ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

It’s a phrase that seems trivial and self-evident, but for Lara Krug, it’s the perfect description of the seemingly insignificant, unrelated, random events that led her from a small town in Connecticut to the C-suite of the Kansas City Chiefs as their first Chief Marketing Officer .

A Little Bit About Lara

Lara grew up in Weston, Connecticut, a small town about an hour north of New York City. When it was time to start thinking about college, while most of her 110 graduating class was focused on staying close to home, she wanted to go to a bigger school that had a “classic college” feel.

Her parents supported her in her journey by agreeing to road trip with her to any schools she wanted to explore. A friend that she had played softball with when she was in middle school had just started at Miami, so she added it to her list. As she explained, “I saw Miami and I adored it. The moment I got on campus, I fell in love with it. It met all the things in my vision of what I thought a college should look like. The town, the grass, and the brick buildings. It felt kind of northeast so I didn’t feel totally out of what I had grown up around, but it felt far enough away that I could go do something different.”

She told her parents, “I’m done. I want to move here.”

Lara’s first experience when she arrived with her mom for orientation reinforced her belief that Miami was the right place for her The airline had lost her luggage . As she tells it, “Here I am, the weekend of orientation . I was wearing a brown Velour knockoff Juicy tracksuit that I’d worn on the plane . I had no other clothes . My mom drops me off in the Emerson dorm room She said, ‘I’ll come back in a few and we can go shopping for clothes .” Across the hall, this young woman and her parents were standing there, her name was Sydney Stoops, she said, ‘You can borrow some of my clothes if you want!’”

She and Sydney went downstairs for the welcome event where she met Sydney’s best friend Colin Krug . She remembers the exact date – June 8th because it’s the same date that Lara and Colin were married ten years ago .

Lara entered Miami as a Mass Communications major . Her best friend’s mom who worked in media and marketing at Unilever, told her, “If I were you and I wanted to move to New York one day and you want to do anything in this world, I would suggest getting an internship early .” She heeded the advice and completed an unpaid internship in New York City at Jane, a beauty fashion magazine .

“I realized quickly that having a marketing background and advertising background was something that would be a good compliment to mass comm, especially for some more of the financial pieces and understanding how businesses are run .” Lara added a Marketing minor when she returned to campus . “I felt smart being around the people that were going to Miami, but also, I didn’t feel so intimidated that I didn’t think I was going to thrive . Miami helped me feel much more confident in my abilities .”

That decision made Lara a great candidate for the Farmer School’s prestigious Laws, Hall & Associates interdisciplinary program where teams of students from marketing, mass communications and art worked with a client, competing with each other in creating multi-media campaigns .

“Laws Hall, to me, was the coolest thing I ever got to do . The fact that Miami had a program where you could have realworld exposure was just so cool . At that time, the client was a Liz Claiborne brand called Mexx .

“I loved it . I loved working on real-world problems . I loved getting the briefs and coming up with the ideas and getting to understand the difference between marketing planning versus someone that was going to be much more of a designer, and the creative versus someone that was going to be strictly advertising . I loved that combination of all the sides That was the best experience I was able to have at Miami .

One of the best things that came out of it was the network of people who had gone through it . Laws Hall gave us a list of people who had participated in Laws Hall I think I emailed every single person on that list saying, “I’m Lara Edwards . I’m graduating . I went through Laws Hall . I’m not asking for a job, but I would love to know your experience . This is what I’m interested in . Where do you think I should look?” A couple of people I remember responding, some were not in marketing or anything, but others were, and they’re like, ‘Oh, have you considered this?’ or ‘Would you look there?’”

Lara started her career as an entry-level coordinator at a media agency in New York City . She was on the brand strategy team buying media .

“I definitely got the itch early on that I loved understanding brands, I loved to understand the consumer, and where they spent their time . It was always more intriguing to me, less on the creative execution and more around where does a person go to digest a piece of content to then make some conversion .

“I saw that digital marketing and media were definitely becoming where the industry was going, and I wanted to get in there quickly . I wanted to make the move . I don’t think it was intentional, but I knew that getting to the brand side was going to allow me more responsibility, more experience

To move in that direction meant taking a job at Avon that wasn’t necessarily what she wanted but provided the opportunity to get her closer to her goals . The position wasn’t consumer-facing, but Lara had a manager who was very supportive and the more she raised her hand and said, ‘I can do that,’ the more she was able to do build expertise and a track record in the digital space . After a few years, Lara realized it was time to take the next step and add more international experience .

