This week, Steve Smith welcomes  to the Brand Insider Michele Waits, she's the Vice President of Marketing and Commercial Support at illy, the coffee makers. illy caffè is an 80 year old premium coffee brand, many of you will be very familiar with that red logo that you see on the store shelves. The company just launched a major multi channel campaign, it calls, “Welcome on the Road to Happiness.”

Steve welcomes Danielle Parra, Head of Marketing and Culinary for McAlister’s Deli to this week's QSR focused Brand Insider podcast. 

Few D2C brands have experienced the rapid success and cultural profile of Peloton. But how does the company that introduced many of us to HIIT cardio training handle its own high intensity growth. Company veteran Ryan Dillion-Curran discusses with Steve how the brand has evolved in response to data, product usage and market needs and is creating forward looking teams that bake “slack and flexibility” into the Peloton marketing infrastructure. Find out why one of D2C’s biggest success stories recommends emerging brands think more like a CPG.

Steve chats with Stephanie Perdue, VP of Brand Marketing for Chipotle.

Building a CPG brand within the Grocery Industrial Complex can be daunting and costly. Jimmy Bars co-founder explores with Steve the innovative distribution and marketing channels that has helped build the brand without breaking the bank.

Email is 50 years old this year. Its resilience is so familiar that we don't even bother joking about the many "Email is Dead" eulogies. In advance of EIS, this week's Brand Insider calls on two of the EIS veterans (Chester Bullock at RentPath and Scott Cohen at Purple) to reflect on how the pandemic and looming changes in digital tracking will bring email back to the center of marketers' planning.

Steve chats with David Prokupek, who is the CEO of Ideal Image Med Spa, a medical aesthetics company with well over 150 locations in the US. Their services include laser hair removal, cool sculpting and botox, all administered by medical professionals. It also uses a virtual consultation system to leverage the digital channel in preparation for the engagements. The company has seen growth this year as it quickly pivoted to a telehealth consultation platform that now serves over 25,000 people a month. 
Prior to Ideal Image, David himself helped build both the Smashburger QSR brand and Jackson Hewitt tax service brands.

As the oral care upstart SmileDirect grows its brand into new product lines and customers, the company is bringing its performance-oriented media to every screen. CMO John Sheldon explores how a CPM-centric approach continues to perform across linear, CTV and social. Likewise, highly modular creative and leveraging shorter formats are giving SmileDirect the flexibility to grow despite the opaque outlook for 2021 media.

Steve chats with Ulli Haslacher, President and Founder, Pour Moi

Kayla Rochkin is the VP of Marketing at TREC Brands, a purveyor of cannabis based products in the Canadian market. TREC is only a few years old, but has already established several cannabis brands and we'll discuss how the company targets distinct consumer segments, with different branding and packaging.