Category: Show Notes

As a long time financial services marketer, you would expect Dan Marks to have the science of marketing down pat. And indeed he does, having built a predictive marketing spend model at First Tennessee Bank (see The CMO’s Periodic Table!) and the marketing tech infrastructure in his current role. But Marks sees the trend towards data-driven marketing going too far, explaining that, “Just doing the science without starting with the purpose is a recipe for failure.” Embracing the art-side of his job, he encourages his team to “remember that we are ultimately serving people” and to look at what’s happening with people in other categories.”

Packaged goods companies are well known for their marketing discipline and not the place you’d expect to hear a CMO express the need for “tolerating a lot more chaos and ambiguity in the culture and the way we work in order to get to the good stuff.” But that’s just the starting point with Eric Reynolds, who among other things advises against using influencers on a broad scale and believes that unless your brand gets talked about via the “holy trinity of the brand story, the message, and the content” then the idea isn’t big enough to cut through.