Peter Hirshberg

Chairman, Technorati; Marketing innovator and serial entrepreneur

BIG IDEAS

• The Rise of the Audience
  The audience is up to something. An international phenomenon, people are creating their own content, learning from one another, and gaining power. This global audience is breaking news stories, building communities, influencing brands, and changing the way we get information. Bloggers now have authoritative voices and the most popular types of media - television, radio, news, movies - are being created and consumed in ways that undermine the previously one-way forms of communication. The demand side is supplying itself, a shift that has profound impacts on news, mainstream media and entertainment. And it’s sending fear into the hearts of traditional media companies. Peter Hirshberg has a unique lens into what the rise of the audience means for the marketing, branding and entertainment industries. He speaks passionately about what people are paying attention to the web, how they are communicating with each other, and what it means for the future of marketing and technology. Using video, animation, computer visualizations, and humor, his unique presentation style is fast paced, insightful, and entertaining.
• The Looking Glass World of Social Marketing
  Everything we learned about marketing in last 50 years has flipped. Customers talk back, foment rebellion, or wax poetic about their favorite products. When brands campaign, the audience campaigns back at them. Whatever illusion of control marketers had is now gone. But all is not lost: when businesses act transparently, engage their audiences authentically and encourage the two-way communication, they win in this new world. Peter Hirshberg takes you through the looking glass world of post-modern marketing and branding, illustrating how great brands work with their customers to come out on top. And often this requires turning classic marketing on its head: relinquishing the tight control of the brand; mashing up media marketing with new models of engagement; co-determining identity, customer experience, and product features. Making mistakes and fessing up. The inconceivable becomes what you do to thrive.
• How the Computer Ambushed Television
  (or Why the Invention of the Atomic Bomb Unleashed Forces That Led to the Writers Strike). How did a machine that was built for accounting and artillery end up driving the business models, philosophy, application, and power relationships of the entertainment business and advertising? Peter Hirshberg takes a look at the 60 year uneasy relationship between television and computing –and between New York and Silicon Valley culture – offering insights about what media is going to look like in the future, and why the writers strike is home to many of those lessons. Using original and historical clips from computing and television Peter examines examples of the clashes between the two cultures going back 50 years. He shares a look at why we are where we are and insights about what to do next as media explode.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Peter Hirshberg is at the epicenter of the noisy, connected world of online conversation.  He is changing our thinking about marketing, branding and customer relationships.  A Silicon Valley executive with several high profile marketing and branding related ventures, Peter has led emerging media and technology companies at the center of disruptive change for more than 20 years.  He is chairman of the executive committee of  Technorati, the leading aggregator of user generated content in the world, tracking over 100 million Weblogs and 70,000 posts per hour. He is also co-founder and chairman of The Conversation Group, a fast growing agency helping brands with strategy and marketing in a world of empowered  and connected audiences and customers.

Previously Hirshberg served as president and CEO of Gloss.com, the online prestige beauty business co-owned by Estee Lauder Companies, Chanel and Clarins; he was Chairman of Interpacket Networks, the global leader in Internet-by-satellite (sold to American Tower in 2000), and was founder and CEO of Elemental Software (sold to Macromedia in 1999).

During a nine-year tenure at Apple Computer, Hirshberg headed Enterprise Marketing, where he grew Apple's large business and government revenue to $1 billion annually and helped lead the company’s entry into the online service arena. After leaving Apple, Hirshberg's new-media strategy firm served clients including America Online, Microsoft, NBC Television Network, Estee Lauder, Pacific Bell and Silicon Graphics.

Hirshberg is a founder of Goodmail Systems, a board member of ICTV, and serves on the advisory boards of start-ups Ideeli and Aniboom. He is a Trustee of The Computer History Museum and a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. Peter earned his bachelor's degree at Dartmouth College and his MBA at Wharton.