Future of Consumer Marketing

In this episode of The Future of Marketing, host Andres Figueira speaks with Matthew Cancino, founder of Candid Collective, a video content agency specializing in hyperlocal content strategy for franchise brands and multi-location businesses. Over two years, Candid Collective has grown to serve 20+ monthly retainer clients by solving a distribution problem most national brands quietly struggle with: how do you make a national brand feel local at scale when your entire creative team is in one city?
Topics Discussed:
Why hyperlocal content strategy is the missing layer in most franchise marketing stacks
Building a distributed creative network instead of a traditional agency model
Rebranding from Candid Socials to Candid Collective as a talent attraction strategy
Using AI for transcript-based content repurposing and data analysis in video production
The tradeoffs of building a business while employed before going all-in

In this episode of The Future of Marketing, host Andres Figueira speaks with Katerina Miras, VP of Marketing at Avive Solutions, a public safety technology company reimagining emergency cardiac response. With survivability rates from sudden cardiac arrest unchanged for decades despite hundreds of thousands of AEDs already in the market, Avive diagnosed the real problem as connectivity - not devices. Katerina walks through how a sub-100-person team is executing a sophisticated B2G/B2B marketing playbook: building community ownership programs, deploying champion-led trust architectures, and using storytelling at scale to move institutions that historically resist change.
Topics Discussed:
Repositioning from medtech to public safety technology and why the category shift changed everything
Building institutional trust in a market that defaults to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
Designing community programs that become the customer's own marketing initiative
Using champions and ambassadors to create FOMO-driven adoption across counties and municipalities
Why storytelling is strategy - and how to operationalize it
Narrowing your ICP to drive faster, deeper adoption

In this episode of The Future of Consumer Marketing, host Andres Figueira interviews David Lee, Co-founder and CEO of Nex. Nex has built Next Playground, an active play system that's transforming how families engage with screen time by turning living rooms into interactive fitness and gaming experiences. Starting as a basketball training app called Home Court that went viral during the pandemic, the company pivoted to create a motion-tracking camera system that has now sold 350,000 units and secured placement in over 5,000 retail locations. Through strategic retail partnerships, mission-driven product development, and a subscription model that funds continuous innovation, Nex is carving out a new category between traditional gaming consoles and fitness equipment.
Topics Discussed:
Pivoting from a basketball training app to a family-focused hardware platform based on viral pandemic trends
Scaling from 5,000 units to forecasted 500,000 units through retail partnerships
Building trust for a $249 considered purchase through omnichannel marketing
Implementing in-store demos as a primary conversion driver in 4,000+ retail locations
Using subscription models (quarterly/annual only) to fund continuous game development and maintain customer relationships
Leveraging major IP partnerships (Barbie, Kung Fu Panda, Bluey) to expand content library
Operating a distributed team of 110+ people across product, hardware, and game development

In this episode of The Future of Marketing, host Andres interviews Jazmyn Williams, Vice President of Brand at The Honey Pot Company — the first brand to span both sides of the feminine care aisle, offering plant-derived period care and vaginal wellness products. With just a 20-person marketing team and roughly 70 employees total, Honey Pot has scaled to over 36,000 retail doors across the US while building one of the most culturally resonant brands in a category that has historically lived in the shadows. Jazmyn unpacks how a category defined by stigma, legacy purchasing habits, and low visibility requires a fundamentally different marketing playbook — and how Honey Pot is rewriting it.
Topics Discussed:
Marketing a product that lives "in the dark" — under bathroom counters and in purse pockets
Breaking generational brand loyalty in a category dominated by habit
Using experiential sampling to drive mass awareness at scale
Building a digital-first brand in a brick-and-mortar dominated category
Leveraging Gen Z to reverse-sell into older demographics
Using AI for faster consumer insight synthesis without a large research team
Crossing the feminine care aisle as a portfolio expansion strategy

In this episode of The Future of Marketing, host Andres Figueira speaks with Ben Hudson, Brand Marketing & Business Development Consultant at Hudson or Hudson, a brand marketing consultancy that has shaped some of the most culturally resonant consumer brands of the past two decades. From building live activations for Panasonic at NASCAR races to architecting Brooklyn Brewery's global expansion, Ben has developed a sharp perspective on what it actually takes to earn consumer trust in an era of AI saturation, screen fatigue, and institutional distrust. The conversation centers on why experiential marketing is becoming the most defensible channel in a brand's arsenal — and how smart brands are doubling down on human connection as their core growth strategy.
Topics Discussed:
Why experiential marketing is experiencing its most significant renaissance yet
The AI trust crisis and its concrete impact on brand perception
Building brand worlds versus building brand awareness
How to add genuine value in an attention-scarce environment
The analog counterculture trend and what it means for consumer behavior
Using AI strategically without triggering consumer skepticism

