Connector

David Berkowitz

David Berkowitz is principal of his consultancy, Serial Marketer, where he keeps brands, tech startups, and agencies at the cutting edge of marketing. Prior roles include running marketing for video production marketplace Storyhunter, leading the strategy practice at social listening firm Sysomos, serving as chief marketing officer of Publicis agency MRY, and founding the emerging media division at 360i. He has contributed more than 600 columns to outlets such as Advertising Age, MediaPost, VentureBeat, and Adweek, and he has spoken at more than 350 events globally. Beyond consulting, he publishes the Serial Marketer Weekly newsletter and runs the 500-member Serial Marketers community on Slack; you can request to join at serialmarketers.net (anyone connected through David Homan is automatically granted access). David has been an advisor to scores of startups through Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, NUMA, and Katapult Accelerator, along with a portfolio that he has advised directly. An alum of Binghamton University, he served on the Binghamton University Alumni Association board and currently is on the board of The Binghamton Marketing Collective. He lives in Manhattan by Koreatown and is a frequent denizen of K-town’s coffee shops and lunch spots (but you do not want to hear him do karaoke; trust him on that).
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Describe the Impact of a Project you’re focused on.

The most impactful project I'm working on is through consulting at Five Tier, an ad-tech startup that calls itself the Operating System for Connected Media. It has exclusive relationships to sell media, especially in digital out-of-home (e.g., billboards and other outdoor media), on a cost-per-play basis, and the best example of that is offering 15-second ad plays on prominent Times Square billboards for as little as $10 per play, with low minimum buys (roughly $500). Non-profits can use this for their own promotion, and packages of plays are often donated to auctions. But the bigger opportunity for non-profits is to essentially crowdfund a fundraiser, where the non-profit will promote its donors with recognition in Times Square for donations that hit a certain threshold, with the net funds raised (beyond the cost of media) going to the non-profit.

What results do you hope for when the impact is amplified?

For this project, I hope that meaningful non-profits can use it to bolster their bottom lines and do more of the work that they are driven to do.

What do you have to offer as a connector? What can you give as expertise to others?

There's quite a bit, and I'm as generous as possible with my time and network. My network itself skews heavily toward major brands across a range of consumer verticals, executives at ad agencies across the country and around the world, and founders of ad-tech and marketing-tech companies (and a range of other startups). I have my Slack group itself with 500+ members who often connect with each other around professional advice, sharing things they're working on, and people seeking to fill roles or land their next role. Many members in the community have done business with each other since it launched and found other forms of value. I also have my newsletter which goes out to nearly 1,000 professionals (largely in marketing-related roles) where I feature events and job listings and plug great articles or organizations. And lastly, as for my own expertise, it not surprisingly spans marketing. I'm much more a generalist than a specialist. My focus areas over the years include content, communications, and strategy (plus a heaping of business development), but I've managed a range of projects involving demand generation, paid media management, social media marketing, out-of-home advertising, email marketing, and much more. If I don't have direct experience with it, I probably know someone great who does. A bonus: I tend to have quite a few tips on family-friendly travel - my favorite hobby. I welcome discussing that while debating which is the best episode of Storybots.
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