Messi—you think of the World Cup; you think of Apple, and all those things combine not only for MLS to have a moment but for North American soccer to have a moment … a time to connect with and influence fans. There’s not been a better time for soccer in North America to do that job than over the next two to five years because the World Cup is sort of the beginning of how you take and nurture and grow that fandom.
How did your time at Super.com, Chase and Pfizer prepare you for this role with MLS?
I’ve had the opportunity to work across management, consulting very large companies and very small companies. From those very different types of experience, I’ve learned three lessons that are going to start me well here.
No.1, I’ve learned how to build from scratch, but also for scale. If you think of where the league is in its history, that is exactly what we needed here. From a marketing perspective, there are some capabilities we build from scratch, but mostly, we have an established team. They do great work, and continuing to scale the great work they’re doing is critical.
No. 2, in many of those experiences, whether at Deloitte—where I was working on a project and going deep in some aspect of marketing—or in these large companies or small companies, where I was running a P&L or running marketing for various products, I had the opportunity to touch end-to-end marketing. It’s important for a CMO to be someone who understands data and creative equally. This notion that someone is an artist or a scientist, I think, is a bit silly.
The last [point] is I’ve had the opportunity to manage tiny teams. At one of the startups [I worked at], I was the second hire. There’s no marketing budget and you just figured it out. JP Morgan Chase and Pfizer are not the same thing: big team, big budget. Learning how to optimize across both environments—optimize spend, optimize people’s time—that’s critical.
What opportunities do you see for MLS to speak to fandoms on a more personal level?
I teach consumer behavior at NYU Stern in their executive MBA program, so a lot of what we talked about in the classroom is 100% applicable to what we do here. What we probably should be thinking about in marketing is that science is as important as art. When I think about what our job is here, it is about building fans. Well, how do you build fans?
