Marketing Mavericks: An Interview with Ted Rubin
Published: October 1, 2015
Author: 3Q/DEPT
Name: Ted Rubin
Company: The Rubin Organization…Return on Relationship
Twitter handle: @TedRubin
How long have you been in your current role?
I started doing my own thing full-time in August of 2013… @TedRubin TedRubin.com ReturnOnRelationship.com
When you look back at the last six months, what were some of the biggest surprises of your job?
Not so much of a surprise, as a happy result of hard work… Fortune 500 companies taking notice of my work and hiring me.
What are 2-3 bold predictions you’d make for the next six months?
Marketers will wake up and realize millennials are not all that different from everyone else — it’s not genetics but environment —and recognize the need to change the way they communicate. Brands are from Mars, and consumers are from Venus.
The C-suite will realize they need to embrace social communication and outreach and start following the lead of ahead-of-the-curve figures like Richard Branson and Doug Conant.
What’s your favorite recent ad campaign, and why?
Love the Wix.com #ItsThatEasy campaign… amazing job wrapping a social shell around the whole concept and taking it well beyond a simple Super Bowl Commercial. Also the Wells Fargo #WhyIWork campaign, for many of the same reasons, and because it embraced diversity and openly recognized and appreciated the motivation behind why most people work so hard. In addition, they did not buckle under pressure from the radical right to pull the campaign.
If you had $10M, which marketing platform (e.g. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) would you invest in, and why?
At this very moment, and if it were possible to get in before they go public, I would invest in Snapchat. Snapchat not only has the attention of the Millennails, and Gen Z (just like Millennials, but more so), but the platform is social at it’s purest and most effective for story-telling and #RonR… Return on Relationship.
If you had $10M, which marketing technology would you invest in, and why?
I am not a “tech” guy, so this is a difficult question for me to answer.
What is/are the most important metric(s) you use to guide your decision making process?
Gut instinct and judgment… created by paying a great deal of attention to what people are doing and saying on all social platforms. It is all there for everyone to see; just start paying attention.
Which is more important, attribution or mobile? Why?
I say attribution because everything will be mobile, and social, whether you like it or not… and that is perfectly clear for those with their eyes and ears open. But many do not understand, and are not moving quickly enough, to solve the attribution issue… such an incredibly important solution for the future of retail.
Are there any books that have helped shape your marketing strategy?
Well I am a huge fan of all Seth Godin books. I was working with Seth when he coined the term “Permission Marketing,” wrote the article for Fast Company, and then published the book that became his first bestseller. And as far as I am concerned, best social media marketing book ever written is “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” by Dale Carnegie.
More about Ted Rubin:
Ted Rubin is a leading Social Marketing Strategist, Keynote Speaker, Brand Evangelist, and Acting CMO of Brand Innovators. In March 2009 he started using and evangelizing the term ROR, Return on Relationship, hashtag #RonR. Ted left his position as Chief Social Marketing Officer of Collective Bias on August 31, 2013. He remains the 5th largest shareholder.
In the words of Collective Bias Co-Founder John Andrews… “Ted, you were the vision, heartbeat and soul of Collective Bias, thank you for building a great company. From innovations like cbSocially to the amazing relationships you built with the blogger community, clients and employees, you drove the epic growth. You will be missed!”
Many people in the social media world know Ted for his enthusiastic, energetic and undeniably personal connection to people. Ted is the most followed CMO on Twitter according to Social Media Marketing Magazine; one of the most interesting CMOs on Twitter according to Say Media, #13 on Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers, and number #2 on the Leadtail list of Top 25 People Most Mentioned by digital marketers.
Return on Relationship, ROR, #RonR, is the basis of his philosophy… It’s All About Relationships! His book, Return on Relationship was released January 29, 2013. His new book, How To Look People in the Eye Digitally, was released January 2015. Connect with Ted at TedRubin.com or @TedRubin.
