Naomi Litowitz, SVP, Head of Strategy and Planning at Brainlabs, joins AMA's Bennie F. Johnson to talk about how we recognize the future, why you never want to pay the creepiness tax, and why you need to connect with your audience.
Naomi Litowitz, SVP, Head of Strategy and Planning at Brainlabs, joins AMA's Bennie F. Johnson to talk about how we recognize the future, why you never want to pay the creepiness tax, and why you need to connect with your audience.
Bennie F Johnson
Hello, and thank you for joining us for another episode of AMA's Marketing And. I'm your host, Bennie F. Johnson, AMA CEO. In today's episode, in all of our episodes, we'll explore life through a marketing lens, delving into the conversations of individuals that flourish at this intersection of marketing and the unexpected. We'll introduce you to visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know.
Our thought -provoking conversations will unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. Today, my special guest is Naomi Littlowitz. She's the SVP of Strategy and Planning North America for BrainLabs. Naomi is responsible for fueling client growth through data -driven strategic work. Through end -to -end collaboration, she's been able to uncover actionable brand, product, cultural, and consumer insights to solve the most pressing business challenges. Prior to Brain Labs, Naomi was, at Essence, leading the communications planning for a series of NBC entertainment brands.
Prior to her work at Brain Labs, Naomi was at Essence leading the communications planning function for a series of NBC entertainment brands, including the launch of their new streaming service. There, she offered several provocative thought leadership pieces that identified innovation and growth opportunities. She's built business cases rooted in data that have steered the organization and industry forward, having spent nearly 20 years in a career leading industry creative advertising agencies and other media companies.
She has a plethora of vertical experiences from consumer packaged goods to B2B to financial services. Really an expert in all things focused on brand building, leading teams, developing actual business strategies and challenging the industry norms and helping to steer the bottom line. As you can see, Naomi is really a true expert and leader within our marketing space. Naomi, welcome to our podcast today.
Naomi, welcome to the podcast.
Naomi Litowitz
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Bennie
It's so great to have you here. I know we first got a chance to talk when we shared the panel for one of our members only leadership sessions. I was so intrigued and excited by the work you've done and the thought provoking way you've gone about it. But I was like, you have to be a guest hero marketing man. So I'm so glad that you're just you're joining me.
Naomi
Thank you. That is overly kind, but I appreciate it.
Bennie
No, no, no, we're going to put you to work now because you're really, you're really, you know, we're going to start to just jump in, you know, in your career, you launched a recent streaming service. You know, let's, let's talk about that. When we think about this nexus of marketing and technology and new ways forward, let's talk about how you broke through the universe in streaming.
Naomi
Ready? Do it.
Okay.
Bennie
you're experiencing your brilliance with our audience here. You've been on the cutting edge of introducing a lot of marketing -led technology advances. I love to talk about in your career, you recently launched a streaming service. Talk a bit about how it felt to kind of break through in launching a much -heralded streaming service in our marketplace.
Naomi
Sure. So it's interesting. I spent about five years in cable watching numbers decline. And it's interesting when you're part of a brand where you're trying to maintain levels or your goals are about lowering only by X amount of decline as opposed to growth. It's not the most motivating, I have to say. So it felt a bit...
Bennie
Right.
Naomi
A bit behind, right? Like constantly trying to resurrect something that had no life in it. And then moving over to the streaming service was a great experience to try something new. It was where everybody was going. It's where all our audiences were. The only challenge was that...
Bennie
Yeah, -huh.
Naomi
NBC streaming service Peacock was so very late to the party. So we were still trying to, you know, start from nothing, create a new brand, create a new streaming service when people were already inundated with other choices. They already had Netflix, they had Prime, Disney Plus had launched, Paramount Plus had launched. There was so much already in the market. So it became a war of brand.
Bennie
Mmm.
Naomi
It continued on the war of content, which is really what entertainment is all about. So if you content is king and if you had the right actors and you had the right scripts and you had enough money to tell everyone about it, you could potentially win. But we still didn't have as much money as the Netflix's and the Disney's of the world. So it seems like you're always climbing a mountain.
Bennie
Right.
