Imagine this: you've spent months ideating, planning, and crafting the perfect marketing campaign. The creative is stunning, the messaging is on point, and the target audience has been meticulously defined. But as the launch date approaches, things start to wobble. A key department is out of sync, a crucial piece of Technology isn't ready, or the timeline starts to slip. We've all been there – standing on the precipice of what could be a game-changing launch, only to watch it teeter on the brink of failure.

The truth is, no matter how brilliant your marketing idea is, it will never see the light of day without the support of a well-oiled machine behind it. And that machine? It’s built on Relationships.

So I loved this lesson in a recent podcast guest application – ‘Building healthy cross-functional relationships is the key to any successful marketing launch.’

To hear the lessons behind that story, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I sat down Nicole Sumner, Brand Director, Ollie Pets [https://www.myollie.com/].

Ollie has delivered more than 200 million meals, and Sumner leads a team of nine marketers at Ollie.

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

• Building healthy cross-functional relationships is the key to any successful marketing launch
• Sometimes you must let go of a creative idea to ensure you have the opportunity to stand up for something you really believe in later
• If you don’t have contagious conviction in your idea, you can’t expect anyone else to be excited about it. 
• Act like you already have the job title you want
• It’s OK if you’ve never done something before, say yes and figure it out
• You can’t be upset over an opportunity that you don’t raise your hand for

Discussed in this episode

Brand value prop refinement [FREE interactive tool] –After listening to this episode, you may be inspired to brainstorm on your brand a bit. I can’t be there with you, but I gave custom instructions telling MeclabsAI how to help you. Just click here to try out this shared chat [https://meclabsai.com/share/IxnQg61yGo65oY6]. It’s FREE to try, you don’t even have to register to get started (from MarketingSherpa’s parent organization, MeclabsAI).

Enterprise Solutions Marketing: You can make a big career, and still stay human (podcast episode #99)

Creative UX/UI For Impactful Marketing: Think, build, and scale like a product owner (podcast episode #102)

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This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages [https://meclabs.com/course/] free digital marketing course.

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Daniel Burstein Podcaster

Daniel Burstein is the Senior Director of Content and Marketing at MarketingSherpa and the host of the ‘How I Made It In Marketing’ podcast, where he talks to marketing leaders about the lessons learned through their careers.

He also reports on successful marketing campaigns and industry data in MarketingSherpa articles, and helps facilitate the AI Guild from MarketingSherpa's parent organization, MECLABS Institute.

Daniel has 23 years of experience in copywriting, content writing, interviewing, speaking, business journalism, content marketing, sales enablement, and field marketing communications.