A Conversation with Joyce Hwang and Doug Zarkin
In a business environment shaped by rapid technological advancements and increasingly sophisticated consumers, the challenge of building — and rebuilding — brands that resonate has never been more complex. Few marketers understand this better than Joyce Hwang, Head of Marketing at Dropbox, and Doug Zarkin, Chief Brand Officer at Modern Performance & Recovery Brands and author of Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone.
During a recent conversation hosted by Marketers That Matter®, Hwang and Zarkin offered insights on navigating today’s marketing challenges. They discussed the evolving role of AI, strategic positioning over fear-based decisions, and when to recognize your brand needs revitalization. The discussion revealed how successful marketers balance data with human understanding and maintain a strong focus on truly matters to customers.
Hwang and Zarkin shared perspectives drawn from their extensive experience with big-name brands, providing actionable advice for any marketer seeking to create meaningful connections with customers in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Following is a snapshot of the engaging discussion:
What are the top-of-mind issues for marketers today?
Doug Zarkin: The word of the day is actually an acronym: FOMO. Fear of missing out is not a marketing strategy, but you are hearing more and more marketers talk about that fear. The fear of missing out on how to use AI, fear of missing out on developing influencer campaigns, fear of missing out on taking advantage of this or that. The ironic part is that more isn’t better, better is better. And I’m hearing more dialogue circle back to that. Let’s not do more better; let’s do better better. Let’s do a few things really well that we know are important to our consumers, to our patients, to our customers, to our clients, and ensure that they know that they matter to us immensely.
Joyce Hwang: Mine has inescapably been AI. It’s two little letters, but every CMO is discussing it after every dinner, roundtable event, summit, and conference. The common theme and through line that I’ve heard from a lot of CMOs is the silver lining: Marketers are often at the forefront of experimentation. There are a lot of great AI use cases and applications out there from content marketing to post-production improvements. The converse of that is the challenge of AI adoption. How do you scale and fund it within your organizations? How do you make sure everybody’s using it consistently and with governance?
Will AI replace marketing jobs?
Doug Zarkin: No, AI is a wonderful tool, but like any tool in your toolbox, you’ve got to know how to use it. AI is about inputs. Any marketer who’s worth their weight needs to figure out how to use AI, but AI is not a golden ticket that’s going to solve everybody’s marketing problems. What it does is it gives us more options at our fingertips. It allows us to work more effectively and efficiently. It allows us to run a test and learn. But it still comes back to the fact that data in isolation doesn’t make decisions. Marketers make decisions using data because data is only as good as the questions that we ask.
Joyce Hwang: You’ve got to be curious; you’ve got to test and learn. For the folks that I’ve seen be really immersive with AI tools, it’s unlocked their freedom for creativity and individual expression as well. It’s not just a productivity amplifier. It’s as good as the artifacts and training deliverables you use to train it.
How do you approach brand positioning in your work?
Doug Zarkin: Marketing at its core is about positioning – and positioning is about the artist’s sacrifice. Brands that understand their strategic purpose in the hearts, minds, and wallets of their consumer, and build concentric circles around it, are in a much better position to win. Sure, you could come up with lightning in a bottle, but that’s often the exception to the rule, not the rule itself.
Joyce Hwang: With Dropbox, we’re going through our growth phase and where we want to be in the next three and five years. And it’s expanding into new market categories and segments well beyond what got us here for the first 10 years. The expanded product portfolio is still related to that; it’s never deviated off that path.
Are there meaningful differences between B2B and B2C marketing approaches?
Doug Zarkin: It’s easy to get caught up in the differences and lose sight of the similarities. People are going to make the emotional decision before they make the rational choice. The person on the other end is thinking: How is that going to make my life better? How is it going to solve my problems? How is it going to ease the stress of what I’m being asked to deliver? That’s as much an emotional response as it is a rational one.
