My Best Marketing Tips #28: Bose Corporation / Jim Mollica / Chief Marketing Officer
My Best Marketing Tips #28: Bose Corporation / Jim Mollica / Chief Marketing Officer
Having worked with “super talented people” on “super interesting projects” throughout his career that spans roles at Viacom, The Walt Disney Company, Under Armour, and now at Bose Corporation, Jim Mollica has gathered amazing marketing tips and experience.
In his current role at Bose Corporation, he’s focusing their marketing efforts towards immersive content creation in the audio world. Moving away from interruptive advertising, he’s looking at influencing the purchasing journey well before customers enter the market.
What would be your best marketing tip?
Strategy only matters if the creative execution is great. (Cyma Zarghami, former president of Nickelodeon and Viacom Media Networks)
How have you put this marketing tip to good use?
When I was working at Viacom, Cyma and I would debate every new strategy I came up with and look at the merits of creative vs strategy. She raised the point one day that creative needs to align with the business aims, but it needs to be great. There’s no point in creating strategies if the creative doesn’t support them.
I’m not a creative in the traditional sense, but I know that with the right strategy, creative can be the “lightning in a bottle” that makes everything work. I think this combination is now more important than ever, with brands really competing for people’s attention.
What marketing tips does the industry need most right now?
There’s a time and a place for interruptive advertising, but we’re living in a world where the immersive, creative content production will really steal people’s attention. That’s why we, at Bose, are trying to create interesting stories that influence people’s buying decisions well before they’re looking to buy anything in the first place.
It’s very hard to see the specific ROI for content creation, but if you don’t tell these stories, other brands will.
What is the marketing tip you give most often?
It’s the mistakes that you learn the most from.
I think, when you’re starting out, you believe you have to show leadership and not make any mistakes. But, actually, it’s great to become comfortable with admitting vulnerability and show yourself as human to your team. This makes people safe to take on more challenging projects and take more risks, because you’re creating a safe space where you’re not holding anyone up to unrealistic standards.
You have to feel safe to do good work.
Listen to Jim talk about his career mess-ups, the renaissance of audio and more of his marketing tips, on the latest episode of our Shiny New Object
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