The Digital Hollywood Experience

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"The Conference that Defines the Future of the Industry"

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Wednesday, March 4th, 2015

2:15 PM - 3:30 PM

Session A: Grand Ballroom (4th Floor) - Live Webcast from This Room

Leveraging Content and Celebrity For Cross-Platform Success: Brands and Star Power Collaborate

Paul Kelly, Vice President, Music Brand Sales, Viacom Music and Logo Group

Nick Mehra, Head of Global Media + Entertainment Partnerships, Spotify

Harvey Schwartz, SVP of Talent, WhoSay

Melissa Palazzo-Hart, President, Ant Farm (Campaigns for American Hustle, Wolf of Wall Street, Call of Duty, Iron Man, Transformers)

Abby West, Executive Editor, Essence.com

Lisa Birnbach, Award-Winning Journalist and Bestselling Author

Steven Masur, Partner, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP, Moderator

Nick Mehra is Head of Global Media + Entertainment Partnerships at Spotify, where he is responsible for establishing and directing strategic partnerships across all traditional media sectors.  Prior to joining Spotify, Nick was VP, Business + Corporate Development at Guggenheim Digital Media, where he ran BD for its portfolio of assets, as well as corporate development initiatives such as M&A, investments and strategy. Previously, Nick was a senior member of the Content Partnerships team at YouTube where he was responsible for establishing and managing content partnerships with leading sports leagues, movie studios and TV networks. Nick was instrumental in negotiating and closing many key media partnerships for YouTube including Warner Bros., Turner, ESPN, ABC, CBS,

Comcast, Sony Pictures, NBCU, Fox and the NBA.  Nick has also served as Director, Yahoo! Entertainment and the Head of Content Acquisition for Yahoo! Video where he was responsible for creating content partnerships across all content verticals.   Nick has also held business development and strategy roles at both Yodlee and Urban Fetch and began his career as an investment banker working on mergers and acquisitions, public offerings and other corporate finance transactions.  Nick is a graduate of Boston College, where he earned a BS in Finance.  He is based in Los Angeles.

Paul Kelly, Vice President of Music Brand Sales for Viacom Music and Logo Group:  A seasoned marketing and sales executive, Paul Kelly has more than ten years of experience helping both the television and music industries in London and New York collaborate with brands and advertisers. He currently services as Vice President of Music Brand Sales at Viacom where he charts new revenue growth for music and entertainment platforms across MTV, VH1, CMT, Logo TV and Palladia.  Starting his career in London, Paul helped launch the SonyBMG label and led marketing strategies for international and domestic artists at the label. He made the transition into the television industry with the Discovery Channel where he developed and drove cross-platform branded content marketing programs across the network’s consumer clients. Following a move to New York, Paul joined Viacom in 2010 to spearhead marketing and sales initiatives for mtvU.  In his current role at Viacom, he has introduced innovative and revenue-generating partnerships with global advertisers and agencies to produce and leverage original content rooted music to help brands successfully engage with music fans across the world.

Melissa Palazzo is the President of Ant Farm who, along with a talented team, works continually on award winning campaigns for some of the biggest names in entertainment and media. Under Melissa’s leadership Ant Farm has earned numerous accolades and awards in advertising and promotion, a few of those include, a Cannes Lion Award, multiple Emmy Awards, Effies, Telly Awards, Game Marketing Awards, several Broadcast Design Association Gold Awards, and multiple Clio Key Art Awards, most notably the Grand Key Art Award in 2014 for Activision’s “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare” starring Kevin Spacey.  Ant Farm developed and produced the reveal trailer for “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare,” which was the highest-viewed video on YouTube for the second quarter of 2014.  During Melissa’s residence, Ant Farm was named “Agency of The Year” by the GMAs in 2011 and 2013 respectively.  Melissa is a creative, high-energy, entrepreneurial business and marketing professional with nearly 20 years' experiencein managing marketing, strategy, agency operations and personnel for some of the most prestigious brands. Prior to her role as President of Ant Farm Melissa has held leadership positions at Ketchum Public Relations, USA Networks, Miramax Films and Sony Pictures. Melissa is a strong believer in a motivational management style with an emphasis on staff growth and development and has a history of building and retaining highly skilled and energized teams who enjoy what they do.  Proven success in establishing strong industry and client relationships as well as business development, creative management and an expertise in heart centered leadership. Melissa is on the Executive Board of A Place Called Home, a wonderful organization which focuses on creating opportunities for children and teens in South Central Los Angeles. When not trying to take over the world she enjoys doing yoga with her husband and caring for their beautiful one year old daughter.

