Founder Laura Lee Is Building Marketing That Includes Everyone

What if performance marketing could do more than drive growth—what if it could drive equity?

In this episode, Michele Ching sits down with Laura Lee, former performance lead at HBO Max and founder of LL Consulting, to talk about using advanced strategy and AI to open doors, not close them.

From helping B2C and DTC startups grow with fractional leadership to championing inclusive representation, Laura shares her mission to uplift API and women founders with strategic expertise that was once reserved for big-budget brands.

You’ll hear insights on:

• Why performance marketing is equal parts art, science, and human instinct
• The pitfalls of over-automation and the importance of a test and learn mindset
• How real-time contextual targeting creates meaningful audience connections
• What it means to train AI on diverse voices and lead with self-advocacy
• The mission-driven businesses Laura supports and the courage behind them

Together, Michele and Laura explore how their shared focus on authenticity, access, and innovation reflects a broader shift toward marketing that’s not just smart, but deeply human.

Because the future of marketing isn’t just what we build. It’s who we build it for.

TRANSCRIPT

Michele Ching
Welcome to a brand new episode of the Breaking Through the Mayhem podcast. Today we have something truly special for you. We explore how our industry of advertising and marketing can support more than brands and businesses by starting with you. Today, I'm featuring an incredibly special guest, a dear friend of mine, Laura Lee. Laura is an award winning, data driven marketer with over 15 years of experience spanning consumer tech, entertainment and gaming.

She specializes in full funnel marketing to drive growth, and is passionate about scaling brands globally through innovative digital campaigns and data backed insights. She contributes her expertise as an advisory council member for Harvard Business Review and serves on the strategic AI program Advisory Board member at Southwestern Law School. As the founder of her own little consulting firm, Laura partners with B2C and DTC companies to accelerate performance and build impactful, audience driven experiences.

Prior to launching her own firm, she led performance marketing at HBO Max. Her work has most recently been recognized as a 2025 AI Innovator Award recipient, recognizing her commitment to leveraging emerging media and technology to engage consumers in meaningful ways. Laura also serves on the Board of Directors for Agents and Advertising and Awakening Wisdom. Laura is a champion of inclusive leadership and dedicated to fostering environments where diverse voices and talents can thrive.

Laura, thank you so much for joining us at Sightly today. We're so grateful to have you on our podcast.

Laura Lee
Thank you so much for having me.

Michele Ching
So I want to dive into it because I know you're really well off camera, but the folks who are listening don't. So can you just tell us a little bit about your personal journey as a marketing executive?

Laura Lee
Definitely. So I'm a true believer in connecting personal and professional passions. This connection is what really shaped my career and the opportunities that I chased. It led me to make the decisions on what and who I wanted to work on and with. So I started on the agency path, working on brands and accounts that I had a calling to.

Being from LA entertainment was where I felt I really wanted to be ingrained. So my first accounts were in the studio business with Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures, which then expanded to music labels such as Universal Music Group and then gaming accounts like Hasbro. This then transitioned into brand direct opportunities, where I was able to work in live entertainment on some of the biggest artists and events during my time at Live Nation and AEG.

I then asked myself, during the height of the pandemic, what are most people doing at home right now? And they were streaming content. So this is what then led me to joining HBO Max to oversee acquisition and growth marketing for me. When you can visibly see that impact of your work, fulfill someone's day or a lifelong dream, whether that be watching their favorite actor on screen or their favorite artists on stage or TV series or game, it all becomes that much more rewarding to say I had a small part behind that memorable experience.

So this all forged a path to today, where I have launched my own consultancy to support DTC organizations to drive growth and performance and really democratize access to this expertise.

Michele Ching
I love this career path that you shared. I think so many of our listeners might still be in their journey of going from agency side to client side, maybe back, maybe to the sales side.

But one thing that you said in your journey that really stuck out because it resonates to what we believe in and care about at Sightly, is how, you're able to connect the marketing and advertising you do with the human being at home who's watching their favorite actor on screen or their, you know, favorite movie, their favorite show, and you're actually really weaving into meaning and moments in their life that truly matter to them.

And you know, what we care about deeply at Sightly is how we can also democratize access for marketers to reach those moments that matter. If you don't work at one of the large companies or one of the large agencies that you're referencing and even if you do, how are you utilizing access to video metadata, quite frankly, to connect contextually to those key moments that matter within the audience.

