Mike McGuire

My very special guest this week is Mike McGuire, VP Research at Gartner Group in mobile marketing.  He’s a good friend with a voice for radio, but before he reached his esteemed position at Gartner, he was a surfer,  a journalist, a PR guy, and an innovator.

Our lives intersected at Geoworks, at the very beginning of the handheld mobile device revolution, where we were part of a crazy awesome turnaround, in which a company known for competing with Microsoft Windows for the desktop GUI pivoted massively and took on the Apple Newton PDA.

Though we have many stories together, we used our time in this episode to talk about the structure of story itself, specifically how we use story in marketing, and how story has changed with the revolution in technology that we saw first hand.    For Mike, this is a perspective that informs his work at Gartner today.

From the start of the interview, Mike talks about the advice he gives to his clients.  It isn’t that they should have a set of tactics for mobile marketing, but that they should leverage the fact that every single person out there is mobile and make their brand available at every phase of the customer journey.

Butt does that fundamentally change the narratives that we use to speak to our customers?   As a product storyteller, I look for the thread that integrates the work of the developers, the marketers, and the sales people who bring a new product to market. Does mobile marketing and news cycle acceleration change the story structure that they use?

Our conclusion was that technology accelerates and amplifies what we say, so we had better start with a solid foundation grounded in authenticity.  The better we know ourselves and our teams the more likely we are to deliver a strong message in the moment that stays consistent as it evolves.

This interview was done on the outside patio at the Village Bakery in Woodside, California.  Music almost immediately starts playing in the background.  So, I must apologize that the audio quality isn’t up to the quality of my guest.  But the good news for you the listener is that there is no deep fake here.  You get the raw take, and that can be a very entertaining thing.  Enjoy.