About Scott Murphy

Strategist.
Storyteller.
Results First.

I'm a marketing strategist and fractional CMO based in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Ten-plus years of building and running programs that move numbers — across pharmaceutical, e-commerce, consumer goods, and professional services. Strategy and execution, together. Not one without the other.

10+
Years in Market
6
Industries
8
Roles Held
98%
Client Retention
Fractional CMO Open to In-House Roles
The Background

Where the Work
Comes From.

The career in numbers is one thing. Here's the context behind how a journalism major from the University of Florida became a marketing strategist managing $56M budgets and building brands from scratch.

Education
🎓
University of Florida
BS Magazine Journalism
Minor: Theatre · Class of 2004
Managing Editor — Orange & Blue Magazine
🏛
President — Hispanic Communicators Association
Currently Based
📍
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Available locally and nationally
💼
Lead Consultant — Axis Creative Consulting
🟢
Open to in-house roles
Full-time marketing leadership
The Beginning

I Started in Journalism.
Not Marketing.

I graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in Magazine Journalism — not a marketing degree, not a business degree. At the time, I thought I was going to write for a living. What I didn't realize yet was that journalism had already given me the most valuable skill in marketing: the ability to understand an audience, structure a story for them, and make every word earn its place.

That foundation never left. It's why I write my own copy. It's why I can walk into a strategy session and quickly identify what a brand is really saying versus what it thinks it's saying. It's why the messaging work I do tends to be cleaner and more direct than what most marketing teams produce — because I was trained to communicate, not to impress.

Journalism taught me that clarity is a form of respect. If your audience has to work hard to understand you, you've already lost them.


Building the Toolkit

A Decade of Real-World Programs.

The first marketing roles built the digital foundation — web management, SEO, email, social, and paid advertising for clients across hospitality, property management, and media. Then came Everglades Direct / ComplyRight, where I learned what enterprise marketing actually looks like: a $56M annual budget, multi-channel campaigns running simultaneously across email, direct mail, PPC, and webinars, and the discipline of managing product lines, vendor negotiations, and catalog production at scale.

Each role added a layer. Sunshine Bouquet taught me brand development, product marketing, and trade show management for a national consumer goods company. I designed a bouquet collection there — the Venice Collection — that generated $2.5M+ in its first year. That result didn't happen because I was lucky. It happened because I understood the buyer, the retail channel, and what makes a product tell a story on a shelf.

At DiscountMugs, I owned lifecycle email and SMS marketing for a subscriber list of over one million contacts. I built the SMS channel from zero — selecting the platform, designing the subscriber acquisition flows, building the compliance framework, and executing the first campaigns. $126,000 in revenue in the first 90 days. Email open rates went from 14.8% to 22.6%. These weren't small programs. They were full-scale marketing operations, and I ran them end to end.


The Depth Work

Four Years in a Regulated Environment.

The most demanding role of my career was at Tri-Source Pharma — a pharmaceutical company operating across oncology, sedation, anesthesia, and pain management in both human and animal health. Marketing in a regulated industry is a different discipline. Every claim requires substantiation. Every campaign requires compliance review. The margin for error is essentially zero.

What I built there was a full-funnel digital marketing operation: automated email journeys, SEO-driven content programs, website redesigns for multiple brand properties, and conference and event marketing across four national shows annually. The results were measurable and significant — +62% organic site traffic, −32% bounce rate, +36% year-over-year growth — but the more important result was building a marketing infrastructure that could sustain those numbers consistently across a complex, multi-brand environment.

I also built the SOPs. The playbooks. The team training. The reporting cadences. Not because I was told to — because I'd learned that the difference between a campaign and a program is the system underneath it.


Now

Building What I Know Works.

In 2025 I launched Axis Creative Consulting to bring senior marketing thinking to businesses that need it without the cost of a full-time executive hire. We've maintained 98% client retention since launch — not because I chase every account, but because I'm selective about what I take on and relentless about the work once I do.

I'm also actively looking for the right in-house role. The consulting work has given me perspective and range. But there's a kind of impact that only comes from being fully embedded — from owning a brand over time, building a team, and seeing a multi-year strategy through. That's the work I want to do next.

The work I'm most proud of isn't the biggest budget I managed. It's the moments where a clear strategy, executed well, produced a result someone could point to and say: that changed something.

If that's the kind of marketing leadership you're looking for — whether for an in-house role or a consulting engagement — let's talk.

The Differentiators

Why the Work
Looks Different.

Six things that distinguish how I think about marketing from how most people practice it — and why they show up consistently in the results.

01 🎯
Strategy Before the First Deliverable

I don't start building anything until I understand the goal, the audience, the competitive landscape, and the success metric. Most marketing problems are execution problems in disguise — but most execution problems are strategy problems that showed up late. The plan comes first.

