Media 7 | March 23, 2022
Bruno Bin, VP of Marketing at Rocket.Chat takes us through Rocket.Chat's innovate new features and their remote work culture. Read on to know more about his thoughts on the recent paradigm shift in the B2B marketplace, benchmarks of a successful marketing and sales strategy in his latest interview with Media 7....
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Media 7 | March 10, 2022
Chris Kim, Director of Social Media at Airtable shares some of his best practices to creating engaging and customer-centric social media marketing campaigns, and the impact that community and influencer marketing have on strategic marketing strategies. In this interview with Media 7, Chris speaks about the development of the role and importance of the social media professional to become a key contributor in strategic marketing conversations within organizations. Read on to find out how marketing teams can leverage different social media channels using data-driven insights to understand what works on each channel....
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Media 7 | February 14, 2022
Dmitri Zotov, Founder of Affise, talks us through their performance marketing platform, the importance of maintaining the highest levels of customer data security, and also shares his thoughtful insights on the affiliate/partner marketing space in his latest interview with Media 7....
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Media 7 | February 11, 2022
Jeff Kirchick, VP of Sales at Colossus, is a proven sales leader, author and a speaker. In his latest interview with Media 7, he discussed Colossus’s innovative solar software and its impact on the climate tech landscape. Read on to know more about his thoughts on AI in CX and the benchmarks of a successful marketing and sales strategy....
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Media 7 | February 11, 2022
Anton Shulke, Head of Influencer Marketing at Duda takes us through his role at Duda and elaborates the future potential of low to no code site builders. Read on to know more about Duda’s platforms and his thoughts on webinar marketing....
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Media 7 | February 8, 2022
Maria Loupa, Senior Account Director at Waters Agency, talks about how the marketing and PR industry is benefiting from AI. She also puts forth her thoughts on the ideal framework for marketing and sales teams to derive business success. Read on to know more....
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Media 7 | December 24, 2021
Social media is key to political communication and the practice of social listening makes it effective, elaborates Giovanni Hashimoto, Co-founder at A+G Digital in this interview with Media 7. He also shares effective ways to create and optimize digital presences. Read on to find out what to expect from the digital landscape in the new year....
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Media 7 | November 15, 2021
Anu Shukla, Co- Founder & Executive Chairman at Botco.ai explores the latest features on Botco.ai 2.0 and how it helps marketers in health and wellness verticals make more personalized, analytical and actionable insight-driven campaigns. Read on to find out about the biggest challenges in the current COVID-19 influenced product marketing landscape....
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Media 7 | November 15, 2021
Shaun Clark, Co-Founder of HighLevel, take us through a journey of the establishment of his company and the various experiences which he had in the last decade. He throws light on various subjects, from marketing to automation, from generating leads to his relationship with the employees. Read on to find out the tricks of the trade coming from an industry leader....
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Media 7 | October 12, 2021
Erik Newton, Vice President of Marketing at Milestone Inc., is a full-stack marketing leader driving acquisition, engagement, and retention from messaging to product to acquisition and through renewal. He is a marketing thought leader with more than 150 blogs and pieces published. Erik has managed marketing teams, covering product marketing, acquisition, retention, media, mobile, advocacy, display, search, affiliates, e-mail, web development, and site content management, e-commerce, multivariate testing, and sales forecasting and budgeting. He is also the proud author of the book, Hack the Corporate Fast Track: Accelerate your corporate maturity....
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Media 7 | September 22, 2021
Elizabeth Irvine, VP of Marketing for MarketMuse, driving the content, demand generation, and sales enablement initiatives for the organization. Elizabeth spent over eight years at TechTarget, five of which were in London where she built the site marketing department for the new European branch spanning four international markets and languages. She spent a year at Gartner, building an audience for their marketing-focused product, and also spent a year at an early-stage startup, Code Ocean. Elizabeth joined MarketMuse in 2018 as the first full-time marketer and built the marketing structure and automation from the ground up. She organized the marketing launch for MarketMuse’s first self-serve products, launched an affiliate program, and was responsible for launching CSC Live. Elizabeth was nominated for the prestigious VentureBeat Women In AI Award in The Rising Star category....
