Walls that Rock

Kevin Hartman works with students in his office.

You know that old adage: It’s not polite to stare?

In Kevin Hartman’s Mendoza College of Business office, it’s impossible not to.

To your left, the entire wall is filled floor to ceiling with a collage of original posters, prints and memorabilia in an homage to two decades of hipster coolness and retro rock: Talking Heads, Adam Ant, David Gray (a signed poster), Ace Café.

This is not the melange of a teenager’s messy room but an art installation that invites memories and musing.

For Hartman, it’s more like a movable visual feast.

“I’ve had literally the same office for 20-some years, just in three different buildings,” said Hartman, perusing the wall. “This was the same thing I did when I was at an ad agency and then when I was at Google. Some things are new, but as I find things that I think are cool, they just kind of go up on the wall.”

Kevin Hartman

His office décor may be a constant, but Hartman has witnessed tremendous technological change during his career in digital marketing, which started in the late 1990s when the industry was still in its infancy. Hartman is an associate teaching professor of marketing and academic director of the newly launched Notre Dame Master of Science in Digital Marketing program at the Mendoza College of Business.

A few years after graduating from Notre Dame with a B.A. in political science and economics, he landed a job with the Chicago-headquartered advertising firm FCB. Then known as DraftFCB, the agency was a digital marketing innovator.

“We were one of the first agencies that used data to inspire and direct our creative advertising. For five years, we were out in front, and nobody else was doing the stuff we were doing,” said Hartman. “The idea of using data to better understand the wants and needs of customers, and building a feedback loop to fulfill those wants and needs, was a new idea then.

“Those were exciting and fun times, and it really put a huge stamp on me and my comprehension of how you can use data in marketing. But now, of course, everyone is doing it. But I am so grateful to have experienced the merger of technology and advertising at the cutting edge.”

In 2012, Hartman left his position as senior vice president and director of analytics at FCB to join Google’s analytics team. During his 11-year tenure with the Silicon Valley tech giant, he rose to the position of chief analytics strategist.

Digital marketing became a central theme of societal conversations about the future of privacy during this period, largely due to the explosive growth of the field and an ongoing proliferation of players in the digital advertising space. The biggest changes, Hartman noted, came on the YouTube side of the company’s business.

“When I arrived, YouTube was the only game in town. We really didn’t have much of an analytics capability then because we did not need it,” Hartman said. “When you sold advertising, you basically said, ’OK, we’ve got search and we’ve got YouTube. How much of it do you want to buy?’ But over time, competition came in — Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok. The competition put YouTube in a position where it had to sing for its supper. Google had to show its customers what they were receiving in return for their advertising investments. We’d never had to tell that story before. Suddenly, data and measurement became much more important.”

Hartman’s knowledge of the history of digital marketing helps him see how the industry is likely to evolve in the future, which he wrote about in his 2020 book, Digital Marketing Analytics: In Theory And In Practice. The digital marketing industry is now valued at more than $300 billion annually — a number that is projected to double by 2028. As Hartman looks to the future, he believes it is essential that the industry’s growth be driven not only by data and by profits, but also by ethics.

“I am excited to give students a leading-edge view into the impact of technology on marketing,” said Hartman. “AI has changed the rules of the data game — the scale of the data required and how frequently it needs to be refreshed. It allows you to build a picture of your customers’ interests and better understand their wants and needs. But it is also important to respect your customers’ privacy, and understand how the decisions we make as executives can impact our company, our brand, our customers and society at large.”

Read more about Kevin Hartman’s development of the Notre Dame Master of Science in Digital Marketing program.