3 questions I wish I’d asked as a junior marketer: Pinterest CMO Andréa Mallard
To become a modern marketing leader, you must be prepared to ask yourself tough questions, says Pinterest’s CMO Andréa Mallard, not least are you prepared to tell – and listen to – the truth?
After starting her career as a journalist before postgraduate courses at the London School of Economics and Stanford University, Andréa Mallard decided to branch out into senior roles in strategic planning, design and marketing. She worked for brands including Ideo, Omada Health and Forbes, before joining Pinterest as CMO in late 2018.
At a time when the influence of social media is in the spotlight like never before, Mallard takes her role seriously.
“For most marketers, and certainly for the modern CMO, the depth of thinking that is required has become more layered and complex than ever, and you need to love that complexity,” she states.
“You need to want to engage with it like a student might engage with it. I would have loved to have alerted my younger self to the fact that it was going to be very important.”
Having worked in marketing for two decades, Mallard is conscious that her role and the wider business world have changed enormously. However, she believes that had she been granted a preview of those changes, it would have made her braver, giving her the permission to emphasise the importance of marketing more confidently earlier in her career.
