Hi, my name is Rick Murray, and I'm the president of Edelman Digital.
For the past two years, I've had the pleasure of leading me2revolution -- a group Edelman formed in 2006 to help us change the way people thought about and practiced public relations in this digital, and very social age.
That group has now been merged with Edelman Interactive Solutions and Edelman Mobile into this new, global brand we call Edelman Digital.
I live in Chicago, but lately have been away from here more often than not. I collect guitars and will always prefer an all night jam session to a night at the opera. I'm a Canadian citizen, but have a very definite point of view on US politics (which you can follow, if you care to on Twitter), and an even stronger one on the Cubs and why this is their year.
I ride my bike about 5,000 miles a year; I'm training right now to ride 50 miles in 50 states in 50 days. Still looking for the right charity to support on that ride. I’ve been married to a wonderful lady from El Paso for 26 years. Together, we have three amazing daughters, but I respect their privacy so you won’t ever hear me reference them by name online.
I am a member of the board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, and helped WOMMA craft its ethics code in 2005. I still believe in its veracity and loudly advocate its adoption whenever asked.
Finally, I will never write about our clients without their permission, and I will always disclose the nature of our relationship with any client in any post I do after receiving that permission.
Born in South Africa, Jared brings over 20 years of creative management experience forged from over a decade in the corporate world together with the nimble management skills acquired from having founded and managed 2 new media startups.
Prior to joining Edelman, Jared was a founder of SmashTube, with a focus on digital media strategy along with the creation, production & distribution of Branded Entertainment and Original Programming for online, mobile video and social networks.
Prior to Smashtube, Jared founded MyAdGuys and MarketingForce as an online marketing platform for small business and large brands included American Express, Motorola, ERA, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, Serta, AgFirst Bank, Assante, Dex Media & YouthAids.
Jared's entrepreneurial spirit was grounded with 10 years of experience within the WPP family at Grey Advertising on global brands such as Domino's Pizza, Mars, Red Lobster, Canon Cameras, Topps, Cendant, Kool Aid and Mitsubishi.
He was also the Executive Creative Director and co-founder of G2 at Grey (WPP) from 1992 and grew the group from 2 people to over 100+ in NY, while spearheading the development of over a dozen international offices around the WPP network including London, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Paris, Moscow, Caracas, Santiago, Rio, Bogotá & Toronto.
Jared is the author of a forward-thinking digital media blog. He is a prior board member of the Art Directors Club and is a Blue Ribbon Judge for the Emmy Award's new broadband category.
He is a graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA and resides as their East Coast Chapter Chair.
Normally I blog in German language (Haltungsturnen and PR 2.0), because blogging is something that is quite local over here. But I twitter in English to connect with friends and colleagues all over the world – and now I start blogging here now and then in English as well. As Head of Social Media Europe and – not totally seriously – German Chief Blogging Officer for Edelman I coordinate Edelman Digital in the old world.
When I first started blogging back in Febr 2003 I wasn't aware that this was quite early, it is said that in Germany there have been less than 500 blogs. And I started even before Steve Rubel, ha!
Since early 2005 I worked with companies in the new web and developed some projects that involved bloggers. Summer 2006 I joined Edelmanand do both – workshops and evangelism and a lot of real client work, including the first employee blog of a big German company (Daimler AG) or social networks for brands. My speciality is the rise of the consumer and that he talks back to you – and the new culture of conversation that is evolving through social media.
Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights, is responsible for keeping Edelman Digital, Edelman and its clients in the vanguard. Rubel studies global technology and social trends and shapes actionable insights on how they will influence marketing communications.
In this role, Rubel serves as a strategic advisor to clients such as Unilever, Microsoft and others. In addition, he supports the account planning processes, intellectual property development and the firm's innovation and business development efforts. He is a member of the Edelman Digital senior leadership committee.
Rubel’s Micro Persuasion blog on digital trends (www.micropersuasion.com) has 50,000 daily readers and has been cited as a must-read by the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNET, PC Magazine and Forrester Research. He also writes a bi-weekly column for Advertising Age and is often sought by the press and as a speaker.
Prior to joining Edelman in 2006, Rubel worked for 15 years in a variety of marketing communications positions in corporate, non-profit and small/mid-sized PR firms. Most recently, he spent five years at CooperKatz & Company where he pioneered the use of blogs as a marketing vehicle for clients such as the Association of National Advertisers and Vespa.
Rubel hails from Long Island, New York, and is a graduate of Hofstra University.
I run the Digital Public Affairs practice in Edelman's Washington, DC office. It's an extraordinary team of new media professionals (less one we sent across the pond)We focus on issues management, crisis communications, and public policy.
