Marketing With Purpose Kit: Breaking Down Silos Across Teams
Laura Rice, Chief Marketing Officer at Celebree School under Huffman Family Brands, joins the Marketing With Purpose Kit to explore emotional intelligence and silos: how trust, shared dashboards, and empathy align marketing, franchise development, and local operators around one purpose. Hosted by Michele Brasfield.
Emotional intelligence and silos are tied together more tightly than most org charts admit. In this Marketing With Purpose Kit conversation on The Bliss Business Podcast, host Michele Brasfield sits down with Laura Rice, Chief Marketing Officer at Celebree School under Huffman Family Brands, to explore breaking down silos across teams.
In this episode we explore:
• Why silos slow growth through duplication, miscommunication, and mistrust
• How cross-functional dashboards and joint strategy sessions build accountability and trust
• Balancing near-term enrollment campaigns with long-term brand storytelling
• Leading with empathy in a crisis, from daily reassurance updates to parents during COVID
• Why one shared school dashboard with lead scoring keeps marketing, franchisees, and the enrollment center on the same playbook
• How personalized growth plans help keep marketing talent engaged
Laura opens with a premise that frames the whole conversation: silos slow growth, and the fix is human before it is structural. At Celebree, franchise growth depends on alignment between the marketing team, franchise development, and local operators, so the team built cross-functional dashboards and holds joint strategy sessions. In her words, “breaking down silos is less about tearing down walls, it’s really about building bridges where those gaps are.”
She ties marketing to three pillars: enrollment, franchise development, and brand trust. Laura calls the balance between short-term campaigns and long-term brand building a portfolio approach. For franchise marketing, her team reports on quality leads and intro calls rather than volume.
Empathy shows up in the details. During COVID, Celebree sent daily reassurance updates to parents focused on safety and care. Parent surveys later showed families cared about their child’s emotional development, which shifted the messaging toward social emotional growth and lifted enrollment inquiries. Inside the company, monthly personalized growth plans give people a path to stay.
That shared-data discipline mirrors how Zero Company works with clients, because paid search, social, and programmatic campaigns perform best when marketing, sales, and the agency all read from the same numbers.
Key Takeaways
• (1:30) On what actually solves silos: “This isn’t about structure, it’s really about emotional intelligence. Silos are rarely solved by org charts or more meetings. They’re solved through trust, empathy and a shared sense of purpose.”
• (3:00) On balancing short-term and long-term marketing: “I like to think of it as a portfolio approach. Some initiatives deliver results today and others are for tomorrow.”
• (4:48) On leading through a crisis: “In a crisis, people don’t just remember what you did, they remember how you made them feel.”
• (6:45) On pairing data with human feedback: “Analytics can give you that map, but empathy tells you which road to take”
• (8:07) On tying marketing to the pipeline: “In franchise marketing, we report on quality leads and intro calls rather than just volume, so we don’t want to just live in our silo.”
• (10:43) On where performance breaks: “performance doesn’t break because of technology. It breaks in the spaces where people, processes and platforms aren’t aligned.”
FAQ
How does emotional intelligence help break down silos?
Laura Rice, CMO of Celebree School, says silos are rarely solved by org charts or more meetings. She argues they are solved through trust, empathy, and a shared sense of purpose, backed by transparency such as cross-functional dashboards and joint strategy sessions.
How can marketing, sales, and operations work from the same data?
Laura Rice says Celebree built lead scoring into its school dashboard so marketing, franchisees, and the enrollment center work from the same playbook, and the agency partner sees the same data. The team then doubles down on the lead sources that perform and cuts the ones that do not.
How do you balance short-term campaigns with long-term brand building?
Laura Rice describes a portfolio approach: some initiatives deliver results today and others build the brand for tomorrow. At Celebree, local digital campaigns that generate inquiries are paired with national thought leadership.
When trust, empathy, and shared purpose lead, teams stop guarding territory and start building bridges. See Laura Rice’s guest profile, watch the video, hear her earlier conversation on The Power of Emotional Intelligence in Business, or explore more Marketing With Purpose Kit conversations.
🎙️ Hosted by Michele Brasfield
🎧 Produced by Martha Huerta
Chief Marketing Officer of Celebree School
Laura Rice joined Celebree in June 2021 and has served as the Chief Marketing Officer since March 2022. She oversees the marketing strategy and execution across all affiliated brands under Huffman Family Brands. In her role, Laura’s focus is driving awareness of the Celebree franchise opportunity in target markets, leading initiatives to grow the franchise network, and ensuring consistent brand development and visibility across the entire portfolio.
With more than 28 years of experience as a marketing professional, Laura brings a diverse background spanning equipment and real estate auctions, consumer products, Department of Defense contracts, and a decade in online K-12 and higher education. She is highly skilled at transforming complex ideas into actionable strategies, building integrated marketing plans, and executing campaigns that drive measurable results for both B2C and B2B audiences.
Laura is passionate about creating seamless customer journeys, aligning marketing and sales teams, and leading with an entrepreneurial mindset. She continuously refines processes to improve efficiency, ensure alignment, and enhance the experience for prospective and current franchisees.
Outside of work, Laura is a proud mom to her daughter, who attends both Caliday and Celebree. She loves coaching her in sports, cruising in her Jeep, and spending time with her beloved Basset/Beagle mix, Bernie.
