In times of huge economic and social change, knowledge becomes a critical success factor. We created the Digital Thought Leaders interviews to bring you closer to people and brands shaping the digital networked economy. They are based on private interviews (and occasionally lectures we've participated in), and are published monthly. We also publish similar insight papers to accompany our own talks, strategy workshops and training events. The aim is to unlock the potential of your team through sharing leading edge insights from people shaping the digital networked economy.

Accessing Digital Thought Leaders

On this page you'll find a few of our interviews and you can download the associated short reports. Clients should use their passcodes to access the full service. (Clients wanting archive access should email their account manager for details)

Vice-President and General Manager, MySpace Brazil

October 2008

When we interviewed Emerson Calegaretti in Caracas on the eve of their launch in Venezuela, it was clear why Latin America is so compelling. Social media has been big in Latin America since YouTube opened up the market and showed people how to connect social networks with media assets. The passion and enthusiasm for social networking accelerated early, and the region has some of the highest volumes of social media activity anywhere in the world. MySpace pioneered making personal home pages easy to build and fun to connect through, opening up access to personal publishing and changing the model for consumer engagement with the web. MySpace sets itself out as supporting people’s lives in three ways: self-expression, discovery and connection and the resulting behaviour playing out on their pages typifies the sharable and tearable content of Web 2.0 digital assets.

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MSN Mexico

September 2008

Eight years ago Mariate left the world of management consultancy and joined the team of just over a dozen people at MSN in Mexico City. She has played an instrumental role in helping to expand the role of commercial media on the internet in Mexico, growing the scope of online marketing in the country and raising advertiser confidence. Today the team at MSN is over 50 people and the scope of the website is a hundred times greater than back in 2000. Along the way Mariate co-founded the industry trade association and has helped accelerate the migration of marketers’ focus to online. In this interview she talks about the role of reach in media planning, why high-end demographic audiences have switched to the web, and why many brand managers still don’t understand what online is about.

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Polar explorer, Motivational speaker

August 2008

Ben Saunders is a record-breaking polar explorer and by his own admission an "extreme blogger". From the North Pole he wrote to millions using his blog, a PDA, a matchstick and a satellite phone. While becoming the youngest person in history to walk solo to the North Pole, Ben was able to keep us up to date with the progress.

Blogs are the most diverse of digital publishing platforms. They can be harnessed by anyone, anywhere for almost any publishing reason. Ben's blogs demonstrate their power both to amplify an offline event and to make intimate connections with millions.

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Publishing Director, British Medical Journal

March 2008

Peter Ashman leads the strategic, commercial and operational development of BMJ Journals and has business responsibility for the Group’s flagship journal, the weekly British Medical Journal (BMJ). He was previously from Nature Publishing Group, where he successfully led the Group's strategic launch into medical publishing. Prior to that, he was publisher of the British Dental Journal and successfully negotiated the acquisition of the British Dental Association's entire journal portfolio. Earlier in his career, Peter worked for The Lancet, both in the UK and North America.

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February 2008

Read the discussion and post your questions to Digital’s moderator.

Continue reading "Digital Thought Leaders Discussion: Martin Oxley & Danny Meadows-Klue" »

Is the newspaper industry stuck in the wrong advertising model?

January 2008

Newspapers are still fishing for advertising in the wrong place. That’s the conclusion of newspaper veteran Bob Cauthorn in looking at how the advertising model has failed to adapt in spite of the massive leaps in content. His argument is that hyper-local is the way forward.

Continue reading "Bob Cauthorn, President at CityTools" »

December 2007

Peter’s background includes JWT and WPP, but on the day he set up Oystercatchers we asked him about how the marketing and advertising industry is likely to evolve over the next few years with the growth of digital. He’s clear that the models for reward need to change: “It’s not just about paying for the hours people put in, it’s about rewarding them based on the performance they create. Overall its about working with the right talent; that’s what clients want. This doesn’t mean that you necessarily have a roster of agencies all with the same structure of account directors, creatives and planners”. For Peter, the implication is that the scale of change will be personal and internalised as well as a macro re-structure of how the ad industry works. “This probably means more plural lives for individuals, potentially a growth in the freelance market, and a more flexible and fluid marketing industry. Maybe this means a smaller industry, with people paid better, and a greater search for the link between investment and effectiveness.

