WVU Marketing Communications Today

  With the rising demand for marketing accountability, and the emphasis being placed on data-driven decision-making, is the intuitive marketer under threat of extinction? Our guest, Susan K. Jones, says that AI and science will allow the intuitive marketer of the future not only to survive but to thrive. Listen in as we discuss how smarter AI and tech will lead to smarter “informed intuition” for marketers everywhere. Susan is the author, co-author, or editor of more than 30 books. Academically, she is a tenured full professor of marketing at Ferris State University in Big Rapids MI, and she is also a marketing practitioner with a background in banking, collectibles, insurance, and business-to-business. About our Guest: Susan K. Jones is a full, tenured Professor of Marketing at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, MI, where she is entering her 33rd year of teaching. Susan's practitioner background includes work at agencies and companies in fields including banking, collectibles, insurance, and business-to-business. Originally a specialist in creative direct marketing, she has broadened her work, research, and teaching into digital marketing and social media. The author, co-author or editor of more than 30 books, Susan is an active volunteer focusing on education and child advocacy. She serves as a trustee of The Ferris Foundation. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in advertising from Northwestern University. Married to her husband Bill, Susan has two married sons and five grandchildren. She lives in Ada, MI. WVU Marketing Communications Today: Horizons is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master’s degree programs in Marketing Communications.  

  Is marketing’s focus on the customer misplaced, even harmful? We discussed this radical idea with Tim Parkin, a global consultant and coach to marketing executives at many world-renowned brands. While marketers have been focusing on the customer, Tim contends that we have neglected our internal teams. They find themselves without the processes, collaboration, and alignment needed to make marketing to customers work. Join us as Tim explains why he rates most large corporate marketing teams only a 3 out of 10 and gives us an action plan to make this right. HINT: It is tied to a clever combination of skill-based retention and a disciplined process. About our Guest: Tim Parkin is a global consultant, advisor, and coach to marketing executives of many world-renowned brands. He specializes in helping marketing teams optimize performance, accelerate growth, and maximize their results. By applying more than 20 years of experience merging behavioral psychology and technology seamlessly, Tim has unlocked rapid and dramatic growth for global brands and award-winning agencies alike. Tim is a speaker, author, and thought leader who has contributed to AdWeek, Forbes, MarTech, TechCrunch, and dozens of other marketing outlets. He is also a member of the American Marketing Association, the Society for the Advancement of Consulting, and was inducted into the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame. WVU Marketing Communications Today: Horizons is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master’s degree programs in Marketing Communications.  

  "Small business owners are not marketers,” says our guest Stephanie Schwab, CEO of Crackerjack Marketing. But she can help them become proficient, and successful, if they follow a distinct process that she shares during this episode. As the world enters a time of business uncertainty, Stephanie recommends that owners reassess their marketing, to understand the nature of their unique offering and to take stock of their customers. Listen in, as we explore the details around her process, and her marketing must-dos—including the surprising Top Tip she gives to business owners. About our Guest: As CEO of Crackerjack Marketing, Stephanie Schwab creates engaging digital marketing programs for exuberant lifestyle, tech, and education brands. Over the last 20+ years, Stephanie has focused on social media, content marketing, and influence marketing, blending management consulting best practices with agency creativity. She is the Director of the Digital Marketing Programme at Harbour. Space, a high-tech university in Barcelona, Spain and Bangkok, Thailand, where she teaches courses on fundamentals of digital marketing, social media and content marketing, and starting and running an agency. Stephanie also works with coaches, consultants, and service providers to create profitable and sustainable marketing through her Business Marketing Blueprint program. Stephanie received her MBA in marketing and strategic planning from the University of Illinois at Chicago. When not working or teaching, Stephanie travels, plays board games with her husband and teenager, knits, and cooks gluten-free meals. WVU Marketing Communications Today: Horizons is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master’s degree programs in Marketing Communications.  

  Seth Marrs, the Forrester analyst who follows sales technology, painted an exhilarating picture of the future of SalesTech, saying it will combine with MarTech into an entirely new way of going to market — along with a new organizational function called Revenue Teams. Primarily focused on the B2B ecosystem, but with consumer applications — especially for call centers — this developing technology is enabling an end-to-end customer experience driven by conversational intelligence, NLP (natural language processing), AI, and real-time data capture and analysis. In fact, Seth believes the future will be about opportunities and not leads, and this tech gives us a brand new container for our engagement experience, resulting in more powerful roles for marketing, higher revenues, and customer satisfaction overall. Sounds great. Give a listen! About our Guest: Seth Marrs brings more than 20 years of experience leading sales operations, service operations, and marketing organizations. He excels at leveraging data, process, and technology to drive growth in organizations of all sizes and in all industries. Before joining Forrester, Seth spent the last five years as a consultant and senior vice president leading sales operations and marketing organizations for multiple private equity-backed companies ranging in size from $200 million to $1 billion, where he was responsible for customer acquisition, sales execution, and compensation. Before going into private equity, Seth led sales operations for Carl Zeiss Meditec in the United States and held multiple executive sales and service roles at GE Healthcare, including leading sales operations for GE Life Sciences EMEA, building and running a global lean organization for the $3 billion life sciences division of GE Healthcare, and leading sales enablement for the US region (which represented $7 billion of GE Healthcare’s revenue). WVU Marketing Communications Today: Horizons is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master’s degree programs in Marketing Communications.  

