These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.
Spotlight: Dave Knox
Title: Brand Manager, Digital Innovation –
P&G Productions
Employer: Procter & Gamble
Who paid it forward: David Armano
What David had to say about Dave: “Dave’s star is already on the rise. As a P&G brand manager he’s helped evangelize social media within the organization and become sort of an unofficial spokesperson. His writing on related topics is insightful and he balances personal with corporate brand effectively (no easy task).”
Dave Knox is a Brand Manager, Digital Innovation for P&G Productions, a new role for him in the past few months. Prior to that, he was a brand manager for digital business strategy with P&G Corporate Marketing. Dave attended college at Miami University of Ohio in Oxford, OH where he studied marketing and entrepreneurship. He joined P&G right out of college and has worked his way up in the company ever since. Dave writes a blog called Hard Knox Life where he discusses a brand manager’s point of view at the crossroads of marketing, media and technology. In addition, he has been been named by AdAge as “1 of 25 Media People You Should Follow on Twitter” and a “2010 Social Media Superstar” by Media Industry News. Dave is also active in the marketing industry, serving on the National Council of Pi Sigma Epsilon, the Advisory Board for Brandweek’s “Cincinnati’s Agenda 360 Consumer Marketing Steering Committee”, and as a speaker at conferences such as the Web 2.0 Summit, SXSW Interactive and IEG Sponsorship.
How Dave got interested in blogging: Dave said that social media gives him the opportunity to to remain connected within the marketing communication world. When he worked with P&G’s WalMart customer team several years ago, he was yearning for connection with the marketing community and feeling part of the discussion with the team. He started blogging to fill this void and found that he was able to connect with great minds in Chicago, Austin, San Francisco, and New York without actually having to go to these places.
Some of Dave’s thoughts on how social media is changing things: Dave looks forward to continuing to establish himself at forefront of how the world of marketing is changing because of social media. He enjoys driving change for the industry and leveraging technology in the right ways that benefit both brands and consumers. He says that what is going on right now is similar to what occurred in the early 90s with internet revolution, and that this revolution is not just beneficial for brands, but for people as well. When asked what the coolest project was that he’s worked on, he said it’s where he’s at right now. Dave says that P&G gives him the opportunity to think about a company that’s been around for a long time and how it can migrate its business strategies to digital environments. However, he says that social media was not meant to be a “career path” – but that digital is an enabler. He believes that the world is going to be digital within the next ten years, and that social media will be a driver for this to occur.
Tomorrow, Blogwell will be in Cincinnati, and as per Dave’s blog post, there will be a tweetup this evening on Wednesday following the conference hosted by Cincinnati Social Media. In addition, Cincinnati Social Media members who wish to attend the conference will receive a special discount for Blogwell.
Connect with Dave on:
So, a little history here to begin: apparently, last year a website called www.followfridays.com was launched to help people manage their #FF’s and see who the most #FF’ed individuals are. Clicking on that URL today brings you to a web hosting site called ‘(mt) Media Temple’. So I guess it’s been shut down. I heard whisperings of Twitter incorporating something to officially recognize #FFs, but I have yet to see anything leaked, tweeted, or scooped on that. Then, this afternoon, I received an email from Alfredo Artiles of www.e24apps.com – the company that also launched LocaFollow which I highlighted in my post on tools for searching Twitter profiles. He said:
I am so pleased to have another article published on Mashable!
