The chief marketing officer of the free ad-supported television (FAST) platform breaks down the maturation of the free-streaming space, Tubi going for an entire brand refresh, and growing the brand past its “teenage-acne phase.” Episode TranscriptPlease note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.Damian Fowler: (00:01)I'm Damian Fowler.Ilyse Liffreing: (00:02)And I'm Ilyse Liffreing. Damian Fowler: (00:03)And welcome to this edition of the current podcast.Ilyse Liffreing: (00:10)This week we sit down to talk with Nicole Parlapiano, the chief marketing officer of Tubi.Damian Fowler: (00:16)Nicole became the CMO in 2022, having honed her marketing experience at a number of high profile companies, including VaynerMedia, WeWork and Tinder. In 2023, she was named one of ad age's leading Women of the Year.Ilyse Liffreing: (00:31)Tubi had a breakout year in 2023, it surpassed 74 million monthly active users. 10 million of those came between February and September when the brand had its viral Super Bowl campaign.Nicole Parlapiano: (00:47)I mean it was a big moment. I think it's one of those lightning in a bottle I think when it really hit for me is when I saw a friend of mine who has kids in college sent me a TikTok and they were imitating the kids what it was like when the Tubi commercial came on. And I thought like, what a privilege and what an amazing impact that people are creating reaction videos because of what we did. And you know, if it's with the college kids on TikTok, then it's gonna go. It really showed how much like impact we had in that moment and for you know, a more of a challenger streaming brand. It was a big moment for the company and for the brand.Damian Fowler: (01:28)It certainly raises the bar right for, for next Super Bowl. For you , do you, are you, are you thinking oh we've gotta build on this and and do something even more?Nicole Parlapiano: (01:37)I literally basked in it for three days and then I was like Ooh, like this is definitely a hard thing to follow. And I think you can't put pressure on things like that. We are just obsessed with our viewers and obsessed with like surprising them. I think that happens in small ways every day on social. We're very accessible to our fans and our viewers. We respond to everybody. So really scaling that mass intimacy, you know, sending our biggest fans Tubi care packages and special things that they like. The bigger campaigns we've done since then are really similarly just looking at the moment we're in, really being considerate about who the audience is, who is the target audience and like how can we break through creatively in that moment on a small scale, on a big scale. Instead of letting the content lead us, we really let the viewer and the audience lead where we go. That takes the pressure off of what, what are we doing? What do we need to do? They tell us what we need to do if we're listeningDamian Fowler: (02:39)So are your marketing campaigns sort of reacting to Yes. What your viewers are watching? Yes. Is that, could you talk a little bit about how you stay like in the moment stay relevant?Nicole Parlapiano: (02:48)Listen, like for things like Super Bowl you have to plan many months ahead, but we actually had a very condensed time. So even on our bigger campaigns we turned things within four months pretty quick. When we do Super Bowl in the future, I think that part of the magic is cutting it really close. I mean culture's just moving so fast at this point that if you make something 10 months out, like is it still gonna hit the right way? Like things are moving too fast. I wouldn't say it's completely reactionary, but I do over-Index on giving my team enough time to pay attention and listen versus follow a marketing calendar. I think if we're following a marketing calendar and we're so focused on the calendar dictating our lives, you're going to miss the things that are going on in culture and then you don't have the