MarketActivator is led by Francois Van Der Merwe, a professional services marketing specialist and business writing consultant, based in Sydney, Australia. Francois has worked across the globe and has a major passion for postioning companies effectively online, so that they can dominate their markets. His vast project management and implementatation experience enables me to handle or oversee projects for clients with whom he has a regular or long term relationship.
Francois worked for Deloitte for many years, having played a key role in the Marketing & Communications for Deloitte’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Industry Group. In this capacity he was initially based in Hong Kong, where he had the regional marcomms role, and implemented multiple marketing programs from scratch, which was one of the greatest “entrepreneurial” experiences of his corporate career.
In 2006 he moved to New York City and took over the Global Marketing Director role for the TMT Industry Group and oversaw all of the marcomms activities (internal and external) of the industry group, providing guidance to nearly 50 countries around the globe as we expanded the global presence and influence of the TMT industry group, having achieved tremendous results through our thought leadership profiling, media outreach, client impact and related eminence building activities. The activities included:
- Disruptions Event * (annual event which brings together over 100 CxO’s of key TMT client and prospects for 2 days of panel discussions, presentations and networking.) In playing a pivotal project management role for this annual event he had the privilege of dealing with many guest speakers including Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), Guy Kawasaki (Apple evangelist and Entrepreneur), Charlie Jones (famed US broadcaster), Ron Insana (CNBC), Terry Jones (Founder, Travelocity), Jason Pontin (Editor, Technology Review), Chris Anderson (Author of New York Times bestseller, The Long Tail and Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (famed author of New York Times bestseller, The Black Swan), Rich Karlgaard (Editor, Forbes Magazine) and Michael Fuchs (Former head of HBO) as well as multiple (too many to mention here) CXO’s and senior management members of top technology, media & telecommunications companies across the globe who participated in the panel discussions.
- Asia Pacific Technology Fast 500 (profiling high growth technology, media & telecommunications companies in Asia Pacific)
- EMEA Technology Fast 500 (profiling high growth technology, media & telecommunications companies in Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA))
- Global CEO Survey Report (report analysing the survey responses of the CEO’s of winning companies in the North American, Asia Pacific and EMEA Technology Fast 500’s)
- Convergence Conversations Book (comprises interviews with senior executives from TMT companies across the globe on the topic of Convergence)
- Digital Dilemmas Book (comprises interviews with senior executives from TMT companies across the globe on the impacts of Digitization)
- TMT Predictions (annual predictions of trends in the TMT industry)
- Global Venture Capital Survey (report on survey of over 400 venture capitalists (VC) around the globe on the state of the VC industry)
- TMT Security Survey (report on survey of technology executives regarding technology security issues)
- Writing the Annual Report for the TMT Industry Group
- Monthly newsletter distributed electronically to over 6,000 TMT practitioners around the globe
- Global TMT Industry Training Event (hosted in Athens in November 2007) – attended by 500 partners and senior managers of Deloitte Global TMT Industry Group.
* The Disruptions events in which I played a pivotal project management role were held in San Francisco, USA (November 2006) and Athens, Greece (November 2007).
