Brion Roberto
Verified Expert in Marketing
Marketing Expert
A global marketing leader with years of experience bolstering startups and blue chip companies like Johnnie Walker, American Express, BCG, and The Washington Post, Brion has exceeded goals, expanded into new markets, and significantly increased profits. He has managed dispersed cross-functional teams to create campaigns with digital and global insight. Brion's innovative strategy has garnered awards for exceptional marketing that delivers.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
Zlick Ltd
- Acted as the chief marketing officer (CMO) and developed a marketing strategy and mobile advertising processes with the CEO to launch a new product.
- Handled online reputation management and created a go-to-market plan for user acquisition, brand activation, and long-term brand positioning.
- Advised on internet marketing tactics, drove marketing collateral development, and provided hands-on editing and creative oversight.
- Launched campaign in two new markets, including the UK; developed an optimization and targeting plan.
Marketing Strategist
Fifth Dimension LLC (via Toptal)
- Worked with the CEO to develop a strategic marketing strategy for a new blockchain storage company.
- Developed personas, audience targets, and industry focus groups via a meta-analysis of studies, primary research, and business intelligence (BI).
- Created a six-month marketing plan to increase brand awareness, generate leads, and establish industry credibility.
Marketing Expert
Demand Signal Inc. (via Toptal)
- Developed a comprehensive end-to-end marketing plan, including a five-point unique strategic approach.
- Identified unique customer segments and market opportunities.
- Created content game plan centered around podcasts.
Brand and Name Development Consultant
Buonaliving Inc (via Toptal)
- Developed naming strategy via competitive analysis and client vision of goals and company's growth.
- Created more than 12 options for names within the constructs of clarity, memorability, and uniqueness, availability for trademarks and .com domains.
- Created an eight-page deck that described the approach, rationale, and recommendations.
Strategy | Marketing | Digital Expert
Thirsty Fox
- Managed the agency and developed a new creative platform and media buying strategy.
- Created an annual marketing plan and shifted the budget to focus on high-growth activities to expand the footprint and reach new customer segments.
- Set up key partnership and co-branding opportunities to build reputation and affinity marketing.
- Recommended new marketing stack to improve performance marketing.
- Created strategic recommendations for the CEO on GTM, market research/personas, and brand development.
- Led strategic email marketing and programmatic advertising using automation tools like GetResponse, leveraging email autoresponders to enhance customer engagement and retention.
Brand Marketing and Communications Expert | Consultant
BCG - Gamma
- Created a new brand working with the executive committee, including defining the mission, values, positioning, personality, tone, and archetype.
- Designed a new brand campaign by creating a strategy and selecting and managing an advertising agency for success.
- Developed an exhaustive competitive analysis of more than 20 companies to determine differentiation in a crowded space.
- Invented a new product category, SaaS naming, and pricing tiers.
- Conducted interviews with more than 25 team members to define sentiment, marketing, user stories, and branding baseline to inform an overall strategy.
- Managed creative and media agencies for primary research, strategy, creative platform development, campaign planning, and execution.
- Initiated new interim campaigns, driving demand using paid search such as Apple Search Ads and LinkedIn.
Marketing and Product Consultant
Repoze LLC
- Developed a new platform to stake a new market niche in recruitment and HR services.
- Performed competitive analysis and mapped a unique position in the market.
- Created and defined a new brand, working with the CEO.
- Strategized on the product roadmap, business model, and GTM to deliver a best-in-class plan.
- Initiated and performed primary research using Google Analytics 4 to drive potential customer insights and product feature lists.
Head of Digital Products and Marketing | Senior Director
Scarlet Health
- Led ten products for innovative, mobile, on-demand diagnostics and provider hub and launched three new products in six months.
- Drove 50% year-over-year growth via improved UX, partnerships, and targeted product marketing.
- Improved velocity of product development and releases by more than 15%.
- Increased NPS by more than 20% and doubled patient retention.
- Launched a new API Marketplace for providers and payers.
- Developed industry-leading product roadmap and developed a best-in-class customer data and CRM program.
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
Stealth Web3 Start-up
- Raised funds via a comprehensive business plan, the first one for the company.
- Performed primary research and analysis to develop a pricing strategy across three continents.
- Developed a unique positioning strategy for a ground-breaking new category.
- Delivered recommended strategy to achieve desired market penetration and profit margin.
Head of Product and Marketing
Urban IQ
- Co-founded an international ad-tech startup focused on building a marketplace for the digital out-of-home (DOOH) industry, including outdoor advertising.
- Created a trademark and two US patent-pending technologies, offering programmatic DOOH buying, data intelligence, and proof-of-play.
- Built an innovative SaaS platform from scratch with clean code.
- Established a partner network of over 20 publishers with over 100,000 screens.
- Led a team of nine, with the headquarters in New York and an office in India.
