This is a post about change. Winston Churchill said, “There is nothing wrong with change, as long as it is in the right direction.” This is not your typical resignation. You could call this a ‘planned’ or ‘friendly’ departure. During this time I plan to remain on as Bazaarvoice CMO while I help recruit for my successor (one of the reasons for this post), and upon my departure I will be on the Bazaarvoice Board of Advisors to help the company’s continued growth. “Growth means

What a dilemma! You are asked to reduce budget, cut costs, reduce expenses. However, you need your BEST to gain market share, compete for customer dollars and emerge from the recession as a winner. You need the best employees, technology, service, partners, vendors, and agencies so you can outsmart and out-execute competition. You need the best to drive demand when marketing rules are being reinvented by customer conversations. You need the best because, more than ever befor

Marketers are usually challenged to justify word of mouth social media marketing programs to the finance department. With economic challenges ahead, your job doesn’t get easier. As someone who’s focuses on both creative and measurement, and as Interim CFO at Bazaarvoice, I started thinking more about the question of what marketers need to sell CFOs on the social marketing opportunity. Ultimately everything comes down to the bottom line – drive revenue, margin or costs down –

I have to share this story…it’s about how my son got offered the job of Co-CMO for Bazaarvoice. Last week we had kids-at-work day. I brought in my 8-year-old son Kyle and 11-year-old daughter Haley in for half a day to experience my work. They were very excited, however, I had a number of meetings and conference calls. During these meetings my daughter colored, read, and ate ice cream. My son, on the other hand, walked the halls and started offering advice to our employees. S

Fortunately, I’m homebound with my new son for the next week, but I was able to get away tonight for a dinner at Salt Lick (best BBQ in TX!) with many bloggers who came to Austin for SXSW. Friends made it such as Charlene Li of Forrester and Groundswell, Shel Israel of Global Neighborhoods (Author of Naked Conversations), Bob Pearsons of Dell (runs Dell’s community /conversation / social media team), Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester and Web Strategist, and others. I also met some

I haven’t kept up the pace of posts here compared to previous years. Part of this is because it’s been an exciting, busy year. But the other cause is my writing time is fractured between this Decker Marketing blog, our company blog (Bazaarblog) and writing other articles / columns. So, I thought I’d point you to articles I wrote elsewhere over the past year or so that you might find interesting… Some of my columns on iMedia Connection: The Big Idea Behind Social Commerce How