Speaking

 On the record: I've now asked Grant McCracken to give keynote addresses at two of our iMedia Summits-- the first was the Financial Marketing Summit in Fall of 2007 and the second was our Automotive Marketing Summit. Very few speakers get a second chance at the podium at my events, but Grant brings a uniquely insightful, engaged and brilliant perspective to where culture, media, advertising and the internet all slam into each other. He is also hugely charming and funny onstage, which is always a plus. Pacing like a tiger up and down the stage, Grant's eyes sparkle as he makes his audience both think and laugh. The best historians are storytellers, and Grant's ability to pull a compelling tale from a series of images means that his audiences return home with clear memories and new intellectual tools at their disposal. I enjoy him as both an author and a speaker, and recommend him without reservation.

Brad Berens

CMO Executive Summits Chief Content Officer & Editor at Large, iMedia

• Culture and New Technologies: Theory and Method from the Meaning Transfer Model, Industry Symposium, Marketing the Future: Bringing new Technologies to the Marketplace, New York, June 19, 1990.
• Culture and Brand Bonding: Anthropological and Psychological Perspectives, with Andrew Mitchell, Competitive Paper, Brands & Consumer Psychology conference, San Francisco, May 17, 1991.
• How Culture Shapes the Future. 1991 International Interior Design Exposition, Toronto, November 21, 1991.
• Children of the Lesser God: Technology, the triumph of popular culture, and the coming crisis in the museum world. Culture Technologies Convergence Conference. Toronto, Ontario, May 27, 1994.
• The Ethnographic Interview. Global Teenager Project, Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta, Georgia, June 14, 1994.
• Fragmenting the Culture. Session theme: Impact on Society & Lifestyles. Conference theme: Global Network Evolution. XVI World Tele-communications Congress. International Switching Symposium, Toronto, September 22, 1997.
• Maybe it’s rocket science after all. American Gas Association Conference, Las Vegas April 27, 1998.
• The American Consumer Scene. The Marketing Forum, somewhere at sea, QE II, May 4-7, 1998
• What I learned at Harvard Business School. Canadian Wholesale Drug Association, Toronto, January 25, 2000.
• Bringing the brand up to speed: marketing in a dynamic marketplace. Trend Agenda. Minneapolis, January 29, 2004.
• The New Diversity: what to do when consumers and markets splinter, Global Business Network Meeting, New York City, May 18, 2004.
• Complexity. The Sterling-Rice-UBS conference, New York City, May 17, 2004.
• The New Diversity: what to do when consumers and markets splinter, Global Business Network Meeting, New York City, May 18, 2004
• Flock and Flow. Keynote Speaker, Design Management Institute, Vancouver, June 3, 2004.
• How to do Ethnographic Research. Microsoft. Redmond, Washington. August 4, 2004.
• A walk in Connecticut: implications for product development & marketing in the grocery sector Canadian Council of Grocery Manufacturers and Distributers. Montreal, Quebec. October 9, 2004.
• Flock and Flow: managing innovation on the Kauffman continuum. Innovent Seminar, Nokia Corporation, Portland, Oregon, October 7, 2004.
• More is More. A debate with Barry Schwartz. PopTech. Camden, Maine, October 23, 2004.
• Ethnography: what it’s for, how it works. New Frontiers for Growth Conference, Marketing Science Meetings, Boston, April 14, 2005
• Raymond Loewy and the 1954 Buick: a mystery in 3 parts. Fuse: Brand Indentity Package Design, New York City, April 20, 2005.
• Culture. IDEO. Palo Alto, California. December 14, 2006.
• Being On Oprah. Interesting2007, London, England, June 16, 2007.
• Financial Marketing: climbing the value hierarchy, iMedia Financial Summit, New York, October 18, 2007.
• Pattern recognition. PSFK Conference. New York City. March 27, 2008
• 10 tools: marketing for new media & the new consumer. Convergence 2008, Vancouver, May 22, 2008.
• Connecting to culture. American culture and automotive marketing. iMedia Automative Summit, April 28th, 2008.
• Culture and creativity and advertising. FutureFlash Institute of Canadian Advertising, May 14, 2008
• Transformations, the new segmentation. European Society Of Marketing and Research, First International Conference, Montreal, Quebec, June, 2008.
• I am sorry to have to tell you this, but you have Asperger’s syndrome. Interesting2008, New York City, September 13, 2008.
• Who owns the corporation? How about designers? American Institute of Graphic Designers. FUSE, New York City, October 25, 2008
• Executive Education, Harvard Business School, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009