Before going launching his consultancy – Delightful Communications - Mel’s 7 year role as Digital Marketing Evangelist at Microsoft Advertising, was to build relationships within the online advertising community by supporting and educating through the Microsoft Advertising Blog, evangelizing through social media, writing and by speaking about internet marketing and digital at conferences, trade shows & other events.
He began his digital advertising career as an editor at the search engine LookSmart in 2000, spending time at 24/7 Search as an Account Director before moving to Microsoft in 2005. He was part of the team that planned & executed the UK roll-out of Microsoft adCenter in August 2006, and it didn’t take much persuasion for Mel to help set up Microsoft Advertising’s Community Team that same year, when it became apparent that Social Media Marketing was going to be huge.
Mel has spoken about Digital Marketing, Search, Social Media and adCenter at conferences and events in the UK, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Reykjavik, Dublin, Barcelona & Tenerife. He has also lectured on MBA, MSc and online marketing courses, advising syllabus decision makers at Cranfield School of Management and Birkbeck College – part of London University.
More recently, Mel has built up a reputation for incisively interviewing industry heavy-weights on camera like Biz Stone, Sir Martin Sorrell, David Sable and Carolyn Everson (and less incisively, people like Hugh Grant!)
He is now based with his family in Seattle and regularly writes for Microsoft, Media Week, Brand Republic, Econsultancy and other 3rdparty publications.
Before getting into digital marketing, Mel was an eternally-resting-actor and got an ignominious break in a Joe Cocker Video alongside Catherine Deneuve, way back in 1997!
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Buy the book Pioneers of Digital: Success Stories from Leaders in Advertising, Marketing, Search & Social Media