Creative disruption. Digital transformation. Today’s groundbreaking brands and organizations are driven by visionaries, inventors and game changers. Each year, She Runs It honors the true catalysts of innovation with the Changing the Game Awards. These are the women who are making bold moves and reinventing the rules of marketing. They’re transforming brands, remaking organizations and developing new approaches to business. This year’s honorees will be saluted at a special She Runs It luncheon at Gotham Hall in New York on April 18. Learn more about—and be inspired by—their achievements below.
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Brainwave: Changing the way a product is marketed
Marissa Solis
VP & GM
PepsiCo
It used to be that if you wanted to find a Frito-Lay product, you’d go to the chip aisle. But today you can get Cheetos dust on your fingers when you’re picking up fast food or enjoying a movie thanks to the novelty mashups that Solis promoted as head of marketing of the company’s away-from-home segment. Her group catapulted Burger King’s Mac n’ Cheetos—which is exactly what it sounds like—into the public consciousness. The comfort food in a finger-friendly, crunchy crust (and its follow-ups Cheetos Chicken Fries and Flamin’ Hot Mac n’ Cheetos) has garnered billions of media impressions thanks to appearances on The Today Show, Good Morning America and The Late Show…plus tons of buzz on the fast food communities of YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat.
Clearly, Solis thinks outside the bag. Go to Regal Cinemas and you can have Cheetos Popcorn. Head to the local 7-Eleven and you can pick up Doritos Loaded (also now available the supermarket freezer). They’re the kinds of activations that people just can’t help talking about. And now Solis is taking her innovative approach to the PepsiCo’s North American beverage business, where she’s moved over to lead Hispanic strategy.
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Amy Baker
EVP, Ad Sales
A+E Networks
For over three decades, Lifetime has served women viewers, but, with Baker leading the charge, the A+E network has recently upped its game with a series of research reports examining the key issues impacting womanhood today. The 2017 study—“One Woman’s Empowerment Is Another Woman’s Burden”—was based on two years of proprietary research, with Baker and her team uncovering what captures the hearts, minds and dollars of contemporary women.
As more brands market to women, these kinds of insights have become indispensable, as it is increasingly obvious that the forces shaping women’s identity are complex and rapidly changing. A follow-up “Women and Money” study covered the societal expectations and cultural contexts that come into play with money, including what money means to women socially, in banking, saving, budgeting, investing and retirement planning.
Last year, Baker launched the SheReports Newsletter for Lifetime, providing of-the-moment content on emerging trends and commentary for agency and brand marketing decision makers. The ANA’s #SeeHer has a regular feature highlighting interviews with ad executives where they look at a topical issue as it relates to female consumers. It has become a must-read for those who want to understand what it means to market to women today.
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Ann Rubin
VP, Corporate Marketing
IBM
IBM may not be top of mind when it comes to couture, but thanks to Rubin’s leadership, the two may forever be intertwined. In 2016 she and her team partnered with high-fashion house Marchesa to design a “cognitive” dress for the Met Gala’s “Man X Machina”-themed-evening. Worn by supermodel Karolina Kurkova and fabricated using IBM Watson APIs, the dress changed color based on what people tweeted about the event.
Rubin’s content activations have been critical to showing the human side of IBM’s Watson AI. For example, last year’s “Art with Watson” program teamed artists with Watson to use data to discover and illuminate the unknown essence of six notable individuals: Charles Darwin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nikola Tesla, Paul Rand, Josephine Baker and Thomas J. Watson. And at this month’s Masters, Watson created personalized highlights. Says Rubin, “We see this as an invitation to our clients and partners to work together to put smart to work to transform any industry from healthcare to retail to education to energy by applying Watson, cloud, blockchain and security to change their industry and the world.”
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Ivonne Kinser
Head of Digital
Avocados from Mexico
Few things go better with a Super Bowl Party than guacamole—that’s a given and one of the reasons that Avocados from Mexico has advertised during the big game for the last four years. But it’s the digital extension of that campaign—under Kinser’s leadership—that has supercharged its impact. Consider this: The recent Avocado Secrets activation included a gamified consumer experience with 17 functional apps, 100,000 brand influencers and an extensive social and media campaign. The result? It was the number one digital Super Bowl campaign on search.