It's really interesting when you say about success on the outside, you see like, wow, you're coming into this conversation, you're coming into this space, this arena with the NBC brand behind you. But to hear you talk about it, you know, it's not necessarily that that was an advantage because there were other big brands already there.
Naomi
Of course, it's, you know, first to market is true whether you have that big brand name behind you or not.
Bennie
When did you feel like you had turned a success corner with your work there with Peacock? When did you feel like you've gone from this kind of late addition idea to actually carving out a space of success?
Naomi
I think there were a few different moments. There were internal moments and then external moments. So internal ones would be, you know, when you have a script that everyone's really excited about, or when an actor decides to join one of your projects, knowing that it's going to be on Peacock and you feel like that momentum of the industry behind you. So there were those internal moments where we felt like, okay, this is going to be something.
Bennie
Okay.
Naomi
The external moments come with numbers, so subscriptions and acclaim. I think some of the shows got great acclaim, and that's critical because, again, people move where the content is. And then the numbers of subscription, I think we were modest in projections. And so when we were able to hit them, they were huge, huge wins.
Bennie
Wow. So when you think about hitting the projection, one of the things that you're really speaking to is not only capturing audience, but managing changing audience taste and preferences. What's one or two things you learned from this experience and kind of changing the behaviors of consumers and your audience with the new streaming products?
Naomi
That's a good question. So I used to sort of believe that you are what you watch, that it was able to define you. But then I think the more I learned about audiences, the more cross pollination we saw. So true crime lovers were not only true crime lovers, but they were also reality lovers. And who watched documentaries might also watch
Bennie
Right. Mm -hmm. Right.
Naomi
Crime dramas or fiction, I mean, there was so much cross -pollination and people might follow a writer or they might follow an actor or they might be more dedicated to one series and then need a break, that it's very hard to sort of define one segment of viewers. And you can, you can target one segment, but you might be missing out on a whole bunch of other people who might also be interested.
Bennie
Which is so true. We now have these more complex views of who we are as an audience. I think about even like, we talk about familiar family viewing. There are things that I watch independent from my family, things we watch together.
Naomi
Thank you.
Yeah, do people get mad at you if you watch those things on your own? You're supposed to save them.
Bennie
Sometimes in my household that happens, right? You have a conversation, I'm going to start streaming X. If anybody would like to go along with it, and then there's always a few of you, if you do step ahead and stream, you aren't allowed to talk about it. Maybe that's just me in my household, I don't know.
Naomi
Yeah. Right.
No, no, it's standard. It's like the new baseline of marital fights. You watched without me?
Bennie
It really is. We tend to stream a lot of cooking shows, cooking competition shows during the dinner hour. But there is an interest in my household for the true crime. But we don't watch true crime while we're eating. That's the only distinction. That's what happens. But there's a time and a place for all content.
Naomi
Interesting. Yes.
There's a time and a place for all content.
Bennie
So what has, as you kind of work with audiences in space, what's one thing that surprised you even more with how new audiences are showing up?
Naomi
In streaming in particular.
Bennie
It's extremely particular, but I then want to transition into from that question into thinking about our brands. But yeah, I think we start with streaming where the technology and the apparatus change behaviors. But then I'd love to hear your thoughts on how we're seeing modern audiences shape with brand content.
Naomi
So with streaming, I think there's a paywall and there's finances to be considered. So at some point, people are going to say, well, it's enough. There used to be this choice paralysis where there was too much content and there was like a maximum people were willing to pay about four different services at a maximum amount per service. And that was it. And then they couldn't even consider something new because there was just too much choice.
Bennie
Right.
Naomi
It seems like that's like, that choice paralysis is like, so five years ago. And then with COVID, when there was actually like a lack of content, people were waiting for more and more to come out. There was nothing new coming out and people had nothing else to do. Luckily, TikTok emerged at the perfect time and short videos sort of skyrocketed like a hockey stick.
Bennie
Right.
Naomi
And the choices that people had from online shopping to home delivery and more and more and more and more and more retail outlets, like everyone became a retailer, it seems like choice is now expected and fewer and fewer people feel like there's too much choice. The majority of people actually feel like they have just the right amount.
