Our Leadership

THE AMA FOUR – BOARD MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

MEET CRAIG CHARNEY – FROM INTERNATIONAL POLLING TO INTERNATIONAL MARKETING

(1) When did you know you were made for marketing?

For Craig, there wasn’t one specific moment when he knew marketing was the right path. Instead, it was the realization that the same skills he had developed studying people and understanding public opinion could also help brands understand their customers. Now Craig has worked on projects and campaigns in the and over 50 other countries.

His early work in international polling gave him an opportunity to study what people thought, wanted, and cared about. Marketing offered a natural extension of that work, allowing him to apply those insights in a new context.

What began with research in South Africa and work connected to the Mandela and Clinton campaigns eventually opened the door to a career in international marketing.

(2) What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

The best advice Craig received came from his father, who was a traveling salesman:

“The customer is always right.”

It’s a simple piece of advice, but one Craig believes applies just as much to marketing as it does to sales. At its core, the lesson is about listening. Understanding what customers want, what they don’t want, and what they are actually telling you can make all the difference.

(3) What advice would you give your younger self?

If Craig could give his younger self one piece of advice, it would be to pay more attention to the customer.

That means looking beyond what you want to communicate and focusing on the people receiving the message. What do they want? What don’t they want? What are they telling you?

For Craig, keeping the customer at the center is not just good advice for marketers. It is a mindset that can shape an entire career.

(4) The Fun Fact

Craig has had plenty of unique experiences throughout his career, but one stands out: he conducted the first polls ever in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, as well as in the Pakistan-Afghan tribal regions.

At the time, the team believed they could not travel directly into the tribal regions, so they brought people from those areas to non-tribal regions of Pakistan to conduct the research.

The experience led to an unexpected observation. At the end of the interviews, the team said to the respondents, thank you for answering our questions. The respondents replied, thank you for asking. No one was ever interested in our opinions before.

From South Africa to Afghanistan, and from political polling to international marketing, Craig’s career has been shaped by one consistent thread: understanding people.

His journey is a reminder that the skills we develop in one chapter of our careers can open doors to entirely new ones, sometimes in places we never expected.