Meet the Boost! Team: David Darby

Janinne: Where did you fall in love with the magic of marketing?

David: For me, it started in that most magical of places – Pittsburgh (laughing).  But seriously, it began back there in an early job on the agency side as I helped clients tell the stories of their brands, and then the real catharsis came in my next role with a Boston management consultancy.

I was having such a blast learning how to drive growth for small- and mid-sized businesses that it gave me the bug for entrepreneurial marketing, which led me to pursue that focus in my MBA at Babson. I then joined what some at the time were calling a “ten-billion-dollar start-up,”  Amazon!   At the time it was the right choice for me.  My wife and I were starting our family, so it was a great time to balance the fast-paced dynamism of a sky’s-the-limit business environment with the stable security of a large corporation.  I loved that mix, and got to help launch a number of Amazon’s marketplace stores, then moved over to manage their Music and Movies third-party businesses.

 Janinne:  Can you tell us about the biggest marketing challenge you faced so far in your career?

David: That came next, while working at Microsoft.  My role was to bring products to market globally for the Display Advertising group, working closely to set up field sales for success while bringing the clear voice of customers to the engineers building what’s next.  The scale, international/organizational complexities and pace of change were both exhilarating and challenging.  For example, we launched the industry’s first true multi-screen targeting, allowing an advertiser to tell a sequential story to a desired audience across their daily use of MSN, Skype, Xbox, Outlook and Windows. One challenge we faced was moving our salespeople from telling ‘silo’ stories (say, the MSN pitch or the Xbox value proposition) to a narrative that conveyed the power of the unified Microsoft media ecosystem across 35 different countries.  Long story short: the global sales trainings, demo videos and pitch collateral we built helped Sales make that leap with clients, and the launch had the positive splash we sought.  Being able to work on projects like this made my seven years there pass by in a flash.

Janinne: Even with those challenging work pursuits, you must have time for other interests?

David: I love spending time in the mountains and oceans, and some of my favorite memories are of climbing Alaska’s Denali, mountain biking from Telluride to Moab and paddling a wooden kayak I built around Orcas Island.  Kids naturally usher in a different stage, and my greatest recent joys have been coaching their soccer teams and teaching them to ski and sail.

 Janinne: What brings you to Boost!?

 David: I love the variety of client engagements Boost! offers. We deliver projects for high-scale, matrixed organizations, while simultaneously engaging with budding ventures who have complex, early-stage needs of a very different type.  That diversity energizes me.  Frankly, I also prize the flexibility my current role offers me.  It’s a cliche, but halfway through life, I’ve come to greatly appreciate the ability to work hard, play hard… and attend my daughter’s dance recital.