What Marketers Are Thankful for in 2012

Thanksgiving can be a stressful time for many people, as travel plans, family gatherings and grueling hours of cooking all merge to create a perfect storm that would seek to destroy everything the holiday is meant to be.

To help our readers fight against the coming onslaught, we’ve asked marketers to share what they’re thankful for this year. We hope this helps you to pause, reflect and express gratitude for all the good things in your lives, within and outside of your careers.

Kyla Starinieri, online marketing manager at Yodle:
“I’m thankful for Codecademy for making me better at tracking performance and executing marketing strategies. Codecademy makes learning the ‘nerdier’ aspects of online marketing more fun. I’m thankful for the rise of cloud-based interfaces because applications like Kenshoo, Marin, Google Docs, Evernote and music-streaming interfaces allow me to work from everywhere. I’m also thankful for ‘The Year of Mobile’ and being able to prove that it’s finally happening.”

Peter Klein, senior vice president of media services at MediaWhiz:
“I’m thankful for a dedicated, hardworking team that has continued to drive client results despite many challenges this year in our space — from Yahoo in email, to Google in search and Facebook in social media, among many others. I’m also thankful for the industry making significant positive progress in lead quality via great monitoring services, such as CPA Detective, in addition to the stellar self-regulation efforts from industry leaders and organizations like the Performance Marketing Association. I’m most grateful for the advertisers that see the value in paying for performance vs. branding, which is contributing to the growth of performance marketing by billions of dollars each year.”

James Green, CEO of Magnetic:
“When it comes to marketing, there is a lot to be thankful for in 2012, but two key trends come to mind: data and multiscreen activity. The usage of data for online marketing campaigns is finally making digital a viable media channel for many brands, as marketers can now reach consumers online at the right time and with the right message. By applying data to media, we know which audiences are more likely to buy a car or engage in promotions, and how to reach them effectively. In 2012, mobile usage grew 52 percent, and at the heart of this increase is the widespread consumer adoption of mobile devices, from smartphones to tablets, so it has been great to see engagement from consumers across screens.”

Jeremiah Knight, group account director at Team One:
“This year we continue to be grateful for HTML5 and CSS3, which enable responsive Web publishing to myriad smart devices and many screen sizes without needing different specialty servers. We’re thankful for the beginnings of location-aware and context-aware mobile technologies (think Passbook and NFC chips, and so forth) that will enable advertisers to be even more useful to consumers in the years to come. We’re thankful for gesture-recognition devices like Xbox Kinect today that have already been modified for amazing marketing experiences (like Audi City) and will, no doubt, be at the forefront of convergence in the living room. And we’re thankful for broadband content distribution enabling consumers to cut their ties to cable and think about paying for content differently. Now if we could only get HBO GO as a standalone subscription. Well, here’s to wishful thinking in 2013.”

Penny Herscher, president and CEO of FirstRain:
“The advancements we saw in 2012 around collaborative, cloud-based intelligence platforms for sales and marketing (such as the widespread adoption of Salesforce.com) has been a real boon for many firms like my own that sell B2B solutions to large, complex companies. With rich and robust cloud platforms such as Salesforce or SharePoint deployed, it’s possible to roll out a whole array of innovative tools for greater collaboration (e.g., Chatter, Yammer) and customer intelligence.”

Mike Harris, president of DDB West:
“I’m thankful that the people now have the power over marketers. They can research marketing claims and debunk them. They can talk to their peers about ideas and products. They can create their own content about brands. They have the power to make or break brands and products. This is causing the downfall of marketing tyranny, and the return to power of honesty and creativity.”

Matt Eastwood, chief creative officer of DDB New York:
“I’m grateful that we’ve finally entered an era where YouTube views are as important as on-air ratings. This year felt like the tipping point. Creatively, the implications are huge — it frees you up from time constraints. Why not run a two-minute film (well done, Chipotle)? It gives the power back to advertisers and agencies, rather than allowing networks to dictate what should and, more importantly, shouldn’t go to air.”

Sandra Zoratti, VP of marketing, executive briefings and education,