As a new feature on ITBusiness.ca for our special CMO Digital section, we’re featuring profiles of Canadian chief marketing officers and marketing executives. If you’re a CMO and you’d like to be included, get in touch by tweeting at @ITBusinessca.
Name: Tom Ward
Title: Vice-president of marketing
Company: Qnext
How long have you been in your role? 1 year
What’s your favourite smartphone app and why?
Qnext – not just because I work there, but because it is incredibly useful. Qnext virtualizes my storage to allow me to access and share files stored on my computers, public clouds like Dropbox or our corporate private cloud, via our Network Attached Storage all from my smartphone. It provides data continuity no matter where my files are stored, where I am or what device I am using.
What is the most significant way you see the marketing field changing in the next five years?
Marketers need to understand the implications of the inflection that we are experiencing toward mobility, e.g. smartphones and tablets. As people use more than one personal computing device, our old paradigm of device-centric data where all your files are stored on your personal computer is being replaced with data continuity where you expect your files to be available to you, no matter where you are or what device you are using.
This paradigm shift means that more and more marketing messages are being served first to mobile media. That means that messages must be served in a very simplified form, one at a time, easy to digest and with very little reading required. That means the messaging must be extremely refined and researched. Marketing is composed first for mobility and then waterfalls to other media. Marketers can’t afford to miss this inflection or get this wrong.
Do you have a morning routine? If so, what does that look like?
I am usually the first person in our family up in the morning, so after showering, I lay the breakfast table and pack the kids’ lunches. Then in the car, I have my morning devotions with prayer and am listening to either an audio Bible passage or sermon that I have downloaded to my smartphone over Bluetooth.