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Media 7 | August 17, 2021
Jay Wolff, SVP at KERV Interactive is also an Executive Board Member and Vice President at 212NYC - New York’s leading organization for the digital advertising industry, reaching over 5,000 digital media, marketing, and advertising professionals. 212NYC’s mission is to create a forum for members to make connections, share insights and support the digital advertising community through education, programming, and philanthropy. 212NYC is a non-profit, volunteer-run organization, and membership is open to all advertising professionals in the New York area.
He is a successful problem solver and connector, working closely with partners across the entire advertising and media ecosystem: marketers, agencies, publishers, and broadcasters. His extensive industry experience includes driving significant revenue growth, team building, helping organizations reach important milestones and business outcomes. He can cultivate meaningful relationships with senior-level executives....
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Media 7 | August 6, 2021
Kady S., SVP Global Head of Marketing at Klaviyo, is interested in building entrepreneurial, diverse, and effective marketing teams that grow and scale alongside some of the world's most impactful consumer brands.
As a former engineer with 20+ years of experience in marketing for tech, CPG, and DTC companies, she is uniquely positioned to use data, customer insights, and integrated brand strategy to deliver industry-leading results.
Throughout her career, she has led Fortune 500 and pre-IPO companies that have scaled to millions of users, global teams, and double digit growth. She was part of the team that helped lead Dropbox through a successful IPO and truly loves that phase of hyper-growth at fast-paced, innovative companies.
When she is not leading marketing for high-growth B2B and B2C brands, she is a Venture Advisor at Relay Ventures, a frequent guest lecturer at Stanford, a keynote speaker, and guest contributor for several leading business publications. She is also an avid reader, a perpetual student, and (most importantly), a very proud parent....
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Media 7 | August 6, 2021
Oli Gardner, Co-founder at Unbounce, also founded Be the Keynote. Oli is a prolific international keynote speaker on a mission to rescue bad bullet points from the presenters who made them that way. He’s an award-winning public speaker and a veteran of hundreds of speaking engagements. Frequently the top-rated speaker, he has developed methods for presentation design and performance that consistently deliver amazing results. Oli has coached many beginners and advanced speakers who have seen accelerated growth in both their speaking skills and their careers....
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Media 7 | July 29, 2021
Aaron Pang, Associate Director, Business Transformation at EY, created his first e-commerce business and online marketing business at age 21 and achieved over one million US revenue in the first year. In 2015, he led the home market of a global successful logistic-tech venture, Lalamove. After that, he went on to lead a three-year transformational program for a global accounting body Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants (HKICPA). He is the creator and host of the Transformative Purpose podcast, author of two books Reborn Digital and The Asian Dad....
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Media 7 | July 28, 2021
Amanda Sexton, Founder at FocusWorks Marketing, has been in marketing for over a decade. She has seen a lot of change in the industry but one thing has remained the same: companies paying more than they should be for marketing that doesn't get results. She created FocusWorks Marketing out of a desire to help business owners and their teams get the results they need and deserve from their marketing budgets....
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Media 7 | July 7, 2021
Mark Bembridge, Founder at Smartology, has worked on the creation of semantic recognition platforms for at least 15 years. He has a wealth of AdTech experience that he brings to bear in his work at Smartology, helping them grow globally and continue to succeed. ...
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Media 7 | June 3, 2021
Jennifer Montague, Director of Marketing at Dixa, is a marketing leader with 12+ years of experience specializing in field marketing, lead generation, sales support, and digital communications....
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Media 7 | May 5, 2021
Lisa Sharapata, VP Marketing, Brand and Demand at MindTickle, is an accomplished marketing executive with global experience across brand strategy, demand generation, customer experience, product marketing, and sales enablement. She thrives on creating winning go-to-market strategies, building brands from the inside-out, growing teams, and leading. Her sweet spot is developing and executing game-changing programs that build awareness, generate demand, and grow the lifetime value of the customer....
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Media 7 | April 15, 2021
Rachel Eisenhauer, VP of Marketing at SundaySky, oversees all marketing functions, including digital marketing, demand generation, operations, field marketing, customer and partner marketing, events, vertical strategy, analyst and press relations, content and corporate communications. She leads a team of digital, product, and solutions marketers, and focuses on building the brand and creating demand for the company. Rachel is one of the original go-to-market team members in the U.S., joining the company as the first marketing manager in 2012. Prior to SundaySky, Rachel built the digital marketing function at agencyEA, an experiential marketing and event firm based in Chicago. ...
