Making Marketing Authentic, with Kristian Alomá ’02

MAX: Welcome to Northwestern Intersections, a Northwestern Alumni Association podcast. We'll be talking to alums about their career paths and the lessons they've learned along the way. Our guest today is author and business leader Kristian Aloma. Dr. Aloma has experience in communications, consulting, marketing, and academic lecturing, most recently founding Threadline, his own marketing company. Along the way, he even published an Amazon best selling book titled, Start with the Story: Brand Building in a Narrative Economy. 

We will dive into all of these topics and more in this edition of Northwestern Intersections. Dr. Kristian Aloma, thank you so much for joining us. 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Thank you for having me. 

MAX: Kristian, you've been busy. You've had a lot of projects recently. How do you keep up with everything that you have on your plate? 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Good question. Sometimes I'm not sure how I keep up with everything on my plate. It's one of those things where I keep myself busy and structured as much as I can. And that does not always work admittedly. Always a goal to fight procrastination, to fight the desire to sit down and play some video games with my nephews or something like that. But there have been these key moments where I have set and defined things I wanted to accomplish. 

And either quickly or slowly, I just start working towards it. And that has led me to Northwestern. That led me to my first significant job in my career at a research agency, and ultimately starting my own agency and getting a PhD, getting a book. All of those became goals that I set for myself. And with the support of my family and the support of my friends and my colleagues and my coworkers, things like that, you work through it and you get there. 

MAX: And before we get into the specifics on those projects, let's take it back to your undergraduate years. What did you study at Northwestern, and why? 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Sure. So interestingly enough, Northwestern wasn't on my radar when I was in high school. I actually did a summer program by chance that happened to place me at Northwestern the summer between my junior year and senior year in high school. And it was called the Lead Program, hosted by Kellogg. And so they brought me to campus, along with 29 other minority students from around the country. And we got to have a crash course in business essentially through Kellogg. 

But through doing so, we stayed on campus, we were given tours of campus, got exposed to the university. And it's through that program that I was like, Northwestern is a place. First of all, South Florida-- I didn't know Northwestern existed. It wasn't on my radar. It was all of the Florida schools is what I was thinking about. And so I was encouraged to apply and got there. Now, when I came to Northwestern, I actually started in engineering. 

I thought I wanted to be an engineer. I very quickly learned I didn't want to be an engineer after one or two quarters. And had a period of figuring out and exploring what I wanted to then do. And I was looking into academics, looking into the education program, looking into the journalism programs, looking into the medical programs. But ultimately, what I realized was, technical aspects, the business aspects of engineering I really love. But I also love the creative aspects of writing and poetry and performance. 

And so I found my place in-- at the time, it was the School of Speech, and focused on communication science is where I sort of ended up with a emphasis on I think it was sociology overall. And that, to me, was the launching pad into what I realized I wanted to do was to go into marketing and advertising, which in my mind combined basically the creative arts and business. It was the ability to bring those two things together that I really loved. And so that's what I pursued. And four years later, kind of came out of Northwestern looking for a job in the Chicagoland area. 

MAX: And walk me through those first few careers. What did your early jobs look like? 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Yeah, I think like many of us, you take the job that's offered at the time. And I started in a pharmaceutical advertising industry down in downtown Chicago. And to this day, I still think that was some of the best early training, early on job training that I could get. I was working at an advertising agency at one of the entry level positions kind of basically managing projects. 

And that exposure to the life and the cycle of an advertising agency and working with clients and dealing with creatives and dealing with clients, managing all those details, that really kind of set me up for basically any other job I had after that. So that sort of core training was some of the best training I think I've ever had. 

From there, I actually decided to pursue marketing in the nonprofit space. Started working for a nonprofit out in Boston called Jumpstart for young children. But to be honest, by this point, I had fallen in love with the Midwest, always willing to help you culture in Chicago, especially. So after about a year in Boston, I decided to come back. And that's when I joined an organization called Brand Trust and was there for 12 years and beyond. 

Now, the interesting thing-- each one of those jobs, basically I got in because of a connection to Northwestern. So at my advertising agency at Corbett, that first job, the president at the time was a woman named Elaine Eisen, who was a passionate Northwestern alum. And I remember in my interview with her, I was actually carrying-- I was just fresh out of college. And I still had basically a Northwestern laptop bag, and she saw it. And she asked me to sing the fight song then and there in the interview. And so she and I hit it off. And still someone I sort of really admire. 

My second job out in Boston, Jumpstart, basically the same thing happened. Executive of the nonprofit was a Northwestern alum, asked me to sing the fight song in the interview again. And he and I really hit it off. And to this day, still keep connected every now and then on LinkedIn, things like that. 

