Cameo's Top Marketer Emily Boschwitz: 'Take the obstacle as an experience'

When Emily Boschwitz was in third grade, her parents requested a meeting with her principal.

Boschwitz was struggling, unable to read or write. Her teachers seemed to have given up on her. They even put her in the corner of the classroom. Her parents wanted to know why.

“Kids like Emily,” the principal said, according to Boschwitz, “they grow up to flip burgers for a living.”

The conversation stuck with Boschwitz.?

“I remember hearing that vividly,” she says. “I was like, ‘I'm gonna prove her wrong.’”?

Boschwitz had yet to be diagnosed with dyslexia, something that happened shortly after that meeting. She then entered a school that used a teaching method designed for dyslexic students. She learned to read and write in junior high and would ultimately be accepted to the University of Pennsylvania. Shortly after, she wrote to her former principal.

“I wanted to show her and others who questioned students with learning differences that everyone can learn - though it may be on a path different from the ‘norm.’”

Today, as the top marketer at Cameo , a video-sharing platform that connects consumers to celebrities and public figures, Boschwitz says her educational history has informed much of who she is as a leader. It’s shown her the value of diversity of all kinds, both on her team and in the way she approaches marketing.??

Cameo, which ranked No. 17 on LinkedIn’s 2021 U.S. Top Startups list, is one of the hottest companies in the creator space, where celebrities and others are hired to deliver pep talks, declarations of love, birthday wishes and, now, professional schmoozing . There are more than 40,000 Cameo participants available for hire, ranging from Snoop Dogg, who will cost you $1,200 per video , to members of the Cameo team, including Boschwitz, who charges $5 .?

Boschwitz has held several roles in marketing and ascended to top jobs at the health and wellness startup hims & hers , and now, Cameo, which was recently valued at $1 billion .

Finding creative ways to learn new things “is something that helped me find my place in marketing, and find a love for marketing,” she says. “I've had to be a sponge. I had to spend a lot of time observing people to really learn and understand dynamics.”

At the end of our conversation, I ask Boschwitz to describe herself in one word. She pauses.?

“Adaptable,” she says. “The world changes around us, marketing changes around us or circumstances change around us, and it's not always easy and we have to learn to adapt to it.”?

It’s a theme of her life: Finding a way to chart the best path in the moment.

“Take the obstacle as an experience,” she says. “Make yourself different and unique and build your future your own way, no matter what that looks like.”

Below, she shares more of her story.?

1. What has had the most impact on your perspective as a marketer?

I am dyslexic, so my brain works differently! I couldn’t read or write until Junior High, and in school, I was often thrown to the back of the classroom by teachers. To learn, I had to find innovative and unusual ways of thinking - often through visual solutions. I believe my dyslexia unlocks creativity because I make different associations and tie the world together in funny ways. That is a lot of what we do as marketers, so I feel fortunate to have learned to see the world through this lens.

2. What’s changed the most about your job as a marketer over the course of your career?

What it means to have authentic connections has changed the most. When I started my career, social media advertising was in its early innings and personalized content targeting was enough to build relevance with consumers. Today, marketing needs to not only be personalized, but companies also need to invite customers to co-create the brand. We need to drive a depth of relationships and community that only comes when our customers are active in taking ownership of our brands. Luckily though, this pays off if you take the time to measure it, because building a community people love is the most defensible and valuable type of engagement and loyalty.

3. What’s the hardest part of a marketer’s job today?

Attribution. With the rising costs of marketing, we need to diversify the marketing mix with new channels. It’s a comfortable trap to become reliant on a few core digital channels; they are easier to measure. However, your business risk is higher because of this dependence - platform costs are rising, consumers are shifting attention, and pixeling is becoming more limited. So, marketers need to spend time to develop incrementality testing frameworks that allow them to test new channels while evaluating the overall business impact of those efforts. These testing frameworks will become more of a science over time that you repeat testing on to understand how the impact of channels has evolved.?

4. Tell us about the marketing campaign you’re most proud of working on in your career.

When I first joined hims & hers , our team worked to come up with an out-of-the-box campaign for our hair loss solution. We brainstormed where guys think about hair loss, where they are and where they are not marketed to already. This led us to develop a marketing campaign with public bathroom mirrors; we ended up rolling out a stadium bathroom campaign at major league sporting events. We took over the bathrooms from floor to ceiling, including the mirrors, helping to educate men and normalize hair loss. It drove a social media frenzy, with guys taking bathroom selfies at events. They even went home and started developing their own bathroom content , leading to our hims shower party movement on social media. Thousands of men nationwide posted videos and photos in the shower - singing and dancing into hims shampoo bottles, and it all started with our initial humor, surprise and irreverence in our stadium bathroom campaign. This campaign was a huge step in our brand’s ability to build a community that normalized self-care.

5. What’s a marketing campaign you wish you’d thought of and why?

In the last year, I particularly loved the #ThousandDollarCrocs challenge on TikTok, which was inspired by a Post Malone lyric. Crocs encouraged TikTok users to share what they thought $1,000 Crocs would look like, and encouraged people to “Come As You Are.” In the development of a trend that celebrated what makes users unique, an unlikely brand, Crocs, built a loyal community of consumers on and off TikTok who not only want to co-create with the brand but will also continue to be loyal enthusiasts of the brand.

6. What’s your must read, watch or listen for all marketers?

The book “No Filter” by Sarah Frier, which walks through the history of Instagram. It is an incredible read on the importance of fighting for simplicity and building for core consumer use cases. I found the work by the early community team inspiring and believe that it, as much as the UX, drove Instagram. Great brands build consumer loyalty by making life both simple and more meaningful, and by cutting through the noise and delivering what consumers want when they need it.?

7. What’s an under the radar brand you’re watching and why?

Culdesac , a company focused on building cities for people, not cars. The last two years have created a shift in how we work and live. Our neighborhood has become a larger piece of our identity - we don’t just live where it is convenient for work anymore. Where we live needs to align with our core beliefs, just like the brands we want to shop from today. I am eager to watch how companies such as Culdesac help develop our neighborhoods into brands and values we identify more deeply with. Culdesac is truly nurturing sustainable and lasting communities.

8. Name a product you can’t live without (that doesn’t connect you to the internet) and tell us why.

A pencil. Being dyslexic, I have gone through my share of erasers, so a pencil has been a key fixture for me throughout my life. It’s funny when simple objects create comfort and meaning. To think of it, some of my first friends were made around a pencil sharpener. But I initially thought of it in response to this question because to me a pencil is always a good place to start. It’s not permanent, but it sure does encourage me to have an open mind, go for it and not worry about perfection. This is just as important for adults; we make as many mistakes as kids do - life is for learning!

9. Finish this sentence. If I weren’t a marketer, I would be…

An astronaut! Wow that sounds canned, but it’s so true! There are few surfaces where anything can be true, and I love how diverse the story set is around the possibilities of space. Also I still regret never having the opportunity to go to space camp as a child.

10. Finish this sentence: The marketer I most want to see do this questionnaire is…

Ali Weiss, Glossier CMO . I have always been inspired by her marketing, she is a true visionary who creates the unimaginable with her team. From building a community of loyal brand enthusiasts online to out-of-this-world experiential in-store campaigns - I continue to be energized by what she creates at Glossier.

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