About 1

As the Director of Social Business at tax giant H&R Block, Scott Gulbransen recently returned to the tax business after previously spending 10 years at rival Intuit working on the TurboTax & Quicken brands. In his 17 years as an accomplished marketing and public relations professional and journalist, Gulbransen completed his 13^th tax season after a wildly successful foundational year at H&R Block in 2012. A strategic thinker and business problem solver, Gulbransen has worked for some of the world’s top brands including Intuit’s TurboTax, Sony Online Entertainment, and Applebee’s.

In 2012, Gulbransen ramped up the 54-year old brand’s social marketing and communications efforts but restructuring its social platforms, launching its new social content hub, and building new analytical approaches to social measurement. In addition to launching the new Block Talk blog, the company’s first truly consumer-facing content hub, Gulbransen also worked closely with agency partners to launch the national phenomenon – The Stache Act.

The social and content campaign, which led to the first-ever Million Mustache March on Washington, struck a never with millennial taxpayers not as familiar with the HRB brand. It’s call for a tax deduction for mustache care led to hysterical, shareable content – all for a cause. It created a palpable buzz, which helped H&R Block close the gap between it and its top competitor. The campaign raised 10,000 for charity Millions from One and won two industry awards for its hilarity. More importantly, it refreshed the brand for a new generation of consumers unfamiliar with HRB and built a new dialogue and kinship with millennial clients.

His work, and with help from his dedicated team, Gulbransen was named one of H&R Block’s Top 100 employees, of the over 100,000 that work for the tax stalwart, after just 8 months with the company.

Prior to his return to the tax space, Gulbransen was named the first-ever Director of Social Media & Digital Content for Applebee’s.  Gulbransen led the world’s largest casual dining chain and its social media and digital content strategy. In just over a year, Gulbransen led a small but nimble team that created and built a robust and far-reaching social engagement channel for Applebee’s and its franchise community. Applebee’s, thanks to his vision, strategy and foundational work, was recently named as one of the top restaurant companies in social media.

In addition to his professional accomplishments at the corporate level, Gulbransen is also a prolific blogger named as one of the Top 50 Daddy Bloggers in the US by Cision in 2011. Gulbransen was ranked #21.

Prior to his gig at Applebee’s, Gulbransen was a member of the TurboTax communications and social media team. Scott has helped the TurboTax team launch and sustain the brand’s social media platform. He also drove and was responsible for the launch of TurboTax’s successful content strategy. Recently, he launched one of the most significant social media campaigns in the brand’s history with the @TeamTurboTax Twitter project.

Gulbransen was instrumental in reinvigorating the Quicken brand almost entirely through the use of social media and, particularly, Twitter.  By engaging with customers and influencers who talk about personal finance on Twitter, he and his team helped Quicken Online grow from just 200,000 users in October 2008 to over 1.4 Million in just 10 months.  This led to a more focused look at the personal finance space for Intuit and, ultimately, the acquisition of Mint.com.

A former print journalist, who, after realizing his paychecks from the newspaper industry weren’t going to get much bigger, turned to the Dark Side – public relations. After working in both college athletics and inside mid-size agencies, he joined Intuit in 2000 and Applebee’s in 2010. He is a graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and is the married father of five kids.

Despite his busy personal and professional life, Scott is a digital native who never strays far from social networking. To hassle Scott, or to tell him how great you think he is (or not!), email him at scott@scottgulbransen.com, add him to your Circles on Google+, or ping him on Twitter at @sdgully.. Scott also is a contributor for Technorati, the hot Dad’s blog EveryOtherThursday.com