Marketing with Meaning: A Conversation with John Kim @ University of Vermont
John Kim has built a career out of a skill most people simply treat as a personality trait: connecting people. Always known for providing career advice and facilitating professional connections, John is a long-time sustainability professional with extensive experience across strategy, marketing, and ESG reporting at 1Row, The Walt Disney Company, Herman Miller, and Lipman Hearne. He currently serves as Graduate Programs Career Advisor and Part-Time Lecturer at the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business, where he focuses on helping committed, passionate, and educated aspiring changemakers find roles where they can put their skills and passion to work.
In this Marketing with Meaning interview, John discusses the importance of humor in building connections with audiences, the risks of ads and integrations that feel inauthentic, and what he learned from how buffalo handle a crisis.
1. What’s one thing that’s surprisingly effective at engaging audiences right now, and one thing that brands think works but actually turns people off?
Genuine humor is still something that connects with audiences and sticks in their brains. But it’s a fine line between humor and cringe. I think something that turns people off is excessive product placement that feels more like an ad than part of the story. It can be done subtly and effectively but if it comes across as a blatant product endorsement outside of the context of the story, it can feel off.
2. Is cultural relevance more about a brand staying true to its own voice and values, or aligning with its audience’s? Where do brands most often get that balance wrong?
Cultural relevance is about a brand staying true to its own voice and values. Consistency is what builds trust in a brand. If a brand sways to whatever way the (cultural) wind blows, I believe it will be difficult for that brand to become a trusted brand for the long-term.
3. Can you share a campaign or story that’s really stuck with you, something that’s shaped how you lead or think about your work?
I recently had the pleasure and honor of having Jim Osgood, former CEO of companies including Kleen Kanteen, Cascade Designs, and Turtle Fur, come speak to my Sustainable Innovation MBA (SI-MBA) students. He asked if we knew about the migration patterns of buffalo, and the class went silent. He said that buffalo instinctively know to run headfirst into an oncoming storm rather than hunkering down or avoiding it – because that’s the quickest way to get out of it. The idea that having resilience and courage to go headfirst into challenging times is often the most effective way to get through them really stuck with me.
4. How can brands talk about purpose or sustainability in ways that feel real, not performative?
People are generally skeptical of a company’s claims, and see them as greenwashing at worst and as boastful at best. The most effective way to do it is for brands to behave and operate in ways that align with their values/purpose and have others speak about them on their behalf.
5. What’s one technology that communicators believe is the future of marketing but that you think is actually a dead end?
AI generated ads (images, videos)...it may improve but for now, I think consumers can tell when images and videos are created with AI and it’s a major turn-off.
6. What skill do you wish you’d developed 10 years ago that would have accelerated your career or made you a more effective communicator?
The art of storytelling; for most of my career I’ve heard about the need to be a ‘storyteller’ but I’ve never really been taught what that entails. It wasn’t until I saw former Disney Animation and Dreamworks executive Kristina Reed speak at a See Change conference that I truly understood the actual method they used to tell and create memorable stories. That understanding and perspective would’ve been really helpful earlier in my career.
7. When you’re not thinking about marketing or communications, what inspires your creativity or keeps you grounded?
Playing ice hockey. I started playing as an adult and it’s been an incredibly fun yet humbling journey. It’s something I didn’t have a baseline to compare to (I had never played when I was younger) so it’s been an experience where I just have a complete beginner's mindset. Each time I play, I’m learning and improving, plateauing, and improving, over time...and the more I improve the more fun it becomes. It’s certainly frustrating at times but without fail, every time I play I know I had a lot of fun, got great exercise, and have, perhaps, made small incremental improvements.