Lisa Lopuck - Driving Business through Design

Lisa Lopuck might be the most talented designer I've ever met.

Before founding DigitalPopUSA , Lisa was a creative director for The Walt Disney Company, providing design strategy and creative leadership and across many of the company's highest-profile websites.

Lisa's tagline is Making Cool Brands Even Cooler and she has certainly done that for us, most notably with the redesign of our Funded House brand and website.

Did I mention she literally wrote the book on web design back in the day? You can still pick up Web Design for Dummies right here on Amazon.

No, I don't usually add this many links in my CMP profiles, but—like all experts who make amazing work look easy—Lisa has a lot to show off and I'm a big, big fan.

So, now that you have some idea of her extraordinary talents, here is my interview with Lisa Lopuck.

1. Lisa, how do you define marketing?

As Simon Sinek pointed out in his now-famous “Golden Circle” TED talk, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” If a customer can relate to a brand on a personal or emotional level, they can become your biggest advocates and will buy almost everything you offer.?So, for me, marketing is how best to communicate a brand’s “why” across all customer touch points.

2. How do you define your role in marketing?

I think of myself as a bridge between my client's brand and their customers. Your brand has a story but not everyone will stop to listen to that story, so my job is to communicate just enough visually to get their attention and start the conversation.

3. What is the best thing you have had the opportunity to do in the world of marketing?

The best thing I have had the opportunity to do in the world of marketing is take a seat at the leadership table and help drive real business results. One of my current clients, Jacked Up Fitness, is one of those rare startups that has experienced extraordinary growth in a very short amount of time. Refining the brand, messaging, creative, and marketing strategy in order to catapult the company to the next level is what business-minded creatives live to do. From optimizing the website for conversion to creating a premium onboarding experience, the opportunity to approach and manage the customer journey holistically is a rare and especially rewarding experience (because it works).

4. What do you love most about marketing?

What I love most about marketing is the ability to see, almost in real time, how customers respond to great creative initiatives once they are in the wild.?

Where did we hit the mark? Where did we miss? What can we fine tune to perform even better? Digging into the data often uncovers new and surprising insights that allow us to continually improve how we connect with customers.?

5. What do you hate most about marketing?

Not all leadership teams have unified clarity as to their company’s mission, their “why,” and how those ideals map to their customer base. This poses a real challenge for marketers because you can't just get to work and see what works. First, you have to figure out how to drive internal alignment and there are times when misaligned priorities and outsized egos make that all but impossible.

6. Do you consider marketing people marketers first, business-people first, or leaders first?

I think good marketers are part creative thinkers and part business-minded people. Great marketers are those that add the element of leadership to the mix. Not only can great marketing people come up with innovative ideas that solve real business problems, but they also communicate those ideas in such a way as to inspire and align the teams around them.

7. What is your proudest marketing moment and why do you think it worked?

When I was at Monster Energy, the company wanted to introduce a new RTD (ready to drink) tea into the marketplace that was already dominated by big players such as Arizona Ice Tea. Mark, my boss and the President of Monster, wanted to call the drink “Peace Tea” and give it an organic vibe targeting a younger generation. After reviewing extensive can designs and spiffy campaign concepts from several agencies, it finally struck me why Mark hated all of them. They all looked like everything else already on the shelves: Clean, polished, pretty, colorful and perfect.

After thinking about the young, activist-oriented, organic-leaning target audience, I thought, what if we made a can that looked handmade and home-grown instead—like an art piece? With that inspiration, I found an artist with a wood-cut looking illustration style. I sketched out a detailed street scene that reflected the flavor’s theme, loaded it with fun hidden “easter eggs” and peace-oriented phrases, and included the signature "peace sign" fingers on the front. I then asked the artist to illustrate the scene in his style... and Peace Tea was born.

The brand quickly took off and rivaled Arizona Tea in the marketplace. I attribute a lot of the brand’s success to the fact that it was so different-looking—the can’s design just stood apart from everything else around it. The cans were in fact art pieces and people still collect them to this day.

Have a look for yourself.

8. Thank you so much, Lisa, you know I love your work. How can people get hold of you if they need design services?

I really enjoyed it! And people can always reach me via my website at DigitalPop.io