Tales From the Marketing Crypt - A Recovering CMO Tells All | Maryam Banikaraim | CMO Confidentia

This episode explores the dynamic and often tumultuous role of Chief Marketing Officers through the experiences of guest Maryam Banikaraim, a seasoned marketing executive.

1. Marketing roles are increasingly complex, requiring adaptability to digital transformations.
2. Effective CMOs often need to educate their peers about the strategic value of marketing.
3. Continuous learning and adaptability are crucial for CMOs to stay relevant.
4. The ability to narrate a compelling brand story is more critical than ever.
5. Navigating corporate politics is a significant aspect of the CMO role.

1: Introduction

Mike Linton introduces the podcast and guest Maryam Banikaraim, setting the stage for a discussion on marketing leadership challenges. Mike Linton: "Welcome to CMO Confidential."

2: The State of Marketing

Banikaraim reflects on the cyclical nature of marketing strategies and the instability of the CMO tenure. Maryam Banikaraim: "The state of marketing is constantly in flux."

3: Evolving Marketing Tools

Discussion on integrating new technologies like AI into marketing strategies. Maryam Banikaraim: "The pace of change is unprecedented, making continuous learning essential."

4: Challenges in Tech Industries

Banikaraim shares her experiences in tech, where marketing is often misunderstood. Maryam Banikaraim: "It's hard to get tech firms to appreciate the long-term value of branding."

5: Leadership and Learning

The importance of leadership embracing continuous learning to bridge the digital divide. Maryam Banikaraim: "We need to bring generations together to leverage both wisdom and innovation."

1. Embrace New Technologies: Continuously update your understanding of new marketing tools and platforms.
2. Educate Your Peers: Regularly share insights about marketing's strategic value with other C-suite executives.
3. Storytelling is Key: Focus on crafting compelling stories that connect with audiences emotionally.
4. Prepare for Political Challenges: Develop strategies to navigate corporate politics effectively.
5. Promote Continuous Learning: Encourage your team to embrace learning as a crucial part of their professional development.

A CMO Confidential Interview with Maryam Banikarim, Managing Director of Most Powerful Women + Brainstorm Tech at Fortune, formerly the CMO of Hyatt Hotels, Nextdoor, Gannett, NBCU, and Univision. Maryam discusses what it's like to be a company's first chief marketing person, how to bring a boss who doesn't know marketing along, bridging the generational digital divide, and how tech really doesn't believe in marketing. Key topics include: why you should say yes to hard things; looking for "clues" during the interview; how success at your job doesn't protect you from company politics; and from her TED talk -- how to see life's obstacles as an obstacle course.

People

Maryam Banikaraim, Mike Linton

Companies

Nextdoor, Hyatt Hotels, Gannett Corporation, Univision, NBC Universal

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Maryam Banikaraim

Content Warnings:

None

Mike Linton

The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything podcast network looking to launch or scale your podcast? I hear everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit ihereverything.com dot. Welcome to CMO Confidential, the podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions and choices that go with being the head of marketing.

Maryam Banikarim

Hosted by five times CMO, Mike Linton. Welcome marketers, advertisers and those who love them to chief marketing officer Confidential. CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions, and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite. I'm Mike Linton, the former CMO of Best Buy, eBay, Farmers Insurance and Ancestry.com, here today with my guest Merriam Banacharum. Today's topic hails from the marketing crypt, a recovering CMO tells all.

Mike Linton

Now, Merriam is a four time CMO, having been in charge of marketing at Nextdoor, Hyatt Hotels, Gannett Corporation, and Univision, and was also the co founder and NBC Universal. And NBC Universal. Yes. So many CMO jobs are just, I can't even count them. I need more fingers.

She's also the co founder of NYC Next, and she's dedicated herself to improving communities and New York City. She also recently signed on as the managing director of Fortune Live Media and also gave a TED Talk outlining the difference between obstacles and an obstacle course, a metaphor I think applies to the CMO job, which we're going to talk about later in this podcast. Full disclosure, I've known Miriam for a number of years, as we were both members of the original marketing 50. Welcome, Mariam. Thank you so much for having me, Mike.

