KATE TERHUNE MARKETING/ART
Life's work.
I became a publicity coordinator for campus recreation as a junior in college, where I painted marketing messages onto actual bed sheets to advertise gym events and intramurals. At the time, I wasn't aware of exactly what I was getting into, but the college job turned out to be a milestone: the first of many marketing roles, and the start of a long love affair with art-driven marketing. As the years tick by, I'm ever reminded of how those early days were foundational in building a skill set that balances art and science.
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Work is just a much a part of my life as art, so here, I've decided to document my career journey. Thanks for checking it out!
01
Intimacy
My first job outside of college! I interviewed for an internship position, but impressed the hiring manager and CEO with a proposal of marketing activations that I believed the brand could pull off. They hired me full time on the spot. I stayed six years and learned almost everything I know about storytelling from Brenda, my fearless leader, and Susan and David, the founder/CEO and President, respectively.
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Brenda was a former TV producer, and she showed me hustle. Through her guidance, I learned that anything is possible, and marketing doesn't have to cost that much time or money to figure out. She also taught me how to measure my own value, which was huge. Susan taught me how to be an empathetic leader. She was kind to every single person she met. David taught me almost everything I know about Excel (which he learned from a mammoth instructional book that I'm pretty sure he read all 1000+ pages of). Eventually, this team moved on, leaving me to work under new leadership.
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Over the six-year period at Intimacy (which eventually became Rigby & Peller), I tackled a lot:
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Led all marketing functions, including organic social, advertising, PR strategy and media relations, community engagement, and internal communications
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Launched e-commerce channel, driving incremental revenue and boosting market share programs to drive loyalty
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Drastically improved email marketing open rates and CTRs via implementing customer segmentation, optimizing linking strategies, and bringing design in-house
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Created social presence, growing following to 100K in a year (+200% vs. goal)
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Built various reports to monitor marketing effectiveness
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Launched customer ambassador and referral programs to drive loyalty
02
Nordstrom
Nordstrom was a company I admired since the moment I stepped into the store in high school. They just did things differently. The store wasn't over-crowded with racks, the assortment included aspirational and approachable fashion. My husband and I were living in Seattle for a few months -- and after a brief stint working at startup Rover that I decided wasn't the best fit for me -- I tracked down a few people at Nordstrom to find out what working at HQ might be like. Long story short, I liked what I heard, and it wasn't long before I was interviewing for a job on the gorgeous 32nd floor of 875 (IYKYK).
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Nordstrom was a transformational experience for me. I now hold a very high bar for corporate organizations, one that I recognize is achievable with the right team, the right leadership, and the right values. Inclusivity, non-toxic work environments, raises and cost of living increases, good parental leave policies, innovation... all fair game at Nordstrom. (And should be everywhere else, too).
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My experience over three years was diverse and thrilling. Here's a peek at what I got to work on:
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Brand Programs Marketing Manager, Women’s Segment
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Led marketing strategy for Nordstrom’s largest customer segment, Woman’s Modern
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Owned vendor relationships and partnership negotiations for a handful of Nordstrom’s largest vendors, including Fossil, Kate Spade, J.Crew, Michael Kors, and more
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Managed a $40MM marketing budget to drive awareness, demand, and traffic
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Led team of three direct reports through re-organization, maintaining a positive work environment while ensuring new strategy adoption
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Interim Marketing Strategy Manager, Nordstrom Product Group
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Sat on the Nordstrom Private Label Core Leadership Team alongside group President and divisional merchandising VPs
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Designed marketing strategy for Nordstrom’s private label merchandising group
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Outlined a $10MM marketing budget, weighted to support strategically important labels
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Managed awareness-building campaigns for key brands, exceeding target KPIs
Marketing Strategy Manager, At Home, Accessories & Specialized
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Designed, pitched, and negotiated program proposals and large-scale marketing plans for vendors such as Le Creuset, Tory Burch, Fossil, Gucci, David Yurman, and more
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Directed multichannel campaign development, leveraging paid media, social, and PR to drive incremental excitement for the omni-channel experience
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Conducted a digital media analysis that prompted an optimized ad buying strategy, resulting in a 30% YoY increase in ROI for Nordstrom’s annual fall campaign
03
Carter's & Oshkosh B'gosh
I spent three years leading customer acquisition & retention marketing for Carter's, OshKosh, and SkipHop. It was a data-intensive role where I could really sink my teeth into the dynamics of a massive loyalty program. It was FASCINATING. My favorite project was the launch of the first ever Carter's credit card, which I led -- and I learned more about managing technical cross-functional project management here than I could have ever imagined was possible.
