• by Erik Sass , December 19, 2006

A veteran media planner, and the former head of print services at both Zenith Media and Initiative, has a new gig that brings together the worlds of media and marketing, calling this the future of the business. Steven Greenberger, a fixture of Madison Avenue print media buying, is leaving DJG Marketing after just over a year to join SLG Advertising as executive vice president and media director. Although he only hinted at what's to come in an interview Monday, he promised big developments in the New Year.

With this move, according to Greenberger, "I've joined an advertising agency that believes media and marketing work hand in hand, much more so than I've observed with the very large advertising agencies." As part of this approach, "we're going to take event marketing, promotion, database and other areas that might be more peripheral to a traditional media agency and bring them together with day-to-day media planning to create a great synergistic approach to how media is selected."

Although the details will have to wait for the New Year, Greenberger said he expected the new approach would yield greater efficiency in "how the assets of larger companies are utilized and how we execute media in general." This includes improved accountability, he added: "We're working on a variety of different ROI analyses." Greenberger promised "there will be significantly less wasted dollars" through melding media and marketing.

Over the last 25 years, Greenberger has earned a name as one of the media industry's most influential executives. In addition to his latest role at DJG, Greenberger served as executive vice president of convergence and print media at Initiative Media, director of print media at Mediacom, and senior vice president of print services at Zenith Media. He also served as director of marketing and research for New York magazine and associate publisher of Rolling Stone.