November 2007

Talking about the changes in the advertising industry, Matthew Mayes is clear that this “calls for a different form of advertising to populate this new space. People choosing to spend lots more time in this landscape.” On the changes in channels Mays may be a digital evangelist, but is no advocate of analogue rejection: “Newspaper and TV brands have a great future, they’ve just going to be watched and read very differently”. However Mayes is convinced that all is not well in the model of how advertising is created. Is ‘the big idea’ happening in the wrong place? “Why do you try to define the ‘big idea’ in the least important channel? This means you have to force it below the line and the model doesn’t necessarily work?”

Continue reading "Matthew Mayes, Executive Creative Director at MRM Worldwide" »

UK CEO, Wikimedia

October 2007

Digital Thought Leaders | By Danny Meadows-Klue

The Wikipedia model has revolutionised knowledge classification and the linkages between content. Google pretty much anything and chances are that a wiki listing will be bubbling up on the results page. Clearly Wikipedia will remain a permanent fixture of the landscape, and we should all cherish the fact it’s a foundation. “But the problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice, in theory it would never work”, explains Alison Wheeler, Wikimedia’s UK chief executive. It’s a conundrum: after all, why should people want to dedicate their time to updating and managing entries on a public encyclopaedia?

www.wikipedia.org

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Continue reading "Alison Wheeler, UK CEO, Wikimedia" »

Making sense of the ad opportunity today

September 2007

The recent press and debate about what and how we measure in the online landscape have been particularly welcoming to me. The recent furore around the ‘death of the page view’ certainly seems to have put the publishing and ad worlds in a collective spin. The metric that has been held, dearly or not, as the most relevant gauge of the advertising opportunity online has come under threat - and everyone is scrambling to make sense of what happens now. The other issue that has thrust measurement science into the spotlight concerns the debate between the Telegraph and the Guardian about the former’s claim to being “Britain’s number one quality newspaper web site.”

Continue reading "Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst at Nielsen Online" »

Author and President of Crayon

August 2007

Joseph Jaffe is a passionate digital marketing thinker who puts massive energy into transforming traditional and new businesses. He feels that the whole marketing process needs a rebuild to capture the changes in consumer attitudes and online challenges for brands. In his ten points about the dramatic shift in the relations between consumers and marketers he indicates a path businesses should take.

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CEO Biotics International

July 2007

Joel de Rosnay is the rare visionary who uncloaks the future with the richest of insights. He describes the internet as a relationship technology and is fascinated by the new structures of relationships that are emerging. His books chart the history and the future of our relationships with technology and the Agor Vox online newspaper he helped build in France has pioneered the publishing models of citizen journalism. While the media industry is focussed on Web 2.0, he’s unravelling Web 3.0.

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Simon Caulkin in his weekly column for The Observer on 26th November 2006 summed up one of the fundamental drivers of current web innovation:

"It's not established companies that have pioneered the key businesses of the second-generation internet but geeks and customers who scorn the commercial offerings pushed at them by industry leaders and instead create new ones to meet quite different demands of interchange and self-expression."

Head of News Interactive, BBC.co.uk

May 2006

Pete Clifton heads the largest online news operation in the world. BBC News Interactive enjoys the support of a worldwide network of correspondents and the incredible BBC editorial machine. Already the site tops 4 million unique viewers a day, but now they are changing their publishing model to embrace convergence and user generated content. With the BBC's behaviour able to influence the UK online media market, all eyes are on London's White City to see how the new services perform.

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General Manager for Digital Media, Elle.fr

May 2006

For sixty years Elle's magazines have been media icons. With a new enthusiasm they're embracing the web, and they're taking on board the new models of publishing. With 39 editions and 20 websites, Clement's brands have come a long way from a single media proposition. But only continued innovation will let them succeed in an increasingly challenging online market.

