The Brand Builder Who Drove Demand Through the Roof w/ Erica Brinker of Array Technologies
Chris closes out the first season of the podcast with a conversation with Erica Brinker, Chief Commercial Officer and Head of ESG at Array Technologies. Erica is an extraordinary leader who knows how to build a brand and prove her impact.
Prior to Array, Erica was CMO at Honeywell, an industrial that historically didn’t believe in marketing. She drove demand through the roof for Honeywell by building a brand campaign that is still driving impact years later. Her insights and approach should prove incredibly valuable for CMOs who are leading through the turbulence of this current economy.
Chris and Erica cover:
- Her early years as a marketer working at Kate Spade, Tiffany, and Ralph Lauren, in a world where brand was everything -
- The path she blazed to become Chief Marketing Officer at Honeywell -
- Honeywell's Futureshaper brand campaign, which aligned everyone from the buyer to the C-Suite at Honeywell around a shared vision of the future -
- How you can earn and grow a trusted relationship with your CFO -
- How Erica's desire to change the future of the planet for her kids led to her current role at Array -
And much more! Thanks for joining us this season. We'll see you in 2023!
00:35 - Chris's intro
03:45 - Learning responsibility (and a little marketing) as a kid
04:53 - To DC, for politics?
06:52 - Learning marketing at Tiffany and Kate Spade
09:00 - A first-timer in a Tiffany store
10:18 - Leaving NYC for Honeywell
12:19 - Starting a branding program in a vacuum
15:03 - Impacts and outcomes of her first campaign at Honeywell
16:17 - The role of narrative in the Possibilities of Flight Made Easy campaign
17:23 - Moving to CMO, kicking off the Futureshaper campaign
20:33 - The terrifying thrill of organizational change
24:01 - The campaign's surprising internal shift
26:17 - The Futureshaper campaign's impact externally
28:46 - How Erica used analytics to prove her impact as CMO
30:41 - Earning the CFO's trust
31:45 - Making the move to ESG at Array Technologies
33:39 - Array's narrative and core business, and the future they envision
35:20 - The challenges Array is facing in the solar industry
37:15 - Doing what you say you'll do
38:14 - Array's audacious ESG goals
39:39 - What it means to move from CMO to Chief Commercial Officer
41:26 - The big solar win of the Inflation Reduction Act
44:32 - Erica's career low point
46:08 - The importance of customer obsession
47:49 - What Erica is hopeful about in 2023 and beyond
49:48 - Chris's closing thoughts