Coworking with Birk Cooper

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Birk Cooper is CMO of rewards platform Fetch. Before joining Fetch, he was an account lead at McCann Worldgroup, where he worked on the General Mills account.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I’ve always admired the Airbnb team and what they’ve accomplished. I look forward to their summer release campaign every year because it’s what app marketing should be about: the product. They do a really good job talking about their app, why they did certain things, why you should care, and coordinating a massive amount of work between product and marketing that generates a lot of buzz. Then they’ve wrapped that tentpole product feature-based campaign with their brand-building “categories” campaign, which builds on the overall perception of Airbnb. They must be doing something right, as they were just included in the S&P 500.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile? Each year, I like to do at least one very hard thing. It could be skiing the 50km Birkebeiner cross-country ski race, climbing a mountain, or learning Chopin’s Ballade No.1 (I’ve only done the first). For me, there’s something about an annual tough physical feat that gives you a different appreciation for preparation, discipline, mental toughness, and—most importantly—learning to find joy in the process. Plus, some of my greatest mental clarity to solve problems comes during those long runs.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I have the same answer for both. I think the most important marketing trend right now is the loss of signal that has occurred on the heels of the privacy changes and degradation of cookies for targeting and tracking. I’m optimistic because it forces two things: 1) innovation—companies need to find new ways to reach, speak to, and understand what their customers are doing. Limitations force innovation, and innovation is good. And 2) a culling of companies with no real competitive advantage. It may sound harsh, but it’s ultimately good for the economy and for people when weak companies are removed and new entrants are forced to create real differentiation to emerge.

What’s one marketing-related podcast, social account, or series you’d recommend? I’m a big fan of the weekly newsletter Grow.co. There’s so much great content out there to digest—having a curated list of articles and topics in my inbox once a week is a gift. They do a fantastic job pulling in technical and high-level content for the things that matter.