Thought Leadership Lectures in Advertising" Series Features Industry Innovators

Historically, Texas Advertising has invited noted speakers, held conferences and seminars on a variety of advertising and public relations topics to inspire, educate, and motivate UT students, faculty and practitioners. A new series has been initiated called "Thought Leadership Lectures in Advertising." This new series of lectures brings to our campus the innovators who have achieved significant success, changing how the advertising function and thinks.

This year, the series features three speakers who will share their views regarding creative development new economic models for the business, advancement in metrics, increasing engagement and the function of "brands" within the global market. Familiarity with these thinkers, trends and topics are becoming increasingly important to successfully participate and prosper within the advertising industry.

The speakers for the series and some notes about each follow:

October 10: Jeffrey Dachis,

Founder & CEO, The Dachis Corporation

(A new Austin-based startup focused on

delivering social computing to the enterprise)

CEO in Residence Austin Ventures

In 1997 Jeffrey Dachis was co-founder and CEO of Razorfish, the agency that helped establish the digital services industry. With new ways to rethink consumer insight, Razorfish made radical leaps into the future of design and challenged existing procedures and assumptions. At one point Razorfish's public valuation was over $5 Billion. Dachis' new enterprise will focus on creating an industry leading strategic consulting practice and an enterprise class Social Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) suite.

October 30: Torrence Boone

CEO Enfatico/WPP

Enfatico, part of the WPP Group, was launched to handle Dell's global marketing services account after winning the opportunity in a history making agency competition. Enfatico, a musical term that means to play emphatically or with emphasis, is based in New York and employs some 600 staffers in 13 cities, including four in the U.S. Enfatico's model has "legs" -- as Torrence Boone says "Everything we're building for Dell will be a foundation for the overall model and approach we'll use for other clients. The analytics and methodology we're using for Dell has relevance for other client sectors."

The lecture series will continue through February of 2009 with several other nationally recognized speakers. In order to document this series featuring some of the leaders that are helping to define the advertising industry the Department plans on publishing DVDs through cooperation with and distribution by the American Academy of Advertising.

We hope all of you take the opportunity to attend this outstanding series of talks.