Kellyn Smith Kenny: Keeping pace with innovation
About Kellyn Kenny
In a 2020 interview, Kellyn Smith Kenny, then CMO of Hilton, discussed the importance of redefining success metrics for marketing leaders. She argued that focusing on return on ad spend (ROAS) can lead to acquiring cheap but transactional customers who require repeated spending to retain. Kenny advocated instead for prioritizing lifetime value and brand building, stating that "if you can focus on lifetime value and brand building...you're going to be much better off." She described redefining "hero metrics" and achieving a holistic return on investment as crucial. Kenny also addressed the rapid pace of innovation in marketing, saying that "if you're standing still for a year, you're gonna find yourselves ten years left behind." She noted that more innovation had occurred in the previous half decade than in the prior two hundred years. To keep up, she emphasized the need for a blend of data and intuition, stating that "the answer is not in the spreadsheet" and that "the spreadsheet is never going to tell you what's gonna happen six months from now."