The Marketing Maelstrom
Dear ad:tech Delegates and Friends,
In my last post, I ended by talking about the emergence of the “marketing maelstrom”. I came across the definition of maelstrom the other day and it seemed to accurately describe the environment we all find ourselves in.
mael st rom (n): A powerful, often violent whirlpool, increasingly sucking in objects within a given radius..
As I travel across the country and around the world, I have found that an increasing number of our digital colleagues across the planet are feeling as though they are caught up in this maelstrom and I would argue that its force is growing stronger (insert Star Wars metaphor here) and its radius of effect continues to expand. From my perspective, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the business of media and marketing communications that is not feeling the impact of the digital revolution.
This, in my opinion, also makes it a great time to be in the business we are in. And to have a bit of an impact on the conversation as we do here at ad:tech is also a thrill because things are changing so fast and no one truly knows the answers. We all stand at the edge where one merger announcement, one press release, one product announcement can fundamentally alter the state of our business.
I am particularly excited about our keynotes coming up at ad;tech San Francisco as they each will bring a unique perspective to this marketing maelstrom. Here’s a quick overview of each:
Tuesday Morning: We lead off with Brian McAndrews, the CEO of aQuantive, which is the holding company over industry leading firms such as Avenue A - Razorfish, Atlas, and DrivePM. Brian will sit down with Lynne Johnson, the senior editor at FastCompany.com to talk about “The Digital Decade” and what the last 5 years can teach us about the next five. In addition to its efforts in North America, aQuantive is also developing a global network of agencies via acquisition and partnership and Brian has built an amazing company that has boundless potential. Brian brings a wide-ranging perspective to the conversation as prior to his digital experiences, he was a senior programming and marketing executive at ABC and I am keen to hear him comment on the transformation of the media business and how we are increasingly living in a multi-platform world.
Wednesday Morning: On Wednesday, we have a fantastic roundtable keynote that will bring leading executives from across the media and marketing industries to talk about this new content and media revolution and what impact they believe this revolution is having and will have on programming, consumer behavior, and the advertising value proposition. We are thrilled to welcome Suzie Reider, the Head of Ad Sales at YouTube, Jason Hirschorn, President of Sling Media Entertainment (makers of the Slingbox), Caroline Little, CEO of Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, and Kourosh Karimkhany, the General Manager of Wired Digital. We are equally as excited to have Jon Fine from BusinessWeek as moderator for this session and look forward to how he leads this discussion. This session brings together the “old guard” and the “new guard” to talk about how to survive in a world of fragmenting media outlets and attention spans.
Wednesday Evening: For the first time in North America, we are experimenting with an evening keynote session which will take place immediately before the ad:tech Awards Gala. I have been waiting a long time to bring together what I call some of “the old warriors” of our business to talk a little bit about the past and help bring perspective and insight to what may be around the corner for us all. This stellar panel includes Gene DeRose, the Founder and former CEO of Jupiter Communications, Kevin O’Connor, the co-founder and former CEO of DoubleClick, Jonathan Nelson, the Founder and current Chairman of Organic and Bob Davis, the former CEO of Lycos. We are also excited to have Tony Perkins, the founder and founder and CEO of The Red Herring as the moderator for this session. We jokingly call them “old warriors”. The truth is they are all true industry pioneers in their own right and they are all off on new ventures of their own and we are very lucky to have them here with us in San Francisco. I suspect these five industry pioneers have never shared a stage together and I suspect they never will again so I think we should all be excited about this opportunity to hear them discuss and debate the past, present, and future of our business.
Thursday Morning: Our final keynote session brings one of the more exciting companies today in the space to the keynote dais. By now, we imagine you all have heard of Joost, a company that is working towards transforming the television and broader media viewing experience for audiences on a global scale. The founders of Joost are the same mavericks behind Kazaa and Skype and we welcome David Clark the EVP of Advertising and GM of Joost North America—and a seasoned media veteran in his own right—to the stage as he talks about the disruptive DNA of his company and how he sees the media business transforming in the (very) near future.
What I find interesting is that when you look at the companies and speakers represented at the keynotes, and throughout the entire program, many of these individuals and companies helped spark and create this maelstrom we find ourselves in today. They are pioneers, revolutionaries, and mavericks and we suspect they also will have unique insights on how to survive, and ultimately thrive, in this chaotic new world order.
While we have nearly 50 other great break-out sessions and over 200 fantastic speakers at ad:tech San Francisco, I wanted to take a few minutes to highlight our keynotes and reiterate that as attendees we have a unique opportunity to hear and learn from a fantastically diverse group of industry pioneers, risk takers, and “dreamers of disruption”, as I like to call them. I strongly encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity and come early to get a good seat.
It has been our focus to bring the discussion at ad:tech to a more strategic level and I am confident our group of keynote speakers will help us achieve that goal.
I look forward to seeing you in San Francisco next week.
More soon.
-Drew
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By bcwwix on 2008 11 21
