Meet Kiki: Chief Brand Officer at PlantBaby Co
This blog was written by Verónica Lawson Vilches
Hey there, conscious marketers! 👋
It’s Verónica here. In this blog post, I'm happy to introduce you to Kiki Van Son, a wonderful member of our community. She is a true inspiration and founding member of our Conscious Marketing Movement. 🤗
By the way, if you are interested in joining me and the amazing community in the Conscious Marketing Movement, please click here for a 7-day free trial.
I had the pleasure of collaborating with Kiki, and I can't wait to share her story with you. So, let's jump right in!
Kiki Van Son
Can you tell us about your professional journey and what led you to focus on conscious marketing?
A few years out of college I landed my first big gig at a global creative agency in New York. It was the same top dog corporation that bought Don Draper's independent agency at the end of the TV show "Mad Men” (a show that admittedly played a role in my applying to the job).
I was seduced by the social and extravagant culture of advertising at first and relishing in the perks. I also met really interesting, talented people - that's part of what bothered me. I wanted to see our genius at work in a way that both honored our massive creative potential as individuals, and also positively impacted our world.
Sometimes this was the case, through national campaigns brought to life tirelessly with astounding cooperation over many months, which offered different perspectives and started real conversations in culture. Most of the time, it felt like money and recognition were the only motivations behind the stories we were crafting, and more consumption was the only impact of sharing them.
Specializing in social media analytics and ad buying specifically, I got to see behind the curtain of the surveillance and data harvesting practices that leverage what we (often unconsciously) give attention to online to decide what ideas to reinforce and advertisements to serve in our individualized newsfeeds.
The better I got at my job, the worse I felt, so I created the space to really investigate why by going back to school. I studied business for social impact and sustainability at Glasgow Caledonian New York College alongside a devoted community of professionals who were wrestling with similar questions in their respective fields.
My Master's thesis introduced the ad revenue based business model of social media platforms into the literature surrounding social media and mental health. This research led me to a position at the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, where I supported the launch of a documentary exploring social media’s harms and broken incentives called “The Social Dilemma.”
Afterward, I taught a marketing storytelling accelerator in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, through ASSETS Women’s Business Center, and guided a group of social impact entrepreneurs through the creation and production of marketing assets that centered their own authentic story to promote their businesses in the community.
I was back on a path that felt true to me and soon after encountered an opportunity that inspired me to embrace my experience as an advertiser and return to a career in marketing. As Chief Brand Officer at PlantBaby Co, a nutrition startup focused on accelerating positive health outcomes for kids and families, I’m now applying my passion for creative storytelling and business as a force for good to a purpose I care about and products I believe in.
But what is 'conscious marketing'? What does it mean to you?
Sometimes we're not fully conscious of the marketing messages we're soaking up, like when we drive past a billboard on the highway. Other times we are, like when we're actively watching and talking about a Super Bowl commercial.
“Conscious marketing” to me is recognizing that in both cases, and in every medium, the messages we craft as marketers and stamp onto the world carry weight, transfer energy, and influence the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of people. Marketing in its most simplified form is communication and it can be a powerful tool for connection and meaning making when handled with care.
My understanding of my role as a marketer is rooted in the responsibility I think we have to both treat people's attention as sacred, and to influence the use of corporate as well as consumers’ resources mindfully. My hope is that eventually, we won’t need to use the qualifier “conscious” for our industry, because we’ll successfully reimagine and improve the practice, experience and impact of marketing.
What makes conscious marketing different from traditional marketing?
Working in tech, I came across this concept of a "Zebra" company, which is an alternative to the “Unicorn” business model and economic incentive structure. This concept strikes me as a framework we could also apply to the marketing industry, to understand the differences between “conscious marketing” vs. “traditional marketing."
In my mind, unicorn companies - a term commonly applied to the privately held tech companies valued at over $1 billion in the last couple decades - operate in the same world as traditional marketing, whereas zebra companies play in the world conscious marketing is ushering in - it's a world we're actively creating now, that's going to take a lot of hard work and dedicated people to build (like those Cláudia has brought together through the Conscious Marketing Movement)!
