Every week we’re highlighting marketing leaders, experts, and disruptors within the SUM community sharing real advice, insights, and perspective.
This week, we caught up with David H. Dancer, Founder and CEO of D2 Marketing Strategies. A six-time CMO and President of Future Method with over 30 years of experience, he has helped build and scale brands across wellness, fintech, retail, SaaS, and emerging categories, holding executive leadership roles with companies including Teleflora, MedMen, Inspire Clean Energy, Openpay, NGDATA, and Future Method. Today, David serves as a fractional executive and growth advisor, partnering with founders and leadership teams to drive growth, build brands, and navigate transformation. He brings a practical operator's perspective shaped by decades of leading teams, launching products, and scaling businesses.
Where do you go when you need inspiration?
Travel, without question.
I love new experiences, and I find myself constantly dissecting businesses while I'm traveling. Hotels, restaurants, retailers, airlines, museums, even a neighborhood coffee shop. Why does one experience feel special and another forgettable? Why are some businesses frictionless and others frustrating?
Travel forces me to slow down, recharge, and see things differently. Some of my best ideas have come when I wasn't trying to come up with ideas at all.
What's the best thing a fellow marketer has ever taught you?
One of my bosses at Visa taught me the power of a good brief. He would spend hours writing them, and we'd often have two or three rounds of edits before anything ever reached an agency. At the time, I thought it was excessive.
What I learned was that getting the brief right was most of the work. It forced us to really understand the customer, define the problem we were solving, and establish how we'd measure success. If you gave agencies and partners enough context, they would do their best work. I've found that's true whether you're a Fortune 50 company or a startup.
What would you tell a marketer just starting out today?
Use the early part of your career to try on as many hats as possible. Startups are great for that because everyone has to do a little bit of everything.
Learn brand, performance, CRM, analytics, customer experience, e-commerce, whatever you can get your hands on. You may eventually choose a specialty or remain a generalist, but having a broad understanding makes you much more valuable over time.
And stay curious. Read. Join communities like this one. Find marketers you admire and ask them for a virtual coffee. Most people are willing to share what they've learned. I've learned just as much from conversations with other marketers over the years as I have from conferences or classes.
What’s one boring-but-brilliant way you use AI?
I probably use AI more as a colleague than a copywriter.
As a consultant, I spend a lot of time working on my own. AI helps me conduct research, make sense of large amounts of information, review copy, and pressure-test ideas before they ever go to a client. It's made me much more efficient.
What it hasn't done is replace strategy. That still comes from experience. AI can help me get to an answer faster, but it can't replace judgment. I think too many marketers are asking AI to do their thinking instead of using it to improve their thinking.
I love new experiences, and I find myself constantly dissecting businesses while I'm traveling
What’s your toxic marketing trait?
I came from large companies, where we'd spend hours refining briefs and making sure every box was checked before moving forward. That tendency followed me into startups. My instinct is always to want one more conversation, one more edit, or one more data point before pushing go.
Startups have taught me to get comfortable with ambiguity. Things rarely come together exactly as planned, and waiting for perfect information is usually a recipe for moving too slowly. I still like a good plan, but I've learned that progress beats perfection.