Predicting The Turn w/ Dave Knox

Kyle Schlegel gets asked every day what Roger Federer is like, or real, when the camera’s not on him. The truth: he’s exactly the way he is on camera. That’s a powerful level of authenticity and it’s a growing trend. It’s also just one of the big ways technology has changed the landscape for marketing leaders of sporting goods companies. At Brandemonium, I got to sit down with an expert on this topic, my friend Kyle Schlegel, the Global Marketing Director of Racquet Sports at Wilson. He outlined 5 challenges that face large sporting goods brands today, and the 2 practices marketing leaders should be engaged in to become better assets to the brands they represent.

How do you hold on to an entrepreneurial mindset in an industry as established as food, beverages, and hospitality is? To find out, we invited Kevin Burke, Senior Director of Global Marketing - Innovation at Beam Suntory, to join the Predicting the Turn podcast.

Everyone’s trying to predict disruption. Big brands, venture, and startups. How do each of these perspectives think differently about the issue? More importantly, how can a show with these 3 perspectives help listeners predict the turns in their industries? Dave Knox’s background is at the intersection of the worlds of big brands and startups. He started his career at Proctor and Gamble as the Founder of Corporate Digital Strategy right around the time where web2.0 was emerging. Dave then spent the last seven years as the Chief Marketing Officer for a fast-growing digital innovation agency called Rockfish which he helped sell to WPP.  On the nights and weekends, he spent his time as an advisor to a few different venture capital funds and also was the Cofounder of Brandery, one of the top 15 startup accelerators in the country. Predicting the Turn is based on Dave’s experience spending time with companies like P and G, Kroger, and Ford, but then working on nights and weekends with startups that were challenging the very industries that those big companies were working in. This podcast is meant to be a discussion about that. It's not aimed only at the world of big business or only at the world of startups and venture, but at the intersection between those worlds. Listeners can expect to hear great conversations with the leaders of some the biggest brands in the world, the venture capitalists funding the hottest startups, and founders and entrepreneurs who were crazy enough to change their industries.

CPG companies are being disrupted left and right. Where they struggle, brands like Inspire & Arby’s have figured it out. Technology innovation is causing massive disruption in many fields, especially CPG. Companies are too slow, encumbered by corporate bureaucracy. Instead, they need to leverage their resources in a streamlined way toward proactivity, higher order thinking, and how to add holistic value to their customers. Where they struggle, marketing leaders in the foodservice industry like Jason Leohr and Jim Taylor are winning. Jim is the Chief Marketing Officer of Arby’s and Jason is the VP of Media for Inspire Brands, Arby’s parent company. I got to chat with them right before their speech at Brandemonium.