Soyoung Kang knows the difference between being reckless and taking a risk. As chief marketing officer of Eos Products, she researched TikTok as a marketing channel for nearly a year before running a campaign, a strategy that has panned out as the body care brand continues to gain attention for taboo-tackling work such as its recent award-winning “Bless Your F*ing Cooch” work. That campaign earned more than 700 million impressions and helped sell 150,000 shaving creams in a week. Eos reserves between 10% and 20% of its marketing budget for new and emerging marketing platforms.

“Where we’ve taken risks, we haven’t blindly leaped off a cliff—we’ve gotten comfortable with the level of risk we are taking in an incremental way,” said the Korean-born Kang, who grew up in Philadelphia. It helps that Kang, who earned her marketing chops at brands including Bath & Body Works ahead of joining Eos four years ago, trained as an architect.

“It’s one part analytical and one part creative—that’s what I love about being a modern marketer,” she said. “It means being as commercially savvy and oriented to growing your brand as being wildly creative.”

Up next, Kang will continue to grow Eos beyond its lip balm roots by expanding further into categories such as shaving and body care.

What advice would you give your younger self? 

Say yes to more opportunities: more meetings, more mentoring, more wacky ideas. Some of the most biggest wins of my career have come from unexpected places. 

What’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken? 

Taking my current role!  Eos had never hired a CMO, I had never been a CMO, and I had also never worked in a smaller organization.  But I am immensely grateful that both Eos and I took that leap of faith, because I’m now exactly where I’m meant to be.

If you weren’t doing your current job, what would you be doing and why? 

I’m a self-professed nerd; if I weren’t working in corporate, I’d love to be an academic.

What should the industry do to encourage more women and people of color into its ranks? 

Our industry’s mantra—if you can see it, you can be it—continues to anchor why we work to improve diversity and representation in storytelling. For the same reason, we need representation of women and people of color in the C-suite and in the board room, to create true inclusion in our hiring, development and promotion policies.

What is the biggest lesson you have taken away from the pandemic?

To revise a famous quote, “what women have done, women can do.” Meaning that we’ve unequivocally demonstrated in the past two years that we can better balance the needs of our careers and our personal lives by throwing out the conventional rules about how we work, where we work.  Companies and leaders that embrace this approach will win in this increasingly competitive hiring market.