A handful of up and coming leaders expand the Netmarketing universe.
Think Net marketing is kickback work?. You try riding herd on millions of online customers 24 hours a day. Here are five young mavericks creating. some of the best that Net marketing has to offer from key positions in the industry: Net PR specialist; creative directors at traditional interactive agencies; and marketing directors at a dotcom and at an old line firm.
“Somebody once said the Internet knows no age, only good ideas. That’s what we’re about,”
DeBeers Design Your Own Engagement Ring Commercial, created at Digital@JWT.
The Right Brain
Doug Jaeger,
Interactive Creative Director
TBWA\Chiat\Day
Age: 24
Claim to Fame: The "design your own engagement ring" online idea and the accompanying TV ad campaign for DeBeers. The overwhelming response by Web Surfers crashed the DeBeers server six times.
Doug Jaeger has always been captivated by media. In junior high. he and his friends programmed Fantasy roleplaying games on a Mac. In high school, he spliced film and music on computers to create his own movies. In college during an internship at agency.com, he helped create the Webpage for huge multinational Lucent Technologies.
Now just 24, Jaeger plies his technical skills and Creative instincts as the first interactive creative director at powerhouse ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. He is by far the youngest creative director at the agency known for its Apple, Taco Bell, and Energizer ads.
CEO Carl Johnson says Jaeger's youth serves as a catalyst for broader thinking inside the. agency and sends the message that age doesn't matter. "I don't care how old anyone is, I care how good they are," Johnson says.
Johnson first heard about the hot young creative at J. Walter Thompson through the industry grapevine. After one meeting, the CEO wanted Jaeger on his team. Johnson decided to treat Jaeger as a new business pitch and began to woo him, including buying Jaeger's personal URL dougjaeger.com.
Jaeger was impressed. "I liked the way they were thinking. I thought 'This is the way: to motivate someone, he says.
The ultimate entrepreneur as a kid he once sold cow print T-shirts Jaeger believes he can contribute much to a "traditional" ad agency. He's already working on integrated ad projects for Circuit City and Barnesandnoble.com, creating an internal, interactive knowledge database, brainstorming with other staffers, and recruiting talent like himself.
"Somebody once said the Internet knows no age, only good ideas. That's what we're about," he says. BS8