STAN COOK
Americas Marketing Director, DOW COATINGS AND PERFORMANCE MONOMERS
Could you please share your current role, what it entails, and what excites you most about it?
I am currently the Americas marketing director for Dow’s Coating Materials business. In this role, I lead a team of marketers spanning Dow’s Architectural Coatings, Industrial Coatings, Pavement Markings, Paper Coatings, and Adhesives segments across North America and Latin America. I help set the overall Americas marketing strategy and segment-specific strategies to bring value to these markets and to also address the long-term ambitions of the business. Creating value is something I am naturally drawn to—it is truly at the center of my role as a business-to-business marketer.
How important has mentorship or a piece of advice from someone been in your career—and have you had the chance to mentor others in return?
Early in my career, when I was still on the technical side, my boss told me to make sure I built credibility with our customers. Once you have that credibility, he said, they will continue coming to you to help them perform their job better. Credibility is not built because you want it—it is built by being authentic and by understanding what customers do and what their needs are. Even though my customer interactions have evolved throughout my career, there has not been a single day when our customers have not been at the center of my thinking.
How, if at all, did your educational background shape your path into coatings?
Going through school, my plan was to become a chemical engineer. When I joined Rohm and Haas as an R&D scientist, I had no prior experience in polymer science. After nearly a decade in the lab, I thought I would make a career in it, as many had done before me. I certainly never imagined I would make a move into Marketing. The moral of the story is that your skills will eventually find the right spot, and maintaining some flexibility is important. Sometimes people see something in you that even you cannot see.
What’s one project or innovation you’ve worked on that you’re especially proud of?
Being a raw material supplier, it is a different kind of relationship playing behind the scenes—but it is especially rewarding to walk down the paint aisles with my kids and tell them about what we make that goes into the various products on the shelves. I usually bore them with stories about how we have supported different developments or why one paint is better than another. It is a behind-the-scenes role, but it is incredibly impactful because we bring a distinct perspective. We participate in creating value across many of the paints out there.
How do you stay current with advancements in coatings technology?
Being in a large company like Dow, it is easy to work across businesses and functions and only skim the surface of a market or industry as you move from job to job. I have made it a point in my career to stay in the coatings industry, and I believe being a “lifer” truly allows me to understand the market and the needs that exist across the value chain. Sensing trends firsthand is important—but even more important is being able to help create those trends. That kind of impact only comes with deep, intimate experience in a market.
Has the coatings industry changed since you entered it?
I entered the coatings industry at the tail end of a decades-long movement towards lower and lower VOCs. Lowering VOCs and rebuilding performance at those lower levels really dominated development work for many years. Today, we are seeing new focus areas and a shift in direction for sustainability, with initiatives aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of products and addressing substances of concern in formulated products beyond traditional VOCs. I believe that over the next 10 years, we will see considerable progress in many of these emerging areas.
Are there particular industry innovations or shifts you’re excited about?
Just as we have seen over the last several decades, Dow is working on many innovations that will impact the coatings industry for years to come. Across each of our segments, we are developing innovations designed to tackle everything from enhancements to application experience, improvements in a wide range of performance features, and a broad variety of sustainability value propositions. Given our distinct position in the market, we seek solutions tailored to our customers’ specific challenges. But oftentimes, we also bring forward ideas and innovations for needs that people may not even be thinking about yet.
What advice would you give someone just starting out in the industry or considering a career in coatings?
Regardless of your job description, make sure you understand the market and the needs that exist across the various parts of the value chain. Customers do not buy innovative technology just for the sake of it—they buy technology that offers specific value to them or to their customers. Coatings are everywhere in our lives, and once one need is conquered, new challenges will emerge that require fresh innovations.
What keeps you motivated and eager to come to work each day?
The ability to take distinct technologies developed by our R&D team and find ways to create value for end users, formulators, and Dow is a truly motivating part of the job for me. We have all seen great innovations that cannot find a home because they do not create value for someone. Bringing a needs-based perspective to our innovation projects is deeply rooted in understanding the market and the needs across the value chain and it is something that I genuinely enjoy in my work.
How does company culture impact your work and ability to perform successfully?
One of Dow’s core pillars is to be the most sustainable materials science company in the world. This is a lofty goal but to achieve important things in sustainability, we cannot rely on small steps alone. By setting this mission, Dow has shown it is not afraid to make the investments required to make a meaningful change. Likewise, in setting that mission, it has forced me to think about what we can do—both big and small—to create value through sustainability in the markets we serve. There are many exciting developments in the pipeline aligned with this vision.
Stan Cook is the Americas marketing director for Dow’s Coating Materials business. In this role, he leads a team of marketers spanning Architectural Coatings, Industrial Coatings, Pavement Markings, Paper Coatings, and Adhesives segments across both North America and Latin America. Cook works to set an overall Americas strategy, as well as detailed, segment-specific strategies to bring value to these markets and to address the long-term ambitions of the business.
Cook joined Rohm and Haas Company (subsequently Dow) in 2003 as an R&D scientist in the Architectural & Functional Polymers business. He transitioned into the Marketing function (now part of Dow’s Coating Materials business) in 2011, and has held positions of increasing responsibility in Marketing over the last 15 years.
Cook holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Lafayette College and a Master of Engineering in Polymer Science & Engineering from Lehigh University.