“More and more, CMOs are realizing that they are not just driving revenue with the media investments that they are making and the percentage of sales that come off of those media investments. Most of us now are true revenue drivers, whether it’s a retail media network, whether it’s the ambitions we have for revenue driving off of the creator network, whether it’s the loyalty flywheel and the data-driven marketing that supports that. Making sure that you are really looking forward, ahead, and balancing where you’re spending your time, versus as a functional leader but also a business leader, is critically important.”
—Jennifer Wilson, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Lowe’s
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As Wilson’s comments allude to above, Lowe’s has launched a flurry of new business and marketing initiatives of late. The retailer kicked off its “We’re Here to Help” campaign platform last month, promoting the company’s commitment to community revitalization across 10 million square feet this year. The rollout includes a 360-degree channel mix, local partnerships, social-first storytelling and a content hub to showcase and track the initiative’s progress. As part of that impact campaign, the brand revealed this year’s recipients of the Lowe’s Hometowns grant program—renovation projects of 100 nonprofit and community spaces across the country, from food pantries to transitional housing facilities to neighborhood parks.
The brand also marked its entrance into the creator economy with the launch of Lowe’s Creator Network, designed to leverage home improvement and DIY content from 17,000 creators—including the hugely influential MrBeast—to reach a broader, younger demographic. And, to boost its ecommerce business, the company announced a new online marketplace that allows vetted third-party sellers to offer products in expanded categories related to the home.
We spoke with Wilson about how the company’s give-back initiatives relate to its brand positioning; what Lowe’s hopes to gain from the creator network; the strategy behind the new marketplace; and what she believes are critical characteristics of a modern, successful CMO.
Chief Marketer: Let’s start with your “We’re Here to Help” platform. What was the inspiration there, and why this is unique for Lowe’s?
Jennifer Wilson, SVP and CMO at Lowe’s: We’ve been on a journey refining our brand position around being the most helpful brand in home improvement. And in some of the research—which was qualitative/quantitative, talking with professors and consumers across the country—one of the biggest nuggets that came out of that was that we are known for our friendly, helpful associates and their knowledge, and also their love, heart and give-back to the communities that we serve. We’re this national brand that feels very local. And for over a hundred years now, we have been serving and supporting the communities that we live and work in.
So as we’ve been on this march to reinvent and modernize the brand, we started with our broader “Lowe’s Knows” campaign several years ago, and then we started adding on to how we think about the notion of help, from launching AI tools and other ways of going to market using emerging technologies, et cetera … to the way that we help make the communities that we live in and work in better places.
There’s an emotional connection with the communities that we serve because we’ve always been there in times of disaster and recovery and rebuild. And also for the last several years now, we’ve committed to making a hundred hometowns better places, whether it’s helping gardens grow or rebuilding playgrounds or rebuilding structures in communities.
CM: In terms of the channel mix for this particular campaign and platform, where are you marketing it?
JW: It’s a 360 campaign, but the majority of the investment is around social channels, largely because we want this to feel very organic, [enabling] social sharing, both across the country with consumers but also leveraging our associates as brand ambassadors so that they could share milestones along the way of this 10 million square feet of impact. For example, [an associate might say] Hey, I just did a local garden, and share it out on social. So I would say 60% of our budget is around social media and on all of the social platforms—TikTok, Meta, X, YouTube, et cetera.
And then we’ve created a social content hub on Lowes.com so that any community effort that we’re doing is housed there and people can go see that and share it with their friends and with their communities. But we’ll also show up in digital display. We’ll show up in some marquee TV moments on linear TV—throughout NFL season, as one example—and connected TV as well. So while it’s a predominantly social campaign, we are using multiple channels as well to amplify.
CM: How are you helping specifically through the launch of AI tools?
JW: “Style Your Space” was one of our AI initiatives that launched in our app about a year ago. You can take a picture of any room in your home with our app and then start to look at different ways to view the room and shop right there from the app. [You can say] my style’s transitional or my style’s modern, and you can look in real time using AI technology at your room and start to look at different products and ways of imagining your space. That was inspired by the fact that consumers, particularly younger consumers, want to use emerging technology to get inspired and get ideas.
