About the Author: Bill Hanekamp
For more than 15 years, Bill has been an Internet marketing consultant, conference speaker, seminar leader, and author.
He has developed online strategies and creative for Sony Electronics, Philip Morris, American Express, Salon Selectives, Gore-Tex, Restaurant.com, Harvard Law School as well as nearly 100 middle-market businesses in a wide range of B2B and B2C industries. He has worked at one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Leo Burnett, and managed several congressional and state-level political campaigns.
He is a sought-after keynote speaker on emerging media and Web 2.0 trends and their impact on marketing and advertising. He has presented at leading industry conferences where audiences consistently rank his performances “best of show,” “very entertaining,” and “insightful.”
Conferences
The following provides a partial list of conferences at which he’s spoken:
- Direct Marketing Association Conference
- Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo
- Chicago American Marketing Association
- Word of Mouth Marketing Association
- Annual Retail Advertising Conference
- PromoLive
- MarketLive E-Commerce Summit
- Social Media Summit
- Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
- American Business Media
Why The Executive Whisper?
“When I first started writing and giving speeches addressing the shifts in advertising and consumer behavior 5-6 years ago, many traditional marketers preferred I would have remained silent or dismissed me out of hand.
“Now, I certainly wasn’t the first or most well-known person to make incendiary claims, but I have been as consistent and adamant as any about one overwhelming fact: Traditional marketing, especially advertising, is a near complete waste of money for 98% of all companies. (I’ll address the other 2% later. Suffice to say, if you’re not spending like Budweiser or Nike, you’re not one of the 2%.)
“Traditional marketing is based on the “Interruption Model” that requires companies spend an extraordinary amount of money to interrupt people in their homes, cars, and walks down the street with a message, often irrelevant, that sticks primarily through incessant repetition. The concept that it ‘targets’ potential customers through media buys based on perceived demographics, even psychographics, is a pseudo-science at best. Again, I’ll address this later in this site in much greater detail.
“I know from first-hand experience as I’ve had the pleasure of working at Leo Burnett, at the time one of the largest ad agencies in the world, and on clients including Sony, Marlboro, American Express, Dewar’s Scotch, Gor-Tex, Salon Selectives, Restaurant.com and more than 100 mid-size and start-up companies. And I consider some of the best minds in the industry to be my friends.
“Note, I am not saying advertising doesn’t work. It’s no secret that some advertising is better than no advertising. And some really brilliant people continue to produce insightful strategies and breakthrough creative that generate fantastic business results. But this is rare — and you know this simply by watching almost any TV commercial. Most commercial messages are never seen nor heard, for a variety of reasons which I’ll address, to have any real influence.
“What I am saying is that for most companies traditional marketing, like TV commercials, is a colossal waste of money, which can be much better invested in other marketing endeavors.
“Unfortunately many, even most, advertising agencies have been slow to admit this. Do you really wonder why? Businesses and careers are predicated on maintaining the status quo.
“On the pages of this site, I’ll reveal the secrets of how so many companies waste money when executing the traditional marketing model, and how, instead, they can promote their businesses more efficiently and effectively in a Post-Advertising Age framework – which I’ll call ‘The Attraction Model.’”
Personal
Bill graduated with honors from Dartmouth College, and currently lives in [deleted], with his wife and two children.
