Martin Giles - Martin Giles is a Senior Business Correspondent for The Economist based in New York City, where he covers a range of business and financial issues. Prior to taking up this role in 2008, Mr Giles spent ten years on the commercial side of The Economist Group, latterly as Executive Vice-president of the Group's North American operations.
Prior to joining the commercial side of the company, he was editor of The Economist’s finance and economics section, and previously spent time as a reporter in both London and Paris. Mr Giles earned an MA degree from Oxford University and has an executive MBA from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business.
He is a trustee of a British charity that supports students who wish to become financial journalists and sits on the Advisory Council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Tony Hsieh - Tony Hsieh originally got involved with Zappos.com as an advisor and investor in 1999, about 2 months after the company was founded. Over time, Hsieh ended up spending more and more time with the company because it was both the most
fun and the most promising out of all the companies that he was involved with.
Hsieh eventually joined Zappos.com full time in 2000. Under his leadership, Zappos.com has grown gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000
to $840M in 2007 by focusing relentlessly on customer service.
Hsieh focuses on continuing to grow the business at a rapid pace while maintaining the culture and feel of a small company. Prior to joining Zappos.com, Hsieh co-founded Venture Frogs with Alfred Lin. Venture Frogs is an incubator and investment firm that invested in Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, Tellme Networks, and of course, Zappos.com. Prior to Venture Frogs, Hsieh co-founded LinkExchange, an advertising network that was successfully sold to Microsoft for $265M in 1998.
Jaya Kumar - Jaya Kumar is the Chief Marketing Officer for Frito-Lay North America.
He is responsible for traditional marketing practices across all Frito-Lay brands, overseeing advertising, media, insights and innovation.
William Pearce - William "Bill" Pearce is Senior Vice-president and Chief Marketing Officer and oversees Del Monte’s entire marketing organization, including Pet and Consumer Marketing as well as Research, Package Design and Promotions.
Pearce joined Del Monte in 2008 and brings with him over 20 years of consumer packaged foods experience. His past accomplishments include working as Taco Bell’s CMO with broad responsibilities for accelerating the growth of the brand while building long-term brand equity and delivery of annual profit commitment, as leader of Campbell Soup’s ready-to-eat food brands with full P&L responsibility and with Procter & Gamble as marketing director responsible for the Snacks Division of the North America.
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
marketing
Activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers. In advanced industrial economies, marketing considerations play a major role in determining corporate policy. Once primarily concerned with increasing sales through advertising and other promotional techniques, corporate marketing departments now focus on credit policies (seecredit), product development, customer support, distribution, and corporate communications. Marketers may look for outlets through which to sell the company's products, including retail stores, direct-mail marketing, and wholesaling. They may make psychological and demographic studies of a potential market, experiment with various marketing strategies, and conduct informal interviews with target audiences. Marketing is used both to increase sales of an existing product and to introduce new products. See alsomerchandising.
A panel of executives discuss why CEOs now rely heavily on CMOs at the Seventh Annual Marketing Forum hosted by The Economist in San Francisco.
Speakers include: William Pearce, Senior Vice-president and Chief Marketing Officer, Del Monte Foods; Jaya Kumar, Chief Marketing Officer, Frito-Lay; and Tony Hsieh, Chief Executive Officer, Zappos.com.
Moderated by Martin Giles, Senior Business Correspondent, The Economist.
Finally the concept of marketing shifted from telling the customers what to do to actually listening to them. Zappos leads the way for a new generation of successful marketers. Interestingly enough, the company doesn’t have a CMO; it’s aligned under one culture which prioritizes customer service. Every single employee religiously follows it. No wonder it’s idolized by Mashable and Alltop for its unique positioning among other online brands. A huge fan of amazon.com, after seeing this video I will definitely give Zappos a try. Bravo, Tony!
I've just found an article which provides some constructive criticism of the Tony Hseih's approach to hiring new employees http://bit.ly/1aff9C
Seriously, isn't it better to invest into improving the practices of Zappos' HR department in order to weed out unsuitable candidates BEFORE actually hiring them. This could be done by thoroughly explaining them the company culture as well as designing special test for them to see if they fit in.
@Bob_B - I don't think it would be too hard to devise a 'test' for interviewees. And it should be encouraged for the interviewer to tweek the test for every other interviewee (or so) as long as they know what they are doing. I don't think it's very hard to weed through people and figure out if they're company worthy or not. You can usually tell within the first two weeks they are there.
member. 
