Q&A with Jay Gaines, CMO at Forrester

MEDIA 7 | November 28, 2019

Ed Breault, Chief Marketing Officer at Aprimo is a marketer with over 18 years of industry experience. At Aprimo, Ed is responsible for the global brand and growth which includes all Paid/Owned/Earned media, Brand Experience, Product Marketing, Industry Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Strategic Communications, Content Marketing, Analyst Relations, Alliance Marketing, Public Relations, Events, Demand Generation and Account-Based Marketing. MEDIA 7: What’s your superpower? ED BREAULT: I would say it’s applying the full spectrum of art and science that is required in marketing today. Not just left or right brained, but whole-brained strategy. Being human yet data-driven and really understanding numbers and (the right) metrics to make connections to business drivers. Add storytelling to that, so I can effectively communicate to my team, the CEO and CFO as well as my Board of Directors on those metrics, and connecting all that we are doing in marketing to the mission of the business. Then quickly shifting gears to the art and creative aspects of marketing that are required to engage an audience and tell great commercial stories that take complex concepts and craft them in a way that is interesting for people to pay attention to. I have to be the ultimate point of truth for the brand. M7: At Aprimo, how have marketing leadership roles and responsibilities evolved over the past few years? EB: There are so many dimensions needed by marketing leaders today. There are several elements driving this evolution, it’s the new experience battlefront that is emerging and also marketers themselves driving changes. From a market perspective, there is a clear appetite for disruption and consumers are wanting more experiential elements to their buying experience and interactions with brands. Take a few direct to consumer disruptions like trialing products in-home, purchasing directly from a brand or even wanting to ensure that the producer’s trade practices are in line with the buyer’s or even a regulator’s for that matter. Then we want to try before we buy, and we emotionally care about the supply chain of products. Do we TRUST this brand to do business with them? Behind all of this is a story that needs to be told, and it is those marketers who know their audience well and make connections that will win the commercial game. Back to the marketer, there are so many diverse backgrounds that marketers bring now and I’m really intrigued by those who have unconventional backgrounds because they contribute something uniquely new to the field. I love hearing about the marketer’s journey.

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MEDIA 7 | December 5, 2019

Andrea Lechner-Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadMD is an experienced Marketing and Sales Executive with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in Business Process, Marketo, Sales, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and IT Service Management, Andrea is also a strong business development professional and a storyteller. MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into marketing? ANDREA LECHNER: Frankly, not having better options. I originally attended the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse thinking I’d major in Archaeology. I wanted to be Indiana Jones! But, after visiting the archaeology building – i.e. the cold, dark basement of the science building – where a girl sat to piece together pieces of an old Native American vase, I knew archaeology was not going to be the right path for me. And so, without being good at science and a major in art or art history was unlikely to pay my bills, I decided to go into “business”. I originally registered as a management major, but took my first marketing class and thought it was more interesting and switched my sophomore year. That was pretty much it. I’d never been involved in business classes or DECA in high school – I didn’t really know what to do or what jobs in marketing were even possible. I dumb lucked myself into it really. M7: As a storyteller, do you relate the brand to a story or story to the brand? AL: Both? Neither? I think there are stories in every brand, because there are people working on the brand and people engaging with the brand and people using what the brand creates. People, most often a single person, are at the heart of great stories. You can start with the “point” of the story you’re trying to tell. Say you have a software that help accountants better create reports for board meetings. It’s likely you’ll want to tell a success story about an accountant getting promoted to CFO in part because your software helped better communicate their work product to the board. You could have the idea for that and go looking for that story in your customers. OR, you could hear that story, and say, “That’s amazing!” and share it with customers, partners and internal people. Stories are all around us – the most important thing is to keep your ears and eyes open for finding them.

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MEDIA 7 | January 9, 2020

Sangram Vajre, Co-Founder & Chief Evangelist at Terminus is also an author and host of the podcast FlipmyFunnel. He is one of the leading minds in B2B marketing. MEDIA 7: What are you passionate about? SANGRAM VAJRE: Three things: Lead professionally. Grow personally. Love family. M7: Terminus has been recognized as one of Georgia’s 40 fastest-growing companies by ACG Atlanta. What factors contribute to this pace? SV: One of our core values is #OneTeam – which means we think and act as one team and know that if we treat our team right, they will treat our customers amazing. There are no great companies, only great people that make those companies.