And then finally, my third job and ultimately the last job that I was hired by someone else for, was a connection through Elaine Eisen and Northwestern all over again. So it all kind of comes back to my Northwestern basically community of helping me navigate these different careers that I've had. 

MAX: Well, I've picked up on two great lessons here. Number one, stay connected to your campus. Number two, learn that fight song, listeners. 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Yes. 

MAX: That can help you. 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Well, and honestly though, I probably messed it up every single time I sang it. But I do recommend learning the fight song. It'll probably help you more than it should. 

MAX: I love it. And going back off of that last job experience that you mentioned, being at Brand Trust, you transitioned from a pretty significant tenure there to two completely different projects. Tell us a little bit about going into the March for Science and your time as a lecturer actually at Kellogg. 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Yeah, absolutely. So the March for Science, it was more of a passion than it was a career, even though I am pretty passionate about my career today. Just after Trump was elected and inaugurated, and we were noticing a community of us, of folks, were just noticing the way in which science was being either misrepresented or discounted, ignored, not just sort of in the public sphere, but also in the governmental spheres and the policy spheres. 

And it was an area that I felt and continued to feel quite passionate about, that we should be conducting research and answering these big questions, these social questions, these policy questions with a rigorous approach to these things. And at the time, there was no person in the position within the White House as far as heading basically the development and the research of science. 

And so it became this thing where I actually went to a informational meeting about people who were interested in doing something about this, of organizing a march. And basically within a week of that meeting, I became one of the chairs of organizing, one of the organizers of the march overall. And so it was probably a three or four month process of bringing together Chicagoans from all different political spectrums who just really cared about science and cared about the protection of science. 

And my co-organizer and I, Adam Arcus, we believed in it not just being a protest, not just being a march, not just being rally, but also being a platform that can celebrate scientists and celebrate science. And so we were engaging with the scientific community and trying to get their voices heard, trying to do so in a way that acknowledged some of the challenges the scientific community has had from a diversity and equity perspective and represent voices that don't typically get heard on these large platforms. 

And the end result, which is still one of the most amazing things, I think, in my life that I've experienced to this day is, on the day of the march, we had 60,000 Chicagoans come out. And I have talked in front of some pretty large crowds, but never a crowd that's that large. And just to see that passion, that energy, that shared vision of the role that science can play in our lives, both personally and professionally and socially, it was heartwarming to see. 

MAX: What brought you back to Northwestern, to Kellogg where really it all began for you? 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Yeah, it's interesting because I didn't come back. I kind of was always there in many regards. I mentioned that summer program that I did that sort of first got me interested in Northwestern. When I attended Northwestern, I got involved with that program again. And so I was a counselor for the program every summer while I was an undergrad. After I graduated, I tried to stay involved even as a professional. So I'd either come back and speak to the students that were attending, or I'd get them to come to the company I was working at and kind of explore that as a summer program. 

And so I think every year-- and this is since 1997-- I've been involved with that program. Now, with that and having that exposure and getting to know some of the team at Kellogg and things like that, I was kind of tapped to lead a storytelling session. I started to build this sort of passion for storytelling, which eventually led to the PhD. 

And so I was doing a training on storytelling for Kellogg's nonprofit institute. And that one session led to another session, which led to becoming a pretty sort of regular kind of presence in their curriculum for a number of different programs even to this day. So now, I'm pretty involved and working pretty regularly, pretty routinely in their programs and helping the different nonprofit leaders that come through that program. And it's been a really sort of rewarding experience. And I'm continuously trying to get even more involved and more engaged in those sort of programs. 

MAX: Something that's stood out to me just from our conversation already is the emphasis that you place on community building, company culture. What have you learned about building culture and community? And why is that so important to your work? 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. And I think when it comes to the energy of a company and what you're doing every day, it's one thing to just love the work, do the work, or to be paid well for the work. It's another thing to spend eight hours every day with someone and not feel as though they have a shared set of interests or objectives. It's not that you need to be surrounded by people that are just like you, but the more that you can instill a core set of values into a culture-- and that comes from the top down in most organizations-- the more the context, the more the foundation of that culture nurtures positive relationships, nurtures deep relationships. 

In many cases, a lot of people find best friends at the companies that they work at. And if those cultures, if those communities aren't properly developed and properly cared for, those relationships don't really thrive, whether it's coworkers, whether it's clients, whether it's people who work in the company next door to the office to yours. 

