What if you could tap into 20 years of authentic consumer conversations to transform your marketing strategy?
In this special Cannes Lions edition of Marketing Vanguard, host Jenny Rooney sits down with Roxy Young, who has led Reddit’s marketing as CMO for nearly five years, to explore the power of community intelligence and why brands need to embrace authentic engagement.
From Reddit’s evolution as a marketing platform to its groundbreaking AI-powered insights tools, this conversation reveals how marketers can harness the power of genuine community feedback.
Tune in to discover why Reddit’s unique approach to brand safety, open communities, and real consumer dialogue is driving 60% year-over-year revenue growth and changing the future of marketing.
Roxy Young is the outgoing CMO of Reddit, where she leads marketing for one of the internet’s most influential community platforms; she recently announced that she will depart the platform in August. With a background in finance and strategy, she brings an analytical approach to brand marketing, focusing on doing “less, better, faster.”
Under her leadership, Reddit has become a critical part of the marketing mix for brands seeking authentic community engagement.
Episode highlights:
[02:54] The Evolution to Community Marketing — Roxy traces the evolution of marketing from the Mad Men era of perfect one-way messaging to today’s community-driven approach: “When I started my career back in 2020, I always joke that we would sit around in a room for a year and come up with the perfect message, very Don Draper style … and all the while, Reddit has been marching to the beat of its own drum, helping our communities be these vibrant places for conversation.” She explains how this new wave requires brands to “give up a little bit of control” but results in “more engagement, more brand affinity, building more meaning in the minds of consumers.”
[04:33] Reddit vs. Social Media — Roxy clarifies Reddit’s unique positioning: “Reddit is an alternative to social media. Social media is about your followers and about me and how great I am … but we’re really at the intersection of search and social. We have amazing intense signals. If you’re on Reddit and you’re in an electric vehicle community or a skincare community, we don’t need to know your demographics … but we know what you’re interested in, and that’s an incredible signal for marketers.”
[06:16] Layered Brand Safety Approach — Addressing brand safety concerns, Roxy outlines Reddit’s three-layer system: “At the foundational level, we have the Reddit rules. Then the really unique to Reddit part is that every community is started by a person, is moderated by oftentimes a team of people, and is governed by a set of its own unique community rules. And then the third layer is we give brands a whole suite of tools so that they can take control of the experience that they’re comfortable with.”