Why designers should pursue the path of CMO

How Mark Forscher evolved from designer to one crypto’s most respected CMOs

Ever wonder why designers make for the best marketers? There’s a lot to learn from Mark Forscher’s fascinating journey—from running his own design studio to building Bison Trails, selling it to Coinbase, and now taking the reins as CMO at Alluvial. 

In our conversation, Mark highlights the power of simple, repetitive storytelling & shares why more web3 founders should look outside their competitive set for inspiration. We also explore the role of branding infrastructure projects and what crypto companies can learn from Coinbase’s marketing strategy.

If you're a designer curious about the parallels between product and marketing, Mark's story might even inspire you to consider a new direction. 

Elan: It's been really cool to see your trajectory from working with media brands to being an independent creative director, and now leading marketing in crypto. Walk me through your journey.  

Mark: I was an in-house creative director at a digital agency in New York called Code and Theory in the early-2000s. It was run by about six people known for their innovative interactive work. I then went in-house at Newsweek Digital, where I was creative director during the 2008 presidential campaign. I learned a lot from journalists and also worked at ABC News as Creative Director.

However, I realized the higher I worked in media organizations, I was getting further away from adding value for users. I liked working with journalists but less so in the media space, so I decided to take the leap and focus full-time on client work. That's when I started my studio, which I ran for over a decade in New York, focusing on client work, expanding my skill set, and learning as much as I could.

That's when I connected with Joe Lallouz and Aaron Henshaw, the Bison Trails founders. In late 2018, Joe and Aaron contacted me about doing brand work for a blockchain infrastructure startup. I didn't know much about proof of stake or blockchains at the time, but I started working with them and the more I understood, the more I saw their vision and opportunity. I shut down my independent practice and went in-house to run branding, design, and marketing for Bison Trails. We became the largest infrastructure provider in the space. Two years later, we were acquired by Coinbase right before their public offering.

At Coinbase, I quickly got involved with a project to build a common standard for liquid staking, which became Alluvial. I went full-time in August 2022 to run marketing as the Chief Marketing Officer before we launched the protocol, Liquid Collective, in March 2023. 

Elan: How did those experiences leading design prepare you for being a marketing leader? You don't often see designers evolving their careers into a CMO role. 

Mark: I would love to see more designers get into marketing. In terms of past experiences, there are a lot of different skills you need to be successful at client work: collaborating with people, understanding what motivates them, finding the kernel of truth in their vision, and expanding upon that. A lot of my agency client work experience informed my approach as a leader today. Working with journalists and media companies taught me a lot about framing and accuracy, which is crucial for marketers.

I also got to see different cultures at various companies and learned what works and what doesn't in motivating people and building effective teams that scale well. Early on, I wasn't good at managing people. These days, I'm very intentional about team culture, what facilitates good work, and the decision-making processes we need to scale and grow.

Client work has definitely helped me understand people and how to get the best outcomes from any situation. Vision drives results.

Elan: You mentioned before that you wish more designers kind of took the marketing path. For designers who are around the middle of their career, why should they maybe consider marketing?

Mark: I think it's a super interesting topic. I'm surprised there aren't more people out there who have switched from design into more of a marketing focus.

I think there's a lot of crossover, particularly between brand work and marketing. And actually, with a lot of UX work, there are a lot of similarities with marketing.

If you're a designer exploring different career paths and you enjoy collaboration, being precise with your words, and finding simple solutions to complex problems, those are relevant skills for marketing. Understanding user needs and motivations, thinking about the larger context, and the impact of your work in moving a business forward are crucial as well. 

That's a lot about what marketing is focused on: complex problem solving, doing good creative work…but in service of some larger business goal or user need.

For me, there's a lot of overlap. And then, somewhat selfishly, I think being in a marketing leadership position, I'm really able to set the conditions for excellent design, storytelling, and brand work to happen.

So, if you find yourself in your career as a designer or somebody who's focused on brand, if you maybe don't have the right conditions to do good creative work, that could be a signal too to find the seat where you can create the conditions for that work to happen.

Elan: It's almost no coincidence that one of the most beloved brands in tech, Airbnb, has a founder, Brian Chesky, who is a designer. It aligns with your point about setting the conditions for an organization to become a marketing powerhouse.

Mark: Yeah, that's a really good example. Founders who are designers understand how to balance these considerations. If you're a designer who has made the leap into marketing, I would love to hear from you, as it seems to be a less common path.

Elan: So now that you're taking the reins on the marketing side, how would you describe your philosophy to marketing & brand? 

Mark: My marketing philosophy is focused on finding simple solutions to complex problems. To do that, you have to understand the problem space, who you're trying to reach, their needs and motivators, and define the problem well with your stakeholders. Then, you evaluate different solutions, test, and iterate.

Brand and marketing work, like good product work, is about iteration and measuring your results as you go. So, my marketing philosophy is really just a design philosophy applied to marketing.