“I love people . I love to travel . I wanted to learn more . I just started applying to jobs everywhere that I could in New York City, got rejected from some, and then ended up at L’Oreal, which was an amazing pivot in terms of exposure, and went to a global side of the business .

“I worked on a brand called Matrix, which owns Biolage within the Professional Haircare Division . I was the only digital marketer in that brand I wasn’t even part of the marketing team technically . I was responsible for their websites . I was responsible for social assets . Facebook at the time was becoming a big deal . I wasn’t considered a traditional marketer, but I got to report directly to the global general manager .

“It was the best situation because he was a traditional marketer . He had been leading creative branding for 40+ years . I learned so much from him in terms of writing a brief and a concept If you think about shampoo, it’s the same ingredients pretty much . It’s how you market the product that determines if you could buy it for $15 or buy it for $2 . I learned that from him, and he gave me so much autonomy because I was able to come to the table in a very, I think, pragmatic way, with confidence to say, ‘Here’s what we can do from digital .’”

That position allowed Lara to work with all L’Oreal’s partners around the world on their websites, digital assets, and content, and she loved it

Three and a half years later, Lara experienced another first –she was recruited by Anheuser Busch InBev (ABI)

“lt was a huge pivotal moment in my career in terms of getting exposure and experience . I went into their global organization first . I ran their media and experiential teams negotiating contracts with the World Surfing League and building a music platform with the largest EDM (electronic dance music) festival, TomorrowWorld, in Belgium . I had zero experience in sponsorship or events, but people matter, great relationships matter, delivering great work matters and I was given the opportunities based on my results .

“I worked in the global office for about three years in a variety of different roles . ABI is a huge part of my career and a huge part of my life . I got to travel all around the world with them . I’ve gone to Russia, and Korea, and China, and Argentina . Then I moved to the US operations of the business .

“About three years into my career there, I had my first baby . I didn’t want to travel around the world as much anymore and wanted to finally be given a brand to own . That was a big transition for me . I wanted to move from being in a support role in digital and media to being the owner of a brand and the full marketing team . I moved to the US and was there for about four years in a variety of different roles . My last one was running Stella Artois as the VP of Marketing .”

Right as the pandemic was hitting, Lara’s husband, Colin, was recruited by Barkley, an independent creative agency in

Kansas City . It would take him back to his hometown and a new experience for their family . They decided to make the move .

Not long after relocating, Lara got a call from another recruiter telling her that the Kansas City Chiefs were looking for their first Chief Marketing Officer, and asked if she was interested, even though it would mean leaving New York. They had no idea that she was already there. Surprisingly, many NFL franchises don’t have CMOs . In some, the position is combined with sales, while in others, it isn’t elevated to the C-suite level .

“I think they wanted to recruit me because of my skills and experience and because I came from a different world from sports, bringing a different approach and mindset when it came to building brands . It also was a nice compliment I am sure to be married to someone from Kansas City and the fact that I had become an NFL fan, a Chiefs fan, and I had the respect and the desire to want to uphold the legacy of the club and the brand .

“After I had interviewed, I got a call offering me the job, and my husband’s standing in the living room, and mouthing, ‘Take that job . Take that job .’ I knew I was going to take it given the opportunity, but I negotiated because I’ve spent 12-plus years working incredibly hard to come to that point in my career . While I couldn’t wait to work for this organization, I think the hard work that you put in after college, and all those years, you want it to pay off So, I negotiated, and my husband was like, “I can’t believe you did that .” Then they called back and we had a deal . I was proud of myself and as you can imagine, Colin, a huge Chiefs fan, was also so excited .”

“I hope my kids, and especially my daughter, see this one day and understand that you, man, woman, whoever you are, you should at least ask, fight for yourself and your worth . The worst thing they can say is no . You are in control of your career and your life .”

Lara had built a career in product marketing and was a relative newcomer to the world of sports, but the learning curve wasn’t as steep as you might think . Essentially, all the marketing skills she had honed throughout her career, combined with her ability to connect with consumers, view the world through their lens, and tell a compelling story were exactly what the Chiefs were looking for .

