29
BENNETT D.
BENNETT
COPYWRITER, BBDO
BBDO New York copywriter Bennett D. Bennett
compares himself to a utility player in baseball,
citing his versatility as a key strength. That
versatility extends far beyond advertising:
Bennett started college as a physics major, has
an extensive fi ction background and experience
as a voiceover artist.
Bennett, 27, landed at BBDO in 2015,
scoring a spot as the inaugural hire in the
agency’s creative residency program after giving
a speech at the AdColor Awards & Industry
Conference. He continues to be involved with
AdColor, as well as the AAF’s Mosaic Council,
the 4A’s and The 3% Conference.
While Bennett thinks the industry is
making some progress with diversity, he says,
“I just don’t think progress is as quick and as
impactful as it should be.” He adds, “There’s a
large pipeline of diverse talent coming in, but
not being included enough in conversations at
agencies,” which means that much of that talent
leaves for other industries before reaching
senior-level positions.
Bennett, who is currently working on
campaigns for Macy’s and SAP, aims to
eventually launch his own agency. “My goal is
not just to expand as a writer, but to put that into
practice through long-form story content, build
brands from the ground up from a branding and
identity perspective,” he says. —E.O.
ANDA GANSCA
CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, KNOTCHGrowing up in Transylvania, Knotch co-founder and CEO
Anda Gansca was always a self-starter and problem solver—
she even created her own interdisciplinary class in high
school because she “felt like the educational system was too
theoretical,” she says.
Fast forward to today and Gansca, 29, has turned her
focus to addressing issues in digital advertising. She believes
consumers deserve to have their opinions heard about brands,
and advertisers need to listen. Plus, transparency issues
with how data is collected and packaged back to brands
complicates advertisers’ trust in their digital marketing spend.
Brands like Chase, Unilever and GE embed Knotch’s
technology into their ads in exchange for collecting real-
time analytics and research on how consumers engage with
content. Knotch also offers a branded search engine that lets
marketers compare those stats to their competitors’.
“I think it’s really easy in our industry to lose track of the
fact that we’re ultimately serving people, not impressions,”
Gansca says. “We’re in this industry because advertising
pays for the internet to work, and we’re simply there to
make the internet a better experience and give marketers
the ability to listen to their audience’s voice.” —L.J.BEN LAMM
CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, CONVERSABLEArtifi cial intelligence has begun to take center stage this year, even
as many marketers still grapple with understanding what it is and
how to use it.
As CEO of Austin, Texas-based Conversable, Ben Lamm has been
at the forefront of AI, using automated messaging to connect brands
with users. A year ago, the company launched a “conversational
commerce” platform for Facebook Messenger, Twitter and other messaging
apps to build chatbots or human-centric services.
However, the serial entrepreneur (who sold his previous company, Chaotic Moon, to
Accenture) knows that AI isn’t a one-size-fi ts-all fi x. In fact, Lamm—who’s also worked on VR and IoT projects—sees
AI as playing a role to both scale experiences and also personalize them.
“I always say that AI isn’t magic, it’s just work,” Lamm, 38, explains. “It’s about evaluating, choosing and
strategically implementing these technologies in a way that makes sense for your business and
marketing goals.” —M.S.ANIQ RAHMAN
PRESIDENT, MOATAs measurement and brand safety issues rock social media platforms
and publishers, the relevance of companies conducting third-party
audits for digital advertisers has skyrocketed this year. That, in turn,
made measurement companies like Moat more popular than ever before.
Moat, which was acquired earlier this year by Oracle for a reported
$850 million (per Recode), has been at the forefront of a number of hot-
button issues in the digital world—and so has its president, 30-year-old Aniq
Rahman. In addition to working with all of the major social platforms on better
third-party ad measurement, this year Rahman’s team partnered with Storyful and CUNY to develop a list
of fake news sites in the aftermath of the 2016 campaign to help readers separate fact from fi ction.
“I don’t know if people fully understood that viewability was going to be something that was on every
campaign, every impression moving forward,” says Rahman. “And it moved from a diagnostic capacity for
understanding inventory, but now the industry has moved to saying, ‘Hey, this is a standard that everyone
is adopting.’” —M.S.