In data-obsessed marketing landscape, Hinge CMO Jackie Jantos talks brand building

The role with all of its changes can be challenging, but Jackie Jantos, CMO of Hinge dating app, says it’s a challenge she welcomes, pushing back on short-term metrics in favor of long-term brand building. 

“But ultimately, if your goal as a CMO is to build a sustainable long-term business, then you need to be shooting the arrow sort of 10 years out,” Jantos said on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast, “and better understanding how your product will navigate that and how your brand will stay relevant along that way.” 

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

The debated role of a CMO

CMOs take on many different shades within the organization where they’re based. For me, I think as a CMO, my role is to orient the organization, the strategy around long-term growth, and to be paying attention to where consumers and audiences and culture is going. Ultimately, the CMO and their team are the ones who are the closest to the audience themselves. They’re the most connected to creativity. They’re most connected to how culture is taking new shape and where audiences are going and where the world is evolving.

Changing tenure

For me, the CMO role, its naming, and also its remit in general, should be both a healthy mix of short term and sort of immediate goals and priorities. But importantly, it should also be a very healthy mix of long-term goals and long-term priorities. And one of the challenges with the short tenure is, can you see impact to a brand at global scale based on harder and longer out things to measure, like reputation in a year’s time? I don’t know you can. In some ways, if you really are focused on the long term, you tend to be perhaps the kind of CMO who wants to stick around for a period of time to see that through fruition.

Marketing social impact

The other reality is we know that Gen Z audiences feel more connected to brands that are doing right by the world and doing right by them. And they are more connected to brands that share their values. So if you’re a marketer focusing on a Gen Z audience, or a product developer focusing on a Gen Z audience, if you’re not also thinking about their whole lives and how you can better serve them and serve some of the most impactful realities that are shaping how they’re feeling and showing up every day, then you probably won’t be likely to play a really relevant role in their life.