“I’m a strategic marketer who employs cutting-edge technology and data to unlock tremendous value.”
I have consistently delivered stellar results during moments of inflection such as the dawn of the Internet at Insight, The Great Recession at HP, The COVID Pandemic at AWS and the emergence of AI at StackAdapt.
If you’re searching for a seasoned and AI-savvy marketing leader who has driven successful outcomes at every type of company from startups to Fortune 10, let’s talk.
I arrived at StackAdapt to lead a marketing organization that had been focused on product launches and sales enablement. One early priority was working with Business Ops to deploy a multi-touch attribution platform to measure marketing’s impact. Since I had previously delivered fantastic results when I introduced StackAdapt’s cutting-edge, AI-driven ad platform to Cisco, drinking our own champagne (using our own platform) was central to my strategy at StackAdapt as we began to invest in growth. I had committed to deliver $5 of incremental revenue for each $1 in marketing spend and exceeded that objective with actual results of $11 in 2022 and $7 in 2023. StackAdapt revenue skyrocketed from tens of millions in 2021 to hundreds of millions in 2023 resulting in venture growth investments of more than $500 million.
Transforming Marketing with AI Attracts
Hundreds of Millions In Venture Capital
How Do You Hit Your Financial Target
When Coronavirus Turns Off The World?
My first day in my new role at AWS was April 4, 2020 - two weeks after the world shut down because of the Coronavirus. I was one of six segment leaders (Enterprise, Startups, etc.) and I inherited a pipeline goal which was set in early 2020 without the impact of COVID-19. Because of my expert-level understanding of the needs of the SMB audience and my hands-on delivery and obsession with analytics, SMB was the only segment to deliver on our pipeline goal achieving 140% of plan. One tactic of note was the first virtual AWS Re:Invent for SMB which produced 14% of my pipeline target in one week.
Innovative IoT Marketing:
21,000 Leads
$25M Revenue
Campaign Cost of $17,000
In 2017, I joined an innovative Internet of Things (IoT) software company called Jasper which had just been purchased by Cisco and was being merged with Cisco’s networking hardware and software for IoT. As I led the new integrated digital marketing team, I worked with analytics experts at Cisco to create propensity to buy models which identified the best prospects for our solutions among Cisco’s existing customer base. We targeted those prospects with ABM programs that were specific to each company and each buyer/influencer. We quickly became the fastest growing business at Cisco. In 2019, my team and I were approached by Cisco Central Marketing for a $750,000 sponsorship opportunity at a large event in San Diego called Cisco Live. 35,000 of Cisco’s best customers would be there including a large percentage of prospects with high propensity to buy, but I knew we could reach this target more efficiently. Working with my digital marketing agency, we discovered innovative AI-driven technology from StackAdapt that would allow us to geolocate the event exhibition hall and host hotels. This meant we could deliver a targeted IoT campaign ONLY to mobile and laptop devices within the geolocation “fence” during the week of the event. Our booth overflowed throughout the entire event. We expected thousands of visitors. We got tens of thousands. Our objective was 2,000 leads from the event. We achieved 21,000. Our revenue objective was $2M in event specific revenue. We achieved $25M. The cost of this extraordinarily successful campaign?
$17,000.
Bridging the Brand Canyon Between
Norton and Symantec Was Big Business
In 2011, I joined Symantec, the world’s largest software security company in a new SMB business unit. My deep knowledge of the companies born of The Great Recession and primary research fueled rapid and dramatic success which resulted in my promotion in 2013, adding the $2B Norton business to my responsibilities.
In my first few weeks in my new role, I quickly learned that:
• We didn’t have a clear understanding of the small business customers using Norton.
• We hadn’t considered the changing security needs of many customers as they grew from a small company to a larger company.
With analysis and research, we concluded that:
1. Small and medium business was producing over $400M in revenue (20% of Norton revenues) from roughly 15% (5.4M) of Norton’s total customer base because the average SMB customer spent ~50% more annually on security than a consumer (~$75 vs ~$50).
2. 268,000 US SMB customers of Norton were leaving each year because they had outgrown Norton and didn’t know how to graduate to Symantec (many didn’t know Norton and Symantec were the same company). This represented lost revenue of ~$20M (268,000 X $75) annually.
Losing “only” about $20M (1% of Norton revenues) a year would make it hard to justify the engineering expense required to “bridge the canyon” between Norton and Symantec by making it easy and graceful to grow into Symantec. So, I dug further and asked for some won/loss analysis from my team to discover to whom we were losing these customers and how much they spent with their new security provider.
The answer was startling.
Few of these “caterpillars” were choosing Symantec because they perceived it as enterprise security rather than SMB security. So, they were leaving Norton when they became “butterflies” and choosing companies with a single brand like McAfee, Trend Micro, etc.
At the time of their brand change, they were also increasing their annual security spend 7X to over $500!
The actual revenue we were losing was, therefore, more reasonably projected to be nearly $150M which did open the necessary eyes at the company for engineering investment. We bridged the “brand canyon” with software infrastructure and realignment of marketing investment which helped Symantec SMB revenues grow at triple digit rates.
