Erica Joy Lenard
Brand Strategist and Fractional CMO • EJL Consulting, LLC
Los Angeles, California, United States •
$5,001 - $10,000
About
I am not a keynote speaker who studied brand strategy. I am a brand strategist who spent 20 years inside the rooms where the decisions got made. Disney Princess. Barbie. Hot Wheels. CAMP. MTV. I built the campaigns. I ran the franchises. I sat in the briefings where joy got value-engineered out of the work and watched what happened next. I built the Joy Is the New Strategy framework because I lived both sides of it. The brand side, where I watched campaigns hit every metric and still miss the audience completely. And the career side, where I watched talented people lose the thing that made them good at their jobs without a single word for what was happening to them. My talks are not theoretical. They are built from receipts. And they leave people with something they can actually use.
Speaking Topics
Signature Programs (6)
The campaigns that generate real loyalty, cultural relevance, and tattoo-worthy fandom are not the ones that optimized hardest. They are the ones that understood joy as a strategic input, not a decorative finish. Drawing on 20 years building campaigns for Disney Princess, Mattel/Barbie, Hot Wheels, and CAMP, this session gives senior marketing leaders a practical framework for diagnosing where brand thinking breaks down and rebuilding it around what actually drives connection.
Key Takeaways
- The difference between a campaign that performs and a campaign that connects
- Why emotional resonance is a measurable strategic outcome, not a soft concept
- How to build brand evaluation frameworks that capture what metrics miss
Audience
CMOs, VPs of Marketing, Brand Directors, Senior Marketing Leaders
Format
Duration
45-60min
Delivery
Culture is not a brand value you write on a wall. It is the thing your audience decides about you whether you participated in the conversation or not. This session draws on two decades inside Disney, Mattel, MTV, and CAMP to examine how brands earn cultural relevance, what it costs to lose it, and what it actually takes to get it back.
Key Takeaways
- How cultural relevance is built versus borrowed
- What iconic brands do differently at the strategy level, not just the creative level
- Why brand culture starts internally and what happens when it does not
Audience
CMOs, Senior Brand Leaders, Marketing and Culture Leaders
Format
Duration
45-60 min
Delivery
Followers are a vanity metric. Fandoms are a business asset. This session examines the strategic difference between audiences that show up when you post and communities that evangelize, defend, and tattoo your logo. Drawing on franchise work at Disney Princess and Barbie, this talk gives brand leaders a practical lens for building genuine audience devotion rather than optimizing for reach.
Key Takeaways
- The strategic distinction between reach and devotion
- How franchise brands build loyalty that outlasts individual campaigns
- What fandom-building looks like as a repeatable brand practice
Audience
CMOs, Brand Directors, Franchise Marketing Leaders, Consumer Products Leaders
Format
Duration
45-60 min
Delivery
Your Experience with Erica
Your perspective matters!
What was it like engaging with Erica?