If you are creating a sense of caring community, where you are providing value in whatever way you can, support interest, engagement with this community, these sort of areas thrive. And I think there's a lot of just really interesting things we learned coming out of the pandemic. I think what we're starting to see and starting to realize is this balance between having that flexibility and that ability for people to stay home for those communities that they have at home, but then also the value of every now and then having those sort of moments of engagement. 

Not necessarily that they have to go to the office every day or even three days a week, but there is foundation, there is an encouragement for people to connect with each other, to build relationships with each other, to engage with each other at work. And I think that's what helps the most successful companies thrive, whether or not it's fully in-person or it's fully virtual or it's somewhere in between. 

MAX: Going off of that, I think that one thing I really enjoyed reading up on your experience and your resume was your approach to narrative psychology and, again, building relationships. And I think a lot of people kind of view the corporate sphere as very intimidating, and you're trying to force people to buy things or make sure these people don't miss out on this, a quick fix to everything. Totally different approach from you. Talk me through that. Why this approach, how has it helped you? 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Yeah, there's a couple of different angles to that question. And the first is the reputation of marketing and advertising. I think there's been studies in the past. Advertisement is one of the least trusted platforms in the world. People don't believe that most advertisements or marketers or salespeople have their best interests in mind overall. To me, that's unfortunate. That's sad. 

And the problem for me is marketing as an industry is probably the most influential industry in the world. It is through marketing campaigns and branding and commercials and all these things that all these major organizations do that a lot of culture sort of gets developed, a lot of culture gets built, and a lot of people get influenced into thinking, am I pretty enough? Do I have enough friends? Do I look cool enough? Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing a responsible thing? 

All of these factors are sort of coming into play through marketing and advertising. And so in my mind, being a marketer is one of the most sort of important positions in the world, but also one that requires so much responsibility to do it right, to do it ethically, to do it in a way that is sensitive just to the culture that we are impacting overall. 

And so as I was developing the book and as I was developing this sort of clearer sense of what marketing is to me that I've come to now, one of the things that I realized is, you have to approach marketing kind of with the same sense of commitment and responsibility that physicians approach their patients. 

And so that, to me, is the most ethical way to do it, where if you can both recognize the position of your customers, recognize the value of your customers or your clients, recognize the impact that you have on their lives, and then try to provide as much value to them as possible so that they want to engage with you, they want to purchase you, that is sort of a responsible approach to marketing. 

Now, that path and those ideas led me to this concept of psychology. My last organization, Brand Trust, was an emotional branding agency. We focused on the emotions and the psychology of branding. That's where a lot of these ideas seeded in my mind. And one of the things that I started to realize is marketing is one of the social sciences. Marketing is essentially psychology in a business sense. 

And so as I was pursuing psychology, as I was sort of understanding all of this work, one of the things that I was really focused on was understanding how consumers build identity around the brands that they purchase. So what does it mean to be an Apple guy versus a Dell guy? What does it mean to be a Nike guy versus an Adidas guy? These brands-- and some of the most successful ones-- tend to help us feel a certain way. 

And as I was exploring that and as I was trying to understand the way consumers build identity around the consumers' choices that they make, one of the things that kept leading me to is this concept of story and the way people tell stories about themselves and their lives. And that's at the heart of narrative psychology. 

And so narrative psychology is this subfield of psychology that focuses on the way we make sense of the world by the stories we create about the world. And we may never tell those stories to anyone else. We just may tell them to ourselves. And that act, that process is both, one, constantly happening and absolutely fascinating to imagine the way in which every one of us is revising this life story about who we are, about what we've done, about who we want to become. 

And so that just sparked this massive passion and interest to understand that more clearly. And narrative psychology is traditionally and typically used in a clinical sense. It's a therapy tool. It helps people reframe their own life stories from perhaps an unhealthy or an inaccurate framing to one that is a little bit healthier, from being a victim to being a survivor, from being a bystander to being the hero of their own story, those sorts of things. 

But what I realized was, businesses need to understand these narratives as well. If we are playing these roles in people's lives, if we are having this impact that we know we're having in people's lives, if we understand those people's stories, if we understand who they're trying to become-- if they're trying to feel like a successful parent, if they're trying to feel like an accomplished business person-- if we understand that, then we can build our organizations to fit into those stories. And we can build a relationship that centers those customers in the story as well. 

Because if we don't, what happens is we become this self-centered organization. And it's just by the graciousness of our customers that they keep buying us even if they don't like us. And so when we center the customers in those stories, when we center them in those stories, when we make them the hero, then we tend to have a deeper relationship with them. Then we tend to have greater loyalty with them. We tend to have a longer relationship with them than we could have ever had otherwise. 