- Tested and created a powerful but streamlined user journey for purchasing advertising and campaign management using tools like Hootsuite.
- Conceived, wrote, copy-edited, and pitched press releases, driving coverage from over 100 media outlets and a potential audience reach of over 10,000,000.
Global Head of Digital Products and Multi-channel Marketing Strategy
Sanofi
- Raised the digital and multi-channel capability for one of the world's premier life science companies in the pharmaceutical industry with $40 billion in revenue and 120,000 employees.
- Devised, gained board approval, and implemented a three-year, over $75 million digital transformation and an omni-marketing strategy program: strategy, communications, a staffing plan, a stakeholder management approach, and vendor selection criteria.
- Oversaw a team of more than ten product managers in content marketing, data management, campaign management, mobile, social, webinar, messaging through email, analytics, organic search with SEO, and paid search.
- Set up Adobe Analytics and Adobe Campaign Manager with industry-first capabilities to connect with WeChat, Line (Japan's leading messaging app with 1+ billion users), and Veeva (a Salesforce 3rd-party app for the pharma industry) in under a year.
- Led the roll-out of the first enterprise-wide omni-campaign management system and digital product management. Developed the communication strategy, training material, and adoption.
- Recognized as a 2017 Talent Champion: Coached and provided growth opportunities for employee development.
- Proved that an omnichannel marketing strategy versus the traditional sales and marketing approach lifted revenue by around 10%.
- Managed the mobile development team and digital product teams, which delivered more than 20 products.
- Handled global digital asset management (DAM) and created a process to reuse images, photos, and content, resulting in over 15% cost savings and enhanced compliance.
- Crafted data strategy and architecture and implemented new data tools, including a data management platform (DMP) using Adobe Audience Manager.
Global Digital Marketing and Innovation Director
Diageo
- Built a global center of excellence in digital marketing for the world’s largest spirits and beverages company, with over $15 billion in revenue and more than 40,000 workers.
- Developed a comprehensive enterprise, global digital transformation program including the roadmap, brand architecture, data management, measurement and evaluation, market intelligence, best practice collaboration, and execution framework.
- Supervised a team of over 20 based in five continents to deliver more than 1,000 innovative web, social, mobile, SEO, and CRM campaigns.
- Delivered an ROI of more than 300% on digital marketing investments.
- Accomplished a double-digit increase in engagement and sales via loyalty programs for Johnnie Walker, Single Malt Scotches, and Luxury Rums. Owned content-driven emails and event planning with Eventbrite.
- Drove thought leadership and more than ten industry social and digital innovations. Developed mobile vouchering, Twitter age verification, Facebook listening studies, personalized QR codes, crowdsourced outlet mapping, and an ROI-based marketing mix.
- Launched and expanded eCommerce sites to balance the scale with local market relevancy and commercial goals.
- Expanded the digital footprint in emerging markets such as Turkey and East Africa through an intensive four-month in-country program.
- Improved analyst digital brand intelligence rankings of Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker, and Crown Royal to the top of their respective categories.
Digital Marketing Lead, Americas
Diageo
- Promoted as a team manager of eight, based in New York, Miami, Sao Paulo, and Bogota.
- Coached the team to deliver more than 200 digital campaigns with a value of over $20 million.
- Led marketing communications and stakeholder management for digital marketing initiatives across more than ten countries, securing the highest global internal satisfaction rating of 4.2 out of 5 compared to peers.
- Upskilled the team to create specialties across content marketing, mobile, analytics, social, search, paid advertising, innovation, and architecture.
- Led an enterprise-wide project to migrate a legacy provider based in South Africa from a limited capability to a distributed global model using best-in-class technology, MDM, and REST APIs standards.
- Launched new digital marketing channels and improved the quality of the existing ones, including web, mobile, social, paid advertising (e.g., Spotify Ads), messaging, and video.
Global Program Lead for Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff
Diageo
- Delivered an award-winning website featured in Adweek to more than 80 countries. Improved vodka SEO ranking to number one on Google.
- Created a global clone model and playbook and managed teams to deploy.
- Pioneered an industry-first mobile website, launched on budget and on time.
Managing Director
Sage Impact
- Founded a New York startup marketing and communications consultancy focused on helping organizations maximize opportunities through technology.
- Attracted clients, managed communications, and navigated complex, matrixed internal organizations of stakeholders.
- Delivered more than ten digital projects that improved websites, user journeys, and enterprise transformation, resulting in more than $2 million in client estimated value.
- Analyzed opportunities for increased page visibility and rankings. Employed techniques, both content, tags, and technical, to get Smirnoff ranked number one for vodka on Google.
- Optimized a website and performed heuristic analysis for the American Express travel site to increase customer satisfaction by over 10% and purchase conversions.
- Reduced the website bounce rate, evaluated alcohol industry standards for age gates, set benchmarks, and deployed solutions to reduce bounce by more than 20%.
