Episode 38: Bozoma St. John on arranging Beyonce’s performance at the Super Bowl half-time show, getting her groove back after a tragic loss, and working with Netflix as the streaming giant’s CMO.

Boardroom Talks

Boardroom Podcast Network

Business, Entrepreneurship, Sports

4.4 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2021

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bozoma St. John has been a high-profile brand architect and marketing whiz for some of the world’s most innovative entertainment and tech companies. Her resume includes executive positions at Pepsi, Uber, Endeavor, Apple, and now Netflix. But as an African-American woman of Ghanaian parentage, St. John’s ascent up the corporate ladder has involved numerous struggles for rewards worthy of her contributions. Many of her early successes were created behind the scenes, including her notably arranging, while at Pepsi, Beyonce’s memorable 2013 Super Bowl half-time show. In 2016, as Head of Global Marketing for Apple Music, she hit the stage at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. Her presentation became a viral sensation, with Buzzfeed commenting: “Bozoma St. John is the Coolest Person To Ever Go Onstage At An Apple Event.” It elevated St. John’s public profile, and she's now known in the public consciousness as much for being a style icon as a savvy behind-the-scenes corporate marketer. St. John talks to Rich and Gianni about her fall out with Pepsi after the Beyonce half-time show, getting LeBron James and Kevin Durant in the back seat of an Uber for an award-winning campaign, and why Gianni was such a good intern. [Yes, St. John was Gianni's boss for his 1st corporate internship.] She also talks about how she rebounded from tremendous grief after the death of her husband, why she relates so well to tech founders, and why she's so excited about Netflix's future.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's up everybody and welcome to another boardroom out of office podcast here as always with my man Gianni Horel.
0:12.4	Gianni, how are you?
0:13.8	What's up?
0:14.2	What's up, brother?
0:14.8	I'm good, man.
0:15.7	Special guest for you today.
0:17.2	I'm going to get to it in a second.
0:18.7	But this is number 38 and we are blessed to have
0:22.0	somebody that I believe has the same type philosophy on energy, fun, and why we're doing all this
0:28.7	as we do, which is why are you doing it if we're not having fun, and we can't have fun and not
0:34.4	take everything and everyone too seriously. So I am excited to also learn from her because she's been so incredibly successful in every walk of life.
0:43.0	So without further ado, I will introduce our next guest as the CMO of Netflix, a visionary,
0:50.0	and most importantly, the woman who gave Gianni his first internship, Miss Bozema, St. John.
0:56.2	Welcome to the show.
0:57.6	Thank you so much, Rich, Gianni.
1:00.7	So good to see you both.
1:02.3	And I'm really excited to have this conversation.
1:05.2	You know what I mean?
1:05.5	It feels like right out of office, I feel like I can, you know, take off the cape and get real. Get real.
1:14.2	Yes, we will get real. And I will tell you, Gianni is super proud to have to had you as his first
1:20.6	internship. He only told everyone here about 19 times. Well, what he may not have said is that his father made sure to text me probably every day for about two years in prep for the moment. And then even once I was in Paris, you know, getting ready to like go out for the night and I get a text
1:46.0	of like, hey, you know, you should go hang out with Gianni. He's in Paris. He's going to show you a good
	...

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