Michael Arnone comes with 25+ years of experience in marketing across many different industries, he loves the everyday adventures in marketing. He currently works as the Director of Marketing at FUJIFILM Recording Media U.S.A..
If you could write a book about your life, what would the title be, and why?
I think the title would be: “Tales of Everyday Adventures.” When people think about adventures, usually a grandiose vision pops into their head like swimming in the Amazon or hiking in the Himalayas. I tend to have my adventures on a smaller scale, day-to-day. I’m one of those people that will try something once or explore wherever I happen to be at that moment in time. When traveling for business, I always take the last flight out for that day, so I can at least see something unique in the city I happen to be in. Sometimes, I get my family in the car without a destination in mind and go for a drive to see what we can find.
I carried this mentality over to my marketing career as well. I’ve been in several industries without knowing anything about that industry on the day I started. One year, I had an idea for a children’s craft toy and decided to patent and pitch the toy without ever being in the toy market or having any connections to it. Not every day can be theme park thrills, but something is always happening. Not knowing what is going to happen is half the fun.
How about your professional life?
Almost 25 years in marketing, (even though I don’t look it), and it’s been a blast. I got my start in CPG marketing, but before that, my first internship was at Disney World in Florida. That experience set the stage for me to understand how to treat customers (we call them guests) as well as customer experiences and journeys. Disney led me to my first job as a marketing specialist at Snapple. From there, I moved into an advertising agency and then I went to marketing at a manufacturing company. Things took an unexpected turn when I was recruited out of that company by an aircraft manufacturer and then spent over 10 years in private jet marketing. Currently I am in leading a marketing team at Fujifilm, so it’s been an interesting journey with a lot of different products and services. I often tell people who are nervous about changing industries that you don’t need to know everything about a product or market on day one. If you have a core understanding of how to connect with a customer through marketing, you can be successful. In my career, I’ve sold pens, and I’ve sold planes (that should be the name of my second book) and bringing customers to products is what we do as marketers.
Why did you get involved with the AMA-New Jersey chapter? Why is this organization important to you?
I believe that as marketers we need to have a good network of people who can share similar experiences, challenges, and solutions. In the past marketing did not have the visibility with management that it has today with all the marketing technology available. Now that every metric can be tracked and viewed in an instant on an executive dashboard, the role marketing plays in the organization is elevated. So, the AMA New Jersey is perfect for sharing marketing methods, different ways to address problems, and emerging technologies. Of course, there is always room for a few good stories.
What best advice would you give new professionals in your industry?
Work on your T! I see too many people focus on one area of marketing such as social, Google, email, etc. I think it’s a big disadvantage because they get laser focused and don’t understand the full breadth of what’s going on in the entire customer journey, how the systems connect, and how the sales process works. This lack of knowledge makes it hard to move up when they try and grow in their role.
People may or not be familiar with the term T-shaped marketer. A T-shaped marketer has a broad knowledge covering a wide range of marketing with in-depth knowledge in 1 or 2 areas. Diversify all your marketing skills. If you’re a social media manager, understand how the marketing automation program that your social lead pipes into works. And ultimately, how it fits as a touch point in your CRM and customer journey.
I would even say step outside of marketing and do some non-marketing projects. Get on some non-marketing committees like production, operations, or even employee relations. I joined one committee and wound up going to Six Sigma green belt training, learning about processes mapping and Continuous Improvement. If there are no committees available to join, learn about proper project management or agile project management from an institution like the PMI. Skills like this can help with marketing
projects like onboarding a new marketing technology or improving the customer journey via process improvement. It will also help you later in your career. As you move up the ranks, you need to be able to discuss marketing, not with a bunch of marketing acronyms, but in business and process terms to other functional areas and the executive team so that they understand how marketing fits into the overall business.
If someone wants to connect with you, what is the best way to reach out to you on social media?
I’m always on LinkedIn.
