We started an interactive group at MVBMS Euro RSCG, the smartest ad agency I’ve ever known. That group created and placed some of the Web’s first ads and built some of the first corporate web sites. That was fun. It also changed everything for me, bringing out a lot of my left brain.
Rich Ullman started doing Internet marketing in 1994, shortly after the Mosaic browser came out.
Prior to that, he spent 7 years in advertising as a media planner, account guy and brand manager on an assortment of blue chip consumer brands, including Mercedes-Benz, Tiffany & Co., Bacardi, Tequila Sauza, Saab and Volvo.
He left MVBMS to join a start up and was the Director of Marketing for About.com from when it was known as The Mining Company, through its IPO, its re-branding to About.com, and it becoming the fifth most-visited property on the Web.
I guess you’d call that Web 1.0. That was a helluva lot of fun.
Later, amidst Web 2.0, I joined another start up to run its marketing. Ripple6 was a social media marketing platform that launched in 2006, grew, was acquired in 2008 by Gannett, and integrated with Pointroll in 2010. That’s when I left.
If you want to fill in the professional blanks, go to
LinkedIn.
Here is a fascinating article that Rich recently wrote, that is filled with important ideas for further discussion:
Posted on July 27, 2011 by richullman
Fragmentation and Building a Marketing Machine
This morning, I read a very solid blog post from Charlie O’Donnell about building a marketing machine in a start-up. Charlie is a very well-known name in NYC Tech circles, and although I don’t know him personally, he has one of the best names for a blog of anyone I know: “This is going to be BIG…”
Charlie humbly stated his point as theory, but it’s a hypothesis grounded with a lot of evidence. Like several others, I added my comment, but I ended up writing more than I originally intended. It made sense to re-purpose some of those thoughts here, because there was a bigger issue to address, namely fragmentation. I encourage you to read Charlie’s post, and all of the intelligent comments on building a marketing machine, including mine.
Fragmentation driven by technology is one of the biggest issues we face today. Not just in media, marketing and technology, but everywhere. It used to be just a word for media planners talking about audience size. A few years ago, I told people that Twitter was the poster child for fragmentation, because in addition to audience, content was being cut into fragments (of 140 characters). I consistently think of targeting as the twin sister of fragmentation, because it’s the positive opportunity created by it.
Unless you can re-aggregate the pieces or move with some comfort from one niche to the next, it’s a problem. It’s a growing enemy. Fragmentation and specialization affect talent and recruiting, as Charlie points out, becoming the enemy of well-rounded experiences. It has affected journalism (for better or worse) as James Fallows wrote in a long, well-worth-the-time-article in The Atlantic this past spring. There, it is the enemy of thoughtful perspective. And fragmentation is crippling Washington at the moment, where politicians have conveniently jumped into their ideological communication silos and chosen to ignore or refute anything outside of it. It has become the enemy of teamwork.
These things can cripple your start-up. Or they can cripple your society. Or they can cripple your goverment, if you’re not careful. And that’s something that is ALREADY BIG.
*
In another thread, Canyon County, Idaho Democratic Chair Bob Solomon responded:
I have been calling it "atomization," the tendency for us to retreat further and further into like minded enclaves...I even feel it internally...it becomes a challenge even to have a society
Rich said:
I'm far too optimistic to think we won't have a society. It's just a little more difficult for people to see the mosaic, and not just a bunch of little pieces.
*
Here is the link to the original article: http://richullman.com/...
Reposted with permission of the author.