Norton Security’s Transformation: From Boxed Software to Wildly Profitable Subscription Service
After 2.5 years of leading Consumer and SMB Marketing at Symantec, I was seeking a new challenge. Traveling more than 120 days a year, often internationally, was taking its toll so I asked for a new assignment which would allow me to make a difference at the company while being home more. Of the available options, I chose the product marketing challenge of converting the most profitable consumer security software product the world had ever known – Norton Security – from a boxed product sold on an annual basis primarily in physical retail stores, to a fully web-delivered, managed and perpetual subscription service. In a matter of months, I led my team to fully activate a SaaS experience for consumers that resulted in a decline in annual churn from ~27% to ~17%. This newly retained, highly profitable revenue delivered hundreds of millions of dollars of incremental profit to the company bottom line. A subscription service also reduced Norton dependence on expensive retail channels for acquisition of new and “re-acquisition” of existing customers which delivered hundreds of millions more in savings. As a result of this transition, Norton was merged with LifeLock to form the most successful and profitable identify and internet security business in the world.
Overthrowing the King: How Strategic Marketing Drove HP Past Dell in the US SMB PC Market
In 2008, as the US economy was melting down due to the mortgage crisis, I became the first dedicated HP marketing leader in the Americas for the SMB market. The challenge was exhilarating. Dell led HP by 16 share points in the US and had been #1 in SMB for 20 years. My key strategies were informed by segmentation and research:
Focus on businesses created by The Great Recession,
Deliver a compelling message about the productivity benefits of new laptop and desktop computers,
Provide low-cost financing programs,
Utilize retail stores as a differentiator as many of these prospects preferred to shop for convenience instead of “building their own PC” via the online/call center model perfected by Dell.
Our campaigns were compelling and well executed by my team resulting in an HP gain of 19 share points in three years which displaced Dell as the leader in US SMB PC market share. This share shift represented incremental revenue for HP of $1.2 billion and met the objective given to me of robbing Dell of the tens of millions in US SMB profits used to compete with HP in other markets.
From Zero to $10 Billion: How HP’s Digital Imaging Strategy Revolutionized the Market and Killed Kodak
In 1996, I was promoted to be the first global leader of consumer marketing at HP. Through reorganization, my team soon employed more than 100 marketing professionals around the world and managed a global budget of $125M. I had helped launch HP in the consumer PC business the previous fall and that business ramped from $0 to $1B in 18 months. In Consumer Marketing, we set our sights on a much bigger opportunity; owning a new category we defined as digital imaging which put HP in direct competition with one of the most beloved brands of the previous 100 years – Kodak. We brought photo printers, photo scanners, digital cameras and imaging-enabled PCs to market with a relentless campaign educating consumers around the world about the power of digital memories and what could be achieved with them. The desired outcome of this strategy?
Wildly profitable ink sales.
In 1996, Kodak launched Advantix (a “digital” way to use traditional film) with a $500M worldwide investment and in 1997, I launched “The Power of Possibilities” campaign for the HP digital imaging line with ~$100M in support.
By 2000, the war was over. Kodak earnings had dropped from $2.1B in 1997 to $100M in 2000 and Kodak had fired its CEO. By 2012, Kodak had filed for bankruptcy.
The HP consumer business had grown from ~$2B to over $10B in revenue and a dominant position in consumer PCs and digital imaging products which delivered billions in ink profits.
Marketing Drives Insight’s Digital Revolution:
100% Growth in Revenue AND Profits
When I joined Insight in 1998 as SVP of Marketing, I was highly motivated by the opportunity presented to the company by the exploding e-commerce market. Like today’s AI revolution, the disruption represented by the Internet presented unique opportunities to marketers and required a complete transformation in strategy, team composition and investment. I reimagined a catalog-based marketing organization into a digital development and marketing org. Software engineers, database analysts and HTML programmers were hired and they built custom websites (MyInsight pages) for tens of thousands of our best customers. My team created the first dynamic graphical emails in history, with products and pricing unique to the preferences and purchase volume of each recipient being added to a dynamic template at the last moment. We mailed those emails in the tens of millions to an exploding email address list – a list built at zero cost – primarily through co-marketing programs. Email revenue scaled to $25 million per month and Insight stock price doubled from October 1998 to October 1999.
More About Me
As a master of reinvention, I have continuously evolved as a marketer. I have repeatedly added new marketing skills to stay ahead of the curve. From the earliest days of the Internet and its application to e-commerce, to the explosion of available data that allowed me to deliver measurable ROI that was previously unthinkable, and now into my AI phase, I have continuously adapted to the changing landscape.
What unites these different phases is my unique ability to:
1. Anticipate market trends and position my company for success
2. Build and lead exceptionally talented teams
3. Serve customers with conviction when others preferred the "safe thing" over the "right thing."
I have led marketing for both start-ups and growth-stage companies like StackAdapt and Aveo, as well as established companies like AWS, Cisco, Symantec, and HP. My journey includes leading Product Marketing for Norton and pioneering new categories in Connected Entertainment, the Internet of Things (IoT), and AI-driven AdTech. I also began my career at marketing agencies, so I know how to inspire great work and recognize it when I see it.
My diverse experience spans strategic insight, analytics, technical expertise, and holding almost every job within a marketing organization. Above all, my strong leadership skills make me the ideal choice to lead your marketing organization and drive faster, more profitable growth for your company.
If you want to turn tens of millions of dollars of revenue into hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue or hundreds of millions to billions, let’s talk.
If you need an experienced marketer to master the present of AI while dreaming up new AI applications to transform the marketing approach at your company, let’s talk.
If you need to PROFITABLY serve the dynamic and data-intensive small and medium business market (10-1,000 employees), let’s talk.
If you need a SaaS expert who can analyze your market and find the unique strategy and messages to take share profitably, let’s talk.
If you need to reposition your company in a lucrative “blue ocean” market where marketing can help build a dominant and high-growth position, let’s talk.