Jim Garrity

Who is Jim Garrity?

Jim Garrity has worked for three Fortune 50 companies in his career

in sales and marketing positions. His career began with IBM in sales in

the Tri-State (NY-CT-NJ) area. After 14 years in sales and sales

leadership roles, he transitioned into Marketing Communications.

Jim held a number of marketing and communications positions, the last

one being Director of Advertising, IBM US, the position he held when he

left IBM in 1992, At that time, he went to work for Compaq in Houston

where he held two positions, the last being Vice President of

Communications. From 1997- 2007, he served as Executive Vice President

Chief Marketing Officer at First Union in Charlotte, NC, which

today goes to market under the Wachovia brand as a result of the First

Union-Wachovia merger in 2001.

Accomplishments include development and launch of new advertising

campaigns at IBM 1988-1992 which significantly increased awareness and

consideration for the IBM masterbrand as well as the specialized

business unit offerings spanning business and consumer markets.

At Compaq, Jim led the rebranding and repositioning effort to drive

awareness that a) Compaq was much more than a premium-priced product

company with only high end products and b) a company that was bringing

highly innovative products to the consumer market (a new market for

Compaq in the mid 90's).

At Wachovia, he led the efforts to transform a virtually unknown

brand (Wachovia) into a national financial services powerhouse,

virtually building a Fortune 50 brand, “from scratch." He also

developed a highly regarded marketing ROI measurement system that

ultimately led to moving the marketing investment decision making mode

from intuitive and anecdotal to fact-based decision making.

Jim retired from Wachovia in July, 2007 after ten years there as

CMO. Today, he is advising a small number of technology startups with

business models that he finds to be exciting and personally engaging.

He also enjoyed a long and deep relationship with the Association of

National Advertisers (ANA) and served as a member of the ANA board of

directors from 1995-2007. In 1998, he served as Chairman of the Board

of the ANA. From 1995- 2007, he served as founder and chairman of the

ANA's New Technology Committee - a group focused on emerging

developments in marketing and marketing communications techniques and

technologies. From 1996-2007, Jim also served as a director of the

board of the AdCouncil.

For the past several years, he has been teaching MBA classes at Wake

Forest University's Babcock School of Business. In addition, Jim has

taught undergraduate and MBA classes at Stamford, University of

California, Berkeley, University of North Carolina, and Duke.