Marc Shillum MA(RCA), FRSA, MISTD
Marc is a third-generation, British-born, Swiss Immigrant, American dad of four astounding children, born in two countries across two states, across sixteen years, after meeting his amazing wife while living and working in Den Haag, The Netherlands.
Marc formed his career at successive cusps of massive change across many mediums. Beginning with the democratization of computer animation, followed closely by the digitization of news media, the decentralization of advertising, the development of service design, the definition of logistics for autonomous transportation, product planning for additive manufacturing, and A.I. within customer services – all underscored by an intuitive sense for Brand Development within the digital age.
Marc was the founding Chief Experience Officer of Matternet, a pioneering transportation startup that was awarded World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer in 2015. He has a knack for discovering the hidden potential within people, brands, and their products and services. His ability to see emerging patterns between Business, Product Experience, Technology, and Marketing has benefited some of the World’s most well-known companies like Lego, Nike, Adobe, Condé Nast, Disney, RH, HBO, EA, Discovery, eBay, Aston Martin and Barnes & Noble. His ability to see the potential within people has led to positions on the Bill Moggridge Awards Sustaining Committee, the RSA Student Awards, an inaugural judge on the One Club’s Next Creative Leaders as well as contributing to the Biographies of his mentors and former employers Tibor Kalman and Gert Dumbar.
Marc has delivered keynotes at SXSW, the Lego Marketing Summit, Nike Design Summit, Boeing Design Summit, Microsoft Trends Council, The British American Business Council, The RSA Student Awards, PSFK, and The Department of State and has written OpEds for The World Economic Forum and Virgin Unite.
Marc is also the author of 'Brands as Patterns' a white paper that has laid the foundation for coherent brand building in the digital age. The paper has been republished by FastCompany, Contagious Magazine and PSFK, and became two back-to-back panels at SXSW. Marc is currently writing a book – ‘Marketing at the Speed of the Product’ – bridging the traditional divide between Product and Marketing teams, “I’ve found that a lack of common language, shared goal-setting, and connected thinking degrade performance. This prevents many companies from driving better product-to-market-to-customer-fit, which strengthens the business”.
His experience has given him unique insight into how to build strong innovative businesses and how to grow empathy within diverse, cross-functional teams so that they can thrive on solving the complex fluid problems of the future.
Global leadership bridging Brand and Product for a 20,000 person Fortune 500 company.
– Unifying first company-wide analysis of the end-to-end customer journey across the five largest pieces of the global business across all departments.
– Launching first global campaign “Fill Your Cart With Color” for eBay which propelled the organization to its third-highest stock price in history.
– Founding eBay’s Brand Innovation Lab, scaling to three full-time staff within the first year, integrating engineering, product strategy, brand and marketing.
– Building ebay.corp.playbook.com as a centralized global resource for product design systems, brand strategy and brand creative tools.
– Mentoring cross-discipline creative staff. Building network, practice, and understanding across marketing, communication, product design and business.
Founding Chief Creative Office, a cross-discipline consultancy that attracted prestige clients like Discovery, RH, Adobe, GoPro and Lego.
– Creating ‘Seeker’ Discovery Inc's first digital channel, achieving 200 million monthly views at launch, selling as part of a $585M deal to Group Nine Media in four years.
– Rebranding Restoration Hardware as ‘RH’, expanding the company beyond retail stores leading to the highest stock price in history.
– Naming and Positioning security startup ‘Canary’ which received $60M+ investment.
– Positioning and Branding clean air startup ‘Molekule’ which received $40M+ in investment.
Matternet – Building a Design Centered Technology Company.
– Founding Chief Experience Officer of Matternet, a pioneering transportation startup which was awarded World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer in 2016.
– Driving UX design process to launch first-to-market product, M1, the only autonomous transportation vehicle given the permission by Swiss Aviation Authority FOCA to transport diagnostic samples over urban areas. M1 Transportation Drone included in permanent collection of the Design Museum in London.
– Identifying Product to Market Fit, focusing the company on the $30 Billion Diagnostic Transportation market which was ripe for disruption.
– Creating an internationally recognized Brand, receiving $25M+ in funding from premier investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Boeing.
– Introducing and preparing aerospace engineers to understand a user-centered design culture.
Method Inc – Scaling a boutique design practice.
– Part of the leadership team that tripled revenue for Method Inc leading to successful acquisition by Global Logic.
– Driving Brand Discipline from 5% to over 30% of revenue.
R/GA – Redefining Brand Thinking for the Digital Age
– Founding digital first Brand Practice for R/GA, gaining $1M in revenue in first year, growing from 1 to 11 full time staff in two years.
– Identifying Business Strategy as new practice.
– Creating nook, a billion dollar brand for Barnes & Noble – pushing a last to market product to number 2 in a single year. Gaining 13.4% global market share for E-paper readers, selling more units than anything else Barnes and Noble has ever sold before in its 40 year history.
– Building the bridge between UX and Brand thinking to create an entirely new approach to brand building and disrupt competition.
