When Connie O’Brien became chief marketing officer at U.K.-based Tungsten Network in 2016, the company’s awareness was largely limited to Europe. Its marketing was pretty much confined to investor relations. O’Brien was tasked with building a marketing machine from the ground up. “I had to figure out how to create some resonance with our prospective customers as well as the suppliers…
Eponym. Feel free to Google it. Though not an everyday term, it is the ultimate acknowledgement of cultural acceptance. Eponyms like FedEx, Kleenex, Jacuzzi, Band-Aid, Scotch Tape and Chapstick all continue to lead their respective categories. But others like Formica, Bubble Wrap, Plexiglas, Popsicle, Realtor, Windbreaker, Novocain, Dumpster, Stetson and even Ping Pong have long lost their original corporate association…
Walking around the studios of New York Public Radio in New York City, you’re confronted with conflicting realities: one symbolized by a primitive radio microphone from 1924 and the other by an advertising poster from 2016 with the headline, “More Influential than Russia.” As pioneers of FM broadcasting, it’s not surprising that New York Public Radio is the largest public radio…
“I’m just suggesting, humbly, that better products are easier to sell,” says Jerome Nadel, senior VP and chief marketing officer at Rambus, a public software licensing company in Silicon Valley. This begs the question, are better products really too much to ask for? For decades, the answer for many CMOs has been, unfortunately, yes. Like it or not, it has traditionally…
We’ve recently sent you some examples of the power of great storytelling. But can a great story actually drive leads your business? The answer is, unequivocally, “Yes!” (And we can prove it). Hear from one of our clients, in her own words, about how our story-driven marketing campaign (“Reducing Friction”) has generated qualified leads and awareness for Tungsten Network: We’ve…
One of the most bizarre yet pervasive quirks of the business world is that everyone thinks they are a qualified marketer. The collective rationale is that because they consume products like other humans, their opinions must be valid. Well folks, I’ve witnessed a rocket launch but that doesn’t make me a NASA scientist. Marketing is an increasingly sophisticated discipline requiring…
At the tail end of 2017, I participated in a CMO Roundtable. It was somewhat therapeutic knowing that all 19 of my fellow seasoned CMOs had a similar view of their jobs: “It’s damn hard!” The good news is that to a person, everyone sitting around the table actually loved their jobs along with the challenges and rewards that came with it….
Whether it’s seen as a guiding light or a perilous sinkhole, the use of data is a predominant consideration for B2B marketers, especially as they look ahead to 2018. In fact, gathering, dissecting, deploying and protecting data is so top-of-mind that you might think these folks were becoming geeks of the first order, mirroring the passions and predilections of coders and…
Ensconced in the luxurious observation lounge of a brand-new 168,000-ton ship, Meg Lee, chief marketing officer of Norwegian Cruise Lines, greeted me with smiles and a champagne glass. This demonstration of the notion that travel should be fun ended with my first question about her definition of marketing. She responded: “filling ships.” “My job is to fill a fleet of…
If “every village has its idiot” had an antithesis, it would be “every community has its organizer.” In any group setting, he or she is that person who naturally brings together disparate individuals with a common bond and, most important, mobilizes them for action. At Kofax, that person is Grant Johnson, chief marketing officer. The automation software company was acquired…