Wednesday, October 22nd

12:30 PM - 1:45 PM

Track VI: Poolside Tent II

Branded Advertising Strategies - Content and Platform Integration

Nicholas Davison, Director of Web Development, Digitaria

George Leon, Senior VP of Media & Account Management, Hawthorne Direct

Corey Weiss, Business Development, ipsy

Ken Willner, CEO, Zumobi

Luke Stepleton, Co-Founder, 3BlackDot

Kai Hasson, Creative Director, Portal A

Robert Gonsalves, Consultant in Online Operations, Moderator

management, as well as product development and fulfillment.  Over the past 20 years, George has been involved in every aspect of the DRTV industry from media to operations to marketing and new media.  He brings his years of experience in agency account management, media analysis, effective team management, and creating strong media relationships, particularly with Los Angeles and New York media outlets. George also provides knowledge of media operations, from product development, call center management to fulfillment.   Utilizing his background in Financial Analysis and Forecasting, George launched his media career at Williams Television Time in Los Angeles, George worked on account analysis for clients such as Mattel, Phillips Electronics, DirecTV, and M&M Mars.  Later, George became media director of a Philadelphia based public media company, National Media, Inc. Within two years, George was responsible for all of the company’s media and operation functions.   In 2000, George co-founded Gold Mountain Media, Inc., a successful DRTV media agency focusing on Long Form media.  Gold Mountain represented various advertisers such as T-Fal Cookware, Body by Jake, Homeland Housewares, Beachbody, and Alchemy’s Six Week Body Makeover. As integrated marketing and media campaigns expanded their dominance in the DRTV media marketplace, George launched CIELO Media Management, Inc. in 2008, focusing on a hybrid of English and Spanish Long and Short Form media campaigns.    Today, he oversees Hawthorne’s expanding integrated Brand Response TV (BRTV) media strategy, execution and analytics and spearheads Hawthorne Direct's Data Science and "Big Data" initiatives on behalf of a broad range of major brand clients including 3M, Hamilton Beach, Brother, HomeAdvisor.com, Lifestyle Lift and TransAmerica.

Corey Weiss, Business Development, ipsy: Corey Weiss is well versed in leveraging multiple channels to market and promote entertainment and consumer products. Over the past 17 years, Weiss has worked for Twentieth Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company, Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures. He has effectively utilized the Internet, DVD, broadband and wireless to market a wide range of blockbusters including Saw II, Napoleon Dynamite, Spider Man, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Men In Black II, Titanic, The Lion King, Pulp Fiction, While You Were Sleeping, The Truman Show, Grease, and The Rugrats Movie.

Kai Hasson is the Creative Director of Portal A, a creative studio based in San Francisco and Los Angeles that develops, produces and distributes video built for the web.  Kai is responsible for leading Portal A's creative output, from concept ideation to direction to post-production. Kai often directs Portal A's projects, including YouTube Rewind 2013 which has been viewed nearly 100 million times. Before Portal A, Hasson worked for Current TV, where he created strategies for the distribution of original online content.   Kai grew up in Berkeley, CA and is an alumnus of Yale University

Ken Willner, CEO, Zumobi: A veteran marketing and digital media executive, Ken has been actively involved in the development of mobile as a media platform since 2002. Having held senior leadership roles at national advertising agencies, a Fortune 500 company and emerging media organizations, Ken truly brings a 360-degree view of the marketing and media landscape to Zumobi.  As Chief Executive Officer, Ken leads an experienced team in the development and growth of Zumobi's mobile media business. Prior to Zumobi, Ken was Vice President of Advertising and Media at AT&T Wireless, where he developed a number of innovative marketing programs to stimulate consumer adoption of mobile content and applications.  One of his most successful programs was the American Idol media sponsorship, where he was the driving force behind an integrated marketing campaign widely recognized as the seminal event that popularized text messaging in the United States. Earlier, Ken was Founder and Vice President of Marketing at Fizzylab, an early entrant in the contextual search and advertising space.  By developing marketing programs and partnerships with leading digital media companies, Ken helped grow Fizzylab from a garage start-up to a company with more than 50 media clients in just 15 months. Ken began his career in the advertising business and held senior management roles at national advertising agencies including McCann-Erickson and Rubin Postaer and Associates (RPA). During this time, he led the development of advertising and branding campaigns for leading consumer companies including The Walt Disney Company, Hitachi, Washington Mutual Bank, WebTV and Domino's Pizza, among others.  Ken graduated from the University of Washington with a B.A. in marketing. He is on the IAB Native Advertising Task Force and is a member of the WINMEC Media and Entertainment Advisory Board at UCLA.

Luke Stepleton, Co-Founder, 3BlackDot: Prior to forming 3BD, Luke Stepleton was Director of Entertainment Partnerships and Top Talent Management at Machinima, the world’s leading Entertainment and Gaming YouTube Network. Stepleton has extensive experience working with talent and top brands such as Ubisoft and Taco Bell, to create integrations that effectively communicate a program’s narrative while being authentic to its viewer.  Stepleton can also be seen in 3BlackDot’s successful mobile game, Zombie Killer Squad, in which he is featured as an in-game character.  This is the first time that real YouTube celebrities with are featured as characters in a video game.

Robert Gonsalves, Consultant in Online Operations: is a highly respected consultant to CEOs in all industries seeking to grow and profit from their online presence. His work creates lifelong online customers for his clients. His content and engagement strategies and tactics define, design, develop, deploy and extend brands, increase online audiences, and ensure the loyalty of those followers. His pioneering work at Warner Bros. Online (founding member 1995-1999) and seven years at Disney Online is supported by his work in operations, technology, customer management, production, budgeting and analysis, spanning a total of 23 years at Paramount, Disney and Warner Bros. His work has increased traffic by 600%, tripled online revenues with award-winning websites, reduced costs by double digits, and increased advertising inventory by 85%. His clients and colleagues say he is “a razor sharp strategist who creates actionable solutions <and> is brilliant at operations”... “with a keen sense of how things work” and “new media savvy.” They go on to say Robert is “an incredible technical visionary who has that rare gift of balancing the technical with the business requirements, <who can> harness technology to turn a vision into reality” with his “amazing breadth of knowledge about a very changing industry.” His core expertise is leading and growing new and existing brands online and creating/enhancing customer communities, to build new revenue streams and bottom line growth on all interactive platforms.

Internet Summit - Branding Day