FEATURED Q&A: Shannon Pruitt on Joining The Honest Co.
Last month, The Honest Company announced the addition of Brand Storytelling Advisory Board member Shannon Pruitt as the company's new CMO. As the former chief content officer at Carat (Dentsu Aegis Network), and president of The Story Lab, Pruitt joins The Honest Company with extensive experience in the areas of integrated, omni-channel marketing, brand-building and innovative brand story creation.
Brand Storytelling sat down with Pruitt to discuss how that experience will serve her in her new role at The Honest Company and more.
What’s it like shifting from the agency side of things to the brand side? Shannon: It's so exciting. I’ve learned so much throughout my career which has all led me to this role at The Honest Company. After spending years working with some of the brightest brand marketers and publishing partners in the industry, walking into this role feels like coming home. Being on the Agency side was a great way to develop all aspects of marketing expertise particularly coming from a brand storytelling and marketing perspective; the brand side is the opportunity to not just influence but to actually implement. How will you implement your marketing and brand story expertise in your new role? Shannon: In architecting the immediate, mid and long-term plans, I will look to marry what we need to do from a business perspective, what we are doing well and what we can be doing better to connect the parts to the sum - all through the lens of what our brand stands for and what's meaningful for our consumers. The Honest Company is so fortunate to have a strong mission with visionary founders who live and breathe the founding principles, along with products that make it easier to make safe choices for you and your family. It's a strong foundation and my job is to help bring that mission to life as a true lifestyle choice. To start (and no surprise here), I am focused on gathering a better understanding of our consumer and their motivations, behaviors and barriers. This will enable us to invite people into our brand story, mission and ecosystem through our storytelling across platforms. All of which will reinforce our community, further our brand meaning, and of course, drive our business. What excites you most about joining The Honest Company? Shannon: We are on a mission to enable people to live happy and healthy lives. With this purpose and our heritage as a direct-to-consumer brand, I am most excited to join the amazing team to ignite the current momentum through audience-led storytelling across our channels and partners. To have an opportunity to educate, inspire and provide valuable products that allow people to create an environment that is safe and healthy, is something I am already proud to be a part of in my career and in my life.
About Shannon Pruitt:
As a strategic brand and communications executive of 17 years, Shannon believes the key to brand transformation lies in a true shift to a data and insight-driven, audience-led approach and organization. Through understanding the opportunity and impact of brand storytelling at the intersection of behavioral/contextual data, entertainment, distribution, tech and commerce, she leverages her unique background in working with brands, tech platforms, content creators, IP/rights holders, and media owners to give her an expert ability to quickly understand, adapt and architect marketing strategies, solutions, and experiences that create measurable business results. She built and grew integrated marketing and business development teams handling all aspects of marketing and commercial brand extensions at production and studio powerhouses 19 Entertainment, Mark Burnett Productions, FremantleMedia and Warner Bros Digital.
