Marketing Together

Shana & Ana
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Marketing Together is the podcast for marketers who want to do great work and get recognized for it. Co-hosted by Ana Vazquez (product marketing) and Shana Thomas (brand & lifecycle marketing), we break down the real strategies behind product marketing, brand building, CRM, and career growth. Each episode digs into a brand, campaign, or marketing trend with real data, honest hot takes, and actionable takeaways you can apply immediately. From go-to-market strategy and positioning to building your personal brand and navigating the industry with confidence, we cover the topics ambitious marketers actually talk about (just usually not out loud). New episodes drop weekly during our seasons. Follow so you don't miss one.

Episodes

  1. Aug 26

    Brand Inflammation: Why New Balance Spent 15 Years Dying

    Some people are spending billions trying to live to 120. In ths Marketing together podcast we borrow their playbook — VO2 max, inflammation, hormesis — and map it onto brand strategy. Three principles: measure real biomarkers instead of vanity metrics, treat inconsistency as the inflammation that quietly erodes trust, and use adversity to get clearer instead of reactive. Then a full case study on New Balance: a 15-year sales decline, a brand that became a punchline, a CMO who flipped 70% of the budget from activation to brand building, and $9.2B in 2025 sales. A framework for building something that compounds instead of decays.

  2. Aug 20

    Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso: How Two Best Friends Turned Chaos Into a Marketing Masterclass

    Two guys from Buenos Aires met at age six, formed a prog-rock band as teenagers, pivoted to trap, went viral on NPR's Tiny Desk, made an album mocking the industry they'd just broken into, won five Latin Grammys with it, then burned those Grammys on camera. So is Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso's chaos authentic, or the most sophisticated brand narrative in music right now? In this episode of Marketing Together, hosts Ana Vazquez (product marketing) and Shana Thomas (brand marketing) unpack the rise of Argentina's strangest export: the rock nacional roots that explain everything, the 50-million-view Tiny Desk set nobody planned, the PAPOTA short film that preemptively mocked selling out before critics could, and the fictional Sting-run wellness center that framed their comeback album. We dig into serialized storytelling as a career strategy, whether you can critique the machine while winning its trophies, what happens when the burnout in your satire becomes real, and why aggressively Argentine turned out to be the most global move they could have made.

  3. Aug 12

    The Drop Model: How Crumbl Engineered Demand

    Crumbl's app outranks Domino's, Taco Bell, and Chipotle in the Apple App Store. They hit a billion dollars in annual revenue by late 2024. And they did it by selling cookies that are only available for seven days at a time.  In this episode of Marketing Together, hosts Shana Thomas and Ana Vazquez break down how a bakery founded in 2017 by two cousins in Logan, Utah, accidentally discovered that scarcity beats availability, and then engineered it into a full demand-generation machine. What started as an operational workaround (they simply couldn't bake enough flavors) became a weekly rotating menu, a Sunday reveal ritual, and a drop model borrowed straight from sneaker culture instead of the restaurant industry. We get into the mechanics behind the six-flavor rotation, the pink box that turned unboxing into free organic marketing, the 30-plus person social team, and 9.6 million TikTok following built on #CrumblReview, and why the app, not the viral moment, is where the real business lives. We also dig into where the model gets complicated: algorithm dependency, copycat brands, and the open question of whether Crumbl's 2023 rebrand beyond cookies dilutes the very specificity that built the brand in the first place.  Because great marketing is never done alone.

  4. Aug 5

    Spotify Wrapped: The Campaign That Sells Itself

    Every December, hundreds of millions of people voluntarily do Spotify's marketing for it, no ads, no incentive, just screenshots and story shares. In 2025 alone, Wrapped drove 500 million shares and 200 million engaged users in the first 24 hours. In this episode of Marketing Together, hosts Shana Thomas and Ana Vazquez use Wrapped as a case study for one of the most overlooked distinctions in product marketing: internal PMM versus external PMM. The polished, swipeable cards you see every year are just the visible layer. Underneath is a year-round internal machine, cross-functional alignment across data science, engineering, legal, and brand, brutal debates over data methodology, and a 2024 backlash that forced Spotify to rebuild trust before shipping 2025's comeback. We break down what actually makes Wrapped work (the 2019 Stories-format pivot, the yearly novelty hook, the five different Wrapped editions for listeners, artists, songwriters, podcasters, and advertisers), what internal PMM really looks like day to day, and seven actionable steps for building internal alignment, no matter how small your team is.  Because great marketing is never done alone.

