I'm delighted to be starting with Forrester as a Senior Analyst serving Interactive Marketers. I am based in our London office and will cover Global and EMEA specific topics. 

A little bit about me . . .

I studied computer science in Edinburgh, Scotland over 20+ years ago when it was mostly a mathematical topic — heavy on algebra, programming, and other dry subject matter. While some of these topics remained in academia for many years I have seen how they have come to be nurtured under a more commercial light with recommendation systems and rich analytics solutions proliferating in the marketing technology landscape. These tools live alongside bleeding-edge techniques including neuroscience tools to measure pre-cognitive responses to media, messages, and experiences. It’s clear that the mad scientists and M(ad) Men are working side by side. Of course, marketing will always have a strong and essential dollop of artistic flair in the elixir but without doubt it is moving inexorably toward a science helped, in part, from the massive data sets now available through the web and social paradigm.

My experience in the industry has seen me work with many telecommunications companies, media publishers, startups, and hardware manufacturers on a wide gamut of products, marketing strategies and solutions to problems. Most recently I supported the BBC with short- and long-term CRM/sCRM strategies (across all channels) as well as implementing prototypes in the marketing resource management (MRM) and media planning space. In the mobile domain I recently completed some work with Vodafone Global on a system that wove its own mobile content together with third-party content using recommendation engine technologies and HTML5.

With Forrester I will be writing about the habits of consumers and interactive marketers in EMEA across established and emerging IM channels. My first report is already out which shows a forecast of Western European Online Display Advertising 2011-2016. My next report examines the impact of privacy legislation, growing data footprints and their effect on how brands converse with their customers.  In 2012 I hope to cover a number of areas including : ad systems within gaming, neuro techniques and insights for marketers, group/bulk customization, Gen X/Y/Z insights in EMEA, curated targeted mobile content, and many more.

Do you have any views on what areas I should research? Drop me a line . . .

Often Interactive Marketing is said as being characterised by a shift from monologue to dialogue and this is one clue to where solutions for marketers will emerge and ultimately head toward. Having tailored dialogues with customers only scales when we introduce smart 'semi-sentient' systems into the mix. These smart systems leverage artificial intelligence, natural language, and search and are designed to work in the sprawling ever changing bio-like nature of the web.  I don't envy those marketers of the 40's and 50's — here and now is as exciting as it could be.

I look forward to developing dialogue and insights with you on what I see as a subject area that is in bloom.

Anthony

@ant_mull