Should You Attend Content Marketing World?

Melanie Deziel is an award-winning branded content strategist and consultant, and the founder of The Overlap League, the native ad newsletter. She is a board member of the Native Advertising Institute, has served as an executive judge for the Digiday Content Marketing Awards, and travels the country educating marketing, sales and editorial teams on branded content strategy. Melanie is the former Director of Creative Strategy for Time Inc., where she led ideation for sponsored content programs across 35+ publications, and was the first editor of branded content at The New York Times, where she conceived and wrote in-depth pieces sponsored by advertisers, including the “Women Inmates” piece created in partnership with Netflix and Orange Is The New Black and the “Grit & Grace” feature on The New York City Ballet presented by Cole Haan, which earned the OMMA for Best Native Advertising Execution in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

Sales and Marketing professional with 20+ years sales and marketing experience, specializing in digital media, social engagement, public outreach and creating quality content.  I am professional, analytical, and results driven. I’m adept at conceptualizing and implementing marketing campaigns for a wide variety of clients and products. Strong results are derived from tailoring a campaign to a company’s current needs while simultaneously forecasting their future ones. 

In the social media arena, my credo is: the most effective way to build brand loyalty is to entertain and educate consumers simultaneously. The key is to create content that is liked, and, more importantly, shared.   “Build relationships first, sell second” was my philosophy years before the term “inbound” was used to describe the phenomenon.  I’ve had a long-term interest keeping up with the trends of digital and social media.  Excellent networking and people skills. Extremely comfortable in representing and being the face of a company in public arenas and speaking engagements.

Leah leads global digital asset management strategy and supports global digital content development and execution at McCormick & Co. Leah’s prior experiences in design, marketing, IT solutions and corporate training and change management position her as a leader in connecting and implementing marketing technology and driving digital communication strategy enabling transformation and creative productivity for McCormick’s 30+ global brands spanning over 140 countries. Cultivating business process and technical solutions, she has led and collaborated on custom marketing technology integrations, content workflows, metadata frameworks, and digital archival projects.

At VMLY&R, I collaborate with clients, expert technologists and very talented creatives to plan and create innovative content that solves real business problems. I am an ever-growing strategist and a lifelong learner: a writer, a leader, and big-picture thinker.

My experience and education have given me a unique perspective in brand building, real-time marketing, influencer relationship management and emerging media.

At Red Bull, I worked with a company that wasn't afraid to say that a brand should have a personality and worked every minute to inject that persona into national events ranging from action sports to video game tournaments held 100 feet below ground in a cold war missile silo (no joke). Red Bull introduced me to the concept of utilizing local influencers in order to create richer experiences for our consumers, and that has stuck with me ever since.

With Vitaminwater, Vitaminwater Zero & Smartwater brands we took field marketing to a new level. By applying traditional sampling, marketing event & influencer strategies and harnessing the power of social media, our experiential focus can now easily be shared and spread throughout our fan's feeds & streams embedded within their multiple communities. A 1:1 approach became 1: many.

My passion lies in the relationship building & influencer relationship management both online & off. Working with smart people and doing smart things to bring brand's & people to the level that they deserve to be at is what gets me up every day (that and a 5Hour Energy).

Barkley has given me the opportunity to combine all that I've learned and helped brands develop, grow & expand their own online communities through an array of services, processes & products. I lead an amazing team of thought leaders, quantifying & developing consumer behaviors through strategic online listening & engagement.

Specialties: interactive digital marketing, brand positioning, brand personality, brand building, social media, blogging, podcasting, relationship building, guerrilla marketing, event planning, red bull, vitaminwater, smartwater, influence, influencer relationship management, experiential marketing