Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill

Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill: How Senior Marketers Scale the Heights Through Art and Science provides readers with a fresh take on maximizing their potential. Author and marketer Nancie McDonnell Ruder conducted more than 50 in-depth interviews with some of the world's best marketers to study how they reached the pinnacles of their careers. These "Jacks" and "Jills" are prototypical marketing rock stars with many commonalities, including grit, prioritizing learning and the uncanny ability to combine what Nancie calls the art and science of their discipline.

Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill: How Senior Marketers Scale the Heights Through Art and Science provides readers with a fresh take on maximizing their potential. Author and marketer Nancie McDonnell Ruder conducted more than 50 in-depth interviews with some of the world’s best marketers to study how they reached the pinnacles of their careers. Their wisdom is featured prominently and is backed up by Nancie’s insight from 25 years of experience on both the agency side and as the founder of her own marketing consultancy, Noetic Consultants.

Nancie introduces you to “Jack” and “Jill,” who represent prototypical rock star marketers thriving in today’s complicated landscape. In gathering and examining their collective knowledge and behaviors, Nancie identifies the patterns that fuel their success. They are Jills- and Jacks-of-all-trades. They have grit. They place learning above looking like they know it all. They aren’t afraid to fail. And so much more.

The critical commonality Nancie finds is an uncanny ability of Jacks and Jills to combine what Nancie calls the art and science of their discipline—and to know when to shift from one to the other. In Jack and Jill, senior marketers (and those who aspire to be) get the secret to marketing success whispered in their ears, straight from the marketers’ mouths. Offering the Noetic Art & Science AssessmentTM and toolkit of resources, along with anecdotes, insight and wisdom, Jack and Jill shows readers where they fall on the marketing art/science continuum—and teaches how to ascend from there.

To paraphrase the iconic Leo Burnett Company campaign (Nancie, herself, is a Leo Burnett alum), modern marketing is not your father’s Oldsmobile. In order to drive products, services and careers where they need to go, today’s senior marketers need to hone some skills and trade in others for a newer model. The stories, advice and methods included in Jack and Jill enable today’s senior marketers to give their campaigns, clients and careers more horsepower by unlocking the philosophies, strategies and behaviors of the best in the field.

Nancie McDonnell Ruder wrote Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill: How Senior Marketers Scale the Heights Through Art and Science to satisfy her deep curiosity and offer senior marketers a fresh take on maximizing their potential. Featuring more than 50 in-depth interviews with some of the world’s best marketers, Nancie identifies and shares the “secret sauce” that fuels success in today’s complicated landscape. She offers insight, wisdom and concrete tools straight from the “Jacks” and “Jills” and her own 25-year career, which began at the Leo Burnett Company where she worked with Procter & Gamble, Eli Lilly, The Gap, Lexmark Computers and Hoerchst Marion Rousseau. In 2002, Nancie founded Noetic Consultants, whose clients have included Samsung, PepsiCo, Nike, Marriott, Mayo Clinic and Discovery, Inc. Nancie also serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, her undergraduate alma mater, and is the creator of the Noetic Art & Science Assessment™.