In this episode of The Future of Consumer Marketing: Masterclass Edition, host Andres Figueira speaks with Todd Anthony, founder of Pinwheel Agency, a senior-only creative shop built as a deliberate counterpoint to the bloated big-agency model. After decades inside holding companies and client-side roles at Yahoo and CBS, Todd built Pinwheel around a simple but contrarian thesis: strip out the juniors, kill the bait-and-switch, and let expensive talent run fast without supervision. Eleven years in, clients like Stripe and Experian have stayed for five to ten years — and the agency is deliberately staying small to keep it that way.
Topics Discussed:
Why the traditional agency staffing model is broken — and how to exploit that gap
Building a senior-only creative team and what that actually means operationally
How to use custom brand voice GPTs across large organizations
Why AI is a pattern-repeating machine, not a pattern-breaking one — and why that matters for marketing
Niching down into complexity: marketing SaaS and enterprise products with compliance constraints
How to scale a creative agency 20% annually without losing quality control

In this episode of The Future of Marketing, host Andres Figueira interviews Pierre Miazga, Studio Marketing and Communications Director at Ubisoft Bordeaux. Pierre reveals how AAA game marketing has evolved from traditional campaign-based promotion to embedded development marketing - where marketers function as "enablers" rather than sellers, working directly with creative teams from concept phase through launch. With Assassin's Creed Mirage as a case study, Pierre unpacks how Ubisoft Bordeaux navigated the challenge of marketing a legacy title to hardcore fans in a market releasing 52 games per day, while maintaining creative risk-taking and authentic player relationships. His approach demonstrates how entertainment marketing can balance player expectations with creative surprise in an increasingly fragmented and competitive landscape.
Topics Discussed:
Embedded marketing in game development vs. traditional go-to-market campaigns
Marketing as "enabler" in creative development processes
Navigating the saturated gaming market (20,000 Steam releases annually)
Competing for player time, not just against other games
Building games "from fans to fans" through direct player involvement
Balancing player expectations with creative surprise
The 3-4 year game development cycle and when marketing enters
Cross-functional collaboration between marketing, creative, artistic, and technical teams
Positioning vs. advertising in game development
Managing tone consistency across multi-year development cycles

In this episode of The Future of Consumer Marketing: Masterclass Edition, host Andres Figueira interviews Abdo Mazloum, Founder & CEO of Webtmize, a Montreal-based performance marketing agency. While Webtimize operates in the B2B space, Abdo shares critical insights about modern digital marketing infrastructure, the emerging shift from Search Engine Optimization to Answer Engine Optimization, and data-driven campaign methodology that consumer marketers can apply to their own brands. From scaling an agency from a spare bedroom to 25 people and 50 clients, Abdo reveals how performance marketers are adapting to AI-powered discovery, building measurement frameworks that prove ROI, and leveraging technology to do more with less in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
Topics Discussed:
Building performance marketing infrastructure from first principles
Transitioning from traditional media to digital with measurable A/B testing frameworks
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) as the evolution of SEO for AI-powered search
Developing data-first marketing philosophies for campaign optimization
Scaling agency operations while maintaining quality and client selection criteria
Leveraging AI and LLMs for campaign management and optimization

In this episode of The Future of Consumer Marketing: Masterclass Edition, host Andres Figueira interviews Nadim Kuttab, CEO and Co-Founder of Xevio, a performance-based native advertising agency that's rewriting the rules of agency economics. In just three years, Xevio has grown to nearly $100 million in annual ad spend with a 50-person team across Europe, built on a radical premise: no retainers, no locked contracts, and pure performance-based fees. Operating in the relatively unknown native advertising space, Xevio has carved out a defensible niche by becoming best-in-class at a channel most marketers overlook. Through aggressive selectivity (rejecting 9 out of 10 client requests), transparent performance metrics, and heavy investment in AI infrastructure, they've built a model where both client churn and employee churn are remarkably low in an industry notorious for both.
Topics Discussed:
Building a performance-only agency model with no retainers or minimum commitments
Scaling native advertising campaigns to mid-six figures monthly spend
Operating with six co-founders and the dynamics of a large founding team
Creating pod-based team structures for specialized client management
Investing six figures per semester into proprietary AI tooling for campaign automation
Maintaining sub-10% client acceptance rates through rigorous qualification
Building company culture in a hybrid-remote European team with 50% office presence
Providing premium employee benefits (daily meals, unlimited transit, gym memberships) to minimize churn
Navigating the evolution of native advertising beyond traditional below-the-fold inventory
Managing geographic market selection based on native inventory availability

In this episode of The Future of Consumer Marketing: Masterclass Edition, host Andres Figueira interviews Jake Kurtz, CEO and Founder of Brick Media Group. Brick Media has evolved from a general digital marketing agency into a specialized social media powerhouse that helps established brands modernize their online presence through comprehensive social media management. Starting as a side hustle in 2018, Jake built Brick Media by recognizing a critical shift in the marketing landscape: the emergence of short-form video and the algorithmic revolution sparked by TikTok. By 2020, he made the bold decision to cut all services except social media, positioning Brick Media as Tampa Bay's go-to social media agency. Today, the company operates with 21 full-time W2 employees, managing everything from strategy to content creation to analytics for established businesses that need to add "gasoline to an existing flame" rather than starting from scratch.
Topics Discussed:
Pivoting from full-service digital marketing to social media specialization
The algorithmic shift caused by TikTok and short-form video dominance
Building a 21-person in-house team without outsourcing
Analyzing supply and demand dynamics of attention across platforms
The evolution from volume-based to clarity-focused content strategies
Strategic platform selection based on audience attention patterns
Leveraging AI for efficiency without replacing human judgment