WHO PUT THE“EXCEL” IN

EXCELLENT18 CHIEF

MARKETERS

REAL LEADING LADIES DON’T WALK RED CARPETS. THEY MAKE STRIDES IN THEIR INDUSTRY.*

18M A R K E T I N G

2 0 1 5

*TAGLINE COURTESY WOMEN@WUNDERMAN

03 Introduction

04 The Day in Pictures

08 It’s All About Purpose

11 Honoree Profiles

37 The Altruistic Side of Marketing

The Femme Fatales of the marketing world knock out the competition by mak-ing their brand irresistible and their customers starry-eyed with devotion. They inspire and empower their teams to create their own starring roles. And they do it all with verve and flair.

These Leading Ladies are the inspiration for the Direct Marketing News Mar-keting Hall of Femme. The award celebrates achievements of the most accom-plished and influential women in marketing.

These exceptional female marketing chiefs have risen to the apex of their pro-fession as champions of customer-centric, data-driven marketing. Their meth-ods have improved marketing performance and have yielded measureable re-sults—from revenue growth to increases in customer engagement. Their stories are ones of daring and determination, of savvy and ingenuity.

Read on for the narratives behind the 2015 Marketing Hall of Femme honor-ees’ success stories. –Ginger Conlon

GUESTS PAUSE FOR PHOTOS DURING COCKTAILS AND NETWORKING.

THE DAY IN PICTURES

HONOREES ENJOY A PRIVATE ROUNDTABLE WHERE THE CONVERSATION ON MARKETING LEADERSHIP OVERFLOWED WITH IDEAS AND INSPIRATION.

HONOREES REVEAL THEIR SUCCESS SECRETS AS THE ACCEPT THEIR AWARDS.

HONOREES TAKE QUESTIONS FROM GUESTS DURING AN ENGAGING PANEL DISCUSSION.

For a person’s life to have true impact, it has to have purpose.

American Red Cross CMO Peggy Dyer says that’s true both personally and professionally. And it’s equally as true for businesses—both nonprofit and for-prof-it. “That’s the importance of purpose; it helps you stay grounded and helps guide your leadership,” Dyer said to a ballroom of senior marketers during her keynote speech at the 2015 Marketing Hall of

Femme hosted by Direct Marketing News in New York. “As marketers, we need to al-ways lead with purpose.”

Center stage in front of the MHoF hon-orees, their colleagues, family, friends, and supporters of the Femme movement, Dyer encouraged leading marketers to get up each day and think about purpose—not just the bottom line. She said that for the American Red Cross team, purpose means people helping other people: “It’s simply in the blood [at the American Red Cross]; it’s in our DNA. I encourage you to have that same purpose.”

Dyer said that marketers today—in-cluding those at for-profit B2B and B2C companies—need to have three qualities to remain impactful: grit, heart, and au-thenticity. It’s a formula that she said has enabled the nearly 134-year-old organiza-tion to stay top-of-mind and at the fore of help and relief.

“Grit is really that perseverance,” she explained. “It’s sticking with something day in and day out. When you can com-bine grit with purpose, that’s when you can achieve your goals year-over-year.”

But she warned that grit alone isn’t enough.

“Stats are important for any marketer. Honestly, I use them with all of my deci-sions. But you can’t be effective [with those statistics] without heart,” Dyer insisted. “It’s the heart [of a company] that makes a huge difference in your marketing; in

IT’S ALL ABOUT PURPOSEAMERICAN RED CROSS CMO PEGGY DYER SAYS THAT GRIT, HEART, AND AUTHENTICITY ARE THE FORMULA FOR PURPOSEFUL MARKETING. BY NATASHA D. SMITH

your messages.” She said the mission of her organization is undeniably rooted in heart: “That’s what we do; American Red Cross helps turn heartbreak into hope.”

“And I’ve learned over and over again about authenticity,” Dyer continued as she reflected on her own poignant life les-sons. “I remember when I was original-ly diagnosed with breast cancer. I didn’t know if I should share. My CEO [at the time] encouraged me to, and I decided to be authentic. There was so much out-pouring of support for me—and the brand. So, I’m encouraging you to do the same. Be authentic as a brand.”

As Dyer wrapped up her final remarks to the crowd, she again encouraged mar-keters to embrace purpose in all of their relationships with customers, employees, and supporters. “Go back to that purpose every day,” she said. “Then I guarantee that your customers will follow you in what you’re trying to create.”

If any member of the 2015 Marketing Hall of Femme class can stake a claim to be among those pioneering data-driven marketing, it’s Michelle Bottomley. She was bitten by the accountable-mar-keting bug, as she puts it, at the start of her career in the early 1990s at Bonner Slosberg Humphrey, an agency now better known as Digitas.

“Those were the days when databases were so big we had them loaded on supercomputers so we could go and look at profiles of who buys a certain thing. One of our first analyses was for

Lotus, to find out whether people who bought word processing programs also bought software bundles. The sexy channels back then were di-rect mail and the call center,” Bottomley recalls.

