H. Naylor Fitzhugh Conference - Marketing in the New Age

Marketing and Branding in the New Age: Engaging Customers through Digital Media

4:00 – 5:30pm, Conant Ballroom

As consumers continue to spend more time online, companies face a new opportunity to engage consumers through interactive, targeted marketing and advertising. However, these companies also face the challenge of developing innovative ways of holding customer attention in the fast-paced world of social media. Given these opportunities and challenges, how has marketing and advertising has changed with the growth of digital media? How has digital media impacted the way companies engage with its customers? What opportunities and challenges have been created by user generated content spread through social media outlets? What role will digital media have on marketing in the future?

Panel Speakers

Tony Cornelious, Brand Strategist, Jack Morton Worldwide

Tony Cornelious is a Brand Strategist and Account Director at Jack Morton Worldwide, a global brand experience agency. With nearly 15 years of advertising and marketing experience, Mr. Cornelious has worked in various industries including politics, entertainment, fine art, music and brand strategy. His experience began with the civil rights icon U.S. Congressman John Lewis and has included spearheading music-based influencer programs with Virgin Records and designing and implementing audience development and marketing programs targeting young, affluent professionals for the Museum of Contemporary Art – Chicago. Mr. Cornelious has honed his account management, strategy and production expertise at agencies such as Mother, William Morris Agency and currently Jack Morton Worldwide.

Mr. Cornelious has also created and developed influencer, multi-cultural, and general market programs for Allstate Insurance Company, Nintendo USA, U.S. Army, COTY Fragrances, Propel enhanced water, Vanity Fair, The Economist, Dell, Lexus, Bloomberg, KPMG and Amazon/Kindle to name a few.

Mr. Cornelious has a B.A. in Political Science from Morehouse College. He has done Continuing Education courses in 361 Advertising and Brand Strategy at the School of Visual Arts. In his spare time, he enjoys art gallery openings, Bauhaus inspired design and listening to old (and new) vinyl.

Gilberto Pires, Brand Manager, Unilever

Giba Pires has 16 years of experience in communications and marketing, working for companies such as General Motors, McCann Erickson and Unilever, where he is currently Senior Marketing Manager for Axe Shower North America. Mr. Pires has worked and lived in 5 different countries and has managed more than 7 different brands for Unilever in the last 10 years.

Mr. Pires has a Business Administration degree from Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP) in Brazil. He has a Masters of Business Administration from Ohio University through a partnership with Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Brazil.

Ken Smikle, Founder and President, Target Market News

Ken Smikle, President of Target Market News, and editor and publisher of its publications, is considered one of the leading authorities on marketing, advertising and media directed to the African-American market. The company's online trade publication, Target Market News, covers business activities in advertising, marketing and media targeted to black consumers. Its 16-year-old annual report, “The Buying Power of Black America,” analyzes how African-American consumers spend billions of dollars in hundreds of categories of products and services. Target Market News annually hosts the Marketing to African Americans with Excellence [MAAX] Summit which presents the most up-to-date research and trend data available on black consumers.

Mr. Smikle has appeared on numerous media outlets, such as CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, PBS and NPR, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Advertising Age and others. Most recently the National Alliance of Market Developers named Smikle the 2011 Communicator of the Year. His 35-year career in journalism includes positions as a publisher and editor for a number of periodicals, including Black Enterprise and the N.Y. Amsterdam News and The National Leader.

Mr. Smikle presently resides in Chicago with his wife, Renee Ferguson, a former investigative reporter at NBC5 Chicago, and their son Jason Smikle, co-founder of TUV Media.

John Deighton, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School (Moderator)

John Deighton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is an authority on consumer behavior and marketing, with a focus on online and direct marketing. He is editor of the Journal of Consumer Research and was the founding co-editor of the Journal of Interactive Marketing. He initiated and leads the executive education Taking Marketing Digital program. He has served as course head of the first year MBA Marketing course, and has taught elective courses in Business Marketing, Consumer Marketing, Interactive Marketing and Digital Marketing Strategy.

Mr. Deighton’s current research deals with online marketing. He has studied the use of social media in the Obama/Clinton primary campaign, the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign, the use of blogging in the Ford Fiesta launch, how the Coca Cola Facebook presence is managed and a series of cases on the processes by which viral videos were propagated online and offline, amongst others.

Prior to joining Harvard Business School, Mr. Deighton was on the faculties of the University of Chicago and the Amos Tuck School, Dartmouth College. His Ph.D. is in marketing from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has an undergraduate chemical engineering degree from the University of Natal and an MBA from the University of Cape Town.