Marketing Today with Alan Hart

Rand Harbert is CMO of State Farm at a time when the company has reinvented, or at least reimagined, the way insurance is viewed. That is, instead of being there when things go wrong, they want to be a company that is there when things go right. And, in the process, make it clear that they offer a breadth of services that improves the quality of their customers' lives by providing proactive resour...

Linda Boff is the CMO of GE , a behemoth company with over 300,000 employees worldwide. While certainly an established brand, it's a company in transition, and Boff has been leading that charge, not only to evolve but to make things better for people they serve. As she says, “We're five years into what is a huge transformation for the company into what is the world's leading industrial digit...

In this podcast, Esurance CMO Alan Gellman discusses a wide range of marketing topics. But as seems to be the case for so many top marketers, tools and platforms are important, but to drive growth, it all comes down to trying to understand the people you want to reach: “We always — always — hang into that center of ‘Who are these people and how do we deliver for them?' Beca...

Elizabeth Windram , director of Brand and Advertising at JetBlue, arrived at her destination in marketing after stops in finance and MBA school. For her, it's not just coming up with the big idea so much as it is to trust your instincts and follow through; believing in what your gut is telling you while listening to other viewpoints and making the work better. “As long as you don't mess with...

Lisa Baird was named CMO of the United States Olympic Committee in 2009. Prior to that, she served in brand and marketing roles for Proctor & Gamble, GM, IBM and the NFL, among others.  With the Olympic Games occurring years apart, Lisa touches on how she maintains focus on long-term marketing goals: “The better and more articulate and more precise your mission and your purpose is &...

Seth Kaufman's career traces a steady and seemingly unstoppable ascent at PepsiCo. As an intern, he fell in love with the people, the brands and the culture before taking on (and conquering) challenge after challenge, including brand and innovation initiatives, developing channels strategies in sales, and frontline field work on the snack side — where he embraced and developed his strength a...

Rohit Bhargava is a trend curator, TEDx speaker and the author of five best-selling books, including the recent 2017 edition of “Non-Obvious: How to Think Different, Curate Ideas & Predict the Future” and “ Likeonomics .” When Bhargava analyzes trends, he isn't thinking about the availability of flying cars you can control with your mind, he is operating more in the her...

Dan Marks is the CMO for Hancock Whitney Bank, a regional player in the Gulf South area with a footprint spanning from Houston, Texas, to Tampa, Florida. In November of 2016, he was honored by the CMO Club with their peer-nominated President's Circle Award. Dan is always looking to the future and believes in the strength of the marketing stack, which he describes as “the next-generation way...

Russ Findlay is the head of marketing for the U.S. at Hiscox , an international specialty insurer with a 115-year history. Prior to Hiscox, he worked in consumer packaged goods with companies like Unilever, Pepsi and IHOP. In this podcast, he discusses marketing in general and his career path from CPG to the world of financial services. For Findlay, working in financial services presents a unique...

Tom Asacker is a keynote speaker and an adviser to executives and companies, and he is the author of five books, including “The Business of Belief.” He believes many marketers operate under the false assumption that people behave like computers, expecting them to make decisions based simply on the information they supply and then choose their product or service. According to him, it ju...

Peter Horst is a former CMO at The Hershey Company. Prior to that, he spent 12 years at Capital One and was CMO of TD Ameritrade. He discusses here a range of topics, but he speaks at length on the inherent challenge of applying big data and analytics to human behavior. “It's going to get increasingly more challenging to maintain that right balance of art and science, of machine speed and hu...

Laurel Hodge is director of creative strategy at the online image-sharing community, Imgur , which she says is “on a mission to lift people's spirits for a few moments every day.” But there's a lot more to it than that. Imgur has more than 150 million monthly active users, and among those, 86 percent are millennial men, the most ad-adverse and toughest audience to reach for marketers....