So it's like the audience has sort of evolved and sort of come up to the level of the marketplace. Like we've, the market has trained people to be okay with how much is in front of them and to teach them how to sift through it in an orderly enough way that it's not overwhelming.
Bennie
So this creates a new challenge for brands. As a strategic advisor in strategy and planning, what is some of the counsel you give to the brands that you connect with now, with this new reality?
Naomi
Yeah, I mean, I think it's like the the advice is as old as time. It's you have to connect with your audiences like you can talk about AI and you could talk about the right media mix and, you know, modeling audiences and getting to the right people. But unless your brand speaks to them, unless you have an insight that truly, truly, truly connects with someone, you will not be memorable.
I think about like some of those commercials where, you know, you're watching and you're like, my God, that's so true. And that's what works. That's how you connect with people.
Bennie
So we were talking a bit earlier, and I know for an audience, I know the answer, but I have to ask this question. So Naomi, what brand is doing that for you today? What's been the most memorable? Right.
Naomi
So this morning, yeah, talk about connection. This morning I opened up my trades, my headlines, and I saw that Elf Beauty had a new campaign calling for diversity in boardrooms. And this big headline called So Many Dicks. And a bunch of, I don't know, four times, three, six, nine, like 30 photos of white men in these little blue circles. And the headline says, there are more men named Dick, Richard, Rick, or Rich on publicly traded boards than entire groups of underrepresented people. So there are so many dicks and so few of everyone else. And this is just, it's funny, it's kind of sad and tragic, but it's true. And it's, I like, I just love that a beauty brand has taken this on.
Bennie
Right.
Naomi
I definitely connected with it and I would definitely buy Alf the next time I see it because of this.
Bennie
Right. Right. And allows you to look and say, like you said before, what are we doing to break through to be memorable? And it reinforces their brand position in a unique voice in a fun, cheeky type of way.
Naomi
Right, right. They're smart. It's memorable. It's connecting. I'm impressed.
Bennie
Now, it's one of those things where we all admire and love when everything hits just right. The concept, the media placement, the creative, and the work that we're doing. But we know that sometimes things just go awry. What advice and counsel have you given to folks where the strategy seemed like a good idea yesterday, but the execution and today's reality throws you off?
Naomi
Hmm. That's a good one too. I mean, I think oftentimes we plan too far out ahead, especially like CPG brands, which plan like a year and a half in advance. Like you, I always tell clients, we always, always suggest holding a percentage of your budget to be agile and respond to culture and be there in the moment. At BrainLabs, we talk a lot about predictive trends and catching, you know, a trend before it hits its peak.
And it's so important otherwise you've completely missed it and you're you know living in the past and spending money on something that's no longer relevant.
Bennie
Share a little bit more about how you think about that, right? You know, predicting the trend, what signals do you often see as a shorthand to help you find trends in a larger marketplace?
Naomi
We look to social media, TikTok and Meta, TikTok in particular and YouTube as well. We look to see what is rising in terms of both engagement and growth. So how many people are contributing to these new hashtags and at what rate?
And the ones that we see that have that trajectory of growth are sort of are exactly the ones that we want to be a part of. The ones that have already imploded and are massive are the ones that are going to be behind us by the time you get a campaign out there.
Bennie
Right, right. There's nothing worse than being a week late on a trim, right? It has the exact opposite impact of being cool and hip. And I laugh because I know we're both parents. So we kind of live that in our day -to -day lives, but you don't want to saddle your brand with that, right? So when you think about what excites you most about the work you get to do at Brain Labs?
Naomi
Right. Right. Right.
I was also thinking that.
Exactly.
Bennie
You spent a lot of time and you've had in your career on the client side, being in the client, in -house. So how have you been excited about being in an organization like BrainLabs?
Naomi
So I was, I was on the advertising side for many years in ad agencies. And then when I moved over to media, I felt like there was this gap between strategy on the creative side and then strategy in the media world. It was like, no matter what we deliver to our media team, it felt like they always came back with the same target audience.
Bennie
Right. Right.
