Senior executive and results-oriented SaaS marketer with 20+ years experience at Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, BEA/Oracle, and Symantec among others
I’ve dedicated my career to driving effective and innovative marketing programs that get results. Along the way, my teams and I have won several Gold Effies, the leading industry award for marketing effectiveness
I bring a unique and diverse background with a mix of startup, mid-size, and large company experience across a range of categories in and outside of technology
I’ve run offices, managed global teams of 200+ individuals, owned P&L’s, recruited top talent and led teams across the globe, direct and matrix
Specialties: Product marketing, positioning and messaging, demand and lead generation, lead nurturing, SaaS marketing, digital marketing, sales support and training, social media, advertising, marketing communications, integrated marketing programs, partner marketing, strategic planning, business development, public relations, analyst relations and events.
Chief Marketing Officer @ The Apcera trusted cloud platform is a highly secure, policy-driven platform for cloud-native applications and microservices—as well as legacy applications. Apcera lets dev and DevOps teams use any modern tool or software they want while giving IT the assurance that their infrastructure is safe and secure.
With Apcera, companies can innovate at speed with full confidence and trust.
Founded in 2012 by CEO Derek Collison, a former Google, Tibco and VMware executive and architect of Cloud Foundry, Apcera was initially funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and True Ventures among others, and recently received a very deep, nine-figure (USD) strategic investment from Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC), the global technology, cloud and mobile giant headquartered in Sweden.
I'M HIRING - PRODUCT MARKETING LEADER From 2015 to Present (less than a year) San Francisco Bay AreaMarketing Advisor @ From 2014 to 2014 (less than a year) San Francisco Bay AreaChief Marketing Officer @ Led marketing globally for Sitecore, the company that lets marketers own the experience they deliver to their audiences, across any digital channel.
- Ran all global Product, Corporate, Lead Generation, Field, Web, Content, Technical/Developer, Event and Partner marketing as well as Marketing Operations, Sales Enablement and Training and PR
- Managed a team of 85 in 16 countries across the globe
- Revamped marketing capability from the ground up, driving org design, staffing structure and hiring plan, all focused on achieving maximum global efficiency and collaboration
- Helped build a global demand and lead generation process and repeatable engine which currently provides a large portion of the company’s MQLs
- Developed company positioning and messaging platform, including mission and vision
- Led complete overhaul and redesign of the website strategy, experience and design
- Hired key, VP and senior level talent from Intel, McKesson, Eloqua/Oracle and Adobe From January 2013 to 2014 (1 year) San Francisco Bay AreaSVP, Platform Marketing @ Led all global Platform marketing for Salesforce.com, the innovative company that pioneered Software as a Service and Cloud Computing.
- Led all product, demand generation, corporate, web and social marketing as well as sales enablement, PR, AR and event marketing for the Salesforce Platform
- Helped drive >100% increase in Platform revenue, YoY
- Developed and ran a number of integrated lead generation campaigns that provided >30% of the MQL’s (leads) for the business.
- Launched a suite of sales tools at sales kickoff, and orchestrated comprehensive sales training designed to help educate sales reps on how to make a complex sale
- Presented to audiences of over 5000 at 3 Cloudforce events
- Developed and executed the brand strategy for the business, reconciling four separate brands (Force.com, Heroku, Database.com, Site.com), developed positioning, messaging and value proposition, and launched Salesforce Platform at Dreamforce
- Launched Salesforce TouchFactory, a radically easy to use mobile app development platform targeted at “citizen developers”
- Helped develop a Platform solution targeted at franchise management organizations, which became a valuable solution for the Platform business
- Helped develop a systematic Analyst Relations strategy which helped facilitate sales and drove positioning as “visionary” in the Gartner Magic Quadrant
- Developed core PR strategy focused around thought leadership, product and customer PR, which resulted in >300 positive Platform stories per quarter
- Launched Site.com, a radically easy to use cloud CMS, at Cloudforce
- Hired key, senior talent from Oracle, Embarcadero Technologies and Visa From October 2011 to 2013 (2 years) San Francisco Bay AreaEVP, Worldwide Business Director @ At Leo Burnett, RIM's global marketing agency, managed BlackBerry’s global marketing and advertising across all digital and traditional channels. Led a team of over 75 across 10 countries. Developed and launched the “Love what you do” campaign, which resulted in a 14 point increase in purchase intent and contributed to record sales over past several quarters.
Owned the P&L for the business. From 2009 to October 2011 (2 years) EVP, Global Business Director @ At McCann Worldgroup, global marketing agency for Microsoft and Nortel, managed the delivery of marketing services including creative, content creation, account management, strategy/analytics, media and production. Responsible for P&L management and the development and growth of over 200 individuals within the SF office.
Led the global Microsoft and Nortel engagements:
Microsoft: Developed and deployed a global marketing program for the Mid-market segment designed to increase software license renewal rate and net revenue per customer. Program was a success -- increased license renewal rate by 11% resulting in a 34% increase in total net revenue among Microsoft license customers in the Mid-market segment.
Nortel: Led the Nortel engagement globally across digital, traditional & social media, advertising, lead generation, events and public relations. Managed team of 100 based in global and regional hubs in the US, UK, Argentina and Singapore. Developed the Gold Effie winning “Cisco Energy Tax” campaign, a largely digital and social media campaign that drove over $100MM in sales. Additionally, launched the “Hyperconnectivity” campaign, Nortel’s first global marketing campaign in over 10 years. Campaign was fully integrated and helped lift Nortel’s B2B awareness and consideration by 12 points, as well as delivering significant revenue pipeline.
Member of the Microsoft Integrated Leadership Team and the leadership board within SF office of McCann. From 2005 to 2009 (4 years) VP of Global Marketing, TSG (Technology Solutions Group) @ Led global marketing for the HP Technology Solutions Group, a $57 billion division of HP focused on Enterprise software, servers, storage, networking and professional services. Managed all product marketing, positioning, messaging, value proposition and sales tool development, demand creation, advertising, direct/relationship marketing, public relations, analyst relations, employee communications, customer reference, branding, collateral and executive communications programs, as well as website development.
Led a global team of over 150 in the development and execution of integrated marcom programs across business units and geographies. Managed a $50M marketing programs budget as well as an advertising media spend of over $300M, focused on the “+HP” and “Change Agents” campaigns (Consumer and B2B).
During tenure, helped grow business unit revenue 13%, almost twice as fast as that of the other HP BU’s.
Led relationship with key HP marketing agencies (including Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Publicis & Hal Riney), along with other key digital agencies.
Selected by Executive VP to lead the bi-annual senior leadership meeting, which consisted of the top 200 VPs and leaders in the organization.
Elected to HP’s Enterprise Marketing, Solutions and Marcom councils. From 2003 to 2005 (2 years) Senior Director of Global Marketing @ Led the development of sales tools, digital, advertising and demand creation programs and managed the development of all messaging including all CEO/executive speechwriting and communications.
Led a strategy initiative that positioned and differentiated BEA vs. IBM. Subsequently, developed a global marketing/advertising campaign and sales enablement program, which helped drive record revenue growth for the company. From 2002 to 2003 (1 year) VP of Marketing and Product Management @ Launched the world’s first online marketplace for digital content, bringing the power of distribution to every individual. The platform was social, community and local-based, and leveraged targeted advertising and contextual e-commerce. Developed and drove the company’s positioning and led product and corporate marketing, effectively positioning iSyndicate as the undisputed leader in a category we invented.
Developed and managed the execution of a national integrated marketing campaign, which resulted in a 10-fold increase in company awareness and a 70-fold increase in revenue within 18 months. Developed all sales tools and grew customer base from 14,000 to over 200,000 in 18 months.
Launched iSyndicate Europe, a joint venture with Bertlesmann AG; developed and managed execution of on-going marketing programs in the UK, Germany and France. From 1998 to 2002 (4 years) VP, Account Director @ Senior client business/relationship lead, responsible for marketing success and effective P&L management.
Cisco: Helped re-invent the Cisco brand. Drove repositioning of Cisco from a vendor of networking gear in a commoditized market to a cornerstone of the Internet, the “next industrial revolution.”
Led the development and execution of Cisco System’s marcom and digital/traditional advertising programs for 4 years, including the Gold Effie winning "Are you ready?" campaign, Cisco’s first global marketing campaign. Campaign positioned Cisco as shaping the future of the Internet, and resulted in extremely strong increases in perception (on measure of “pick one company to provide Internet-based experience”, Cisco was chosen two and a half times more frequently than Microsoft and five times more frequently than IBM), awareness (80% increase in unaided brand awareness), as well as a 50-fold increase in market cap, placing Cisco squarely among the top five global technology brands.
Symantec/Norton: Developed and executed a marketing campaign that grew revenue 30% YoY and helped Norton pull ahead of McAfee in market share. Campaign was based on a segmentation model designed to expand the market for consumer software utilities by targeting young, emerging Internet users as well as their parents.
Interactive Network: Led the launch of the world’s first interactive, mobile gaming company. Developed innovative marketing campaign that included the first live TV commercials in 25 years, to demonstrate the product proposition. Campaign drove a 400% increase in subscriber membership.
Additionally, led the development of advertising and integrated marketing campaigns for a range of leading brands including Siemens/ROLM, Quantum and Cyrix. From 1990 to 1998 (8 years)
BA @ Oberlin College Jeff Thomas is skilled in: Strategic Planning, Product Marketing, Advertising, Integrated Marketing, Business Development, Social Media, Lead Generation, Email Marketing, Online Advertising, Social Media Marketing, Direct Marketing, Online Marketing, Marketing Communications, CRM, Product Management, Strategy