Todd Kaplan, PepsiCo's CMO, recently joined Joseph Jaffe on his business talk show, Joseph Jaffe is Not Famous, for an in-depth marketing conversation concerning community, brand building, and so much more!

This incredible interview highlights why we need to avoid cutting marketing budgets while focusing on optimism, courage, hope, positivity, and what Joseph calls "community capitalism."

Here are a few noteworthy takeaways and you'll be sure to want to watch the entire episode and while you're at it, subscribe to the show.

Top 10 Key Takeaways

1.    Marketing is Not About the CMO 

As Todd Kaplan states straight out of the gate, marketing is about community and brand vision. While the CMO provides thought leadership and helps drive the agenda, successful marketing comes down to teaching, passion, and pride within the industry, moving forward in a way that will resonate and live up to its potential.

2.    The Idea of Intrapreneurship

Many great ideas and ways to connect with consumers may be right in front of you..inside your own company. Joseph talks about how innovation powers marketing in culture-forward companies. They discuss how treating every advertising role as a startup can help find new ways to bring a product to life and spark creativity within branding.

3.    Embracing the Challenger Mindset

The challenger mindset encourages marketing and advertising agencies to look closely at who the competition is and what you're competing with, enabling brands to think about how consumers are spending their time. Becoming a lifestyle brand and engaging with modern consumers puts you in competition with almost anything that asks for their time. Todd offers some great marketing points, including a Metaverse take on marketing.

4.    The Future of Brands is Community

Recognizing where the future of marketing lies is essential, and understanding the community's role is just as crucial. In this segment, Joseph inquires Todd about whether community is the future of marketing or branding, and Todd responds by stating the future lies with community building. Community plays a considerable role in brand building and focusing on consumers' emotions.

5.    The Tattoo Test

In an intriguing take, Todd Kaplan brings up "The Tattoo Test," which can stand as a marketing test for consumer loyalty and the role a brand plays in their lives. Brands don't only serve as product and service providers but often play a more profound role in consumer lives. Todd names sports as an outstanding example of The Tattoo Test, stating that fans can celebrate or commiserate together, all in the name of a "team," which, at its core, is a brand.

6.    Brand Ownership

In this fascinating segment, Joseph asks Todd who owns the brand: the company, or the consumer? Todd states that the brand owns the ideas, the products, and creative executions. However, deepening the partnership with consumers is essential, and he uses Harley Davidson as an example to show how consumers can take ownership through brand engagement and support.

7.    Courage and Bravery in Marketing

Philosopher Tom Morris comes into the conversation to discuss courage in marketing, stating that "good marketers need confidence, great marketers need courage." What's the difference? Confidence is the expectation of good results, while courage is a commitment to what's needed rather than to what's safe. This entire segment offers invaluable marketing advice from a philosophical point of view, including the emotions marketing evokes in consumers.

8.    The Key to the Consumer

Is courage, or getting off the ride and building your own ride, the key to reaching the consumer in marketing? Sort of. Todd Kaplan broadens this idea by encouraging marketers to realize that they, and the innovation and creative thinking they employ, are the key to the consumer.

9.    "No" is a Request for More Information 

This statement is a beautiful takeaway from this conversation. It's challenging to get every marketing element right the first time. As marketers run into barriers, it's crucial to take the word "no" as a request for more information from a marketing perspective. A "no" from a corporate brand should inspire one to look at it from another perspective, and as Joseph states, "no" could mean "not yet" or "not now."

10. Learning by Doing

Joseph shared a quote: "The point of human evolution is adapting to circumstance. Not letting go of the old, but adapting it, is necessary." - Sonali Bendre

Todd expands on this, as being a marketer means learning by doing, moving through ideas and creative concepts with agility and flexibility. Risks are relative.

 

The Final Word

"What's wrong with marketing?" Joseph posits in his Seated Soliloquy.

 Spoiler alert: The answer is nothing. Nothing is wrong with marketing. There could be an issue with marketers or business in general, but marketing is as it has always been.

 

We've gone over the takeaways, but we've barely scratched the surface of what the entire interview has to offer. Watch it today, and subscribe for more life-coach-esque, daily talk show content.

 

Todd Kaplan is Pepsi's Chief Marketing Officer, overseeing marketing for the Pepsi brand in North America, where he is responsible for all creative communications, brand strategy, product innovation, and commercial execution across the entire Pepsi trademark. Since Fall 2018, Kaplan brings an unapologetic, culture-forward perspective that has been foundational to re-energizing the brand bringing it back into the cultural zeitgeist - from reinvigorating the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show platform with historic performances from JLo & Shakira, Dr Dre, Snoop, Eminem, The Weeknd and many more, to developing disruptive new products like Nitro Pepsi, to putting out some of the boldest and most talked about brand creative the Pepsi brand has ever seen. Todd has established Pepsi as an industry leader of modern marketing, developing new content models - including multiple television shows, long form films -  trailblazed into Web 3 with one of the first brand NFT projects, and more.