The big game isn’t AFM’s only high-profile effort. Kinser also masterminded a strategy that let the humble fruit amplify the impact of its float in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In “Avotracker,” a virtual float journeyed from Michoacán, Mexico to NYC, making six different stops along the way; the more consumers tweeted the #AvosToNYC hashtag, the faster the float moved through the U.S. And at SXSW in Austin, Texas, a giant Avo-Matic avocado vending machine used AI to capture consumers’ facial cues and serve them customized avocado-based dishes, generating 1.6 billion social impressions in two weeks.
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Colleen Hotchkiss
EVP & Managing Director
Zenith USA
To Hotchkiss, the name CoverGirl has far broader meaning than it may imply, something that became evident when she oversaw the media execution and amplification of “The First Male CoverGirl” campaign for last year’s launch of So Lashy mascara. Aimed at the emerging Gen Z market, it featured 17-year-old makeup artist and social media star James Charles as a CoverGirl spokesman. A first for mass cosmetics, the campaign reached 62 million consumers within one hour of launch and drove a 225 percent sales lift over CoverGirl’s previous mascara launch, not to mention coverage that resulted in more than two billion media impressions.
Hotchkiss has been an indispensable part of Zenith’s beauty and luxury portfolio, whether it’s an attention-grabbing experiential execution for a top fragrance brand or overseeing U.S. business for the global Coty account. She’s assembled a top team and is dedicated to inspiring the next generation of talent both in the agency and across Publicis Groupe as an active member of Viva Women, its group dedicated to empowering women through mentoring, professional development and work-life integration.
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Paradigm Shift: Changing the way a customer segment or target audience is approached
Annah Zafrani
SVP Integrated Marketing
Universal Pictures
There’s nothing really new about big movie partnerships with TV networks, but Zafrani and Universal have really set the bar for creating links that get results. Some things seem obvious—what could be more natural than pairing the Jurassic World blockbuster with Animal Planet’s Monster Week? Others? Maybe not quite so intuitive. For example, what do you do for an animated movie about a talent competition for animals like 2016’s Sing? Zafrani and her team set up 450 custom elements across 14 networks to extend the movie’s reach in ways you might never have imagined. Sure, there were stunts on Cartoon Network, Nick and Disney. But ESPN? A promo featured NFL stars like Aaron Rogers performing some of their go-to karaoke numbers. Or WWE? The first movie integration featured special spots for Raw and Smackdown. By targeting every type of viewer, Zafrani and team helped Sing become a global success.
The truth is, movie companies require big opening weekends and Zafrani has had to reinvent ways to market Universal’s movies to consumers. By leveraging movie talent and custom creative, she’s been able to come up with stunts that not only boost recall but get fans excited to head to the theater. That’s something standard commercials often can’t do.
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Goli Sheikholeslami
President & CEO
Chicago Public Media
At Chicago Public Media, Sheikholeslami is marrying the best of the old guard with the transformative aspects of digital innovation, leading the public media company’s transition from a broadcast radio service to a digital on-demand news and entertainment hub. Under her watch, Chicago’s NPR station WBEZ has achieved enviable audience and membership growth of 35 percent in just three years, and is expanding its capacity to create and distribute high-quality, in-depth journalism, innovative podcasts and original programming for all of its platforms.
Sheikholeslami is that rare executive with a combination of traditional news media experience and digital innovation. When she was at The Washington Post, she led the successful integration of digital operations with the company’s traditional print publication while maintaining the highest of journalistic standards. She was also chief product officer at health information platform Everyday Health. You’ll also find Sheikholeslami on the boards of NPR, Patreon, a start-up that powers membership businesses for creators, and DHI Group, Inc., a provider of data, insights and employment connections through specialized services for professional communities.