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Here are some highlights of my time at Carter's:
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Single-threaded director of North America’s largest children’s apparel loyalty program, to which >90% of CRI retail sales are attached
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Marketing program and P&L manager for all lifecycle marketing initiatives
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Program managed the Carter’s Credit Card launch, surpassing revenue targets
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Launched Fun Cash, a marketing campaign that delivered $20MM in incremental sales
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Delivered go-to-market launch plans for Carter’s first mobile app and SMS programs
04
Roots Natural Kitchen
Is there a better time to start your career in restaurant marketing than at the start of the a global pandemic? Of course there is. Nonetheless, I started at Roots in March of 2020. I was hired to do growth marketing and help the small restaurant chain open stores around the country. As you might imagine, the job description changed pretty quickly in the face of COVID. I became an essential asset to Roots and jumped into action, setting up promo code functionality, helping to get the consumer app optimized and off the ground, and setting up a loyalty program to drive customer visits.
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Here's what my time at Roots looked like, in a nutshell:​
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Directed growth marketing and demand generation as startup restaurant chain marketing FTE #1
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Stood up third-party delivery platforms, implementing paid search, and optimizing online presence, driving incremental customer acquisition and demand in the face of COVID-19
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Introduced promo code functionality to the mobile app, resulting in incremental orders and app adoption, which in turn enabled customer data collection to build CRM
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Leaned on prior loyalty marketing expertise to write business requirements for an entirely new, digitally native proprietary loyalty program
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Modelled the company’s first customer segmentation framework
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Created a fully integrated, scalable new store opening launch plan inclusive of PR, social integration, partnership marketing, digital media, signing, loyalty, and customer engagement tactics – plus built an analytics tracker to measure tactic effectiveness
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Led creative agency to bring "Flavor Comes First" and "Use Food. Do Things" campaigns to life.
05
Chewy
After my pandemic-era whirlwind of a time at Roots, I got a call from a former leader who had moved on to a marketing role at Chewy. I wholeheartedly accepted a position there to drive brand marketing efforts for the private labels business. Chewy was big on whitepapers, so I learned the art of writing for business in this role. I'm so glad to have had that experience!
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Here's what else I worked on:
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Owned brand positioning and development work and go-to-market strategy for Chewy’s largest private label brand, Frisco (this might have just been my FAVORITE branding project of all time)
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Led consumer insights-driven brand work to inform Chewy’s first private label supplement and science diet brand launches
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Shepherded customer insights throughout the org, empowering sourcing, category managers, creative partners, and marketing channel leads with actionable insights
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Implemented the company’s first reviews seeding program, seeding 4K+ customer reviews
06
Rent.
The same leader that brought me over ​to Chewy ended up accepting a role as CMO at a company called RentPath. My first thought? Not the coolest brand name, what do they even do?! But it didn't take long for the newly appointed CMO to convince me to join her team to build the company's first brand function from the ground up.
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The work we pulled off in such a short amount of time is mind-boggling. ​The first thing we did was rebrand and relaunch the company as Rent. We introduced the new company in stellar fashion at the industry's largest conference, NAA Apartmentalize. Our experiential activations included a massive booth on the conference room floor, a VIP party at a San Diego speakeasy, the first of its kind building-wrap advertisement that covered the top seven floors of a neighboring hotel, and a baller party at nearby venue, Moonshine Flats. It. was. epic.
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Here are some of the other things that I've been up to as the company's Director of Brand:​
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Brand Marketing, Consumer Social, Creative, and Event Marketing functional leader
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Designed brand architecture for Rent. network (Rent.com, Apartmentguide.com, Rentals.com); socialized the work across internal and external teams / agencies
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Conceptualized and delivered 360° experiential brand activations at industry conferences
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Earned multifamily industry speaking opportunities (NAA Apartmentalize; AIM) and professional marketing awards (Brand Innovators 40 Under 40; AMA Atlanta AMY)
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Directed and led agency conceptual work to bring the brand's first campaign to life, including: Door to You, You and Your Roommate, and Rent is the Word.