CMO Spotlight | Gabie Boko - NetApp

The CMO Spotlight offers an inside look into the minds and journeys of high-performing marketing leaders.

Setup CEO + Founder, Joe Koufman, sat down with Gabie Boko, the Chief Marketing Officer for NetApp, to talk about staying consumer focused, being bold, and loving the LEGO brand. 

“I always try to look at the failures versus the successes because I actually learn the most from them, in terms of how to lead, how to measure, and what not to do the next time.”

Watch + Read the Recap Below

Q1 | What advice would you share with marketers?

“Think about something you’re good at and use that as the core.”

Boko also emphasized that a customer focus is the lens by which you’re able to succeed. “I’ve kept that focus on somehow bringing customer success and customer improvement. Customers can drive and dictate so many different things. So I’ve paralleled that with how to innovate.”

Additionally, she always asks, “What do the customers need? What can I help them do? And how do I connect that back to innovation?” She further explained that it is not about titles, but what values you bring. “For me, it was making customers successful and having a mindset around innovation. So I would a thousand percent lean in on that. That’s going to shape you and help you make great decisions in what you want out of your career and how you define success.”

Q2 | What is your superpower?

“My superpower is being bold and taking risks.”

Boko likes to get ahead and “look around the corner.” She has found, while that makes her bold, sometimes it can lead to her outpacing her team. “You have to pull yourself back and say, ‘If this is a great idea, how do you build to it?’”

So she is a bold risk-taker, but with balance and patience that allows others to agree, build together, and get on the same page. “I always have to learn how to balance.” 

Q3 | What values are important to you?

Honesty, openness, flexibility, and adaptability are important values to Boko. She admits that she is not a perfect person or leader, but values when people own their mistakes and work together to move forward. She shares, “Ultimately, what I expect out of people who work for me is that ability to assess, own, and then move on and build. That is the key. I think that creates a level of empathy with your teams, a level of honesty with execs, and hopefully it keeps you centered on what you’re trying to drive, which marketing’s job is to make a market. You can’t do that if you don’t have that lens through which you’re looking at it.”

She also shared that marketing is a hard place in an organization. “I also think that marketing is one of the most unforgiving—or forgiving—areas inside a company. The goal is for marketing to be at the center of risk and at the center of direction. You can’t beat yourself up over bad decisions. You have to learn from them and move on. Your job is not to out-argue the idea. Your job is to figure out the impact that it’s going to have. That makes you a really great partner, and that’s a really hard thing to do for marketers. I think resiliency is critical.”

Q4 | What brand do you admire?

Boko admires LEGO and Harley-Davidson because both of them are consistent and community-oriented. With LEGO, “they are so maniacal about their brand,” so they retain their value and invite people in to just be themselves. 

She shared, “Harley-Davidson was doing community and lifestyle way long before those were even interesting words. That gives you a sense of what I value in brands: stick to your values, stick to who you are, and be really good at it so that everybody wants you. And then how are you creating a community?” 

Since Boko’s strength is being consumer-focused, thinking about how consumers are a part of a brand is important to her. 

Q5 | Tell us about an impactful campaign.

“The biggest flop I’ve ever had comes from having hubris as a young marketer, and that has tainted how I work ever since. That is hubris in how you think about the decisions that you make.”

Boko shared about how she ran the 800 numbers for catalogs and put one into print that wasn’t even on the bank. “That demonstrated to me the importance of checking all the details. Just because you do it doesn’t make it right. You have to be willing to pivot and go and address and get certain things back if you do it wrong.”

She has an optimistic outlook when it comes to making mistakes and turning them into learning opportunities. “All campaigns, in terms of success, have to be looked at through the lens of what went right and what went wrong. Everything that I’ve done has taught me something. I always try to look at the failures versus the successes because I actually learn the most from them, in terms of how to lead, how to measure, and what not to do the next time. There are probably many other things that went wrong-ish, good-ish in my career, but it’s less about me and more about the people that I work with. I’ll put them as being successful and me as taking the learnings.”

She added that her success as a leader is never because of herself, but because of her team. “It’s got to be the people who did it, because at the end of the day, I’m just signing checks.”

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For more marketing leadership advice and insights into the mindset of marketing executives in various industries, be sure to watch the full interview with Gabie Boko, and keep an eye out for more thought leadership from our CMO Spotlights.

If you know an impactful marketing leader who would be a good candidate for the #CMOSpotlight series, nominate them here.

Watch the Full Interview to the right.