The Startup That Challenged Big Formula and Won Parents’ Trust

Welcome back to The Friday Fortune! If your week has felt like a never-ending game of “just one more meeting,” consider this your officially sanctioned escape. Close that extra tab (or at least pretend to), grab a coffee you probably reheated twice, and settle in. 

Each week, we bring you fresh insights from top CMOs, marketing leaders, and brand builders who are rewriting the rules in real time. Think of it as your shortcut to smarter strategy, without the 12-slide deck.

From category-defining campaigns to the mindset shifts actually driving growth, we’ve got everything you need to stay sharp (and maybe even impress someone on your next call).

Here’s what’s on deck this week:

• A sit-down with Bobbie Chief Brand Officer, Kim Chappell

• Why Hollister made a music video instead of a traditional ad campaign

• OpenAI killed Sora

📈 Marketer of the Week

If there’s anyone changing what it means to build a modern, trust-first brand, it’s Kim Chappell, Chief Brand Officer at Bobbie. With a career spanning journalism, tech, and startup leadership, Kim’s story is one of instinct, reinvention, and learning to bet on yourself, even before you feel ready.

Kim didn’t take the traditional path into marketing leadership. She started as a journalist, spending a decade reporting, producing, and chasing stories across the country. That experience, while intense, quietly built the foundation for everything that followed. As she put it, “I don't think that what I realized during those hustling years in my 20s that it was such a muscle that I was building on how to feed a content engine daily.” That ability to move fast, adapt, and uncover the emotional core of a story would later become her biggest advantage.

After transitioning into tech and communications and a stint at Square, Kim was approached with an opportunity that initially felt completely out of reach: building the marketing function for a brand-new infant formula startup. No prior experience. No playbook. Just belief from a founder who saw something bigger.

That leap into Bobbie meant starting from scratch (literally in a basement) with no product yet, no roadmap, and one big question: how do you disrupt a category dominated by legacy giants? The answer wasn’t flashy campaigns or big-budget launches. It was proximity to the customer.

From day one, Kim and the team focused on building direct relationships with parents, starting with Zoom calls, reverse hashtag searches, and real conversations. That early investment shaped everything: from launching as a subscription-first model to meet modern parents where they were, to building a brand rooted in empathy and transparency.

And when the product finally launched, it nearly sold out in just six weeks. But the real differentiator was trust. 

In a category where skepticism runs high and stakes are deeply personal, Bobbie doubled down on transparency as a strategy, and not just a value. From owning their own manufacturing facility to launching a “transparency tracker” that lets parents trace their product’s journey, every move reinforced credibility. As Kim explained, “If you don't have trust as the foundation of your company in this space, you can't build a brand.”

That philosophy has powered Bobbie’s growth—from DTC startup to national retail shelves—while helping reshape the broader conversation around infant feeding. Campaigns featuring high-profile voices, community-first storytelling, and bold advocacy all ladder back to one thing: earning the right to show up.

Internally, Kim applies that same mindset to leadership. As marketing becomes increasingly specialized, she rejects the idea that leaders need to have all the answers. Instead, she focuses on building teams of experts and creating space for them to thrive, guiding strategy from a zoomed-out perspective while staying relentlessly curious.

Kim’s Takeaway

Build trust first and everything else follows. Pair that with a commitment to listening to your customers, and you create a brand that people both buy from and believe in.

To hear more about how Kim is changing an entire category through transparency, storytelling, and fearless leadership, listen to the full episode of CMO Weekly.

🥠 The Cookie Jar

Crack open a handful of the week’s best marketing links—because good fortune favors the curious.

• San Jacinto College: Cracking Open Doors to a Brighter Future with OpenFortune. This is higher education with a side of destiny.

• Why Hollister made a music video instead of a traditional ad campaign. Ads are skippable. Bangers aren't.

• TikTok promises new ad formats and a better future at NewFronts. Bold pitch from an app that might not exist next quarter.

That’s a wrap for this week’s Friday fortune.

If you enjoyed the read, pass it along to your favorite marketer who could use a little extra inspo in their inbox.

Until next time, may your marketing be memorable and your cookies always be fortunate!

— The OpenFortune team