And so a lot of our clients and partners utilize our technology to do it, both for, you know, their own brand authenticity, wanting to make sure that the way they activate media connects to the brand's values. But also what you said, I think is the most powerful part is using technology. Sightly happens to be a leader in this space, but utilizing technology to meaningfully connect to those moments with the consumer, at that like show level or video URL level.

So I think you know, it's really interesting that you have come to the same arrival point that Sightly has had in our journey with how to connect meaningfully with consumers. I really, really appreciate that. And one of the things you stood out, you know, we care about a lot. We built technology for it. But you talk about this idea of democratizing access to some of the, you know, most advanced performance marketing strategies around.

Can you tell me a little bit about that. Give us a look under the hood of maybe an example, of a time that that actually worked.

Laura Lee
Yeah. For me, it's about recognizing that I've had the amazing fortune of working on some of the biggest brands and organizations. How do I then apply this knowledge that I've gained and this experience to share this wealth to other products and other companies who maybe don't have access to a full stack marketing team, or they don't even know where to begin when it comes to launching a strategic marketing campaign.

So since launching my consultancy, I've used my experiences to partner with a lot of the big brands still, you know, doing my work with Virgin Galactic or The CW, but I'm also working with startups to help kickstart them and their vision into a promotable product. So I want to turn these strategies into a growth engine for them. I'm also expanding globally to help other markets realize their potential with strategies that have been pressure tested in a key environment.

So the benefit of the fractional work I do is really defined as a cost effective solution to provide high level marketing strategy and leadership for those who maybe can't afford a full fledged team. So I'm also a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, and to me, this gives me more of an opportunity to support and uplift API founders and give access to this strategic oversight and really help them build and grow together.

So essentially, putting more women owned or API on products in front of consumers and helping them find success in the ways that they deserve.

Michele Ching
That is so beautiful. Because when you talk about democratizing access, my brain immediately went to small business. But what I heard in that last part is that you're not just thinking only about small business.

Who doesn't have access to maybe a full stack team or, you know, expensive technology, but you're specifically honing in on women founders, Asian Pacific Islander founders? I mean, I think that. So many times we see in our industry that when folks can take a chance on themselves, launch their own business and make that big leap, and they're ready to shift into, more advanced paid media tactics, they're often times just met with your, oh, just buy Google and Facebook.

And then they're like yeah, but how do I figure out my organic strategy versus my paid and what tools can I use to do that when the access I have is just some demographic affinity, maybe some keyword targeting. But also how do I even optimize all of that. And now I have data overwhelm. And when I hear you really saying is, I got you.

I've done that. I'm going to help you make sense of all of this with this work that I do. And it's super interesting. I know I keep tying it back to that, but there are so many parallels and what you're sharing about your journey and the work that you do with the work and the innovations we prioritize at Sightly. The whole reason we came up with this technology is that the honest truth is that AI is making it possible for small business founders, leaders, fractional executives to do the productivity and output of large firms.

But how do they make smart decisions with the AI tech stack that they invest in? And Sightly has, you know, made a big bet. We have an in-house design team that can actually create our own AI. We have three patents we're really proud of doing it. Because like you, we said, hey, I could actually take a huge weight off the shoulders of these media buyers and traders.

We could help them automate how they build out audience personas. We could help them automate how they target real time moments at the speed of news and culture. We actually have the ability to do that. And it talk about democratizing access. We built, you know, a platform that literally anyone from a small business founder to a large agency can absolutely utilize to compete at the highest level.

So I love this idea of democratizing access to the tools and the experience and the expertise you bring to the business. But speaking about AI as a way to supercharge anything, you know, the way that, brands are meeting consumers in real time or meeting consumers in a smarter way and building out audience personas, there are a lot of pitfalls that that we've seen, you know, happened when folks are too reliant on AI or don't know what they're doing or don't have a thoughtful AI strategy.

So from your perspective and your expertise, I'd love to hear from you. What are some of the biggest mistakes or watch outs that brands are making when it comes to AI, specifically, in their performance marketing approach?

