This week on the Digital Velocity Podcast, Greg Stuart of MMA Global joins Tim and Erik to discuss how organizations can not only survive but thrive through the ever-changing and challenging marketing landscape.
Studies that MMA Global has conducted show that marketers aren’t very satisfied with marketing within organizations and that there are so many difficulties facing the field today. Greg explains,
“So, we in marketing don’t even really like marketing, or don’t like the marketing that we’re either made to do, forced to do, or are doing. There are so many challenges. I don’t know. Boy, I mean, better incrementally, but not nearly as far as I think we need to be or I’d want to be to be a real profession, to be predictable, to be trusted by the rest of the C-Suite, to get bigger budgets because we’re having more influence on the impact of the organization. That we’re no longer using things like likes to explain how well we’re doing in marketing, you know, all the other metrics that we kind of get into. We’ve got a long way to go.”
Data continues to be one of the best indicators of whether or not marketing strategies are improving brand success and marketers must rely more on those numbers. Greg says,
“As an individual marketer, I would strongly urge you to take a little bit less on your hunch, a little bit less on your intuition, if you can, and try to study the data and the insights and the facts and the research that makes sense.”
Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about how businesses can productively navigate the constantly changing marketing environment.
About the Guest:
Greg Stuart is the CEO of the MMA Global (MMA), the leading global media trade group focused on architecting the future of marketing, which is increasingly spearheaded by mobile. Over the past 7+ years, Greg has transformed the once-bankrupt association, attracting major marketers and media/tech company leaders to lock arms and advance the marketing industry.
Greg and team have tripled the organization’s revenues, energized its 800+ member companies globally, and there are now nearly 60 MMA team members in 15 countries. His Board includes CMO’s from Marriott, Uber, Dunkin Brands, Walmart, Samsung, Chobani, and dozen and half others, plus senior execs from Facebook, Google, Twitter, SNAP and more.
Greg is a long-standing marketing industry thought-leader on the future of marketing that is either mobile dominant or influenced by mobile’s new connected dynamics. Two of his three decades in marketing have focused purely on digital and emerging technology. He has served as CMO, CRO in addition to CEO at companies across the media landscape such as Y&R, Sony Online Ventures, Cars.com and Flycast Ad Network (IPO’d 1999) and more. He also turned around and built the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the trade group for interactive advertising. There are IABs in more than three dozen countries. Also, in the last ten years, Greg has invested in and advised CEOs of two dozen venture-backed businesses, which have now transacted for well over $2.5 billion.
In addition to being a sought-after international speaker (Jakarta to London to Buenos Aires to Shanghai) and a member of the National Speakers Association, Greg is the co-author of What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds, which was recognized by AdAge as the as the No. 1 book of the “10 books you should have read”.
Industry authorities have awarded Greg for his work as a pioneer in emerging media. In 2006, AdAge selected Greg as part of the “10 Who Made Their Mark” alongside Jay-Z and Chad Hurley (YouTube) and he is a regular contributor to leading publications for his views on the future of marketing.