On this episode, Joe Cano, the Chief Marketing, Chief Merchandising, and Chief Growth Officer at Zappos, discusses the company’s culture, use of AI, and customer experience. He highlights the importance of Zappos’ customer obsession and the strong emotional connection they have with their customers and he explains how Zappos leverages AI in merchandising and marketing, using data analytics to personalize product recommendations and create targeted marketing campaigns. Cano emphasizes the balance between AI and the human touch, ensuring that Zappos maintains its personal and emotional connection with customers.
Tune in to learn:
- How to navigate personal and professional transformation
- The power of authenticity and self-care
- How to optimize executive leadership teams
- Lessons learned from transforming marketing at National Instruments
- Advice for aspiring marketing leaders
- Why the future of marketing is generosity and service
About the Guest:
“Joe Cano is the Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer at Zappos.com, the experiential e-commerce and customer service company. In his executive role, Cano leads business development initiatives and focuses on improving the customer experience within the e-tailer’s product offerings, 360 marketing efforts, social strategy and innovating the product category review process, splitting his time between Los Angeles and Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas.
Cano, who has over 20 years of experience in the e-commerce, merchandising and marketing, most recently served as the GM of menswear, womenswear and accessories at Walmart.com, where he worked with the Jet.com and Walmart.com teams in New York. Prior to Walmart, Cano’s leadership journey began as a Senior Director of Planning for Saks Fifth Avenue, where he quickly grew into the role of VP, Chief Site Merchant, creating strategic roadmaps for the advancement of Saks.com in the digital space.
After attending college, Cano worked at a software company, real estate company, and several retail stores before finally deciding to give corporate retail a try. While onboarding through Hot Topic’s corporate training program, he immediately fell in love with the process of marrying data and products. Cano’s first big break was pitching the movie Twilight to his Vice President of Merchandise, predicting ahead of time that the franchise would explode to the cultural phenomenon it is today. He credits vampires for kick-starting his career.
Cano understands the importance of continuing to build upon the strength of Zappos’ brand partner relationships, and to help authentically tell customer stories through Zappos’ amazing brand partners’ products. Having experience in teen, luxury, and mass-market retail, he was determined to find a company with an amazing culture which led him to Zappos. The rest as they say is history!”
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