We also have a partnership with Apple where we’re using their goggle technology, and that is now rolled out to select stores, too, where consumers can plan their kitchen space wearing the immersive AR technology and plan out a 3D dimensional kitchen space using AI.
And then most recently we’ve launched Mylow, which is our AI chat tool, both for our consumers on our website and in our app where you can ask Mylow anything. What’s the best grass seed to use in my climate? How do I fix a leak? But also we rolled it out to all of our associates as a part of what we call the Mylow Companion App, so that associates who perhaps are new to Lowe’s, or even seasoned, have this helpful tool right in their pocket and can be able to answer and address consumers’ needs right in the moment. These are all, again, adding up to the notion that we want to be known as the most helpful brand.
CM: Shifting gears to the creator network that you recently announced. Why is this the right time for Lowe’s to launch this? It’s obviously a large project that’s been a long-time coming.
JW: A couple things. One, to your point, we had been beta testing this for well over a year, which is how we’ve accelerated into the 17,000 creators that are already in our community. And that was in an effort to learn the affiliate side of the world to understand from creators, whether they’re micro-creators or some bigger, mid-size creators, what tools and analytics they needed from us to be able to both operate from a business perspective but also be their authentic selves and create the creative that was most meaningful to them. So we used that as a learning ramp.
The “why now” is twofold. Creators drive a tremendous amount of online revenue. And we as an industry in the CMO/C-Suite are looking at how we can get better at measuring the impact of influencers who influence the purchase beyond just dotcom. Because ultimately I want measurement attribution to be able to capture what’s happening in stores as well. And we’re moving to that. We know as a marketing community that this is a real big flywheel for dotcom business. Online growth is one of our six strategic pillars of the company, of our “total home” strategy.
We are starting a marketplace as well so that we can expand our online presence and get into more offerings and assortment across the total home. So when we’re in parallel launching the marketplace, and know strategically we need to deliver and outpace a standard CAGR and online growth, this felt like the right time. In addition to that, we know we need to grow with younger audiences. Growing with millennials and Gen Zers and frankly even Gen Alpha has become a significant part of our strategy at Lowe’s.
CM: You’ve partnered with MrBeast at the launch, who is hugely influential.
JW: We knew that if we could pull MrBeast into the creator network, it could both appeal to those younger audiences, but also just spark some excitement with other creators, whether big or small. If the world’s largest creator is joining the Lowe’s network, then why shouldn’t I? And what we also like about MrBeast is that he is philanthropic. We share values in the sense of his give-back to communities. But we could also be his official build partner of the season two of “Beast Games,” and our red vest associates are literally on site there helping to build the city. We’ve got great footage of that. So that became a really authentic connection. We paired the two together: a strategic business decision as well as a way to accelerate what we’ve been beta testing.
CM: What’s the marketplace strategy?
JW: We recently announced at our annual investor conference that we would be launching our marketplace. We also announced a partnership with Mirakl where we’ve got our first several marketplace providers live out on Lowes.com. The ambition is to be able to offer consumers end-to-end needs for anything they need for their home. And while we have a solid assortment today of almost two million items, from couches to side tables and rugs and plants, et cetera, that you would want in your home, we want that assortment to expand. Because we know, particularly for millennial homeowners, they can’t get enough of choice. They just want to be able to find anything and everything that fits their style. And we believe that marketplace will be able to accelerate and advance our broad assortment while bringing great value to our customers.
CM: How does it differ from Lowes.com?
JW: It’s third-party providers, rather than first-party and second-party providers. First-party would be the same suppliers that supply our store. Second-party would be some suppliers who would just ship direct to a customer. In the case of marketplace, it’s all third-party sellers. Just like we would vet the creators who come into our creator network, we’re vetting these third-party sellers, and then they’re selling from our site.
CM: As for the creators that are joining the network, what are your criteria? What do you look for? Are they an assortment of large and small? Are there home improvement, DIY creators and other types as well?
