With more than 20 years of experience, John Baker, the Global Chief Marketing Officer of Mirum is an agency specialist and believes that technology can change marketing for the better. John feels proud to be a member of Mirum and has contributed towards its elevated growth.
John is a digital marketing professional with strengths in direct marketing and application development. He also has an extensive agency experience in business development, client management, developing relationships with parent agencies, network integration, and new office start-ups. In addition, John has experience with multiple entrepreneurial ventures, from the creation of Mirum, a global agency, to three interactive agency offices in different locations across the world, and working with over 11 startup clients ranging from Virgin Games to boo.com. John lives in New York but has lived in London and Paris and has handled global agency management for Mirum, JWT, iris, Proximity, and Organic.
John’s Journey towards becoming the CMO of Mirum
In 1995, John founded a little digital agency called Modem Media and discovered digital marketing. He never looked back. His experience afterwards has allowed him to really see how agencies work across direct, digital, advertising and sales promotion, and how these teams build their clients’ businesses. As an MBA intern, he found himself working across disciplines doing everything from from sales proposals to management accounting spreadsheets. As CMO of Mirum, he created the new agency brand, and found the common cultural base across 15 agencies, selling in a common vision and culture into the global teams, and utilizing big client meetings and new business pitches to bring people together.
“It is amazing to start with 5 people and an idea, end up with thousands of people pushing it ahead, making it bigger and better”, says John when asked about his experience in working with different companies. John has been with Mirum and J. Walter Thompson since 2010. As part of the JWT Global Digital team, John helped drive the creation of Mirum, and today, he is the Global Chief Marketing Officer.
At Mirum, John focuses on building the business, shaping how Mirum works with partners, and driving digital strategy for clients. As a regular industry speaker, he has been a cyber-jury member at Cannes and worked with the DMA and IPA on councils at different times.
Bringing Client Friendly Atmosphere
In today’s rapidly changing business world, everyone in the business is looking for points of differentiation and unique benefits for customers. According to the dynamic CMO of Mirum, if a businessman has confidence, then that person can get through anything and revel in its experience.
While working at Mirum, John and his team follow the same culture. In addition, the dedicated CMO launched an idea of Borderless Digital Agency. This idea aims to breaking down the barriers with clients by connecting with them globally and making the collaboration more focused on their needs.
John and his team engage clients and consumers in the following areas:
- Business Transformation
- Transformation Strategy
- Opportunity Identification
- New Product Development
- Experience Design
- Solution Planning and Prototyping
- Design and Development
- Platform Integration and Management
- Commerce Activation
- Campaign and Media Planning
- Campaign Creation
- Conversion Optimization and Management
Working as the Dedicated and Responsible CMO at Mirum
As the CMO of Mirum, John is responsible for spreading awareness and leads, because he knows that being a newly established company, it is essential to push into analyst reports and industry press. Furthermore, John also runs the global business development team and manages global partnerships with technology companies like Adobe, Sitecore, and Salesforce.
The fun loving CMO of Mirum believes that seeing the work come together and how a team of professionals can create great stuff is hugely satisfying, especially when the client agrees and decides to carry on working together. Similarly, John’s most favorite part of work is helping new businesses and pitching big programs for clients since he loves meeting people and considers every client like a new puzzle. By figuring out what clients need, John and his team kick-start towards working for a clear and common goal.
Improving Mistakes with Continuous Learning
John is most grateful to his parents for teaching him good work ethics. He learned that one needs to actually do things and make them happen instead of just talking about them or managing them. In his initial days, John lacked the understanding of how today’s organizations are set up and how to work through them. To fulfill his lacking skillset, he started working in a niche consulting firm doing international cost-of-living research. However, he wanted to learn and experience more, therefore, he applied and hustled to get into Columbia Business School and there learned about how different types of businesses work.
Mistakes Can Make You Smarter
Mistakes Can Make You SmarterCommenting about mistakes in a person’s professional life, John asserts, “There have been lots of mistakes on pitches but as long as you feel good about why you made the decision you did, you can’t get upset about that. On a broader scale, I could call out decisions to move to a new agency or to do a startup that really, really didn’t work, but I think such mistakes make you smarter.”
