Marketing truth from an expert trade journalist. How can I help to solve a marketing problem that your event attendees will be facing?

A former newspaper editor​ and director of marketing in the high-tech industry, I am now a professional keynote marketing speaker as well as the writer of The Promotion Fix column for The Drum.

I use my prior careers in journalism and marketing to show businesses, conferences, and universities the true present and future of the marketing industry as a neutral observer with nothing to sell.

Born and raised in the United States, I am now based out of Tel Aviv.

Quick link! Download my speaking one-pager now (PDF).

A 30-Second Introduction

What If Your Marketing Could Be Better?

• By ignoring the buzzword-driven hype and understanding the traditional practices that have always helped companies to sell more stuff?
• By knowing which “trends” are real and which are advocated by people who are selling something?
• By discarding the biggest myths in the industry because they are not based on any real evidence?

I Have Nothing to Sell

If you hire agency executives to speak, they will be biased and promote their services. If you hire in-house staff, they will be biased and promote their company’s products. As an independent columnist and professional speaker, I have nothing to sell except my ideas. I make my living by writing and speaking — not selling anything anymore.

Corporate Events

I have keynoted private events for customers such as three Facebook brand summits in Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia in 2017.

What I Discuss

• How Marketers Should Respond to the Next Recession
  • Much of the world may soon face a recession — and the first thing that companies will do is cut expenses from every department. I have compiled studies and reports from the IPA in the UK and Kantar Millward Brown from the last recession to inform what marketers should do when the next one hits

• The Biggest Myths in Marketing
  • I counter the following myths. TV and radio are dead. People want to have relationships with brands. The medium does not matter. Ad tech cuts out expensive middlemen. Only short-term results matter. Advertising “waste” is a bad thing. The brand does not matter. See columns on these topics here and here
  • I also show how “millennials” and other demographic segments are not useful in marketing

• The Pros, Cons, and Best Practices in Influencer Marketing
  • My extensive research on this topic
  • “Good analysis of influencer marketing from Samuel Scott in The Drum. Marketers need to step back and consider what’s really important — less emphasis on quantity (followers, clicks, and likes) and more appreciation of quality may be the way forward.” — Unilever CMO Keith Weed

• The Future Trends in Marketing
  • Blockchain could bring transparency to ad tech
  • GDPR, online ad fraud, and the death of data-based marketing surveillance will bring a return of creativity (transcript and video)
  • Direct response spend has moved online, but television is still the most used medium for advertising and is more effective than digital
  • There will be no separation between traditional and digital marketing. Marketing will become integrated by being channel-neutral
  • How the marketing industry got to the point of believing vapid gurus and software companies selling something

• The Dark Side of the High-Tech Startup World
  • The industry uses bad marketing practices to fulfill short-term metrics that lead to long-term losses. Companies are full of sweatshops that commit age discrimination, violate labor law, and force founders and workers to practically kill themselves to satisfy investors. Startups are not customer-centric and see no value in non-digital channels. Open offices save money at the beginning but lost money over the long term. VC funding often makes investors rich at the expense of founders and employees. See this column on these topics
  • The startup world is now avoiding VCs and looking for alternatives

Examples of Presentations and Talks

• The Common Myths in Ad Tech (transcript and video from Russia)
• The Biggest Lies That Marketers Tell Themselves (transcript from Ireland and video from Finland)
• TV is Not Dying — It’s Lies, Damn Lies, and Bad Media Statistics (transcript and video from Macau, China)
• The Day After Tomorrow: When GDPR and Ad Blockers Stop Martech and Adtech (transcript and video from England and Turkey)

The Biggest Lies That the Ad Tech World Tells Itself — (dubbed in Russian)

The Biggest Myths in Marketing (in English)

Panel Moderation

My most recent panel moderation was at ad tech company Marfeel’s office in Barcelona. I interviewed representatives of Forrester Research, Marfeel, the Rubicon Project, and Den of Geek. Here is the edited transcript.

Workshops

I also give workshops at conferences and companies:

• Marketing 101 — an introduction into marketing and communications that covers customer-facing research, product-market fit, segmentation, pricing, positioning, messaging, promotional tactics, media mixes, and measurement
• Marketing communications — how to create the most effective marcom campaigns and incorporate them into your overall marketing strategy
• Media relations and publicity — how to create a media relations plan from research to publication and reporter targeting to pitching stories to measuring the right metrics
• SEO — how to get found in organic search results for relevant queries that relate to you, your product, the solutions that you provide, and the questions that you can answer as well as how to ensure stable, long-term growth without risk of Google penalties and what website technical issues to address

Interviews

• Podcast: How This Little-Known EU Regulation Could Kill Most of Your Digital Marketing in May 2018
• Podcast: Is Everything the Tech World Says About Marketing Wrong?

Where I Have Spoken

Recommendations

My Future Schedule

If your company or organization would like an appearance while I am in your area, contact me ASAP at sjscworldwide@gmail.com so I can make the necessary arrangements!

A direct link to my calendar is here. A text list is below the calendar embed.

February 25 — St. Albans, England — The CMO Network
February 26-28 — In Glasglow and Edinburgh, Scotland
March 1-3 — Lisbon, Portugal — The European Summit
March 20-22 — Prague, Czech Republic — Marketing Festival
March 25-26 — Moscow, Russia — Synergy Digital Forum
March 27-30 — Johannesburg, South Africa  — TBA
April 1-3 — Vilamoura, Portugal — Share Algarve
May 1-3 — Miami, Florida — TBA
May 6 — Huntington Beach, California — Apartment Internet Marketing Conference
May 8 — Stockholm, Sweden — Industry Forum, Banking and Insurance
May 30-31 — Mumbai, India — Zee Melt
June 11 — Zwolle, the Netherlands — Industry Forum, Retail
June 12 — London, England — ProcureCon
July 23-25 — Sydney, Australia — TBA
September 4 — Stockholm, Sweden — 600 Minutes
September 25 — Bussum, the Netherlands — 600 Minutes, Customer Experience
October 2 — Stockholm, Sweden — Digital Business Strategy
October 8 — Stockholm, Sweden — Industry Forum, Retail
October 23 — Helsinki, Finland — Future Customer Experience
November 20 — Stockholm, Sweden — 600 Minutes, Executive Marketing
December 5 — Oslo, Norway — 600 Minutes, Customer Experience
December 11 — Frankfurt, Germany — 600 Minutes, CMO

How Can I Help You?

• E-mail: sjscworldwide@gmail.com
• UK phone: +44 20 8144 5815 (event organizers only)
• US phone: +1 617 505 4378 (event organizers only)
• Skype: sjscott80