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Ryan Nelsen is CMO of the programmatic advertising platform StackAdapt, where he leads global marketing, communications, and brand. He’s also held marketing roles at the experience management company Qualtrics and at MX, a financial services company.
Favorite project you’ve worked on? There have been so many favorites, and a fun one is from when we created the Qualtrics X4 Summit. We doubled the number of attendees each year, culminating in 15,000 leaders joining to hear about all of our innovations with guest speakers Oprah, then-President Obama, and Richard Branson.
During my time at MX, we continued bringing people and technology together with guests including Matthew McConaughey, will.i.am, Allyson Felix, Jason Sudeikis, Peyton Manning, and Ryan Tedder. I’m fascinated by people who have become the best in the world at what they do, including learning from people like Michael Phelps.
What’s your favorite ad campaign? Anything that Ryan Reynolds touches is pure gold. I love the nostalgia they brought back with Rick Moranis in the Mint Mobile commercial. Tying Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to shrinking costs was clever.
Another one that stood out to me was the CeraVe Super Bowl ad with Michael Cera. Knowing my wife buys their products, it made me laugh when they connected our worlds with the perfect name crossover.
One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I’m a girl dad to four smart, amazing daughters. I’m passionate about creating a better world for them and women everywhere.
What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I hope we continue to build human connections at scale. In mid-market and enterprise, people buy from people they trust. I believe that will continue and relationships will drive decisions.
With the proliferation of AI-generated content I’m seeing a lot more quantity over quality, which I am least optimistic about. Companies are using AI to generate content, but as consumers we’re not typically using AI to consume it. Noise is everywhere and time is our most valuable asset. So even though your team is saving time generating content with AI, they could be wasting your audience’s time and losing trust if the content doesn’t exceed expectations.
What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? I like the dynamic of the All-In Podcast, from the topics they discuss to their debates around different economic opinions and worldviews. It’s normally a good discussion on trending topics, and they argue different views to share their perspective, often backed by data or historical context.
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