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Lisa Beshara
SVP, Client Business Partner
J3
Skincare users are a notoriously fickle bunch, but Beshara has found ways to leverage data, smart targeting and innovative creative to enhance personalization and create new levels of lifetime loyalty. Working with a variety of Johnson & Johnson brands (J3’s sole “client”), she’s taken a digital-first approach to ensuring relevance. For Aveeno, Beshara and team mined shopper loyalty card data to create an audience segmentation plan. That was combined with ads served based on real-world triggers like UV index, wake-up/bedtime routines, retailer locations, and other contextual issues. The campaign won the Best Use of Data award at the Festival of Media.
But Beshara isn’t just about lotions and potions. Last September she and her team oversaw the first digitally led campaign for Neutrogena’s Light Therapy Mask, a tough sell since consumers saw using light to treat acne as “weird” and “intimidating.” The campaign addressed this head-on, having people take selfies wearing the mask, using co-branded influencer content and testimonials and building out how-to videos to tell the story. The result: increases in recall and a jump in product awareness.
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Kristin Dolan
Founder & CEO
605
From her years of experience at Cablevision, Dolan learned the value of the data and analytics that cable set-top boxes can provide. So when Cablevision was sold to Altice a few years back, the one-time COO founded a VC fund with husband James Dolan (the company’s CEO) to invest in data, analytics and technology. Dolan Family Ventures set the stage for the launch of 605, which focuses on TV media measurement and analytics. After all, shifting viewing habits and new means of delivering programming mean there are major gaps in the way TV media is measured. 605 aims to fill those gaps for both marketers and programmers so they can understand the true impact of their TV advertising investments.
Dolan is widely respected as someone whose insight and experience can inform strategy and help companies execute their plans, and she sits on the boards of Wendy’s, Revlon, AMC Networks and Madison Square Garden. Plus, she’s won an Emmy for outstanding achievement in interactive television programming.
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Christine Pantoya
SVP, Direct-to-Consumer & Mobile Strategy
NBA
People love to talk basketball. On social channels. On their phone. Everywhere in the world. That’s why Pantoya is always thinking about what can be done to increase the thrill of what’s happening on the court via every person’s mobile device. After all, the NBA is all about global expansion (a third of the players in the league now have international backgrounds) and mobile is crucial to reaching new markets. “We found that 70 percent of conversations on Twitter during the finals were relative to NBA,” she says. “After the finals, there’s the draft, and people using technology means the conversation continues. We also drafted our first Indian player last year, and this meant huge engagement in India. And so basketball is becoming a year-round season.”
Pantoya has overseen key partnerships with mobile providers like Verizon in the U.S. and Vivo in Brazil, making it more seamless for fans who can watch NBA League Pass on their phones. She and her team have also introduced dedicated apps for things like mobile ticketing and even parking. And under her watch, NBA also became the first league to broadcast a whole game in VR. “We are looking to put consumers in the center,” she says. “And they can then create their own personal experience.”
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Maureen Polo
SVP of Brand Studio
Fullscreen
When brands want to reach the social-first generation, they turn to Fullscreen, which has one of the largest networks of influencers and content creators. But when they need something truly engaging, they tap into Polo and her brand studio to come up with creative ways to tell stories that maximize the impact of social platforms. So for AT&T, they came up with Guilty Party, a show about cyberbullying that featured a collective of young digital stars that already had a following of nearly 40 million fans. Told through weekly episodes and daily character vlogs, the show ran on the series’ Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and later on AT&T’s DirecTV Now streaming service.
Polo has also helped Mattel and Fullscreen rethink content for younger kids with Fullscreen Family, a massive collection of family-focused, brand-safe channels for third-party advertisers on YouTube and other digital platforms. So Fullscreen creators can now, for instance, make social-first content for Hot Wheels fans that can run across the toy’s Instagram, Facebook and YouTube channels.
