John Horniblow  - Digital Innovator 

John is a passionate and highly respected digital marketing professional who has worked with some of the world’s leading and most respected companies and brands including Toyota , Nestle,  Nike,  Apple,  Microsoft,  News Corporation. 

Early in his career John trained as a cinematographer and has shot, directed and produced award winning short, television documentary and industrial/training films working with broadcasters such as BBC, SBS, and ABC . His work has been screened at International film festivals and on network television. 

In Online development John first worked as a producer on the launch of the MSN network in Australia (Microsoft -PBL venture; NineMSN)  working on the transformation of traditional news , current affairs , and editorial properties into the online world . He  spent time working at News Corporation in the founding days of News Interactive.   John joined Spike Networks to become  the Director of Interactive Services  in the interactive agency that  was formerly Asia/Pacific’s largest and most successful .  He ran the companies most prominent accounts for Toyota, Lexus, Nissan, Commonwealth Bank, and Southcorp Wines  and and produced and managed the strategy and development of  a number of Fortune 100 company websites across a number of industries. His work has garnered awards at: London International Advertising Awards 1999 for TV and cinema commercials, radio and print advertising, and interactive media, The International Designers Network (IDN) Design Award 1999 in the Web/Entertainment category, and the 1999 Best Advertising/Marketing Site category in the Australian Interactive Multimedia Association Awards.

In 1999 he was also part of the team that took Spike to an IPO on the Australian Stock Exchange and opened overseas offices in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. He moved to Los Angeles , USA to be the Director of Production and Content Development for SpikeRadio, the worlds first 24/7 online radio station network in the early days of audio and video streaming , pioneering production processes in remote media broadcasting across the internet. He forged partnerships with Apples’ QuickTime TV network( the pre cursor to Itunes )  as a top tier content producer and broadcaster, Microsoft’s Windows Media as a broadband developer . In his tenure at SpikeRadio he produced Nike’s Olympic 2000 online media project, Radio Free Sydney, (Winner - Communication Arts’ Interactive Design Annual 2000 – Best in Interactive Design.) including producing series of short video web-episodes “Desperate seeking Brandy” and featuring US woman’s soccer star Brandi Chastain  shot against the backdrop of Sydney’s Olympic Games . This alongside the bold and evolutionary BWM films is  recognized as one of the web’s first branded entertainment series online. 

In 2001 during the Dotcom downturn he started BLADEdigital, a strategic interactive and online production consultancy advising to Nissan Global Interactive Marketing, Nike Digital, Qantas’ North American  CRM program, The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, The Phoenix Art Museum and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

He then moved onto leading Activision’s  interactive marketing efforts across all consumer facing digital channels . He led some of the earliest forays into social media marketing on mySpace and Facebook , developed a number of company firsts in driving web 2.0 fan based communities as a cornerstone to deep CRM activities , developed a behaviour  and sterotype mapping CRM platform to clearly define precision driven consumer segmentation and  re designed/repositioned the Activision’s corporate and brand websites.

Recently he worked under contract to Nestle , at their worldwide headquarters in Switzerland developing the strategy   and global training for CRM and the global  rollout of a CRM platform.