Naomi
I was like, I don't understand. Am I that ignorant or is there a gap or like, what don't I understand? There was a lot that I didn't understand about the media world, but there was also no one on the media side really translating that strategy. So when I went over, I feel like I'm trying to fill that role. And then today, all these years later, after having spent time in the media world, I do believe that...the future of advertising is not a 30 second commercial or a seven second commercial. It's in the form that nobody even recognizes as traditional advertising. The brands are there, they're in your space, but it's not like...
Bennie
Right.
Naomi
I mean, it's not like you should even recognize it as advertising. It just should be so integrated and organic. And media agencies are the ones who are going to do that with technology, with finding audiences, yes, with AI, but also with insights the way we always did, the way we always understood people.
Bennie
Right. So it's really an incredible kind of change architecture and change moment. We talk a lot on the podcast and in our conversations about the notion of changing future of business and work and how that reflects in changing the profession and a professional. And I love how you talked about advertising that the future, you won't recognize it with today's terms. You won't direct as a day's apparatus. And that's really exciting, but it can also be.
Naomi
Right.
Bennie
As we've seen scary for teams and organizations, how do you as a leader help to propel your teams through these changing spaces?
Naomi
So I still think it's through that consumer, like education, this is who you're talking to. This is the changing face of a CMO or a CEO. They don't look like they used to. They're younger. They have a more diverse set of media habits and you need to be a part of that. So constant education about who their audiences are and what their audiences are doing, how their audiences go through brand discovery, what those purchase motivators are. They don't look like they used to. And the more we can impart that on our clients,
Bennie
Mm -hmm. Right.
Naomi
The more open they'll be to reaching those audiences in new ways.
Bennie
So if you had advice for someone coming into a media role today, a new intern at the marketplace, what advice would you have for shaping their career for the next? I want to go 10 years. I'll just say five years.
Naomi
I would say more than ever, you need to think omni -channel. Don't learn only one channel. It's not the day of the future. No best ad or marketing campaign is on one channel. No person exists on one channel. So be omni -channel, because it's not how...
Bennie
Right.
Naomi
Media companies are training people necessarily. So that would be my main point of advice. The second is have your hand in everything and start to learn what strategy means from day one. Don't wait till you have experience to try to understand strategy. Just make it a part of what you're doing every single day and it will make you that much more valuable.
Bennie
Speaking of strategy, what do you wish that clients knew coming in to get the most out of engaging with an agency like yours? What do you wish that the clients knew about strategy and planning that would allow you to do even more with them?
Naomi
It has purpose, not just words on a page and not just a funnel for funnel sake. There is purpose to it and we do use it like a blueprint. So when they agree to something or they align to it, we take that very seriously. We literally use it as a blueprint to mapping out the rest of the campaign.
Bennie
Right.
Naomi
I think sometimes they see strategy as disconnected from the output of an actual tactical media plan. They're not necessarily paying as close attention to that upfront part as we need them to. And, you know, some of that's a lot of it's our fault, like we are not clearly showing how one translates to the next. So I think that.
We need to do a better job of that and we need to bring them on this journey with us so that they see how they're connected and believe in both parts.
Bennie
So a big part of your work has always been in understanding and working with data. And today we have more access to information points than we've ever had before. How do you think that brands win today with the data and information they have? What's a winning formula, if you will?
Naomi
So there's, I think first and foremost, it's cleaning up their first party data and finding a way to be able to use it. Cause a lot of our clients have a ton of data that's just not usable. It's not clean, it's messy. They don't, they're not using it. They're literally just like, they've got CRM lists, but they're not segmenting it. They're not up to it properly. They're not analyzing it. We're not modeling it. Like what a waste of beautiful vault of data.
Bennie
Right. Right.
Naomi
So the first one is to actually use it. and then the second one is to roadmap it. So what can we get from it today? And what do we want to get from it in the future? And can we use it to, you know, to meet whatever your KPIs are to move people from learning about who they are, who, who we are to converting them, to modeling them, to using them to, to develop better creative, better headlines turning them into advocates. There are so many ways that we can use it, but they have to be willing to work with us and sort of build for the future.
