The Cox School of Business hosted Marissa Solis as their 13th speaker event on Wednesday, Feb. 12. Solis is the head of Global Brand and Consumer Marketing for the National Football League (NFL), a UT Austin grad and an SMU parent.
Solis spoke to an audience of SMU students, former coworkers and other members of Dallas’ business community. She began her fireside chat with a brief introduction and overview of her career.
Solis was born in Mexico City but immigrated with her family to Harlingen, Texas when she was 10 years old. Harlingen, deep in the Rio Grande Valley, is located half an hour from the Mexican border. It was here where Solis grew to love foreign affairs.
“I wanted to be a diplomat and an ambassador, and I wanted to go back to Latin America and forge relationships,” Solis said.
Her interests took her to Georgetown University where she prepared to become a foreign service officer with hopes of becoming an ambassador. Two weeks before graduation, however, her dean pulled her aside.
“[He] said to me, only two percent of career officers make it to ambassador. You [first] need to go into corporate and make a name for yourself,” Solis recalled. “That is how blunt he was and it was, for me, a lesson in life.”
With no formal marketing education, she pivoted to corporate. It turned out to be a good move.
Solis began her career in San Juan, Puerto Rico as an Assistant Global Brand Manager for Procter and Gamble.
“That was kind of the very first step,” Solis said. “I became a marketer for Proctor and Gamble, [which is] probably the best foundational company for marketing.”
Though P&G is where she attributes much of her marketing success and strategy, it didn’t lack discouraging learning moments.
“I was given the opportunity at the young age of 22 to lead my first campaign and it was for Downy,” Solis said. “I remember walking in to meet the agency and when I walked in the room, it was a room of all men, which, hey, that’s my life.”
Women in the room nodded in understanding and agreement.
“I remember going up to the head of the agency and introducing myself: ‘My name is Marissa Solis. I’m very excited to work.’ And he said to me, ‘Marissa, so excited to meet you. Why don’t you meet my assistant, Susie? Why don’t you two ladies have some coffee while us men talk business?’” Solis said.
Though her boss was in the room, he said nothing.
“It was in those 30 seconds that I had to make that pivotal decision,” Solis said. “Am I going to walk out of the room or I’m going to stay in the room? For me, it was my parents and everything they went through. And with everything shaking in my body, I made a decision to stay. I said to the team, ‘It’s my campaign. I’m running this campaign. I’m staying in the room.’”
After P&G, her career skyrocketed. Solis was hired by PepsiCo where she worked her way up the corporate ladder from a marketing manager all the way up to the Senior Vice President of Frito-Lay North America, a PepsiCo company.
After 18 years at PepsiCo, Solis had no plans to leave. She loved working there and oversaw Frito-Lay, a multi-billion-dollar company.
“I was on top of the world. I knew my career,” she said. “Life was really, really good.”
Then she got “the call.”
While at her daughter’s soccer tournament, she received a call from a man who offered her a job for “an iconic brand.” Solis hadn’t been expecting a job offer and told the man she would only leave for a select few companies.
The man on the line asked her if the NFL was one of them.
Solis was more fazed by what he said next. At the time of the call, COVID-19 was rampant and the Black Lives Matter movement was filling headlines. He told her that the NFL was going through a transformation and they wanted her to be a part of it.
“[He said] the NFL wants to tell a different story and we think you can help tell that story. That, to me, was extremely compelling,” Solis explained.
Solis didn’t take the job right away. Besides her allegiance to PepsiCo, her biggest reservation was her daughter, Gaby, who was wrapping up high school.
Gaby, a current pre-med student at SMU, encouraged her mom to take the job.
“I [told Gaby] I think I’m just going to turn this down. I don’t think I’m going to do this. And she said to me, ‘Mom, you are crazy not to take this job, like crazy,’” Solis said.
That was the final push Solis needed to say yes.
“Sometimes it’s the people around you that know you so well and know that it’s the right decision,” she said. “It was a full leap of faith. I do miss Pepsi, of course, but I do not regret it one bit.
Since being hired as the Senior VP of Global Brand and Consumer Marketing for the NFL, Solis has worked on a variety of campaigns. Most recently, she spearheaded “Run With It,” a Super Bowl ad for women’s flag football.
The audience for the NFL is a lot more diverse than people realize. One of Solis’ goals was to appeal to that audience in ways that had not been previously utilized.
“[The NFL] needed to completely change the way we come to market [the game]. That’s exactly what we set out to do,” she said.
Viewership for the NFL has increased since Solis arrived on the scene and so has the percentage of female fans. She hopes that her efforts will continue to trend in the same direction.
Before taking questions from the crowd, Solis gave some advice to students.
“[The NFL] was never in the plan. I mean, I was going to be an ambassador,” Solis said. “Don’t worry so much about making a plan. You have to kind of see where your passions lie. My whole career has been about making decisions to go to places that fulfilled me.”
