This week on “Marketing Today,” I interview Penny Baldwin, the senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Qualcomm. Baldwin is actually the first ever CMO at Qualcomm, a leading technology company specializing in wireless solutions and an architect of 5G technology. Baldwin’s past career experiences include general manager, global brand management, and new technology group marketing at Intel, as well as CMO at McAfee, and senior vice president of global brand strategy and marketing at Yahoo!.
Baldwin talks about the growing excitement and capabilities around 5G technology and what exactly that means to marketers. She clearly explains several 5G capabilities like browsing the web five times faster and being able to download a movie in a minute, and how 5G can be used in entirely different industries like healthcare, retail, and autonomous vehicles. She discusses her early years in advertising and even opens up about her upbringing, having two deaf parents.
Baldwin discusses her wide-ranging advertising and marketing experience by saying, “Once you cross over from the agency side to the client side, you come to realize that marketing is so much more robust than any one discipline or channel.” She continues by stating, “the entire marketing mix needs to be orchestrated on a much bigger stage and no one component apart is more important than the other.”
5G isn’t the first time Qualcomm has created a large technological advancement. Baldwin says, “Thanks to Mobile GPS, we gave rise to Uber as an entirely new business model. Riding-sharing didn’t exist before 4G technology was available.”
Highlights from this week’s “Marketing Today”:
- Penny Baldwin introduces herself and how she began her career in advertising. (01:18)
- What was Penny’s experience like at tech companies like Yahoo and Intel? (01:54)
- What does Qualcomm do and how does it fit into the global technology ecosystem? (02:36)
- What is 5G and what makes it so transformative? (04:48)
- What does it mean when your brand becomes the industry standard? (07:05)
- How does Penny market all of this advanced technology to the marketplace? (08:01)
- What are some new uses and experiences that 5G will enable? (09:37)
- What does Penny’s marketing team organization look like? (12:35)
- What applications in marketing can be related to 5G? (15:20)
- Is there an experience of Penny’s past that has made her who she is? (19:37)
- What advice would Penny Baldwin give to her younger self? (21:47)
- What fuels and motivates Penny these days? (22:22)
- Are there any companies, brands, or organizations that Penny Baldwin believes marketers should pay attention to? (23:21)
- What does Penny Baldwin feel is the future of marketing? (24:07)
Alan B. Hart is the creator and host of “Marketing Today with Alan Hart,” a weekly podcast where he interviews leading global marketing professionals and business leaders. Alan advises leading executives and marketing teams on opportunities around , customer experience, innovation, and growth. He has consulted with Fortune 100 companies, but he is an entrepreneur at his core, having founded or served as an executive for nine startups.