Making money off the 845 million people who have a Facebook page may seem easy, but reality may be a different matter. When the company filed its IPO documents last week, many experts questioned how it was going to get advertisers to pay for continued access to all those folks.
That task falls to David Fischer, Facebook's vice president of marketing. As The Wall Street Journal writes, it's up to Fischer to develop new ad formats. Among other things, he came up with the idea of "Sponsored Stories," which allows advertisers to pay Facebook to highlight "like" activity from users to their friends.
Fisher, who grew up in Massachusetts, is a protege of Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. They worked together at the U.S. Treasury department under then-Secretary Larry Summers and he followed her to Google in 2002. He met founder Mark Zuckerberg two years ago, who told him then that he didn't want to know the details of Facebook's advertising business.
It will be up to Fisher to make sure, per founder Zuckerberg's mandate, that advertising on Facebook is "unlike anything else." (The Wall Street Journal)
Sales Buzz
More Jobs (NYT)
U.S. employers added 243,000 jobs in January, bringing the unemployment rate down to 8.3%.
Intentional Gains (Sales Machine)
Sales Machine offers advice on how to land big deals without any need for luck.
No Drugs (WSJ)
Walgreen Co. reported that its same-store sales slid 4.6% in January as it lost a big customer, Express Scripts Inc., a benefits provider that manages prescriptions. Orders from Express made up 12% of the total number of prescriptions filled by the drug store chain.
Marketing Buzz
Land a Super Bowl Spot (FINS)
The use of crowdsourcing to create Super Bowl spots is opening doors for new, young talent that may never have had a chance to land jobs on Madison Avenue.
Acxiom's New CRO (Ad Age)
Nada Stirratt, a former MySpace, MTV and AOL executive, is joining the global interactive marketing services company Acxiom as its chief revenue officer in charge of managing the company's relationships with marketers.
Premier Loses Marketing Exec (Marketing Week)
Jon Goldstone, group marketing director of the U.K.'s largest food producer Premier Foods, is leaving the company amid a restructuring effort that combines Premier's marketing and commercial teams.
Buzz Around the Office
Five young accordion players from the Kum Song School in Pyongyang, North Korea, performing A-ha's "Take on Me."
List of the Day: How to Talk Your Way Into a Job
When you're looking for a job, what you say is only as important as how you say it.
1. Present yourself as optimistic and positive.
2. Show you are willing to learn and improve.
3. Smile – everyone likes to work with happy people.
(Source: Glassdoor.com)