Bennie
So when we talked last, one of the questions I asked you was, what was the first brand you fell in or out of love with? And I just want to say it again. You said Milli Vanilli. Just because I love you, I just have to say it again for you in there. So as you think about it and you think about in your family, what are some of the first love brands that you're seeing with your kids and your family?
Naomi
Yeah. So entertainment, I mean, okay, entertainment wise, like there were some kid brands, my daughter just asked me this actually, she's like, what was I really, really into? So that, you know, and these brands are huge, like Pokemon or PJ Masks and Paw Patrol, those were the huge, huge brands.
Bennie
Huh. Right.
Naomi
Lego is an interesting one because it has transcended generations. My brother -in -law is obsessed with building Lego with my niece. And it's like it doesn't, you're not a kid, you're not an adult. It's like literally a brand for everyone. And I hate when I get a brief and it says, everyone's our audience. No, but.
Bennie
Yes. Right.
But it true, but Lego truly is. It's just as a full disclosure, everyone knows I am huge. My family are huge Lego fans and yes, right. It for everyone. And I think about, my goodness. So we just, I will tell you that from Mother's Day, we just got the pyramids of Giza for my wife yesterday. So that hasn't been built yet, but that was the big Mother's Day surprise.
Naomi
Area. What have you revealed most recently?
Wow. Yeah.
Bennie
We've worked on there as a special limited edition. That's the spaceship with the little blue space guy whose name happens to be Benny. So I always get excited whenever I see the classic Lego space set, which was my youth that model up. So I got super excited that that came out.
Naomi
Hahaha. Amazing.
Bennie
So always good fun with the brands and that space. When we think about the brand tension in the marketplace, LEGO is a great example. It's a legacy brand that continues to reinvent itself over 100 years. But it's harder and harder for brands to do that, to have a shelf life that long. When you see clients, what advice do you have for clients who have the beauty of a legacy brand, but also all the baggage and encumbrance of a legacy brand.
Naomi
Yeah, I mean, like innovate or die. Like it is such an old but true statement.
And I think if you wait too long, I know nobody likes change and they'll say, but our customers love us for this. Great. But if you don't change and you don't innovate and you don't evolve, you will be so old. And by the time you're ready to do it, you will have lost an entire new generation. So move with the times, move with the next generation, build for the future. We have a lot of like, a lot of our brands, when we build out audiences for them, we build out their, we call them like their most valuable audiences and their opportunity audiences. And then we like to have your next best audience. So the people you need to start thinking about, because as soon as you finish this priority, these are the next people. Do you have a product that matches them? Are you in species where they're going to see you? And if you're not thinking about it yet, you're behind.
Bennie
Nice.
Right. And how are people making meaning with your brand? Right? Because you can have the exact same product. LEGO is a perfect example. And the way that our parents interacted with LEGO, the way that we interact with LEGO, the way that our children interact are completely different, but it's the same brick and figure.
Naomi
Right.
Right, right. It's the same thing with Barbie, right? They've done an excellent job of resurrecting an old brand and really, really changing an image. They've done a great job of coming out with new toys or new styles of who she is and changing what she stood for. Really an amazing journey, yeah.
Bennie
Right?
Right. Amazing story. I love as we kind of give nods to Mattel and to Lego, you know, doesn't go past me that we're talking about products that are about play. And so what is the power of play in thinking about how brands win the future? I know it's not just the domain of the toy companies, right? How do we think about play?
Naomi
Mm -hmm.
It's interesting because so Lego and Barbie are two like tactile actual play toys. And I know that Lego and probably Barbie have a lot of virtual components too, where you can do both online and offline play and the merging of those worlds, like the merging of online and offline and anything that we do is critical. I think. Ugh, this is going to go into a whole other conversation about like the loss of today's childhood with social media and how screens have taken over and human interaction isn't what it used to be. So I do think play is more critical than ever and brands that can find a way to be playful in a world where otherwise it seems to be forgotten is so essential, especially for parents who recognize that.
Bennie
So sometimes our recording devices take over. And this was one of those times, right? I thought I was going to say something really interesting, but we're going to say it again anyway. But I think it's sometimes that for me, it ladders up to a space of imagination, right? Because you speak about the physical tactile toy, but then there's also the kind of virtual experience. But then there's a space of story and myth -making and telling. So when I'm playing with Barbie or Lego,
Naomi
Yes.
