Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins

Adobe's Lara Balazs On Orchestrating Value Creation

Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins

Show Notes

This week, one of the central ideas of Create or Destroy gets flipped: namely, that product is marketing. Every single product decision is ultimately a marketing decision, and it either contributes to value creation or value destruction.

Lara Balazs, Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Global Marketing at Adobe, agrees with that thesis, but says we need to think of marketing as product too. And like a physical or digital product, you have to "ship" your stories and narratives to create true meaning and relevance with your customers. Lara speaks from a heralded track record of driving massive enterprise growth. Prior to Adobe, she was the CMO and GM at Intuit, ran worldwide marketing for Amazon Prime, and drove iconic brands like Visa and Nike.

In a world where marketing has long since moved past isolated campaigns and channels, Lara views the craft as a discipline powered by deep systems thinking. Her job isn’t just managing a department; it’s orchestrating the many moving parts of a massive corporate ecosystem so that every single piece performs as if it is one unified whole.

Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins is produced by Wisdomous and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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