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Tifenn Dano Kwan is CMO at Amplitude, a digital analytics platform. Earlier in her career, she served as CMO at companies including Dropbox and Collibra.
What’s your favorite ad campaign? As a marketer, my favorite ads are the ones that elicit true emotion—whether that is laughter, tears, or inspiration. A recent ad I loved was the Dunkin’ ad at the Super Bowl this year with Ben Affleck. It centered on a genuine element of surprise and was incredibly authentic to the brand. Another one I love is the 2019 Nike “Dream Crazy” ad featuring Colin Kaepernick. It resonated with so many viewers, and its message of daring to be different was so simple yet powerful.
Favorite project you’ve worked on? Within my first few weeks joining SAP Ariba, I was responsible for launching 12 innovations on stage at their global user conference, SAP Ariba Live, and we had less than two months to plan. My responsibility was a challenge I’ve come to love—getting the marketing and product teams to work together as one integrated team. One of my greatest strengths lies in creating order and structure where it doesn’t yet exist, and that is exactly what this project required of me. At the end of the day, we successfully launched all 12 innovations, creating more than 130 marketing assets in the process and, as a result, increasing pipeline by 30% year over year.
One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile? I have three dogs at home with my wife, and I love spending time with them. I have two mini long-haired dachshunds and a southeast Asian village dog we rescued. I often say as a marketer, it can feel like my job is herding cats, and at home, I transition to herding the dogs.
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What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I am a firm believer in the power of product-led growth. PLG is the key to unlocking customer lifetime value, especially today when all eyes are on retention and profitability.
What will happen in the next five to 10 years is the automation of functions due to the power of AI and machine learning. It will affect product and marketing teams and the temptation will be high to replace native functions with algorithms. For example, it may seem easy to send all notifications through an AI-powered system without the need for a communications team’s oversight. But it doesn’t mean this should apply to every aspect of that team’s role. We need to contextualize the usage of AI for marketing purposes and continue to bring a human perspective to the work we do. There is a time and place for AI and ML to automate tasks, but there is also a time and place to have the heart and soul of humans within our work.
What’s one marketing-related podcast, social account, or series you’d recommend? I would recommend following Jon Miller, the former CMO at Demandbase, on X and LinkedIn. He is a brilliant mind and an expert on account-based marketing, go-to-market strategy, and all things digital.