Keith Harris
Branch Marketing Manager St. Louis, Metro East Illinois, Kansas City
The Home Depot
Montgomery, Alabama
Parkway Central High School
UMSL, Bachelor of Arts, Communication, Theory and Rhetoric
Board Member, CUREiosity
In short, what do you do?
I am a Branch Marketing Manager for Home Depot’s St. Louis, Metro Illinois and Kansas City markets. In this role, I am responsible for 22 stores in St. Louis, 10 in Illinois and 18 in Kansas City area. I establish and maintain relationships with company personnel to help foster a greater partnership and connectivity. In addition, I review branding practices, create various promotional events, oversee the day-to-day operations of the ISP teams in each market, assign workloads, and manage team sales performance and training.
What are the biggest changes in marketing trends you’ve seen in your 20 years in the field?
Well, marketing is no longer just about the Four Ps – Product, Place, Price and Promotion but about Experience, Everyplace, Exchange and Evangelism. Another important change in marketing is its intimate connection to technology. The global rise of smartphones, the explosion in digital media channels (Social Media Marketing, E-mail Marketing, Display Advertising, etc.), and the critical nature of technology infrastructure. How you spend your marketing dollars is different also. It’s not a matter of buying time and space on someone else’s media platform.
What professional lessons/experiences from your 13 years with the St. Louis Rams have been most helpful in your current role?
I learned the basics of how to evaluate the target audience, determine what works and what doesn’t, to re-prioritize and be smart about resource allocation and investment. I learned how to use that platform as a business to make lives more meaningful. Visual storytelling emerged as a strategy for not only standing out but also for nurturing and growing a vibrant fanbase and engaged communities. The ability to craft visual stories that inspire emotion, amplify a message and spark a movement was a major lesson and one I refer to still.
What led you to start your own lifestyle marketing company, Koncepts?
I noticed the changing landscape of culture and how people are all moving towards a shared cultural complexion. I wanted to work with brands to understand their audience and use that knowledge to strike the perfect balance of traditional and lifestyle marketing. Knowing how your company’s brand aligns with consumers’ values and becoming an extension of those values is key.
With regard to Koncepts, how do you stay current on the latest digital and social media platform trends?
As a digital marketer, you’re constantly looking for ways to improve. The digital and marketing industry changes very quickly – so quickly that it can be hard to keep up with the latest trends on a daily basis. However, you have to stay up to date in order to make sure that your strategy is still successful. Digital and Marketing blogs are a great way to come up with new ideas, find new tactics, and draw inspiration. I read Mashable, Hubspot, Sprout Social, Optimizely, Econsultancy, Mixpanel, Harvard Business Review and IAB to name a few.
