By the end of 2010, we may see circulation figures for The Wall Street Journal and USA Today fall below a million readers each. We may also see the nightly news disappear from our televisions when networks can no longer attract sponsors. Larry Weber, Chairman and CEO of W2 Group, Inc., believes that consumer-generated media is the catalyst that has already started a movement to that end.
"Opinion now shapes marketing. Marketing no longer shapes opinion." As a result, the marketing professional becomes a constituency manager; a person who is responsible for tracking the conversation rather than creating it. In his keynote, Larry discusses some of the tools and techniques that, he believes, will make all the difference, as the nature of information retrieval undergoes a tectonic shift.
Larry Weber is well known for applying innovation and technology to advance the marketing craft. He started The Weber Group in 1987 and shortly after launched Thunder House, one of the first online marketing firms. Within 10 years, The Weber Group was the world’s largest technology PR agency. Ultimately, Interpublic Group acquired both The Weber Group and Thunder House. In early 2000, after building Weber Shandwick into the world's largest PR agency, Weber became chairman and CEO of Interpublic’s Advanced Marketing Services group, encompassing all its PR, research and analysis and entertainment holdings.
In 2004, after seven years on Madison Avenue, Weber returned to his entrepreneurial roots and launched W2 Group, a global marketing service company focused on digital constituency management and next-generation marketing services. Today, W2 Group is home to the Racepoint Group, the fastest-growing technology PR firm in the world, and Digital Influence Group, the first agency to specialize in digital channel programming (blogs, online communities, mirco sites, RSS strategies). Weber published, The Provocateur, in January 2002 and is now working on a second book.
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