I’d never heard about Wenda Harris Millard before. My bad.
Thanks to Brian Morrissey at Adweek (and Catharine P. Taylor’s pointer) I now know better.
In a talk with Federated Media Publishing founder John Battelle at the Conversational Marketing Conference in New York yesterday, she said, “emotional creativity that has been key to building brands” is being overshadowed by “the cool efficiency of technology.”
“Technology is very important, but where many companies go wrong is when they think technology is the answer or primary solution to proving a business solution to a marketing problem,” Millard said. “The business of advertising is still a business of persuasion. Machines can’t make art.”
“I’m extremely disturbed at the commoditization of Internet advertising before we’ve had an opportunity to establish its value proposition.”
Millard is the newly named president of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
