Brand Insider

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218

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Aug 2026

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MediaPost's Intimate marketing, advertising and strategy discussions with top brand marketers.

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August 20, 2026Episode 22235 min

Ep. 222 with Dan Chodrow, Executive Creative Director, Goodles

I'm Southern through and through, which means I take my comfort food seriously. Fried chicken. Cornbread. Sweet tea. A simple mayo and tomato. And of course, mac and cheese. When I was a kid, homemade mac and cheese wasn’t always an option, so I found my way to the boxed variety. You know the one: blue box, orange cheese, one flavor. It was my go-to when I was on my own for dinner when my culinary skills consisted of boiling water and not burning the house down. My palate's grown up since then, and I’m pretty good in the kitchen, so most of the time, I make my own mac and cheese, but every once in a while, the old craving creeps back in. I need a specific nostalgia that only a powdered cheese packet can trigger. And when it does, what's in my cabinet these days isn't the mac and cheese of yore. It's Twist My Parm. It's Shella Good. It's Here Comes Truffle. When Goodles decided it was time to disrupt this Southern staple, they didn’t just update the box. They leaned in, hard. They called out the category for coasting on nostalgia instead of earning it. They realized they can’t out-spend the competition, so they wanted to out-weird, out-good and out-community them, turning these little acts of good into cultural moments. How do you convince consumers that a decades-old category needs disruption? How do you build a brand that wins over a four-year-old and her mom in the same bite? And what does it actually take to out-good instead of outspend? We chatted with Executive Creative Director, Dan Chodrow, to find out.

August 13, 2026Episode 22132 min

Ep. 221 with Tamika Young, CMO, Hinge

In December 2014, I matched with a guy on Hinge that I had 19 mutual friends with. Back then, Hinge was built on matching you off of your Facebook network. They only matched you with friends of friends, so there was some built-in reassurance that whoever you were meeting wasn’t a total stranger. We got drinks, and we had a great time. We kissed, said our goodbyes, and went on our way. We tried to meet up again, but our schedules never lined up. There was an entire saga when he accused me of faking watching my friend’s 5-year-old to avoid seeing him, which for the record, I was not doing. A couple of weeks went by, and we just stopped trying. Four months later, on a total whim, I texted him to see if that dinner offer still stood. Shockingly, he said yes. (Turns out we'd both still been seeing other people the night we met, so maybe some space is all you need.) I married that guy in 2019. We had our daughter in 2021. We laugh at it now, looking back, but if I’m being honest, somewhere in the middle of the silence, the vetting and the wrongful babysitting accusation, I was pretty skeptical it would go anywhere. That's the emotional territory Hinge is leaning into with its new campaign, "I Can't Believe We Met on Hinge." It's not the tidy, love-at-first-sight version of the story. It's the version where you’re tired from dating, you’re half-convinced to delete the app, but still, somehow, hold onto hope. It’s real couples, real footage, real names. It’s the truth of what dating actually feels like when it finally works out. In this week’s Brand Insider 1:1, we sat down with CMO Tamika Young to hear more.

August 5, 2026Episode 22033 min

Ep. 220 with Natasha Madan, CMO, Credit Karma

People don’t like talking about their finances. I’ve been with my husband for 11 years, and I still give him the side-eye when he asks how much is in my savings account. For many people, it’s uncomfortable talking about money because they don’t know what they’re doing. They were never taught how to manage their finances, the difference between saving and investing, Roth IRAs and 401(k)s, good debt and bad debt. I’m lucky to not be in that camp. My parents are annoyingly good with their money. Like retire-at-48 good with money. And outside of graduating college debt free, the best gift they’ve ever given me is financial literacy and financial freedom. Why wasn’t this taught in school? How could we have graduated high school with zero idea how to read a credit report, file taxes, or know what APR actually means? Isn’t managing your own finances the home economics course we all needed? It’s a gap everyone feels. In fact, a recent study found that 67% of Americans are more afraid of running out of money than they are of dying. It’s not that people don’t care about finances; people have real anxiety about it, and while there’s more information available, somehow there’s less confidence in what to actually do with it. That's not an information problem, that's a trust problem, and it's exactly the space our next guest is playing in. For years, Credit Karma has been known for one very specific thing: free credit scores. But a credit score doesn't tell you what to do next. How do you turn a number into guidance and guidance into a relationship people actually trust? In this week’s Brand Insider 1:1, we sat down with CMO Natasha Madan to find out.

July 29, 2026Episode 21928 min

Ep. 219 with Sravan Vadigepalli, Senior Director, AI, Lowe’s

I honed my marketing chops at The Home Depot. I spent six years of my life in an orange apron. Six years reflighting media, plussing up paid search, and trying to predict the exact week spring will arrive so we can flip end caps from snow blowers to mulch. If you've ever worked retail, you know brand loyalty doesn't end when you clock out for the last time. Brand loyalty like that is tattooed on you. So the fact that I'm sitting here, having a perfectly civilized conversation with today's guest, is honestly a small miracle. He's Lowe's. He’s my sworn enemy. He's the vest to my apron. The blue to my orange. And even though I’ve been out of the home improvement game for six years, I still feel like I’m going to get caught when I walk into that big blue box store. Old habits die hard. But here's the thing about rivalries: The good ones make you pay attention to the other side. And I have to hand it to Lowe's: what they're building right now, especially in AI, deserves respect. Everyone is talking about AI. Every panel, every keynote, and every LinkedIn post has a suspiciously confident hot take. We're exhausted by it, but we can’t stop talking about it because there's just so much still unfolding, too many new use cases showing up every single week. And I hate to break it to you, but if you're still only using AI to make your mean email sound nice, you’re behind. Big time. The real conversation isn't about whether to use AI. It's about how to get started. Are no legacy systems weighing you down? Do you have decades of process and infrastructure you can’t just rip out and rebuild overnight? Or are you somewhere in the middle? How do you align strategy, product and partnerships while bringing a legacy organization along for the ride? We sat down with Lowe’s Senior Director of AI, Sravan Vadigepalli to find out.

