Snap, with CMO Kenny Mitchell

Update: 2022-11-07

Description

Episode Summary

What’s it like to work at the top levels of marketing in major companies? Kenny Mitchell – an Emmy Award nominated leader who combines creativity with business smarts – describes his move to Big Tech, life at Snapchat (he's the CMO there), augmented reality, and what he wished he knew when he was 20 years old that he knows now.

Sydney Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Kenny Mitchell

Kenny Mitchell is the Chief Marketing Officer of Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat. He guides the brand and business marketing efforts, focusing on driving the growth of the global Snapchat community and the base of advertising and developer partners. Previously, Mitchell was an accomplished leader at McDonald's U.S., Gatorade, and NASCAR, where he oversaw the marketing efforts related to key consumer touch-points – creative, digital, design, retail and experiential. Over his 20-year career, Mitchell has received numerous awards and recognitions, including being named one of “The Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company, Forbes CMO NEXT, AdWeek 50, Business Insider: 25 Most Innovative CMOs, and Campaign Power 100. He has also won numerous creative awards, including multiple Cannes Lions, film festival selections, Tribeca, and two Emmy nominations. Mitchell also is a Member of the Board of Directors for e.l.f. Beauty. Mitchell holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. He was inducted into Dartmouth’s Sports Hall of Fame as a men’s basketball team member. He and his wife, Heather, live in Los Angeles and have a daughter, Carter.

Insights from this episode:

Details about Snap
Kenny’s career journey
Developing new apps
Kenny’s biggest competitor
Details about augmented reality and the metaverse
The future of the metaverse
The role of AR in the real world
The role of marketing in an organization
Kenny’s nomination for an Emmy Award
Kenny’s hiring process

Quotes from the show:

“At its core, Snapchat is a kind of visual communication app or platform that helps to enhance relationships between your friends and family and give you a connection to the world with augmented reality (AR)” —Kenny Mitchell [5:53 ]
“What a lot of new apps and businesses find is that it can be tricky to quickly build a dependable and honorable business against platforms in many cases that already have the audience that you are looking to build” —Kenny Mitchell [8:53 ]
“Our focus is really building out more and more advanced AR experiences and looking to establishing an ecosystem around augmented reality, that’s what we believe is the true next computing platform” —Kenny Mitchell [19:36 ]
“We think that unlocking computing all over the world through hardware that is connected to the real world is probably what the future looks like, and we have a little bit of confidence because we are seeing the way that AR is being used in our platform so much right now” —Kenny Mitchell [22:34 ]
“The center of gravity really sits with the marketing of an organization” —Kenny Mitchell [28:35 ]
“Personally, I’ve always had a proclivity towards innovation. That’s probably more the reason that when they (Snap Inc) circled around a few years later looking for a CMO they wanted someone who understood the Snapchat audience, understood product and platform really well, and was great from the innovation, creativity, and storytelling perspective” —Kenny Mitchell [36:48 ]
“The other thing that is pretty unique and special about Snap is that its culture is underpinned by these three core values of kind, creative and smart” —Kenny Mitchell [43:03 ]
“The thing that is very specific to marketing is that we make stuff that goes out into the world. There is something incredibly gratifying about that” —Kenny Mitchell [46:46 ]