In a previous life, I co-founded and helped build a moderately successful (but not so moderate) online community focused on politics and activism. I've testified before the House of Representatives as well as the Federal Election Commission in support of free speech online.
I was a traditional communications guy. I'd done PR, advertising, even direct mail. But after 8 years, I left the small agency that had taught me everything I knew about communications, and took my skills to a small NGO called the Center for Individual Freedom.
Like so many of other small NGOs in Washington, DC, mine was involved in a huge range of issues, engaging on a range of causes in furtherance of a greater philosophy. My job was to raise our profile, employing those causes as the content for our communications program. And a higher profile would mean, it was hoped, greater web traffic and more contributions to support our organization.
Not surprisingly, however, top-tier media didn't really care what me or my organization thought. There were bigger fish with big-name scholars, original research and established clout.
So I turned to blogs. I thought, perhaps, that if blogs covered our activities, they might send a little extra traffic to our site. And I reasoned that bloggers might be more interested in our point of view on things, especially if I could build strong relationships with a core group.
It worked. Together with a greatly enhanced online giving program, we succeeded in growing our list from 8,000 to more than 150,000. And our web traffic soared.
It was around this time that I started blogging. I started by writing at the awesome site confirmthem.com, where I still contribute the occasional tidbit today. It was a natural fit. I was already writing op-eds and content for the website. Within a few months, two friends and I took our weekly bar chats online at our blog, On Tap.
Shortly thereafter, I came to Edelman. The aim was simple: Help corporations begin join the online conversation and build relationships with bloggers and others.
The last couple of years have been an amazing experience. To be sure, I've been a part of some tremendous successes and made my share of mistakes. I've thought and learned a lot more about the online conversation, and I've tried to help our clients understand the right way to listen and join.
But the best part has been watching technology transform the way people get and share information, communication with one another, and come together in communities around interest -- no longer constrained by geography.
It's an exciting time to be in communications. And to be sure, I'm a communications person first and web-geek second, though happy to brag about both.
Recently, Edelman offered me the chance to move its London office, where I'm eagerly helping clients in the UK and Europe embrace conversational communications. So you can find me these days in central London, where I live with my wife and our beagle, Cody.
You may know me from Below the Fold, my blog focused (mostly) on how new media is changing newspaper journalism. I used to be a newspaper reporter, but gave it up when I realized that food and shelter actually cost money.
Or you may know me from Edelman Digital, where I oversee our West Coast account teams. I work in the L.A. office but live in Orange County, where I like to mess with the status quo by voting Democratic, driving a Toyota and being married to a woman from the Midwest who has yet to have augmentation surgery of any kind (she does surf though, which is pretty cool.)
Or you may be thinking, “Wow, what an arrogant S.OB. We don’t know this guy – nobody knows this guy! Who does he think he is, Phil Gomes?” You’d be surprised how much that happens.
Here are a few things to help you get to know me better:
I hope that helps. Oh, and one more thing – please "friend me" on Facebook. I don't want to die and have people look up my profile and think "wow, this loser didn't have any friends, good thing he's gone." This is my greatest fear. Well, this, and my dog killing me while I sleep.
When I was working in LA, an entertainment industry executive told me before a meeting that my team and I could skip the de rigueur introductions. "I know you all went to school, won awards, did great things, and are very good at what you do. What else?"
So, in that spirit, here's the "what else."
Hi, I am Thiane Loureiro from Edelman Brazil. My fascination for the Web begun in 2002 when I was a journalist at an international news agency. There I wrote an underground music column that later became a blog. I joined Edelman as a Corporate Manager in 2003 and was surprised to see that a PR firm was so pioneering in embracing the Web. This made me change from a purist to someone who truly believes that the Internet will and should change corporations and the way we do our job as PR professionals. In 2006, I spent a month in London working and learning from the interactive services team. In 2007, I started to build the Digital practice in Brazil.
Yes, I still have my underground music blog and I love listening to noisy rock and roll and going to concerts. I went to my first live show when I was only 13 years old (I am 32 now) and average about 15 concerts a year. I also love travelling, reading and, of course, being online as much as I can.
I've very fortunate to be working with some of the smartest minds in communications here at Edelman. I have always worked in the mass audience space, building fan bases, working with great product, and allowing people to explore, contribute and improve whatever it is I or my clients have to offer, from the bottom up. I've never felt entirely comfortable with the top down approach to communications, and with the boom in digital tools and increasing ability for people to contribute to the mass conversation, I've thankfully found a niche as a digital evangelist, communicator, and trusted advisor to many of our clients.
