As the global chief marketing officer for Canva with a deep-rooted passion for storytelling, Zach Kitschke’s life is full of chaos and creativity. But outside of the chaos that is the daily grind, Kitschke is an avid bookworm and a snowboarding aficionado.
B&T sat down with Kitschke to talk all things Adland and life outside of Adland in this week’s edition of CMOs To Watch.
B&T: What three things would you take to a desert island?
Kitschke: A fully loaded Kindle, beach umbrella, and some matches to start a fire!
B&T: Favourite album, podcast, movie, streaming guilty pleasure and book/audiobook?
Kitschke: The Daily from the New York Times
B&T: What is your passion outside of work?
Kitschke: Snowboarding would be right up there. I only got a chance to go for the first time in my twenties and have since become hooked.
B&T: If you weren’t a CMO, what would you be doing?
Kitschke: I always dreamed of being a journalist because I love trying to figure out the world, and storytelling too. I get to do a bit of it as a CMO, but in a different life, that definitely could have been my calling.
B&T: What was your favourite campaign of all time?
Kitschke: Apple’s Mac vs. PC campaign was brilliant from a category disruptor. It brought to life their personality, and demonstrated what made Apple… Apple.
B&T: What is your brand’s top priority for the next 12 months?
Kitschke: Canva has won hearts and minds of 190 million consumers around the world, and now we’re embarking on a journey to win in the enterprise space. It’s an exciting time to expand our business into new arenas and in new markets, and this is a massive priority for me and the company overall. We’re in the beginning stages, but this is the anchor for us all as we aim to drive impact in everyone’s workplace, worldwide.
B&T: What channel is exciting you the most?
Kitschke: In the early days at Canva, PR and organic social played a big role in building and fostering a relationship with our community, and that remains true today. It proves you don’t always have to have the biggest budgets to have an impact, and in many ways is the most authentic way to drive awareness and consideration. I continue to be a big supporter of these channels.
B&T: How do you split your marketing budgets between long/short and channels mix?
Kitschke: We take a long term view at Canva. Our goal is to empower the whole world to design, so while we’ve made some good progress there’s a long way yet to go. Our analogy internally is that we need to be constantly planting seeds, as well as harvesting fruit – so invest in compounding efforts like brand building, PR, organic SEO, as well as more short-term efforts like performance channels, and account based marketing.
B&T: What is the biggest challenge you currently face in the marketplace?
Kitschke: I think of this as more of an opportunity than a challenge, but as we accelerate our B2B efforts, shifting brand perception is hugely important for success in our next phase. While Canva created the “simple and accessible” design category, the challenge now is to parlay that into the workplace and drive adoption in all organisations. The modern office is becoming more visual for all employees, and very few are trained designers. The opportunity is there for Canva to lead this category and be synonymous with creativity and productivity.
B&T: What campaign are you most proud of?
Kitschke: Canva’s goal is to make complex things simple, and I’m very proud of the creative work we’ve produced with our “What Will You Design” campaign that’s done a great job of communicating our workplace value to a variety of audiences. It makes design accessible, it shows clear workplace use cases, the tone showcases our brand’s energy.
We’ve run multiple iterations of this campaign over the past 3 years, and it’s continued to be impactful – we’ve more than tripled our unaided brand awareness.
B&T: Where do you see yourself in five years?
Kitschke: I hope we’re even further along our mission to empower the world to design. A huge part of Canva’s ethos is our Two Step Plan – which means building one of the world’s most valuable companies, and using that platform to do the most good we can.
We aspire to a world where everyone has an equal shot in life, and one of the areas I’m most passionate about is our education efforts. We’re already powering more than 70 million students and teachers, and there’s so much more to be done here.
Check out the other instalments in the CMOs To Watch series here: