EVENT

Imagine, for a moment, walking into a store where you have only made a purchase one time before. The salesperson runs up to you and greets you by name, and before you can get a word in edge-wise, he offers you five other products that are almost identical to the one you purchased before. Then, without warning, he invites you to talk with five other customers who not only look eerily similar to you, but are also all wearing the same item you purchased. Then, as you begin to hasten your exit—because at this point, you are fairly certain that the salesperson is a stalker—he begins to shout down the corridor after you, begging you to come back and offering you coupons and discounts as your brisk walk turns into an all-out sprint away from the insanity.

It is so easy to imagine this scenario in real life, but it is far more difficult to admit that this is the very experience that many of us have inadvertently created for our customers across the omnichannel landscape. So it begs the question: When did we forget how to build real relationships with real, live human beings?

In this latest installment of the CMO Council’s thought leadership series, “Get to Know a CMO,” Liz Miller will have a one-on-one session with Frank Grillo, Chief Marketing Officer at Harte Hanks, seasoned veteran of the advertising, marketing and telecommunications industries, and a passionate advocate for bringing the human back to marketing.

Join the CMO Council as we hear Frank’s position on what customer centricity truly is (and what it isn’t), how marketing can be made human again, and where we lost our relationship skills somewhere along the way. Liz will also be asking Frank about his own path to becoming a CMO, which has seen stops along the way as the COO of telecommunications companies and a long track record of serving as the chief growth engine and customer experience orchestrator for large, dynamic organizations.