Commentary

Steve Minichini + Taylor Swift = Who Woulda Thought?

Steve Minichini kicked off the Programmatic Insider Summit in Lake Tahoe on a surprising note this morning, invoking pop star Taylor Swift.

Minichini, the digital ad wunderkind who until he recently became CEO of AboveNation Media, had been the head of digital operations at MDC Partners’ Targetcast (now Assembly), looks like a pretty macho street-smart guy. But he confessed that he recently took children to see a Taylor Swift performance at the Meadowlands in New Jersey and found himself so enthralled, he was “boxing out 12- and 13-year-olds” to touch her hand.

The reason for the Swift anecdote, he said, was that he was impressed with how she kept bringing guests on stage throughout her performance, so he decided to incorporate that feature during his opening keynote, albeit virtually by attributing their comments, thoughts and opinions as “guest stars” during his presentation.

That led to another surprising revelation about Minichini, which is that he didn’t know what the word potpourri was until one of his expert friends explained it to him. The friend had used the term, “Programmatic Potpourri: Moving Beyond The Buzzwords.” Clearly, Minichini isn’t a regular viewer of the game show “Jeopardy,” otherwise who would have known. The other thing that was clear is that Minichini is much more of an expert about programmatic than he is about potpourris.

After quoting one of his authoritative sources who said asserted that programmatic ad technology is commoditizing creativity, Minichini said he was shocked, but nonetheless included the “sound bite” in his presentation, because, “I know that programmatic enhances creativity, why is he saying the opposite?”
Next story loading loading..

Discover Our Publications