Wpromote Hires Intel Vet Megan McDonagh as its First Chief Marketing Officer

Independent marketing agency Wpromote has brought on veteran technology marketing executive Megan McDonagh as the company’s first chief marketing officer. As the agency’s first CMO, she will oversee the marketing team, building new go-to-market strategies and working closely with svp, head of sales David Gensler to optimize the role of marketing on the agency’s business development pipeline. McDonagh brings over two decades of expertise leading marketing teams in the high-tech space. She spent over 20 years at Intel, where she held leadership roles across integrated marketing, product marketing, brand strategy and partner marketing. She brings extensive experience partnering with sales to meet and exceed business growth goals and will leverage a deep understanding of brand-side marketing to elevate the agency’s marketing strategy, including a reinvigorated product marketing approach for the company’s proprietary technology platform Polaris. “Megan has an impressive track record delivering results and accelerating growth for both high-growth startups and established tech companies, including teams responsible for marketing strategy, brand development and digital innovation,” said Wpromote chief relationship officer Mike Stone in a statement. “Her background will be invaluable to us as we continue to expand our Polaris offerings to our growing slate of clients and reimagine how we are targeting and measuring marketing impact across the full funnel.” McDonagh most recently served as chief marketing officer of enterprise SaaS startup Amperity, leading a 30-person marketing organization. Prior to that, she served as CMO of global industrial wearable startup RealWear. There, she led the transformation of the brand’s positioning, rearchitecting the company's demand generation engine and building a product marketing function from the ground up. Putting tech and data up front McDonagh told AgencySpy that one reason she chose to take the Wpromote job was that the agency recognized that it needed to be its own best client. “Looking at Wpromote’s position in the market, it immediately struck me that we needed to put our tech and data front and center when it comes to our brand. That’s not just my tech background talking: our clients are facing a huge imperative to drive business impact, and that’s impossible without a really strong data strategy in today’s media ecosystem,” said McDonagh. McDonagh added that at the heart of Wpromote’s brand ethos is the commitment to empower its clients to think like a challenger about their brand, marketing and media. That mantra resonates powerfully with Wpromote’s clients and she wants to fully activate that challenger mindset across Wpromote’s marketing team and the organization as a whole. McDonagh’s tech background lets her see that few marketers care about tech for tech's sake. “What they actually care about is what tech can unlock: what you can accomplish with the right tech in your corner, how it can make your job easier, how to use it to amplify or accelerate business results,” said McDonagh, who added that when she was assessing whether Wpromote was the right fit, she did a deep dive on Polaris, the agency’s proprietary tech platform and saw the potential to leverage all of the platform’s capabilities to connect the dots between long-standing marketing silos and operationalize “closing the gap between creative and media, which is one of the biggest challenges in marketing. I recognized that opportunity not only from my tech experience but also based on my 25-plus years on the client side of various agency relationships and seeing these challenges from the other side.” One big goal of McDonagh’s in her new role is to make Wpromote the best client of the agency and unlock the full potential of all its in-house expertise and advanced tech to build a stronger brand and marketing strategy. “I don’t bring the same assumptions to the table that leaders who came up through agencies do; I see a significant amount of opportunity in the market because agencies don’t tend to take their own medicine particularly well. We’re going to change that. The new appointment comes on the heels of a burst of growth for Wpromote, having recently announced the addition of Athletic Brewing Company and Learning Care Group as new media AOR clients as well as the new appointment of seasoned sales executive David Gensler as svp, head of sales.

Revolving Door

Wpromote Hires Intel Vet Megan McDonagh as its First Chief Marketing Officer

Kyle O’Brien

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Kyle O’Brien