Probably one of my favorite aspects of AI is the way in which it supports and accelerates learning. Some examples from recent personal projects and the takeaways I walked away with: I went back to school last fall to start work on a chemistry degree. While this may appear rather "left field" for a marketing and communications professional, it's actually pretty on brand for me. I've been firmly a dual interest person since high school, pushing myself to excel in both the arts

I was on a call with a sales and marketing executive from a tech company and we were talking shop. He shared his three-pronged strategy for the near term but said that ultimately, he doesn't have the secret sauce for market penetration for his product. I told him that I didn't think that was a bad thing, sharing with him my test-learn-iterate model for marketing. Many people forget that with a field that innovates and changes as rapidly as marketing does, a lot of what we do

Having been on both sides of the interview process, I know that writing tests can be nerve-wracking. But as an interviewer, I can speak to how important and necessary these are. As a marketer, content is everything ( I talk "content is king" here ) so if you're bringing someone on, you want to be confident that they can deliver the goods. A candidate may look perfect on paper and they may have great work samples but really, how do you know for sure that they did all the work?

I am going on 14 years in marketing and the longer I am in this space, the more clarity I gain about what good, effective marketing looks like and the impact it can have on society. For example, Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, launched in 2004, socialized conversations about real bodies and in my mind propelled us (albeit way too slowly) to where we are with the #bodypositivity movement today. What ultimately sets some companies apart is that they are able to look beyond the

Many directors in small shops find themselves in the same position — filling the need for specialized skills with a bevy of vendors. Managing vendors encompasses everything from negotiating contracts, tracking hours and services, and submitting invoices for processing to providing project and assignment specifications and evaluating work. When you have over 10 vendors that you manage (though not all at once), as I found myself these last two years, it becomes quite a task. Bu

The sum total of your marketing efforts falls in two buckets: the content you create and the leads you are able to generate. Everything hinges on content so the old adage, "content is king", rings true. But the longer I work in marketing, the more I begin to think that if that is true, then "data is queen". Your content doesn't have two legs to stand on if the data points to it performing less than industry benchmarks. Email service platforms provide A/B test data so you know

Little did we know when the news came out in December about COVID-19 cases in China that this pandemic would bring our entire economy to a near-complete halt and would touch our lives so personally. That we would experience the deepest social isolation we may ever know in our lifetime. That simple visits to the grocery store would bring on extreme anxiety and fear of getting sick. That the smallest acts of kindness, like a note in the mail or a drive-by surprise, could mean s

I put this information together for a meeting I had with GAC senior leaders where I presented all of our department's accomplishments from the last two years. As I was developing the presentation slides, I realized that the principles I listed can be applied to any marketing/comms department. Here are what I consider the tenants of modern marketing and communications. You need a solid brand to tell a good story. In the case study on Sales Enablement , I talk about how importa