10/2/2023 0 Comments Medialink jobs“All I know is they had a party for 3,000 people last night, and it’s all anyone’s talking about today. “What do they do? Who are they? I don’t even know!” said Michael Perlis, president and CEO of Forbes, who has known Millard for 30 years and calls her “a juggernaut,” buttonholed as he was walking in to one of the MediaLink events. “My people have been trying to explain it to me for seven years, and I still have no idea,” CES President Gary Shapiro said. Brand Matters Keynote Panel: Wenda Harris Millard, MediaLink Margo Georgiadis, President of Americas, Google Randy Freer, president and COO, Fox Networks Group Deborah Wahl, CMO, McDonald’s USA Bob Sauerberg, president of Conde Nast Jay Rasulo, Sr. “They led our media agency review, and did a workshop on Big Data and marketing - standard consulting, really, but you trust what they say because, and it sounds odd, but because they just know everyone,” said Andrew Markowitz, who leads the Global Digital Strategy Group at GE. Later, he left and sued its parent company, Interpublic Group for defamation, a dispute now settled (and IPG has since been a client and partner, in fact), before setting out on his own and founding MediaLink in 2003. He was a very large franchisee of El Pollo Loco and Rally’s Hamburgers (a part of his career that contained some level of controversy), became president of home video company International Video Entertainment, practiced law, and joined Western International Media (which later became Initiative Media Worldwide) as president. Kassan, the founder and CEO, has a more varied background. She was on the founding team of DoubleClick before joining Yahoo as chief sales officer, and became co-CEO and president of media for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Millard, MediaLink’s president and COO, says there’s virtually no one over 35 in the sales business who hasn’t worked for her. Millard and Kassan have certainly been around a long time. We don’t do ‘perfect world.’ It’s not about the deck.” “We will compete with McKinsey and Bain, but everything we do is through the lens of the operator,” Millard said. Their clients even jokingly call MediaLink the “mafia,” and Kassan the “Godfather.” Some executives seem to hire the consultants mostly because they’re worried something bad will happen if they don’t. Among media executives, fear of MediaLink is real. If you’re an executive in their full service, MediaLink hires you, plans your parties, guides your strategy, introduces you to your friends, and then finds you your next job. Though MediaLink’s services aren’t really much different from firms like McKinsey or Bain, they inspire a sort of brand loyalty among their clients, in part because they pair consulting with a new executive search business. “They route more information around in our industry that any other single organization.”ĭawn Ostroff, president of Conde Nast Entertainment said: “Somehow they have their tentacles in every facet. “I would call them the human routers,” said AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong, who arrived at MediaLink’s Monday and Tuesday night CES parties along with his “digital prophet,” Shingy. Kick-off party at Tryst, The Wynn Hotel MediaLink They’re the media world’s shadowy overlords, puppet masters behind almost every deal in the modern media landscape - and every viral mozzarella stick on your Facebook feed. “You will find we are much lower than most consulting firms,” Millard told me one night. Prices for their services range from the lowest end of $500,000 a year to many millions. Morgan Chase, GE, Unilever, Kraft, AT&T, the New York Times, Conde Nast and Time Inc., among others. Their job: To grease the wheels of communication between old media and new tech (i.e., help Conde Nast figure out how to deal with Snapchat), make introductions, headhunt for executives and advise on strategy.Īs one observer said at CES, they’re paid to introduce people to people they already know.Ĭonsider: MediaLink works for J.P. Its 80 employees set up more than 400 events and meetings (“interactions”) across CES, a weeklong festival for gadgets and, increasingly, deal makers. Run by the professional networkers Michael Kassan and Wenda Harris Millard, MediaLink’s clearest public-facing activities are its evening parties at Cannes and International CES, but the company is just as active during the day. MediaLink is a strategic advisory firm that a lot of companies use - and that almost no one understands. I sat in on the meeting, and afterward asked Darin Dugan how he would describe MediaLink, the hosts of the gathering. A vice president of Applebee’s, looking to make some viral content out of those signature mozzarella sticks, met privately in a conference suite at the Wynn hotel with half a dozen ad tech and marketing companies in Las Vegas last week.
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