Personal branding lessons from marketing exec and future RHOBH star Bozoma Saint John
+our favorite digital tools and the cultural moments and news that caught our attention this week
quick summary ⚡️
How Bozoma Saint John prioritizes her personal brand as much as the brands she works for
LinkedIn’s corporate speak translations, Hailey Bieber’s smoothie sensation and more in the cultural moments and news that caught our attention this week
Go-to digital tools if you need a helping hand
The art of self forgiveness
Bozoma Saint John and the case for building a personal brand as an executive
Kait Richmond is a writer, producer and contributor to the M.T. Deco Blog
You probably know the name Bozoma Saint John.
If you don’t, commit it to memory now. Bozoma - or Boz, as she’s often called - is a superstar marketing executive who has made waves in the business world for simply being herself. And with the news that she is the newest cast member of Bravo’s the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”, she’s on the verge of reaching new heights of stardom.
As a marketing expert, there’s plenty we can learn from Bozoma, but what stands out is her ability to market herself. Throughout her high-level roles at Apple, Uber and Netflix, and now as an author and entrepreneur, she prioritized her personal brand as much as the brands she works for. In a world where a lot of executives struggle to develop their own voices – because they don’t have time, or feel embarrassed, or are stifled by their companies – Bozoma has proven that authenticity pays off.
She moved from Ghana to Colorado when she was 12 years old, and studied pre-med in college. Worried that being a doctor wasn’t her passion, she took a gap year in New York before she was set to go to med school. She took a job answering phones for Spike Lee’s ad agency, and fell in love with marketing and advertising.
From there she went to PepsiCo, where she worked on major campaigns with celebrities like Beyonce and Eminem. Then came a stint at Apple; it was 2016 when she walked on stage at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference to talk about new music services and caught the attention of the Internet. [Could you ask for a better headline than “Bozoma Saint John Was Badass Long Before Apple”?]
Then there was Uber, Endeavor and Netflix, where she held c-suite positions and built her public persona at the same time. She’s received a ton of recognition over the years, including being inducted into the American Marketing Association Hall of Fame in 2022 and named the #1 Most Influential CMO in the world by Forbes. Bozoma left Netflix in 2023 - and reports followed that her departure was because she was too focused on her personal brand.
Don’t let that scare you, though, because Bozoma is doing just fine. Around that same time, she published her memoir, and today is running The Badass Workshop and working closely to support her home country of Ghana. Plus she’s a single mom to her daughter Lael. And later this year she’ll make her debut on one of Bravo’s most popular shows.
How exactly does she do it? Her strategy seems to have three buckets: social media, speaking opportunities and ownable projects. We’ll focus on her social media, but it’s worth noting that the other two feed her accounts. Bozoma is getting content out of everything she does.
She favors the Meta platforms, being most active on Instagram and cross-posting that content to her Facebook, as well as posting occasional Threads (she recently said she was going to use the platform more after a meeting with Meta). She’s also a Top Voice on LinkedIn, where she has 123,000 followers, but posts more infrequently. Her accounts on Twitter and TikTok have been dormant for awhile, but it’s worth visiting her TikTok because there’s a ton of great business advice there.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Bozoma is a must-follow in our book. You’ll learn about building a personal brand but also get so many gems about business and life. After you do follow her, here are a few things to keep an eye on when you see her in your feed:
The way she speaks in her own voice: Let’s be honest, Bozoma probably has help with social media, as in someone to take photos and video, maybe even to post. If that same person is writing her captions, they are crushing it. Every post feels undeniably Bozoma, whether it’s the use of capital letters or her chosen hashtags.
How she keeps up with trends: Bozoma has said that when she moved to Colorado from Ghana, she had a hard time making friends, so she needed to find something to talk about with her classmates. That was when she started keeping up with pop culture, and she fell in love. That comes through on social media when she uses Instagram Stories to comment on a trending moment or makes a Reel with a popular sound. In marketing, relevance is everything.
When she gets personal: Bozoma attributes her confidence to what she’s been through. In 2013, her husband died after a short battle with cancer, and she was left as a widow and single mom to a little girl. She isn’t afraid to talk about her grief, or the struggles of being her daughter Lael’s only parent. She’s also not afraid to talk about how much she loves being a mom.
more on Bozoma on the MTD blog
💎cultural gems💎
The cultural moments and news that caught our attention this week:
HOW HAILEY BIEBER TURNED A $19 SMOOTHIE INTO A NATIONWIDE SENSATION, create & cultivate
In 1 month alone, Erewhon sold 40,000 smoothies.
HOW TO SPEAK CORPORATE, linkedin
On their Instagram, LinkedIn shared the definitive “corporate” jargon translator.
MY JOB WAS MY LIFE. THEN I GOT FIRED, the cut
“It was my first time getting anything but glowing feedback from a manager. I started sobbing hysterically, tears and snot pouring out of me. It was so embarrassing: Anyone who walked by could see me. I couldn’t get myself out of there fast enough.”
BEAUTY BRANDS TREAD LIGHTLY WITH TRAD WIVES, business of fashion
“Creators who post homemaking content aren’t inherently risky – some would argue [Nara] Smith’s content is far more luxury than domestic, given her unboxing videos of designer purses and large, spotless home – but finding the right match is key.”
more on trad wives on the MTD blog
meme
You gotta do what you gotta do.
But if you are looking for a helping hand, here are our fav go-to digital tools for businesses:
Canva to design and build graphics. Particularly great for Instagram feed / stories and Pinterest. Bonus that it allows for team editing, rather than having to export and email files back and forth for approval. It’s what we all dream photoshop to be.
Notion to map out your content calendar. It’s great for the long-term view and then week-to-week planning / approvals, especially if you do have some support in publishing content.
In-shot and Splice for more complicated video editing that can’t be done on TikTok, Reels or YouTube Shorts. This typically equates to cutting pre-recorded video down to a shorter length, incorporating Broll/ photo /sounds, and and adding in fonts / graphics to differentiate from what’s available in-platform [while we generally recommend producing IN platform, it’s also important to make sure what you post is high quality and original].
Google alerts to stay on top of relevant news and information in your area of expertise. Use this content to share your own POV or a great quote / fact / stat that your audience needs to know about.
Burner accounts that remain private and allow you to test out publishing content before it goes live. This is particularly helpful with longer-form videos and multimedia carousels with a lot of components, to ensure quality and for approvals, because having to edit or archive [don’t delete please!] is not great for performance in algorithms.
more on the MTD blog here
inspo
Give your past self grace 🤍