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Media 7 | March 17, 2021
Judith Magyar, Senior Director of Strategic Content Development at SAP, is a member of SAP's Global Content team delivering proactive, reactive and creative content in a fast-paced environment; areas of focus include sustainability, circular economy, digital transformation and disruptive technology; regular contributor to SAP Brand channels....
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Media 7 | March 9, 2021
Tyler Calder, VP Marketing at PartnerStack, is a results-driven marketer, focused on growth and acquisition. He holds expertise in SEM, SEO, Social Media, Programmatic Buying, Mobile and Email. Previously, he was a senior member of Precision Nutrition, one of the world's fastest-growing nutrition companies, which Fast Companies named as one of the most innovative companies in Health. He was also a senior member of Search Engine People, one of Canada's largest and fastest-growing digital marketing agencies, where he led the Enterprise group....
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Media 7 | February 9, 2021
Christopher Marriott, President and Founder at Email Connect LLC, is a recognized expert in the process of connecting leading brands with the right marketing technology partners and platforms. Before founding Email Connect as a consultancy focused exclusively on the ESP/CRM/CDP vendor selection process, Chris served as a tenured executive at Acxiom, leading and building its Global Digital and Email Agency Services team into one of the industry’s top services providers. He is also a regular columnist on email marketing and the RFP process and is an adviser to several emerging marketing technology companies including AudiencePoint and Shotzr....
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Media 7 | January 29, 2021
Jerrid Grimm, Co-Founder at Pressboard, is an entrepreneur, marketer and co-founder of Pressboard, the story marketplace for brands and publishers....
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Media 7 | January 12, 2021
Jonathan Lacoste, Co-Founder, President, and Board of Directors at Jebbit, along with his classmate and friend Tom Coburn, co-founded Jebbit, an enterprise software company in the mobile marketing and consumer data space. Jonathan has raised over $10M in venture capital with some of the largest brands in the world as customers and partners, including Google, Expedia, and dozens of professional sports teams. Since launching the company, he has been named in Forbes' "30 Under 30" and was the "Emerging Executive of the Year" in the state of Massachusetts.
MEDIA 7: You have a long track record of helping build and scale successful companies such as Jebbit. Where did the original idea for Jebbit come from?
JONATHAN LACOSTE: The initial spark for Jebbit came nearly a decade ago when my co-founder, Tom, was watching a Hulu video online and a video ad interrupted his show. As many college students would do, Tom opened a new internet tab and went to Facebook to spend the time while the ad played. It made us collectively realize that digital advertising was a matter of capturing and effectively using someone’s attention, this being a clear example of this advertiser wasting dollars for someone to be browsing Facebook on another tab.
Like many startups though, Jebbit has morphed from this original spark based on customer feedback. The most impactful inspirations we’ve had along the way have often come from customers describing the difficulties they’ve had. Over the past few years, our customers have described how difficult it is for them to quickly create and launch digital experiences and of being unable to capture the right first-party consumer data at scale. Therefore, those are the challenges our team thinks about every day....
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Media 7 | January 12, 2021
Larry Kim, Founder and VP Marketing at MobileMonkey, is a notable expert on chatbot marketing, AdWords, Facebook Ads, entrepreneurship, and start-ups. He’s been named Search Marketer of the Year from PPC Hero, Search Engine Land, and the US Search Awards. He also won special recognition from the United States Senate & House of Representatives for his work in creating jobs in the Boston economy.
MEDIA 7: How did you come up with the idea of MobileMonkey?
LARRY KIM: In a nutshell, we tried to re-imagine marketing automation software from a mobile-first perspective and using messaging channels as the primary communication channel as opposed to email.
Add to that the fact that I have two boys age 1 and 5 who love monkeys, and the result was the creation of MobileMonkey, a leading OmniChat messaging platform for SMS, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Website chat!...
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Media 7 | December 17, 2020
Deanna Ransom, the Global Head of Marketing & Marketing Services and Chairperson of Diversity & Inclusion at Televerde, comes with an experience of more than 25 years in sales and marketing. She is known for her voluntary work with shelters, helping women transform their lives, and supporting organizations.