Molly Swenson is CMO of RYOT , an immersive media company founded in Los Angeles in 2012 and recently acquired by AOL and The Huffington Post. She's also a badass. Molly was a White House intern in the Obama administration, performed as a contestant on “American Idol” and designed philanthropic strategies for Kobe Bryant, Shakira and Ben Stiller. More recently, Adweek recognized her as...

Rachel Tipograph left her role as global director of digital and social media at Gap after a conversation with her boss where she asked, “How do we drive sales on the web, not annoy people, and even make Gap cool again at the same time?” His reply: “If you figure that out, that's a billion-dollar idea.” That conversation coupled with her recognition of the seismic upheaval...

Meaning is the new luxury. It's not logos and labels but products that are made with thought and care — products that are authentic with great stories to tell, according to Bridget Russo, chief marketing officer at Shinola. “We've learned that place matters. For us, our home is Detroit. That story of provenance adds depth to our brand. But it has to be real. It's about finding out what...

Roll Cast Advisors' Drew Miller believes marketing is all about relationships Drew Miller, founder and CEO of Roll Cast Advisors in Austin, Texas, thinks marketing done well forms meaningful relationships between companies and people. And meaningful relationships grow and thrive when companies deliver something that's really important to the customer. “You always want to know your customer,...

Today we are changing the name of our podcast from Avid Impact to Marketing Today with Alan Hart. Join Alan in the coming weeks for interviews with top marketers and thought leaders. Don't miss your change to learn from the best in the industry. Subscribe to Marketing Today with Alan Hart. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/marketingtoday See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....

Vishal Khanna, Digital Marketing Director at Wake Forest Innovations, 2015 Content Marketer of the Year sat down with Alan Hart. Vishal discusses how the content marketing at Wake Forest Innovations produced ROI results that beat out IKEA, Marriott, Emerson, CSC and GoPro. The results were 600%+ increase in marketing qualified leads and a...

Steven Handmaker, Chief Marketing Officer of Assurance, one of the largest and most awarded independent insurance brokerage operations in the U.S., sat down with Alan Hart. Steven discusses how Assurance has become recognized as a "best place" to work and what is marketing's role in driving a "rock star" culture. We move to talk about the world of B2B marketing, the future and the w...

Part 2 with Kimberly Whitler, Forbes contributor and Assistant Marketing Professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, sat down with Alan Hart to discuss her recent research looking at company performance, corporate board composition and the CMO. Did you know purely analytical CMOs are correlated to poor company performance? What is the future of markting leadership? Plus...

Part 1 with Kimberly Whitler, Forbes contributor and Assistant Marketing Professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, sat down with Alan Hart to discuss her recent research looking at company performance, corporate board composition and the CMO. Did you know purely analytical CMOs are correlated to poor company performance? Did you know that marketing experience on the board...

Honey Maid is a classic, all-American brand that's been part of families lives since 1925. But by 2013 it was seen as old-fashioned. Our challenge was to re-position Honey Maid as a modern snacking brand for today's families. We drew a parallel between the brand and modern day families, recognizing that despite a lot of change over the years, what defined each of them as wholesome hadn't changed....

Chris Balach, senior brand manager of Extra Gum, sat down with Alan Hart to discuss his recent Effie win. Gum had been in a 2-year decline. Extra, one of the category's largest brands, had been declining for even longer. That changed dramatically when Extra stopped following the conventional gum script and started to infuse the brand with meaning that transcended the category and touched peoples h...

Mark-Hans Richer of Harley-Davidson spoke to Alan Hart about what many scoffed at a few years ago: Take a brand with an aging owner base and made it a must-have product for young adult riders. In 2008 we made some big moves with product introduction of Dark Custom, which -- as a strategic initiative -- has now won a 2015 Gold Effie for sustained success in the market for its 7 year run. Support th...

Tips, advice, and insights from the industry's top, award-winning marketers. “Oscar's problem with the healthcare industry is that it's viewed as inhumane. The industry doesn't really focus on the individual, and it's hard to navigate,” says Veronica Parker-Hahn, Vice President of Marketing at Oscar Insurance speaking to Alan Hart. “And we saw a great opportunity to bring a human...