Bennie
When I watch my kids play, they're making up stories and worlds and experiences that extend beyond that, right? And they're finding all these ways that are virtual and in -person and physical and imaginative to think about the space. And I think the brands benefit from that and inviting us in for that imagination. I wonder how, you know, other story brands can bring us in the space of imagination.
Naomi
It's a great, beautiful thought. I mean, I do think it's in our storytelling and I'm trying to think of a brand that I've been taken with from a narrative perspective. And I'm struggling and I don't know if that's because I'm on the spot or if it's because it's just not in my realm right now.
Bennie
Right.
You know, it's one of those things where we always love to have these questions that make us think in this space and and I know you'll probably still consider this and call me back two weeks from now. It's it and that's wonderful because I will invite you back to be on the podcast. We could talk some more. But you know, yeah, no, it's just a space in there. And maybe in some of the brands, we might not be the target audience for the story, right? You ever find yourself outside of the story where it's not your story. You're not the main character. You're the spectator, right?
Naomi
Yep. Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Bennie
And I know I realize in my own space where I've realized I've aged out of the demo or I'm out of the segmentation is so specific that I'm outside of any of these arcs. And to your point, I'm like, there's no story there, but my children will come to me and they can explain this entire brand story. It's like, they weren't looking for me.
Naomi
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Right. It's gonna bother me now. I'm gonna, I'll get back to you on that one. Is there one that you can think of that?
Bennie
No, like I said, I can think of lots of good stories that I'm left out of for experience in space that goes into it. But I think that's what's kind of provocative about our future of marketing and brand. How do we yield these superpowers to create these deeper relationships? You know, one of the things that in our conversation before that you spoke about,
Naomi
Right.
Bennie
And this will take us off of that part of the subject. But we were talking about the way that brands are able to kind of dig into your world. And you refer to it as the creepiness tax. Like, how brands can take this conversation that we're having, and next thing you know, you and I are getting hit with brand stories that we need to know about. Why?
Naomi Litowitz (31:15.886)
Right.
So this was actually something that Dr. Mansour, who was on that session with us, he was doing some research around the effects of digital big brothering or creepiness, if you will. Like if you Google or say a brand name, then you're served an ad for it. And his research is showing that it's negatively affecting people's perception of that brand. So I called it...
Bennie
Right. Right.
Naomi
a creepiness tax because that has consequences. Like no one wants to be taxed and the brands are getting taxed because of all this big brothering. And I think the way around it is, is the same way that brands are going to get information from people and collect that first party data. And it's all around the value exchange. So what are people getting in return for interacting with your brand or allowing you to show up just because they said your name?
Bennie
Right.
Right? And kind of if just because I say hi doesn't mean we're best friends, right? Just moving into that, it's kind of makes relationship a little weird, right? So when we think about this, it's always fueled by our new technology approaches. And sometimes technology is really big and bold and breaks the universe, like when Chat and GPT came out. Other times, it's revolutionary change is incremental. When we think about kind of,
Naomi
Exactly. Yeah.
Bennie
A lot of the machine learning and algorithmic learning that has been in place, that's just been happening as we go on. Talk a bit about what innovative things that you're seeing on the horizon. And I'll free you up. You don't have to say AI first. We know everybody's going to say that. But what are some of the things that you are seeing in terms of technology and marketing at the intersection that are piquing your curiosity?
Naomi
So one of the things I think has sort of been like slowly growing for ages and is now kind of taking hold is voice activation. Like it's turned Alexa and Amazon tried to get people to purchase through Alexa and it really never really took off. But.
Bennie
Mm. Okay, yeah.
Naomi
I don't know about you, but my kids talk to machines all the time. They talk to Google, they talk to text, they talk to Google search. Everything they do is voice activated. So I think this next generation that is gonna really drive this kind of technology exploration. And I think that's what will get it to truly do that hockey stick. And I think it will...
Bennie
Right.
Naomi
Be with purchases and it will be, I think there will be a segment of people who are using voice activation in a different way from people who don't use it.
