Renegade Marketers Unite

Customer experience is at the core of marketing success. Nimble founder and CEO Jon Ferrara explains where and how brands should be targeting their messages in Part II of his interview on the Renegade Thinkers Unite podcast. Ferrara grew Nimble out of the idea that brands do best when customers recommend them to their networks. Nearly nine years later, Ferrara's business is stronger than ever and...

Jon Ferrara grew the social selling platform Nimble from scratch to 100,000 users in just a couple of years without spending a dime on media.  He has also converted 15% of those users to paid subscribers making Nimble a model for bootstrapping entrepreneurs. Having been a CRM pioneer with Goldmine which Jon sold in 2000, he is a wonderful font of insights and inspiration so much so that we recorde...

Is the key to immortality for brands simply about finding the right moment for reinvention? When Ron Chemow's Hamilton became Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway sensation, Global Head of Corporate Marketing Aniko Delaney recognized the opportunity for BNY Mellon to reach new audiences. Affectionately called the Hamilton campaign, "Invest In Our Legacy" managed to not only to honor BNY Mellon's founder...

  Keeping a brand fresh means evolving with trends, but Alma Derricks, former VP of Sales & Marketing of the Retail Sales Division at Cirque du Soleil, knows that not every trend is right for every industry. As someone who runs towards moments of inflection, that's exactly what Derricks walked into when she joined Cirque during an ownership change in 2015. Believe it or not, Cirque had relied on o...

This episode will help you understand the state-of-the-art for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and how forward-thinking businesses are capitalizing on CRM to improve customer experiences and drive revenue.    

In this podcast, you'll learn about where to start your brand transformation, why your brand should be a "sage" instead of a "hero," the importance of creating a tangible customer experience and the strategy behind CA's new ad campaign, "The Modern Software Factory." Over the last four years, CMO Lauren Flaherty repositioned CA Technologies' global brand, helped it adapt to the fast-paced blur of...

As Chief Revenue Officer, Meredith Kopit Levien is a driving force behind  The New York Times 's digital transformation and their stunningly timely "The Truth is Hard" campaign. When the news became the news during the 2016 presidential election cycle, Kopit Levien's challenge was not only to remind people why real journalism matters, but also to reach a new base of paid subscribers hungry for hig...

When Tom Libretto joined Pegasystems as Chief Marketing Officer, he recognized that his new company was on the cusp of huge changes. Applying his experience at major companies like IBM, Nokia and Chase, Libretto dove headfirst into his role, first by assessing star performers, past successes and failures and opportunities for growth. The good news was that one of the company's star performers was...

Described as both a bulldog and a warrior, Intuit's VP of Marketing Patti Newcomer-Simmons built her reputation by seeking out the difficult challenges most mortals try to avoid. One such challenge was to dramatically improve departmental performance at a company that was already filled with "happy campers." To do this, she first focused on the getting the metrics right. Rather than dwell on how s...

Dara Royer sat alone at her desk pondering the seemingly impossible--how do you rebrand a global organization with only a $50,000 budget?  She knew in her heart of hearts that rebranding was not just a nice next step for Mercy Corps, but it was a critical requirement for the organization to realize its global ambitions. She also knew there is little glory in being right, what really mattered was g...

Digital rock star and Spotify's Global Vice President for Growth & Marketing, Mayur Gupta, joins us in this week's podcast to talk predictive marketing, lack of separation in online and offline worlds, and why quality beats quantity when it comes to consumer acquisition. With over 15 years of experience in leading the digital transformation, Gupta shares insights on how brands and marketers can ea...

There are three salient features of creativity, regardless of the form it takes: It's new, it's everywhere, and everyone can do it. This week we switch it up on RTU to talk to the expert on creativity, Larry Robertson. Robertson's latest book, The Language of Man , tackles the biggest myth about creativity, and that's this notion that only a few rare people are capable of creative genius. In the p...