She took her targeting skills to OgilvyOne, where she played a key role in transforming the direct agency into a data-fueled integrated mar-keting force. Over a 10-year career there, she rose through the ranks from chief CRM officer to GM of the consulting business to co-president and COO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. Her next stop was Barclaycard, where, as CMO, she herded most of the marketing budget into digital pastures, set up retention and cross-sell desks in the call center, and drove the cost per account acquired down from $100 to a much more rea-sonable $10. It’s a ratio she likes to work in. At Mercer last year, Bottomley turned a renovated brand and a new demand generation capability into a 10:1 ROI in the effort’s early months.

“I think about three things,” she says, “how to grow the business through client relations and sales effectiveness, how to differentiate the brand, and how to build the digital experience.”

Marketing strategy: In a word: leverage. In-variably, the Pareto Principle [aka, the 80/20 rule] is at play, and opportunities exist to retain and expand existing high-potential relationships while acquiring best customer look-a-likes.

MICHELLE

BOTTOMLEYCHIEF MARKETING & SALES OFFICER, MERCER

WINNING WAYS: Mercer is transforming our go-to-market program and outlined the vision and strategy for delivering an increasingly data-driven and digital approach. We’re on the path to delivering a substantial change program that puts our clients and our colleagues at the center of everything we do.

Blair Christie is a self-described extreme extro-vert. And as SVP and CMO of Cisco, she doesn’t shy away from delivering bold results. Gener-ating more insightful leads and better aligning marketing with its sales team has enabled Cisco to produce an additional $2.8 billion pipeline.

Marketing strategy: Brand-to-demand—and all of the way through [the demand funnel]—is really the broader way of describing Cisco’s approach

to marketing. We’re tying everything together. We have a dashboard that goes from awareness, to response, to reach, to revenue…. Content and our digital engagement are the core foundation pieces to [our] brand-to-demand approach.

Defining moment: First, I made a move to Cis-co, which meant that I moved across the coun-try. I went from a small technology company to a very large [one]. At the time it was almost the largest market cap…. I was in the world of in-vestor relations. Then, about four or five years into that I had another idea where I wanted to consolidate corporate communications at Cis-co. [Finally,] stepping into the CMO role was a big change; I went from [overseeing a team of] about 250 people to 1,200 people.

Trend watching: It goes back to the basis of what we think is part of this next wave of the Internet; we call that the Internet of Everything. It’s more than just bringing things together. It’s really the connection of people, process, data, and things. It’s a huge opportunity for business in both the private and public sector, and it’s what I think is going to quadruple or be five or six times the impact of what we saw with the first wave of the Internet…. But I also see huge impact for society.

BLAIR

CHRISTIESVP AND CMO, CISCO

WINNING WAYS: If I stay on the theme of brand-to-demand, I’ve been extremely proud of the revitalization and the refresh of Cisco’s brand that we kicked off in 2012 and we continue [to run]. We just had our recent installment of that campaign in Janu-ary. And by all ways that we measure it, it has been successful and continues to drive not just thought leadership and awareness for Cisco, but [also] a compelling and inspiring story that drives directly to what we’re selling today. The other thing that I’m proud of is the revenue marketing work that we’ve done.

Here’s how garment industry veteran Lucille De-Hart shook up the direct response TV world in her first months at Tristar Products, the “As Seen on TV” powerhouse responsible for brands such as the AbRoller, the Perfect Toaster, and the Genie Bra. One of the company’s top sellers is the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer, but DeHart immediate-ly recognized that Tristar was failing to squeeze maximum revenue from the brand. Instead of tap-ing another 30-minute infomercial, DeHart hired a professional filmmaker to create an hour-long documentary about the legendary fitness guru called Anything Is Possible, which was shown at the

Miami International Film Festival in March 2015. Brand building and cutting-edge content market-ing come to the infomercial business.

“Though the direct response business had already figured out that high recognition of brands is the secret, they treated their brands too much like products,” DeHart says. “Now, by telling the story of Jack LaLanne in a true documentary, not an infomercial, we intend to leverage that platform to introduce a line of new products under the Jack LaLanne brand.”

DeHart, who was CMO at Maidenform be-fore joining Tristar, is concurrently padding out the brand potential of another shining star at Tristar: the Genie Bra. “Genie was the number one bra brand for three years based on terrif-ic marketing that really explained the product, but it was not merchandised within an entire category,” DeHart says. “We’ve now launched Genie large sizes and slim jeggings and secured endcaps throughout all Walmart doors.”

Marketing strategy: It’s essential for marketers to drive their company and brand vision forward without falling victim to the short-term demands of quarterly revenue. I’ve always believed mar-keting was an investment, not an expense, and that successful marketers align their businesses to drive long-term ROI.

LUCILLE

DeHARTCMO, TRISTAR PRODUCTS INC.