MAX: You mentioned it a little bit earlier. Going off, founding your own company-- big transition point. First of all, how did that come about? And secondly, what advice would you give to someone who's maybe interested in transitioning from the corporate space to consulting or independent consulting or even founding their own firm? 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Sure. Starting a business was sort of always in the back of my mind. I come from a large Caribbean family that immigrated to South Florida and always had businesses. So my parents were teachers, high school teachers when I was growing up. But they also ran a cafe in a mall while I was growing up and a catering business and a cookie business and a sub shop and all these different things. So I always knew I wanted to start or run or own my own business at some point in my career. 

Now, I didn't know how to do that, especially since I was moving out of the service space, like restaurants and catering, things like that, into professional services, where I'm a consultant in that point. And so through my career, I happened to land in a company that had a really great culture at Brand Trust. And my former CEO Darryl Travis, who was just an extremely open mentor-- so if I wanted to know anything about how the business was run, he would just say come ask me and he'll tell me. And I would. I would go ask, and I'd go shadow. And I'd go to each of the departments and learn how they did finances and learn how they did sales and do all these different things. 

And so eventually, I think I started to realize I could either kind of hang around and wait to take over a business that I'm in, or start one on my own. And that took some long conversations with my partner. It took some deep reflection on whether I was ready. It took some analysis on if I had the finances to do something like that and all these sorts of things that kind of all have to come together until I eventually was like, I think this is it. I want to build something that is not only mine but is also, to some degree, a challenge to the way these kinds of businesses are built already, that the sort of idea of running a business to maximize profit at the cost of your employees or at the cost of your clients to me doesn't jive. 

I wanted something that felt like it shared the benefits and that it focused on work-life balance, it focused on culture, it focused on the well-being of my employees and the well-being of my clients and things like that. So that's what I set out to do. 

As far as what it takes to get there, if you're thinking about doing that on your own, I often describe starting a business a lot like having a child in that you'll never feel ready. And you're probably never truly ready for that experience. At some point, you just have to feel like you're willing to take the risk. 

Now, running a business is very different from raising a child. I can tell you that much, having two myself. But if I had waited until I thought it was the perfect time, I would have not started a business at all. I had to just take the leap. I had to take that risk. Now, you have to mitigate that risk. You have to know that you have reduced the risk as much as possible. And use a kind of 80-20 rule that if I feel kind of like I've covered 80% of understanding my risk and mitigating that risk and there's still always a little bit of risk left over, I feel pretty good about that choice. And I felt pretty good about this one as well. 

So if you're interested in becoming, one, a consultant, if you're going into the consulting world-- and ultimately, consulting is a very broad term. So there's lots of kinds of consultants. But if you're interested in that marketing consulting space, I find the aspects of the industry that focus more on insight gathering and understanding consumers, which tends to be the market research spaces, the data analytics spaces, those sorts of things-- those will, I think, serve you well because consulting is all about understanding more so than acting. 

You've got to make recommendations. And you've got to have sort of frameworks that help clients move forward. But none of that will really be effective unless you understand the problem your clients are facing, the consumers your clients are serving, those sorts of things. And I imagine that's pretty similar across all forms of consulting overall, though there'll be very different sort of aspects and roles and frameworks involved. 

And if you want to start your own business, you know what advice I got when I was younger? Which is find someone that you want to be when you grow up and figure out what they did. Talk to them, interview them, take notes about the path that they have. It may not be the path that you can take by any means, but it will give you insight into how you get there on your own. 

So I did that with my former CEO, Darryl. I've done that with lots of folks in my life throughout my career of just finding those people in the organization, whether it's one level above mine or it's the CEO, and figuring out and learning what was their path. Because all of us are sort on this journey. We're all basically living out this story. And if we learn from someone else's story, it can help us shape our own story as well. 

MAX: That's a perfect bridge into my next question. Speaking of story, you've actually written a book. What was it like writing a book? Where did this come from in your narrative? 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Yeah, again, we talked at the beginning of the conversation. These were all goals that I've always had. And it was just laying dormant until it felt like the right time to pursue. And for a long time, it was, what do I write about? What on Earth-- why would why would anyone want to hear my voice, whether text or audiobook at all? And it was over the past few years where I think I started to have that realization and that recognition, which leverages and maybe requires a little bit of ego to say, I think I know things. I think I have some experience and some wisdom to share at this point. 

And with that, that's when I started to formulate, what is my central idea? And this first book was interesting because, to some degree, it was, let me just basically codify my principles for running this business, for the way I approach marketing, the way I approach consulting. And so it was just really about gathering and codifying and framing that. Now, I say it was kind of easy because that was there. I knew what the topic would be. 