Laura Lee
Yeah, and I think everyone is experimenting in this together. Right. But from what my experiences have been so far, it doesn't matter if you're a well-established brand or you're a new venture startup.

There's a few common watch outs when integrating AI, and I have four that I want to touch on. So I'm a firm believer in AI helping to amplify human potential, reducing time spent on menial tasks. Some of the things you mentioned earlier, right. And really allowing for innovation and creativity to really thrive. However, the first point is I should not be used to reduce human oversight.

So what does this mean in terms of performance marketing? So when you're using generative AI or lens like I'd love to know, like how many times have you noticed a typo or grammatical error that's outputted from these models? Right? I recently did a very basic stock image prompt on Gemini, and I was looking up the term generic, a generic term, marketing team.

But what was outputted to me was an image with the text narketing with an N. So these are the types of elements where you have to use human intelligence. You have to catch the errors yourself. You have to train the model to then output accurate and better results for you. And if we kind of tie this back into performance marketing again right.

So what does this mean. So it means over automation without any human checks or balances. Using platforms like Google Pay Max or Meta Advantage both very very strong products, but avoiding letting it just simply run without any human intervention. So this can lead to poor audience targeting or wasted ad spend, a lack of differentiation needed, and creative or messaging.

And you know, I can share one anecdotal story where we ran a search campaign and it was run for, targeting a really, really popular pop star. However, his stage name is also the name of a breed of a dog. So the search engine couldn't differentiate a story for this artist or a search for this artist versus the animal without further guidance.

Right? So this is where human intelligence comes in. We have to intervene to add in parameters, exclusions, really guide it to bid on the specific query that we want that's relevant for us. Right. And this happens all the time. The second is AI can optimize for specific metrics, but it doesn't have the human knowledge or strategic goals like brand emotion or to convey things like brand lift, right, brand loyalty, brand equity, or differentiating a nurtured lead versus a high quality lead.

I can optimize for what you as a human tell tells it to, right? So, but if you're tracking the wrong metrics like optimizing for lowest CPA instead of highest LTV, you risk low value conversions. AI models also are only as good as the data that you input for them. So if your first party data is outdated or say, your conversion tracking is broken, AI will learn off of this lower quality or unclean data.

The other common pitfall that I've encountered is experimentation. So without a proper test and learn agenda, or the mindset to really adapt to these learnings, brands won't really have the ability to truly teach these models to uncover deeper insights. So taking that risk is really where I feel most clients and accounts are uncomfortable is how do we kind of like find that happy balance between risk and really finding that reward?

AI is not a set it and forget it type of, you know, a logic, right? We have to regularly experiment to feed learning. In the end, I always say you have to help AI so that it can help us. And my last I think my last watch out is really around education. We have to consistently check in and ask ourselves, do we truly understand, like how these tools are actually working?

And we have to try to, you know, use human analysis and strategy and continue to train ourselves and others so that we can really understand these dynamics.

Michele Ching
I love everything you said. I think if I'm understanding you correctly, the key takeaways are that AI should not replace humans because AI cannot thrive without human oversight,

Laura Lee
Exactly.

Michele Ching
And that ultimately, the AI is just listening to what the humans tell them to do. And so if you tell them to do the wrong thing or tell the AI bots to do the wrong thing, it's going to do the wrong thing.

So you can't become overly reliant on the automation. You still need to get involved, and it can do some large amount of automation for you. But humans need to still take an active role in their relationship with how the AI is like supporting them.

Laura Lee
Yeah, and I think performance marketing is really balancing art and science. Right. With the integration of AI.

There's your science, but the art. AI cannot do it for you. That's where your human intelligence comes in and really builds that strategy. So I think for me that's that balance there.

Michele Ching
And then one of the tried and true things that I heard you say, regardless of how technology continues to push us forward, is having test and learn agendas.

I think I have seen so many cases where, we bring on new clients and they want technology to be this like perfection zone, not remembering that at the end of the day, to your point about art and science like you are the brand leader, are you the brand? You're the agency for this brand. And so this robot doesn't know what you know.

It also doesn't have the nuances that you know about that you know, brand or even like the consumer and how they think differently in different seasons and what they care about. So I think super, super smart for you to remind everybody to continue to have learning agenda as throughout their journey with new technologies, AI or otherwise. And the last one that you said, I love the most personally, continuous education, I think it's technology moves so quickly.

