Throughout his career, Aon’s Michael Marinello has worked with film stars, politicians and businesses to showcase the power of technology. Here, he gave us an insight into what being a thought leader entails.
The job title ‘thought leader’ is something of a head scratcher. What does a thought leader actually do? And how does one become a thought leader in the first place?
The nature of the role can be simply explained as communications mixed with leadership duties. Good ideas and a head for business is also a must. Most thought leaders are employed by big multinational professional services companies, seeing as they are the types of businesses who need thought leaders.
To get more of a flavour of what being a thought leader entails, SiliconRepublic.com heard from Aon’s Michael Marinello, who is based in New York.
Marinello’s title at the financial services giant is head of communications and content. Unsurprisingly, technology plays a significant role in how he does his job.
Talking about the value of technology
“One of the more interesting challenges I am constantly brought in to solve for firms and organisations of all types and industries is helping non-tech companies understand the value of their tech organisations,” he said.
This involves liaising with colleagues, clients and tech workers themselves “in order to raise brand value, accelerate business success and recruit and retain the necessary talent”.
To be successful in joining different teams together to work on new projects, Marinello has to be diplomatic and adaptable, but there’s also a certain amount of methodology in what he does.
“Each situation has been different, but creating a value based, data and analytical approach has always led to successful outcomes for me,” he said.
Marinello has more than 20 years of career experience under his belt, and he has quite an extensive CV. It reads like a who’s who of media and tech giants.
He has worked for Microsoft, Bloomberg, IBM, TimeWarner/Turner Broadcasting and his own consultancy firm.
Marinello has proved his worth as someone who can lead and generate new ideas for businesses over the years.
During his time at Microsoft, he worked for the general counsel on intellectual property, before running communications and analyst relations for Microsoft Office (now Microsoft 365). The latter involved launching Office 2010 and the platform we now know as Skype.
He also worked for Bloomberg, serving on the CTO and head of engineering’s leadership teams. He created and ran a cross-platform brand positioning and reputation effort for Bloomberg’s tech, innovation and design division.
He was part of the team that designed, launched and ran Bloomberg’s first R&D office in Silicon Valley. And he helped IBM rebuild its comms platform also while he was with them.
Tech for the entertainment industry
As someone based in the US with an interest and proven track record in communications, it is inevitable that Marinello decided to leverage the power of the entertainment industry to push brands.
He created and ran Bloomberg’s branded entertainment group, which saw him and his team work on films such as The Big Short, Equity, Billions and The Newsroom. They created partnerships with the movie industry to showcase Bloomberg’s technology in these productions.
Marinello also served as a technical advisor on multiple productions – including Money Monster, starring Jodie Foster, George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
Working with some of Hollywood’s heavy hitters was always going to be a tough act to follow, but Marinello, whose pleasingly alliterative name lends itself to showbiz, later moved to Turner Broadcasting/TimeWarner.
While there, he was external comms lead for the CEO John Turner. The role saw him working with the company’s global departments compiling plans to position it as a tech leader in the entertainment world.
Branching into politics
Working with high profile people on high profile projects meant Marinello made his mark in politics, too. He was a member of TechNYC’s leadership council, a network of tech leaders that was set up by former mayor of New York and CEO of Bloomberg, Mike Bloomberg.
When Bloomberg launched his presidential campaign in 2020, he selected Marinello as his chief liaison to the tech industry.
By the time he took that job on, Marinello had seen a lot of tech developments in his industry. He lived through “the advent of the 24-hour news cycle brought on by the online news revolution in the late 90s”.
He saw the “value of using technology to enhance the storytelling capabilities of firms and organisations”, as well as “the ascension and then dominance of social media and mobile technologies as the primary means of news and information consumption”.
And he witnessed the digitisation of the entertainment industry which transitioned from tape and film to the use of IP (internet protocols). As Marinello put it, what all this meant was that over time “tech companies became entertainment companies and entertainment companies became tech companies”.
Nowadays, he would describe himself as more than a thought leader and content head.
“Succinctly put, my job is an extension of who I am as a person – builder, problem solver, leader, communicator, storyteller, entrepreneur.”
And it’s not for the faint-hearted.
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