with myself here, coming out of college and going through, like I said, my first fourteen years of my career running at operations teams, I didn’t think about it at that point in time. For me, it’s it’s it’s always been about being a business leader. It’s always been super important to me to be able to lead people and be a business leader. And becoming a CMO just happened to be the path in which I became that business leader.

Bennie

Right. So when you think about our landscape for the next six to eighteen months, you know, from your per vantage point, what’s gonna be the biggest breakthrough for marketing?

Kerel

Ooh, good one.

Bennie

And that’s a beautiful question ’cause we can both be wrong and right at the same time, right?

Kerel

So I I’m gonna I’m gonna bring it back to leader people and leadership. I think in this era of artificial intelligence and where it’s going, it’s all great, right? I think human leadership is more important now than it’s ever been. and when I say that, as a leader, you don’t have to have all the right answers but what you have to do is you have to be able to have a level of empathy and understanding. You have to be creative, you have to create space for people to thrive and be creative as well, too. And you have to make good decisions as well. And again, I think that that is more important now than it has ever been, especially again as we are in this artificial intelligence era that we’re in.

Bennie

I very much like people and leadership in this space. Now, you know, when you think about it with with your teams, what are some of the things that you’re doing to help them grow in this moment?

Kerel

Yeah. So you know what’s interesting about that is that I obviously like my team, especially my direct reports, I meet with them weekly, right? But those meetings are more like tactical meetings. What I’m doing now is I meet with each of my direct reports one on one monthly as well, too. And what we’ve done now is we’ve carved out time each month.

And that meeting is all about strategy and professional development. So that is a time for me to provide them with direct feedback on how things are going, areas that I want to see them focus on, how I think that they can become better in terms of more strategic and how they grow their own careers, right? So that’s one area.

The other is we just talked about AI, right? we have to as a marketing organization use certain tools and be efficient and effective in doing that, right? In my eyes, no one’s an AI expert. We’re all learning, right? So to be able to learn from each other, teach each other, test out different tools, all in the idea of how do we be more productive and efficient and effective, right?

So those are the two main areas in which I’m trying to focus on with my team in terms of developing them and helping them reach their own goals. One of the things that I do as a leader is I keep what I call my own family tree. And I got this idea from the NFL, right? So if you’re an NFL fan, you know there’s this thing of like the coaching tree, right? Like Bill Parcells has his coaching tree and

So I like to have my own professional tree and what that is, and I and I literally have a document of people that I’ve either hired or mentored that have gone on and got that next promotion or now an executive somewhere else because I get so much joy out of seeing the people that I’ve either mentored or hired that have reported to me go on and do the big things that they want to do. So I keep my own tree.

Bennie

Right. I love it. I love the idea of having a marketing coaching tray. Right. I had a professor before he always used to say in work that you get to pick your own ancestors. And that was the space that he would talk about. And it was kind of that space in terms of mentorship. People that you’re looking to. And it was like you didn’t have to be stuck. You could find the folks that made sense to you in your world. And I love that it seemed in that direction of growth of mentorship. being a

Kerel

That’s right. Absolutely. I also keep a list because ultimately I want to be a CEO. And so I keep a list of people that when I become a CEO that I’m going to hire as well too.

Bennie

I love it. And as we talked before, I love it in terms of being intentional about what’s next. And my friend, I believe that that’s definitely in the future because we’ve all heard that you called that you’re gonna be a CMO before it happened. So I love this theme of calling your shot. So I think I think you called all the net on CEL. So we’re gonna be watching and listening and waiting and we’re gonna have you back on the podcast.

Kerel

Yes. You got you have to.

Bennie

On your first day.

Kerel

I love it. I love it. And then and then you and I can have a CEO talk, right?

Bennie

Yeah, yeah. Well, if following our thought, we’re having one now, my friend. So yes, this it’s awesome and space in there. What I’m gonna ask you just to close out is what brings you joy? You’re always exciting and light up when we talk about marketing, whether it’s the operation of marketing, the promise of marketing, even when I ask you about the challenge of marketing, you’re smiling and excited about it. So you know, tell us what brings you joy these days when you think about

Kerel

I mean, yeah, so I’ll give you a professional and a pro and a personal answer. On the professional side, I love building, right? I love building high performing teams, I love building marketing strategy, marketing campaigns. And the reason why you see a smile on my face even when I talk about the challenges, because the challenges are part of the building. It’s part of the process, right? so you can’t get discouraged by that. Right. So that’s on one side. On the other side, it’s my family that gives me my joy, right? My wife, my two daughters, being able to spend time with them, watching my girls grow and coming into their own sort of humans and and young ladies and adults as well, too. That certainly gives me joy, and that is one of the biggest motivating factors that I have as well is to be able to provide and protect my family and and to watch them thrive.

Bennie

I can’t think of a better way to close our conversation and went from one class of 26 dad to another class of 26 dad, marketing leader to marketing leader, and truthfully CEO to CEO, my friend. Thank you for being a part and sharing, you know, the through lines of this journey of marketing leadership, of how we as humans can deliver the best, how we can push and challenge marketing to be better.

And how we can create spaces that don’t exist today, but we can imagine them for tomorrow. I think it’s credible that we got a chance to spend some time together. Look forward to seeing you again. And as I mentioned, we’re gonna have you down in New Orleans for our collegiate conference as well.

Kerel

Yes, sir. Looking forward to it. Looking forward to it.

Bennie

And thank you all for joining us for this very special episode of AMA’s Marketing / And. We look forward to having you learn more about the work that’s taking place in marketing and leadership and how you can grow in your profession as well. Thank you.