“When I went into the beer world, which was so different from the beauty world, I wondered how I would go from beauty to beer . But I think it was never really about the product to me . I’ve always come to different jobs seeking the exciting part of the role . My perspective is branding and storytelling, connecting with consumers and fans .

“I’ve learned a lot about fandom, so much of fandom is passed down from families . The beauty of sports is that you have loyal fans . It’s not just about the game on Sunday . This is so much bigger than that . How do we export that from the stadium all around the world?

“The biggest difference is you’re selling so much more than the tangible product . The sports business world is changing . I think that was one of the reasons I was excited about the role Not just because they’re now a Super Bowl-winning team, or had been, it was more about the opportunity . I seem to always find entrepreneurial roles within existing large organizations . I like that type of challenge .

“The fact that Clark Hunt, our chairman and CEO, and Mark Donovan, the president who I report into, they have ambitions of becoming the world’s team . Some people would say, ‘How could a Midwest team…why would you think you could become the world’s team? We are Super Bowl-winning, we have Patrick Mahomes, we have amazing players Our organization has been owned by the same family for 60-plus years . We have international ambition . We would say, “Why not?”

But there have been some surprises.

For most of her career, Lara worked for large public companies with more than 100,000 employees . The Chief’s business staff includes roughly 250 people . About 50 of them report to Lara . That means that she is involved in many more ways, from fan engagement to community-building, to events, to charitable giving .

“I had never felt that level of inspiration . There were just so many more people in my other companies that I don’t think I realized being the VP, if I made as much of a dent .

“When I recruit people, I can say, ‘We get to build this .’ You’ll actually feel when you close the door at night, like, ‘Oh, I can see the thing that I did,’ which I think was a big change for me, but also something that I felt was a good progression in my career .

“I can see it from the 50,000-foot view so a lot of my day is spent trying to get the vision through and giving very clear directions so that my team can go and be excellent at what they do in delivering . No two days look the same, which I love because I think there are constantly new challenges that we’re discovering and finding solutions for .

Another difference is the extreme loyalty of sports fans . Consumers may like a product, but diehard sports fans can recite stats, player histories and may have entire rooms dedicated to memorabilia .

“It’s not even rational sometimes . Once a fan is a fan, they are so loyal to the club and it’s such an emotional thing . It’s so cool in that way because the stories we get from fans like, ‘I’ve watched every game with my grandfather,’ or, ‘My mother and I watched the game . We go to every game .’ The amount of loyalty was very surprising to me in a positive way . Also surprising to Lara is her unofficial position as role model . “There are so many young women coming into sports that are very much looking up to those that are at the top to say, “How did you get there? What did you do? How do I do it?”

Many women that are not even in my department, come and talk to me . ‘Hey, what did you do?’ ‘In this situation, if we’re trying to make a change, how do we do it?’ That’s something that I have a lot more awareness of and care about . I want to be a good leader and a good example so that young men and women can see you can get to a CMO position or a CEO position one day regardless of being either in love with the product that you’re selling and/or if you’re a woman or a man . Remembering where a childhood friend went to college . A stranger hearing her plight at orientation . A brief conversation with a friend’s mother . Moving from New York to Kansas City . Unconnected events that helped forge Lara’s path . One of the things that make her smile the most? Lara now gets to joke with Colin and say, “Man you really played the long game You met me and now you get a Super Bowl ring .”

Well played, Lara .

LARA’S ADVICE FOR SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO BE IN HER POSITION

To be in sports, I would not necessarily start in sports. I think the world is changing. I think having as much relevant experience based on how the world is turning is going to make you a really strong candidate. Whether that’s working at agencies, which I find a huge value for anyone that’s in this field, I think you need to know what it’s like to get the brief. I think you need to know what it’s like when the client says, “I don’t like something, and you have to know how to respond in a graceful, respectful way.

I’m a huge advocate for people starting at agencies, whether that’s media agencies, sports agencies, experiential agencies, creative agencies. You just learn a very different skill and you’re working across a lot of different brands, which I think gives you exposure and flexibility. Then I think also coming with an open mind on how to deliver solutions. Again, I think a lot of people assume that at sports clubs they’re like these massive teams with massive budgets. That’s not the case.

Sports teams need people that can be really effective, really efficient, really solution-oriented, really good at people management…the soft skills. You need to know how to convince someone to buy your idea and the ROI in it and make the business case about it.

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