Faris Yakob

Position(s):

Speaker

Faris served as EVP/Chief Technology Strategist at McCann-Erickson, New York from 2008 till January 2010. 

 

As Chief Technology Strategist he is trying to work out how to communicate in this networked world, how brands can make people happy and how we can do awesome stuff that is useful or entertaining or both.

 

Before that he spent five years as the Digital Ninja at communication strategy agency Naked Communications. 

 

After getting a MA in English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Faris spent some time as a management consultant and as a writer for Maxim magazine. 

 

As a strategist he has worked on brands such as Sony, Google, Yahoo!, Nestle and Virgin Mobile, in Sydney, London and New York and helped some of them win some awards, at festivals like the One Show and the British Interactive Media Awards.

 

Faris writes about brands, media, communications, technology and for a number of publications including the Financial Times, Contagious Magazine and Forbes. He writes a blog called Talent Imitates, Genius Steals, which Campaign named one of the top ten advertising blogs in the United Kingdom and is where you can usually find him.

 

He was awarded the President's Prize for his thesis on the future of brands from the IPA in the United Kingdom. He has been lucky enough to be invited to talk about this sort of thing at conferences all over the world. 

 

Faris was on the jury for the Content and Contact category at the Clio Awards and the digital jury for the Campaign BIG Awards last year. He has written chapters about social marketing for two Age of Conversation books, the proceeds of which went to Variety, and helped organise Twestival, a global twitter meet up to raise money for charity: water. 

 

He was named a Campaign "Face to Watch" in January 2008, a week after he had left the country to crack the states, where no one reads Campaign.  

 

Faris is proud of being a geek and he hopes you are having a lovely day.