Name Mark Sherman | ||
Mark Henry Sherman is the founder and CEO of Media Experts. Founded in 1981 with three employees, Media Experts has grown to become Canada’s largest independent media services company with 150 employees in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, and concluded a purchase transaction with the Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG) in December 2015. Media Experts' customers include Bell Canada, BMW Canada, MINI Canada, WestJet, Best Buy, Interac, and Virgin Mobile.
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Sherman’s career in media began in broadcasting where he worked on air as a ski reporter and as Canada’s first FM radio promotion director, and then, by age twenty-five, in sales management.
Digital Work
Sherman, in 1999, concluded an agreement with DART making his firm the first agency in Canada to serve its own online advertising. He opened The firm's iTVLab in 2001, which incubated the first-to-market “Television Hyperlinking Advertising" model in 2995, etc.tv. The site leveraged the video on demand (VOD) infrastructure of digital cable, allowing viewers to hyperlink from linear thirty second commercials seen on a broadcast network directly to long form television ads, served on demand.
In 2006, the firm became the first agency to execute a sponsored Facebook application on behalf of a Canadian advertiser, and then executed the first Google Domination Day in North America, purchasing all Google display ad inventory and search queries for a single category in one day on behalf of its client.
In 2009, the firm was the first agency in Canada to run a "Devil" rich media ad unit on AOL, the first to implement ad-serving verification software that tracks and confirms the placement of an advertisers’ messages on a webpage, the first in Canada to use behavioural targeting and the first to execute a nano-targeted mobile campaign targeting cell phones in a concentrated geo-graphic area.
In 2010, it became the first media agency in Canada to be 100% Google AdWords certified. Anticipating the inevitability that all media will be bought on exchanges, The firmestablished XPETO in 2011, the first Canadian agency to operate its own online media trading desk. The firm developed “Sniper”, a suite of made in, and for Canada, media valuation tools which allow for the adjustment of traditional media ratings and the isolation of target customer contacts, with advertisements.
In June 2010, Sherman, with Zak Mroueh, principal at the Canadian creative agency Zulu Alpha Kilo, co-founded the People for Good movement, a national initiative created to encourage Canadians to reconnect with their core values of tolerance and generosity. He galvanized some 75 media owners, including over 500 media properties to donate over $20 million in advertising, time, space and production to the People for Good movement.
Sherman has chaired the Marketing Task Force of Federation CJA from 1992 to 2013, spearheading an annual fundraising campaign which now exceeds $40 million annually. His firm also orchestrates media strategy and buying on a pro bono basis for several other Canadian non-profit organizations including Montreal’s JGH, Operation Enfant Soleil, and Covenant House, and Bell, Let’s Talk Day.
Sherman is married to Janice Silver and is the father of three children, Genna, Jake and Alexa..
Awards
Sherman was named Media Director of the Year by Strategy Magazine in 2011. . In 2011, Sherman was named to the Media Jury, one of seven Canadian media professionals representing Canada at the 2011 Cannes International Festival of Creativity and Media. In December 2010, he was named “Media Innovator of the Year” by The Internationalist Magazine.
The Olympic Torch Campaign was conceived by Sherman for Canadian Aerospace and Transportation designer and manufacturer Bombardier. Sherman recommended that Bombardier and manufacture the Olympic Torch. The 45,000 km torch relay through 1,037 Canadian communities boosted Bombardier’s reputation among Canadians, and globally, through its connection to Olympic Pride.
In 2010 Media Experts was awarded seven Media Innovation Awards including five Gold Awards, including the 2010 Award for Best in Media Research .