Maryam Banikarim

And it's true, we've known each other for a long time. Maybe I know longer than we're going to even say on the air. But. So, first question, Miriam, you're in a great position to talk about. What do you see is the state of marketing today?

Mike Linton

I mean, you've been around cmos for a long time. We've talked about it forever. We've had a number of guests talk about it. Give us your what's the state of marketing today? Well, marketing, like all things in business, seems to be in a cyclical world, right?

Maryam Banikarim

It's like centralized, decentralized. It's the flavor of the day. I think the tenure just remains a volatile situation, right? Why have I been a CMO for 20 years at five different companies. Because if you're looking for impact, sometimes it gets difficult to move the ball forward, depending on the organization.

And so the state is constantly in flux, is the answer. Constantly in flux, and a lot of times constantly in flux. In a way that makes the CMO job harder. I think it's, sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's harder. My assessment, looking at your CMO jobs is a lot of times those are, those were jobs where it might be harder, surely harder than being in a consumer goods company where folks understand marketing.

Mike Linton

I mean, you've done true tech and you've done also some other big things. So let's talk about that. Because you've had five big CMO jobs, often with companies where management and the board a little less experience with marketing than maybe some other places. And some of them might have thought of it as a cost center or just making ads. Talk about that.

Maryam Banikarim

Well, first of all, I've often been the first ever CMO in an organization. So that's very different than if you grew up coming into marketing at Procter and gamble, where it was the driver of the business. I think, you know, what is marketing? People have a lot of different definitions of that. What is a CMO?

People also have a lot of different definitions of that. There are cmos who are pure creatives, really. They're the people who do ads and branding, and then there's other cmos who do other things. For me, I always thought that I was a business person solving problems just through the lens of marketing. Right.

I mean, I always understood that my job was to help grow the business. And the way I did that was just with the discipline that I knew, which is, how do you connect emotionally with the consumer to get them to actually come on that journey with you, with the idea that you were going to grow the business. Right. So my jobs really varied the spectrum from working on an upfront to working with sales, to sell strategically to clients to actually doing strategy. Right.

Working on m and a deals. So it was the gamut. But oftentimes you work for a CEO as a CMO, you're often hopefully working for the CEO, and you're often working for somebody who does not necessarily know the world of marketing. They weren't a marketer before, and so you have to bring them along that journey, as well as the other executives on the team and the board. So persuasion, yeah.

Mike Linton

A lot of this goes to how they originally think about marketing when you arrive. And a lot of times, I dare say a lot of them think about marketing as the marketing that they see versus the marketing below the surface, that is, or the math or the strategy that's driving what they see. Give us some tips for how do you come in to a group that doesn't really see the whole set of marketing tools, but instead it's just looking at the marketing that they see?

Maryam Banikarim

Look, I think that the world has changed, right? It used to be that your boss would go in to their country club and talk about the ad that was running in the Super bowl. So, you know, it was like the world they knew, and it was kind of the thing that all their friends saw. You know, I was on the phone the other day with the CEO of a new soda company, Poppy, and she launched her brand on TikTok and social, right? I mean, yes, now she runs ads, and she's disintermediating the soda business, right?

So a consumer product, but coming at it now from the lens of having launched on social, right. I mean, there's a lot of people in the C suite who sort of dismissively look at social as the thing that their grandchildren or their children use. They don't actually spend time on it, so they don't have a muscle memory to understand it in the way that they understood a Super bowl ad. I think that we have in general in business and in marketing, too, this real digital divide between sort of the older generation and the younger generation, and really the understanding of people's habits as a result of that. So I've had executives who really weren't that familiar with social, and frankly, that's where a lot of business is being driven today.

That's how people are getting their news. It's how they're actually making purchasing decisions. It's where they're purchasing itself. Right. That's very different than the world you and I grew up in.

