Hometown
Woodstock, VT
Education
Tufts University
MIT Sloan School of Management
What is your job at CampusLIVE?
As Vice President of Marketing at CampusLIVE, my job touches on many parts of the customer experience. First and foremost, I make sure we're communicating our message to the right audience so they visit the site and try us out. After that, I work with the team to provide an awesome experience for our customers, including announcing new challenges and features, answering questions, solving problems, fulfilling prizes, and more. The official list of stuff I manage is: customer acquisition, customer loyalty, public relations, social media, communications, and brand.
What brought you to CampusLIVE?
Two main things: the team and the big vision. This is a team full of genuine and good people with amazing work ethic and scrappiness. I had to be a part of it! And there's an amazing vision here to create something unique and huge, which is very exciting and energizing.
Do you have any favorite stories from your work life?
We will do anything to get the job done here. So when we had a Rhode Island only challenge we had to fill, 4 of us piled in a car and took a road trip down to URI to do some guerilla marketing. Here I am, a 35 year old guy with a pregnant wife ready to give birth at any time, walking around campus passing out flyers about our newest challenge! It was a grind that day, but we got the job done. To me, that adventure represents the spirit and toughness of this company.
What does the typical day look like for you?
Wake up at 6AM (or be woken up earlier by my 2 year old daughter or 4 month old son). Do a quick workout. Walk to work. Grab an ice coffee and either an egg and cheese (Mon, Wed, Fri) or cereal (Tues, Thurs). Respond to email. Check twitter and google reader for great articles and information, and maybe ESPN or a fantasy team if I have time. Look at our numbers from the previous day. Then it can go in a hundred different directions. Calls with partners or prospective partners, meetings with the team, analysis in excel, creating powerpoints, brainstorming for new challenges, testing out new marketing channels, writing or critiquing ad copy, helping with customer issues, creating strategies and roadmaps for new projects, participating in customer focus groups, thinking about the customer experience, etc.
Why do you come to work in the morning?
The easy answer is I love the people and what we're trying to do. Also, something new happens every day around here, so there's always an air of excitement. Plus there's a ping pong table.
What lessons has your work life taught you?
Treat everyone with respect and kindness even if you disagree with their point of view. It's the only way a team will function at highest performance. Be proactive. Don't let someone tell you what to do, go find a problem and solve it. Take the extra time to plan and prepare every day instead of just jumping in. Always have a backup jar of peanut butter in case you run out. Communicate honestly, whether it's good news or bad news. Own up to mistakes, and work as hard as possible to fix them. Take risks...calculated ones only. Don't let Boris trash talk you in ping pong, he's mostly bark...
What advice would you give someone who is interested in pursuing a similar line of work?
Follow the top marketers on twitter, and read the online marketing blogs everyday. Talk to people in your networks that work in marketing, and find out what it's like and what it takes. If at all possible do an internship. If it's not possible, don't be afraid to work in a different role, as long as that role develops some sort of marketing skill. Lastly, in today's marketing world, it's more important than ever to be well versed in analytics. So read up on marketing analytics and learn how to perform different kinds of quantitative analysis.
What is the best part of working at CampusLIVE?
The birthday candy attacks.
What's the coolest thing you've accomplished thus far working at CampusLIVE?
The coolest thing I have accomplished so far is not something I did myself, but instead with the help of tremendous people. And that accomplishment is developing the mission and creating the identity for the awesome CampusLIVE marketing crew (aka Sharketing).