The Media Revolutionaries, presented by Xaxis and AOL

DDB Worldwide’s chairman emeritus Keith Reinhard considers his role as a co-founder of Omnicom in 1986 to be his greatest career accomplishment, but bringing disparate agency cultures together wasn’t easy. Concurrent with the three-way union that formed Omnicom was the merger of Doyle Dane Bernbach, a New York agency, and Needham Harper Worldwide, which had […]

Steven R. Swartz isn’t the only business reporter to make it big on the business side of reporting. Sequoia venture capitalist Michael Moritz wrote for Time magazine before making tech investments, for example. But he is one of the few to have risen to the very top of the company he has worked in for […]

When J. Walter Thompson’s Non-Executive Chairman Bob Jeffrey got his start in advertising, it was normal for agencies to present a single TV spot to prospective clients in order to prove their credentials. For example, at Chiat/Day, where he worked early in his career, they showed the “1984” Apple spot. However, today’s top creative directors […]

Less than 10 percent of e-commerce and advertising is powered digitally —  but that will inevitably change. And the looming transformation will provides a twenty to thirty-year “tailwind” for the entire adtech and media industry which will mean vast opportunities for young people entering the industry, says Tim Armstrong, CEO and Chairman of AOL Inc in this video. Also […]

CANNES – Comcast’s data from its twenty millions set-top boxes, coupled with marketers’ first party data, will create a “whole new world” for NBC Universal, for both advertising and content creation, explains Linda Yaccarino, Chairman, Advertising Sales and Client Partnerships in this this interview with Beet.TV Comcast has been expanding its addressable technology via acquisitions including […]

When considering setbacks over the course of his career, J. Walter Thompson’s Non-Executive Chairman Bob Jeffrey thinks of losing accounts, which he always took “very personally and emotionally.” In particular, he remembers when the agency lost most of its Microsoft business. “That was very painful because I thought we had done great work, and there […]

These days, Pets.com is part of internet folklore – an early dot.com juggernaut that, in its mission to sell pet supplies direct to consumers, burned bright, launching in August 1998 and going from an IPO to liquidation in 268 days. Carolyn Everson remembers the site with horror, too – but, for different reasons. Everson says the idea for a pet retail […]

CANNES — When considering the future of media over the next decade, the Daily Mail’s North America CEO Jon Steinberg thinks we have to be open to what may have seemed impossible even two years ago. “When I look at my 6-year-old daughter, I’m pretty sure she’s not going to drive a car,” he says […]

CANNES — In one form or another, David Kenny’s career has been all about data, from the advertiser, agency and publisher perspective. Now The Weather Company’s CEO and chairman, Kenny was previously a president at Akamai, a managing partner of VivaKi, and a founder of Digitas. In his first job at Bain, he learned from […]

Byron Lewis formed UniWorld Group, an African-American and multi-cultural agency, in 1969. But seven or eight years later, his venture capital was running out, and the agency was failing to make enough money to keep the lights on. One big problem the agency had been up against was that there were almost no media outlets […]

As cord-cutting continues to gain momentum and video-streaming options abound, Cablevision’s chief operating officer Kristin Dolan is trying to transform her company into a service-oriented business like American Express or Zappos. “To me, we’re at a critical inflection point where the world is changing and we’re no longer a monopoly, and we’re a company that […]

CANNES – Joe Ripp has seen about as many incarnations of Time Inc. as there have been in the digital era. Joining in 1985 as an assistant comptroller, he eventually became SVP, CFO treasurer of the company in 1993 and, a few years later, served a AOL vice-chairman until 2004. After leaving the stable for senior […]

CANNES  — Over the last year, with more brands embracing ad tech platforms to undertake advertising activity themselves, and as more top-tier brands put their agency accounts back out to review, many have begun to wonder – is the ad agency over? But Bob Pittman doesn’t see it that way. Pittman, who oversaw the creation of MTV, led […]

The whole of the communications business is being shaken up – and yet, one thing will remain exactly the same. “In 10 years time, as today, ideas will be king,” according to ad agency holding group Publicis’ CEO Maurice Lévy. Speaking with Beet.TV, he envisages a future industry in which digital technology will play a bigger […]

Though people often say “it’s not personal, it’s business,” it was always personal for Shelly Lazarus when Ogilvy & Mather lost an account. “What I learned was you had to have the resilience to bounce back and to say we are really good at what we do, we add value, we make a difference, and […]

When Brian O’Kelley was fired from Right Media after its sale to Yahoo because of a major disagreement about the direction the company had been being taken in, he considered whether he should retire or maybe become a venture capitalist. Instead, later in 2007, he decided to start something new. “It took me about six […]

CHICAGO — Embrace failure. It’s often possible to learn more from mistakes and pitfalls than from victories. That’s the advice of Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group in this deep-dive interview with Beet.TV about her strategy and approach to her career in the advertising business over the last few decades. “I’ve learned more from failure than […]

Today, Tim Armstrong is credited with having turned around one media company, as the resurrection and recent sale of AOL suggests. But, in 1993, when a 23-year-old Armstrong was embarking on his first foray in to the media business, things weren’t quite so rosy. Fresh out of a six-month stint in investment banking, after realizing the […]

More than most people, Keith Reinhard knows that persistence pays off. In an interview with Beet.TV, DDB Worldwide’s chairman emeritus describes the shock of being fired by McDonald’s and his 16-year campaign to win them back. Reinhard recalls receiving notice from McDonald’s in 1981, when he was president of Needham, Harper & Steers, as the […]

Watch the consumer. Always keep an eye on how she is changing. That’s the advice on how to thrive and survive in the media business from a veteran and a luminary who has shepherded TV networks, designer goods e-commerce sites and now a venture fund. “I am always struck by how much has changed, not just […]