This week, we turn our spotlight onto Eric Reynolds, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer of The Clorox Company, and CMO Club Chapter President for San Francisco.
1. What was your first (or favorite) job?
I was the guy inside a gigantic moose costume at the Minnesota Zoo. One of my earliest jobs, it should have taught me the power of emotionally connecting with your audience. Instead, it bred in me my lifelong dislike of amusement park characters. I hated that damn suit.
2. What are the three most important components for your personal and professional success?
- Hard work and resiliency have been at the core of every meaningful thing in my life.
- IÛªve surrounded myself in my work and personal life with people who energize and push me. I weed out people who drain me of energy, are themselves stagnant, or who are consistently unhappy.
- I see the joy (and often good humor) in most things that I do and people with whom I work. IÛªm terrible at being miserable.
3. You are currently the CMO Club Chapter President for San Francisco. What are you most looking forward to over the next year with your local group?
The Bay Area is a tremendous place for marketing talent, industries, and ideas that shape the future. Continuing to be that safe place for CMOs to discuss the challenges and elevate the ideas that will help us master our future excites me. TodayÛªs challenges cannot be addressed alone. We need community.
4. What is the biggest challenge for operating your marketing team around the world?
Without a doubt, the biggest challenge is finding the right team members and then creating the environment that unleashes them and allows them work courageously and quickly. The pace of change and newness has only accelerated, while the types of marketing talent you need to succeed has exploded. ItÛªs always been about the people and helping them succeed.
5. As a marketer, what are you most looking forward to in 2018?
I am most excited by three things:
- First, returning the industryÛªs conversation back to powerful brand-building, grounded in humanity. If we canÛªt get the discussion back to the very thing that drives real growth, weÛªre doomed.
- Second, continuing to master technology and data to serve our brands. WeÛªre starting to get smart on this, but yoking technology to brand storytelling is the key.
- Finally, the marketing communityÛªs leadership to advance inclusion and diversity thrills me. Not just with our consumers, but with our teams, agencies, and other partners. Marketing can play a powerful role in advancing movements like #SeeHer.
6. Which book would you recommend to your fellow CMO Club members right now?
IÛªd recommend two:
- ÛÏThe Business of Choice: Marketing to Consumers’ InstinctsÛ by Matthew Willcox. IÛªve been going deep on neuroscience and behavior economics lately. MatthewÛªs insights are incredibly useful.
- ÛÏEating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand LeadersÛ by Adam Morgan. This has been out for what, 10 years? Re-read this book. ItÛªs as relevant and possibly more powerful today. Clorox brands typically lead their categories. But if weÛªre lazy marketers or slow, challengers can eat our lunch. We all have to act like challengers today.
7. Name one Head of Marketing who impresses you today and tell us why.
There are so many great leaders who inspire me and inform my thinking. People like Antonio Lucio, Keith Weed, Marie Gulin-Merle, Jonathan Mildenhall, Seth Farbman, Anne Lewnes all come to mind for various reasons. But the one IÛªm crushing at the moment is Linda Boff at GE.
GE is in the middle of an epic transformation. IÛªm pretty sure not every day over there is a lot of fun. But Linda Boff is showingÛÓlike Beth Comstock did before herÛÓhow to reinvent an old industrial brand, considered dead by many.
Clorox has a lot of brands that are over 100 years old. Watching Beth and her team, their energy and resiliency, is like a master class on how to reinvigorate employees, prospective talent, and consumers by bringing the brandÛªs idea into modernity, in a way thatÛªs fresh and exciting. I think thatÛªs really hard challenge. And sheÛªs doing it.
8. Do you have a personal mantra, words of wisdom or favorite inspirational quote?
Oof. Just one? I love aphorisms. IÛªd offer three:
- ÛÏOptimism is a force multiplier.Û
- ÛÏAlways assume best intent.Û
- ÛÏBe curious.Û