- Developed an 80-page training guide for Diageo's new hires.
- Set up an innovation project to engage American Express customers using emerging technologies, including RSS.
- Recruited a team to deliver progressive digital solutions to American Express, Diageo, and other travel and financial services clients.
Associate Director, Marketing
Digitas
- Led an American Express interactive account for leading direct, digital marketing. Managed senior client executive communications and devised stakeholder map and strategy.
- Coached a team of professionals across capabilities to drive a 110% increase in year-over-year revenue.
- Designed and implemented a groundbreaking credit card dashboard experience for customers. Features included consumer and business accounts statements, travel plans, upgrade offers, and payment management. Received industry accolades and awards.
- Created a new americanexpress.com consumer experience, resulting in higher site traffic, revenue, and customer acquisition.
- Innovated new ways for consumers to spend their membership rewards points, including seasonal promotions, RSS feed updates, and new partnerships.
Product Manager
Gartner
- Directed the global product management for the world's largest IT research and advisory company, with over 10,000 clients in 60 countries.
- Managed and devised the strategy for the highest-grossing product, representing 1/3 of the company's total revenue—$300 million.
- Launched new segmented products and grew to a $2.7 million business.
Marketing Manager
Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
- Improved marketing and product management for a world-leading media site. Unique visitors increased by 220% during my tenure, and the revenue doubled.
- Promoted to people management responsibilities, including spearheading a marketing manager, a coordinator, and a graphics team.
- Developed and launched new franchise products, including WashingtonJobs.com, increasing traffic by 100% and revenue by 150% in 12 months versus the previous site.
- Managed advertising agencies and consultants to deliver rebranding and three new media products.
- Designed, wrote the business case, and launched a new evergreen product—Washington's Best Bets—that became the highest-trafficked local part of washingtonpost.com. Garnered the highest consumer engagement in the 100 cities in the CitySearch network.
- Piloted industry-first usability testing using a statistically significant sample size to improve site experience. Increased page views and time on site by over 15%.
- Wrote and released press releases to gain visibility and share of voice.
Project History
Social Media Breakthrough
Achieved the number one spirit brand on social media, the reach of 3.2 million people in 120 countries, and 1.8 billion media impressions.
Program Portfolio SEO Brand Improvement
Led the global strategy and renovation of websites to achieve industry-beating SEO rankings, including number one for Vodka.
Re-branding Bulleit Bourbon
https://www.bulleit.com/Increased Bulleit Bourbon's sales by more than 200% and grew sales faster than established brands like Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, and Four Roses. Bulliet became the fastest-growing bourbon brand.
Captain's Conquest: Mobile Gaming App
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giDR0DKV4TABuilt one of the most downloaded and used apps in the beverage industry that broke ground for the gamification industry; saw over 500,000 downloads and won a Silver Cannes Ad award.
Rebrand for a Leading Sustainability SaaS Company
https://co2ai.comLet rebranding efforts increase demand generation, client perception, and industry recognition.
Toptal Marketing Vertical
https://toptal.comDesigned system and content for use by Toptal to screen potential digital marketing experts
GoMeals | Diabetes App
https://appadvice.com/app/gomeals/336651139Drove usage for the number one diabetes meal planning app in the world, growing to 600,000 downloads
FEATURES
• Food Trackers: Patients can search thousands of food and dishes from popular restaurants and grocery stores and the items they have in their own kitchens to determine the nutritional value (i.e., calories, carbohydrates, fats, protein, etc.) of the food they eat.
• Activity Tracker: Patients can calculate the calories they burn, selecting a physical activity and intensity level.
• Glucose Tracker: Record and view glucose numbers. Patients can track highs and lows, and with meal and exercise tags, they'll have a log of readings to share with you and their diabetes support team.
• Restaurant Locator: Which restaurants are closest and maps the location. With a database of over 20,000 restaurant items, they can make healthy eating choices before even stepping in the door.
• Cloud Sync: When patients log in, history and favorites are backed up to the GoMeals cloud network.
Pricing and Positioning of a New Product Category
Raised funds, gained product/market fit, and achieved adoption.
US/European Luxury eCommerce Site
Set up and launched the 1st direct-to-consumer site in the liquor (beverage) space, driving brand growth. Awarded the web award from The Web Marketing Association. and recognized by Luxury Daily as one of the top 10 digital projects.
Education
Graduate Certificate in Business Administration (Frontline Leadership)
George Washington University - Washington DC
Bachelor's Degree in Political Science
Oakland University - Rochester, MI
Certifications
LinkedIn Marketing Fundamentals Certification
Google Analytics Individual Qualification
Google Campaign Manager
Display and Video 360
Search Ads
Google Shopping
Adobe Certified Expert - Adobe Campaign Business Practitioner
Adobe
Sitecore Certified Marketer
SiteCore
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring