Role Model and Digital Creative

Some days ago, while browsing the net in search for inspiration to write this post, I came across a really interesting character on TED. This spontaneous and multitalented guy has been lucky enough to work in a vast variety of companies, creating ways and strategies to achieve interaction between brands and their customers. His name is Renny Gleeson, and here is his TED channel and his website.

He started his career developing online and CD ROM games, opportunity that opened gates for him to start concentrating on other projects and jobs that called his attention. Since 1995, his Curriculum Vitae include companies like Cybersites, Saatchi & Saatchi, NBA, AOL, Nestle, Mc Donald’s , American Express and many others. Moreover, as a side project for all these jobs, Gleeson has uploaded and shared a good amount of videos, tweets, blog posts, articles and contributions to other websites that have helped him build a relevant online presence in the digital marketing world.

But what does his work for all these firms have in common? The main reason why I admire the content putted online by him: his creative thoughts on customer-brand interaction and his dedication to find effectives ways to do so. Just as he wrote in his article Advertising is dead. Now, Why Am I Exited?, a contribution article for Creativity-Online.com: “Brands need provocative relationships with good customers. They need their stories told, and "interactivity" is driving the reemergence of the collaborative narrative as art form and communications medium”. Here's a video where he explains further his thoughts.

Apart from his insightful articles, this man seems to have another useful skill to communicate his ideas: his speeches. With his dynamic way of speaking, humor and clarity, he transmits his ideas while keeping the audience entertained. Check out his Sneaky Moves of Antisocial Smartphones Users video where he comically picks on the issue of mobile phone addicts; or his Qik account, where he has posted 46 videos taken with his cell phone camera to highlight the way mobile devices are becoming a more and more an essential part of our experience.

Personally, personalities like this, beyond entertainers and informers, are inspirational role models; people who have radical different ideas, knows how to transmit them to the public and make an impact.