MediaPost's Online All Stars celebrate the stars in the online media, advertising and marketing industry, who have pushed the business to new levels of excellence through their outstanding achievements and thought leadership.
Writing about media agency executives can be frustrating. Often, the subject will blitz an interviewer with buzzwords and catchphrases about data, algorithms and acronyms, stymying any attempt to reveal the person underneath the casual business attire.
Michael Epstein is not that kind of media agency executive. “You can get lost in the data,” he warns. “We like to say that behind every data point is a person.”
The Carat USA CEO’s hypersonic ascent — he came on board as Carat’s first chief strategy officer from Mindshare barely four years ago—has been fueled by his flair for innovation and the conviction that “people-based marketing” is the key to ongoing success for his shop and his clients.
Successful campaigns, he insists, are about “identifiable people rather than proxies … like digital cookies.”
The 2017 Media All-Star has impacted the internal development and importance of continued digital transformation and innovation within the Dentsu Aegis Network’s flagship media agency. Over the past two years, Epstein helped grow Carat’s digital footprint by 30%.