Josh Blacksmith serves as the head of global digital consumer experience at Kimberly-Clark. Blacksmith, who has over 20 years of integrated marketing, digital transformation and brand-building experience, is a passionate proponent of leveraging the sophisticated activation of data, technology and creativity to help Kimberly-Clark’s iconic brands such as Kleenex®, Huggies®, Kotex® and Cottonelle® unlock value in every consumer moment – deepening consumer relationships and delivering unparalleled growth.
In his role, Blacksmith partners with the company’s global, regional and local marketing teams to build and scale best practices in digital execution while accelerating transformation throughout the organization’s omnichannel data-driven marketing efforts. As a result of Blacksmith’s leadership, the organization has built a consumer data strategy that is helping Kimberly-Clark take control of its own consumer relationships in order to optimize 1:1 lifetime value.
He has also introduced and scaled a new global, consumer-centric marketing model rooted in building cross-channel marketing plans that maximize the ROI of every consumer interaction. In addition, he has worked to introduce data science into the organization by uncovering behavioral and transactional data signals and demonstrating how to work with agility to drive growth by activating these signals across media platforms and scaling wins through automation.
Prior to joining Kimberly-Clark, Blacksmith was the senior vice president and general manager of customer relationship management (CRM) at FCB Chicago for nearly seven years. During that time, he provided strategic direction and oversight to the global CRM, MarTech and omnichannel direct marketing practice for an extensive client list that included Toyota, Lexus, Samsung, Allergan, State Farm, Clorox, PACCAR, Volkswagen and Anheuser-Busch.
Prior to his work at FCB, Blacksmith spent more than 10 years at several marketing and advertising agencies, including MXM (acquired by Accenture Song) and Biggs-Gilmore (acquired by VMLY&R), leading global CRM, performance marketing and digital programs for Kellogg’s, Kraft Heinz, Fiat Chrysler and Walmart, among others.
Blacksmith was honored as the ‘2021 Charles S Downs Response Marketer of the Year’ by the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing (CADM), was selected as a ‘2020 Consumer Goods Visionary’ by Consumer Goods Technology, was named a ‘Top 40 Under 40 Marketer’ by Direct Marketing News in 2014, and he was recognized by Marketing EDGE as a ‘Rising Stars Honoree’ in 2016.
He is President-Elect for the American Marketing Association (AMA) of Chicago, past Chairman of the Board of Governors for the ANA’s International ECHO awards, past President of the CADM and holds a Bachelor of Arts in advertising from Iowa State University along with a Master of Business Administration from the University of Iowa.