Bob London
Bob London, founder and CEO of Chief Listening Officers, helps B2B companies develop marketing strategies that start with learning the customer’s true perspective. Chief Listening Officers serves emerging to mid-size B2B technology and professional services firms across the software, SaaS, data, financial services and healthcare sectors.
These companies typically have a significant market opportunity or challenge and need an injection of executive-level strategy, horsepower and leadership to hone their positioning, value proposition, messaging and marketing mix.
Bob pioneered the Outsourced Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) concept in 2003 when he founded London, Ink, a B2B marketing consultancy. He worked with, advised and mentored dozens of small- and mid-size companies on their marketing strategy and execution, serving as an interim or part-time CMO.
Bob is a 20+ year marketing veteran who has achieved rapid results with marketing budgets ranging from the $200 million network television launch of MCI Friends & Family to startups that have to make the most of their precious funding.
Bob also served as VP of Marketing for Digex, Incorporated, a national Web hosting and management firm that grew 100% annually during his tenure and went through not one but two IPOs. In addition, Bob was director of product marketing for Verisign, the leading web identity and security firm and Chief Marketing Officer of SingleShop, a venture-backed online shopping startup that burst along with the 2000 dotcom bubble.
Bob graduated from the University of Maryland College Park with a BS in Marketing and resides in Potomac, MD with his wife and two teenage sons.
Advisor & Mentor
Member of advisory board for ParkMyCloud, an enterprise web application that allows cloud computing users to turn off their idle computing capacity, significantly reducing their cloud costs.
Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at the University of Maryland’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, providing guidance to student entrepreneurs. Also a regular speaker and contributor at Dingman’s entrepreneurship classes.
Member of advisory board for The Marketing Alliance, the leading education and networking group for B2B technology marketing executives in the DC area.
Member of advisory board for GenZ Connect, a career platform that helps college students arrange informational interviews with professional mentors.
Mentor and advisor to early-stage tech companies at 1776, an internationally renowned startup incubator headquartered in Washington, DC.
Member of advisory board for National Capital Companies, a mid-market investment bank headquartered in Bethesda, MD.
Thought Leader
Bob has keynoted or spoken at the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit (4 times) and Potomac Tech Wire’s “Future of Marketing” Conference. He has delivered keynote talks at the Private Access Network Annual Meeting and WashingtonExec’s Next Gen Event.
He has also been the featured speaker at Network Solutions’ GrowSmartBiz Conference, the National Association of Federal Credit Union’s Annual Conference (three times) and the nationwide Unintentional Entrepreneur series.
Bob also publishes the popular DriveTime Marketing video blog as well as Bobservations, a blog series that chronicles the often humorous intersection of business and life.
Bob’s work and writing has been featured in or covered by the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Miami Herald, USA Today, Marketing News (the AMA’s flagship magazine), The Washington Business Journal and SmartCEO DC magazine.