So the world of marketing is different. Just, I mean, the basic tenants are the same, but your tools are different. So you have to figure out, what does my boss sort of understand about the landscape and how do I bring them along that journey? It can vary, and it has varied from job to job. Well, and you're in a great seat to talk about this because now you're also throwing on massive amounts of data, AI, data science, all kinds of stuff that are integrating with all of these tools.

Mike Linton

And we've had a number of folks come on the show and say it's hard enough just to keep up with the tools, much less integrate them. How do you bring a board and a CEO along with the speed of these tools, when they are just saying, hey, what's your strategy for AI? What's your strategy for social when they don't even know the tools? Well, I don't think that's just a CMO thing. I think that's the thing that all senior executives are struggling with, right?

Maryam Banikarim

I mean, the pace of change is unprecedented. And I think last year, I was a guest co chair at the most powerful women's summit, Fortune's most powerful women's summit, and I had to moderate a panel on AI. I did not know a lot about AI. That is not my expertise. And in some ways, when they asked me if I would moderate that panel, which was with three heavy hitters in the AI space, why me?

But then their response to me was, we know you're not an expert, and so you'll make it digestible to an audience that may not be all on the same place as a starting point. You know, I always like saying yes to hard things because it forces you to get better, right? And so it was difficult, and it was kind of scary. I spent three weeks going to school, right? I listened to a lot of podcasts.

I read a lot of things, and, you know, it made me that much smarter. So I think that's the basic thing that we have to do all around. Like, how do you constantly get smart? How do you constantly be open to learning? You know, it's one of the things I think about, because you have this workforce that's coming up, that's younger and was a digital native workforce, and oftentimes you have leadership, which was not right.

If you think about the digital divide, there's a generation in which they think that the real world is interrupting their digital lives. And then there's the old world where they think the digital world is interrupting their real lives. Like, that's a real big shift that we're going to be living through. And so I think, I know we're having a marketing conversation, but honestly, I think that there's a bigger thing that's happening, which is we need to figure out how we bring generations together. So that you take the wisdom of people who've done things and seen things, but also get them to appreciate the new ideas and the innovation and the wisdom of the younger generation, right?

Like, I see this divide where people say, like, why can't the older people learn slack? Because that's the much more efficient way to communicate. And the older people who are like, why are they so entitled? And the truth is, that's just a very bifurcated way to look at what's happening. I think young kids have a lot of really great ideas.

Can you be open to learning them? Can you force yourself to be open to learning new tools? Like Slack isn't a complicated thing to learn. But I was sitting next to Ann Marie slaughter the other day, you know, and she wrote a seminal paper about stepping aside. Although she went to become a professor, it wasn't like she was literally, you.

Mike Linton

Know, totally not totally aside. Yeah. And I was asking her this very conversation. I said, what do you think makes it so that some people are more open to continuous learning and others not? And she said, as a professor, you are constantly learning because you're staying young in order to engage with your students.

Maryam Banikarim

We all know habits are hard to learn. I think one of the things you and I did early on, and that was one of the gifts of M 50, was that they would bring us fresh ideas and learning and then even sometimes give us hands on training. I remember they took us early on to visit Facebook and Twitter. It's why I have my name as my handle right before I even, even really knew what Twitter was. But that muscle memory is something that you have to be really dogged about as a marketer.

But also get your executive, you know, committee to come along on help me. Write marketing into the story. Because one of the things is the marketer is almost always at the front of the customer, the technology, and the company. Yeah. And so you're usually, a lot of marketers are right at the front of this trying to explain it to themselves and then their company, why their customers may be way ahead.

Mike Linton

And how do you, what are some tips there? Because I think this digital divide thing and the need to keep learning is super important. Give us some tips. Well, look, I think a good marketer understands the tools are different. They understand the data is a tool.

Maryam Banikarim

Now, you get to make more informed decisions than you were able to before. But at the end of the day, we're storytellers. Right? Like, you're using data to tell a story, to connect. There's a reason stories convert people, because they connect emotionally.