WINNING WAYS: When I joined Tristar its lead brand was in decline. This was a cornerstone product for the company and we needed to invest in its future. Within my first six months here we were able to create a full marketing and business plan, build a brand site, redesign the packaging, and air a new commercial. The new site doubled conversion and we have launched two successful new products. The sales trend reversed from -53% to less than -30%.

Reader’s Digest doesn’t only publish stories; it also helps customers write their own and form emotional connections with the brand. This is Leslie Dukker Doty’s specialty. And last year the CMO led the initiatives that helped the pub-lication acquire 800,000 new customers.

Marketing strategy: I have a clear methodology and a specific approach. I call it inspiring action.

It’s based on building and inspiring brands while optimizing the levels of response…. It’s [also] based on the idea that people need to tell themselves stories and then try to live out those stories. You just do better when your brand is part of that story and becomes part of their lives.

Defining moment: Earlier in my career I was made the business lead for the Citibank AAdvantage Card business. It was one of the first co-branded cards within the industry and was a program with American Airlines…. The co-branded card was positioned around aspira-tional travel in terms of using the card to get to a destination. We had a hypothesis that it was more than that. We did very expensive brand-positioning research and we reached that aha moment where we understood what that connection was with the customer and with the prospect. People did get free travel, but that wasn’t why they were inspired around that card. It was about the gaming around col-lecting miles…. It was a breakthrough concept and that’s how the “Or Was It the Miles?” campaign was born, which was not about trav-el, but was about how you collected miles and why. And by bringing that campaign into the marketplace it changed the industry.

LESLIE DUKKER

DOTYCMO, READER’S DIGEST ASSOCIATION

WINNING WAYS: We relaunched [Reader’s Digest] January 2014; we’re growing, acquiring, and rebuilding the customer base; and we’re rebuilding our database…. [The relaunch] started with the rebranding and then [focused on] doing things well that we used to do very well from a direct marketing perspective and product services. Most re-cently, [we’re] launching into new adjacency products that are more relevant to the next generation of audiences or to people who don’t know that we’re still around.

As a yoga instructor, Mish Fletcher knows a lot about balance. And as the worldwide managing director, marketing for OgilvyOne Worldwide, Fletcher steers the agency’s messaging about

balancing data and creativity to win in today’s marketplace. She also puts that balance into action. In 2014 she led the launch of the agen-cy’s new global data offering OgilvyAMP. That same year, under her guidance OgilvyOne Worldwide won more major creative and effec-tiveness awards than in any year prior.

Marketing strategy: It’s very much about put-ting clients at the center of your thinking and focusing on their needs. All too often we want to think about the services that we want to sell, not what clients want to buy. It’s about using the language that clients are using and then framing offerings around that.

Defining moment: Recently, I was appointed to the OgilvyOne Worldwide board.... It’s an incredible feeling to be part of the leadership team that’s driving the agency forward first and foremost. The way in which it’s propelled me forward is that it’s given me a much broad-er perspective on our business and enabled me to better understand the role of the marketing function and how it can support the business and deliver value to the organization.

MISH

FLETCHERWORLDWIDE MANAGING DIRECTOR, MARKETING,OGILVYONE WORLDWIDE

WINNING WAYS: We have a proprietary, strategic planning methodology. It’s called DAVE, which stands for Data-inspired, Always-on, Valuable, Experiences. It’s also a cheeky hom-age to David Ogilvy. I actually applied DAVE to the agency itself. This enabled the creation of complete and personalized profiles of all of our clients…. We were able to segment our client base and then map the journey of the individual client per-sona so we could understand what it’s like to become a client of OgilvyOne. That then enabled me to make recommendations as to how we should realign resources so that we were creating the right platforms and undertaking the right sort of out-reach, and to ensure that we were squarely centered on clients’ needs.

Amy Hoopes is hardly a stranger to the celebra-tion of outstanding women in traditionally male workplaces. Wente Vineyards operates a restau-rant on its estate in California wine country and runs a Guest Chef Series featuring the “Bay Area’s Most Acclaimed Women Chefs.” The in-person event is emblematic of Hoopes’s marketing taste profile, which combines a full-bodied brand with a bouquet of bonhomie. She learned to put people in her four P’s of marketing with a fashion industry

promotion early in her career at E&J Gallo, and continues the practice at Wente. She’s connected with Food Network on product placements and personal associations with celebrity chefs.

“One of my greatest learnings from the Ecco Domani experience at Gallo was that people make the difference,” Hoopes says. “It was truly a team effort and I was fortunate to work on one of the most impressive cross-functional teams in the industry.”

Hoopes looks to ply people-connections in a multichannel fashion. On National Chardonnay Day last year, for example, a live toast involving Wente family members sparked a million tweets among wine enthusiasts in two hours.

“When it comes to making a wine purchase, today’s consumer is less impacted by wine re-views and more heavily swayed by opinions of their friends and family,” Hoopes says.

