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Chris Thurston

Managing Director
Richmond, VA

Chris brings over 25 years of experience as a brand, marketing, and business strategist for national and international consumer and business-to-business companies. Chris currently serves clients as a fractional CMO, a brand and marketing strategist, and as a project lead on marketing initiatives. He focuses on uncovering the best and most appropriate marketing strategies to drive sales, marketing effectiveness, and ROI while optimizing resources, technologies, and teams to drive client sales growth. Chris regularly builds out plans for clients, leveraging strategies designed to generate cumulative brand growth, clearly defined metrics, as well as consistent engagement with customers and target segments.

Early in his career, Chris launched and built RightMinds, which became one of the larger marketing consulting and advertising firms in the mid-Atlantic. He went on to lead a global B2B digital marketing for Hamilton Beach Brands. With his team, he marketed an array of commercial products in over 100 countries around the globe. This has given him tremendous client-side understanding and empathy for the challenges that all marketing organizations face. Over the last decade, his focus has been digital strategy, marketing planning, growth marketing, customer experience, sales and channel enablement, marketing technology deployment, CRM strategy, and marketing automation.

FUNCTION & SPECIALIZATION

  • Fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)
  • Managed digital marketing services
  • Marketing strategy and planning
  • Marketing technology, automation, CRM – strategy and deployment
  • Sales/channel enablementent

REPRESENTATIVE CLIENTS & PAST EXPERIENCES

  • RightMinds
  • Hamilton Beach Brand – Global Commercial Strategic Marketing
  • Amstel Light/Heineken
  • Dominion (Power Utility)
  • Genworth Financial
  • LandAmerica
  • Ritz-Carlton
  • Hamilton Beach Commerical
  • Marriott Hotels
  • Reynolds Aluminum
  • Inova Health System
  • Time Life Music
  • The Federal Reserve Bank
  • Carl Zeiss Optical
  • Mutual Assurance
  • Richmond Tourism & Economic Development

EDUCATION, LICENSES & CERTIFICATIONS

  • B.S., Mass Communications & Advertising, Virginia Commonwealth University