It's not just a, you know, a transaction. I mean, the best brands tell a story and connect with you emotionally, and they transcend being a commodity as a result of that. Right. And so I think if you think about how you bring, you know, people along on the executive team, one of the ways to do it is stories. Right?

Right. So, yes, you can do a lot of charts. And by the way, people consume information a lot of different ways. Right? When I joined a tech company, everything was a Google Doc, and everything was an app, and they didn't print.

Right. Like, you have to understand the culture of the organization that you're joining, and then think about how you bring them along. So I remember when I was at nextdoor, they talked about things like Dao, wow, and Mao and I joined. I was like, what language are we speaking? I literally had to make a glossary.

And there was a day where I was talking to the product team and the engineering group, and I said, when I say brand love, you're talking about Dao and wow. Daily active users and weekly active, like, you have to figure out how to translate. Part of your job is one of the best charts I ever saw was not communication. It's not what I say, it's what you hear. Does my message land?

And so you have to think about that executive group and understand how they take in information and how you can bring them along that journey. It doesn't matter that you like pretty pictures. It's like, how do they consume information? Cause the goal of any good communication is actually getting the other person to understand your message. I think that is a super important point, which is, it's not what you say, it's what the company hears and then also what the company does with what they hear.

Mike Linton

Because sometimes, and I wanna move this back to the title of the show, sometimes, no matter how well you communicate or no matter what you do, the company is maybe not going to hear what you're saying. So I want to go to the title because one of the hardest things, having done it as well as first time, first ever CMO for a company, sometimes you get a tale from the crip story. Out of that, I'd love to hear one or two tales from the crip story about sometimes where the company just. You get a bad hand as a CMO, or it's just a tough gig. If you can tell us any tales from the crypt of the CMO job, that'd be awesome.

Maryam Banikarim

Well, I mean, in my TED talk, I talk about one of my roles. So let's start there. I think, like anything, it's like, for me as a kid who grew up in Iran and was always looking for community, I found my way in by joining and doing, like, actually participating. Right. And so it makes sense now, in retrospect, that work would be where I would look for it, because I was willing to roll up my sleeve and get in.

Right? And so what better place than work? So I was always looking for community at work. Like, if I just do a good job and I raise my hand for the hard things and figure things out, but what you begin to learn is that, like, I love companies. We all talk about we're all a family, but really, I do think the better analogy is we're a team, because people will be willing to trade you out at any time for something better, you know, something that solves a different problem for them, not necessarily better.

And I remember I was at a job and we got a new CEO. Actually, I'd been at the job for a long time, and then I got named first ever CMO. And then we got bought by five private equity firms. A new CEO comes in and puts me in charge of a project that really I'd never done before, but I was somebody he knew. Before I get put in charge of a project, I'd have to produce it upfront, something that usually took a year of planning.

I had six weeks to do it. And I remember there was a moment he said to me as this was happening, you know, I'm really anxious about this. And I said, me too. He said, yeah, well, if it doesn't work out, you'll be fired, and I'll still be here. And I still remember walking out of his office and thinking to myself, wow, was that supposed to be motivating?

But the thing about my TED talk is like, you know, I treated life as an obstacle course and not an obstacle. And so, I mean, I think there would be other people where they would have experienced that and been like, okay, I'm going to go roll up like a ball. Because like, wow, he's just reminding me the stakes. For me, it was kind of like I heard it and then I swiped right or swipe left or whatever the perfect analogy is. I was like, okay, I got to go solve the problem.

And so as we thought about how to do the upfront and do it differently, we just done a purpose project with GSDNM. Jerry, who had been the owner who sold the company at the time, had we gone down sort of like the Jim Collins like purpose, what is the great company? And so we really tried to do something different with the upfront. And because we only had six weeks, and frankly, because we didn't know how to do it the other way, we had a lot of plan a, B and Cs. I mean, it was like, you know, there were six weeks I did not sleep.

And honestly, I wasn't sure if it was going to work. Long story short, it ends up being a raging success. Literally gets voted the best up front of the year. I get a bouquet of flowers. You know, I wasn't alone, to be clear.

