M-RCBG Senior Fellow-Led Study Group: Eric Salama
Thursday, October 29, 4:30-5:30
Zoom meeting. Registration required:
https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_l7atTKxCRCqJdtHg92OQxw
Especially topical given this week's Government anti-trust action against Google, M-RCBG Senior Fellow Eric Salama will be presenting some of the results of hot off the press primary consumer research on data privacy from US, UK, Germany. He will be discussing themes that have emerged from interviews he has been conducting with senior tech, agency and advertiser players and will also be joined by Jamie Barnard, General Counsel of one of the world's largest advertisers. One of the key themes that is emerging is that regulation designed to give people greater control over the data is having the opposite effect. And that progress may have less to do with regulation and more to do with the ethical stance that companies take.
Eric Salama is a global business leader with a track record of transformation. He has recently stepped down as CEO of Kantar, one of the world’s leading research, insight, data and consulting companies after leading its carve-out from WPP and a sale of a majority stake to Bain Capital. During his 18 years as CEO the business grew to over $4bn of revenue, 30k employees, operating in all markets around the world and working with major multinationals and local giants – clients and partners such as Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Globo, BBC, Yilli, ITC, JBS, Coke, Unilever, Loreal, VW, Group M, Omnicom. The business is unique in combining survey and behavioural data at scale around the world and by 2020 had moved from being a collection of agency brands to going to market under a single brand and with a single P&L, Kantar. Prior to Kantar Eric served on the main board of WPP for almost a decade as the CEO of wpp.com and the Head of Strategy, working as part of the team which built it into the largest marketing services company in the world. Eric has served as a Trustee of the British Museum, a Director of UK Government Department DFID and a Governor of Birkbeck College London. On 1st July he will become Chair of leading UK Charity Comic Relief. He has presented extensively around the world in Government and Parliamentary forums, public conferences and client events. He was both a Chairman and a juror at Cannes Lions Festivals of Advertising. He worked for the Labour Party Front Bench Team on Foreign Affairs 1983-6, was appointed by Tony Blair to the UK Government Creative Industries Task Force in 1997 and served as an advisor to Gordon Brown in his roles as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister from 2000 to 2010. While a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG, Eric will conduct work on data usage and data privacy with his project, Shaping the World’s Newest Human Right. His faculty advisor is Jim Waldo, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard. Email: Ericsalama@hks.harvard.edu