Title: VP-North America demand programs

Company: IBM Corp.

Years in current job: 3

In a virtual era, Matt Preschern, VP-North America demand programs at IBM Corp., is doing something retro: He's traveling around the country, speaking at conferences and meeting in person with CMOs.

Preschern is promoting the results of an ambitious study IBM did last year, conducting in-person interviews with more than 1,700 CMOs in 64 countries about the most pressing marketing issues they face. The study, which found that almost 80% of CMOs are struggling to cope with the data explosion, also found that they were grappling with social media, channel and device choice; shifting consumer demographics; and financial constraints.

Preschern said his challenge is figuring out how “to share the story from an IBM perspective,” and turn it into a “much deeper dialogue with this audience.”

To help its clients with marketing and commerce challenges, IBM has acquired several companies that offer marketing automation technology, such as campaign management company Unica Corp. and Web analytics company Coremetrics.

IBM is employing the software internally, deploying things such as dashboard analytics and behavioral targeting. “The results we're seeing are very, very encouraging,” Preschern said.

It is also training the sales and marketing team so they, too, understand the importance of analytics and how business-to-business is moving to business-to-individual marketing. As this happens, Preschern foresees CMOs increasingly being relied upon to communicate with customers.

“We are the voice of the customer,” he said. “We are the custodians of the brand.”

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