There was a group of us who were working on it and a lot of other people in the company, but, you know, I get a bouquet. You were clearly the leader, because if you're going to get fired, you were the leader, so. Yes, exactly. Um, but, but I knew my head would be on the chopping block and, um, anyway, so get a flowers. Amazing.

The CEO's now, you know, um, it's his absolute best coming out party. It just couldn't be better. And then a couple weeks later, he needed to give somebody else on the team, like some, something to own. Right? It was, it was a political move, right?

It was like, yeah. And so he came to me and he said, you know what? You're doing a great job. Great job. You know, whatever.

The flowers. Um, I'm going to have you report into this new person because, you know, I just don't have time to manage you. I mean, it was literally, like the most ridiculous. And, you know, now I look back and I think, like, should I have just said at that point, like, great, I'll be walking out the door. You'll hear from my lawyer.

I mean, in media, you had contracts, but I didn't really feel like I had permission to do that. You know, it's like, I don't know. Now I look back and I think, like, should I have handled that differently? But, you know, it's like, it's not personal. It was politics, like, and a lot.

Mike Linton

Of times marketing can be moved politically as a function under somebody for all kinds of reasons. And it's. A lot of times it is, it is a tales from the crip story. You know what? Everybody thinks they understand marketing.

Maryam Banikarim

That's how it goes. Nobody thought they could. They understand, you know, the CTO, it's like the black box. But, you know, everybody has an opinion on how to write a headline, how to do an ad, you know, how to do comm strategy. It's just, it's amazing.

It's one of the gifts of marketing. Any second, tales from the crip story. You want to know. Interestingly, I've done three different industries, like media, hospitality and tech. And joining tech was like joining a different universe.

First of all, the average age of my employees were in their twenties. They told me quickly that they switched jobs every year and a half, a lot of them, because that's how they built their stock portfolio. I mean, you just had to understand how people approach work differently. It didn't mean that some of them didn't stay, but they just were much more willing to move than in the era of PNG where people say that their jobs for long periods of time, tech doesn't really understand marketing for the most part. I mean, this is a broad statement, but one of the things that after I'd been at this job for a while trying to convince them about doing a project on, they brought me in to do branding, but really they didn't have the tools to really do branding.

And then I kept pitching this idea and just literally just like explaining the basics of marketing, why you would do it. And it's hard to convince somebody about branding. It's just not that linear of a thing. And you don't get brand awareness doesn't move that quickly. Right.

It's a long term play. So you have to convince somebody that they need to invest over a long term. But there were so many misperceptions that just existed in the marketplace. Like, oh, so and so did a Super bowl spot for $2. It was like, that's not actually true, right?

Like you'd go, I would just go down these rabbit holes, like, wait, what? And then I would go look into that and it was like, no, that was not actually accurate. But like, it's like there's so much misinformation around what it takes to do a good job. And then I remember like talking to other people at different tech companies and I was joking with them that we should start a support network where we could just share our decks. I was like, you know what, it doesn't matter.

They were competitive. I'm going to give you a deck that I use to explain the basics of branding so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel because it was just a slog, because it was very hard to get somebody to understand the value of that. Look, people do great branding when they have a leader who just intrinsically understands the value. Because it's a long term play, it's not going to play out in a quarter. It's not performance marketing where you're going to be able to figure out the lifetime value of the customer in 2 seconds.

It just doesn't play out that way. So it's hard for people to have sticking power, right? I mean, they just constantly have financial headwinds where they're making trade offs and the easy place is always marketing well. And I think the other thing is a lot of the tech companies have a lot of data on a lot of stuff, and they want to apply that data immediately and predict stuff. So each one of them becomes like a snowflake effort for longer term marketing.

Remember, I mean, tech is used to hockey sticks. They're used to things moving quickly, and they're used to product really being the thing that drives it. So, I mean, there's just a lot of different things that come into the fold. I think one of my other favorite things is people who get into the middle of a crisis and then wonder, oh, my God, should I have a crisis plan? Right?

