CONFERENCE RECAPS

In the spring, I went to a day long conference on Native Advertising organized by the BIC program and the CUNY J School. Much was made of the recently released Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Guidelines on Native Advertising , seen as a major step forward in clarifying a complicated issue in the marketing world. But were they? Photo:  Just one of many examples of Native Advertising on sites like Buzzfeed. In this example, the advertiser is Lean Cuisine Native advertising can be traced as far back as Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac  and the FTC has been, in one way or the other, regulating it since 1917. So 2015 seemed like a good year to finally issue some guidance. I read the FTC native advertising guidelines, as well as the meeting transcript from the 2013 workshop that shaped them and thought, "these are great! How helpful! Problem solved!"  And then I came across this quotation:  "For the FTC to continue to really try to put bo

I recently presented to a room filled with communications students, professors and industry folks. And when I brought up "digital asset management," I was met with dozens of blank stares, as if I had asked everyone what they knew about the island nation of Nauru. But digital asset management (DAM) is a key communications tool in the 21st century that everyone show know about - especially brand managers.  Graphic credit: Widen Media Collective At IIE, the non-profit I work for, we have used a digital asset management system run by an awesome company named Widen since about 2008. A few weeks ago, I got to go to a day long conference hosted by Widen on making the most of our digital asset management system. The range of brands and organizations there was impressive: Bulova and the Brooklyn Public Library, the Tyco and Cornell University. No matter what the organization, their mission, or their clientele, digital asset management was key to their operations.