360 Brand Machine’s Kevin Smith Explains the Shift in the Consumer Landscape

Co-hosts Brad Forsythe & Ray Schilens interview Kevin Smith, Principal of 360 Brand Machine—an innovative strategic marketing boutique. Kevin has 20 years of diverse automotive experience spanning retail, product design and development, business strategy and brand communications. Kevin has held Senior Vice President Strategic Planning Director positions at both JWT and Campbell-Ewald—two of America’s largest brandcom/consulting agencies serving Ford Motor Company brands (Ford, Lincoln, Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo and Mazda) and at GM, the Chevrolet brand. Kevin helped grow a brand skunkworks operation within JWT for client Ford Motor Company and led several deep dive product and brand studies assessing global strategic, brand and product issues where project work was regularly presented to Ford senior leadership. He has also done extensive work in the design and product marketing environment bringing product, consumer and competitive insights into the upstream vehicle development process for concept and production vehicles. Kevin has led award-winning studies at Ford/JWT and has written innovative brand communication platforms for two of the world’s biggest volume brands, Ford and Chevrolet. Kevin has also published op-ed columns in leading automotive and branding publications such as Automotive News and Advertising Age and has been a regular presenter on industry topics to national dealer conferences and other industry gatherings. Recently, he has pioneered the development of a new voice of the customer tool leveraging real time virtual reality technology to aid in the emerging area of consumer co-creation. Kevin is a passionate student of the industry and a lifelong car enthusiast. He is driven by discovering and innovating what’s next in strategic marketing and helping clients solve problems.