Oh, my God. Wait. Branding actually does matter. It's too late in that window. You know, it's like hindsight is 2020.

Mike Linton

It's like being watched overboard and thinking, I should have put on a life jacket. That's correct. That's correct. I mean, I will say one of the things about being in marketing is sometimes you can see the truck coming for you much sooner than other people. It's like a curse and a blessing.

Maryam Banikarim

You just can't necessarily convince people. It's like, I feel like you're saying, like, the earth is round. They're like, but I don't see the ships coming. You're like, okay, I'm just here. Please, please just know it's coming.

They're like, no, I don't know what you're talking about. So I know we talked about this before, but I want to make sure we cover it for our listeners. Any tips about joining a non marketing company, and particularly during the interviewing process, to suss out whether you're going to have a good chance or a bad chance of being a success? You know, I mean, as you know, I've taken many new jobs. I think it's very, very difficult to know from the outside.

It really just is. People say all the right things, and I don't know. I mean, I can only talk about my own personal journey. Like, I'm a fixer. My husband says I'm like Ray Donovan.

I can go in. I'm determined to fix things, and so I always believe that I can do it. I guess one of the things I would say to you is when people say things to you, really take notes and consider them. Right? I remember somebody said to me, oh, this is an organization where, you know, they.

They might need an organ transplant, but they'll reject the donor. And I was like, oh, no big deal. I can fix that. Like, you know, like, there are clues along the way. Early in my career, somebody said to me, not everyone can work for her, but you can.

And I took that as a compliment because, you know, I have a high bar for crazy. It was a tip. They were trying to tell me something. Yeah, they were trying.

By to the way they were right. Not everybody could work for them. And I could and I did. But, you know, there's a price you pay. Well, that's like, not everybody can wrestle with an alligator and win, but you can, which is you still get the hell beat out of you by the alligator.

I had a friend who said to me, just because you're good at crisis doesn't mean you should join female all of these things were signs along my journey that maybe I should have listened to, but then maybe I wouldn't be here. I don't know. So this is a fabulous, I'm going to say, take note of the clues you get that aren't blatant, but in retrospect are very clear and try and understand them as clear versus.

Mike Linton

Because they're really cloaked diplomatically, but they're pretty big clues. Is that a fair summary? Yes, because I do think that people, I mean, it's amazing to me. I think people say more than they mean to say. So if you really come in with that lens and then ask yourself, like, you know, sometimes it's worth trying to be the person to run uphill, honestly, I do think that it's true.

Maryam Banikarim

I did have the capacity to do things that maybe other people did not have, which for which we can debate whether they were psychologically healthy or not. But I do think that those things gave me the ability to move the needle and have the kind of career that I have that I might not have had if I'd done it differently. Well, look, you have to succeed and beat challenges that are hard or you don't have a great career. So the key is picking the challenge where you beat the alligator. Picking which challenge?

Yeah, that's correct. Where the alligator. You have a chance to beat the alligator versus the alligator is 20ft long. So speaking of obstacles, let's talk about your TED talk you discussed, and I thought it was a great talk about how life is really an obstacle course, something to be solved versus a series of obstacles. You started with your time as a kid in Iran.

Mike Linton

Give us a brief overview of the talk and then write marketers into the story. Yeah, well, I mean, look, I'm a kid who grew up in, you know, in Iran, 79, the revolution, we move and, you know, I show up, imagine like an 1112 year old, like in a waspy suburb of San Francisco, like in a little french school. School outfit in the middle of the hostage crisis. So, you know, it was kind of like sink or swim. And the way that I solved for things was by joining and doing.

Maryam Banikarim

I was a terrible bowler, but I still joined the bowling club. You know, we didn't have softball. We had soccer. I still joined the, you know, the softball group, and. And I didn't just join.

I did. Right. I, like, participated. Right. It was sort of the way that I would find my way that that was kind of a thing that really, I guess I would say, carried through my entire career.

