EVP, GM, or CMO—why pick one when you can be all three? 

In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, Keisha Taylor Starr, EVP, CMO, and general manager of Scripps Networks at The E.W. Scripps Company, proves that intersectionality and a diverse skillset can take your marketing game to the next level. 

Tune in for their discussion on how strategic repositioning can drive record-breaking audience engagement, why marketers must balance creative risk with financial rigor and the leadership moves required to shape an industry built for diverse voices. 

What you’ll learn:

• How to transition from CMO to General Manager by gaining P&L ownership
• Why sports franchises are essential programming investments
• The strategy behind rebranding a legacy network for new audiences
• How to balance creative ambition with financial rigor as a CMO
• The importance of diverse representation in leadership and decision-making
• How to expand sports definition and create inclusive programming

With a career spanning agency work at BBDO, leadership roles at CNN, Turner Broadcasting, and Warner Bros. Discovery, as well as experience in collegiate sports marketing, Keisha has consistently driven innovative transformations across news, entertainment, and sports properties. 

Her leadership in ION’s rebrand into a general entertainment network with pioneering women’s sports programming has resulted in record-breaking audience engagement and Google TV’s most-watched free live channel designation in 2024, demonstrating how CMOs can balance creative vision with financial accountability. 

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Episode Highlights: 

[05:53] Connection Is Your Competitive Advantage in a Fragmented Media Landscape — Keisha emphasizes that the modern media environment demands a fundamental shift from competing on content volume to competing on audience connection, explaining that in an era where viewing is asynchronous and audiences scatter across infinite platforms, connection becomes the differentiator that traditional networks can no longer guarantee. Her strategic response is to anchor programming around universal connectors, whether that’s local news, live sports or experiential events, that create genuine reasons for audiences to gather. 

[08:08] Make Early Strategic Bets on Underserved Audiences Before Competitors Do — Keisha demonstrates how successful brand repositioning requires identifying audience gaps and committing resources before market saturation occurs. While many networks were still discussing women’s sports as a trend, Scripps made the calculated decision to build franchise-level programming, i.e., their dedicated WNBA broadcasts on Friday nights and NWSL games on Saturday nights, creating structural scarcity in premium programming time. This early mover advantage addressed a real consumer friction point: Sports fans struggle to find their teams across fragmented broadcast rights and platforms. The result was record-breaking engagement, including seven WNBA broadcasts averaging over 1 million viewers—metrics that were previously unattainable outside traditional sports. 

[12:04] Link Every Marketing Investment to Business Value, Not Just Creativity — Keisha explains that the fundamental tension between creative marketing ambition and financial accountability emerges when CMOs gain P&L responsibility. As a traditional CMO, the instinct was to pursue bold, attention-grabbing campaigns that differentiated the brand in the marketplace—a goal that often conflicted with cost discipline. Once responsible for margins, her evaluation framework shifted dramatically: Creative excellence only justifies investment if it generates tangible business value through audience growth, advertiser satisfaction, or revenue lift. CMOs facing similar pressure should reframe financial rigor not as a limitation but as a clarifying tool that helps identify which marketing activities truly drive business growth versus those that primarily satisfy internal creative ambitions.

[22:23] Expand Your Definition of Sport for Higher Audience Engagement — Keisha’s portfolio strategy at ION deliberately broadens the definition of “sport” to include cheerleading competitions, women’s college basketball and emerging athletic categories rather than treating them as peripheral content. This inclusive positioning serves dual strategic purposes: It captures substantial but previously underserved audiences (each niche represents millions of passionate fans), and it signals organizational values alignment with increasingly diverse consumer bases. CMOs managing entertainment or media properties should apply this framework by mapping audience passion clusters beyond traditional category definitions, identifying which niches are substantial enough to justify dedicated programming or product development and deliberately positioning organizational alignment with underrepresented communities as a competitive and values-driven advantage.

In this week’s episode of Adspeak by ADWEEK, Dana Paolucci, head of engagement marketing at Unilever’s Dove, joins Raven Walker, SVP of client partnerships at Collectively, to unpack how heritage brands can stay culturally relevant through creator-led strategies.

