Vol 17. Insights from Twilio’s VP of Brand

Meet Adam Morgan

Each week, we sit down with a marketing leader to learn more about their career, insights, and accomplishments. This week, that marketing leader is Adam Morgan.

Adam may be the only marketer we’ve spoken with who started out as a chemical engineer in college. His goal was to invent things (think: the next Kevlar) but he quickly realized labs and solo work weren’t a fit for him. So he decided to invent ads and marketing plans instead. 

Here are the need-to-knows about Adam:

• In 2020, AdWeek named him one of the top 100 creative minds in the world. 

• He’s the author of Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business: Proving the Value of Creative Ideas With Science.

• He was named Advertising Professional of the Year for Utah in 2014 by the American Advertising Federation.

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The agency years

Adam’s first job out of college was working for a newspaper as a designer making ads. From there, he went into the agency world, where he stayed for 20 years working with some of the largest agencies in the world (think: Publicis, McCann Erickson, ThomasArts).

“I loved the agency years. It was this rollercoaster of highs and lows. I feel like I did everything—TV spots, radio spots, billboards. I even did two seasons of a reality TV show,” he said. 

From the early days, Adam’s passion was rooted in ideas. He read books like Jump Start Your Brain by Doug Hall and Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan. “I was just so inspired by big concepts and big campaign ideas.”

Over time, Adam found himself orbiting three industries: tech, finance, and outdoor recreation. But even after working with behemoth accounts like Intel, it was the more humble accounts that stuck with Adam the most. “It was about relationships. I had close relationships with great people so those are the ones that burn the biggest memories in my brain.”

Pivoting and pioneering

Leaving agency life after two decades is, of course, a major change. As for what prompted it? Adam points to a shift in industry. “When I started, all the glory and big ideas were in agencies. Going in-house was seen as selling out. But the design-led movement really changed things. Even though it was all about innovation and product design, it brought creativity and design into the forefront at companies.”

Adam saw first-hand a big exodus of agency folks moving over to brand side around the mid-2000s. The narrative was that you could drive bigger stories if you went in-house at a company that believed in creativity and brand. “I realized that in my career, I wanted to have a bigger impact and start making things that lasted. So I dropped the old school mentality, opened my mind up, and started to explore brand side.”

Adam first started working with startups (one of which ended up becoming a unicorn). But when Adobe came knocking, he resisted. “I turned them down three times before finally joining the team. But once I started, I realized I should have said yes the first time.” 

“Joining Adobe changed my life. And it did it in ways I didn’t expect.” Going in-house, Adam suddenly had so much more control over what the brand stood for in the storytelling and the narrative. “Being able to join that, especially for a company that I believed in, made me really fall in love with it. And so that's why I was at Adobe for a long time—almost nine years. I just loved helping drive that narrative.”

A standout campaign

After nearly a decade at Adobe, Adam did a stint at Splunk and completely redid the brand. From there, he joined Twilio, just in time for another major brand refresh. 

“At Splunk, it was a 9-12 month journey to do the rebrand. At Twilio, we did the whole thing in three months. It was a crazy whirlwind.”

Adam said the brand refresh was less about a new look and feel and more about digging deep into what the core of the company stands for and the why. “We were really focused on landing a deep story that emotionally connects with the audience.” 

Once they settled on the narrative, he said, everything from the colors and fonts to the art could just map back to that. “It just turned out phenomenal. It’s a huge testament that my CMO and CEO had such trust and allowed us to run with it. That’s why we were able to do it so quickly. I’m super proud of it.”

It helped that brand refreshes were such familiar territory for Adam. He’d led them even back to his agency days so the research, the listening tours, and the narrative building were not new to him. But he did say he got lucky with Twilio. 

“There was lighting in a bottle on this core ‘why’ story. So all we had to do was build everything around that. And even then, the theme made those decisions easy. It was, ‘Well of course we’re going to use these brand elements.’ It just all came together in an amazing and fast way.”

Advice and takeaways

1) Don’t play it too safe. 

A huge part of Adam’s philosophy is experimenting and iterating. “My mentality was let's iterate. We'll try stuff. We'll push stuff out. If it's not working, we'll change it. There were a couple ideas in the Twilio rebrand that included an extreme sport utility podcast van, and our CMO told us we’d gone too far. But it's just like the scientific method, right? You're testing things.”

It’s easy to default to what’s safe, especially in large organizations. But it can be worthwhile to push against that mentality and advocate for more experimentation. If something fails, pull it and try something else. If something works, go all in. Either way, you’ll be gathering valuable data and knowledge along the way. 

2) Be active in your pursuit of growth.

Adam doesn’t just read a lot. He turns to reading and self-education to give himself a competitive edge. From early in his career, he treated books like mentors and used them to learn skills, creative frameworks, and strategic thinking. Over time, that habit evolved into a superpower that helped him lead teams, speak business, and stay ahead of trends. “Reading has probably been the biggest level up for me.”

Relying solely on university or on-the-job skills often isn’t enough to earn that elusive seat at the table. If you want to grow into a leadership role—or stay sharp once you’re there—explore how you can make learning a consistent, intentional habit. It can be as simple as listening to podcasts on marketing speak or business strategy. They can help you learn those languages and earn your seat.

3) Build strong relationships with your people. 

Many leaders keep a far distance from their team for the sake of objectivity. But Adam doesn’t buy into that. “Life goes so fast and I’d just rather work with people I genuinely enjoy. I have friendships from brands that I worked with back in the agency days that I still continue to foster.  That’s really what matters in the end.”

When you think about building a team or even just how you show up on a team, take a moment to evaluate your approach. Are there opportunities to deepen your relationships? Allow for a bit more authenticity? If so, consider how you can open up more while still operating within your boundaries. You may enjoy your work and make that work even better, all at the same time.

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