Gen-X, Millennial Digital Opps: Forbes promotes two marketing leaders (Score 64)

Forbes created a new position by promoting former CMO Lynn Schlesinger to chief customer experience officer. Schlesinger joined Forbes in 2019 as brand and demand VP before being promoted to CMO in early 2020. She will now report to chief technology officer Vadim Supitskiy and will be responsible for merging marketing and technology. Sherry Phillips is taking over as CMO after serving as SVP of Forbes LIVE. Phillips will report to CRO Jessica Sibley and manage brand strategy, integrated marketing and design.

Per Pathmatics, Forbes earned 92.3m impressions YTD through Facebook ads (45%), Twitter ads (22%), desktop display ads (21%), Instagram ads (8%) and mobile display ads (4%). It placed the majority (90%) of these ads site direct onto sites such as facebook.com, twitter.com, instagram.com, yahoo.com and zillow.com. It placed the remainder (10%) through a variety of indirect channels onto sites such as cnn.com, finance.yahoo.com, dmv.org, cars.com and pof.com. It spent around $509k on digital display ads YTD, a 23% increase from $414.9k spent in this channel during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend fell 36% from $2.2m in 2019 to $1.4m in 2020. 

Sellers-- I believe Forbes is mainly targeting Gen-Xers and millennials. It reaches these demographics primarily through digital display ads. The company placed the majority of these ads directly onto social media. Forbes is ramping spend back up after cutting costs in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic. It also invests in OOH and print ads, per Kantar. I do not expect to see any radical changes to this company's marketing strategy, considering 

Agency & martech readers-- I believe Forbes works with creative AOR Gyro NY, with an in-house team taking care of media buying and planning. Promoted CMOs are much less likely to review the agency roster than outside hires. However, you should still reach out to Forbes to see if you can pick up any of its business. I recommend offering digital and/or social media assistance.