Marketing strategy: It’s all about people: ob-serving, understanding, and interacting in ways that resonate with each individual and their lives.

Defining moment: Early in my career at E&J Gallo I was given an opportunity to think dif-ferently about brand building for Ecco Domani wines. The mission was to connect an Italian ta-ble wine with high fashion (think Milan), and be the first brand in Gallo’s import portfolio to make imported wines accessible. I learned that people make the difference. It was truly a team effort.

AMY

HOOPESCMO AND EVP, GLOBAL SALES, WENTE VINEYARDS

WINNING WAYS: Education is the key to success. Not only is it imperative to teach your consumers about your brands, but it is equally important to ensure that your employees are knowledgeable and engaged in sharing your brand story and your values.

Elizabeth Jackson insists that marketing should be fun. “That doesn’t mean easy—but fun,” she says. And for Jackson, marketing certainly has

been, and continues to be, hard work. In fact, Jackson made the not-so-easy transition from marketing for major B2C companies—such as Procter & Gamble, Campbell Soup Company, and Summer Infant—to the B2B space. She says, however, much of that same know-how has en-abled her to dive right in, excel, and take those B2B-specific challenges head on.

“Marketing is more than just brand building and marketing communications,” Jackson says. “It’s understanding the voice of the customer [whether a shopper or an enterprise], and lever-aging all facets of our brand and company to build value for them.”

Marketing strategy: The approach that I always take to marketing is the who, the what, and the how. The who is the audience—in other words, who am I talking to? That could be broad seg-ments, different industry verticals, [or] psycho-graphics. The what is the thing that our brand stands for and what our value proposition is, and how we communicate that to our target consum-er. The how is simply the way that we bring that brand equity to life, which includes all of the different vehicles and strategies that we put into place to make that happen and keep our promise.

ELIZABETH

JACKSONCMO AND EVP OF CORPORATE STRATEGY, HOOKLOGIC

WINNING WAYS: My background is actually B2C. And when I came to HookLogic, what I felt was missing from our lead-generation effort was a reason to engage with our adver-tisers. So, I put in place a content strategy in which we had primary research and fantastic data with our retail partners—all about buying behaviors on e-commerce. That is, I set up a content strategy that was relevant to the target audience. We engaged advertisers—the who—with meaningful content—the what—which Hook-Logic had uniquely—the how.

Ashley Johnston’s answer of “everything” to our question about what trends she’s watching may seem like a cop-out, but in actuality it’s the prod-uct of personal experience. The mom of Luke (a.k.a. Lucky), 8, and Ava, 5, has a front-row seat to the marketplace of the future.

“Ava loves to bake and is already learning how to use YouTube to find recipes. When you watch young children, you can see that

technology is just like breathing,” Johnston says. “I heard someone recently saying that children today won’t be able to think on their own. I couldn’t disagree more. I see my chil-dren finding their own ways through these connected devices.”

Johnston approaches such all-encompassing issues with aplomb, firm in her conviction that every day is another day to prove one’s self. In one year she wove a single brand story around five legacy brands at Experian Marketing Ser-vices and told it in 33 countries. The “Intelligent Interactions” campaign installed a new identity at the data-driven marketing powerhouse, and won Johnson and her team the coveted internal Masters in Marketing Award.

The two words that sum up Johnston’s recipe for success: Be fearless. “When I was in college and trying to decide which area of marketing to go into, someone told me to do what scares me the most,” she says. “That was technolo-gy.” Upon graduation, she took a job at Racer Computer, a supplier of white box computers to CompUSA. She learned how computers work, and now instructs marketers the world over in the best ways to use them.

Marketing strategy: Tell your story. Storytell-ing is not just a buzzword, it’s your ability to make an emotional connection.

ASHLEY

JOHNSTONSVP, GLOBAL MARKETING, EXPERIAN MARKETING SERVICES

WINNING WAYS: In 2014 we launched the Experian Marketing Suite. We took disparate products and combined them to deliver on what we believed clients will be looking for to-morrow. We put clients at the center of our portfolio so they could put the custom-er at the center of their businesses.

Maly Ly’s marketing genius is distinctly a product of her background. Arriving in the U.S. at seven years old, Ly learned to overcome language bar-riers by connecting with people psychologically. Having worked in two of the most disruptive and consumer-driven markets around (music and video games), Ly further honed her ability to connect with people. This work, combined with her experience as an early hire at AdRoll, helped

solidify Ly as an expert at crafting powerful mes-sages without compromising brand purpose or identity, or alienating consumers. Now, Ly ap-plies her marketing savvy to Sojern, working to establish the brand as an industry leader.

Marketing strategy: The foundation of my mar-keting strategy starts with a deep understanding of customers—their needs, problems, and motiva-tions—and how a product or brand can best serve those needs, problems, and motivations. [That knowledge underpins the] unique positioning that resonates with customers. And to approach chan-nels that best engage customers, you have to be willing to listen, to experiment, and to optimize. Additionally, the modern buyer journey—which involves self-directed research, evaluation, and social proof—doesn’t follow a linear purchase jour-ney, so content, programs, and channels have to be mapped to all phases of this journey.