Right. Like, later on in life, I made a travel guide, and, you know, it was before the Internet, and I mailed it to Mickey Drexler. Like, I was willing to just do crazy things that I think people might have been embarrassed about, or, you know, my kids roll their eyes out. Like, my God, were you not worried about not being cool? And the answer was no.

I clearly was not. So I think I look back, right? One of the things that happened was, I live in Chelsea in the pandemic. You know, we were hit early and hard, and coming out of the pandemic, I had this idea of hosting neighbors on an open street for a potluck. And I just.

I'd seen a picture of people having a meal out on the street. I was like, amazing. What if we did that? And what happened is we got to know our neighbors more in the middle of COVID right. Because we were all in place in a way that we hadn't been if we'd had jobs like you and I have had, where we were just always on an airplane.

So I rented tables and chairs with some neighbors, and 500 neighbors came for lunch. The day before the lunch, there was a wedding nearby, and a neighbor said to me, let's go see if we can get them to donate. This wedding party will donate their flowers to us, and they'll make the table better. So we walked over there, found out the person in charge, and the guy just said no. As we were walking away, my neighbor said, can I ask you a question?

I said, sure. He goes, well, how did that feel? I said, not great, but, you know, like, we got to go solve another problem. And he said, you know, it's interesting because I now want to go curl up like a ball, because that didn't feel great. And you don't see life as an obstacle.

You see it as an obstacle course. And that was really the moment. Like, the moment of insight, right? It's kind of like a marketing thing. Like, that was the insight.

I was like, wow. And it's true for me, it was like, it was always a Rubik's cube. It was like just a puzzle to solve, right? Like, there were so many times where I could have been like, wait, I don't know how to do an upfront or, I don't know, the hospitality industry or, wow, what's happening to me? I've just joined a tech company and I don't understand their language, but to me it was just always like, let's just move the pieces around and see if we can't solve for it.

And sort of that attitude makes it less personal and it just forces you to be like one step at a time to trying to solve the problem. And I think you can apply that in marketing. Right? Like, there's many things we don't know. I've just joined fortune.

It's a great. Yeah, let's talk about that. Talk about the job. Talk about what, you know, what you're doing there and why you took this well. So, you know, after having done 20 years of CMO ing, I ended up, you know, really finding my purpose in building community in New York City and then, you know, even more locally in my community.

Just like M 50 really gave me a community. When I first got invited to the fortune most powerful women summit, it was a major moment, right, because you had to be invited. It was a convening, very senior, powerful woman. Univision wasn't really recognized, and that moment really was recognizing not just me, but really Univision and the power of the hispanic market. So getting invited in was a really big moment.

And I think, you know, as somebody who spent a lot of time at work, right, a lot of time. Your peer group is your friend group, right? Because it's where you're. Right, your hours. And so all of a sudden I had this exposure, not just amazing ideas and, you know, breaking news at the conference, but also a community of women who had similar journeys in one way or another across lots of industries that I could draw upon.

And it was a game changer for me. And I've had people say to me, wow, NpW really changed my life. Literally after the announcement came out. I've heard from several people who've said things like that, very accomplished, amazing women. And so the opportunity to be part of helping reimagine this community and the brainstorm tech community as we sort of live through an incredibly changing time in the world and in the world of business seem like a great way to sort of come full circle.

And like I said, it's like you got to be willing to just continue solving the problem. They have an incredible business. It's profitable. You know, it's very sticky. But you have to constantly try to figure out how you're going to get ahead.

Right. And there's a lot of people now in that space. How do we reinvent that? How do we actually act even more like a community? How do we support people?

Should we do be doing different kinds of events? Should we be thinking about how we sort of nurture that community when they show up differently? We're going to test and learn a lot of different things. It's like a continuous puzzle for me. Well, I think that's what, it's a very great continuation of your TED talk, which easily findable.

Mike Linton

Marian Banacharam on TED Talk. But I want to flip now, you've been referred to sometimes as a recovering CMO. Tell us about how you are recovering and what tips you have for people that are recovering from the cmo time. I don't know if that's a very good sentence, but, you know, the question. I think being a CMO or being in the c suite, I mean, there's a toll that that takes on you, right?

