Humably
Stuart McFaul
Advisor & CMO · Brand, positioning, and go-to-market
Stuart McFaul is an advisor to Capably Human and its Chief Marketing Officer, where he leads brand, positioning, and go-to-market strategy. A growth marketing strategist with more than twenty-five years of experience, he has led positioning for companies ranging from pre-revenue startups to Fortune 50 firms.
San Francisco, California
At a Glance
25+
Years in growth and brand marketing
1998
Founded his consultancy, virtual-first from day one
250+
Clients advised worldwide, across six continents
$2.35B
3PAR acquisition he helped position
Track Record
Positioning companies at inflection points
1998
Stuart McFaul Associates
Founded the San Francisco consultancy, long known as Spiralgroup, on a distributed, virtual-workforce model that was unusual at the time.
2009
3PAR
Led the repositioning of the network storage company as a cloud computing leader. After an HP–Dell bidding war, HP acquired it for $2.35 billion in 2010.
2013
Amazon’s Evi
Led US product marketing for the Evi AI assistant, driving it to number one on the US and UK App Store charts. Its technology later became foundational to Alexa.
2015–2018
Meta Company
As Acting Marketing Vice President of the augmented reality startup, positioned it against Microsoft HoloLens and Magic Leap through its TED 2016 debut.
Now
Capably Human
Advisor and Chief Marketing Officer, making Capability Fitness, a category that does not yet exist, legible to the people it is for.
Why Capably Human
Category creation is the work
He joins a company attempting something marketing rarely gets asked to do: establish a category that does not yet exist. Capably Human is building around Capability Fitness: the lifelong development of the capabilities people use to reason and decide, learn, focus, create, and adapt. The commercial question is whether that idea can be made legible to people who have never heard it. Category creation is the work Stuart has spent his career on.
How He Works
The Get Real Marketing System™
He is the creator of the Get Real Marketing System™, a purpose-centered framework built on a simple premise: companies lose their way when they lose contact with why they exist.
- 01
Authentic story development
- 02
Stakeholder alignment and engagement
- 03
Market activation
- 04
Value optimization
“When people ask me what it takes to succeed in marketing, my answer is simple: just listen.”
Expertise
- Go-to-market strategy
- Brand positioning
- Growth marketing
- Product messaging
- Storytelling
- Crisis communications
- Fractional CMO leadership
Sectors
- Enterprise technology
- SaaS
- Consumer products
- AR/VR and emerging tech
Boards and Affiliations
- Financial Executives International, Silicon ValleyBoard member · since 2016
- A Network for Grateful Living (Grateful.org)Board member · since 2023
- Elevation CollectiveCharter member · since 2024