They explore Dove’s shift from transactional influencer campaigns to community-driven partnerships that generate authentic engagement and large-scale UGC.

From the viral Dove x Crumbl collaboration to immersive brand storytelling experiments, the conversation highlights how listening to audiences, respecting creator ecosystems, and integrating PR with influencer marketing can unlock exponential awareness.

The episode offers practical insight into building long-term creator relationships, measuring cultural impact, and turning brand moments into sustained movements.

What you’ll learn:

• How to identify cultural moments through social listening
• Why “tapping into” culture depletes communities, and how to “respond” instea
• The demotainment framework for heritage products
• How to build long-term creator loyalty through intimate community programs
• Why PR and influencer marketing must operate as a single engine
• How to move at speed while maintaining brand safety

About the Guests:

Dana Paolucci is the head of engagement marketing for Dove (Unilever) North America, where she leads all influencer partnerships, external communications, and brand collaborations. With a track record of launching iconic, award-winning campaigns, including Dove’s Super Bowl spots, brand collaborations like Dove x Crumbl, and long-term community initiatives, she has redefined how heritage brands engage creators and build cultural relevance.

Raven Walker is SVP of client partnerships at Collectively, a woman-founded influencer marketing agency specializing in creator-led social-first campaigns across beauty, CPG, and lifestyle brands. With expertise in strategic partnerships and creative innovation, she leads transformative campaigns for major brands, including Unilever North America.

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Bob Liodice remembers a moment from his first job interview, 31 years ago, for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). “One of the questions that I got is, ‘do you lick envelopes and stamps?’” he recalled. 

It wasn’t a joke. In 1995, companies still did business through the mailroom, and only 14% of Americans had internet access. Liodice—hired as senior vice president before becoming CEO—helped change that, taking the ANA from a struggling trade group with $28,000 in the bank to an organization representing $400 billion in brand spend and offering premium resources, including the Marketing Knowledge Center and Masters of Marketing conference.

But as Liodice prepares to step down at the end of this year, the leader who takes his place will face a challenge arguably bigger than the coming of the internet: the rise of AI, and the rapidly evolving influence it’s having on the production and dissemination of content.

“My successor is going to have to deal with the implications of the way ANA manages itself,” Liodice told ADWEEK. “We consider ourselves to be a content company, a convening company, and a leadership company. We have to figure out a way to insulate that, such that the high-value content generated by the ANA is viewed as being valuable and unique within the minds and hearts of our members.”

Liodice is not alone in his caution; AI crawling and repurposing proprietary information is a huge concern among businesses. The stakes are higher still for organizations like the ANA, which presents a great deal of its business intelligence in a quasi-public sphere—conferences attended by marketers the world over—and then repackages that as online content.

“We do a thousand events a year,” Liodice said. “Then we bottle that… and distribute to our members in various content forms.”

He said the challenge his successor will have to navigate is “the way we bring our members together to get something which is unique, which increases the value of the ANA.”

Fundamentally, Liodice regards AI as positive force in marketing. But the CEO who takes the reins from him will require greater vigilance.

“There is so much incredible opportunity from AI—the power of it is beyond imagination,” Liodice said. “But it also comes with… issues. We don’t spend as much time talking about that in our industry.”

With 258 days left before Liodice officially steps aside, the hunt for his replacement has just started and candidate names have yet to surface. (“We are in the process of finalizing an executive search firm,” he said.)

But when asked about what an ideal CEO would look like, Liodice was clear: It will need to be someone with a broader range of experience than he had when he arrived three decades ago.

Having spent 15 years at Kraft General Foods, Liodice came to the ANA as a quintessential brand guy. But to lead the ANA now, he said, “I don’t think you can just be a brand guy.”

“If my successor is going to be able to navigate this extraordinarily complex terrain, brand [experience] is limiting unto itself,” he said. “What about media expertise? What about technology? This person needs to have exposure to these things.”

Fortunately for the incoming CEO, whomever they are, licking stamps and envelopes are skills no longer required.