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The veteran business columnist's remarks echo those in a recent post from VC and entrepreneur Joi Ito:

"I personally think that people are trying to build Bubble 2.0 on top of Web 2.0. Instead of becoming a platform for the future of the Web, it's possible that Web 2.0 is becoming the platform for the short-term future of greedy people. However, I do think that it is important to understand that the recent success and surge in innovation on the Web is due to a semi-new set of principles. Part of the principles are a return to fundamental principles. The innovation on the Web and the Internet is driven by what David Weinberger has called "Small Pieces Loosely Joined" - a network created by small groups working together around open standards. It is and was a community of people and projects trying to connect to each other."

Founder, GameSpot.com

May 2006

Vince Broady is a legend in the world of online game playing. He set up the GameSpot.com network ten years ago that unites computer games fans worldwide. We caught up with him in London at the launch of their UK site and discovered how the early adopters in the online games industry are setting a blueprint for much wider digital publishing and marketing.

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CEO Target Marketing

April 2006

Jim Sterne has been exploring online marketing for more than a decade. His new-found passion for web optimization has seen him dubbed "the godfather of web analytics". Now he's on a crusade for effective web marketing that delves into the heart of the firm itself. Analytics unlock the full benefits from all existing website investment, yet many businesses are only scratching the surface, and most are yet to start.

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CEO 24/7 RealMedia

March 2006

Christopher Wagner, CEO of 24/7 Real Media Europe, talks about the keys
industry needs to use to unlock the next wave of client investment. Since
taking the helm of their European operations in 2001, he has been pushing
hard to help clients discover what these new technologies can deliver for
their business, and also to ensure industry can deliver on its promise of
targeting.

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Founder & CEO Zopa.com

February 2006

In the mid nineties, a small group of people transformed the face of British banking. Led by Richard Duvall they created a new brand, a new image and a new attitude. The new bank was Egg - the first mainstream online bank of the digital networked economy. Richard is still in finance and still online, but this time creating a lending exchange. Zopa - the 'eBay for money' - is ripping up the banking rulebook and could mark the start of a new era in personal finance.

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Director General of the European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA)

January 2006

Dominic Lyle has a unique view of the European landscape. The European Association of Communications Agencies represents agency associations across the continent, and in every market the role of the web is rising dramatically. In a time of such rapid change, Lyle argues that the industry needs to look to the long term to maintain the right framework for growth.

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Founder CraigsList.org

December 2005

Craig Newmark set up his list of local web listings in San Francisco in 1995. Run from the his garage on shoestring budgets, CraigsList is the story of a dotcom success that has spawned offshoots in 175 cities across 35 countries, and audience traffic that matches Amazon. It's left regional newspaper executives reeling, and forced many analysts to question the future of local press.

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CEO and Chief Yahoo!

March 2001

Founder of Yahoo! Jerry Yang is explosively upbeat from the moment you meet him. The enthusiasm that started on a tiny scale at Stamford still shines through, and though Yahoo! is morphing into a new animal, broader than search and mail, it’s transition to a media brand is one that he has been a champion of. “We’re approaching 500m people on the internet now and the future that we use to talk about is here. What’s strange is that its happened so quietly,” he muses, no doubt nursing the wounds of investor confidence collapse in the previous few years.

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In times of huge economic and technical change, knowledge becomes a critical success factor. We created the Digital Thought Leaders interviews to bring you closer to people and brands shaping the digital networked economy.

They are based on private interviews or lectures we've participated in, and are published monthly. We also publish similar insight papers to accompany our own talks and training workshops, to unlock the potential of your team.

Digital Thought Leaders are published monthly and summaries are sent to our clients. If you're not yet a client, we may be able to give you free access for a couple of editions. Just tell us a little about yourself and your firm, and why you'd like us to give you our research.

Email the team.

Danny has been a researcher and commentator in the digital networked industries since 1995. He managed the UK's first online newspaper and has helped run web businesses ranging from mass market portals and consumer magazines, to online stores, search and email services. Among his industry roles he is the co-founder and former chairman of the UK and European Internet and Interactive Advertising Bureau, and has been lecturing on digital marketing for more than a decade. He set up Digital Strategy Consulting in 2000 to help firms get the most from the digital networked economy.