David Meerman Scott

David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, advisor to emerging companies, bestselling author of eight books including three international bestsellers, and a professional speaker on topics including marketing, leadership, and social media.

He is a recovering marketing VP for two U.S. publicly traded  companies and was Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the world’s largest information companies. David has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. He currently lives in the Boston area.

David serves as an advisor to emerging companies in the marketing technology category including HubSpot, Libboo, VisibleGains, Speakerfile, GutCheck, and Newstex, as well as varied nonprofits that interest him including the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz, HeadCount, and Nashaquisset. Previously, he was on the boards of directors of NewsWatch KK (successfully sold to Yahoo Japan) and Kadient (successfully merged with Sant) and the board of advisors of Eloqua (successful IPO in mid-2012 and sale to Oracle in early 2013).

Speaking

David is available for keynote presentations at corporate events and conferences around the world and also delivers full-day and half-day masterclasses. David has presented to groups in 33 countries on five continents.

Satisfied audiences include:  Cisco, HP, PwC, GenRe, Microsoft, McCormick, Nestle Purina, Amdocs, Jackson Healthcare, Powdr Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Century 21, The New York Islanders, NASDAQ Stock Market, the Government of Ontario, McKesson, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, SAP, Google, Digital River, Hill & Knowlton, Text100, Hanley Wood, Dow Jones, SAS, Business Marketing Association, National Investor Relations Institute, Milken Institute Global Conference, Entrepreneurs Organization, International Health Forum, America Credit Union Conference, TS2, Giant Screen Theater Association, Realtors® Conference, and many, many more…

Books and writing

David’s book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web. Six months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list and published in 26 languages from Bulgarian to Vietnamese, New Rules, now in its third edition, is a modern business classic. Scott’s popular blog and hundreds of speaking engagements around the world give him a singular perspective on how businesses are implementing new strategies to reach buyers.

His newest book Newsjacking is getting tremendous buzz around the world. He’s the author of  Real-Time Marketing & PR, now in a revised paperback edition, which achieved #2 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and #3 on the USA Today bestseller list.

He is also the co-author (with Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot) of the international bestseller Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History and wrote four other books including World Wide Rave.

David serves as executive editor of The New Rules of Social Media book series for publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. The series includes titles that expand on the ideas of his international bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR with books that provide valuable insights and detail on different aspects of social media marketing.

His blog – Web Ink Now – is a top worldwide marketing blog. David writes for Huffington Post and regularly contributes to many print and online publications.

 

“I didn’t plan on becoming a marketing strategist on purpose.
I came upon it accidentally.”

The perfect keynote speech

My keynotes are always customized based on the needs of the conference organizer, the geographical location of the talk, and the demographics of the audience. I adapt my presentations in many ways, including the examples of success I showcase, the focus of the talk, the use of specific language and jargon of the industry, even the clothing I choose to wear. My presentations include three elements: Information, Entertainment, and Motivation.

Who is David Meerman Scott?

At the height of the dot-com boom, I was vice president of marketing at NewsEdge Corporation, a NASDAQ-traded online news distributor with $70 million in revenue. My multi-million dollar marketing budget included tens of thousands of dollars a month for a public relations agency, hundreds of thousands a year for print advertising and glossy collateral materials, and expensive participation at a dozen trade shows a year. My team put these things on our marketing to-do list, worked like hell to execute, and paid the big bucks because, well, that’s what one did as marketing and PR people. These efforts made us feel good because we were doing something but the programs were not producing significant, measurable results.

At the same time, drawing on publishing experience I had gained in my prior position as Asia marketing director for the online division of Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the largest newspaper companies in the world, I quietly created content-rich marketing and PR programs on the Web.

Against the advice of the PR agency professionals we had on retainer (who insisted that news releases were only for journalists), we wrote and sent dozens of releases ourselves. Each time we sent a release, it appeared on dozens of online services such as Yahoo!, resulting in hundreds of sales leads.

Even though our advertising agency told us not to put the valuable information “somewhere where competitors could steal it,” we created a monthly online newsletter called TheEdge, with articles about the exploding world of digital news. We made it freely available on the home page of our Web site because it generated interest from qualified buyers.

Way back in the 1990s when Web marketing and PR was in its infancy, I ignored the old rules, drawing instead on my experience working at publishing companies, and created thought leadership strategies to reach buyers directly on the Web.

Guess what? The homegrown, do-it-yourself programs we created at virtually no cost consistently generated more interest from qualified buyers than the big bucks programs that the “professionals” were running for us—and resulted in millions of dollars in sales. People we never heard of were finding us through search engines.

Wow. I had stumbled on a better way to reach buyers!

In 2002, after NewsEdge was sold to The Thomson Corporation, I was fired. My ideas were a little too radical for my new bosses. So I started my own business to refine my ideas, work with select clients, and teach others through writing, speaking at conferences, and conducting seminars for corporate groups. The subject of all this work: Reaching your buyers directly and driving more revenue.

Since then, many new forms of social media have burst onto the scene, including blogs, podcasts, video, virtual communities. and Twitter. But what’s the same about all the new Web tools and techniques is that together they are the best way to communicate directly with your marketplace.

The marketing programs I have developed are responsible for selling well over one billion dollars in product and services worldwide.

I’ve written hundreds of magazine articles and eight books:

• The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly (Hardcover 2007, revised paperback edition 2009, second edition 2010, third edition 2011)
• Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Product that Grow Your Business Now (Hardcover 2010, revised paperback edition 2012)
• Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage (2011)
• Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History (2010 with Brian Halligan)
• World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that get Millions of People to Spread your Ideas and Share your Stories (2009)
• Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities that Lead to Business Breakthroughs (2008 with Craig Stull and Phil Myers)
• Cashing in with Content: How innovative marketers use digital information to turn browsers into buyers (2005)
• Eyeball Wars: A novel of dot-com intrigue (2001)

I’m a graduate of Kenyon College, and have lived in New York, Tokyo, Boston, and Hong Kong. I’ve presented at hundreds of industry conferences and events in over twenty countries on four continents.

Gaijin Male Model

In Japan’s go-go years, I was one of the first twenty-something gaijin male models in Tokyo to specialize in the young businessman look.

You can read about in my essay called Gaijin Male Model which was published by North American Review and the anthology Hacks.

With Japan’s stock and property markets the envy of the world, I exploited one of the only times in history where a mere mortal could moonlight through a few wacky years of over-the-top TV commercials, exotic location shoots, spotlights with beautiful women and encounters with the famous. I enjoyed a wild ride courtesy of Japan’s financial hysteria and my luck at being there at the right time with the right look.

I did television commercials for product such as Panasonic office equipment, Nippon Life Insurance, Mitsubishi cars, and… get this… Wacaol Women’s Underwear.

I was in television shows, a movie (Tokyo Pop), and some print advertisements. And to top off my “career” as am impostor model / actor, I was in Teatro alla Scala’ production of Puccini’s Turandot directed by Franco Zeffirelli with James Levine conducting.

Our environment

My work delivering talks and running masterclasses requires me to fly well more than 100,000 air miles per year and use taxis and hotels around the world.

I offset my carbon footprint by making a donation to Earth Train, helping to fund their efforts in Centro Mamoní, Panama.