Check out this article to learn more and see a helpful visual chart that explains the differences in their "why," "how," "who" and "what": https://www.humanetech.com/insights/we-need-zebras-not-unicorns
Can you tell us about a project or campaign you worked on that embodied conscious marketing principles?
At PlantBaby, we're developing plant centric, naturally nutrient rich foods and beverages designed for kids, that are both convenient plus minimally processed and free of additives.
While we want people to buy our products, and think they’re important for busy families to have on hand, we believe the best option is making food from scratch at home with fresh, ideally local, ingredients. Every year on Black Friday since we've launched the company, we've released the recipes of our plant milk products along with a video tutorial, encouraging people to make it at home with the people they love instead of buying more stuff.
I love this campaign because it’s acting on our values instead of just speaking to them, and it offers people options. I think a lot of companies focus on positioning their products as the only and best option. I think a more conscious approach is offering people information instead so that they can make a decision about what works best for them.
What challenges have you faced in promoting conscious marketing practices, and how have you overcome them?
I've advocated against the use of social media advertising platforms like Meta because I don't agree with many of their company practices and I believe these technologies are having a disproportionately negative impact on mental health and our shared information environment and democratic process.
At the same time, I have a product to market that I believe can improve health outcomes for people and inspire supply chain practices that are more supportive of the environment. Platforms like Meta have the lowest barrier to entry for advertisers, and give startups like ours with limited resources the opportunity to gain market share amongst the big dogs who can’t say the same about the impact their products are making. It's a catch 22 and there's no easy answer.
I've had to exist in the gray, and just do my best to act on my values and advocate for the world I want to create, while balancing the realities of our current world and the need to stay in business. One way I try to stay in integrity while using these platforms for advertising is putting extra care into the content we create and promote.
How do you determine the success of your conscious marketing efforts?
Generally speaking, I gauge the success of my marketing activities by evaluating the health of our business as a whole: if our brand and product is in integrity and we're on track with sustainably forecasted financial growth, while our employees are happy, and our customer feedback is positive - marketing is doing the job well and consciously.
What new developments, trends, or technologies give you hope for the future of marketing and keep you energised?
The Conscious Marketing Movement Community gives me hope for the future because it's an intentional community platform organized around a specific goal, with people coming together and exchanging different resources and experiences in support of a shared vision.
To me, this community and platform design represents a necessary departure from the one size fits all social media platforms that have defined the last two decades of the internet. These platforms were supposed to be broad, to offer boundless social connection, but as we know by now, while they do facilitate that to a degree they fall short of providing the real sense of belonging we need.
These platforms do, however, have huge potential to be sites of impact, especially in tackling the global and interconnected climate, economic, and social challenges our societies are facing.
I suspect the Conscious Marketing Movement Community will make its mark, and inspire other community platforms! On a personal level, it's also such a privilege to form relationships with a global community - to be inspired by different perspectives, and encounter opportunities to collaborate with kindred souls.
What advice would you give to businesses or marketers who are just beginning to explore conscious marketing?
I recommend first spending time connecting with your own values and orienting yourself within your work from there. I've collected a lot of information and ideas over the years from great authors across a range of topics including media, technology & culture, business, leadership & communication, and philosophy, psychology & creativity. This is a list of some of the standout works that have helped set the larger context that I think and act from:
MEDIA, TECHNOLOGY & CULTURE:
(1985) Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
(2010) You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lainer
(2012) The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
(2010) The Shallows by Nicholas G. Carr
(2020) Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock
(2022) Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
BUSINESS, LEADERSHIP & COMMUNICATION:
(1999) Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen
(2008) Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows
(2012) Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
(2015) Conscious Marketing by Carolyn Tate
PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY & CREATIVITY:
(1946) Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
(1997) The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
(2002) The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
(2012) Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill
(2012) Mastery by Robert Greene
(2015) Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
To learn more about Kiki'’s work, visit her website at https://datadisco.tech/ 🔗
That's all for today!
We'll be back soon with more inspiring stories from our amazing community. ✨
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Until next time! 🌟