High-quality, relevant, and well-designed content is the key to strong marketing programs. I’m a fanatic when it comes to details, data, and design. Marketing is most powerful when the story, the data, and the visuals work together. These approaches have transformed my two most recent companies, Sojern and AdRoll.

MALY

LYVP OF GLOBAL MARKETING, SOJERN

WINNING WAYS: Sojern’s global marketing and sales enablement efforts have helped the company grow at a rate of more than 1,000% on average over the past three years. The com-pany is the only travel technology company to top the Deloitte Fast 500 Technolo-gy list for the past two years.

In the past year our team produced news and materials that garnered upwards of 300 million impressions, leading to a 36% increase in Web page views, and a 32% increase in site users. Across social media, in the past year we’ve increased Twitter engagement by more than 500%, and Facebook by more than 700%.

Natasha Raja is a firm believer in following one’s passion. And if there’s one thing Raja is passion-ate about, it’s delivering results. Through her leadership, the tech career site Dice has experi-enced a 55% increase in registrations and a 70% increase in candidate applications.

Marketing strategy: I truly believe in customer

centricity; especially ‘voice of customer’ and ‘how do we create loyalty for that customer.’ It’s really a two-way street on how you take care of your customers, how you make them feel spe-cial, and how you understand their wants and needs and make it a perfect CRM.

Defining moment: When I first came to the U.S., I never wanted to live here…. I was go-ing to gain a few years of work experience and go back [to India]. But working at eBay was life-changing because you’re working with the smartest people, but you’re [also] following your passion. You can see the work that you’re doing—whether it’s behind the cube, in front of Meg Whitman, in front of the camera, or in front of your customers. You are making a dif-ference, and it was very rewarding to see that you don’t always need to own a company or start a company to build your success or make a difference in the world. You can work at a very good company, and you can still achieve your dreams.

Trend watching: It’s all about the data…. There’s brand, there’s product, there’s integrated marketing, but data speaks for itself. Data tells the story, and today the data is deeper and richer and marketers are smarter than ever before.

NATASHA

RAJAVP OF MARKETING AND CUSTOMER SERVICE, DICE

WINNING WAYS: One of our campaigns was “Hottest in Tech.” [We invited] real techies—a real programmer, Hadoop developer, and Big Data engineer—and had a photo shoot. We were actually up on [a] Times Square [billboard], as well. The engineers were in their boxers and we put “find the hottest tech talent on Dice.” It worked so well because it really caught people’s attention.... It’s about changing perception, and we started getting more product awareness and product sales due to that.

Alicianne Rand is the personification of a mar-keting unicorn. She has a head for analytics and marketing science and a heart for creative and de-sign. And, as anyone who knows her can attest, Rand is passionate. It’s that passion that earned her an early position at NewsCred, where she’s grown her team into a powerful revenue center for the company, with 70% of NewsCred’s 2014 deals having touched at least one piece of mar-keting from her team. Rand led the charge when

NewsCred kicked off its Content Marketing Summit in 2013, and has doubled the event’s au-dience since. Rand shifted the mind-set at News-Cred toward its current design-oriented focus, which helped the company score Digiday’s 2014 Best Content Marketing Tech Platform Award.

Marketing strategy: I come from a creative background doing brand design, so I believe a strong brand purpose is critical. I’m into the science and analytics in marketing, as well. We work to show that marketing is not a cost center, but a revenue driver in the business.

Defining moment: There wasn’t a single de-fining moment for me. It was my intense curi-osity that helped get me here. With that, and the experience I got from my work as an intern at ABC, I landed at NewsCred. I’ve been here since the beginning because I really believe in the founders, and what we’re doing.

Trend watching: I’m really interested in under-standing how content creation, consumption, and sharing are intersecting with the latest inno-vation in technology. Take a platform like Face-book, and look at the rise of BuzzFeed, and note how intertwined the two are. They really power each other. The pace of innovation is incredible. Look at the Internet of Things; the way software is intersecting with our regular lives.

ALICIANNE

RANDVP OF MARKETING, NEWSCRED

WINNING WAYS: Building such a phenomenal team has been a great accomplishment. We’re a small team, but we come out with tons of creative ideas, and we’re inspired by the bigger mission of our company. I’m also proud of the fact that marketing contributes to more than 30% of the revenue at NewsCred on a first-touch basis, specifically in our B2B departments.

SheKnows produces content that allows wom-en to inspire other women, which is just one of the reasons Samantha Skey says she joined the team in March 2013. “When I think about our approach to building the SheKnows brand and communicating with our core audience of moms and those women who love lifestyle, I think about that core value that we try to engender: women

impacting women,” Skey says. “Part of our jobs is making sure that every piece of content we put out there is informing, inspiring, and amusing.”