You know, you mentioned like performance Max on Google. We see a lot of clients being like, yes, let's dump all our money into that. And you're like, yeah, but how are we also now filling the top of the funnel? Where are you still investing in brand equity and reach and those kinds of goals. And so if you're not continuously learning about not just the ad formats, but also your tech stack and what's available out there in terms of AI and innovation, you're you may end up with like tech stack soup and duplicating your investment and not really knowing like what metrics to trust or look at to inform your decision making.

And selfishly, what I'll agree with, especially up at the top about the human oversight, is that is one of the biggest pieces of learning we have. For any of the clients that work with us, on Sightly on the brand mentality technology side of, you know, that the platform work that we do, we have built in human oversight stats into every component of the platform, because the whole premise of a brand mentality is that you get to choose your brand's perspective, your opinion or mentality at any given time, and it can change given the context of current events and news and culture.

And it's meant to change because a brand is dynamic, like a consumer is dynamic. So yeah, we've got a lot of AI that's filtering through billions of data points a day across the entire internet, and it's connected to the way that a brand or client feels about their brand profile. That makes a decision a very easy decision tree about, is this moment relevant for my brand?

Is it, you know, on is it on brand, is it off brand, is it safe? Is a suitable it answers a lot of those types of questions, but there is a training component to every touchpoint. So yeah, you've set your brand profile to automate that. Is this moment target or is this moment a block or is this moment a monitor?

But if if you see that come through the platform and you read like a news headline and it comes up as a target and maybe based on your brand profile as a target, but right now we are in, let's say, an election season, for example, maybe it's not so much a moment you want to target. There's a thumb up and a thumb down so you can continue to train the model.

So you're not setting it and forgetting it like you said. And so I'm loving how a lot of your journey, your experiences, your recommendations really converge with the same education that we hope to provide our clients and partners when they work with us to.

So from that perspective. We are not all living one campaign and one wrap report at a time. At the end of the day, to your point about human intelligence, there's a huge human component to this massive industry.

Marketing and advertising supports, honestly the way that media can live, thrive and monetize in the world. And so we have a huge responsibility and opportunity to give back to the industry and give back to the people that this industry impacts, that the people that this industry is sending messages to you. Right. And I know that you are really passionate about we talked a little bit about it in your bio, and I know you're really passionate about service and giving back, so I would love to learn a little bit about what inspires you when you think about the human component of our business service and giving back.

Laura Lee
Yeah. I mean, exactly as you referenced earlier, I'm an advocate for female and API representation. And to me this is in many ways, right. So broadly speaking, I feel like we need to uplift these communities to really shine light on the amazing talent and intelligence and creativity in general. But specifically, like, I would love to see more API and API women represented in tech and AI, ML marketing like such as performance marketing.

I think most tech organizations feel that we aren't an underrepresented minority in this field, as there's an abundance of API talent in developer or engineering industries, which I'm so proud of. But we can't forget that performance marketing is also a technical field. It's data driven, it's analytical, it's product forward, and it's product influencing. So it's a true definition of innovation.

I hope that the work that I do not only encourages and inspires new talent to get into this field, but I also want to start seeing these AI models have an understanding of female and or API voices, right? Can they learn off of a cultural difference to give us outputs that don't only serve the majority? So I'm hoping that this work can really encourage more API and women founders to also have courage to build and launch.

Like you said earlier, knowing that marketers like myself are here and ready to support them in their needs. So, I mean, I just hope that, you know, there's going to be more opportunity for everyone with this.

Michele Ching
Thank you for saying that. Something that I shared a little bit about on my LinkedIn page is the way that we prioritize these exact types of conversations at Sightly.

One thing I'll say that we're really proud of is I think it's something like 80% of our executive leadership team are women. And speaking to that point, you know, that's about but not I don't know if everyone knows that I recently became a mom. I guess it's not. So recently it was maybe like about a year ago.

I think as women, when we're thinking about navigating our career, going back to the human element of this business transition, that transition to a mom can be, you know, really intimidating. So finding companies like Sightly that can really champion you to be brave and bold in every season of your life and really support you through those milestones and those transitions.

