Building a World-Class Brand with Michael Mendenhall, SVP, CMO, & CCO of TriNet

Sep 17, 2019

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What does it take to build a world-class brand? Many marketers aspire to it, but few are ever able to actually participate in building one of the top brands in the world. However, Michael Mendenhall has had the opportunity a number of times. As a senior marketer at Disney, he was able to learn from great brand builders like Michael Eisner, Bob Iger, and Steve Jobs. And as a multi-time CMO, he has had opportunities to perfect the craft of building a brand from the top.

Now Michael is bringing that expertise to TriNet, where he serves as Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer/Chief Communications Officer. On this episode, Michael opens up his playbook and talks about how to build a world-class brand. He also discusses how to manage a marketing team, why communications should sit with marketing, and much more.

Links: Full Notes & Quotes: http://bit.ly/2kQA527 Michael’s LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/2mlZQYJ TriNet: www.trinet.com

5 Key Takeaways: - “I've always built a team, not as if it's a marketing team as much as it’s a team that’s all about content. It's all about our narrative. It's about the focus and consistency of the narrative.” - Michael Mendenhall - CMOs should focus more on driving meaningful engagement than on pure volume metrics. - Communications is pivotal to marketing, and senior marketers should aspire to have supervision over the communications function and team. - “One thing I learned from Steve [Jobs] is simplicity of message and focus. Don't get distracted in your messaging and communications.” - Michael Mendenhall - Your brand is precious. If you aspire to be a world-class brand, don't allow yourself to put out anything that isn't world-class.

Bio: Michael Mendenhall joined TriNet in March 2018 as Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer/Chief Communications Officer. He leads all marketing and communications functions, including messaging, branding, advertising, demand generation, product marketing, and corporate communications.

Michael is a marketing and technology veteran with extensive leadership experience. Prior to TriNet, he most recently served as IBM’s Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Communications Officer for IBM Watson and IBM Cloud, leading all marketing and communications strategies for both business areas.

Prior to IBM, Michael was the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Communications Officer at Flex. Michael also served the Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Fusion-io, where he helped transform its brand positioning and product alignment prior to its acquisition by SanDisk. Before Fusion.io, Michael served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Hewlett-Packard and spent 17 years at the Walt Disney Company, where he rose to President of Marketing and Synergy for Walt Disney Studios and Executive Vice President of Global Marketing for Disney Parks and Resorts.

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