Distinguished Speaker: Leo Burnett’s Tod Szewczyk Goes Back to the Future
If you went back in time to 1968 and the very first PRINT show, you would encounter a completely different set of technologies. Not only exhibiting on the show floor, but also in the homes and offices of the people attending—and exhibiting—at the show. Not the least of which, you would find no one staring at their mobile phones—there were no mobile phones. The only tweets from the show would be from any birds that somehow got into the building.
Exhibitors and attendees at that first PRINT show were virtually incommunicado while at the show. (Those were the days.)
Fast forward to PRINT 17, and it’s a completely different world. If you were one of the people that were at that first PRINT show, you know much has changed, and that the rate of change is accelerating.
As technology, and the culture that embraces and becomes dependent on it change, so, too, do marketing and advertising change with them. You only have to watch an episode of Mad Men to see how advertising alone has changed since the 1960s.
How can marketers, advertisers, and those who work with them—like printers—cope with a technological landscape that changes rapidly, constantly, and relentlessly?
On Monday, September 11, from 8 to 8:50 am in Room S102ab, Tod Szewczyk, VP of Emerging Technology and Innovation for Leo Burnett, will take a look at “The Future of People, Technology, and Advertising.” In this forward-thinking session, Szewczyk will track how fast technology is changing, and how it is changing the world we live in. He will also offer some ideas as to where we are headed, what it means for marketing and advertising, and how to—ideally—stay ahead of the changes that are coming.
At Leo Burnett, Szewczyk helps bring new platforms, partners, and ways of working into the agency. He provides insight and best practices to successfully integrate new technologies into marketing initiatives that create immersive and engaging brand experiences.
Szewczyk has led the agency’s development of the proprietary Leovative content platform, and founded Arc’s Retail Innovation Lab and FutureShop/Leovative expo events. In addition, he also leads the agencies’ strategic partnership with Google.
Szewczyk’s writing has been published on the Chicago Ideas website under the “Future Today” series, and through Leo Burnett’s Leo Scope program.
With a background in strategic sourcing and production across myriad categories for the past 15 years, he now works to make sure innovation is practical and strategic, with an eye to solving the business problems that the agency is working on with its clients. Szewczyk earned his BA from Columbia College Chicago.