Deanna holds a certification in Executive Leadership from Cornell University, an MBA from American Intercontinental University, and a Bachelor’s degree from Rowan University. She is passionate about books, music, and finding innovative ways to overcome challenges both personally and professionally.
MEDIA7: You have a remarkable career graph of being a marketing expert for about 25 years. Please take us through your journey.
DEANNA RANSOM: My career began in Sales. ERP sales at QAD and I was lucky enough to be present when QAD went public. That experience was one of the best in my career and I still remember the great people I worked with during that time. Then the dot-com bubble burst, caused major disruption and I continued in sales, but in the public sector with Information Builders, a privately-held data and analytics company. It was there that I began my transition to marketing.
I noticed that there was a disconnect between the Marketing organization and the Sales organization that didn’t seem to make sense or be productive. I had a hunger to find a way to get more quality leads for my sales funnel and to understand how I could help make that happen as a partnership of sorts. It began as a series of conversations with the person overseeing Federal marketing for the field office that I sat in which was in Washington, D.C. at the time and it turned into me taking on the Marketing role based on that collaboration when some colleagues decided to move on from the organization.
Next, one of my mentors had taken on a new role overseeing all of North America and tapped me to come lead Marketing and Communications. It was such a tremendous honor and great experience which really allowed me to bring in my writing component as a content developer and published writer to the mix. The company decided to shut down East Coast operations, I landed at Bluestone Software and had the pure pleasure of being there when they were acquired by HP. My story continues with the good fortune of continuing to grow and lead in some great companies such as Clarivate Analytics, Satori Group, SAP, and Merck primarily fueled by curiosity, adaptability, vision casting and building along with a love of innovation all underpinned by data to ensure results while building great teams and intentionally building strong collaborative relationships.
Today, I’m serving at a company that I’ve had a relationship with for over 10 years. I lead marketing, marketing services, and our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative while enabling women to change their lives in the process. This is the perfect intersection of driving strategic business growth, powering marketing as a revenue driver, and supporting the transformation of people....
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MEDIA 7 | September 11, 2020
Jeff Epstein, VP Marketing at Comm100 is a B2B marketer with 20+ years’ experience creating compelling messaging and content for sales enablement and demand generation. Having held roles with companies including IBM, General Motors, and Comm100, Jeff knows how to connect solutions to buyers.
MEDIA7: You have a long track record of successfully working in and managing diverse product marketing teams. What are your top three reasons for joining Comm100?
Jeff Epstein: Firstly, I saw a software company with a mature product that had an awareness challenge, not a software capability challenge. It’s fun to market a deep solution! Secondly, digital customer service software is an established domain with a big TAM. And finally, I knew several people on the team already and knew it would be a good cultural fit.
M7: What’s the most valuable lesson you have included in your leadership strategy throughout your career so far? How do you bring out the best in your team’s talent?
JE: Listening is more important than talking, whether you’re managing down or up. My job is to set goals and then help remove obstacles for my team. I can’t do the latter if I don’t listen.
I bring out the best in my team with a simple formula: communicate clear goals, get out of the way until asked for help, provide unsolicited feedback (both positive and constructive) often, and publicly acknowledge achievements.
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MEDIA 7 | June 11, 2020
Philippe Guiheneuc is the Marketing Director at Akio, a company that provides customer experience software platforms. It proposes cross-channel solutions that help you with customer engagement management, voice of the customer analysis and brand reputation monitoring.
In this Q&A, Philippe speaks about customer satisfaction, CRM, marketing strategies, challenges, branding, and more.
MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into Marketing?
PHILIPPE GUIHENEUC: Coming from a family of officials, farmers and painters, I discovered the world of business at the ESSEC business school in Paris. I carefully avoided three subjects: Computer Science, with its flashy green dashboards on a black background, Accounting, for its remarkable ability to make me lose patience, and Selling, because I could not bear to be told no. Consequently, my first job was to sell accounting software!
Only fools refuse to change their mind. So I may be half intelligent, because althoughI have discovered a passion for businesswith its three components (communication-marketing-sales) and innovation, to the point of teaching storytelling in business schools, unfortunately I remain insensitive to the poetry of a P&L.