Bennie
I think you're right. And you had just mentioned how the pandemic moment turned everything into a retail opportunity, internal retail space. And I think what you're describing is really an extension of that. Like how do we show up for the businesses in space in there? So what does that mean for our brands that are wed to a physical experience?
Naomi
Right. Mm -hmm.
I think many different ad assets can either have voice activation or similar to that retail experience, like create more of a frictionless shopping experience through technology, whether it's voice activation or, you know, the old QR code is coming back again because you can shop to purchase or text to download or speak to purchase. Like there's so many different ways of making, of using technology to sort of shorten that.
Bennie
Okay. Right.
Naomi
User to purchase experience.
Bennie
So we started our very first conversation about brands and brands being beyond the logo. If you were to provide guidance for people getting into brand management today and thinking about it, what would be your advice on what a contemporary brand needs?
Naomi
What it means or what it needs.
Bennie
Both, actually.
Naomi
So I think, you know, it's, I think we maybe talked about this, in that session also, but brand managers don't own the brands the way they used to. It's a collaboration between the brand managers and the audiences and the consumers. So as much as they, their job is to try to manage the positioning and manage what goes out into the world, but ultimately it's how it's received, which is also going to define it.
And so they need to be aware of that collaboration and listen to what the people are saying.
Bennie
Really important with listening in the space. So one of the things that you talked about is using your senses to listen, observe, and to catch the trends that are happening in popular culture that can impact your brand or product. When should you not do something? I was thinking about you saying before, you're like, yeah, you can pick up the trend that's happening. When should brands?
Naomi
Yeah.
Bennie
Use restraint and discipline.
Naomi
So I hate, I mean, I'm gonna use the word authentic, because you don't wanna be inauthentic, but it's such an overused word. So I think it's really like, you need to know your values, you need to know what you stand for. And I wouldn't push yourself to live outside of that, because it doesn't resonate. So that's when you hold restraint. Everyone's jumping on this trend, but it's not right for us. So we're just not gonna do that. We're gonna wait, we're gonna be patient. We're gonna catch the next wave when it matters.
Bennie
It's really powerful that Miles Davis is often quoted saying, what you don't play is just as important as what you do play.
Naomi
Yeah, I always say there's insights in what under indexes or in the lack of data. If you can't find the point, there's an insight in the fact that it doesn't exist.
Bennie
Wow, it's really powerful in that space. So as a brand strategist, as we think about it, what do you think your world's going to look like in 10 years?
Naomi
I hope I still have a job. I hope AI has not taken over. I think technology, I really do believe we'll still have jobs, actually. I think as much as the technology is doing an incredible job and we're like, wow, wow, wow, there's so much still that we do to make it better. So I do think we'll have a job. I do think that...
Bennie
Hehehehe
Naomi
The notion of advertising and influencers or influenced is going to continue to evolve into something different. I don't think it'll be influencing. I don't think it'll be de -influencing. I think it's gonna look different. I think we're gonna go back to some things like endorsements of like the way it used to be. So like this show has been brought to you by Coffee Mate. I think some things are gonna become a lot simpler because of the clutter of content, I think simplification of things is going to stand out again. And to that notion, advertising and what branding and brand awareness looks like is gonna continue to change as well.
Bennie
Right.
I think, Naomi, that's a perfect sentiment to end our conversation on today. The future is going to be, it's going to change, but we'll do things that become more simple, more authentic, and we'll still have a space to provide the leadership and function. So thank you so much for sharing your insight and your journey as a brand strategist and leader. I really appreciate you spending this time with us today.
Naomi
Okay.
Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Bennie
And so we're going to still have those questions we're going to think about Naomi. So next year, next year you're coming back and we're going to look at our world again, being 12 months wiser and say, but thank you for being a part of this today. And thank you all for listening to this episode of AMAs Marketing N. I'm your host, Binnie F. Johnson. We invite you to learn more about the work that Naomi and her.
Naomi
Yes.
Bennie
Organization is doing at Brainlabs. We invite you to think about strategy and advertising as you change the future. And we invite you to come and be a part of AMA and check out our resources at AMA .org. Thank you.