Hi, I'm John Balla - I co-founded the SAS Customer Intelligence blog and served as Editor for five years. I held a number of marketing roles at SAS as Content Strategist, Industry Field Marketing and as Go-to-Marketing Lead for our Customer Intelligence Solutions. I like to find and share content and experiences that open doors, answer questions, and sometimes challenge assumptions so better questions can be asked. Outside of work I am an avid downhill snow skier, hiker and beach enthusiast. I stay busy with my family, volunteering for civic causes, keeping my garden green, striving for green living, expressing myself with puns, and making my own café con leche every morning. I’ve lived and worked on 3 contents and can communicate fluently in Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and get by with passable English. Prior to SAS, my experience in marketing ranges from Fortune 100 companies to co-founding two start ups. I studied economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and got an MBA from Georgetown. Follow me on Twitter. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
I get the most interesting insights from questions my kids ask me about my work. Why? Because they know very little about big data or analytics, and the questions they ask are sometimes about things that I’ve taken for granted. Every time that happens, it reminds me that the questions you
I have the hardest time getting my teenagers to use email. It's a generational thing that all parents probably contend with, and for marketers, it points to the growing importance of social media and mobile apps in the marketing mix. But unless teenagers comprise your largest target market, there's one enduring
Starbucks is a company that has amply demonstrated that it’s about far more than pouring a cup of coffee. Their famous CEO Howard Schultz has boldly led the company to take on social impact initiatives that give their customers the opportunity to participate in those initiatives. Not all of the initiatives
I learned the hard way years ago that writing succinctly is hard work – and worth all the effort. Thanks to a stringent marketing professor who insisted all case write-ups be submitted on a single sheet of paper, I developed a genuine appreciation for good, clean writing and a similar
As social media burst onto the scene as a game-changer for marketing several years ago, a lot of focus was placed on the need for brands to be transparent, authentic and accountable in their interactions. Those have always been hallmarks of good business practices, but what had changed was that social media made it
How often do you give much thought to your card swipe? It’s become so commonplace that I doubt you think of it at all – and that’s how it's supposed to be. Fast, easy and a complete non-event so you can be on your way in no time at all
Why are they thinking that? And how is their customer experience different with mobile? As the world is going mobile, those were the questions on our mind as we kicked off an important research project with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management (the Research). We were motivated to zero in on those
It’s Father’s Day and once again I am crowd-sourcing some fatherly advice to provide guidance to marketers. While marketing and the world we live in have changed dramatically, the essence of fatherhood has remained fairly constant. Part hands-on and part supportive of their children’s mother, dads are often thought of
In today’s digital world, even the most dedicated customers can have different needs and preferences at different times and places. And while customers can certainly be fickle, that’s not what always drives the situationally-dependent nature of the customer relationship. It’s life today that makes it so complex. Think of your own customers
Television is a great equalizer – everyone has one or surely knows what it is, making it easy to relate to. For instance, just about anyone could tell you their favorite program. In my case right now, it would have to be a tie between Scandal and Modern Family. So as a devotee