July 22, 2026Episode 21830 min

Ep. 218 with Katie Babineau, CMO, Beyond Yoga

There is something truly therapeutic about sweating it out, but my fellow yogis out there know that after a couple of big sweats, those leggings are never quite the same. No amount of laundry detergent can restore them. Which is exactly why I have two separate legging categories in my closet – yoga leggings and lounge leggings – and never the twain shall cross. I can't subject my lounge leggings to the torture I put my yoga leggings through, and I can’t depend on my yoga leggings to be as comfortable as my lounge leggings. Lounge leggings matter more than you think. After 3 years of working from home, I genuinely don't know if I could go back to wearing real pants. I'll forever be business on top, casual on the bottom. In my 15 years of doing yoga, I’ve tried a lot of leggings. I was never loyal to one brand because it’s a hard balance to find: the performance I need when I’m putting in the work, the comfort I want when I’m laying on the couch, and the flexibility I need chasing my four-year-old around the playground. Can one athleisure brand actually do it all? Beyond Yoga is trying to do just that. The brand has taken its 20-year foundation and pushed it somewhere new: a modernized platform, IRL activations, and a full expansion into outerwear, lifestyle and dresses. It's a brand betting that progress over perfection and community-led product decisions can stretch a beloved name without breaking what made people love it in the first place. In this week’s Brand Insider 1:1, we sat down with CMO Katie Babineau to find out how they’re doing it.

July 15, 2026Episode 21728 min

Ep. 217 with Nancy Mammana, CMO, New York City Tourism + Conventions

The World Cup Finals are this Sunday in New York. The 5-week saga that has taken over North America is coming to end this Sunday. There’s been something genuinely electric about watching this tournament unfold. Entire neighborhoods turn out in jerseys, half-a-dozen languages are heard at any given restaurant, and strangers hug over penalty kicks. It’s been a real reminder of what a shared obsession can do to a city. This summer, New York has opened her arms to millions of people who’d never set foot in it before. It's one thing to host a World Cup; it's another to make eight million people and a few million strangers feel like they all belong to the same city, if only for a summer. No one has had a closer seat to that balancing act than my guest today. We sat down with Nancy Mammana, CMO at New York City Tourism + Conventions to hear how they pulled it off.

July 8, 2026Episode 21633 min

Ep. 216 with Valerie Marks, Marketing Director, The Macallan

Some drinks are symbols of celebration and reflection, handed down from one generation to another. Drinks when someone decides you are worth the good stuff. The Macallan has built an entire campaign around. It started with a social listening insight: People are often introduced to The Macallan by someone older — a parent, an uncle, a mentor — to mark an occasion, like a first house, a birthday, or a difficult life decision. A moment that deserved something more than whatever was in the cabinet. Rather than manufacture that story, they found someone living it: James Marsden and his son, Jack, a real generational handoff. At a moment when the alcohol category is navigating genuine headwinds and every brand is trying to figure out how to talk to a generation that's drinking more intentionally and spending more carefully, The Macallan made a bet on something timeless. The most powerful marketing isn't a campaign; it's a memory someone didn't know they were making. We sat down with Valerie Marks, Marketing Director for The Macallan at Edrington to hear how they did it.

June 24, 2026Episode 21529 min

Ep. 215 with John Sapiente, Chief Executive Officer, Volition America

Volition America is a patriotic lifestyle brand built around a simple, stubborn belief that the American flag is a symbol of passion and pride, not politics. They’re building brand partnerships across categories and providing scholarships to children of fallen soldiers and first responders. They believe “patriot” doesn’t belong to one party, and it doesn’t mean you agree with every decision being made. With America's 250th birthday one week away, there is no better moment to ask: What does it mean to build a purpose-driven brand in a country this divided? Can you actually be patriotic without being political? We sat down with CEO John Sapiente to hear all about it. This episode is supported by ⁠ Wunderkind Ads ⁠ .

June 17, 2026Episode 21433 min

Ep. 214 with Elina Vives, CMO, Chamberlain Group

Prime Day starts Tuesday, and Chamberlain Group is using it as the first real commercialization moment for a repositioned brand, a new product story, and a marketing organization that has completely rebuilt how it connects creative to conversion. We sat down with CMO Elina Vives to hear how. This episode is supported by ⁠Wunderkind Ads⁠ .

June 9, 2026Episode 21328 min

Ep. 213 with Gerardo Soto, VP of Media and Sports Marketing, Lowe's

Sports fans are another level of loyalty, and smart brands are figuring out how to show up authentically in that space. Lowe’s is doing just that with the NFL and Lionel Messi. We sat down with Gerardo Soto, VP of Media and Sports Marketing, to hear how. This episode is supported by ⁠Wunderkind Ads⁠ .