  5. Jul 29

    Liquid Death: How Water Became a Personality

    How does a company sell canned water for $2 more than a bottle, and get people to want to pay it? In this episode of Marketing Together, we break down the Liquid Death marketing strategy and how the brand turned a category everyone assumed was boring into one of the most talked-about consumer brands in the world. We dig into Liquid Death's branding playbook: the heavy metal aesthetic, the shock-value copywriting, the meme-driven social strategy, and how they built a cult following without traditional advertising. You'll learn what other brands — especially in "boring" categories — can steal from their approach to product differentiation, brand voice, and organic content. If you've ever wondered how to make an unremarkable product impossible to ignore, this episode is your playbook.

  6. Jul 22

    Backstreet Boys vs. NSYNC: The Brand Rivalry One Man Engineered

    In this episode of Marketing Together, hosts Shana Thomas and Ana Vazquez trace how one manager, Lou Pearlman, built Backstreet Boys and NSYNC as competing products out of the same factory, in the same city, chasing the same audience, on purpose. We go back through the lineage from The Beatles to New Kids on the Block's $400 million merch empire, into TRL's fan-fueled urgency that shut down Times Square, and break down how personality-based fandom, manufactured rivalry, and emotional memory became a full brand playbook. We also get into what the machine got right (distinct personalities, omnichannel presence before anyone called it that, songs that still hold up 25 years later) and what it got catastrophically wrong for the artists themselves, including Pearlman's fraud conviction and the ownership structure that left the talent with almost nothing.  Because great marketing is never done alone.

  7. Jul 15

    Green Noise: Why Your Sustainability Story Isn't Landing.

    Sustainability marketing has a trust problem. Consumers say they're willing to pay more for sustainable products, yet trust in brand sustainability claims is at an all-time low. In this episode, Shana and Ana break down the difference between greenwashing and green marketing, why "conscious" branding language stopped working, and what it actually takes to close the credibility gap between what brands claim and what they deliver. We cover real greenwashing case studies, including H&M's Conscious Collection lawsuit, Patagonia's own admission that "nothing we do is sustainable," and Nudie Jeans' repair program with no fine print. These examples show the difference between sustainability as a marketing campaign and sustainability as a business model. You'll walk away with three practical strategies for sustainability messaging that build trust instead of triggering skepticism: auditing before advertising, choosing specificity over sentiment, and making the customer the hero of your brand story. In this episode: Why 91% of consumers believe at least some brands are greenwashing, according to Capgemini researchThe H&M greenwashing lawsuit that was legally won but culturally lostWhat Nudie Jeans does differently in sustainable fashion marketing, and why it worksHow the StoryBrand framework applies to sustainability marketingShana's hot take on which legacy brands were never built to be sustainable in the first placeBecause great marketing is never done alone.

  8. Jul 7

    Celebrity Philanthropy or Brand Strategy? Breaking Down I Love You

    On his 21st birthday, Jaden Smith parked a food truck on Skid Row and started handing out free vegan meals. Six years later, he's still doing it. So is I Love You genuine philanthropy, or a masterclass in brand strategy? In this episode of Marketing Together, hosts Shana Thomas (brand marketing) and Ana Vazquez (product marketing) break down Jaden Smith's I Love You Restaurant: the nonprofit-meets-fashion-brand model, its "pay-it-forward" funding structure, and how it stacks up against Jon Bon Jovi's JBJ Soul Kitchen and Panera's failed pay-what-you-can experiment. We dig into the branding genius behind the name "I Love You," the transparency gaps in the model, the tension between an $89 merch line and a mission rooted in Skid Row, and whether six years of pop-ups adds up to real, scalable impact, or just really good storytelling.

  • 8 Episodes

About

Marketing Together is the podcast for marketers who want to do great work and get recognized for it. Co-hosted by Ana Vazquez (product marketing) and Shana Thomas (brand & lifecycle marketing), we break down the real strategies behind product marketing, brand building, CRM, and career growth. Each episode digs into a brand, campaign, or marketing trend with real data, honest hot takes, and actionable takeaways you can apply immediately. From go-to-market strategy and positioning to building your personal brand and navigating the industry with confidence, we cover the topics ambitious marketers actually talk about (just usually not out loud). New episodes drop weekly during our seasons. Follow so you don't miss one.

Information

  • Creator
    Shana & Ana
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Marketing Together
  • Show Website
    Marketing Together