Secure your place at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, March 23-25
The famous Proust Questionnaire comes from a popular 19-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 are someone you know would like to answer the Digiday Questionnaire, contact me at the email address below.
Our first subject is Rob Norman, CEO of GroupM, WPP’s media agency arm.
The Digiday Questionnaire: Rob Norman
- What about working in the digital media industry makes you happy?
Abundance of innovation, optimism, and opportunity. - What about working in the digital media industry makes you miserable?
Scarcity of perspective, patience, context and consistent ways of assessing real value to business. - What is the worst fault you see in your area of the industry?
The dual paradox of perfect measurability and imperfect accountability and of ridiculous friction in a world of ones and zeros. - What positive changes do you hope to see in the industry?
That profitability gets the attention it deserves as the real measure of business success and as a prerequisite of great service delivery. - What is the quality you most admire in a digital media CEO?
The ability to manage from concept to delivery and the good sense to know that CEOs report to everyone working for their company as well as to shareholders. - What tech company do you wish you started?
Google. It might not last forever but it did change business forever. - Silicon Valley or Madison Ave.?
I prefer the shopping on Madison Avenue and like the Morgan Library a lot. - Track or Do Not Track?
Track. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, but don’t be evil (ever). - App or mobile site?
HTML 5 - If you could only use one of these for these rest of your life: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Spotify, which one?
Facebook. I fear loneliness.
More in Media
In graphic detail: Middle-tier creators are fueling the next phase of the creator economy
Facts and figures behind the growing middle tier of creators who make less than macro creators, but convert more.
How medical creator Nick Norwitz grew his Substack paid subscribers from 900 to 5,200 within 8 months
Creator Playbook: Unpacking the strategy behind medical YouTuber Nick Norwitz turning to Substack to significantly grow his brand.
Media Briefing: In the AI era, subscribers are the real prize — and the Telegraph proves it
In an era where AI is eroding referral traffic and third-party distribution, a subscriber who pays directly has become the most valuable reader a publisher can own. Springer just bought over a million of them.