Joyce Hwang: You definitely have to consider differences of how you target, and how you measure success. On the B2C side, you’re directly speaking to the buyer and end user. On the B2B side, I think it depends on the segment, which could be an SMB to a Fortune 500 enterprise. You have to isolate who’s your buying center or who’s your ideal customer profile, target those specific titles or personas and distill how your solution helps them.
When do you know that it’s time to rebuild a brand?
Doug Zarkin: I’ve had the privilege of working on a number of iconic legacy brands, including Avon, Victoria’s Secret PINK, and Pearle Vision. You start to really have a sense of when your business needs a shot of adrenaline when the only way you’re making top line growth is through aggressive discounting and deals. It’s that desperation of when you have lost that strategic reason to believe in your business and brand.
Joyce Hwang: For us, it was the collective C-suite really looking at the long-range strategy. What you can’t do is say that Marketing is doing it alone. A rebrand has to be a collective partnership with the C-suite, including the CEO, and the product teams. Creating a new rebrand that the product team does not back up is like putting lipstick on a pig.
What’s your best advice for marketers?
Joyce Hwang: Stay curious, stay engaged. Talk to others in the community because you can learn more from just hearing other people’s use cases. What keeps them up?
Doug Zarkin: Stop looking for the ‘right’ way and stop worrying about the wrong way. There’s no such thing. It’s just a way. Marketing is art and science, which means that everyone has situations that involve making decisions. You need to make decisions with the best tools and insights and heart that you have. And have a great team around you, below you, to the side of you, and above you to help take those decisions and figure out how they act in the market and then read and react accordingly.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
About the Visionaries
Joyce Hwang, Head of Marketing of Dropbox
Joyce leads all global integrated marketing at Dropbox, a leading cloud-based solution focused on designing a more enlightened way of working. She oversees a broad marketing remit at Dropbox, including campaigns, digital marketing, partner marketing, field marketing, customer marketing, marketing operations, and marketing data science. She is passionate about uniting customer insights, product innovation, and go to market strategies to scale growth, enhance customer experiences, and build a stronger global brand. Prior to Dropbox, Joyce held leadership roles at RingCentral, Adobe, and Box and began her career in management consulting at Deloitte. She holds an MBA from the Wharton Business School and an HBA from the Ivey Business School.
Doug Zarkin Chief Brand Officer of MPRBrands and author of Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone
With a profound skill set encompassing team leadership, talent development, brand revitalization, and sustained business growth, Doug’s journey exemplifies his resolute commitment to sparking transformative change. Guided by his distinctive “thinking human” approach, he crafts resonant brand narratives across diverse verticals and formats, leaving a lasting impact now captured in his first book, “Moving Your Brand Out of The Friend Zone,” released in October 2023.
Doug’s career is punctuated by remarkable achievements, including co-founding Grey Advertising’s pioneering Youth, Entertainment, and Lifestyle Marketing Firm. His visionary role as Director of Marketing at Avon Products, Inc. gave birth to the successful “mark.” Brand, recognized with the Best Executed Launch Strategy by Women’s Wear Daily. As Vice President of Marketing at Victoria’s Secret PINK, he elevated it into a formidable cross-category national brand. Continuing his trajectory, Doug’s pivotal roles at global giants Warnaco and Kellwood further solidified his branding and marketing expertise.
As Chief Marketing Officer for Pearle Vision at Essilor Luxottica, he orchestrated a monumental brand transformation. Shifting Pearle Vision’s focus from a discount-centric to a care-focused omnichannel brand experience resulted in spectacular growth, earning him a coveted spot on multiple “Top Marketers” lists and multiple Effie and Clio awards.
In October 2023, Doug was named the first Chief Brand Officer at MPRBrands (Modern Performance and Recovery Brands), formerly known as Good Feet Holdings. There, he oversees a portfolio of companies, including The Good Feet Store, Stretch*D, Compression Health and OS1st compression gear and performance socks.
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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