Jann Schwartz, Global Director, Market Development at LinkedIn, was picked by Mark Ritson as his digital hero.
Mark picked him saying, “I meet a lot of “digital marketers” and most of them have me reaching for my bullshit deflector but in Jann’s case I actually met someone who knew his marketing and communication fundamentals, could articulate genuine advantages to digital tactics but had a prosaic way of blending those digital advantages into an integrated mix.”
Now Jann returns the favour and picks his own digital hero.
Who is your digital hero?
What has she done to win hero status in your eyes?
Fran has identified an under-discussed problem in marketing: the need to better align marketing with finance to help marketers make better decisions that contribute to profitable, long-term growth.
How has her heroism helped drive digital?
Marketing’s seat at a company’s leadership table is in decline. Marketing effectiveness measures are declining and budgets are being cut.
Marketing has become purely a marcom job focused on promotion – pricing, product, and placement often no longer sit within marketing.
By re-aligning marketing with finance, Fran is helping to stop marketing’s decline and to start marketing on the path to growth again.
What the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?
We need more heroes and heroines to help articulate the financial case for marketing so that we can bring the value of brand back to the boardroom.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?
For me, it’s building a team at LinkedIn whose job is to research the future of marketing and propose solutions – in partnership with many others – to some of our collective marketing problems.
