Marketer Spotlight: Peter Sloterdyk

1. Tell us a bit about your career journey – how you got started and the key steps that led you to become a global marketing executive?

While I was working at DePaul University, my alma mater, I had the opportunity to work on a project with a Publicis Groupe agency called Digitas in Chicago. Towards the end of the project, the agency took me to drinks and after the right number of margaritas they asked if I’d be interested in joining the team. The rest is a bit of hilarious history!

I learned early on that I thrive on variety, so the agency world was fantastic for me (especially when I was young and full of energy). It was a great training ground – I learned the basic rules of marketing while working for clients across fintech, durable goods, PPG, ALC/BEV, consumer technology, and everything in between.

As a full-service agency, Digitas exposed me to the whole spectrum of marketing and communications from strategic media and communications planning to creative development and everything in between. My experience there is one of the reasons why I still consider myself a well-rounded marketer. 

Then I was given the opportunity to become the first global functional marketing leader of Grindr . As my first global leadership role, I quickly learned that the marketing leader in a business is responsible for business leadership, not just taking the marketing helm. At Grindr, I got to build a team from the ground up, hiring 86 people in six months. Part of our remit was to prepare the business for sale or IPO. When we successfully sold to KunLun, a Chinese gaming company, that facilitated the exit of much of the c-suite. In truth, we were just getting started with some incredible new adventures at Grindr and I will always feel like the journey got cut a little short. 

From Grindr, I took on a new challenge at Netflix thanks to a connection I made during a panel a few months prior. At Netflix, I led the Original Series Marketing team – another global role and again one of those great learning experiences. I found myself surrounded by people who were legitimately smarter, better, faster, more creative than me – in a good way, So I learned what it meant to be a supportive leader, how to get out of the way, let your team do great work, and provide them with the time, energy, and resources they need to accomplish the goals we set together. 

From Netflix, I went on to become Global Chief Marketing & Technology Officer at an Australian e-commerce startup called koala, which originally sold mattresses in a box but now offers a full home furniture line.

I was actually supposed to move to Sydney, Australia, for that role, but it was February of 2020 and the pandemic hit. I never ended up making the official move, though I did spend a lot of time in Australia. 

While I was there, I spearheaded a complete digital transformation. In the first year, I worked with the marketing and technology teams to pursue a significant digital transformation project that included: brand strategy development, brand redesign, whole new website replatformed from Shopify to BigCommerce, building a data and analytics infrastructure from scratch, and building a brand campaign to launch it all. It was ambitious, but a great example of why I love working in start ups-move fast, fix things, and never stop learning.

This was one of the first times in my career that I saw a clear, direct benefit from the work we did. In the first 30 days post-launch, we experienced a significant increase in revenue, more than doubling the previous year’s numbers. It was rewarding to see the incredible impact of our work, but even without such an immediate spike in revenue the work was necessary to facilitate Koala’s next phase of growth. That’s one of the reasons I love working in the startup world – it doesn’t always have to work out perfectly. You can learn as you go, build the plane as you fly it, and make some incredible things happen.

From Koala, I transitioned into full time consulting. As an industry-agnostic marketer, consulting has allowed me to work across entertainment, services, technology, B2B, Saas, and even local mom-and-pop shops. It keeps my brain engaged and allows me to keep learning and growing, which is exactly what I want.

2. As a marketing leader with experience building large teams from scratch, what do you look for when filling a marketing role?

I stopped interviewing for technical skills 10 years ago for two reasons. One, if I’m lucky enough to be working with a capable recruiter, odds are they’ve already done the technical assessment. I don’t need to spend time, energy, or effort figuring out if you know how to build a spreadsheet. In the grand scheme of things, almost anything in the world that I’m responsible for can be taught – almost anything.

What can’t be taught is what I tend to interview for, which is personality match, cultural fit, and what makes you tick. As a leader, my responsibility is to drive people forward, so I need to understand what motivates you, what drives you, why you chose this profession, etc… to really maintain a wildly effective team full of powerfully adaptive individuals. 

3. What’s your marketing superpower?

My superpower in life is understanding people, and that very much applies to marketing. I am obsessed with learning about humans, figuring out who they are, and what motivates them. I’m a consumer research and insights-obsessed marketer because of my insatiable interest in people. 

4. What advice do you wish you knew when you first started out?

Listen more than you talk. As a leader, I will always be better served by listening more than speaking, whether I’m in a boardroom or a one-on-one meeting.

At the beginning of my leadership career, if I was running a meeting I thought I had to do all the talking. But I’m so glad that  eventually I learned there’s so much more value for me in how I lead and in the effectiveness of my decisions if I spend more time listening. 

5. Who or what has been the most significant influence on your career, and why?

My grandfather. He was a local business owner in Des Moines, Iowa, and he was the epitome of what you wanted a small town business owner to be – philanthropic, egalitarian, always seeing opportunity in everything. He created something truly special, successful, and well-respected. I was always fascinated by how he moved through the world, the way he connected with people, the relationships he built, and the importance he placed on one-to-one connections. 

Especially early on in my career, he was my number one phone call when I arrived at a crossroads or don’t know how to solve a problem. We worked in completely different worlds, but he was still my point of reference, and he would always have some perfect philosophical “Tuesdays with Morrie”-style advice for me.

I continue to be grateful for his influence, his mentorship, and the relationship we have because I’ve learned so much from it.

6. What’s a recent marketing campaign you’re particularly proud of, and what was its impact?

I was fortunate enough to be a part of the incredible team that delivered the “Love Island USA” campaign, which became the number one show on streaming over the summer. I spent two months in Fiji and served as the on-set marketing executive, fully embedded in the production. And right before that, I worked with that same amazing team on the campaign for “The Traitors” Season 2, which also became the number one show on streaming. 

What makes me especially proud of these campaigns is the way we integrated—not just leveraged—social media engagement  into every aspect of the campaign. I think marketers often fall into a trap of  separating campaigns by channel without considering how they are integrated or work together. For both of these campaigns, I’m really proud that we connected those dots for consumers. Every piece of the campaign was integrated and connected, so if you were exposed to any part of it, you experienced all of it. This collaborative approach significantly boosted viewership, engagement, and demonstrated the value of a two-way social conversation between consumers and the production itself.

7. How do you ensure your social media marketing strategy stays effective across rapidly changing platforms?

You have to have an influencer component, a paid component, and you also need to meet the creative standards of the day. What looks great on TikTok yesterday doesn’t look great on TikTok today. We now have to move at the speed of the users of the channel because they’re moving faster than any corporate marketing behemoth ever could. That’s where influencers play such an important role in what we can achieve on these platforms.

8. What quote do you live by?

“I’ve set the north star of my compass to you.” 

It’s wildly applicable across my life, both professionally and personally. On a personal level, I set the north star of my compass to my grandfather. On a professional level, I set the north star of my compass to my consumer, my end target, or to decision-maker. I think it can apply in a lot of different ways. 

9. Dead or alive, who would you want to be at your dinner table?

James Baldwin. He’s a queer Black author who had incredible life experiences and I feel like I could listen to him for days and be both entertained and educated. 

The other would be my great-grandfather. I never knew my grandfather’s father, and given how astoundingly wonderful I find my grandfather to be, I’m so curious about his dad. The way my grandfather talks about his father makes me really want to know him.

10. What do you enjoy doing outside of work that helps you maintain a healthy work-life balance?

Performing and writing music and traveling to broaden my horizons and explore new parts of the world.

Looking for some personalized guidance? Book 1:1 time with Peter through our Book an Expert service.