Faris Yakob
Chief Innovation Officer - kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners
Bio:
Faris Yakob is chief innovation officer at MDC's kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners (kbs+p).
He’s trying to make everything more awesome—stealing from the engines of innovation, technology, and culture—to create innovative solutions for clients and partner agencies.
Previously, he was executive vice president and chief technology strategist at McCann-Erickson, New York.
As chief technology strategist, he was tasked with helping to work out how brands, people, and technology can play better together, developing consumer-involved ideas for Nikon, Verizon, and Kohl’s.
Before that, he spent five years being the digital ninja at groundbreaking communication strategy agency Naked Communications in London, Sydney, and New York, working with brands such as Google, Sony, and Coca-Cola.
After getting an MA in English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Faris spent some time as a management consultant—helping blue-chips and start-ups navigate the emerging digital landscape, building a number of digital businesses and then writing for Maxim magazine—before landing in communications planning.
Faris regularly writes about brands, media, communications, and technology for a number of publications, including the Fast Company, Contagious, and Forbes magazines.
He writes a blog called Talent Imitates, Genius Steals, which Campaign named one of the top ten advertising blogs in the UK and was nominated as one of the Ten Best Blogs to Follow by Mashable.
www.farisyakob.com
He was awarded the President’s Prize from the IPA in the UK for his thesis on the future of brands. He has been lucky enough to be invited to talk about this sort of thing at conferences all over the world, from Romania to Brazil, to speak at MIT’s Future of Entertainment conference, and has lectured at the University of Westminster and the University of Southern California.
Faris has served on the jury for the Content and Contact category at the Clio Awards, the digital jury for the Campaign BIG Awards, and is the president of the jury for the NEW category at the London international Awards for the second year running.
He was named a Campaign Face to Watch in January 2008, a week after he had left the country to crack the states, where no one reads Campaign.
