The interesting thing about a house is how quickly its meaning escapes its materials. A builder can measure the lumber, insulation, energy performance and square footage. A buyer walks through the door and imagines Tuesday morning: where the coffee lands, whether the children can do homework nearby, what the monthly payment leaves for everything else. Elicia Azali saw the distance between those two views when she arrived at Beazer Homes in 2024. She had spent her career building brands, but homebuilding had not been on her map. Then someone told her brand did not matter much in the category. Curiosity did the rest.
Azali's reply was practical. A home is often the largest purchase of a person's life. Perception is formed at every interaction, from a search result to a sales conversation to the details of the product itself. If brand means the sum of those interactions, it should matter more here, not less. She saw an industry with deep technical knowledge that often described itself through bedroom counts and square feet. The opportunity was to preserve the science while recovering the feeling.
“Everyone owns the brand. Marketing might lead this work, but this is the company's work.”Elicia Azali, Home Builder Digital Marketing Summit
01 / Starting linesMore potential than polish
That instinct for seeing the person inside the transaction began well before the C-suite. Azali grew up in Oberlin, Ohio. At 15, she found herself at the front desk of one of the country's largest Black-owned real estate and development firms. She later wrote that she had “more potential than polish.” The firm's leaders, Adam Troy and Keith Key, gave her something more durable than a lesson in property: a close view of servant leadership. Every person who entered the office was treated as if they were the most important one in the room.
Decades later, Troy visited Beazer's corporate office to speak about real estate and development. The reunion carried an elegant bit of symmetry. The teenager at the desk had become the marketing chief of a national homebuilder, yet the original lesson still fit: pay attention, make room and serve the person in front of you. The industry changed. The operating principle did not.
College widened the circle. A Glenna R. Joyce Scholarship allowed Azali to study at Ohio State without carrying student debt after graduation. At Fisher College of Business, she led the Council of Black Students in Administration, organizing mock interviews, company visits, volunteer work and networking. A mentor, David Harrison, brought her to the National Black MBA conference in Philadelphia. The concentration of Black excellence made possibility visible. Years later, when Fisher gave her its Pace Setters Executive Award, her advice to students began with two words: “Have courage.”
02 / Career passportRange before routine
Azali has described a career as a passport: collect enough stamps to learn where you do your best work, which experiences add range and which ones need not be repeated. Her own passport started with brand management at Procter & Gamble. It moved through marketing, advertising, product and innovation roles at Nationwide. In 2019, she joined The General as senior vice president of marketing and later became chief revenue officer.
At The General, a familiar cartoon officer and a real basketball legend helped make insurance approachable. The brand's long partnership with Shaquille O'Neal extended into Azali's community work. She joined O'Neal and Daymond John in mentoring recipients of grants for Black entrepreneurs. She now serves on the board of the Shaquille O'Neal Foundation. The connection between commercial reach and public service is not incidental to her. Her guiding phrase, “To whom much is given, much is required,” turns access into an obligation to open space for someone else.
In July 2021, American Family Insurance Group made Azali its enterprise chief marketing officer. The remit covered marketing and customer functions across a portfolio that included American Family, The General and other insurance brands. Public profiles put that portfolio at $14 billion in sales. The scale was useful, but so was the variety: multiple brands, multiple channels and customers who approached risk, trust and value differently. She defined an enterprise purpose around championing dreams and opportunities, then worked to make it more than a line.
Recognition followed: Ad Age's 40 Under 40 in 2021, a She Runs It Working Mother of the Year honor in 2022, and induction into the American Advertising Federation's Advertising Hall of Achievement in 2023. Azali's public account of those years is less trophy case than relay race. Board work with Color Vision and Morehouse College, plus mentoring inside and outside her companies, returns to the people who poured into her when her own possibilities were still coming into focus.
03 / The operating modelThe brand leaves the marketing department
Beazer gave Azali a different kind of complexity. A homebuilder works nationally and locally at once. Land, buyer expectations and competition change market by market. The product is physical, regulated and expensive. The journey is long. The marketer cannot simply announce a promise and hope the rest of the organization catches up.
Her response was to bring the rest of the organization in early. Sales, product, finance and area leaders helped define the customer and the story from day one. That matters because each group controls part of the experience. A salesperson's language can fulfill the promise or puncture it. A land decision determines whether the intended buyer can find the company in the right neighborhood. A floor-plan choice turns an abstract insight into a kitchen, a doorway or a place to gather.
Where the promise becomes real
Azali calls the marketers embedded across Beazer's divisions “local CMOs.” The phrase gives their knowledge some institutional weight. They understand their own customer and market better than the national office can. There are still boundaries. She has joked that sign spinners fall outside them. But the arrangement is a thoughtful bargain: central clarity without flattening local judgment.
“My first goal is to help our businesses grow, and the metric for that are leads and appointments.”Elicia Azali
This is where her head-and-heart language earns its keep. Emotional storytelling is not brand for brand's sake. The commercial job remains leads, appointments and home sales. Yet the technical proof has to connect with a life the buyer recognizes. Energy performance can mean a lower monthly utility bill. Curated choices can mean a kitchen arrangement that fits a family's rhythm. Quieter rooms can mean a better place to work or unwind. Product truth supplies the head; relevance supplies the heart.
04 / The visible workMake the indoors mean something
In October 2025, Beazer introduced “Enjoy the Great Indoors,” a brand refresh spanning its website, advertising and creative system. Its cleverness lies in reversing a familiar invitation. The outdoors usually gets the romance. Beazer's phrase asks buyers to notice the value created behind the walls and in the choices inside them. Azali described the work as a company-wide evolution in storytelling, centered on what customers can experience rather than a recital of construction credentials.
She also keeps a close eye on where discovery happens. Buyers use YouTube, Instagram and TikTok as search engines, not merely entertainment feeds. That changes the assignment. A useful brand story has to survive contact with a search box, a short video, a local sales team and an in-person visit. Consistency is not repetition; it is the same underlying promise taking the right shape in each setting.
05 / What travelsA useful way to build
Azali's method travels well because it is less a campaign recipe than a sequence of questions. Who do we serve? What do they value? Where does the organization actually deliver that value? Which local experts know what headquarters cannot? How will the work produce growth? The answers force brand strategy into contact with operations.
They also explain the arc from a 15-year-old receptionist to an Atlanta CMO. At every stop, attention becomes leverage. A mentor notices potential. A scholarship creates room to study and lead. A conference expands the imaginable. A marketer listens to buyers. A company invites the people closest to the customer into the room. Opportunity is rarely abstract; someone builds the conditions for it.
For Azali, the home is a particularly fitting product for that idea. It is both an asset and a setting for ordinary life, full of hard numbers and private hopes. Her contribution is to keep either side from swallowing the other. The square footage still matters. So does the Tuesday morning happening inside it.