Wildfire Hires Industry Veteran Doug Laird as CMO to Drive Growth and Leadership in the Social Media Market

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Wildfire, the leading provider of social media marketing software with over 13,000 paying customers, today announced that veteran enterprise software executive Doug Laird has joined the company as its chief marketing officer.  Laird will be responsible for leading all global marketing efforts for Wildfire, defining the global market strategy and vision, branding, product positioning and segmentation, and demand creation.

Laird has been instrumental in helping many of the world's most successful B2B and B2C technology companies define their categories, drive growth, and become market leaders. His track record of success spans fast-growing industries such as CRM, business intelligence, online trading, and compliance.  Laird's background includes a deep understanding of customer relationship management, analytics, and community, three key elements of social media marketing as brands look to better use customer information to business advantage.

Laird joins Wildfire from business intelligence software company QlikTech, where as vice president of global marketing he helped the company grow its annual revenue run-rate from $80 million to $321 million in three years, leading Gartner to call QlikTech a "marketing juggernaut."  Laird also oversaw marketing strategy and demand creation during the company's IPO in July 2010, which was one of the top three best performing technology IPOs of the past two years.  

Prior to joining QlikTech, Laird held executive-level marketing roles at SAP/Virsa, Siebel Systems and Oracle. At Oracle, Laird reported to future Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff, and helped increase Oracle's database market share from 15 percent to 35 percent.

"Doug's background makes him an ideal fit for Wildfire – with expertise in CRM, analytics, and community building, Doug has a very deep understanding of three key building blocks that will help us take social marketing to the next level," said Victoria Ransom, founder and CEO of Wildfire.  "Doug is also an expert in helping enterprise software companies define categories and establish market leadership, and he will be instrumental as we accelerate our growth and continue our push into the enterprise.  We are thrilled to have Doug join the team."

"As a long-time technology marketer, I believe that social engagement is the marketing model of the future, and Wildfire is in the best position to capitalize on this trend and serve the market with its volume and velocity model, focused on small and medium-sized businesses with rapid movement into the enterprise.  I've seen this approach succeed time and again with the world's top software companies, such as Salesforce.com, and it's clear to me that Wildfire has the same scalable model that will allow us to take advantage of this tremendous opportunity," said Laird.  "Wildfire is a thought leader that is ushering in the new era of engagement marketing, and I'm excited to join the team at this pivotal point in the company's history."

About Wildfire

Wildfire is the global leader in social media marketing software, with over 13,000 paying customers worldwide, including 30 of the world's 50 most valuable brands. Wildfire's Social Marketing Suite combines best-of-breed social promotion and advertising software, robust mobile and desktop page management, messaging and sophisticated real-time analytics in one complete platform. Wildfire's powerful and intuitive software allows creative marketers and non-technical managers alike to create social campaigns and pages, communicate with their social audience and measure social media performance. Brands and agencies such as Facebook, Virgin, Amazon, Target and Ogilvy as well as thousands of small businesses use the Wildfire platform to engage with audiences on major social networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The only social media marketing company to receive an investment from Facebook's fbFund, Wildfire has offices in California, Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Munich, and Singapore.  For more information, please visit www.wildfireapp.com.

SOURCE Wildfire