Leo Burnett CMO: Branding Is No Longer Just About Ad Campaigns

The time branding was all about ad campaigns is long gone.

The 42nd episode of the DesignRush Podcast brings you a conversation with Emily Doskow, the CMO of one of the oldest advertising agencies in the world – Leo Burnett.

According to Emily, modern branding and marketing needs to be a 360-degree effort.

Tune in to the show to learn:

• Why branding is no longer just about ad campaigns
• What’s a good brand foundation
• What customers want to know about a company’s identity in 2024

Who Is Emily Doskow?

Emily is a brand development expert with over 20 years of experience in branding, marketing, and advertising. Throughout her career, she's developed new revenue streams for departments she managed, driving marketplace differentiation and leading multi-disciplinary business development teams on a global scale.

Managing and scaling new businesses has been a large focus of Emily's career, she tells our editor Vianca.

"I've had a chance to see it from 20-plus years ago to where we are today. The process of creating a new business is constantly changing – I think that's a good thing in our industry as digital innovations and market shifts come along."

This experience has allowed Emily the chance to experience the changes for herself and, more importantly, to understand how strategies have evolved through the years.

It's no longer about ad campaigns, it's about brand experience and full 360 marketing, Emily adds.

"It's been that way for quite some time, but every moment, every touch point, and the wide variety of touch points we now have with our brands, building them offline, online, in so many different ways, it all just becomes a brand experience across so many touch points."

"We often say that a good brand foundation is something that everybody feels like they want to iterate on, they want to work with."

"It should immediately spark people wanting to get in a room together and share inputs. I think that that's the trick behind it, but I won't say it's easy. It's not an easy process, but it is a fun process."

There's No Secret Formula or Best Strategy

Everything starts with brand identity.

Consumers aren't interested just in products anymore, but they want to know more about the company behind their products and services, and if they identify with the company they're supporting.

"What do we stand for? What do we stand against? What is our point of view?" Emily asks.

"In today's world, consumers want to know what that is, they want to be a part of that."

"We look at kind of what is your point of view and then translate that into a brand world. That's brand voice, expression, and identity."

There's no 'right approach' though, as branding depends on many factors.

Companies need to discover their voice and their identity, and they need to do it organically. As such, there's no winning formula to follow, except to be authentic.

Wouldn't it be great if there was an ideal strategy or a checklist, Emily continues.

"There isn't. It's unique to each brand. It's so unique to where they are in their life cycle, where they're already reaching and connecting with consumers, and where they aren't."

"There is often a desire to want to maybe hit the checklist, want to almost say everything and every touch point rather than taking some risks to break through and allowing the process to work."

"We need people to get people's attention, we need to communicate with them, and then we need to build some way that they can engage and feel like a part of the brand."

COVID-19 Tested How We Form Relationships

Brands that work with agencies can have an easier time finding or refining their identity and their voice, but an honest collaboration between both parties is always a must to achieve success.

If you're looking for a new agency to work with, check out DesignRush's carefully curated list of marketing agencies we suggest you partner with.

Having worked with several major brands over the years, Emily shared with Vianca some of the lessons she learned along the way, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It all comes down to open collaboration and trust, Emily argues.

"We have had some long-standing client-agency relationships and we love that. We are a long-standing agency, so to be able to say that those relationships are as long-standing as well is nice."

"Our best relationships are those where there's open transparency and collaboration."

"COVID-19 taught us that there was so much possibility for us to do together because all of a sudden, everybody ended up, not with comms briefs, but with business briefs.

How do we solve this crazy situation was the key question at that point, Emily explains.

"Our product is stuck in the supply chain. What are we going to do? Do we just turn off marketing?"

"We all immediately took a much bigger picture of how we had to work together. That period either strengthened relationships or, in some cases, blew them apart."