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ONLINE EDUCATION

YuJa | January 23, 2023

Prairie State College recently announced that it is integrating with YuJa Panorama to avail of a digital platform for unlimited learning alternatives for its valuable learners. YuJa Panorama is one of YuJa's high-impact media solutions that helps institutions deliver user-friendly video and media content. It makes things more accessible by automatically creating accessible versions of course materials in the background. It also has a visual accessibility gauge that lets creators know when their content has problems, a website accessibility tool that enables students to change how their user interface works, and detailed reports and scorecards. In addition, YuJa Panorama connects with D2L, the school's learning management system. Prairie State College has emphasized accessibility in its mission, which is as follows: 'We provide unrestricted opportunities for learning suited to students' individual and collective needs and implement a fair process that recognizes their dignity.' Nathan Arora, Chief Business Officer of YuJa, said, "YuJa is committed to providing tools that make accessibility easy to implement and manage from an institutional standpoint, and that drive inclusivity and promote learning for all students." He added, "Prairie State College is proactive about providing accessible content for all learners, and YuJa Panorama provides all the tools to help them meet their accessibility needs." (Source - Business Wire) About YuJa YuJa is a prominent education and technology solutions company. It empowers organizations of all sizes with tools to motivate, engage, educate, and collaborate. It supports learning endeavors across various organizations, including higher education, K-12, government, healthcare, non-profit, and corporate. Its legal headquarters are in Delaware, with primary U.S. offices in Silicon Valley (California) and Canadian offices in Toronto.

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ONLINE EDUCATION

Thought Industries | January 30, 2023

The enterprise learning platform Thought Industries for partner, customer and professional training recently launched its new online learning Academy powered by the world's only completely customizable headless developer LMS framework, Helium. It was established in 2022 at the company's annual customer and LMS industry event, Cognition22. For Education to develop a new Academy site, Thought Industries works with Verified Helium Partner. Helium addresses a pain point from the past making it simpler for designers and developers to collaborate with many companies looking forward to customizing and extending the capabilities of their LMS systems. In the past, designers either made mockups and were then met with constraints when developers had been putting them on the screen, or they viewed the system first and then created limited mockups to match. Both approaches are hard, expensive, and take a lot of time. The Thought Industries Academy has different products and services under one roof for learning professionals willing to get more of the potential of the company’s learning platform and programs. Customers of Thought Industries will find a wide range of self-service resources, including new content, new featured resources and FAQs are put in the front and center to simplify the learning experience. Philip Cahill, Thought Industries Senior Director of Customer Education, said, "It was crucial for us to be our own first customer in creating the new Ti Learning Academy. Helium gave us all the flexibility we needed to meet the needs of learning professionals worldwide." He added, "With Helium, we were able to build our new Academy without any limits, and as an added bonus, it gave us a great opportunity to show customers what Helium can do." (Source: Cision) About Thought Industries Founded in 2012, Thought Industries is one of the world's leading B2B external training platform providers and customer education. The company powers the learning business for companies ranging from midmarket enterprises to the Fortune 500, helping them change how they build, deploy, and scale profitable global online learning operations. The customers use the company's platform to reach, teach and engage with their learning audiences. Additionally, businesses, organizations, and associations can give their audiences engaging, fully branded learning experiences using enterprise-level delivery and monetization tools.

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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY

Jones & Bartlett Learning | February 03, 2023

On February 02, 2023, Jones & Bartlett Learning, one of the providers of learning-performance management solutions, partners with LiveCarta, a collaborative platform for digital publishing and learning, to deliver customized e-learning resources for nursing educators. Through its platform, nursing educators can structure educational resources such as books, academic papers, video and audio clips, binders, and scholarly collections with the nursing education curriculum. This integration will acquire a slot in popular learning management systems (LMS) like Canvas or Blackboards, making it accessible to everyone, including the students. In addition, LiveCarta's platform will provide proven nursing education concepts, a developed flipped classroom experience, and just-in-time teaching (JITT) modes. Its collaborative publishing platforms and portals offer flexible, goal-oriented learning and a shared platform for digital content for authors, educators, and classmates. Publishers and content creators can sell the whole book, specific chapters, allowing students to collect data from different publications as course content and study aids. President of the parent company of LiveCarta, Tributary Publishing, Richard Speakman, said, "We built LiveCarta to provide educators with new tools to create the perfect online course pack. Educators can tailor books for their students, including only chapters they intend to teach and adding in additional materials to extend the original author's work. We are excited to partner with Jones & Bartlett Learning to offer nursing educators more innovative ways to bundle learning materials." (Source – Business Wire) Director of Product Management at Jones & Bartlett Learning, Matt Kane, said, "LiveCarta supports our mission to offer students and instructors flexibility in their learning resources. We're excited to offer select nursing education titles among the first products to be featured in the LiveCarta platform." (Source – Business Wire) About Jones & Bartlett Learning Jones & Bartlett Learning, which is a division of Ascend Learning, is one of the prominent assessment and learning-performance management solution providers for the secondary, post-secondary, and professional education markets. It also designs educational services and programs by modifying authoritative written content with innovative technology applications, thus creating engaging e-learning educational content catering to the needs of the current education system. In addition, it has been providing personalized, quality learning solutions across nursing, health administration, health professions, computer science, and public health.

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