For @atsignnick , CEOs need to inspire their employees with a vision to create and innovate. A cost-cutting culture destroys value because the company's no looking to give consumers what they want.
Get more insight from @atsignnick on the latest episode of Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing. Now on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Consider This: @volvocars gave away its biggest patent to its competitors. @sethmatlins says that was a business decision that created more value than any marketing campaign.
@atsignnick shares how @ikea transformed resource reductions into value creation.
The first episode of Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with @sethmatlins is out now on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
In our first episode, @sethmatlins sits with Nick Tran, one of global marketing’s most influential voices and the former Global CMO of TikTok. Now, as President and CMO of the joint venture relaunching Cîroc Vodka and Lobos 1707, he’s rebuilding a brand while scaling another.
Nick and Seth discuss how the value creation equation can look different from the CMO’s and President’s seats, even if maybe they shouldn’t, and how to break old models.
Find Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing on YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
I can think of no better words to share my experience with Neko Health than @pranavyadavpy when he shared his: “I have seen the future.”
Last week in London, in something reminiscent of The Jetson’s and in just under one hour, I received the most comprehensive health screening I ever have. More than 2000 images were taken of my body (those lucky bastards), analyzing my skin, my tissue, my blood, blood pressure and flow, heart, eye pressure, muscle mass (off the charts...kidding!), all with results and diagnostics delivered immediately during an un-rushed consultation and debrief with a doctor.
While the product is amazing, so too was the experience which I can only describe as deeply personalized, humane, and futuristic despite it being current state (of the diagnostic arts).
Co-founded by Daniel Ek to herald a new era of accessible preventative medicine, the waitlist is over 300,000 people for something I was certain would cost closer to $3000 than the $500 (at current terrible exchange rates) than it did.
Neko is opening in NYC shortly, and consider this (FWIW) a full-throated endorsement and encouragement. If they’ll have me, I'm signing up for membership to ensure my first scan serves as a baseline for those that follow.
Grateful to @chrysi and @neko for taking such good care.
(And that’s an Xray of me on the table.)
We moved to LA “for two years” 28 years ago. We're leaving next week with emotions that are less mixed then they are sad.
We came because I got a job; thinking our time here would be a pitstop between the east coast and settling in San Francisco. Turns out the job was a disaster, I don’t really like San Francisco and, quite unexpectedly, we fell in love with LA.
LA has been so kind to me and us, and I owe it immeasurably. My career didn’t begin here but it changed and accelerated because of here. I came to run a non-profit and wound up spending most of the next 25 years in and around Hollywood, schooled in all that "Hollywood" was, is, does and knows, literally and metaphorically.
Most importantly, my kids were found, born, and grew up here. I made forever friends, and for then and now friends. I built a life with my ex-wife here. I fell in love again and leave as a different “we” than the “we” that came here.
For 28 years, I've described myself as a New Yorker who lived in and loved LA. And while I’ll forever and always be a New Yorker, as we leave and head back that way, this city, this town, this community, this idea that is LA has become a huge and forever part of me and of us...shaping me as surely as any NYC street did growing up.
I’m so grateful it has and so fortunate that 2 years became near 30.
Despite the decision to leave being ours entirely, I’m heartbroken. Deciding to move 3000 miles away from my adulting children makes me cry every time I think about it, and I think about it a lot. Deciding to leave 74 and sunny for cold and snowy makes me question our sanity.
But we leave sure it’s the right decision for us and for now.
I will miss so much and so many and be forever grateful for a job that didn’t work out but a city that did.
(The image is by Geoff McFetridge, made after last year’s fires. I got it tattooed on my arm, a small homage to an enormous impact.)
My mother was head of new business for a big NYC ad agency when I was growing up.
At dinners, she’d talk about the brands they were pitching and I’d write copy (which at the time I limited to tag lines) for them to use. I think one out of hundreds might actually have made it to a real creative’s desk. It did not go further.
There’s never been a moment since that I haven’t valued and fought for the exquisite and enduring strategic advantage that creativity well conceived and applied drives. And, as every creative I’ve ever worked with can attest, I remain as frustrated a creative now as I was at the dinner table when I was growing up.
No small part of why I’m “humbled and honored” to join the The One Show and The One Club for Creativity’s 2026 Creative Marketer Jury.
Feb 20 is the deadline to submit and share your work’s creative brilliance at oneclub.org.
Some news….after four amazing years, I’m leaving Forbes to launch a new, multi-platform partnership with Vox Media.
We’re building an enhanced Marketing franchise—podcasts, summits, and live events—to deepen and amplify my commitment to serving and championing CMOs, the marketing community, the C-suite, and the growth they drive. (New podcast launches in Q1, with events throughout the year, and “summits” in the U.S. and Europe in October.) I will be keeping it spicy.
To house this partnership and other ventures to come, I’ve also founded The Wisdomous Company. The name reflects a few things for me, not the least of which is its enduring importance and my ongoing pursuit of it.
While I’m looking ahead with mad optimism—and I think the right amount of anxiety—I can’t help but look back with mad gratitude.
I leave Forbes incredibly grateful for so much and so many there. I wouldn’t have the chance to do what’s next if they hadn’t given me the room to do whatever I have these past four years.
The same is also true for each of you. Community is built not by intentions but by the actions of many. And but for this community, what’s coming next wouldn’t have come at all. Sooooo, (despite it being too late to say it…) happy new year. Hoping it brings you and yours all the things that matter most.
“I think the CMOs who go into a c-suite and are trying to speak the language of marketing are invariably going to stumble.”
Linda Boff, CEO of Said Differently and long-time CMO of GE, sits down with @SethMatlins , managing director of the Forbes CMO Network, on "The CEO's Guide To Marketing" to discuss her experience working with different CEOs. Full episode at the link in the bio.
“Brand is not marketing’s job. Brand is everyone’s job inside the company.”
Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, CMO at DoorDash, sits down with @SethMatlins , managing director of the Forbes CMO Network, on "The CEO's Guide To Marketing" to discuss what the c-suite needs to better understand about marketing. Full episode at the link in the bio.