At one point in our inspiring conversation, Chandar Pattabhiram says "I've always believed that people buy candles not because they need candles, but because they need light." As CMO of Marketo, Chandar brings a floodlight to the world of marketing, leading to an episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite you won't want to miss.  Among his many illuminating ideas, Chandar espouses "engagement marketing" a...

Every brand strives to build emotional connections with its constituents but few have succeeded in the manner of Pete Krainik, founder and CEO of The CMO Club. Starting from scratch in 2007, Pete has built a remarkably collaborative membership of over 800 senior marketers that meet regularly in 22 US cities and several more around the world. In this episode, we'll reveal some of the secrets to The...

Ryan Linders, VP CRM, Loyalty, and Marketing Analytics at Sally Beauty provides a rare glimpse into the initial phases of building a customer loyalty program from scratch. You'll learn how Linders got the program off the ground and how Sally Beauty provides value to customers and gets it back in terms of membership fees and on-going purchase loyalty. 

In episode 9, we take a break from big brand CMOs to hear from independent musician Will Dailey. Why this deviation? Well first, I've been trying to get an interview with Will Dailey ever since I saw him speak at a Content Marketing conference in 2016 because I was certain his story would inspire marketers big and small. Second, Will really is a renegade, having walked away from a major record lab...

Special Episode - A second report from IBM Amplify on Watson Marketing and Cognitive Computing. Drew Neisser talks with Amber Armstrong , IBM Director of Digital Amplification and Demand Generation. Explore the future of marketing and customer experience by delivering just the right content at the right time.  

Special Episode - Drew Neisser reports from IBM Amplify 2017 . Live from the conference floor. Get an up-to-date perspective in this special report on influencer marketing with Amy Tennison, Director of IBM's "Futurist" influencer program. Also features interviews Brian Moran and Jason Falls, two IBM Futurists.  

Rich Honiball, is the CMO of the Navy Exchange (NEX), which generates over $2 billion in sales through over 300 retail stores worldwide that range from a 200 square foot "Micro Market", a 24/7 vending operation, to a 200,000 square foot flagship store "that looks like a department store attached to an electronics store attached to a home store attached to a drug store." In this episode, you'll lea...

When Elissa Fink joined Tableau she was one of 40 employees that helped orchestrate a user conference for 200. Ten years later Tableau has a staff of over 3,200, a user conference for 13,000 and revenue that exceeds a billion dollars annually. It's an amazing success story that Elissa has not just witnessed – she's played a vital role, bringing a combination of enthusiasm, smarts, willingness to t...

Gina McDuffie of VER, one of the largest video/audio equipment providers in the world, shares how she helped evolve what was Video Equipment Rentals into VER, not just from a naming standpoint but also how they marketed and interacted with their global customer base. 

Lamenting the fact that the healthcare industry "says the same thing and blends into this mush," Arra Yerganian is "working to change the conversation" about Sutter Health. To achieve this goal Yerganian is "leaning in when others lean away" and seeks to "embrace the digital experience and create one-to-one relationships for the 3.5 million people that we serve." Believing that this promise needs...

The notion of having a large-scale content studio in-house would be radical for many brands but that's just the opening scene for David Beebe who "set out to establish [Marriott] as the largest producer of travel lifestyle content." A veteran of Hollywood, Beebe has turned Marriott into a content powerhouse by "not asking for permission all the time" and by focusing initially on "really premium st...

As a long-time financial services marketer, you would expect Dan Marks to have the science of marketing down pat. And indeed he does, having built a predictive marketing spend model at First Tennessee Bank (see my book The CMO's Periodic Table: A Renegade's Guide to Marketing!) and the marketing tech infrastructure in his current role. But Marks sees the trend towards data-driven marketing going t...

With over 70% share of the premium tequila market, it would be easy for Patrón's CMO to rationalize a conservative marketing approach. Instead, Lee Applbaum believes that success can only be found by "challenging long-standing norms in luxury and in spirits marketing," and by "always staying ahead of the curve." To these ends, Applbaum is focused on showcasing Patron's authenticity as a handcrafte...