Abby West, Executive Editor, Essence.com:  As Executive Editor of Essence.com, Abby West is the editorial lead for the site, which has seen double digit growth in unique visitors and triple digit growth in social followers over the last year. During her first year with ESSENCE, she led redesigns of the desktop homepage, Hair and Video sections, and the mobile experience.  Before joining ESSENCE in 2013, Abby wore many hats during a nine-year tenure at Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, lastly as a senior editor having launched a popular mini-site, overseen and edited all of EW.com's photo galleries during a period of major growth, and managed the site's extremely popular "TV Watch" recaps.  In these roles and others, Abby has worked extensively across divisions to guarantee editorial excellence and meet business objectives, as well as helping to ideate and execute 360 degree campaigns and initiatives.  Abby joined Time Inc. in the winter of 2000, working as a reporter for Entertainment Weekly, People and Teen People. Prior to that, she spent a few years as a newspaper reporter in Stamford and Norwich.  Abby resides in Westchester with her teen children.

Harvey Schwartz, SVP of Talent, WhoSay: Harvey Schwartz is SVP of Talent at WhoSay. In his current role, Harvey oversees the company's talent acquisition strategy, which currently has over 1,500 high level celebrity Members. WhoSay media properties are powered by original content from celebrity Members that represent some of the most influential names across TV, movies, sports, and music, such as Eva Longoria, Channing Tatum, Novak Djokovic, Tom Hanks, Sofia Vergara, Steven Tyler, and many more. Prior to working at WhoSay, Schwartz worked in the entertainment business as VP A&R for Universal Music/Capricorn as well as managing Grammy award winning artist Peter Gabriel in North America.

Lisa Birnbach is an award-winning journalist, cultural commentator and bestselling author. Celebrated for her keen eye, sharp wit and humor, Lisa is a media favorite. Best known as the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Official Preppy Handbook and True Prep, she’s published 22 other books, which have been translated into a dozen languages. The Official Preppy Handbook became a runaway bestseller and a tongue-in-cheek reference guide for a generation. She’s written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Parade, Rolling Stone, New York, Psychology Today, Yahoo! and numerous websites.  She was a correspondent on CBS’s The Early Show for three years, and hosted The Lisa Birnbach Show, a daily syndicated radio show which received the Gracie Awards in 2007 for Outstanding Talk Show, and Outstanding Humor Show. Her successful (and widely imitated) Lisa Birnbach College Books led her to visit and speak at hundreds of college campuses around the country.  Additionally, Lisa was the youngest profile subject selected for Dewar’s long-running ad campaign.  She also  was lead creative for the award winning Don’t Major in Debt campaign featuring actress Jane Lynch which garnered nationwide attention addressing the issue of escalating college debt.

Steven Masur, Senior Partner, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP: focuses his practice on corporate finance, M&A, intellectual property, strategic transactions, entertainment and new business concepts. He has over 20 years of experience advising digital media and entertainment clients on their corporate and intellectual property transactions and day-to-day business issues. Mr. Masur brings unique strategic business experience to CDAS. He has counseled enterprise level clients including Shazam, Virgin Mobile, Liberty Media, Yamaha, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Bob Vila and Conde Nast Publications in corporate, digital media, and new business matters. He has also helped clients in a wide variety of early stage businesses, including mobile, games, digital music, film, publishing, advertising, retail sales, software and hardware to achieve breakthrough results. Mr. Masur's transactional experience includes a wide variety of deals in angel and venture capital finance, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and other strategic transactions in the US and abroad. He is passionate about helping new businesses break through to the mass market, and frequently assists clients with identifying and formalizing partnership opportunities with Fortune 500 and celebrity brands. Mr. Masur is especially knowledgeable about mobile, internet, social media, emerging content distribution models, e-commerce, games and mobile payments. Mr. Masur serves a variety of corporate and nonprofit boards and industry associations, lectures and regularly writes about major issues in venture capital, emerging businesses, entertainment law, technology and corporate strategy.