That's why I chose to work at Akio. Respect for customers is no longer just a professional obligation but an extraordinary lever for growth. Thanks to the Akio.Cx platform, I contribute a little bit every day to make life easier for customer agents, and that's what makes me happy.
M7: What core issue does Akio.Cx software aim to address and what sets it apart from the competition?
PG: Akio is the editor of the omnichannel call centre platform Akio.Cx. Our core mission is to turn complexity into simplicity!
In the context of increased competition, the quality of the response delivered to clients has become a major stake for all companies. However, the job of a customer advisor is becoming increasingly complex as customers use new channels to interact with companies.
With the customer service platform Akio.Cx, the customer service will develop a personalised experience for its clients, regardless of which channel they choose (phone, e-mail, chat, social media, etc.), thanks to unified client knowledge that is reinforced by semantic analysis.
In 20 years, Akio has built a solid base of references among the largest French companies (AxaBanque, Banque de France, MGEN, URSSAF, Air France, Interflora, Engie, GrDF; Sarenza, Kiabi, Arkea, BPI France Cora, LPM Dyneff, Grep, Ircem, Photoweb, Sandoz, MTP, VMmag, MSD, CAFAT, CGSS, OPT, Bruneau, AMDM, etc.)
Initially, the platform was provided ‘on-premise’, then through a ‘hybrid’ model, and since 2017 it’s provided as a ‘SaaS’ tool.
Recently, Akio announced a global partnership with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise that will offer the Akio.Cx platform to all of its 800,000 customers. This alliance is coupled with a project linked to the notion of the "augmented agent", i.e. high-tech tools made available to customer service representatives to facilitate their work and help them gain in efficiency.
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Media 7 | May 25, 2020
Rashim Mogha, Founder - eWOW, Keynote Speaker, Startup Advisor, Women in Tech Evangelist, Author, and Podcaster empowers professionals by articulating complex technology capabilities into crisp, clear, and attainable business benefits. Her extensive career portfolio includes leadership roles in companies such as Oracle, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and VMware where she built high-performing teams to support over $2 billion businesses.
A recipient of Women Empowerment: Game Changer, Woman of the Year, and Silicon Valley Woman of Influence awards, Rashim has been a keynote speaker at global conferences and organizations.
MEDIA 7: Could you tell us about your role at eWOW and the event properties you are responsible for?
RM: eWOW (empowered Women of the World) is an intellectual platform that empowers women to discover, visualize, and actualize their success. The platform comprises of podcasts, webinars, in-person and online events, the virtual incubator program and our eWOW Virtual Summit. Being the founder of eWOW, I am responsible for all these events.
M7: With most planned events going online, what do you think of the future events? Will you buckle up for a permanent change into virtual events?
RM: Well, we had planned for the eWOW Virtual Summit to be an online event, even before COVID-19. Our mission is to enable women globally and you can’t really do that without hosting a global event. I have been an enablement leader for over 20 years and webinars and virtual events are not new to me. I think it is time now that events move to an online format to be inclusive. The reach of online events is huge, we had attendees from all 3 timezones in the US, Asia, Europe and even from Australia at the eWOW Virtual Summit. Infact our eWOW Virtual Incubator program that we launched is also a 4 week online program.
That said, there is merit in in-person events and those won’t go away. I do however see online events becoming more popular in the future.
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Media 7 | April 24, 2020
Jack Myers, Media Ecologist, and Founder at MediaVillage has influenced the decisions of hundreds of global, national and regional media, marketing, advertising and entertainment companies and organizations for over forty years. More than 150 companies, organizations and industry leaders are members of MediaVillage.
After serving in leadership roles at Metromedia Outdoor, ABC-Radio, CBS-TV and UTV Cable, Jack launched The Myers Report, which for more than three decades has been a go-to innovation partner for more than 200 companies across the marketing and media ecosystem and the industry leader in forecasting the impact of technological advances on culture, marketing, media and entertainment. After a decade of development, Jack launched MediaVillage, now the industry’s most influential platform for thought leadership and a global advocate for the role and value of media to society, culture and business.
MEDIA 7: For those in our audience who are new to it, could you describe MediaVillage?
