“The guy who just gets things done.” – Know more about this company’s CMO! [Monday: Marketing Marvels]
Miles Everson’s Business Builder Daily speaks to the heart of what great marketers, business leaders, and other professionals need to succeed in advertising, communications, managing their investments, career strategy, and more.
A Note from Miles Everson:
Hello, everyone!
We hope you’re ready to kickstart another awesome week.
Each Monday, we highlight outstanding individuals in business and marketing, along with their industry-related experiences, contributions, and insights.
Today, we’ll talk about the Chief Marketing Officer of Veritone.
Keep reading to know more about this “Marvel” and what you can learn from his effective leadership and marketing strategies.
Miles Everson
CEO, MBO Partners
Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute
Marketing Marvels
Are you familiar with Veritone?
For those of you who aren’t, Veritone is an artificial intelligence (AI) company based in Irvine, California.
Since its founding in 2014, the company’s aiWARE technology and solutions have been licensed and used by global media conglomerates, professional sports teams, government agencies, energy utilities, and state and local police departments.
As of 2022, Veritone services over 1,500 customers around the world. It has its wholly owned subsidiaries, namely advertising agency Veritone One and content management solutions agency Veritone Digital.
One of the Secrets to Veritone’s Success
Veritone uses AI and machine learning (ML) technologies to solve some of the world’s “most difficult problems.” The company’s mission is to:
- Make green energy more efficient
- Make local law enforcement more transparent
- Assist tens of thousands of people in finding meaningful jobs
- Innovate in the metaverse to enable new e-commerce opportunities for everyone
Do you ever wonder how Veritone works towards achieving these feats?
Well, aside from its breakthrough technologies and “world-class teams,” Veritone is the company it is today thanks to the effective leadership and marketing strategies of this person:
Scott Leatherman!
Photo from Twitter
Leatherman is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Veritone, and is an award-winning full-stack marketing executive with more than 20 years of leadership and company management experience.
As CMO, Leatherman spends majority of his time at Veritone collaborating with the marketing and sales teams on new strategies to boost engagement rates, company alignment, and revenue.
He believes his main mission at the company is to provide the groundwork for rebuilding the marketing technology (martech) stack, improving data integrity, and aligning the brand’s strategies—all while guiding a skilled team of marketers, partner managers, and sales development representatives.
According to him:
“From the company’s martech vendors to its service bureaus, Veritone has a world-class team and vendors.”
A True Marketer
Leatherman has always been a marketer at heart. In fact, when he was 9 years old, he sold Otter Pops (ice pops) door-to-door. When he was in college, he started a screen printing business.
He got his first job through a personal network a year before graduating from college. He was employed at technology company CKS Group, and his college professors were sending him their résumés in the hopes of also finding work there.
What’s more?
During his tenure at CKS, Leatherman was always invited by the general manager (GM) of the company to join meetings with clients. When it was openly asked once why he was always in the meetings, the GM said:
“Scott is the guy who just gets things done. You will want him at this meeting.”
That statement has always stuck with Leatherman as the highest form of compliment he has ever received.
Clearly, his ability to combine his sales-oriented mindset with creativity and martech has resulted in an ideal mix of potential, technology, and creativity in his endeavors.
That’s what he’s bringing now to Veritone’s table as CMO!
Success that Comprises Everyone’s Growth
Leatherman is not only a marketer at heart but also a leader at heart. As someone who was raised by a single mother, he was trained to always look at the bright side of life.
Additionally, as part of a financial aid program during his elementary school days, he had to serve his fellow students lunch and help clean up the cafeteria afterwards.
His main realization from that experience?
The importance of working with GRATITUDE and RESPECT.
Leatherman learned early on in life that “the more you treat the people who serve you with the same (or more) respect, the more they want to help you.” Because of that, he was able to build healthy relationships that contributed to his character development.
Another way Leatherman showcases his effectiveness now as a leader at Veritone is by taking care of his staff’s overall health and well-being.
Just like Miles Everson, CEO of MBO Partners, Leatherman is BIG on people achieving a healthy work life and personal life balance. He reminds his team that family and health should come first before work. He also tries to work with them around their schedules so he can remove any barrier for them to feel good about themselves, their impact, and their success.
Moreover, Leatherman believes long-term success is defined by his team’s personal and professional development, while short-term success is defined by reaching revenue targets.
In his words:
“Attribution through martech is crucial. When you have a transparent culture, you will have a good culture. As a leader, I’m working with a number of martech businesses to disrupt, accelerate, and measure contemporary B2B for the benefit of both my team and the industry.”
… and last but definitely not the least:
Leatherman’s leadership philosophy is based on leadership through SERVICE. He says instead of expecting staff to make a leader look good, that leader should help his or her team shine, push them to achieve their goals, and celebrate their accomplishments.
He adds that anyone who says, “that’s below my pay grade” or something like that will not earn his respect. He believes if anything has to be done for an organization to succeed, it should be the leader to first pick up the slack.
Leatherman intends to continue to champion this kind of personal and professional development cross-functionally at Veritone while also further establishing the company as an AI leader in the industry.
He says:
“I will do everything I can to retain the team we have now and continue to add diversity as we progress.”
We hope you’re inspired after learning about Leatherman’s humble beginnings and current life as a leader and marketing executive!
Always remember: The success of a business should reflect the kind of work culture that it has—healthy, fun, motivating, and freedom-embracing.
Through this, the business will not only flourish in terms of profitability but also stand out in terms of reputation, positive word of mouth, and the number of people wanting to work at and contribute to the long-term success of the firm.
Stay tuned for more inspiring stories of individuals in our upcoming “Marketing Marvels” articles!
(This article is from The Business Builder Daily, a newsletter by The I Institute in collaboration with MBO Partners.)
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Monday Marketing Marvels”
Too often, industry experts and the marketing press sing the praises of some brand or company’s marketing strategy.
… only for the audience to later find out that its product was a flop, or worse, that the brand or company went bankrupt.
The true ROI in marketing can’t be separated from the business as a whole.
What good is a marketing case study if one can’t prove that the company’s efforts actually paid off?
At the end of the day, either the entire business is successful or it isn’t. And the roles of marketing and communication are always paramount to that success.
Every Monday, we publish a case study that highlights the world’s greatest marketing strategies, marketers, and communicators.
However, the difference between our articles and the numerous ones out there is that we will always make certain that the firm really did generate and demonstrate earning power worthy of study in the first place (compliments of Valens Research’s finance group) in keeping with a person’s leadership skills in the area of marketing and/or communication.
We’ll also study the greatest marketing fails and analyze what they did wrong, or what they needed to improve. We all make our mistakes, but better we learn from others’ mistakes—and earlier, rather than later.
Hope you found this week’s marketing marvel interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next week’s Monday Marketing Marvels!
Cheers,
Kyle Yu
Head of Marketing
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
Powered by Valens Research
www.valens-research.com