JW: We are looking for all sizes—down to 50,000 followers up to millions of followers. And that’s really important because we feel like that’s authentic to the communities that we want to create, as it relates to followship. (Followship is my word, but it is my version of fellowship.) These communities are really important because, to your point, some of these influencers are going to be natural DIYers and creators, or people who are just taking on traditional projects. Some are going to be more into style where they’re stylizing different looks within the home, or within spaces. And so I would call those more like lifestyle creators. And those are equally as important as people who would be rolling up their sleeves and drilling into the wall.
And some of them are going to be more broad like a MrBeast. MrBeast’s custom storefront that we’re going to be placing and that’s live on Lowes.com has obstacle courses that you can create at home this summer with your kids so that you can DIY different fun activities. [Lionel] Messi is a really important and key influencer who we have a partnership with as well. And even on that front, he is doing soccer drills and talking about some of the best moves that kids can take on. And that’s important to us because we are able to talk to people through things that they love, like sports, but still relate it back to how Lowe’s is there and helping them through our membership program.
Our loyalty members are able to sign up for a kids’ clinic as an example, where Messi’s showing them different soccer moves later this summer. So it’s kind of a broad stroke, but all of it comes back to, strategically, either something having to do with the home or something having to do with lifestyle and how you live your life. And we know home is central to how you live.
CM: Will the creator network tie into your retail network?
JW: We’re going to start off in our upfronts later this year by offering our top-tier vendors access to the creator network. So they will be able to buy into that as a part of their packages. But ultimately we want to start with top-tier and then move it across the rest of our media network.
CM: Broadly speaking, as a CMO, what challenges do you face in retail marketing today?
JW: One of them is the pace of the changing tech and data landscape. If something is coming up today as a tool that’s helpful for my marketing team, it’s changing a week from now. So as we are evaluating our marketing technology stack, both the pace of the expectation is changing for the marketeer, but also the speed at which the consumer’s expecting to consume more relevant and personalized information. That bar is getting higher and higher.
That’s one of the biggest challenges for CMOs right now. And the way that we’re addressing that is both by making sure we’re managing the fundamentals with our tech and data team, but also by looking at how we can use partnerships like OpenAI and Nvidia to keep pioneering on the marketing front. Luckily, our technology support team has marketing underneath it and AI, so we get the best of both worlds as we’re innovating in this space.
The second one is a true juxtaposition to what we just launched with the creator network in the sense that everything right now does feel very social-consumed, social commerce and shoppable commerce. And yet I do believe that there’s this desire—particularly we hear it in qualitative research amongst the Gen Z population—for more in real life. The ultimate balance for a CMO of digital and social versus IRL is a real challenge that we have to figure out how to balance so that we just don’t fully go down a social/digital rabbit hole. And that we remember that particularly when you’re a brick and mortar retailer, that human connection is paramount.
And then lastly, I would say that more and more CMOs are realizing that they are not just driving revenue with the media investments that they are making and the percentage of sales that come off of those media investments. Most of us now are true revenue drivers, whether it’s a retail media network, whether it’s the ambitions we have for revenue driving off of the creator network, whether it’s the loyalty flywheel and the data driven marketing that supports that. Making sure that you are really looking forward, ahead, and balancing where you’re spending your time, versus as a functional leader but also a business leader, is critically important.
CM: Lastly, what qualities make a successful CMO in today’s business climate?
JW: I tell a lot of the folks that are on my floor: move laterally. Take lateral positions, and move into the business areas and learn how to run a P&L. And understand what it feels like to feel the pressure of hitting a sales target, every day, every week, every month, every quarter. Because that background, in addition to being able to use your creative thought leadership, will make you well-rounded [enough] ultimately to be become a CMO.
I’m really proud to be sitting in this seat right now. It is such a marching moment for marketing business leaders, because gone are the days when marketing and the CMO role is about a great advertising campaign. I call that side of my world the treadmill, if you will, of our work. And more of my time is spent off the treadmill than on the treadmill. And I think to be a successful CMO, you’ve got to have a great team who you can trust so that you can put your business talents to work and be thinking about what’s the next big thing I can go do that’s going to drive revenue for the company. Because at the end of the day, if we’re not business leaders, then what are we doing here? Creativity has got to drive all of that.
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