Elan: Considering you started as a creative director in the media world and worked on a variety of web2 projects, you must have a unique perspective on web3 marketing. What do you wish more crypto companies better understood about the power of marketing?

Mark: Well, broadly speaking, in technical industries, there's a tendency to look at your direct competitors as your frame of reference. However, some of the best marketing work comes from looking for inspiration from different fields or times. 

For example, when we were starting Liquid Collective, we drew inspiration from Dee Hock, Visa's founder. He wrote a great book called "One from Many," which is particularly relevant for web3 because Visa was essentially a DAO before DAOs were a concept in web3.

In the mid-1950s, the average American family had different credit accounts with various banks, but there was no interoperability between them, which was inefficient for consumers and banks. Visa pioneered the idea of competitive companies supporting a common standard to create a unified credit system, which became the Visa network. 

This concept is super relevant to what we're trying to do with Liquid Collective—building a common standard for liquid staking across competitors. It’s a good reminder to look further afield and consider historical precedents, as many problems we're solving in web3 have been addressed in other ways in other industries.

Elan: You're one of my favorite people to follow on crypto twitter. You recently posted, "Working in web3 marketing can be like riding a wave next to a machine built by brilliant engineers (constantly reconfiguring itself) while sharks chase. To reach calm waters you need the attention of people on the beach who are on their phones (& for them to use the machine)." 

I found this metaphor wild, interesting, and fun. Can you expand on it?

Mark: Yeah, I have a habit of using strange metaphors for complex ideas, but I'm glad it resonated with you. 

Surfing can be exhilarating or painful, depending on how good you are, but it's not always about riding high on a wave. You have to put in a lot of work to even stand up on a board consistently, which I can't do well. Similarly, in marketing, especially in technical spaces, a lot of the work involves collaborating with technical innovators. The "calm waters" in my metaphor represent mainstream adoption of the technology.

Crypto is still polarizing, partly because of those who have misused it. With everything happening in people's lives, getting mainstream attention is challenging. Many of us are working towards mainstream adoption of decentralized technology. 

Even though more people in the US use crypto than have dogs, which is a wild stat, we still have a long way to go before crypto becomes ubiquitous. Achieving this requires utility. So that's what I meant by that metaphor.

Elan: There definitely needs to be a bit more utility. Tell me more about your experience at Bison Trails. For you to go all-in and leave your independent practice, it must have been a compelling opportunity. What got you excited and what were some of your biggest learnings growing the company through acquisition?

Mark: Yeah! Doing client work, you can appreciate the difference between working with experienced entrepreneurs and first-time founders. Joe and Aaron, the founders of Bison Trails, were already successful entrepreneurs before focusing on blockchain. They had a startup acquired by Etsy and were on the Etsy leadership team. Their experience was evident when they reached out about the brand work for Bison.

One major learning was working closely with experienced founders who were intentional about culture, team, and vision. Joe was an excellent storyteller, and I learned the power of simple, repetitive storytelling to build awareness of a new product category. Aaron was a brilliant product and engineering lead, providing substance behind the story.

At Bison Trails, we built the brand around the people, leveraging their technical expertise and personalities. This approach helped us achieve a successful outcome, including being acquired. A key takeaway was understanding the importance of conviction and repetition in storytelling. It's not just about finding the story but believing in it and consistently conveying it throughout the organization.

Elan: Can you tell me more about how you came up with that story, found conviction, and where it showed up throughout the organization?

Mark: Joe and Aaron had the name Bison Trails, which they liked for its sound and connection to the Pacific Northwest, where they were exploring some physical infrastructure. Through research, I discovered a deeper legacy: bison trails are pathways carved by migrating bison in North America, followed by native peoples for hunting and later by pioneers exploring westward in search of their fortunes.

This powerful metaphor fits perfectly with our infrastructure company's mission of pioneering new paths. We were building innovative infrastructure to support future builders on networks like Ethereum, needing stable, reliable, and secure systems. This metaphor of pioneering infrastructure became a core part of our brand story.

We developed this brand story over time, and the concept of the "herd" became a metaphor for our team. Great brands often become almost cult-like, where individuals identify with something larger than themselves. We still have a chat from the original Bison Trails team where we call ourselves "the herd." This layered meaning of the name grew and expanded as the company grew.

Elan: What is the role of brand in infrastructure projects and how does that differ compared to consumer brands or other things you've worked on?

Mark: My experience with infrastructure branding began in the early days of the category when there weren't many professional node operators on proof-of-stake networks, especially across multiple chains. The primary role of brand marketing for infrastructure is building awareness of the technology, how it works, and why it's necessary. This involves creating categorical awareness and positioning ourselves as leaders in the space.

Branding in infrastructure projects also has the potential to humanize the expertise on the team. While any team can copy marketing or branding tactics, they can't replicate the unique insights and experiences of your people. This makes the team a key differentiator, especially in technical fields.

