In this episode of Total Retail Tech Insights, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Megan McDonagh, chief marketing officer at Wpromote, a top independent marketing agency that challenges convention to accelerate growth for brands. Listen in as McDonagh provides an overview of Wpromote and her career background (1:00), the wide variety of industries the agency serves (3:40), and the challenges retail marketers are facing today (4:45). She details how brands can build smarter marketing strategies in times of uncertainty without sacrificing growth (7:30) and how artificial intelligence tools like Polaris IQ can enhance human expertise and drive better outcomes (12:45).

In addition, McDonagh discusses utilizing data to uncover missed opportunities in marketing strategy (17:35) as well as what it takes for an agency to stay ahead of the curve and help clients connect creative, technology and media (22:35). She emphasizes the need for alignment between strategy, creative, media and data teams and a clean data foundation (24:35) and shares one strategic shift that retail marketers and their agency partners have to make to stay competitive over the next year (25:35).

Megan McDonagh is the first chief marketing officer at independent marketing agency Wpromote, bringing over two decades of experience in technology marketing. Before joining Wpromote, she spent 20-plus years at Intel, leading teams across integrated marketing, product marketing, brand strategy, and partner marketing. She also served as CMO at enterprise SaaS startup Amperity and global industrial wearable company RealWear, driving brand transformation, demand generation, and product marketing innovation.

At Wpromote, McDonagh is shaping the agency’s go-to-market strategy, optimizing collaboration between sales and marketing, and spearheading a refreshed product marketing approach for Wpromote’s proprietary tech platform, Polaris. She holds a MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and a BS from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.