I came upon this space whilst studying for my Economics degree from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. A group of us gathered in a dark, musty, nerd-filled basement computer lab, discovered Newsgroups, Message Boards, IRC chat, a brand new thing called the World Wide Web, built websites using Geocities, corresponded with two guys named David Filo and Jerry Yang (founders of Yahoo!) suggesting some cool sites I had found, and played a lot of Warcraft II. Those years of missed lectures were a long term investment in my ability to listen, create and engage in online conversations which ultimately build trust and business outcomes.
Since then, I've had a number of roles in communications and marketing: from promoting under age dance parties via e-flyers and email database of 28,000 at the age of 14, to encouraging the use of "green energy" to industrial electricity users, to advising, producing, and hosting podcasts and other online content for Australia's biggest sporting club, the Collingwood Football Club, to running for Parliament (winning over 28% of the vote and being one of the first candidates in Australia to use new media as a campaigning tool), to even being a representative of Britney Spears in Australia during my 8 great years in the music and film business.
I'm based in Melbourne, but I split my time between our Sydney and Melbourne offices, working across a range of clients in our Consumer, Corporate, Healthcare and Reputation Management Practices. The digital space is booming in Australia, with great ideas from us and a "let's do it" attitude from many of our clients. Our work has been awarded by our peers (Woolworths Drought Action Day won the PRIA "Golden Target" Award for Best Event due to our new media strategy) and things are only getting better. Stay tuned.
I am originally from Detroit, although I've been living in China since 1999 and am now based full time in Shanghai. Besides Shanghai, I've lived in Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong; and have spent time in all but a few of China's provinces. My passions include technology, the Internet, youth / creative culture, music, design, fashion, video, Chinese language, and motorcycles. In 2003 I somehow graduated "highest distinction" from the University of Michigan with degrees in Chinese politics and Mandarin...who knew!
As an "after 80" digital-native fluent in Chinese (or so my Chinese friends tell me...I'm still suspicious), I am responsible for leading Edelman Digital in China by providing strategic counsel and insight to staff and clients on Chinese social media, online / interactive communications campaigns, Internet word of mouth (IWOM) and local Internet trends / culture.
In addition to my work at Edelman, I am a regular contributor to Danwei.org -- the leading English-language Web site on Chinese media, marketing, advertising and urban life - as the host / co-producer of an Internet TV show about Shanghai (The Shanghai Beat) and the author of occasional blog postings.
For more on me, wander over to Google or Baidu. Feel free!
I can be reached on email me @adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com, followed on Twitter @ajschokora, chatted with on AIM @arokohcsmada or on QQ @847022231, skyped @ajschokora, or added on Facebook,
And remember: "some things are better in 1.0...like Legos or dinner with your girlfriend" - AjS
Hello blog world, it’s been a while hasn't it?
Actually, it hasn't been that long since I’ve been writing blogs since November 2003 and seem to find a couple new blogs every year to join. My name is Leah Jones and for the last 18 months I was the Conversation Analyst in the me2revolution. I'm still here and working in Edelman Digital, except I've taken on the task of internal communications. Since Rick thought I'd go crazy if I never talked to the outside world, I’m also the blog wrangler here on Authenticities.
I can be found all over the internet at Leah in Chicago, Twitter, Flickr and various social networks and even some old forum posts exist from when I was a stand-up comic. For full disclosure, I'm on the Board of Directors of Emanuel Congregation and a contributing writer for PresenTense Magazine.
And once, I answered a Twitter from Rick to go on an early morning, 13 mile bike ride. Once.
I'm a
digital native and recent Emerson grad
just getting started in the industry as an AE in Media Strategy here at Edelman Digital in New York.
If my bio had a subtitle, it would be: "What happens when your digital dorm room is suddenly valued
at $15 billion?" or "A funny thing
happened on the way to entering the field."
I grew up on the Web. I was born right around the time one of the
first community
networks went live. I started middle school with AIM
and Google, high school
with Napster and
college with MySpace,
Flickr and the
first video blog. On my first day of college, my R.A. told me and my dormmates that we had to join a new site
called "The Facebook" and this
year, as I attended one of my last panel discussions in college and
was caught Twittering in the
front row, I happily realized that I had graduated into a total, steadfast geek. In fact, Stowe Boyd
says my media habits have left me with a tabbed
cerebral cortex.
Outside of my work at Edelman and adventures exploring New York (with my cell,
camera and laptop always in hand) I and nine other bloggers share our anecdotes from growing up digital on
American Shelf Life and
Adrants and
I'm always
surprised
to
see
who's actually reading our posts.
Prior to joining the team here, I helped Schneider Associates and Austrian-based
i5invest and JMC enter the digital space, was a special agent for
Undercurrent, research assistant for Ziggs.com and president of PRSSA at Emerson College.
If you'd like to connect with me, you can find the ultimate
guide to getting in touch
here.
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