Applied across every engagement since 2006 — regardless of budget or timeline.
02
Journalism-Trained Communication

A degree in Magazine Journalism from UF means I was trained to understand audiences, structure narratives, and communicate with precision. I write my own copy. I know what makes a headline land and what makes a message invisible. That training is the backbone of every brand project I've touched.

UF Magazine Journalism · Managing Editor, Orange & Blue Magazine
03 📊
Results That Are Measurable, Not Just Reported

I measure what matters and report on what moves. +62% organic traffic. $126K SMS revenue in 90 days. 98% client retention. These aren't vanity metrics — they're the outcomes that the business cared about. I'm built for accountability, not attribution theater.

Every case study on this site has specific, verifiable numbers attached to it.
04 🔄
Strategy and Execution — Together

I'm not a strategist who hands off to an execution team, and I'm not an executor who waits for a strategy brief. I do both. Building the plan and implementing it means the gap between strategy and reality stays small — because the person who designed the plan is the one running it.

From $56M enterprise campaigns to consultant-scale brand builds — same standard.
05 🏭
Multi-Industry Range Without Generalist Thinking

I've worked across pharmaceutical, e-commerce, consumer goods, hospitality, technology, and professional services. Each industry demanded something different — different audiences, different compliance environments, different channels. That range means I bring cross-industry pattern recognition to every new challenge without defaulting to category conventions.

Six industries. Eight roles. One consistent standard of work.
06 🤝
Systems That Outlast the Engagement

Every engagement ends with the client better equipped than when we started — SOPs documented, playbooks built, team knowledge transferred. The goal isn't dependency; it's capability. At Tri-Source, the marketing infrastructure I built continued performing after I left. That's the standard.

SOPs, playbooks, and training documentation on every multi-month engagement.
Want to See These In Practice?

The portfolio walks through three full case studies with strategy, execution, and the actual numbers — exactly how these differentiators show up in real engagements.

See the Case Studies →
By the Numbers

A Career Measured
in Real Outcomes.

The metrics that matter most across ten-plus years of marketing programs — not impressions, not engagement rates, but the numbers that actually moved the business.

+62%
Organic site traffic increase
Tri-Source Pharma
$126K
SMS revenue generated in 90 days
DiscountMugs
$2.5M+
Product line sales in debut year
Sunshine Bouquet
98%
Client retention rate
Axis Creative
−32%
Bounce rate reduction
Tri-Source Pharma
22.6%
Email open rate achieved (from 14.8%)
DiscountMugs
$56M
Annual marketing budget managed
Everglades Direct
1M+
Email subscribers managed
DiscountMugs
Industries Served
💊 Pharmaceutical 3+ years
🛍 E-Commerce & Promotional Products 1+ years
🌸 Consumer Goods (Floral) 4+ years
🏢 B2B Direct Marketing 6+ years
📡 Technology / IPTV 1+ years
🏨 Hospitality, Property & Media Consulting
Core Tech Stack
CRM & Automation
HubSpot Salesforce Marketo Braze Iterable
Email & SMS
Mailchimp Klaviyo SF Marketing Cloud Attentive
Analytics & SEO
Google Analytics SEMrush MOZ Tableau
CMS & E-Commerce
WordPress Shopify Magento WooCommerce
Advertising & Social
Google Ads Facebook Ads LinkedIn Ads Hootsuite
How I Work

Six Principles
That Don't Move.

These aren't values on a slide deck. They're the principles that show up in every brief, every campaign, and every client conversation — whether the budget is $5,000 or $56 million.

01
Strategy Before Tactics

Every tactic is a waste without a strategy to justify it. I define the goal, understand the audience, and map the path before anything gets built. The plan comes first — always.

02
The Audience Is Always First

Not the brand voice. Not the creative concept. Not the reporting dashboard. The person on the other end of the message — their context, their problem, their decision. Everything else serves them.

03
Execution Is the Strategy

A perfect strategy that isn't executed well is just a document. The gap between strategy and outcome is almost always filled — or not — by execution quality. I take both seriously.

04
Data Informs. Instinct Leads.

I read the data carefully. I also know that data describes the past and instinct navigates what's next. Neither alone is enough. The combination — informed intuition — is where the best decisions come from.

05
Details Are the Experience

The subject line. The button copy. The email preview text. The loading speed. The follow-up timing. None of these are small. They're the sum of what people actually experience as your brand.

06
Accountability Is Non-Negotiable

I own the number, not just the effort. If a campaign underperforms, I don't explain why the benchmark was wrong — I diagnose what happened and fix it. Results matter. Excuses don't.

Open to Opportunities

Let's Build
Something That Lasts.

If you're looking for a senior marketing leader who thinks strategically and executes accountably — whether for a full-time role, a consulting engagement, or a specific project — I'd like to hear from you.

Fort Lauderdale, FL · Available Locally & Nationally · Response Within 24 Hours
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