JACK MYERS: MediaVillage was launched in 2010 under the direction of veteran industry strategist and trend forecaster Jack Myers. Fifteen founding media companies embraced Myers’ recommendation that they transcend territorial competition to develop and implement industry-wide solutions for competing in the digital marketplace. For the past decade, MediaVillage, in collaboration with partners across the marketing ecosystem, has been pilot testing innovative strategies for generating growth. Today, more than 150 companies, organizations and industry leaders are members of the MediaVillage Center of Excellence.
• MARKET RESEARCH: Under The Myers Report brand, MediaVillage collects, analyzes and shares B2B and consumer data and insights to guide and support our members’ growth priorities and marketing communications.
• MARKET INTELLIGENCE: MediaVillage hosts and manages the B2B marketing platforms for more than 100 member companies, industry trade associations, non-profit advocacy groups, and education providers, each published independently under the MediaVillage Knowledge Exchange. Together they represent the media industry’s only unified force for growth.
• CONTENT MARKETING: MediaVillage.com hosts the commentaries, thought-leadership and insights of the media industry’s most respected columnists, journalists and industry experts, reaching professionals across the marketing, media, entertainment and education ecosystem.
• DIVERSE TALENT DEVELOPMENT: MediaVillage has been a leading advocate for diversity, equality and inclusion, founding WomenAdvancing. org in 2011, 1stFive.org in 2014 and, in 2017, the Advancing Diversity Hall of Honors. Under Myers’ leadership, the Advancing Diversity Council represents the media, marketing, advertising and entertainment community’s commitment to advancing diversity from advocacy to activism.
• EDUCATION & MEETING PREPARATION: To support the on-demand knowledge needs of brand marketers, agency professionals, media industry suppliers, educators, content studios, content creators and diverse communities, MediaVillage is launching MeetingPrep.com, an open AI-fueled search and market intelligence platform. In addition to the most accurate and relevant vertical industry search engine, MeetingPrep will incorporate Giide, an interactive audio learning app; Ad Learning Exchange, a curriculum-focused online education resource; and Advancing Diversity Meet-Ups, connecting talent to jobs.
The power of MediaVillage comes from the engagement and real-world experience of companies and organizations. Through our collective impact approach, we implement effective and cost efficient B2B growth solutions.
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MEDIA 7 | January 16, 2020
Maliha Aqeel, Director of Global Communications at Fix Network World is an award-winning, communication and marketing professional who helps companies harness the power of their brand to drive engagement and achieve measurable business results.
She has developed and led content and marcomm programs for B2B companies in the financial and professional services sectors in her over 15 years of industry experience.
MEDIA 7: When did you start working and what was it?
MALIHA AQEEL: I started my career in 1996 right after high school, freelancing as a journalist and features writer for a magazine in Dubai, UAE. Over time, I expanded my services to include scriptwriting for corporate videos and TV productions, writing and designing client newsletters and promotional collateral.
M7: What made you want to pursue a career in branding and marketing communications? What aspect about your role brings you the most joy?
MA: I didn’t consciously decide to pursue a career in marketing and communication as my plan was to become a filmmaker. However, I had great curiosity about what makes people prefer one brand over the other when a feature-by-feature comparison didn’t show a huge difference between similar products or services. I had taken a few advertising courses during university and it broadened my understanding of how powerful brand experiences and storytelling can drive business objectives. That balance of strategy and creativity is what I enjoy most about what I do and why I’ve continued to find purpose in my career.
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MEDIA 7 | November 14, 2019
Matt Amundson, VP of Marketing at EverString has over 10 years of sales and marketing experience. Matt has held roles in Demand Generation and Sales Development at TIBCO, Marketo, FGXI and Red Bull. His primary focus has been on creating processes that generate a consistent, pipeline.
MEDIA 7: Could you tell us about your mantra “Go for the run”?
MATT AMUNDSON: On December 29th of 2017, I decided to change my lifestyle habits and decided that I’m going to run a minimum of one mile every single day. So, every day since that day I’ve got up and ran. It’s been a seminal moment where my approach on life and work has changed dramatically. And as a result of that, it’s become a personal mantra, which is to not be afraid of where you might be today. If you’ve got some lofty goals or if you want to try something new, just get out there and give it a try and see what the results of it could be. On a personal level, whether you’re physically tired or don’t feel like doing it, just give it a shot and go for it. On a professional level, if it’s something that can benefit you or your brand give it a try, go for it and see what happens.
