Who is David Meerman Scott?

I focus every day on living an extraordinary life fueled by passion. When I throw myself fully into the things I love, I’m energized to fulfill my mission: helping others succeed at what matters most to them, whether that’s marketing a product, creating art, generating attention, or developing an enthusiastic fan base.

After 15 years working in B2B technology business where I served as CMO for several public information technology companies, I was fired. Sacked. My ideas proved a little too radical for my bosses. That was my turning point. I ventured out on my own, writing books, speaking at events, and advising emerging companies on how to align their marketing with the ways people buy. At first, I focused on the rapidly changing online world.

But over the past decade, the internet has become louder, sharper, and more relentless. The promise of content democratization was supposed to unite us, yet all too often, it’s led to echo chambers, viral misinformation, and a loss of empathy and nuance.

These days, it’s easy to know about thousands of people but harder than ever to truly be known, harder to be seen and to feel like you belong. Add in the toxic algorithms of the huge social networks, which thrive on outrage and division, and the challenges multiply.

I'm passionate about teaching another way.

I believe in building genuine human connections that create fans and grow businesses. This is where I focus my energy, sharing these ideas to help make the world a better place and help people achieve success.

I’m not an academic, and I don’t just study what others are doing, I dive in and do it myself. I invest in and advise select emerging companies that are changing the rules in their industries.

I’ve accomplished a lot in my career, but my current focus is on my most important mission: helping people create the human connections that build true fans. In today’s noisy and divided world, genuine, empathetic connection is rare, and incredibly valuable. The organizations, creators, and entrepreneurs who understand this have not only survived, they’ve also thrived.

I'm eager to show you how!

David Meerman Scott is best known for The New Rules of Marketing & PR, a BusinessWeek bestseller and Publishers Weekly starred selection that’s a trusted guide for entrepreneurs and marketers, as well as required reading at colleges and universities worldwide. Now in its ninth edition, New Rules has sold over 500,000 copies in English and is available in 29 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese.

His other international bestsellers include Fanocracy, a Wall Street Journal bestseller; Real-Time Marketing & PR, also a Wall Street Journal bestseller; and Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.

Early in his career, David worked in the municipal bond department at a Wall Street investment bank and soon moved into the financial information business. He served as Asia Marketing Director at Knight-Ridder Financial based in both Tokyo and Hong Kong. Returning to the USA, he served as vice president of marketing at several publicly traded technology companies, most recently Thomson Reuters.

Now he helps innovative companies as an advisor and investor, helping them transform their industries by delivering disruptive products and services. He has been working with HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS), since 2007 when the company had a handful of customers and fewer than 10 employees. David helped the HubSpot team with rapid sales and marketing strategies that have grown the company to more than 275,000 customers in 135 countries and more than USD $3 billion in revenue. In addition to HubSpot, his current portfolio of advisory clients and investments includes over a dozen organizations including several AI companies. In past advisory work, he contributed to successful exits of companies as a member of the board of directors of NewsWatch KK (sale to Yahoo Japan) and served on the board of advisors of Eloqua (IPO followed by a sale to Oracle).

David is also recognized as the pioneer of Newsjacking, the art of injecting your ideas into breaking news to generate media coverage, get sales leads, and grow business. Newsjacking has become so influential that the term is now in the Oxford English Dictionary.

David's book Marketing the Moon inspired two films. The three-part PBS American Experience documentary, Chasing the Moon, which premiered in July 2019 for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. And Fly Me to the Moon, a romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, released in July 2024, follows a marketing strategist planning a fake moon landing video in a NASA warehouse.

He has presented at over 500 conferences and events in more than 45 countries and on all seven continents.