Where Marketers Go to Grow

My second job out of college was with an incredible startup political agency called the Glover Park Group. It's now a much larger and more successful agency, but at the time it was just a tiny company with a huge vision.

I got the job because a woman my mother used to babysit for growing up was friends with one of the partners of the firm in New York.

I don’t know about you, but I rarely feel like I’m 22. I do, however, work with a lot of 22-year-olds who are smart, interesting, dynamic, and absurdly high-energy.

While it depresses me they don’t understand my Saved by the Bell references, their ideas and achievements are truly remarkable.

Whoever said “cleanliness is next to godliness” hasn’t spent much time in office kitchens lately.

Regardless of whether you work at a Fortune 500 company, a small startup, or a mid-sized financial services firm, communal office kitchens have a funny way of attracting messes, spills, and close encounters of the liquid kind at every turn.

College graduation is just around the corner, which means it’s almost speech season. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good graduation speech and all the platitudes that come along with it, but very few of them help you transition from full-time student to full-fledged adult in the working world. 

Most business school conversations over beers end with a hangover -- Neil Blumenthal’s ended with a billion dollar business.

If you aren’t familiar with Neil’s name, you’re likely familiar with the brand he and his co-founders started: Warby Parker. Because Warby’s brand is ubiquitous thanks to the company’s product and marketing success, many consumers all over the globe think of the company as an overnight success. In reality, the brand is a product of years of blood, sweat, and of course, a few beers.

Being humble keeps you hungry.

– Christine Tsai, Founding Partner, 500 Startups (Click to Tweet)

Venture capitalists aren’t often known for their humility, but Christine Tsai represents a notable exception to the rule. A founding partner at 500 Startups and former Googler and YouTube leader, Christine is the embodiment of someone who brought growth to life as both an investor and an operator.

Edith Wharton once said, “Ah, good conversation -- there’s nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”

Ms. Wharton had a way with words (written and otherwise), but she would likely be horrified to know that most of our daily conversations nowadays start with shorthand texts or three-line emails.

Imagine a party where Bono, Drew Houston, Eva Longoria, and 20,000 of your lovably nerdy tech friends show up. Add colorful sheep, some intermittent Wi-Fi issues, and a whole lot of drinking, and you've got the Dublin Web Summit, one of the hottest tech and marketing events of its kind.

It pretty much goes without saying that most business interested in growing are interested in more press coverage.

That desire itself does not present an issue -- but the tactics that follow often do. You see, people often take the fact that they want press coverage to mean that they should stop at

Okay, I’ll admit it. INBOUND can be overwhelming. 10,000 people, 180 sessions, dozens of food trucks, and four packed days are exhausting for even the most energetic extroverts, and with all the speakers, seminars, and social events, you’re bound to have missed out on a nugget of wisdom to inspire you on a rainy day in your marketing or sales department.

Well, we’re here to help! We rounded up the most

In his new book, The Marketing Performance Blueprint, HubSpot partner Paul Roetzer, shares a story from Anita Newton, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Adknowledge. A few years ago, despite being a top-tier marketer in her mid-30s with an MBA and leadership experience at P&G, she was "a fossil" on account of her inability to

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last couple hours, you've likely heard that LeBron James is returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers. This is sad news for Miami Heat fans, but it's great news for inbound marketers.

Why, you ask? Well, this time around, there was no big "Decision." There was no press conference. The news didn't leak. LeBron announced it himself with a blog post on Sports Illustrated's website. Now, in addition to being a two-time NBA champion, a two-time Finals

Every year, Mary Meeker releases her annual Internet Trends Report. While most trend reports end up disappearing into some small corner of the internet, Meeker’s report packs insightful analysis, astute observations, and data-driven forecasts into one monster annual SlideShare, making her presentation a veritable must-read for anyone using the internet to do business (ahem, that’s all of us).

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few months, you’ve likely seen the massive coverage of Target’s security breaches. The news made headlines for days, then weeks, then months, eventually costing the company’s CEO his job. Even after months of turmoil and the eventual departure of the CEO, the hits kept coming. A well-known gossip blog posted a long

If you’ve been reading HubSpot content for awhile, you know as well as we do that inbound marketing works magic for lead generation. Indeed, one of the greatest benefits of inbound marketing is that it’s continuous and compounding: By creating ownable assets to generate awareness, traffic, and thought

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've likely heard a lot about American ice dancing pair Meryl Davis and Charlie White, and deservedly so -- they are equal parts adorable and talented. The Olympics highlight reel has also been dominated by Julia Lipnitskaia, the 15-year-old Russian who skated circles around the competition to warm the hearts

The marketing spoof is one of the best and worst institutions in our industry.

Done well, it can result in one hilarious comedy skit after another. Take SNL's riff on Brad Pitt's Chanel ad, for example, or this clever spoof spawned by Dove's emotionally charged "Evolution" campaign. Even Apple's advertising has been parodied far and wide

Ah, the holiday season. Spending time with friends, family, and 10,000 of your closest friends at big box stores racing to win one coveted item at an unparalleled discount. Nothing like that warm, fuzzy Black Friday feeling to start the season off right. For context, up to 140 million people plan to shop over Thanksgiving weekend. 69.1% of these

The entry below is part of a new series on Inbound Hub called Storytellers, which will feature interviews with prolific storytellers from all walks of life: designers, comedians, marketers, journalists, and content marketing experts, discussing how they shape inspiring stories on a daily basis.

In many ways, the world of PR has become a lot like the world of marketing automation: regardless of your question, one tactic is always the answer.

Write a press release.

Hired a new executive? Write a press release. Painted a wall in your office? Duh -- press

INBOUND just wrapped up -- with over 5,550 registered attendees, and four jam-packed days of inspiration, education, entertainment, and collaboration.

It would be impossible to distill the insights from the entire conference into one blog post, so we’ll

#INBOUND13 is just around the corner, so whether you bought your ticket six months ago or are still deciding whether or not to pull the trigger, here are 10 things you might not already know about INBOUND.

Get excited.

And if you haven't already, get your tickets.

I began my marketing career at a political communications consultancy in Washington, D.C., and it was only a matter of days into each client engagement when one of their executives would say, “have you thought of the TODAY Show?” or, “do you think the Journal would be interested in this?”

Get ready for this stat, marketers, because it's going to blow you out of the water: Only 18% of Fortune 500 CEOs are on Twitter. Put another way -- 82% of Fortune 500 CEOs are missing out on the opportunity to lend an authentic voice to their brand, share product news, and hear from customers. 

In the older days of marketing, most interview questions revolved around a marketer’s knowledge of marketing principles like “The 4 Ps” and how he or she could apply that knowledge to case questions in an interview setting.

The old saying, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” is certainly true when it comes to your brand. The pressure to make a great impression makes it incredibly important that each of your design touch points looks and feels remarkable to a first-time visitor. Maybe your company’s creative team is 20 people deep.