The difficult part then was putting that down on paper and writing that out. And when they say you've got to write every day-- if you ever hear authors give advice about how to become an author-- you've got to write every day. And it's a long process. It's a painful process. You go through-- there's a lot of emotional journeys that you go on in writing this work from, are these ideas worth it? 

There were so many times when I was like, this is a stupid idea that I just put down on paper. This doesn't make any sense. No one's going to understand it. Everyone's going to know this is obvious. But you work through that idea, you refine it, you make it better. 

You also just acknowledge, hey, it's probably stupid to me, but I've been doing this for 20 years so it's going to sound stupid to me. But I need to figure out how to explain it in a way that someone who's just starting, this makes sense to them. And so you figure that out. And then you go through the process of cutting and editing and all this stuff. And coaches that I had when I was writing and working on the book would always say, kill your darlings. 

Don't be afraid to kill your darlings. Even if you love an idea, it may not belong in this book. It may belong in the next book. So it was a process. It felt a lot like my dissertation, to be honest, which took me a long time. And I wanted to go really big. And I got the advice that, you need to finish more than go big. And so you learn to really focus and narrow down your thesis in any of these ideas, whether it's your dissertation or it's the book, and recognize, well, I've got another book in me. 

So went into this thing thinking I wanted to write the Bible of branding. And I realized, that may be more than I could write at this point. But I can write maybe book one of the Bible of branding. And the next one might be book two, things like that. And so that's sort of is how I approached it, that's how I tackled it. And now, just having the printed copy in my hand was-- I keep going back to having children as a metaphor. 

But it was like having the thing I was nurturing and carrying for so long finally out in the world. And just to have the reception-- and probably the most important reception to the book has been from my wife and my mother. They both read it and they both said they liked it. And that's enough for me. So other people have been reading it, too, and other people seem to like it. And I'm very happy about those things as well. So my minimum, though, was my mother and my wife, and they seem to be good with it. 

MAX: Readers who might be interested in this book and more can find their favorite alumni authors all in one place. Discover your next great read in the alumni authors catalog, the Northwestern Alumni Association's new online resource for alumni-authored books. Kristian, this has been phenomenal having you on the show. And before we go, I wanted to ask, are there any Northwestern shout outs that you'd like to give? 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Oh, gosh. There'd be so many. There's what would be known as my Hinman crew. Jeff, Paul, John, Greg. There's my Black House crew from the community that I had at the Black House, at [? Keely, ?] and many others. Chrissy, Robin. And just sort of the community overall at Northwestern. Northwestern was a far more meaningful experience in my life than I thought college would be. And part of the reason I stayed in the Midwest, part of the reason I stayed in the North Shore even, was to be kind of close to Evanston and every now and then walk around. 

I take my kids back. And they call it Hogwarts, and walk through campus every now and then, like when I get to teach at Kellogg and stuff like that, is just always a meaningful experience to me, kind of reliving some of those memories around the rock and at Hinman and all that kind of stuff. 

MAX: I'm going to close with the fun question. This is a three parter though. If you could meet any business leader in history, who would it be, what questions would you ask them, and what advice would you give them in terms of marketing and branding? 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: This is a good question. Any business leader in history. This may feel cliche to some degree, but I would be interested in having a conversation with someone like Steve Jobs. And I would be curious, because I recognize Steve Jobs was just a creative visionary of what the world could look like when it comes to technology. That wasn't necessarily the greatest manager or friend, family member, by any means, according, at least, to his biographies and things like that. 

So I'd be curious to understand and ask him, how did he sort of envision futures in that way? When he was mapping out what Apple could be and what these devices could be, what did he actually see in his mind? So I'd be curious if he ever mapped out what the iPhone looked like in his mind and then held that side by side to what it became, those sorts of things. 

Now, what advice would I give to them? From what I understand, Steve wasn't necessarily the kind of person that took advice from just strangers per se. But one, stop changing the charging port. But that's a different thing. I guess probably give more practical advice in regards to the way that he managed people and the way that he managed and motivated people. It was a style that I would-- is not mine in that it was much more of a very aggressive style. 

He brought out certainly the best in folks, but he also sort of brought out the worst at the same time. And if I had the opportunity to coach, just figure out if there was a different way to do that if there is. And I'm not sure if there is. I mean, he had a unique style and certainly accomplished many great things. But I always wonder, what is the balance between that genius and that level of accomplishment with that sense of happiness and satisfaction and fulfillment in an individual role and how those two things come together. So that would be-- if I could talk to Steve Jobs, I would. 

MAX: Dr. Kristian Aloma, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your insights today. 

KRISTIAN ALOMA: Thanks for having me.