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.
Alan Adams, Senior Director of Customer Analytics at Office Depot, took part in a great panel discussion on integrated marketing management at the 2012 SAS Global Forum Executive Conference along with his colleagues from Seminole Gaming and Best Buy. The session included a short presentation by each panelist, followed by
SAS Executive Lead for Customer Intelligence Lori Bieda moderated this panel and introduced the concept of Marketing Optimization as the "Holy Grail" of marketing for the power it holds to enable marketing to fulfill its mandate as driving profitable growth for organizations. Joining her in this session was Stephan Chase,
I had the distinct pleasure today to hear Guy Kawasaki deliver a keynote address at the SAS Global Forum Executive Conference 2012. I thought of his engaging address as a nice guide for personal effectiveness, particularly in a professional realm. And my main takeaway from yesterday's keynote address by Joe
I just saw the legendary NFL quarterback Joe Theismann deliver his keynote address today at SAS Global Forum 2012, and as expected, he provided us with vivid anecdotes and recollections from his experiences both as a championship athlete and as a businessman. By delivering an engaging mix of humor, lessons learned
As a marketer at SAS, there are few better moments than being at SAS Global Forum, happening right now at Walt Disney Dolphin Resort and the Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando, FL. It's like an annual family reunion of SAS users from around the world, all coming together to reconnect,
We recently held a half-day session devoted entirely to search marketing that gave us an opportunity to cast a wide net internally about this very important topic. I learned some new things and also had a few moments where it seemed the obvious was being presented, but sometimes even "hearing the
During January 15 - 18, 2012 in New York City, the National Retail Federation will conduct its 101st annual "Retail's BIG Show" and once again SAS will be there in a big way. The retail industry is a big deal at SAS and SAS benefits retailers in a big way, with more than 600
According to Wikipedia, marketing with music can roughly be traced back to 1923 with the dawn of commercial radio broadcasting. What we now know as a "jingle" first aired on Christmas Eve in 1926, touting the merits of General Mills' Wheaties cereal. As we all know, musical messages have since become a staple for advertisements on
My friend and colleague, Matt Fulk, has detailed in his posts some of the great ways we've used SAS Customer Intelligence to improve our own marketing. Using SAS fits with our culture of measurement and analysis that keeps us constantly focused on finding better ways to do things, and one
One of the best things about having marketers as my target market is that I personally benefit from thought leaders I get to work with to offer my audience valuable content. And this blog is a great way for me to share some of the best of the best. When it
