The 10 Influential Marketing Leaders 2019

Cover Story
Marketing is the bridge
between a product and its
target audience, and
marketing leaders are the ropes
strengthening it. A marketing leader is
always focused on making his/her
products and services more
approachable, and for that he/she needs
a set of skills and determined
teamwork. Along with the many other
qualities a marketing leader requires, a
management competency for the
performance assessment further helps
in ensuring excellent teamwork.
Management competency helps to
understand the true capacity of
employees and how to encourage them
to perform at their best.
Patti Girardi, CMO of Valet Living,
is one such leader who is known for
motivating her team members to get
the best results out of their
performance. She has served in
multiple companies where she has
helped to increase sales and create a
brand name. With her stellar leadership
skills, she is setting benchmarks in
sales and marketing.
Her interview with Insights Success
exhibits her inspiring journey as a
marketing leader and portrays her
commitment to Valet Living.
Below are the highlights of her
interview:
Kindly elaborate on your journey in
becoming a marketing leader.
As hard as it is to believe, I actually
found marketing by accident. I joined
Cox Communications, the 4th largest
cable operator in the United States,
directly from business school as
Manager of Special Projects, which at
the time, included launching all of the
new cable offerings consumers have
grown accustomed to today: digital
cable, high-speed internet, and digital
telephone service. But as these
strategies developed into tangible
product offerings, the need to market
them was calling, and I transitioned
into a brand management role, which I
connected with in a way that I had
never experienced professionally.
Cox’s explosive growth afforded me
the opportunity to move into a number
of field and corporate positions,
culminating into the opportunity to
lead web strategy and e-commerce
during a transformative time for the
industry – during this period, we grew
Cox.com to surpass call center traffic
as the company’s primary service
channel, something naysayers said
couldn’t be done.
From there, I moved over to the
programming side of the cable
television business as Vice President of
Affiliate Sales and Marketing for Fox
Cable Networks. This role brought not
only the challenge of aligning sales and
marketing initiatives to consistently
outperform aggressive sales targets, but
also heightened visibility throughout
the media industry and access to bestin-class
leadership programs like the
Betsy Magness Leadership Institute for
Women.
The opportunity to marry my life-long
passion for the culinary arts and career
goals arrived when Compass Group,
the world’s largest foodservice
provider, presented the opportunity to
lead marketing for its domestic college
foodservice division and the challenge
of rebranding the business for
Generation Z -- the 8-23-year-old
cohort emerging as the most coveted
youth demographic -- overtaking
Millennials in both size and influence.
This industry-leading rebrand infused
“gathering” into traditional foodservice
as a way to transform the college
dining experience into a vehicle for
promoting high-intensity relationships
– much like the pre-technology
experience of sitting down to a family
meal.
And then, there was the offer I couldn’t
refuse – the opportunity to
fundamentally disrupt the multifamily
housing industry through a major
rebrand for amenity service provider
Valet Living that puts multifamily
residents front and center to make their
lives easier than they could have ever
imagined. As Chief Marketing Officer
for this amazing brand, I’ve been able
to expand the scope of my leadership
across branding, creative services, lead
generation, inside sales, marketing
communications, database marketing,
e-commerce, mobile marketing,
product marketing, public relations,
research, social media, event/trade
show marketing, web strategy, artificial
intelligence and sustainability.
How do you diversify your
organization’s offerings to appeal to
the target audience?
Valet Living is the only full-service
amenities provider to the multifamily
housing industry. It arrived at its
industry-leading position through a
crystal-clear understanding of its
competitive advantages and intimate
knowledge of the apartment industry.
Valet Living’s wide range of services
include doorstep waste and recycling
collection, apartment turns (preparing
apartment homes for new residents),
maintenance (supplementing onsite
maintenance teams with additional
labor or “porter hours”), pet solutions
(pet parks, waste and wash stations)
and its resident-facing amenity services
offering called Valet Living Home.
Valet Living’s core competencies of its
proven track record and pioneering
edge in the multifamily space have
allowed the brand to set the standard
for residential living in each of these
verticals. In particular, Valet Living
Home’s resident-facing amenity
service solution - offering home cleans,
pet walks, package delivery, wellness
classes, and laundry pick-up - is truly
unique in that, although powered by
technology, these amenities are
delivered by the best people and
processes in the business. As the above
amenities include B2B, B2C and
B2B2C services, the challenge for
marketing is to approach each one with
strategies that are most suitable for
each respective audience.