Heather Smiley’s biggest marketing challenge may be that she’s selling something people don’t need right now.
As Chief Marketing Officer of MassMutual, one of the largest life insurance companies in the world, Smiley’s mission is to help Americans secure their future. With a tangible that many avoid thinking about, or can’t even imagine, she focuses on creating what she calls “motivated moments”.
She’ll be explaining her strategy behind those moments — and much more — as a speaker at GrowthBeat Summit taking place in Boston on June 1 and 2. The unique CMO-only gathering provides marketing leaders a rare chance to share challenges and opportunities they’re facing in a soley peer-to-peer environment. (Request an invitation here.)
For Smiley, while planning for a distant future is core to her offering, her efforts are squarely rooted in today’s technology. Just last week the company launched its RetireSmart App to give customers instant access to their retirement account information. It’s part of a multi-app strategy, with new apps and functionality planned for 2015 to help motivate consumers to become more retirement ready.
“We see the app as another important tool for our customers to manage their financial lives,” says Smiley,” [so they can] ultimately retire on their own terms.”
Some of the other speakers at GrowthBeat Summit
Kieran Hannon, Chief Marketing Officer at Belkin Hannon is responsible for all three of the company brands: Belkin, Linksys, and WeMo. But it’s no surprise that WeMo is now the family of products gaining in attention — last year Fast Company named Belkin one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in the Internet of Things.
Barbara Messing, CMO of TripAdvisor Messing has been in the lead marketing role at TripAdvisor for the last four years, so she can easily be awarded significant credit for the company’s impressive growth. In 2014, the travel review company posted revenues of $1,246 billion, representing a 32 percent increase over the previous year.
Liza Landsman, Chief Customer Officer at Jet.com’s and Scott Friend, Managing Director of Bain Capital Ventures Landsman and Bain will be featured in a fireside chat at the summit where they’ll discuss Jet.com’s ambitious plans to disrupt the e-commerce industry. Fueled by ‘scary smart’ e-commere technology that drives lower prices for members while improving logistics for retail partners, Jet.com promises a ‘brilliant’ customer experience right out of the gate.
Laura Holliday, recently-named CMO of Zola Holliday is the online wedding registry’s first CMO since it burst onto the scene just 19 months ago intending to shake up the wedding registry business. Challening the traditional registry retailers, the brand now offers over 300 brands and 10,000 products, and provides a very personalized experience for couples and their wedding guests.
Brian Harrington, EVP and CMO of Zipcar As Zipcar’s chief marketing officer, Brian oversees all efforts in member acquisition and engagement, global partnerships, public relations, and building the company’s global brand. Prior to Zipcar, Brian held leadership roles at Boathouse, a brand communications agency, and I’m in!, a leisure travel website that he co-founded. He was a member of the founding executive teams of Upromise and Connection to eBay, and has held senior roles at EF Education. Earlier in his career, he worked in global marketing for Sheraton Hotels and for Hill Holliday Advertising.
Lynn Vojvodich, EVP and CMO of Salesforce Vojvodich joined Salesforce in 2013 and has been very vocal about the need for change in a marketing world that is inextricably fused with technology. Speaking with McKinsey at the end of last year, she said, “As a CMO, if you’re not an agent of change — constantly innovating, constantly changing, constantly pushing the boundaries — then you’re working at a company that will be obsolete in five to ten years.”
Peter Hamilton, CEO and Partner at mobile attribution analytics company TUNE TUNE works with some of the biggest leaders in the mobile-first space including Uber and Spotify. Just as Salesforce led the charge in SaaS, TUNE is setting the course for the way marketers use data to connect with customers in a multi-device universe.
Michael Williams, chief marketing officer for The Grand Prix of America, Formula 1 Williams faces the challenge of bringing awareness to a sporting event that has never been hosted in America, but instead has been seen for 60 years as exclusively international. The intent is to bring the Formula 1 race to New York in June 2016.
Scott Brinker, Cofounder and CTO of ion interactive (And the prolific blogger behind chiefmartech.com.) In his annual tracking of martech, Brinker found that the marketing technology landscape in 2015 includes 1,876 vendors across 43 categories. That’s not only an astonishing number in its own right, but it’s nearly doubled in just the one year since Scott Brinker last compiled the list.
John Kennedy, CMO of Xerox Appointed to Xerox last July, Kennedy previously was VP of marketing for IBM Global Business Services. Last year, he was recognized by the CMO Club with a Marketing Innovation Award “based on a marketing executive’s demonstrated leadership in creating an innovative marketing environment that changes the game for ROI, customer engagement, and/or for the industry.”
Deena Bahri, CMO for Birchbox Bahri leads growth for the successful subscription service that delivers personalized boxes of beauty, grooming, and lifestyle products on a monthly basis. Last year the company was valued at $485 million with 800,000 subscribers. Bahri has talked openly about how essential data is to the success of the company. Prior to joining Birchbox in 2011, Bahri was senior director of marketing at Gilt, another e-commerce shopping destination.
[“source-venturebeat.com”]
