Trendsetters: PepsiCo's Brad Jakeman Talks about Disruption's Effects on Marketing's Evolution and Structure

There's little question that Brad Jakeman is an advocate of truly transformational marketing. His category-disruptive ideas go beyond merely challenging convention, they also make brands famous. In the past decade, his marketing career has spanned Fashion, Retail, Consumer Packaged Goods, Entertainment, Technology and Financial Services. In fact, Brad has managed some of the world's biggest brands on a global basis.

Today, as PepsiCo's President of the Global Beverages Group he leads global strategy, brand building, innovation, productivity and processes for PepsiCo's global portfolio of beverages, and is responsible for eight of company's twenty-two billion-dollar brands. Most recently Brad was responsible for leading the team that created Pepsi's first ever global brand campaign Live for Now.

He admits that two significant industry shifts have influenced his thinking. Today he believes it is critical to fully activate the role of marketing in an Age of Disruption, and it is equally important to embrace the inextricable connection between marketing and technology, as well as the resulting intersection of roles between Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Technology Officer.

In fact, Brad Jakeman often questions, “As we look at marketing capabilities and functions within our companies, we see they are set up primarily for driving growth. However, are they focused enough on driving transformation and disruption?"

He is firm in his conviction: “If you're a marketer in any business, you must now be focused on how you disrupt yourself before someone else disrupts you, or you're not doing your job. We've seen how entire industries can be disrupted overnight—look at the phenomenon of Uber and Airbnb and how they've changed entire businesses without owning a single car or room. The role of the modern marketer is to always think one step ahead."

Plus, the cycle time for disruption is faster and points out that we've already seen how the disruptors are becoming disrupted. He emphasizes that we have to think about disrupting ourselves before we are disrupted, which is often counter to the ideology of many companies. Corporate reorganization and restructuring is difficult—especially when agile companies may have to consider it every 18 months given the industry's rate of change.

Brad Jakeman's advice is to solve these issues of disruption through an innovation mindset or culture where it is the responsibility of everyone in the company to anticipate disruption. In fact, he dissuades people from considering “best practices" as he's concerned that what worked in the past will probably not work in the future in a rapidly-changing consumer-driven, technologically-competitive economy.

Of course, technology is changing how consumers engage—or opt not to engage with brands and media through today's proliferation of devices. According to Jakeman, “Consumers can ‘screen out' content they don't want to receive, which represents another fundamental change. Marketers today have to think about commercial content that is so compelling that their customers will seek it out and not screen it out. Every brand has the ability and responsibility to entertain or inform through digital platforms that bring experiences and value to people's lives."

He adds, “One of the reasons why apps have become so important is that they use mobile technology to bring the values of a brand to life. Nike Fuel Band is a great example. Is it a product or a marketing platform? The answer is simply- ‘yes.' A convergence of product-like things and marketing-like things is indiscernible to consumers—as long as they are consistent with what the brand stands for. Interestingly, one of the unintended consequences of exploding media and multiple devices is that consumers are willing to interact with content—of greater quality and in greater quantities—than ever before."

Brad's first client-side marketer role was in 1998 when he accepted the newly-created position of Managing Director, Global Advertising at Citigroup in New York. He led the development team that created the critically acclaimed and Emmy Award-Winning Live Richly brand platform and the Citi Identity Theft Solutions service.

In 2007 Brad joined Macy's Inc. as Executive Vice President, Marketing and was charged with revitalizing and re-positioning the Macy's brand on a national stage. In September, 2007 in a collaboration with Academy Award winning Director Barry Levinson and twice Academy Award winning Cinematographer, Bob Richardson Brad developed Macy's first ever National Brand Campaign in which he partnered with some the world's greatest cultural and fashion icons- Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, Jessica Simpson, Kenneth Cole, Tommy Hilfiger, Emeril Lagasse, Kimora Lee Simmons, Russell Simmons, Usher, Sean (P-Diddy) Combs and Marc Ecko. Five years later this idea continues to define and drive the Macy's brand.

Next, he took on the role of Executive Vice President, Chief Creative Officer & Chief Marketing Officer for Activision Blizzard Inc., the world's largest videogame and interactive entertainment company. Brad was responsible for leading the marketing program which resulted in the largest entertainment launch in history, for the second consecutive year, accomplishing over $600 million in sales in four days for the Call of Duty game.

He was named an Internationalist of the Year by The Internationalist in 2015 and is a member of THE INTERNATIONALIST 1000 initiative1000 Marketers Around the World Reshaping the Future of Marketing in global partnership with the ANA/Association of National Advertisers. He will discuss Designing for Disruption at the ANA's annual Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando in mid-October. The expanded story of his views on marketing in an Age of Disruption will appear as a chapter in the upcoming book, The Reinvention of Marketing- Vol.2, to debut later this year, published by INGRAM for The Internationalist Press with the ANA for use by marketers and marketing students at Universities throughout the world.