With more than 20 years of experience in digital media, including time at marquee media companies, such as The Walt Disney Company and CNET, Skey has also spent a chunk of her career in for-profit causes. Interweaving personal and business goals, she became the CMO at sus-tainability company Recycle Bank and carried that passion for doing good to SheKnows Media. “I discovered that although I love [issues like] sustainability, I found that the area that I was going to have the most impact was in women’s is-sues and how women use media,” Skey says. “So, the flip to SheKnows made a lot of sense. And it allowed me the opportunity to continue that dou-ble bottom-line approach, where there are mone-tary goals and social goals in one company.”

Marketing strategy: Understanding the mar-keting math is really important in scaling a business. But when I think about building the SheKnows brand and just communicating to our audience—women who love lifestyle—I think our overall marketing strategy is based on those core values that we try to instill in women.

SAMANTHA

SKEYCHIEF REVENUE & MARKETING OFFICER, SHEKNOWS MEDIA

WINNING WAYS: We hosted a workshop [called] Hatch in celebration of MLK Day. During this workshop we collaborated with tweens to talk about the gifts that they’ve received and the changes in society as a result of the Civil Rights Movement. We created a really inspiring project for these kids, discussing racism. The video that we cre-ated with these tweens focused on micro-aggression—or unintended insults and discrimination. The video has gotten more than 150,000 views and taught people more about these terms and what people can do. It’s the work we’re most proud of.

Corinne Sklar says that taking risks, driving creativity, and fostering inspiration are the steps that will create a passionate and successful mar-keting team. “If you have an organization that’s willing to allow people to go beyond—to extend themselves—there’s a sense of pride and a sense of creativity that’s born out of that,” Sklar says, “which I think has made me a better marketer—and a better leader.” In fact, Sklar says that she takes a personal pride in her marketing team

at the digital-focused business consulting firm because when people are themselves they bring their individual talents and views to their work. “I’ve been able to grow—and so have the people who I work with—because I have others around me, mentors, who encourage me to always be myself,” she says. “That’s key to success.”

Marketing strategy: I look at marketing as three legs on a stool, and, ultimately, if you want to be a successful marketer, I strongly believe that you need to have a focus on all of these: a blend of creative and brand strategy, a focus on technology, and data.

Defining moment: The defining moment—or mo-ments—for me has been having people around me, particularly my leadership and mentors, who’ve encouraged me to be myself. They helped me re-alize that people want my ideas. I felt empowered.

Trend watching: One trend is the focus on the mobile mind-set. Recently, Google announced that it will rank sites and properties on whether they are optimized for mobile. So, anyone who’s doing search marketing should think mobile first. A second trend is to stop thinking about marketing as B2B versus B2C. The lines and barriers are starting to fall away, and you’re see-ing less distinction between the two.

CORINNE

SKLARGLOBAL CMO, BLUEWOLF

WINNING WAYS: I’m extremely proud of an internal campaign we have at Bluewolf: Going Social. We have gamified external and internal collaboration. In other words, our employ-ees are earning points and rewards for collaborating and sharing knowledge. So, just by sharing posts on their LinkedIn pages or earning a certain Klout score, they’re rewarded for being social. It’s a program that we’re constantly iterating on.

“Success is all about making a true impact.”That’s the fervent advice Kate Spellman has

for marketers looking to drive action. In fact, Spellman says that if marketers want to succeed they need to provide potential and current cus-tomers with one thing: value. “Understand the true value proposition for the customers,” she says. “So, focus on the user, the audience, or the customers. Know the actions that you want to

drive and the end result that you want to see. It’s really about the what, the so what, and the now what. In other words, it’s all about impact.”

Marketing strategy: Just make sure that what you’re touching as a marketer is really making an impact on behavior and your de-sired end result.

Defining moment: My latest defining mo-ment would be from the time that I worked at [United Business Media] before coming to Pen-ton. I launched a new division in the company and created it from scratch. It was the digital arm of UBM, called UBM Studios. And it was a defining moment because it gave me a lot of perspective on the importance of building the right team, the ability to let talent do what they needed to do, and bringing the right people on-board. I also think that it gave me a great deal of understanding in running something and un-derstanding how each pivotal area works.

Trend watching: One of the [trends] for mar-keters everywhere is measuring the value of your user. We all hear, ‘What’s the lifetime val-ue of your customer, and how are you measur-ing that?’ That’s an important thing to measure. Also, I think that from a marketing perspective, data is more and more important, and we’ll need to be running to that rather than running away from it.

KATE

SPELLMANCMO, PENTON

WINNING WAYS: My biggest win is the people who have surrounded me [at Penton]. I have the best team in the industry. I would put them up against anybody. And what I’m most proud of is watching my team step up, perform, and have so much impact—that’s in the company and with clients, too.