I just want to say the way that you're encouraging women and API founders to get in the game. I want to say I am a testament and a case study to to doing the same thing. I you know, I'm really fortunate because I've been working at Sightly for eight years, but there are companies like Sightly out there. So if you're listening, absolutely get into this industry because digital media companies and ad tech companies have the capability to be flexible, to support women and marginalized people to meet them where they are crossing, you know, the digital access divide.

You know, just a lot of the things that we've talked about here, but when we're really zeroing in on that human component Sightly is a testament to the capability of this industry to provide a whole, full life for the people on the other side of the technology, machine production.

Laura Lee
Yeah, it just adds to the human component. Right? We work so many hours of our day, we should do something that not only is a personal passion for us, but also gives back the company gives back to you in the way that you're giving it. So like, I love to hear that Sightly is a strong advocate for you and your new life and what that structure looks like.

And I'm so happy to hear that there are many companies out there that are really supportive of these life changes that, you know, females and women have. So, yeah, that's amazing to hear.

Michele Ching
And one thing, a dear friend, Rashmi Rao said on a different panel, a couple hours ago, I have to say in response to this, she said 100% of the next generation comes through a woman.

So for businesses to not prioritize the way that they treat women and makes no sense for our species. And I was like, clap it up.

Laura Lee
I agree wholeheartedly.

Michele Ching
Okay, so we're going to wrap it up right now with a quick lightning round. My favorite questions? There's only two. First question, name your favorite mission driven business and why?

Laura Lee
Okay, I can think of four really fast ones right now. One, I have to shout out Asian in Advertising. It's a nonprofit. It's founded by Bernice Chao. We really just serve the AAPI community. You know, anyone that's in the industry really provides resources, support and mentorship. So I love that opportunity for everyone and to really build community. The second is Humanitea. It's a London based social enterprise.

It's founded by my friend Tina Chen. She offers grab and go vegan tea lattes. They really integrate health, sustainability and mental well-being into its core mission, so definitely check them out. The next one I can think of is, Sāe Coffee Studio S.A.E. It's co-founded by Christina Minju. They're dedicated to redefining the coffee experience. So really emphasizing quality, sustainability and also integrating cultural heritage.

And the last one is Travaras. They're a sustainable and regenerative travel platform, co-founded by Jennifer Loh. And so I really love that they're looking to redefine the travel industry and focus on minimizing environmental impact. So definitely give all of those a little follow or a little check in because they're amazing, amazing products and businesses.

Michele Ching
I feel like I talk to you all the time, and I'm legitimately getting goosebumps because I've not ever bought any of these things.

But I want to buy all of them now.

Laura Lee
Yes, yes.

Michele Ching
They very much speak to everything that I care about. All right. Second to last question. What would you leverage your courage for?

Laura Lee
Yeah. You know, I think this is something that really speaks really closely to my heart, but I'd be honored to showcase my journey of self-advocacy to really inspire others to do the same.

It's not easy being vulnerable. It's not easy putting yourself out there and to have to justify your worth right, and the value that you can bring. So I hope that I can provide opportunities to those who maybe don't have a platform. If you know, I want to be able to share the mic or the stage with others and show what's possible.

I really want to uplift the community and show that we're in this together. So yeah, hopefully make a little bit of impact that way.

Michele Ching
And I want to validate that. Not only is that your intention, but it's what you do. So for those of you listening in, Laura actually had me as a featured panelist on the most recent Asian in Advertising Annual Summit.

Laura Lee
You were amazing.

Michele Ching
Thank you. It was the first summit that I got to share my journey and my experience with. I think it was like over 300,

Laura Lee
300 in person, 300 online. Yeah, we got a huge, huge attendance from that summit.

Michele Ching
So this is such an honor to actually be able to share our Sightly’s platform back with you. Thank you for sharing your platform with me. And I hope that we inspire the folks listening in to follow in your footsteps of self advocacy and, you know, putting themselves out there in new and vulnerable but bold, brave and successful ways.

Laura, I really want to thank you again for sharing some case studies with us today, giving us a playbook for how to integrate AI into the way we do business and performance marketing.

And also some really great brands to check out that I am excited to look up right after this, and I look forward to either interviewing you again or somehow collaborating again soon.

Laura Lee
Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. I'm looking forward to it.

Michele Ching
Thanks.