What happens when a brand earns attention but not affection? It gets stuck in the friend zone. In this episode of In Other Words, host Jason Hemingway sits down with Doug Zarkin, award-winning Retail and Brand Marketing Leader and Author of Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone. They explore why emotional connection drives commercial success, how to build trust through consistent customer experience and the strategies to turn brand advocates into your most powerful marketing tool. The conversation points to a simple truth. Brands do not win by being liked. They win by being trusted, remembered, and chosen, again and again, at scale.

Doug shares how brands can create genuine emotional connections with customers, scale authentically across markets, and turn human-centered strategy into measurable commercial impact. He revisists the brand fundamentals that separate commodities from beloved brands and how trust is built through consistent customer experience. 

Doug Zarkin is an award-winning brand strategist known for his expertise in building emotional connections between brands and customers. With a distinguished career spanning agency work at Grey Advertising, leadership roles at iconic brands including Avon, Victoria's Secret Pink and eleven years at Pearle Vision, Doug has helped organizations across retail, healthcare and eyewear drive growth while strengthening customer relationships. Further, his work has resulted in eight consecutive years of double-digit growth at Pearle Vision and recognition as a top-10 franchise brand. He is the author of Moving Your Brand Out of the Friend Zone, a strategic guide to transforming customer interactions through human-centered marketing, making him a bearer of essential knowledge for marketers seeking to differentiate in competitive markets.

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