In December, the marketing technology firm Epsilon named Jeff Smith its new chief marketing officer. Smith succeeds the company’s former marketing leader, Jon Beebe, who stepped down last year to found the consultancy, QuirkWerk.

For more than 25 years before joining Epsilon, Smith worked in marketing or data-adjacent roles at companies including Oracle, Nielsen, LiveRamp and several high-growth startups.

“I can say that I am old enough to have seen what marketing and advertising looked like before the whole digital revolution took hold, and really been a part of that journey since it did,” Smith told ADWEEK. “The common thread? It’s always been focused on servicing the CMO and helping marketers better wield data.”

In 2019, Publicis Groupe acquired Epsilon and now relies on it to power its PeopleCloud audience management platform—media planning and activation software that guides clients’ investment strategies. For its holding company, Epsilon plays a crucial role as an in-house data asset and opens new revenue streams with its product offering, since technology assets like PeopleCloud often sway media agency review outcomes. Now, holding companies are competing for the most comprehensive dataset and technology platform interface. By the end of 2022, Epsilon was rolling out a PeopleCloud rebrand that simplified its product by comparing data to building blocks.

Before accepting the CMO role last year, Smith was a senior advisor at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and an independent consultant to brand marketers. In both roles, he noted chief marketers’ pressing challenges. After exploring Epsilon’s offering, he realized its product suite provided solutions to common problems his former clients flagged.

“There’s some low-hanging fruit with Epsilon, in the sense that the company has invested very little in marketing historically,” Smith said.

He spoke further with ADWEEK about what drew him to the CMO role and marketers’ biggest tech stack challenges.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

ADWEEK: What about Epsilon, specifically, was attractive to you?

Smith: When Epsilon first reached out to me, I had not thought a lot about the company since the Publicis acquisition. When I started doing a little bit of due diligence, I saw all the things my clients were telling me that they needed. I saw a CDP; I saw a cleanroom; I saw a DSP; I saw a retail media network; I saw an SSP … Everything that marketers are asking about right now, this company has.

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