• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 13, 2022

Horizon Media's three-year-old "Big" unit -- dedicated to servicing startups, ecommerce and emerging brands -- is hosting a three-day "bootcamp" to train them on media strategy and buying utilizing a "bite-size" approach.

The three-day immersive workshop running today through Thursday at Horizon's New York headquarters, was designed explicitly for founders and CMOs of the kind of emerging and high-growth brands Big was created to service.

The participants are not current clients of the agency and each applied and was accepted after being nominated by VC firms. They span sectors including retail, financial technology, and consumer packaged goods.

The training will focus on things such as customer acquisition, channel distribution and how to maximize budget allocation, with an emphasis on "tangible outputs."

The sessions are divided into two formats:

• Interactive case-based learning: inspired by a Harvard Business School case model, five original and interactive cases that coach participants on how to put marketing theory into action.

• Mentor Masterclasses: a curated collection of masterclass presentations from big and Horizon Media.

“Transformational brands trying to set a path for growth often experience a range of complex challenges and trade-offs," Big General Manager John Koenigsberg said in a statement describing the program. "We’re sharing the suite of best practices we’ve learned – how we’ve helped companies scale their businesses – to provide clear and actionable steps for how to get from where they are to where they are trying to go. For the bootcamp, we’re taking methods, frameworks, tools, and solutions that we use to unlock growth for transformational brands and packaging those takeaways into a bite-size and scalable format.”