Renegade Marketers Unite

If your own CEO is skeptical about your marketing strategy, chances are you’ll run into problems internally and externally. To operate more effectively and with the board’s full support, you need to fully understand the data and communicate it honestly. Few professionals understand the importance of the CEO-CMO relationship as well as Alan Trefler—founder, CEO, and chairman of Pegasystems. Listen now for Alan’s take on building a stronger rapport with your superiors, maintaining customer satisfaction, and working as a student of business. Alan Trefler is a visionary change-agent, innovative philanthropist, and trusted advisor to business leaders around the world.  Alan founded Pegasystems three decades ago to change how the world builds software.  In that time, Alan’s unique vision and relentless focus on client success has positively evolved the way many of the world’s leading enterprises engage with their customers. Alan’s best-seller, Build for Change, describes a new generation of customers with the unprecedented power to make or break brands and the changes businesses must embrace to succeed in today’s digital world. Alan is the holder of multiple software patents, and the recipient of industry awards recognizing him as an innovative CEO and successful entrepreneur.  In 2017, Alan was appointed to the World Economic Forum’s IT Steering Committee. A staunch education advocate, Alan and wife Pam established the Trefler Foundation in 1996 to improve educational outcomes.   The Foundation recently sponsored Union & Fifth, an innovative non-profit that turns clothing donations into money for charities.

Whether you're considering entrepreneurship or eager to rise another rung on the marketing ladder, now is the time to be thinking about your personal brand and enter the world of content creators. To understand how to navigate this potentially perilous world, you'll need a guide and I can think of no one more qualified than entrepreneur Dorie Clark. The New York Times describes Dorie as "an expert in personal reinvention," and with the release of her new book Entrepreneurial You, she has outlined all the ways to "monetize your expertise, create multiple income streams and thrive!"  Listen now for Dorie's recommendations on content creation, blogging, podcasting, speaking and so much more.     

WNYC’s transformation from a traditional regional broadcaster to a multi-platform media powerhouse offers lessons for just about any marketer, especially those seeking to become world-class content providers. Setting the stage for our extensive conversation, Peter Weingard, CMO of WNYC, explains, “It's like being in a new business all of the time because what the business looks like today is not what it looked like a year ago.” This enlightened perspective is just the beginning of the CMO-worthy insights Weingard offers. New York Public Radio may be a 93-year-old radio station, but it still manages to look brand new. Weingard helps ensure the media outlet remains agile in its offerings to listeners. As Weingard puts it, New York Public Radio is in the curiosity business. In this episode, you’ll learn how to cater to the here and now audience, understanding how to maintain a flexible content approach.

A company without values is like a tree without roots. As soon it faces adversity, it will tumble over. When Denise Broady arrived at WorkForce Software, she was alarmed to find out that the company did not have any written values in place. To make matters worse, WorkForce had an international team with employees spread out across the globe. Broady had her work cut out for her when she decided to rethink the brand’s vision and communicate that message to the whole company. In this episode, you’ll learn how her marketing team convinced fellow WorkForce employees to embrace new core values and amplify the brand message.

Boxed.com is in the business of delivering joy. Whether you work for the e-commerce startup or order from them, there’s a good chance they’ll make you smile. On this episode, Boxed.com’s CMO Jackson Jeyanayagam discusses his role in helping the brand maintain its sparkling reputation. You’ll learn tips for reaching customers emotionally, as well as how to create a specific vision for your company.

Although the Equifax hack put cybersecurity on the priority list for 140 million Americans and scared the heck out of many others, it is hardly a new issue for consumers. Major hacks at Yahoo and Target a few years back put many on high alert. So what is new here and why should cybersecurity be a priority issue for senior marketers?  Well, as it turns out, all that marketing technology you've recently brought into your company has created even more exposure for your company's data and that of the consumers with whom you do business. Sure enough, your pursuit of big data to optimize your sales, marketing and customer experience efforts, have put your companies at risk, in a remarkably big way. And of course, a data breach will inevitably become a brand breach as the folks at Equifax can attest. So batten down the hatches and have a listen as Norman Guadagno, Senior Vice President of Marketing shares his thoughts on why this is such a big problem and some of the steps that marketers can take to prevent or at least mitigate the impact of a security breach.   

If you’re not focusing on customer experience, you may be missing out on a huge opportunity to build brand love. Dan Gingiss—Senior Director of Global Social Media for McDonald’s—believes in the power of service. He identifies social media as a key medium to address customer questions and concerns. As a published author and podcast host, Gingiss offers professional advice for connecting with audiences and getting involved in consumer conversations. Technical note: Drew apologizes for the sound crackles - he was too close to the mic and hopes it won't distract you from his guest's sparkling insights! He'll try not to make that mistake again. 

Many fuel companies struggle to build loyalty among customers. With so many potential gas options out there, most consumers won’t go out of their way to choose a specific brand. At Shell, it is the job of Dan Little (Head of North American Marketing) to get drivers to go that extra mile. Little and his team launched a rewards program called Instant Gold Status earlier this year that encourages consumers to fill up at Shell on a regular basis. In this episode, you’ll learn how the campaign aims to create brand love and what you can do to improve customer retention.

Is virtual reality putting us on the brink of a new marketing revolution? Google’s creative think tank, Zoo, has initiated a study on VR in hopes of recognizing its full potential. Abigail Posner, who is the Head of Strategic Planning at Zoo, boldly believes that this new technology will show immense promise for marketers in just a few years. In this episode, you’ll learn how some brands are already taking advantage of VR to go from storytelling to story living. Here is a sample Q&A from the interview: Drew: VR has been talked about for years and years and years as the next thing. Are we finally at the point where this is going to become at least semi-mass? Abigail: I think it's a combination of a number of things. One is that we have enough experiences under our belt to recognize the value of it, whether it's gamers playing it, whether it's porn, whether it's the fact that doctors are using it. All of a sudden, there's a range of different worlds that are recognizing its value and it's hitting mainstream. That's number one. Number two, as we brought up before, the actual physical headsets themselves are becoming more accessible, whether it's accessible that we can wear them or accessible price wise. That helps. And then finally the technology itself is evolving. So it's becoming finer tuned. It's becoming more accessible so that we can use it on a number of different platforms integrated into our phones and so forth. It's a combination of a number of different factors. And then I just think generally we are becoming just more comfortable and agile with what it means to create a story in this space.

Not all heroes wear capes. Trip Hunter, CEO of Silicon Valley ComicCon, just happens to work with people who do. When he was tasked with creating buzz for the con from scratch in its inaugural year, Trip had just two weapons at his disposal: a renegade mind and Steve Wozniak. Two cons and a couple star-studded celebrity squads later, the event is looking to build on the massive success Trip helped generate. In this episode, you’ll learn the secrets that make Trip one of the bravest marketers in the world today. He has led groundbreaking campaigns for an array of companies like Renegade, Fusion-io, and Primary Data—always looking to boldly go where no marketer has gone before.