David Meerman Scott

Why organisations work with David Meerman Scott

• He wrote the book that reset the category. The New Rules of Marketing and PR sits in its ninth edition, has been translated into 29 languages, and is standard reading inside marketing functions worldwide. When he speaks to a commercial team, they are hearing from the person who named the model they already use.
• He coined Newsjacking, now in the Oxford English Dictionary, and turned it into a repeatable method for injecting a brand into live news cycles without a campaign budget.
• He has been inside HubSpot’s growth story since 2007, when the company had fewer than ten employees, and continues as its Marketer in Residence. The playbook he talks about is one he helped build in practice.
• Fanocracy, his Wall Street Journal bestseller with Reiko Scott, gives commercial leaders a second framework: how to turn customers into fans, and fans into a growth engine that competitors cannot copy.
• He sits on advisory boards across software, AI, and live-music businesses, which keeps his material in front of current commercial problems rather than recycled case studies.

Biography highlights

• Author of more than a dozen books, including The New Rules of Marketing and PR (9th edition, 29 languages), Fanocracy, Real-Time Marketing and PR, Marketing the Moon, and Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.
• Coined “Newsjacking”; the term entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017.
• HubSpot advisory board member since 2007 and current Marketer in Residence.
• Keynotes and masterclasses delivered on all seven continents and in more than 45 countries, for clients including Cisco, HP, SAP, Google, Microsoft, Ford, PwC, NASDAQ, McKesson, the US Air Force, and the US Marine Corps.
• Advisor and board member to emerging companies including Eloqua (IPO 2012, acquired by Oracle), NewsWatch KK (acquired by Yahoo Japan), and GrabCAD (acquired by Stratasys).
• Serves on the advisory boards of the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz and the voter-registration nonprofit HeadCount.

Biography

The shift that matters in marketing is not a tool, it is a timing problem. Buyers move through most of a purchase decision on their own, using search, social, and peer networks, before a seller is ever involved. David Meerman Scott built his career by naming that shift and giving commercial teams a way to work inside it.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR, first published in 2006 and now in its ninth edition, turned a set of emerging practices into a coherent model: publish useful content, reach buyers directly, and abandon the campaign calendar as the organising unit of marketing. The book has been translated into 29 languages and is now treated as a standard reference inside marketing functions from Fortune 500 incumbents to early-stage software companies. Real-Time Marketing and PR and Newsjacking extended the argument into live events and breaking news, and gave the commercial world a new vocabulary for opportunistic reach.

His credibility is not only editorial. He has been on the HubSpot advisory board since 2007, when the company had fewer than ten employees, and remains its Marketer in Residence. He sat on the board of Eloqua through its IPO and sale to Oracle, and on NewsWatch KK through its sale to Yahoo Japan. With his daughter Reiko Scott he wrote Fanocracy, a 2020 Wall Street Journal bestseller that moved the conversation from reach to fandom, and gave leaders at companies like Hagerty, MeUndies, and HubSpot a framework for building customer communities that behave like a compounding asset.

When Scott walks into a sales kickoff or a marketing leadership offsite, the value is compression. He has already tested these ideas across more than 45 countries, all seven continents, and hundreds of commercial teams, and he will tell a CMO in the room which parts of the playbook are load-bearing and which are noise.

Key speaking topics

• Modern marketing strategy and the new rules of marketing and PR
• Newsjacking and real-time marketing
• Content-led sales and social selling
• Fanocracy and customer community as a growth engine
• Digital buyer behaviour and the shift from campaigns to always-on
• Marketing leadership inside high-growth technology companies

Ideal for

• CMOs, marketing directors, and heads of brand rebuilding their function for a post-campaign buying journey.
• Chief Revenue Officers and sales leaders running kickoffs where marketing and sales need one shared operating model.
• Founders and leadership teams at growth-stage software, services, and consumer businesses looking for a repeatable customer-acquisition method.
• Corporate communications and PR leaders modernising earned-media strategy around live news and owned content.

Audience outcomes

• A clear read on where their current marketing and sales model is leaking pipeline, and which specific tactics to retire.
• A working definition of Newsjacking and Real-Time Marketing, with concrete examples of how to execute both inside a regulated or conservative organisation.
• The Fanocracy framework for converting buyers into repeat advocates, with named examples from Hagerty, MeUndies, HubSpot, and HeadCount.
• A sharper view of what a modern marketing and sales operating rhythm looks like day to day, not as an annual plan.
• Practical language to align a CMO, CRO, and CEO on what good looks like in the next twelve months.