Maryam Banikarim

20 years is a long time. I didn't do course of business CMO jobs. I always did, like, change and transformation jobs. I joke that in the middle of the pandemic, people were learning to bake bread or whatever they were doing. I was literally, like, in the pantry, hiding from my family, taking phone calls.

They were like, the world is ending. Like, are there no boundaries for you? But nextdoor, like, blew up. We had like, 80. We did an increase in 80% in our traffic.

Neighbors were your lifeline, and I felt like a sense of responsibility, right? So I think, you know, how many years can one person be a CMO? People say to me like, don't you want another CMO job or don't you want a CEO job? And the truth is, I'm sort of now at a place where I discovered my own purpose in trying to help New York City and my own neighborhood, and that I think that community matters. I think community matters.

And so I can use the same skills that I was problem solving to help a company to think about how I can problem solve, like, on a more hyper local level, on a city level, and now, like, in this business way, through the fortune communities, right? So I think, you know, we don't have to be linear in the way that people always expect us. People are like, why don't you want to be CEO. I don't. You know, what gives me joy?

What gives me joy is figuring out how we're going to come together as a community, solve things in Chelsea, solve things in New York, and also make sure that this community, this business community that has given me so much can continue to give not just people in my, you know, phase of life, but the generation that's coming up. I went to a Gen Z conference last year. It was a Gen Z conference thrown by Gen Z. I took my daughter with me as my translator so she could be like, oh, no, that's a very big YouTube star. I mean, I want to constantly be learning.

I think that there is this real need. There's so many different kinds of divides. There's the digital divide, there's a political divide. Like, you know, there's just so many of these things. Like, we need to all care enough to leave the world in a better place than we found it.

And it seems very like Pollyannish. It's like, that's why when we do the longest table, I wear a Mister Rogers shirt, because you know what? That's where I'm at. Well, your passion is palpable, and thank you for sharing it. We're almost at time, so I'd like to conclude by a two part question.

Mike Linton

You have to pick one part or both, but you have to pick at least one funniest story you can share on the air and or practical advice we haven't talked about yet. Pick one or both. You're going to have to ask me that question again because I just got an alert for another earthquake in New York. Oh, my gosh. In New York City.

Maryam Banikarim

All right, well, real life obstacle. It's your choice. One or both. Funniest story you can share on the air or practical advice we haven't talked about yet. You have to pick at least one or you can do two.

Let's do practical advice. I'm so practical. Let's do a practical advice.

I have to find one that we haven't talked about. I mean, I think a practical piece of advice is sign up for the hard things, and I think give yourself permission to dream bigger. I was on a call today with a woman who was asking for career advice, and I was pushing her to think bigger. I think we self limit. Right.

And so the next job doesn't have to be another CMO job. The next job doesn't have to be a CEO job. You can decide that you want to run for office. You can decide that you want to do something totally different that feeds a different part of your soul and allows you to take those skills and have impact in a different way. I said, another piece of practical advice is, you know, speak up and use your voice.

I mean, if you've reached a level where you're close to the C suite or in the C suite, it behooves us all to use our voice to make sure that we leave the world in a better place at work and in the world. Right? Like, just use your voice. And I'm in so many rooms where, you know, historically we have not used our voice because, you know, people went along to get along, to get ahead. And I think now if you get to that point where you have a seat at the table, like, use your voice.

Use your voice. I think it really matters. Well, I think that is a great way to conclude the show. Thank you, Miriam, and thanks to everyone for listening to CMO confidential. Look for more of our shows on Apple, YouTube, Spotify and the I hear everything network, including marketing.

Mike Linton

The battle between believers and non believers. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. That's from a search consultant talking about the CMO job. Why is b two b marketing so bad and what to do about it? Parts one and two?

And from Seth Matlin's at the network, is the CMO position the hardest job in business? If you are enjoying the show, please, like share and subscribe. Thank you again, Merriam. And hey, all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off from CMO confidential.