C-Suite Collaboration Is Strengthening Kickstarter’s Brand

The relationship between chief executives and chief marketers can be a famously tumultuous one, but not at Kickstarter.

Having made the leap from CMO to CEO himself, Everette Taylor has assembled a collaborative team to help him reinvigorate the crowdfunding platform, and less than a year in it’s driving results.

At the start of 2023, Taylor appointed ex-Twitter and Amazon exec Courtney Brown Warren to oversee all marketing functions and initiatives across brand creative, content, social, partnerships and more. He also hired Nikki Kria as head of communications.

This week, Warren joined Adweek’s chief experience officer, Jenny Rooney, on stage at Adweek X in Los Angeles to discuss building strong partnerships across the C-suite and how this can translate into commercial success.

Warren said the unusual setup of working with a CEO who has direct experience of the marketing remit has been a game-changer.

“We have a shorthand [language],” she said. “We can skip half of the upfront pleasantries to get right to the nuts and bolts of whatever we’re trying to do. [Taylor] just gets the need to do something out of the realm of what’s been done before. He understands taking chances and what the ROI on that could be.”

She and Taylor are both passionate about making sure that they have no “communication gaps,” which makes for a “stronger leadership team and organization overall.”

The collaboration has required a new perspective from both sides.

“I have to understand that he’s not just focused on marketing. Where sometimes I’m thinking: ‘I’m going to get X amount of spend to do that innovative thing,’ but then [Taylor] will say, ‘No that’s going towards product,’” said Warren.

“He does always give me a reason why [we can’t do something] though,” she continued. “And I’ve learned that I can’t expect everything just because he has a marketing background. However, in terms of thinking about how we’re going to innovate, we both want to do things that are going to make a splash and show up in unexpected ways.”