Chris Knudsen and I had a great lunch today in Provo where we talked about a number of issues surrounding business, including the state of marketing talent in Utah.
Chris made the comment that he believes there is a serious shortage of qualified marketing people in this state, which I hadn’t thought about before. I know a number of PR and marketing folks who are really good at what they do, but I dare say that I know many more technologists and sales people who are perceived as “the talent.” Now let me be clear, I think there is a ton of marketing talent here in the state . . . for example:
Josh Steimle and his crew at MWI are very good at marketing in the web, seo and branding sense.
David Allen, Jeff Smith, Andy Dischman and Todd Shepherd of Studeo . . . well, I don’t know them, but they have made their living as direct marketers.
David Politis is a master at PR (my Jedi trainer 
. . .)
And, Tim Ormond at WebEvident is a great internet marketer.
But, who could fill the executive role that oversees all of these functions at a startup or a big corporation? Probably all of them, but I am starting to see what Chris means. Who are seen as the marketing big dogs in Utah? Is it just perception? Are they here, and we don’t know who they are? Did I name any of them here? Who is the Phil Windley, the Jason Calacanis, the Mark Cuban or the Tom Stockham or marketing in Utah?
2 comments ↓
Russ:
Great lunch and thanks for the comments. To be clear, my thought is that in proportion to the number of technologist we have in the state we are greatly lacking in marketing talent, which cause problems - not enough marketing people to keep up with the stuff technologist keep pumping out.
I think we’re on the same page.
Again, thanks for lunch - let’s do it again soon.
[...] “To be clear, my thought is that in proportion to the number of technologists we have in the state we are greatly lacking in marketing talent, which cause problems - not enough marketing people to keep up with the stuff technologist keep pumping out.” (see my other post to get up to speed), [...]
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