The new breed of marketing bosses have PR DNA

As content marketing and social media continues to blur the lines between the marketing and PR industries, you don’t have to look too far to find a new “Super Breed” of comms professionals with combined DNA.

LinkedIn’s chief marketing officer, Shannon Stubo, is just one example of this new breed of marketer. Stubo had more than 20 years PR experience, working with major technology companies like Yahoo and eBay, before taking up the marketing role at the professional social network.

Speaking to journalists at Marketing Week, Stubo said: “Ten years ago it was, ‘I’m in PR I pitch [to] reporters’ and ‘I’m in advertising, I spend money with agencies to buy ads’ – that was it. Now with content marketing and social, the comms people are doing marketing campaigns and the marketers are doing PR.”

Stubo continued: “It’s all converging and that’s why our CEO asked me to do the job. A lot of other companies are going down the same route.”

Explaining her transition from PR to marketing Stubo said: “I had a lot to learn when I first took over the job. I knew hardly anything about things like demand generation or product marketing. But, a big piece of it came down to the fact I know how to be a leader and how to ask questions so I figured out how to do these things, and of course I hired really good people.”

Alongside her work with LinkedIn, Stubo also mentors entrepreneurs from a number of start-ups and claims to learn a lot from their “scrappy” attitude.

Stubo said: “I think, ‘Oh my god, we have 440 people surely we should be able to get this done [when] this company has one marketer’. There are lots of ways to do this and it doesn’t have to be over processed. I like to work with the start-ups because then I don’t lose that scrappiness.”

As a PR pro, are you equipped to take on the work of a marketer? Perhaps it’s time to widen your skillset as the industries continue to merge.