Brainz Magazine Exclusive Interview
Cindy has long been a leader and pioneer in marketing, advertising and branding.
While part of the big-conglomerate world, she took an entrepreneurial approach as one of the first to apply marketing principles from consumer-packaged goods to healthcare. This ultimately revealed an unmet need that inspired her to create and lead an independent operating unit within WPP that developed branding exclusively for prescription products. Additionally, as part of her WPP responsibilities, she became Global Practice Leader, a position created just for her. In that role, she successfully raised the standards of strategic thinking and delivery throughout Grey Healthcare Group offices on a global scale—in less than 24 months.
Seeking to disrupt the industry again, she joined forces with long-time copywriting partner Alan Rothenberg to envision and launch Glue Advertising in 2013 as a more strategic, innovative, nimble, and accountable communications company. The changes they’ve made to the agency model have been appreciated by clients and industry watchers alike. Glue has been recognized as a top 20 NYC agency since 2015 and a top digital agency on a global scale!
In 2019, Cindy got out in front of the latest trends, taking on the role of US consultant to Singapore-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) media company SQREEM. And now in partnership with SecureCHEK AI, she is on the cusp of revolutionizing how advertising collateral is developed--at the push of a button. This will save marketers millions of dollars and months and months of time that can be reallocated to reaching and influencing their target audiences sooner. Finally, as an adjunct to Glue, she is in the process of building YourMedEdge, a network of healthcare experts who bring consumers the latest trends and discoveries from the floor of major medical meetings in a language they can understand.
You’re an award-winning advertiser, CEO, entrepreneur, and Co-founder of Glue Advertising. Can you tell us more about your work and how you ended up where you are today?
My first job was at Clorox in San Francisco. The company brought in a class of entry-level brand assistants—16 in total—and taught us the real-world applications of positioning, messaging, pricing, and promotion, complementing what I had learned at Chicago Booth. We called the program a second MBA, but it was much more fun than that, since we were all young 20-somethings in a new city without any homework or exams. Every Thursday night we made our way to the Haight, danced all night, changed our clothes, and went to the office.
I was lucky enough to be assigned to a brand that was adding line extensions. I was able to partner with the technical team on new product development, which I enjoyed. Imagine being able to think outside of the box about how to satisfy consumer wants and desires with a very large budget and a lot of scientists behind you. It was a marketer’s dream come true and has made me passionate about innovation to this very day.
My early years on the client-side (with Clorox, as well as Johnson & Johnson and Revlon) gave me great insight into client needs, which drives me, and by extension my agency, to take a strategic, data-driven approach to communications—and always keep the creativity flowing. These fundamentals set us apart from other boutiques and even the big conglomerates, where more tactical junior staff run the show and much of what’s delivered feels expected and even stale. Evidence of our success is recognition as a top 20 NYC agency since 2015.
What kind of service does your business provide and what kind of audience do you target your business towards?
We are a full-service communications company that complements the skills we have internally with connections to other entrepreneurial organizations like ours. This allows us to offer a comprehensive set of capabilities through a single point of contact. Glue takes responsibility for market research, sales materials, print, digital, and broadcast, user experience/user interface design (UX/UI), and media relations, while our partners contribute media planning and buying, video/broadcast editing, and technology builds. To our clients, it feels seamless, and in every case, it is best in class.
Our client roster is just as diverse. My multi-faceted background and the breadth of my team allow us to effectively work across a wide variety of industries. Our current roster includes consumer-packaged goods, healthcare brands, financial services, medical associations, and business-to-business organizations. Sometimes I’m overseeing as many as ten products at once. And no two days are ever the same. It’s certainly not boring!
What is the most common question you get from your clients and how do you answer it?
We are often brought in when the marketing team is feeling under duress because the timeline is too short, the budget is too small, or the other agency has fallen down on the job. The most common question I get from clients in those moments is “can you do this?” And my answer is always “yes!” And I can answer that way without hesitation because I have a smart, passionate, nimble, can-do team behind me ready to make that yes a reality.
Do you have any current goals for your business?
My goals for the future are to continue to make Glue a fun and exciting place to work—where people feel they can learn, grow, be appreciated and be rewarded. With that foundation in place, we will be well-positioned to meet every business challenge. For our clients, I want to be true to our vision statement, which is to deliver a client-centric, results-oriented performance that other agencies, large or small, can't match. My job, right now and looking ahead, is to make sure we continually re-invent ourselves by seizing on and even anticipating trends.
To that end, we have a partnership with an artificial intelligence (AI) company that can segment customers with a high-degree of precision and then serve personalized content, almost at a 1-on-1 level. We have a division called Glue Cooperative, where marketing consultants can tap into Glue’s infrastructure to add advertising capabilities to their offerings—and share in the profits with us. And we are using proprietary technology to create spin-out tactics in minutes, by populating templates with approved visual elements and copy points at the push of a button.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
Before Glue, I was at a very large agency conglomerate. Over my last 10 years there, I led an organization as a managing partner and founded a company dedicated to branding healthcare products—something that I’d identified as a white-space opportunity. During that period, my mother, who had Alzheimer’s, fell and broke her hip. Handling that family crisis during a business trip in Switzerland became a defining moment for me. I was confronted by the obvious—that we don’t have our health forever and we certainly don’t live forever. I took stock about what I really wanted to do with my life and my career. Then I took a deep breath, quit my job, and decided to launch one more company. Only this time I did it for myself.
Is there someone or something special that you and your work are inspired by?
I am very active in the start-up community, mentoring young companies through Chicago Booth Angels Network, which I helped to found in New York, and through the Polsky Center at the University of Chicago, a world-renowned leader in elevating and funding entrepreneurship. I’m inspired by the founders I meet through my volunteer work for both of these groups. Most of them have found a significant unmet need and have envisioned a unique way to solve it. And they’re so committed, they’ve usually quit their day jobs to dedicate themselves full time to make their ideas a reality. While I volunteer my time to support them, they in turn give me tremendous insight into emerging trends, new technologies, and supply-chain opportunities that I was unaware of, and demonstrate a passion for success that is contagious.
What is the biggest career achievement you have achieved so far?
My biggest career achievement so far has been growing and developing Glue for almost 10 years. The company’s trajectory has not been a straight line. More than once we have been on the brink of going out of business because of factors outside of our control. In speaking with other entrepreneurs, I have found that they too have struggled in the early years. But when the unexpected strikes in a bad way, I have remained confident that we are just one phone call or email away from turning things around. I’m an optimistic person by nature. But more than that, I’m reassured by the fact that we are continuously nurturing a pipeline and by the knowledge that our reputation precedes us in a good way. And fortunately, I’ve been proven to be right.
What is the most important thing to keep in mind when branding yourself?
The most important thing to keep in mind when branding yourself--by far--is authenticity. Being authentic will enable you to build a sustainable personal brand, because it represents who you really are, and create a network of advocates who will endorse you because they have an unwavering trust that you will always deliver.
Have you found any advice particularly helpful or advantageous that you would like to pass on?
A close friend and former client of mine once told me to “always play the green.” This is obviously a golf metaphor, which is not my sport. But when applied to what I do every day, it reminds me that I need to take my best shot given the opportunity at hand and that I should avoid being distracted by what I can’t control. This simple phrase has become a powerful touchstone for how I approach client assignments, pitches, business, and even life in general.
And for founders just starting out, I would say never doubt yourself or underestimate your worth. You’ll likely have some sleepless nights worrying about “what-ifs”—we all do—but when you get up in the morning, put your game face on, and play the green!
