The famous Proust Questionnaire comes from a popular 19th-century parlor game in which guests were asked to answer a series of questions to reveal the respondent’s true nature. Digiday is updating the Proust Questionnaire for the digital media industry. If you or someone you know would like to answer the Digiday Questionnaire, contact me at the email address below.
Our latest subject is Adam Kmiec, director of global digital marketing and social media at Campbell’s Soup.
The Digiday Questionnaire: Adam Kmiec
1. What about working in the digital media industry makes you happy?
The pace. There’s nothing like it. You have to always be on your toes, with your head on a swivel and yet laser focused. You’ll never repeat the same day in digital.
2. What about working in the digital media industry makes you miserable?
How easy it is to position yourself as an expert. The number of stories I’ve heard from clients and agencies buying snake oil from would-be gurus and experts could fill a book. These gurus and experts make it so much tougher for all of us to succeed.
3. What is the worst fault you see in your area of the industry?
We forget the value of traditional. We too quickly dismiss the value of traditional and how those before us paved the way for all us to do what we do, today. TV is not dead. Nor is print or any of the other mediums that we keep trying to bury.
4. What positive changes do you hope to see in the industry?
I want to see better investment in analytics and measurement. I think we’ve been hoping to see that maturity for some time. The sooner we stop creating meaningless metrics like “people talking about this” and start creating ones that tie directly to business results, the better we’ll all be.
5. What is the quality you most admire in a digital media CEO?
The same traits I’d admire in a non-digital media CEO: trust, integrity, honesty and empowerment.
6. What tech company do you wish you started?
Not in the traditional sense of Technology, but I wish I had started Nikon. When I see how evolved photo taking, creating and sharing has become, I salivate with what I could do driving their roadmap. In the traditional sense of tech companies, probably Myspace, and there’s no way I would have sold to News Corp.
7. Silicon Valley or Madison Ave.?
I was born in New York, but would have to say Silicon Valley.
8. Track or Do Not Track?
Treat your customers like you’d want to be treated.
9. App or mobile site?
Wherever my customer is. Always prioritize based on what your customers will find most valuable.
10. If you could only use one of these for these rest of your life: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Spotify, which one?
Foursquare ☺
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