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No Apologies: Creating whole new business models, industries, or marketplace opportunities
Sarah Miyazawa LaFleur
Founder & CEO
MM.LaFleur
Miyako Nakamura
Cofounder &Creative Director
MM.LaFleur
Whoever thought the nothing-to-wear-to-work blues could be cured with a bento box? That’s the solution from market disruptor MM.Lafleur, which delivers curated collections of office-appropriate wear in a “Bento” of wardrobe staples that might include dresses, separates, knits or accessories. It’s the brainchild of Miyazawa LaFleur, a former senior manager of the luxe goods portfolio of a private equity firm, and Nakamura, who held top design spots with Zac Posen and Jason Wu.
MM.LaFleur has taken the direct-to-consumer model and applied it to the rules of workwear. Its styles are simple, beautifully made and meticulously fabricated. But the true genius of MM.LaFleur is that it not only helps customers figure out what to wear but also allows women who’ve shied away from the unforgiving department store mirror to try styles on in the privacy of their own home. And it is working. Some 40 percent of first-time customers return within 12 weeks to make another purchase. The brand is now expanding from digital to brick-and-mortar, with showrooms in Chicago, New York City and Washington D.C., and pop-ups in six cities. Clearly, consumers have been hungering for someone to take the work out of finding work clothes.
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Diane deCordova
COO & Cofounder
Parsec Media
Few issues are as important to digital advertisers today as attention. Just because an ad gets served doesn’t mean it’s getting seen. And engagement? That’s another issue altogether. But deCordova believes she has the answer—shifting the standard in mobile media from impression-based CPMs to engagement-based Cost Per Second. Her company, Parsec, offers what it calls “politely interruptive” ad formats, giving viewers control over what they see (e.g., skippable video) and letting advertisers pay only for the time the ad is engaged with. After all, time spent is the best proxy for the consumer’s attention. This format also ensures that only those people who are likely to view an ad get served the ad. A number of media properties—including Hearst, Forbes, Politico and Time Inc.—have made time-based inventory available.
DeCordova is no stranger to the challenges of digital engagement. Before founding Parsec, deCordova led the launch of Google BrandLab, its workshop for marketers that is well known for pioneering the most engaging ad formats. She was also a part of Google’s video sales efforts, coming on board after YouTube acquired Next New Networks (providing branded entertainment programming on YouTube), where she was sales SVP.
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Monica C. Smith
Founder & CEO
Marketsmith, Inc.
It’s no secret that ad tech has been largely male-dominated, but that hasn’t stopped Smith from sweeping fearlessly through with a one-of-a-kind, results-driven business model that marries creativity and technology. Her company’s proprietary software-as-a-service platform, i.Predictus, encompasses multitouch analytics and sales attribution, media mix modeling and data visualization. Boasting a 93 percent accuracy rate, i.Predictus has earned four U.S. patents and has successfully optimized more than $1 billion in advertising expenditures for Marketsmith’s clients.
Smith is a big believer in breaking down barriers. Her agency makeup is 54 percent women, 34 percent millennial and 25 percent minority. She also gives back with a vengeance. Her One More Smith effort is a permanent home and sanctuary for hard-to-place animals, many with disabilities, that has housed thousands since its inception in 2004. Bring Dinner Home, an annual Thanksgiving event she started, serves nutritious holiday dinners to hundreds of impoverished families of school children at the Camden Street Elementary School in Newark. Monica and her team also provide the families with warm coats, books and grocery store gift cards.
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Quantum Leap: Changing the way an organization is aligned to proactively meet new challenges
Danielle Lee
Global Head, Partner Solutions
Spotify
You can’t get more personal than someone’s musical preferences, and Lee has led Spotify’s people-based marketing initiative, which aims to uncover the streaming habits that are unique to the new way of listening. After all, listening to music is an emotional experience, and while data may seem the antithesis of this, it can also reveal context, the building block for personalized marketing and reaching people at the proverbial right time at the right time with the right message.
Some of Lee’s more innovative initiatives include launching the first audio self-serve platform, Spotify Ad Studio, to allow brands of all sizes to tap into the power of Spotify. The Branded Moments campaign, a native mobile video solution for brands to connect and engage with consumers in real-time moments, was launched with brand partners including Gatorade, Bose and Bacardi, and its personalized approach helped drive strong brand affinity. Lee also was integral to Understanding People Through Music, an exhaustive study that analyzed the listening habits of over 100 million people. The findings have been heralded as music to both marketers and users’ ears.
