I don’t pay much attention to personnel moves in the communications industry, despite the number of press releases I receive on the subject. Of course, if I know the person moving jobs then I am interested. And when the move is from ad agency leadership to CEO of a well known media company, then there’s something for everyone.
Baba Shetty, Chief Strategy and Chief Media Officer at Hill Holliday has been named Chief Executive Officer at Newsweek/The Daily Beast. Prior to Hill Holliday, Mr. Shetty led digital at Fallon Worldwide, where he executed the famous BMW Films project.
I met with Shetty last October and was totally impressed with the man, his generosity and his thinking. We discussed content marketing over a wonderful lunch in Boston’s North End. The whole time I felt welcome and respected, even though AdPulp is “just a blog.” So, I can see why Barry Diller and Tina Brown want Shetty on their team.
“Baba is a real catalyst in bringing ideas to the marketplace,” says Brown. “We collaborated on our very successful Newsweek Mad Men issue together and forged a terrific creative relationship.”
The Daily Beast was founded in 2008. Curated to avoid information overload, the site is dedicated to breaking news and sharp commentary. In 2011, The Daily Beast became the online home of Newsweek magazine.
“Clay Shirky says ‘it’s not information overload, it’s filter failure’ and The Daily Beast philosophy of ‘read this, skip that’ brilliantly solves filter failure – there’s a reason the site is growing faster than any other in the category,” says Shetty.
