Q&A with 'Elevate' Trail Leader, Industry Analyst Jeff Minsky

As we look to the future, brands must be better equipped to forecast change and be ready to adapt to an ever-evolving industry.

Elevate's fourth and final trail will give an insider’s view of how content, media and platform businesses are changing their offerings, products and business models, and give a glimpse into how brands can adapt these strategies to more effectively communicate with their intended audiences. Leading this trail will be the Lead Industry Analyst at Myers BizNet, Jeff Minsky.

We caught up with Minsky to better understand his expertise as well as discuss what's in store for Elevate attendees set to embark on the Looking Ahead trail:

Tell us about your background? How have you come to find yourself as a lead industry analyst?

I've been in the industry for almost three decades and have been leading innovation since the beginning of the digital age. During my Omnicom years, I was leading investment in the Advanced TV, Mobile, Gaming, and Digital OOH space partnering; in addition to continuing to be the resident futurist tracking the impact of technology on media consumption habits and helping marketers create strategies around those changes for both marketing communication and business re-engineering.

Following a brief stint on the client and programmatic video side, I reconnected with my friend and mentor, industry-legend Jack Myers who offered me the opportunity to do for the macro-industry what I had been doing for my agency clients. To be able to learn from Jack, who is not only one of the smartest industry forecasters, but also, rightfully so well-respected human beings in the business was too good to pass up.

I have always had a passion for understanding how technology intersects with technology intersects with business models and ultimately consumer preference. This role gives me an ideal platform to speak with you all about the fun stuff that I uncover.

Tell us about the “Looking Ahead” trail. Why is this an important conversation to have at an event focused on branded content?

There is a whirlwind of change, chaos, opportunity that is impacting the core definition of marketing communications. Some of that is brought about by technology. Some of that is brought about by social change. Some of that is brought about by legislation. The one thing you can be sure of is that nothing will remain stagnant, and that the way each generation communicates is impacted by those pillars. Stories are primal. Stories are core to who we are from the moment we leave the womb. But, go back and try and watch most movies that you thought were awesome as a kid, and, with exception, most of them are either unwatchable or move at such a slow pace you ask yourself, what did I like this so much? The technologies of the future will continue to evolve our sensibilities around storytelling and that will include marketing stories.

Additionally, we are no longer just at the precipice of a new bandwidth reality, the Gig per Second world, but it is in roll-out mode. Every change in media consumption has been tied to a change in bandwidth. If marketers can bring themselves to zero-base away from a narrowband media direct response mindset that could never truly create emotions and Brand, to a ultra-high speed, immersive capable storytelling model that incorporates multiple opportunities to drive leads and sales, but doesn't sound like a used car sales pitch (apologies to all the Used Car Sales attendees), then the original vision of what the Web could be from those of us who helped found the digital media industry will be realized; and the stories that brands tell can once again raise the perceived value of their product or service.

What do you hope the audience will learn from this session? What real-world business application might they find?

I hope audiences will realize that it as important to be looking ahead as it is to be solving today's challenges. Because we have data, insights, and have a fairly clear picture of the media roadmap across a 2-3 year cycle, we can start to breakthrough legacy biases and business models that may have made sense when a lot of what we have was new, but as we grow more sophisticated in our knowledge and best practices we can learn to manifest them in a way that will enhance the consumer experience.

In terms of real-world business applications, I hope that the audience will find inspiration to innovate and give a greater thought on how to incorporate some technologies that have scaled into their content, in addition to understand how addressability and personalization of content can make sense at times, but can also be a very slippery slope at other times.

How does an event like Elevate help catalyze the process of "Looking Ahead”?

An event like Elevate brings all the appropriate players into a single room to activate an immersive discussion around the future. There are always people who will say why you can't do something, but hopefully, presentations like the one that I'll be giving will inspire all parties to start the discussion with "How can I use this to benefit the consumer/customer?" versus "Well it's interesting, but I'll wait til someone else does it first."

About Jeff Minsky

Jeff Minsky is an industry recognized founder and leader in Cross-Media Strategy, Comms Planning, and Investment who has become a confidante to top CMOs and business leaders for top Fortune 100 creating incremental revenue and award-winning marketing. He is a leading Digital Investment and Programmatic Media specialist that can quantify millions of savings and enhanced value via a combination of programmatic data driven strategy, refined negotiation skills and strong senior industry relationships. Minsky enables marketers to better understand consumer media consumption behavior predicated on tech leading to the development of marketing and media strategies to strengthen relevancy and eliminate waste. He is considered an Internet "pioneer" for scaling search media in 1995 while at Ogilvy & Mather for IBM winning several industry awards. In 2000, Minsky joined Omnicom and led the AAAAs initiative to create Standard Terms and Conditions for Internet Advertising leading to a landmark agreement between the AAAAs and IAB which, amongst many other highlights, established the concept of sequential liability and 3rd Party Ad Server numbers as the basis of reporting. He founded NEXT (a division of OMD's Ignition Factory), a consortium of 13 Fortune 100 marketers to test, learn, and deploy Emerging Media in a rigorous method.Minsky has significant industry experience in Tech, Entertainment, Financial Services, Retail, CPG.Clients include(d): Pepsi, Johnson & Johnson, Clorox, McDonalds, MasterCard, Visa, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, CW, CBS, Showtime, Disney, Warner Bros., Intel, IBM, GE, State Farm, Unilever, KodakIn addition, he led Omnicom Media Group's partnership investment in the Emerging Media Space: including: Advanced TV (data driven), Programmatic Video, ACR, Virtual Reality, and Mobile.