Focusing on highlighting the people behind the technology is crucial because it's easier for customers to relate to individuals rather than abstract ideas. This human element is a significant part of effective branding for infrastructure companies.

Elan: Do any other infrastructure companies come to mind who you think are doing well in terms of branding? I'm always looking to inspire folks with examples from outside the typical consumer brands.

Mark: Yes, the Obol team comes to mind. They're doing significant work at the infrastructure layer, particularly in terms of brand awareness. Obol pioneers distributed validator technology, which helps further decentralize Ethereum by allowing individuals or communities to collaboratively run nodes. It's a technically complex problem, but they manage to raise awareness effectively.

We work closely with them and recently released a correlated risk report together. Their efforts to highlight the importance of decentralized, distributed validator technology are really commendable. 

Elan: So tell me a little bit more about your time at Coinbase after getting acquired. How were things like design and marketing different at a company about to go public versus a smaller startup?

Mark: Coinbase was much larger and more mature as an organization. At Coinbase, my role was different from my time at Bison. At Bison, I managed content, marketing, all brand activities, and the design team. At Coinbase, there wasn't a parallel role because those departments were much more developed.

I had to pick a lane, so I focused on design. I was the design lead for Coinbase Cloud, which was an early iteration of their developer platform. I also helped manage the Bison Trails team's transition into the larger organization.

Coinbase is well-known for its design, which supports their value of trust and makes crypto accessible and easy to use. While there, I learned a lot from amazing design leaders like Frank Yoo and Tali Krakowsky Apel, who led the design systems team. I saw how design worked at scale and how they unified the experience across different products.

I had less overlap with the marketing teams at Coinbase, but my biggest impression was their emphasis on hiring top talent. Everyone I interacted with was incredibly impressive in their own ways. This operational and organizational scale was different, and it was interesting to learn how teams were organized, how hiring worked, and how decisions were made. I've carried a lot of that through to our work at Alluvial.

Elan: That's awesome. What do you think early-stage crypto companies can learn from Coinbase's marketing strategy?

Mark: Yeah, that's a really good question. As we discussed before, simplicity of messaging is crucial for early-stage crypto companies. There are a lot of different audiences to reach, and what I appreciate about Coinbase is their ability to take simple ideas and target specific audiences effectively.

For example, I love their campaign with coffee cans to "wake up" regulators in DC. This was part of their advocacy work to advance sensible crypto policies. It was interesting and very targeted.

Early-stage marketers can also draw inspiration from Coinbase's onchain, crypto-native strategies. Their work with the Base protocol to build a community and a recent activation in New York, where they sold pizza slices for one USDC, showcased how easy it is to transact with stablecoins.

These strategies don't require a huge marketing budget and provide a lot of inspiration for early-stage crypto companies.

Elan: Well said. Tell me more about what has you so excited about your role at Alluvial?

Mark: One of the things that excited me the most about joining Alluvial was the idea of bringing competitors together to build a common standard. It's pretty rare in the web2 world for competitors to collaborate on common standards. At Alluvial, we're working with leading web3 teams to build Liquid Collective, a decentralized liquid-staking protocol. Liquid Collective itself is exciting, but the idea of a collective of companies contributing to a standard to advance participation in staking is what really inspires me.

Another example is our ongoing workstream developing node operator performance & risk standards. This initiative aims to professionalize Ethereum staking and advance the ecosystem. Currently, there's a lack of shared understanding around operator risk in Ethereum, and the network's reliability depends on the infrastructure layer. We're working to create common standards around how to measure performance and evaluate risk profiles, to enhance reliability and transparency in the space.

Working on these larger collective efforts to professionalize and advance Ethereum is incredibly interesting and exciting for me.

Elan: What advice would you have for early-stage crypto teams or crypto founders who are thinking about making their first marketing hire, whether it's just a lead or a head of marketing? With your experience working at different stages and companies, what guidance would you offer them?

Mark: When bringing in marketing capabilities, it's crucial to set that person up for success with a clearly defined role and scope. Ensure you have enough time to collaborate with them and are open to their input and feedback, fostering a collaborative environment.

For early-stage founders, I advocate for simplicity and authenticity. Find what's true about your product or service what resonates with your customers, and laser-focus on that. There’s a tendency to constantly evolve the story, which can be useful, but once you find something that resonates, you need to repeat it. The best stories are those that people actually remember, through repetition.

Think of marketing initiatives through the lens of iteration, similar to product work. Many founders come from product or engineering backgrounds and are familiar with sprints, planning, and measuring goals—all of which are transferable to marketing. By viewing marketing as an iterative process, and finding what resonates, you can also build up a consistent foundation over time. This approach is very helpful for founders.

About Mark Forscher

Mark Forscher is an experienced creative leader who loves music and building brands. As Chief Marketing Officer of Alluvial, Mark supports the growth and development of Liquid Collective (the trusted and secure staking standard) to further the adoption of Ethereum and the decentralized internet.

If you’d like to connect with Mark, DM on Twitter or LinkedIn.