Michael Park, ServiceNow Chief Marketing Officer and Digimarc Board of Directors member, shares leadership perspectives on current market challenges and opportunities as we begin 2024.
Park brings an innovative and strategic mindset to business challenges with a strong track record of driving operational rigor and organizational change. With a commitment to cross-company collaboration, Park has led business transformation and go-to-market strategies at critical junctures for some of the world’s leading technology companies, including Microsoft, SAP, HP, Siebel Systems, and ServiceNow.
What is the most important decision you make as a leader?
The common thread across all my experiences is the way I collaborate across organizations to create a common purpose. As a leader, creating a common purpose is critical to building and developing the best talent to achieve strategic operating objectives, executing with efficiency, and creating a mindset of growth and learning. A common purpose creates excitement throughout the organization – a ‘One Team’ mentality in working toward a common goal. At ServiceNow, I created a cross company movement and purpose by introducing a new brand ethos, “the world works with ServiceNow.”
As we begin 2024, what is the biggest challenge facing business leaders? How will you address this challenge in your leadership roles?
We are at an exciting and complicated inflection point in the industry. Artificial intelligence, a commitment to digital transformation, and evolving customer expectations have created both challenges and opportunities for business leaders. My passion is understanding and engaging customers through every stage of their journey. It is integral to the go-to-market strategy. Leaders across industries must invest in technology and resources to understand their customers. I am doing this at ServiceNow, and I look forward to lending my insight and expertise to the Digimarc Board of Directors.
Please share insights into your approach or framework for identifying, articulating, and addressing challenges and solutions related to the customer. How will you apply this expertise in your new Digimarc Board of Directors role.
A proper solutions framework begins by delving into customer research and insights. It involves constructing a perspective that outlines essential business needs and pain points across various audience segments. This includes understanding how these challenges are currently addressed in the market, identifying the unique value that can be provided, and articulating why it surpasses existing solutions with clear messaging. This knowledge should then be seamlessly translated into creating and distributing content across key channels, aligning with the specific stages of the buyer journey in a highly measurable manner. In my role on the Digimarc Board of Directors, I aim to guide the development of such an approach, cultivating a robust solutions framework at the convergence of customer needs, technology innovation, and business model transformation.
You were recently featured in a Wall Street Journal profile and asked how artificial intelligence (AI) will transform the marketing and advertising world. What is your perspective on AI and current industry commitments to protect content creators and consumers?
The exponential pace of innovation enabled by generative AI establishes artificial intelligence as a true cognitive partner enhancing creativity, insight, and decision-making at a rate humanity has never experienced before. This application of hyper-speed intelligence is already transforming marketing and advertising.
The beneficial capabilities Digimarc brings to this unfolding new world are exciting to me as a marketing executive – ensuring content authenticity and IP creator protection, giving marketers deeper insight into how content is used and what actions it triggers, and enhancing personalization while respecting consumer privacy.
AI-driven leaps in the power of marketing tools must be accompanied by the equally powerful consumer and creator protections and guardrails that differentiate Digimarc – ethical transparency regarding the use of AI in marketing, protecting consumer data as AI digs ever-deeper into its meaning, absolute certainty that content is authentic, full credit and payment to IP creators, and scrupulous vigilance to keep AI free of bias, especially bias that diminishes inclusion and diversity.
Reflecting on your newest leadership role, why Digimarc at this stage in your career?
Digimarc presents a tremendous opportunity for the markets it serves. Positioned at the intersection of customer needs, technology innovation, and business model transformation, Digimarc is the obvious solution for product digitization. I thrive in this intersection. I’m excited to join Digimarc’s Board to help guide the company as it leads the way to protect content creators and consumers in an era of generative AI, contributes to the fight to end plastic pollution, and so much more.
You can learn more and connect with Michael Park on LinkedIn.
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