Coworking with Rachel Sterling

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Rachel Sterling is CMO of Identity Digital, a domain name services company. She’s also held marketing roles at Instagram, Twitter, and Google.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? When I worked at Nest Labs, we knew that dads were our core customers for smart-home tech. So it was a given that we would run a campaign for Father’s Day. But we realized that dads hated receiving gifts if it required them to do work. So for Father’s Day 2018, we created a campaign that offered the Nest Hello video doorbell with the gift of professional installation.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? This is an oldie but a goodie: for the Super Bowl in 2000, EDS ran a spot about cat herding (not metaphorically, but literally) to describe the value of what they do. It was absolute perfection.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I’m weirdly competitive about only one thing: fishing. If we’re going out on a boat together, I’m going to catch the biggest fish of the day.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I know there’s been a lot of doom stories posted about how AI will take all of our jobs, but I’m optimistic about the wide-scale use of AI in marketing. Having worked in tech for nearly 20 years, I believe technology is meant to supplement human decision-making to improve efficiency and effectiveness. The more we can use technology to handle routine tasks, the more we can free up our time to pursue creative endeavors.

I’m least optimistic about using layoffs as a lever to boost growth. When you cut people from your teams, you introduce psychological safety as a barrier to pitching creative and out-of-the-box ideas. If people are consistently fearful they’re going to lose their jobs through a cost-saving measure, they will only pitch the idea that was previously accepted, which stagnates all development.

What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? Hard Fork. This is not a marketing-specific podcast, but it provides a round-up of all of the latest developments in tech. Marketing needs to evolve with technology, so it’s crucial as marketers that we stay up-to-date on all of the latest trends. Plus, the hosts, Casey Newton and Kevin Roose, are hilarious.