Coworking with Tara Corey

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Tara Corey is SVP of marketing at Optimizely, a software company that provides AI-powered digital experiences. She has also served in senior marketing roles at Ellucian, Qlik, and SAP.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in marketing? My job is to figure out who we’re trying to reach and connect them with the right message at the right time, using clear, compelling storytelling across multiple channels. Day to day, that means managing and justifying budgets, measuring performance and conversion rates through the funnel, and making sure our efforts are actually driving results. It also involves a lot of meetings, aligning teams, pressure-testing ideas, and keeping work moving forward.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Opticon at Optimizely stands out as a recent favorite. It brought together multiple teams to deliver a large-scale event across New York and London, with strong attendance from customers and partners. Seeing so many teams collaborate and watching all the pieces come together was incredibly energizing.

Earlier in my career, I worked on a complex, cross-functional martech initiative that also left a big impression on me. We broke the work into 48 smaller projects and used a literal puzzle to track progress. It became a simple but powerful way to visualize momentum and tell the story internally. That project also came with meaningful leadership lessons around prioritization, setting boundaries, empowering the team, and delegating effectively. It reinforced something I still believe strongly: small changes applied thoughtfully can have an outsized impact.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I’m drawn to some of the classic Volkswagen campaigns, like the spot with the little boy dressed as Darth Vader. It’s simple, emotional, and incredibly memorable. That’s something marketers constantly struggle with, especially in B2B, where it’s easy to blend in or default to safe, forgettable work.

The Oscar Mayer bologna jingle is another example that sticks with me. It may not be sophisticated, but decades later, people still remember it. That kind of memorability is hard to earn, and it’s something I think about often when shaping campaigns.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I’m a juggler and baton twirler. I’ve even brought it onstage while speaking about modern marketing leadership, including juggling on a balance board to make a point about the realities of the role. It was uncomfortable and outside my comfort zone, but it was intentional. Sometimes taking a risk is what makes a message stick.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I’m most optimistic about marketing finding its way back to the art of the craft. Over the past couple of years, the focus has skewed heavily toward efficiency and output. As AI takes on more of the dirty work, it creates room for marketers to spend more time on the creative, strategic, and storytelling elements that make marketing feel human and differentiated.

What I’m least optimistic about is the idea that AI should replace that human, artistic side of marketing. The work is absolutely going to change, but I’m far more interested in AI as a way to augment and empower marketers, not erase the judgment, creativity, and intuition that are core to great work.

What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? The book Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. While it isn’t a traditional marketing book, it offers powerful lessons on experience design, attention to detail, and intentional leadership, all of which translate directly to building meaningful brands and customer experiences.