M7: What is your favorite part about working at EverString?
MA: I really love the people that I work with and I’ve been at the organization for about four and a half years. Some of the folks that I’ve worked with since the beginning are still here and it’s just been an awesome journey to be on with some incredible colleagues and that’s just on a personal level. On a professional level, I think we’re all solving a major problem that a lot of organizations are suffering from – which is related to data. As a marketer who has existed in the mar tech space for the broader part of my career, we often think of our process improvements and workflow improvements to gain more efficiency. Whether that’s marketing automation system or a cool new technology like conversational AI most people fall into two camps when it comes to data, either they’re just not conscious of data or they are. The data that they purchase or the data they acquire ultimately powers everything they do from a marketing perspective or they’re used to the status quo of current data providers that provide low quality of data and are sort of mired in the “well I guess that’s the way it is and that’s just the quality level that I have to deal with”. The fact that we’re changing that for some of the world’s biggest brands like Capital One, FedEx, Staples, Autodesk, Oracle as well as the smaller brands is really exciting to me.
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MEDIA 7 | November 7, 2019
David Spark, Content Marketer and Producer, Managing Editor at Spark Media Solutions is a veteran tech journalist and founder of Spark Media Solutions. He’s been the creative director, producer, voice, and face of many content marketing campaigns for a number of Fortune 1000 B2B tech companies.
MEDIA 7: What part of your background, personality, experience, or skill set makes you a particularly effective content marketing professional?
DAVID SPARK:
• Veteran technology journalist (worked across all media)
• Former advertising exec
• Former standup comedian and comedy writer
M7: What inspires you to come up with new ideas for blog posts, campaigns, tech, and media podcasts?
DS: Inspiration is dependent on the project, the output, and the medium. But in general, I’m inspired by finding a topic/question that the audience will eagerly want to answer. Two of our most popular examples:
CISO Series – This is a media channel we started in October 2018 that we tout as couples counseling for security practitioners and vendors. We have such a passionate audience that they’re submitting a steady flow of questions, commentary, and games for our two podcasts. The CISO Series has provided the forum for our audience to be inspired.
“Man on the street” videos – It’s our most popular video format. We’ve produced close to 200 of these and my goal with these videos is to come up with a question where the first reaction is to laugh and then an eagerness about responding. It could be a challenge question (e.g., “What would happen if you left your mobile phone at home for an entire day?”, or something completely inappropriate for the environment (e.g., asking “What’s Your Password?” at a security conference).
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MEDIA 7 | October 7, 2019
Erik Charles, Vice President and Solutions Evangelist at Xactly Corporation is an accomplished professional with over two decades of experience in Marketing, Consulting, and Product Evangelization. Erik focuses on helping companies drive expansion and growth by better aligning positions, responsibilities, and incentives.
Erik serves as a subject matter expert in the area of Sales Performance Management to ensure that Xactly’s marketing, sales and product teams have the necessary strategic input for industry leading messaging, positioning, and future direction.
MEDIA 7: When did you start working and what was it?
ERIK CHARLES: In early 1980s, I wrote software on TRS-80 model II coded in BASIC to enable for computerized quotes for a life insurance agency. I was in middle school at the time, that was a contract work. My next job was at a software store back when software used to be bundled up into a cardboard box with inserted floppy disks and then it went on from there.
M7: You have an astounding experience of over two decades with industry pioneers like Apple, Sun Microsystems, Canon and recently Xactly Corporation. What has been the driving force behind your remarkable career?
EC: There are two things: as a marketer, I don’t believe in mistakes, I only believe in experiments and what we can learn from them, that has kept me moving forward. I keep on trying new things and seeing what works. I assume that just because it worked last week doesn’t mean it’s going to work tomorrow. So, I’ve never allowed myself to get into a rut. I have always been more than willing to find people who can provide excellent advice at critical moments, even on a specific direction. Finding someone that I can speak with, that can give me a few tips, tricks, hints, ideas, direction or path on moving on. So, I have never been afraid to ask just how could I do this better.
