Digital Doesn't Matter: (and other advertising heresies)

[540+ pages of insights from the world's leading Mad Men]

Apathetic. Numb. Overwhelmed.
Those aren’t consumers. They’re ad professionals.

Radical shifts in advertising have reached a critical point — sucking craft, quality, and satisfaction out of the business. It’s now a Big Data numbers game ruled by instant response and measured in fractions of a percent. Are we doomed to mere assembly lines of offshore production and creative commoditization? Can well-established ad agency networks hang on or are they going to come crumbling down?

Or... are we facing the dawn of the industry’s most seismic renaissance? One that offers agencies and marketers a powerful new array of cost-effective structures and models to elevate the quality of both our work and our lives?

Digital Doesn’t Matter calls upon over 130 of today’s most esteemed Mad Men minds from all around the world to answer. Provocative. Brutally honest. At times, pure heresy. With a complex landscape shifting by the nanosecond, this compendium of insights captures the industry at a true crossroads like never before. For any marketing pro, it is a much-needed Survival Guide — a clear, sensible path to propel agencies and individuals forward, free from budget-slashing bean counters and social media gurus who devalue the craft.

Learn first-hand from the nimble veterans who have not only survived, but also thrived.

Contributors include Global CEOs, CMOs, Creative Directors, Strategists, Planners, and Executives from all roles in the world’s most successful agencies and advertisers. Your guide and author, Josh Sklar, stands as a digital pioneer having spearheaded several of the most respected worldwide digital agencies, creating award-winning campaigns for leading brands such as: Singapore Airlines, Visa, Heineken, Pfizer, Coca-Cola, Nokia, Microsoft, Discovery Channel, ESPN, Cisco, General Motors, and more.

Here are a few of our interviewees:

• Global Chairman / CEO, Y&R & the weekly ramble
• Global CEO, Organic
• Global CEO, VML
• Managing Director, VML Australia & Digital Buzz
• Co-Founder / Chairman & CEO, Razorfish & Dachis Group
• Chief Creative Officer, SapientNitro NYC
• Executive Creative Director, SapientNitro Asia Pacific
• Executive Creative Director, R/GA & Ad Aged
• Director Business Transformation, R/GA & Being Peter Kim
• Partner & Chief Creative Officer, Ethnicity
• Chief Innovation Officer, Mullen & Creativity_Unbound
• Head of Digital, Dentsu
• CMO, Microsoft Asia Pacific
• Jordan Brand Marketing Director, Nike
• Global VP Digital & Social Marketing & CRM, Nokia
• North American Consumer & SMB Exec Director, Dell
• Head of Digital, American Express Asia
• Regional Marketing Director, Samsung
• CEO, Omnicom Media Group Asia
• Managing Director of Ad Agency Relationships, Google
• Senior Vice President of Digital, Edelman & dave fleet
• Regional Creative Director, Ogilvy
• Regional Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi
• Executive Creative Director, BBH NYC
• Executive Creative Director, JWT
• Chief Digital Officer / ECD, DDB & Tribal DDB
• Executive Director, Art Directors Club & IHAVEANIDEA
• CEO, Hoffman | Lewis & The Ad Contrarian
• Executive Creative Director, gyro & Gods of Advertising
• Founder / Columnist, Adrants & Playboy's The Smoking Jacket
• Founder, Adland.tv
• CEO, M&C Saatchi Asia
• CEO, Publicis Greater China
• CEO, BBDO Greater China
• Director Creative Innovation, Saatchi & Saatchi NYC & Hyper Island
• Business Unit Head, Ogilvy Africa
• Founder, eYeka
• EVP Education, American Association of Advertising Agencies
• Chief Technology Officer, the 4As
• Senior Research Fellow, USC Annenberg School for the Digital Future

and many more from WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, IPG, Dentsu, Havas, independents, collectives, industry bloggers, trade journalists and brands.

Josh is the founder and President of Heresy (heresy.co), having conceived the virtual agency after years of working for traditional ad agencies, digital shops, and nonprofits. Josh has been a global digital creative director three times, the most recently for WPP's Enfatico running the $4.5 billion Dell account. Prior to that, he was the Chief Creative Officer of WPP's lead digital agency, BLUE, and spent more than six years at XM, the e-services division of the Cordiant Communications Group and Bates Advertising, in various senior capacities including as its worldwide Chief Creative Officer. While in Asia, Josh and his team, including several Heretics he still works with, took XM to the top of the industry over a period of five years by winning regional Agency of Record status for clients such as: Nokia Mobile Phones, Compaq, Visa, Singapore Airlines, Cisco, Heineken, and ESPN. Other clients Josh worked on include: Coca-Cola, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Pfizer, Accenture, Hyundai, Benadryl, the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), Sauza Tequila, the United States Department of Defense, Polycom, P&G, Cisco, Starwood Hotels, J&J, HSBC, Singapore Telecommunications, CNBC, Discovery Channel, and many others. Through his direct work with these clients, Josh garnered more local and international industry and user awards than any other digital CD in the region.