  Recorded live from the Innovation Center at WVU Reed College of Media, Ruth Stevens and Cyndi Greenglass look at the fascinating marketing trends shared on their podcast over the first half of 2022. Included in the discussion are insights on the complex evolution of the customer experience (CX), the emerging power of Gen X as an audience, the importance of your digital first impression, the future of events, humanizing measurement, and connected TV (CTV). Don’t miss this opportunity to catch the highlights of the first half of 2022 and the marketing waves Cyndi and Ruth are riding over the horizon. WVU Marketing Communications Today: Horizons is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master’s degree programs in Marketing Communications.  

  As marketers, we spend a lot of time talking about Millennials. We target them as consumers, employees, and donors, to the point of obsession, as the next cohort after the Boomers. But wait! We are overlooking Generation X, not surprisingly called the “Forgotten Generation.” This is the 65 million people in their 40s and 50s sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials. They represent a $2.4 trillion market. Ignoring them could prove a costly mistake for both businesses and nonprofits. In this episode, we speak with Alicia Lifrak, who is a Gen X member herself, and has spent the past 25 years leading strategy in the nonprofit and higher education worlds. She explains why marketers ignore Gen X at our own peril, and what we should be doing about it. Pop Quiz: Can you name at least 3 Gen X leaders of major transformational companies today? Listen to this episode for the answer. About our Guest: With more than three decades of experience in the philanthropic sector, Alicia M Lifrak is a marketing executive and board advisor, based out of California. He was the first head of marketing for Sirius Decisions, a sales and marketing advisory firm now part of Forrester Research. Previously he has served as marketing executive at companies like Eloqua, inRiver, TOA Technologies and previously created the online marketing function for Nuance, now part of Microsoft. He co-founded DemandCon, the first demand generation conference after creating the Eloqua Experience and Markies awards program that Oracle has continued even after acquiring Eloqua. An in-demand speaker at events like Dreamforce, DMA, AMA and Campus Party, Steve stays active in the industry, serving as a marketing mentor to young professionals. She currently serves as Executive Vice President for the Gabriel Group, an OSG Company, leading the nonprofit division in offering full-service fundraising, marketing and strategy consultation to clients. Prior to joining Gabriel Group, Alicia spent 25 years leading teams to achieve exceptional results in nonprofit and higher education. Alicia also serves in several key leadership roles as a volunteer and active member in organizations including The Nonprofit Alliance, NonProfit Pro, Rotary International, the Meridian Society and the Washington University Women’s Society. After moving around the U.S. for most of her life, Alicia now lives in Illinois with her four kids, a cat and a dog. She travels frequently, for work and for fun, is an avid reader and loves to see live music. To connect with her directly or learn more, contact her at Alicia.Lifrak@osgconnect.com WVU Marketing Communications Today: Horizons is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master’s degree programs in Marketing Communications.  

  Marketing is no longer about simply bringing in new customers. Marketers are also responsible for managing customers to profitability. Our guest Steve Gershik explains why customer management is the new horizon, and how we all need to develop the tools and skills to understand our customers deeply. We must become digital anthropologists, examining customer behaviors and signals to infer the steps needed to serve customers and expand their value. Join us for a lively conversation, beginning with Steve’s notion of the “funnel beyond the funnel” and the surprising origins of the AIDA concept. About our Guest: Steve Gershik is a marketing executive and board advisor, based out of California. He was the first head of marketing for Sirius Decisions, a sales and marketing advisory firm now part of Forrester Research. Previously he has served as marketing executive at companies like Eloqua, inRiver, TOA Technologies and previously created the online marketing function for Nuance, now part of Microsoft. He co-founded DemandCon, the first demand generation conference after creating the Eloqua Experience and Markies awards program that Oracle has continued even after acquiring Eloqua. An in-demand speaker at events like Dreamforce, DMA, AMA and Campus Party, Steve stays active in the industry, serving as a marketing mentor to young professionals. WVU Marketing Communications Today: Horizons is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master’s degree programs in Marketing Communications.  

