Up and Coming: A Bundle Marketer on the Rise in New Jersey

There’s a like mother, like daughter saga unfolding at Comcast’s New Jersey operations. Marge Jackson, mother of two at age 37, got promoted a few months ago to regional marketing VP, overseeing the top MSO’s 12 systems and 1.4 million subscribers in the Garden State. Daughter Margie at 22 is moving up in human resources, celebrating five years with Comcast’s cluster of eight northern New Jersey systems, where Marge previously served as senior marketing director. The pattern doesn’t stop there. Both women launched their industry careers the same way, as Comcast sales reps—mother Marge pitching high-speed service, daughter Margie doing shifts at a kiosk display while still in high school. Greg Arnold, regional SVP for Comcast’s New Jersey systems, credits up-and-comer Marge with boosting subscriber growth and reducing churn through creative marketing tactics during her tenure. Her triple-play campaign is paying off: About 22-24% of northern New Jersey callers each month are signing up for voice/video/data bundles since digital phone was rolled out six months ago. Arnold touts Marge as a Comcast and cable industry marketer to watch. "She has a great blend of strategic focus and operations focus," he says. "She gets involved with the nuts and bolts of the business, and uses that understanding to produce rollout campaigns like digital phone that get solid results. What’s also remarkable is that she’s growing business in the New York City area where we’re not the dominant player. That’s a tough challenge when Time Warner Cable and Cablevision naturally get most of the media attention." Marge’s first priority in her new role, apart from maintaining momentum for bundle sales, is integrating the 200 marketing people already under her wing in Comcast’s northern New Jersey area—just west of New York City—with 100 marketing people working at systems in the Philadelphia are. Second is putting more bilingual and multilingual customer service reps on duty in Comcast’s five call centers statewide to support more promotion of services among Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans. Customer service is a critical tool for producing strong marketing results, Marge believes. "We can do all the messages we want, and create exciting promotions that drive traffic, but ultimately, you must make sure there are folks at our end of the line who serve those customers," she says.