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Julie Veloz Ott
VP, Learning Development
IPG Media Brands
Typically Learning and Development is not considered the most charismatic department of an agency. But instead of keeping the division in the shadows of human resources, Veloz Ott has moved it into IPG Media Brands’ spotlight. And given that data is her thing, it’s no surprise Veloz Ott’s “numbers” are on the rise. Within six months of taking charge of the group, Veloz Ott shifted its perception among IPGMB employees, with the vast majority feeling like their growth and development was being supported through learning initiatives. In fact, all the organization’s L&D programs now have a score of 4.35 or higher out of 5.0.
And while many companies focus their learning efforts on their employees, Veloz Ott has taken a broader approach. Certainly, using advanced learning technologies to ensure effective professional education has been central. But she’s also aware that keeping IPGMB’s clients in the know can be an extremely valuable differentiator and smooth communications between the agency and clients-—something she’s done with the launch of client media academies.
And then there’s her commitment to diversity and challenging the status quo. Veloz Ott cofounded ROAR, IPGMB’s diversity and inclusion employee resource group, and through the group started Futures Academy for underserved NYC high school students.
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Lynn Power
Former CEO
JWT New York
When she graduated college with a double major in English and criminal justice, Power was looking for an agency career. Except that agency was the FBI. But now, with an industry pedigree including Ogilvy, BBDO and McCann Erickson, in addition to JWT, it’s pretty clear Power ended up making the right agency choice. And her experience driving JWT New York’s transformation serves as ample evidence.
Power joined JWT during some rough times. The shop had gone through three global CEOs, five NY office leads and six CCOs in eight years. Clearly, the organization needed a new direction. Power didn’t simply put new management in place, but set in motion a new management style that got rid of legacy hierarchy (she refused to have an assistant) to make JWT more nimble. That agility was necessary to improve creativity, up the quality of work, firm up existing client relationships and win new ones. All this rethinking has paid off. Client satisfaction scores shot up. New business closed. And creativity bloomed—under her watch, the agency won seven Cannes Lions in 2016 and 12 last year. Power left JWT New York in February “to pursue an entrepreneurial opportunity,” according to an agency statement.
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Solange Claudio
President
Moxie
It’s pretty hard to toe the line when it comes to achieving a more diverse workplace, but Claudio has done just that at Moxie. In her first year, she elevated two women, upping the agency’s female leadership to six. And she didn’t stop there. Within Moxie, she created and now leads Amelia, an offshoot of Publicis Groupe’s VivaWomen program, which places a premium on promoting women in data and technology. Claudio has also spearheaded efforts to attract and retain more multicultural talent. Programs such as ADPR Academy, MAIP Internship, the Mosaic Career Fair and others help that multicultural pipeline.
Driving a culture of innovation has been a key part of Claudio’s success at Moxie. Not only has she created a state-of-the-art campus for the Atlanta agency, but its FutureX Lab maker space has become an epicenter for modern marketing solutions in the area. And Moxie’s FutureX Live Conference has become a showcase for the latest thinking on the promise and possibilities of emerging technologies like AR/VR, mixed reality and brain-computer interfaces. It’s little wonder that Moxie is regularly listed as one of the best places to work in Atlanta.
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Fearless Voices
Susan Chira & Catrin Einhorn
The New York Times
This year, Changing the Game adds a new honor for women who use their voices, talent and tools to break through the enduring silence, creating a path for action and change. Called Fearless Voices, it will salute Susan Chira and Catrin Einhorn, reporters for The New York Times. Their coverage of gender bias and harassment at two Ford Motor Company plants in Chicago shined a light on the plight of blue-collar women in manufacturing industries that had long been the preserve of men. The article posed a critical question for today’s corporations: Why is it so hard to change a culture of harassment?