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MEDIA 7 | September 19, 2019
Tom Raftery, Global VP at SAP is an Innovation Evangelist, Futurist, and international Keynote speaker. Prior to joining SAP, Tom worked for a number of companies at Group IT Manager/CTO level, and as an Industry Analyst. Tom is a global thought leader and ranks among the top 10 Internet of Things influencers in the world.
MEDIA 7: If I were to say to a bunch of people who know you, ‘Give me three adjectives that best describe you’, what would I hear?
TOM RAFTERY: I would like to think that I am a good communicator, maybe smart and hopefully generous. You will have to ask people other than myself though. They would be a better judge.
M7: What is the role of a technology influencer in driving environmental sustainability?
TR: The role of someone like me would be to raise awareness of the issues that are happening and potential solutions to them, particularly technological solutions. A lot of people are busy in their day-to-day lives and they might not be aware of some of the more pressing environmental issues that are happening in the world and that might impact them. So, raising awareness with people, of the importance of these issues, and the potential technological solutions to them is the role I think that influencers should be playing.
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MEDIA 7 | June 25, 2019
Olivia Taylor, Director of CRO at Directive Consulting has 10 years of working experience in graphic designing and has expert knowledge in CRO/UX in landing pages and websites designing.
Olivia was recently nominated for the Orange County Business Journal's Top 25 Women in Business Awards.
MEDIA 7: What’s your superpower?
OLIVIA TAYLOR: I would like to think my superpower is empathy. That’s part of what CRO is: figuring out and understanding what’s going on through people’s minds and finding out what people need and want.
M7: Does it point to user intent, a term generally used in Account Based Marketing?
OT: Yes, exactly that. Because I’m able to basically understand where the consumer and the buyer is coming from, I can better optimize my clients’ websites, change that language in the headline and the subhead to relate to the customers’ pain points and better describe the benefits of what my client can provide to them.
M7: Your career spans an impressive 8 years from a Graphic Designer to being a Director of CRO at Directive Consulting. What attracted you to this industry, and how does Directive Consulting fit into your story?
OT: I became a designer because all other subjects in school were boring. 2+2 will always be 4, but with design, there are so many possibilities - so many different solutions to a problem. Plus, I always loved drawing and creating.
While going to school, I worked as a designer at a few different places. Then upon graduating, I worked at a tech company in-house but it just wasn’t for me. I moved on to an agency that was full-service, but that also was not the right fit. After that job, I ended up at a PPC agency where I learned about CRO. I started there as just a designer and left there as the Director of CRO.
Using the skills I learned there, I was able to join the upstanding company that is Directive where I’m learning so much more, and doing so many more awesome things than I did at any other job and it has been amazing. It’s so wonderful to work at a place that is professional and that takes the work so seriously, only striving to be the best at being different.
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MEDIA 7 | April 3, 2019
Tyler Lessard, VP Marketing of Vidyard has been recently named as an Epic Marketer by Marketo. In this interesting Q&A, Tyler takes us through his marketing journey and shares with us the value of technology in an era where videos are not just visually replenishing, but are also empowering the customer service teams in more ways than one.
MEDIA 7: What were you doing prior to your current position?
TYLER LESSARD: Prior to joining Vidyard as VP Marketing, I spent 10 years at BlackBerry, building out their developer relations program and global partner community. It was an incredible opportunity to learn the importance of relationship building and strong storytelling on a global scale, and the need to simplify how we articulate and position the value of technology for line-of-business customers.
M7: What are the changes that video hosting and management have undergone over the past couple of years at Vidyard?
TL: In recent years we’ve seen the conversation with businesses change from “why should I invest in video” to “how do I unlock the power of video across my marketing, sales and customer service teams”. This has driven us to focus on delivering new solutions through the lenses of these key audiences and what they are really trying to achieve.
We’re now helping marketing teams increase audience engagement with personalized and interactive video experiences, boost conversion rates on digital channels with optimized video experiences within their websites and email marketing, and accelerate deal cycles using video engagement data within their marketing automation platforms to qualify prospects. We’re helping sales development reps stand out and increase their response rates using personalized video messages sent via our Vidyard GoVideo app. And we’re helping customer service teams reduce call volumes and increase customer satisfaction with video-based knowledge articles embedded within customer communities. It’s all about helping businesses leverage video in new ways to improve the customer experience and generate more revenue....
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