What Forward-Thinking Brands Revealed About Growth at ANA’s Brand Masters “Revolutionaries” Conference

As we announced recently, Prophet is now the founding and flagship sponsor of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) new Brand Practice. Given our new partnership, we showed up in forces at the ANA’s Brand Masters “Revolutionaries” conference, held May 7-9 last week in Los Angeles. 

Marisa Mulvihill, who leads our CMO practice, hosted a breakfast with research partner WARC on brand and demand integration; Mat Zucker, our own CMO, spoke on stage about the opportunity in gaming for brands with Ashely McCollum, head of immersive media solutions at Roblox; and Prophet also provided every in-person attendee with a copy of our Vice Chair David Aaker’s Aaker on Branding, Second Edition released that week, giving them the first copies available in America.

This year’s conference was exciting and showcased lessons from brands that are not often heard at national conferences. Over three days, ANA’s EVP Brand & Media Stephanie Fierman and team curated an experience for in-person and virtual attendees, in which, as she explained, “bold, innovative brands take center stage, breaking boundaries and redefining what it means to be a modern marketer.” In addition to Roblox, other presenters came from brands such as True Religion, Poppi, Converse, Saatva, and Target. Topics addressed the brand from every angle, including expanding the case for the brand, brand success at different stages of maturity, and the challenges marketers consistently face, such as brand measurement.  

A Few Session Takeaways from Propheteers in Attendance: 

• Allison Ellsworth’s story with Poppi showed how bold innovation, paired with culture-first, authentic marketing, can revive even the most stagnant categories. By reimagining soda as a functional, better-for-you product, Poppi disrupted the beverage industry and secured a significant deal with Pepsi.  —Clare Conroy
• Aki Spicer of Monks and Danielle Spikener of KraftHeinz discussed the organic process of “flirtation through activation” that led to the breakthrough partnership between DJ Mustard and Heinz mustard. Capitalizing on the rap beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, Heinz moved quickly to tap into the cultural movement by promoting the authentic partnership between the beat-making grill connoisseur and the legendary condiment company. —Danny Pomerantz 
• Emily Sly at Popsockets spoke about building a brand to maintain growth. She talked about the need to build the brand to extend beyond the successful product. She shared their brand purpose: Bringing radical positivity to our tech relationships. —Mat Zucker 
• In a session about brand-led growth and the C-Suite, Audible CFO Cynthia Chu adopts an investment mindset, viewing marketing as a strategic asset rather than a cost center. She recognizes the importance of building trust between marketing and finance by setting aside her functional hat and adopting an enterprise perspective. For measurement, she doesn’t let people use bottom-funnel metrics to measure upper-funnel activity. Find other ways to do it, such as a brand lift study. Some are hard, she knows. They have a category called “feels right” for channels like experiential, which can be tough to measure. Instacart’s Laura Jones got rid of having a separate brand budget and a separate performance budget and collapsed them together. —Mat Zucker 
• Joe McCambley spoke to Saatva’s in-house transformation and proved that brands can achieve greater efficiency and creative excellence by building internal teams deeply immersed in the product and customer. With the addition of a creative-only home studio and repositioning the brand for a re-defined target audience known as the “Research Junkies”, Saatva unlocked more focused, impactful storytelling.  —Clare Conroy 
• Tim Parr, inspired by our own David Aaker’s frameworks and stories, explained how a laser focus on the underserved needs of aging Gen Xers enabled the huge growth of Caddis. Building a brand around “aging awesome”, creating a new category of “eye appliances,” and making the product sexy, stylish, and cool has earned Caddis an enviable price premium. —Marisa Mulvihill 
• When Target rolled out its Holiday 2024 campaign, little did they know how the public would react. Target tells the story of what started out as an innocuous and updated Santa, who went incognito as Kris K, a Target employee, turning viewers on their heads when they all concluded that he was handsome, titling him “Hot Santa.” Target decided to roll with it, using their follow-up ads, which caused a viral internet sensation that appeared on primetime TV shows like The Tonight Show. It was a glimpse into a large company being caught off guard, bending to public response, and pivoting to a more humorous campaign theme versus the original holiday intention of family and the warmth of the season. —Kristi Yover 
• Not from a brand, but certainly an inspirational expert and best-selling author, Dr. Marcus Collins discussed making meaning through our culture. “We see the world because of who we are.”  Marketers don’t make meaning. We signal it.” —Mat Zucker  

Prophet is partnering with the ANA to help marketers elevate brand as a strategic growth and performance driver. We’ll be focusing on developing tools and insights to position brand as a measurable business asset, integrating brand and performance marketing, advancing brand ROI frameworks to support marketing intelligence and C-suite decision-making, breaking down silos to unify brand, media, and performance teams and enabling agile, journey-based strategies rooted in audience insights.