  Marketers are under mounting pressure to demonstrate results. In this episode, the renowned measurement master Katie Delahaye Paine shares her latest tips on how to successfully overcome the challenge while preparing for the new developments ahead. Join us to learn two key reasons this issue persists, why you need to set the right objectives, and how silos and fiefdoms can doom your efforts. Innovative AI-driven tools are on the way, but we must apply them with care. About our Guest: Katie Delahaye Paine, aka The Measurement Queen (@queenofmetrics), has been a pioneer in the field of measurement for more than three decades. She was recently awarded the prestigious IPR Jack Felton Medal for Lifetime Achievement, an award given for lifetime contributions in the advancement of research, measurement and evaluation in public relations and corporate communication. In her consulting practices, she designs measurement dashboards for some of today’s most admired companies. Katie has also been a leading developer and promoter of standards in the PR and social media measurement field. She founded two measurement companies, KDPaine & Partners Inc.(now Carma) and The Delahaye Group (now Cision.) Her latest company, Paine Publishing is the first educational publishing firm entirely dedicated to making more Measurement Mavens. Its newsletter, The Measurement Advisor, is the industry’s most comprehensive source of information about best practices in communications measurement. Her books, Measure What Matters (Wiley, March 2011) and Measuring Public Relationships (KDPaine & Partners, 2007) are considered must-reads for anyone tasked with measuring public relations and social media. Her latest book, written with Beth Kanter, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, is the 2013 winner of the Terry McAdam Book Award. Katie is a Senior Fellow of the Marketing & Communications Center at The Conference Board and a founder and member of the Institute for Public Relations Measurement Commission. WVU Marketing Communications Today: Horizons is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master’s degree programs in Marketing Communications.  

  The landscape of higher education has experienced major changes, but it is set to undergo a sweeping transformation in the years ahead. A smaller Gen. Z cohort, combined with increased talent demands in the industry bring both threats and opportunities for academic instruction. Who will survive, and how will they thrive? In this week’s episode, we tackle two compelling opportunities: how marketing professionals should evaluate the role of higher education in their career ladder, and how schools should borrow from the B2B playbook to competitively market themselves for the future. Take a listen with our esteemed guest, Chad Mezera, Assistant Dean of Online Programs for the Reed College of Media at West Virginia University. Chad literally “wrote the playbook” on online education, and has turned WVU’s higher education programs into award-winning, innovative online degrees. About our Guest: Chad Mezera is the Assistant Dean of Online Programs for the Reed College of Media at West Virginia University (WVU). In this role, he oversees all online courses offered by the college and leads the online programs support team. Before coming to WVU in 2005, Mezera led the internal corporate communications function of a major government IT solutions provider. Prior to that, he planned and executed national and regional marketing campaigns for a non-partisan think tank focused on developing and teaching best practices in federal, state and local government. WVU Marketing Communications Today: Horizons is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master’s degree programs in Marketing Communications.  

  In this episode, Brian Hunt explains, in the clearest possible terms, the total scoop on CTV for marketers. We learned its benefits and drawbacks, the differences between CTV, OTT and linear television, and why CTV is an essential medium for us to be experimenting with today. Career hint: Data science majors can write their own tickets in this field! Join us for the details of how television is becoming more digital, targetable and measurable as a marketing communications channel. About our Guest: Media industry veteran Brian Hunt is Head of OTT and CTV Advertising Sales for Sinclair Broadcast Group. In this role, Hunt is responsible for the monetization of multiple premium connected TV and over-the-top digital video services for the company, including CompulseOTT, a data-driven ad platform and the fastest-growing digital product in Sinclair’s history. His responsibilities also include oversight of Sinclair’s rapidly growing local broadcast inventory and national platforms for NewsON, featuring over 300 local broadcast stations, as well as STIRR, Sinclair’s direct-to-consumer advertising-supported OTT service. Hunt also oversees the OTT and CTV ad sales for Bally Sports regional sports networks and The Tennis Channel. Prior to his role at Sinclair, Hunt was Corporate Vice President of TEGNA’s Premion OTT Division as its first employee. During Hunt’s tenure at Premion, he oversaw Sales, Publisher Relationships, Contracts, Operations and Strategy. Prior to TEGNA, Hunt held a variety of leadership positions in the industry. He was the Senior Vice President of Viamedia, a cable ad sales representation firm where he established and renewed key partnerships including Centurylink, Google Fiber, Verizon Fios, Time Warner and others. Hunt spent over 15 years at NBCUniversal as Senior Vice President of Affiliate Sales & Marketing in the Cable Distribution Group and other key NBCU positions. Hunt has a BS in Finance from Southern Illinois University, M.B.A. from Fontbonne College in St. Louis, MO and an Executive Management Degree from Harvard Business School. Hunt lives in the New York City suburbs with his wife and three children. WVU Marketing Communications Today: Horizons is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master’s degree programs in Marketing Communications.