Ken Herron is a cool hunter for new ideas, strategies, and technologies to increase the value of world-class brands. A global marketing alchemist, he unleashes peoples’ creativity to use technology to develop stronger emotional connections between companies and their customers to drive revenue and market share.

Ken has rapidly grown revenues for multiple early- and mid-stage startup companies. He has held executive marketing and sales leadership positions for multiple SaaS enterprises including Purple Communications, SocialGrow, and Online Buddies; and held product leadership roles with Avaya, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T.

A graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Marketing Management Program, Ken earned his Master’s degree in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and his Bachelor’s degree in International Economics and German from Drew University.

Ranked the #2 Chief Marketing Officer on Twitter worldwide by “Social Media Marketing Magazine”, Ken is a frequent author and popular speaker on leveraging technology for marketing, and the leading practices to engage enterprise and consumer brands’ customers online.

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Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Ken starts off with how his passion for helping people put pieces together and have aha moments for themselves is derived from being an educator. He expounds on how he was molded and energized by being forced into new situations and by change.

He shares his interest in being in a role where he can affect the most change and how this led to the journey he has so far. From being with large corporations where he felt he had a very small impact, he moved to smaller organizations where he can have greater responsibilities and greater impact to both business and people he works with.

How empowering it can be to have tools available at your fingertips to have an idea published and communicated directly; and whether or not it is more advantageous to have an entourage of designers, etc. to present presentations for you.

What Unified Inbox is, some items which need awareness from their users and non-customers and the many ways that their brilliant technology can make our lives way easier and improve the quality of our lives.

How they are looking at improving their product in line with the current technology and especially for mobile; how they are making their content as accessible to as many markets as possible; and the processes they have in place to ensure they are keeping up with the trends.

Check out the coolest project they had just finished by going to demo.unifiedinbox.com, log in and passwords are: uib. You can find the Unification Engine Project that they had just put up on their website. You can play with the tool by yourselves. You can find a virtual kitchen, virtual street scene, virtual factory, etc. and you can send messages using your own cell phone using your own network. Go and set your thermometer or turn on your vacuum cleaner..for real!

Rapid Fire Questions

• What is your definition of innovation?

Innovation is if it actually helped somebody and made a difference in someone’s life – either on a business or a personal context. You’ve truly innovated if you have changed someone’s life for the better.

• Would you put more emphasis on the idea or the execution? How would you weigh each of them and why?

It’s both. I had lousy ideas which had been saved because of the execution of them and I’ve had ideas which should’ve been brilliant in a strategic perspective but failed because the execution was sloppy. It needs to be both – it needs to be a good idea and it needs to be executed well: 50% – 50%.

• What is your biggest learning lesson on your journey so far?

It’s being nice to people. It sounds silly but there is so much stress and pressure that we forget that work only happens through people. If you want them to do the things you want them to do and do them well, being nice goes a very, very long way.

• What is your favorite business book?

Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White

• What is your favorite digital resource?

Twitter

The Dale Carnegie Course

Amazon

• What is your favorite app and why?

Adobe Spark Post