As a businesswoman, Ferragamo saw her position as an extension of her role as mother and family guardian. Hard to imagine Jack Welch delivering such a benediction. Carmen Dubroc, EVP of Marketing at Weight Watchers, told of a career in which tenacity and gut-level decision making were her most valuable professional assets. Like Jackson, she advised marketers to know the consumer. And like Ferragamo, she invoked the role that heart should play in a marketer's workday.
Many people respond in brands to heart and soul.
There is room in every brand for heart and soul. But unlike either Jackson or Ferragamo, Dubroc deplored a culture in which marketers contribute to unhealthy female self-image. Weight Watchers, she seemed to imply, remedies what InStyle and Ferragamo inflict. The new media panel, the most rollicking of the day, featured a quartet of Silicon Valley riot girls who genuinely seemed to like and understand each other. As is often the case with luminaries in the computing and new media industries, serendipity played a major role in delivering each to her calling.