Where’s that social media manager your company’s been looking for? “Most likely in your office,” Frank Eliason, SVP of Social Media at Citi, said Monday during a breakout session at OMMA Global. Indeed, a company’s top brand influencer often works for the company in question, according to Pauline Ores, Enterprise Market Engagement Consultant. But where, exactly? In marketing or PR, perhaps? Well, “PR people understand how to communicate,” said Marcy Cohen, Sr Manager at Sony Electronics. Seeming to side with Cohen, Ores said: "Marketers know about pushing out." "It’s not marketing, it’s not PR," Eliason said …

During a track session on mobile apps, Chris Brozenick, VP & GM, Mobile, at WeatherBug, says for him mobile is "all about the app" as opposed to the mobile Web because it allows a brand to put an icon on the homescreen of users' phones for easy access. He said WeatherBug gets eight to nine times the page views on its apps across different platforms whether the iPhone Android or BlackBerry than on its mobile Web site. Patrick Mork, CMO of app store Getjar, explained that the company tries to offer the best of both worlds by allowing publishers …

If you haven't been able to make it to OMMA Global New York, but have access to a browser, you can see some of the key panels and keynotes streamed live at this location: https://www.mediapost.com/events/?/showID/OMMAGlobal.10.NYC/type/Content/itemID/1268/OMMAGlobal-Overview.htmlhttp://www.ustream.tv/channel/omma-global

"We have no one that is called the creative," conceded Gene Liebel, partner and director of user experience at DUMBO-based HUGE. Leave it to a director of user experience to make a statement like that. But Liebel wasn't literally saying that no one is creative at HUGE. Actually, he was implying that they all are. "Everyone has to be creative, and no one gets to say give me three weeks to make something creative. We give them to 4:00," he said. Liebel

The creative gurus dissecting the state of online creativity are showing some amazing examples that clearly demonstrate what the editors and conference programmers of MediaPost intended to happen: Show that online creatives have plenty of chops that extend well beyond the ubiquitous banner ad. One of the best examples was given by Big Spaceship Founder-CEO Michael Lebowitz: an online video campaign documenting the slow, pain-staking and craftily executed hand painted billboard for Stella Atrois beer. The video, which can be viewed on http://www.uptherefilm.com/film.aspx, demonstrates that online creativity can evoke many attributes for a brand, including offline, analogue …

That's what the 2010 version of Jeff Benjamin would've told the 1996 version. To prove it, he would show him an incredibly cleaver campaign created for The innovative banner ad campaign, created for Axion Youth Banking by Boondoggle, features rock bands performing live in the equivalent spaces of standard banner ads. The agency constructed performance spaces that were literally the size of banner ads – at least the same ratios in terms of pixel by pixel dimensions. The effect is hilarious, with the band members jammed up against each other like 1950s college students crammed into a telephone …

Are banner ads -- which will soon turn 16 -- passé, or just plain ineffective? Not at all, says Jeff Benjamin, partner and Chief Creative Officer at revered creative agency CP+B. Creativity is creativity, and effective marketing is effective marketing, Benjamin insists. “It doesn’t matter what box you’re putting it in.” Based on his most recent work for brands like Nike, ideas that presently have Benjamin’s attention include real-time events, inventions, participation, and using the internet to amplify passionate messages.

Benjamin, the opening keynoter at OMMA Global New York, just reminded attendees that the banner ad will turn 16 next month. To show how far we've come, Benjamin showed a graphic of the original banner ad – and ad for AT&T Hotwired – which carried the copy, "Have you ever clicked your mouse here? You will?" So how far has the banner ad come? Not far, if you ask me, but to creative types like Benjamin, apparently they've come a long way since it started figuring out how to cram as much as he good into a GIF …

Gord Hotchkiss, President & CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions, just opened OMMA Global with the acronym SNAFU -- the "family" version of which is "Situation normal: All fouled up." Believed to have originated in the US Army during World War II, the underlying message is that if you’re too affected by the chaos around you, you’ll freeze up and be rendered totally ineffective. In other words, embrace the chaos. Hotchkiss says business professionals need to do the same given today's rapid rate of change, the proliferation of disruptive technologies, globalization, and an uncertain domestic economy. "That's the situation we're in …

Sprint's No. 3 in the mobile carrier space, but it's also an also-ran in the social media space, according to Chris Boudreaux, Social Media Management Practice, Converseon, and the third, initially mystery, panelist on the Social Media Insider Summit's "Game Show" panel. Bourdreaux said Sprint is definitely "present" on social media, but it is generally generating "negative sentiment."