ABOUT · THE OPERATOR diligence me before the call. that is what this page is for.

I have made this bet with my own name on it.

Twenty years of positioning work as a marketing leader. Three repositionings carried out for real companies, with my name on the outcome. And one engine, built over the last year, that makes that judgment inspectable.

Diginomica byline/50 CMOs to Watch/podcast host
plain portrait, no whiteboards
rowan tonkin · shot plain, ink-tint ok
01

The record, caveats included

2019—2022
Host Analytics → Planful

I repositioned and renamed the company as CMO. Branded search up 50% in eighteen months off a zero base. Unaided recall up 30 points. New logos went from 100 to 300 a year. Marketing Team of the Year.

And the honest part: the brand went backwards for eighteen months before it went forwards. That experience is why every engagement ships a proof plan with kill criteria instead of a promise.

2015—2016
MapD → OmniSci

Repositioned an open-source database company upmarket into an enterprise motion: from eight reps and no ICP to named Fortune 500 accounts. The company is HEAVY.AI today.

2012—2014
Anaplan

Moved the argument from territory planning, where the product story was tidiest, to incentive compensation, where the buyer's pain was sharpest. That wedge produced the company's first Magic Quadrant leadership position.

02 / THE THESIS

Everyone's prompting. Almost no one is operating.

For the last year I have run my marketing life as a self-improving system. The engine is the standing proof of five working principles:

1
Briefs as rubrics
The six criteria are written before the work exists.
2
Proof before publish
The adversarial pass runs before a human sees a ranking.
3
Standards compound
Every run's postmortem becomes a numbered upgrade.
4
Autonomy with gates
The system explores freely; nothing ships without a gate.
5
The human makes the call
The matrix is neutral. The judgment is signed.

Twenty years of positioning work. One engine that makes it inspectable. That combination is the offer.

Read the method