When she was younger, Linda Vetter had “cham-pagne taste and a beer salary.” Thankfully, her waitressing experience taught her how to work with what she had. Fast forward to 2014 and Vetter, now a VP of marketing, applied this same mental-ity when she led the launch of Yes Lifecycle Mar-keting, an integration of the company’s existing solutions, in one month without a separate budget.

Marketing strategy: We have this saying that

hope is a dangerous thing. We’re not going to be focusing in on what we hope will work, but rather what the data is telling us has worked and what hasn’t worked. Then, let’s figure out how to make improvements and start it all over again.

Defining moment: I was with a company for about nine years and had the opportunity to go follow a boy to Europe. I left the company and went and traveled to Europe, and when I came back, I just had no idea what I wanted to do.... I was working at Alterian as an executive admin, and then opportunity presented itself within marketing. I dove in and loved it. That was just one of those moments of being at the right place at the right time, forging this path, growing with-in the organization and learning everything that I could, and it led me to where I am now.

Trend watching: We just recently did some re-search...and we found some crazy numbers of how many [technology and service providers that marketers] are using and the amount of time that they’ve spent coordinating their activities. Think about how much time you spend coordi-nating six vendors, whereas if you have one or two to work with couldn’t you be putting much more time then toward your strategy and apply-ing that toward your marketing activities?

LINDA

VETTERVP OF MARKETING, YES LIFECYCLE MARKETING

WINNING WAYS: Launching Yes Lifecycle Marketing itself…. A ton of our prospects and our clients were dealing with a number of different vendors. We were asking ourselves, “If the whole goal here is to ensure that we as marketers are providing this multichannel seamless experience for our customers...how can we do that if we’re going to town with several different vendors?” The launch of this concept—this holistic approach of aligning technology and services—was really great for us as an organization.

Throughout her nearly 20-year career in mar-keting, Melissa Wallace has attempted to accom-plish one thing: do only what she loves. “Since the beginning of my career, I’ve taken all kinds of marketing roles, mainly in entertainment,” Wallace says. “I kept thinking, ‘If I’m going to market something, it’s got to be something that I love.’ And I love entertainment. I love music. I love sports. I love film. So, I was determined to work in entertainment. I just didn’t know exact-

ly where I wanted to go.”Wallace says that she discovered her love for

marketing entertainment brands about 15 years ago in the role of senior marketing manager for communications giant DIRECTV. “Over time I learned that I love marketing to marketers,” she says. Since her time at DIRECTV, Wallace has taken on several senior marketing roles with marquee companies such as A&E Television Net-works, URL-shortening service Bitly, and Sales-force.com, which in 2012 bought Buddy Media for nearly $750 million, in part due to the successful marketing campaigns led by Wallace, who was the VP of marketing at Buddy Media at the time: “My role today [at Splash] is now to get the public on board. From the branding, to PR, to driving awareness, I get to do all the fun stuff in this new job. It’s everything fun about marketing.”

Marketing strategy: When I was starting out, digital marketing was emerging. So, the idea that you could associate something like ROI with your marketing efforts became something that I was focused on. But I’m also very split between being creative and analytical. I believe that when you’re marketing to consumers, and even to other marketers, creativity is extremely important. So my approach in this B2B space is to find a way to entertain the marketer.

MELISSA

WALLACEVP OF MARKETING, SPLASH

WINNING WAYS: I want to talk about my time at Buddy Media. I came in to basically do a relaunch of their product. We had only about eight weeks, and we took a creative approach on tools for social media marketers. We recruited five artists from around the world, and let them create a digital and social campaign that told a message of power and connections through their artwork. The result was not just an effective campaign, but we also helped create a new category: social media marketing.

Lori Wright understands the elusive nature of excellence, and has learned when and where the pursuit of this slippery adjective is viable. She also is clear about her priorities, and that

clarity has allowed her to excel where it counts in her marketing career. Professionally, this keen sense of self has led to pivotal professional relationships, and substantial progress at TIB-CO, where Wright has helped grow the compa-ny’s leads by 30%.

Marketing strategy: Know who your custom-ers are, and who you want your future cus-tomers to be, then tell them why your products serve their needs better than anything else. Fi-nally, make sure you have the systems in place to be able to tell whether your message is reso-nating, and your existing customers are staying with you and buying more from you.

Defining moment: The defining moment of my career came when I got a call from John W. Thompson one day to work with him as his business operations leader while he was the chairman and CEO of Symantec. Beyond learn-ing from someone extraordinary like John, this was the inflection point in which I moved my family from Florida to California. This afforded me the opportunity to take on a series of roles where I met a lot of people, did a lot of different things, and honed my skills in areas that I was passionate about.

LORI

WRIGHTCMO, TIBCO SOFTWARE INC.

WINNING WAYS: On the personal side, I’m most proud of being here with you right now to have this conversation. I had my second child five months ago, and being both an executive in the fast-paced IT industry and a mom to two energetic boys at home is not for the faint of heart.

On the professional side, I’m really proud of the work we did in 2014 to launch a new brand identity for the company, improve demand-generation processes, and deliver the most successful user conference in the history of the company.

In making the case for Zheng’s induction into the Marketing Hall of Femme, let’s do it Football Hall of Fame style and lay out the stats. When she joined VMware as VP of support services in 2004 the company’s annual revenue was about $200 million; when she left as VP worldwide marketing in 2009 it was $1.9 billion. In her first three months at Tintri, sales began growing at triple-digit rates, the company made its debut in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, its NPS hit 94, and Tintri was recognized as a 2015 Technology of

the Year at InfoWorld. In Canton, that’s the stuff of first-ballot elections.

Zheng is also what would be called in the sports world a “multi-tool player.” With a B.S. in materials science engineering from MIT and an MBA from UC Berkeley, she’s the prototype of the marketing engineer that nearly every com-pany longs for these days.

“Having that engineering background is very helpful to me,” says Zheng, a former vio-linist in the MIT Symphony Orchestra. “I wel-come the fact that marketing is becoming more measurable. It makes me feel much more com-fortable doing what I’m doing. It’s combining the Greek part with the Roman part.”

Marketing strategy: Tech companies can learn a thing or two from B2C companies that don’t practice “ility” marketing—agility, availability, flexilibity—or cliché marketing: “revolutionary,” “disruptive,” “ transformative.” Marketers should find ways to tell their story without boring peo-ple to death or sounding like everybody else.

Defining moment: At VMware I created a doc-ument I thought was well-written and showed it to the CEO. She grimaced and said she didn’t like it. “It’s too corporate-sounding and perfect,” she said. The writing felt manufactured and con-tained too many hackneyed tech buzzwords. It took me a few months to grasp the significance. What came out didn’t sound authentic or origi-nal. I then started speaking in a new language.

YAEL

ZHENGCMO, TINTRI

WINNING WAYS: Tintri was recently recognized as an InfoWorld 2015 Technology of the Year. This puts us on a list that includes Apple’s iPhone, HTML 5, and Docker.

Sure, marketing ultimately is about gen-erating revenue. But along the journey to profit, marketers are all about helping oth-ers look good.

Externally, the work marketers do helps consumers feel that they’ve made a good choice through their purchase decisions. The mean-ing of “good choice” will vary. It may re-fer to anything from feeling smart to feel-ing a part of an exclusive club. For example, a thrifty shop-per who joins a loyalty pro-gram may feel savvy as a re-sult of her sav-ings. Or a tech-nophile may feel like an expert by be-ing among the first invited by a company to try a new tool. These positive feelings poten-tially create a virtuous cycle in which customers are likely to buy more, recommend, and advocate.

Internally, marketing leaders are there in

part to help their teams look good. They do this in a variety of ways. This includes such actions as creating an environment that supports experimentation, risk-taking, and growth; providing coaching, training, and mentors; and tracking performance and measuring success. Marketing leaders are

also there to help make the company look good in such areas as com-municating the brand promise, successfully en-gaging custom-ers, and driv-ing revenue and growth.

The Direct Marketing News 2015 Market-ing Hall of Femme honor-ees are among the marketing leaders who are equally focused on the success of their company and custom-ers—in other words, help-

ing them look good. They’re data-driven, employee- and customer-centric marketers who also have a flair for the creative side

THE ALTRUISTIC SIDE OF MARKETINGBY GINGER CONLON

2015 Marketing Hall of Femme honorees with DMN's Ginger Con-lon, awards keynote and 2014 honoree American Red Cross CMO Peggy Dyer, and Dior cover shoot stylists Josse and John Henry.

of the marketing equation. They’re au-thentic and open, and have an insatiable appetite for learning and growth. It truly is an honor to celebrate the inspiring ac-complishments of these chief marketers.

A COMMON THREADAs different as their journeys have been and their stories are, they do share several common attributes. They use data to build their strategies around customers; they support their employees’ advancement; and they are anything but risk averse. In-stead, they’re all about being courageous and moving swiftly, but wisely forward.

Consider this from honoree Lori Wright, CMO of TIBCO Software: “Be bold. Don’t do a lot of little stuff that makes minimal impact. Come up with one big platform idea each year and swing for the fences—you won’t always connect, but when you do, it makes all the differ-

ence in the world. People won’t remember the little things—but they’ll remember the big bangs.”

Indeed, DMN selected the Marketing Hall of Femme honorees in part based on the big bangs that mark the highlights of our honorees’ careers. We also consider their leadership style, approach to mar-keting, and recent results. Selecting only 18 women from the more than 80 nomi-nees was no easy feat. Their achievements were simply remarkable.

What set the honorees apart? Ultimate-ly, their leadership and marketing strate-gies and the success they’ve had as a re-sult. As 2015 honoree Alicianne Rand, VP of marketing at NewsCred, so succinctly put it: “Strive for something huge.” That’s exactly what DMN’s 2015 Marketing Hall of Femme honorees did. And their career, company, customer, and staff successes show just that.