Ian Schafer
CEO, Deep Focus
Biography
Ian is one of advertising’s most influential voices in interactive marketing and social media. Prior to founding Deep Focus in 2002, Ian was Vice President of the New Media division of Miramax Films. Named a ‘Media Maven’ by Advertising Age and one of Adweek’s “Young Ones”, Ian has been featured in Wired, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Adweek, Advertising Age, USA Today, New York Magazine, Variety, CNN, Fortune and The Hollywood Reporter. Ian also sits on the executive board of the Social Media Advertising Consortium, and the Global Advisory Board of Global Social Media Week.
Ian Schafer
CEO, Deep Focus
SPEAKER FILM
Ian Schafer — Feeding The Feed
Ian Schafer — Feeding The Feed

Social media has profoundly changed how people consume content, shifting the focus increasingly away from pages and toward feeds such as Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. In fact, says advertising executive and social-media marketing innovator Ian Schafer, "consume" is no longer even an apt term for the way stories take root in the individual and collective consciousness nowadays. In an age of micro-content, in which narratives are delivered in smaller and smaller bits, the most successful and influential storiesÑwhether an advertising spot or a Facebook postÑare designed less for digestion than for quick and easy sharing: vibrant, picture-driven packets of information that invite surprise and make you want to type, "Hey, check this out." That pleasurable sensation of discovery has its roots not in the classic creative model of slow, writerly production and revision, but in the newsroom model of snooping and scooping. Awakening that sense of discovery is key for journalists and advertisers alike, whose respective professions are merging as never before. In this film, Schafer explores that convergence, and offers firsthand examples from his professional career of an emerging truth: today, the biggest stories are the ones light and nimble enough to travel far and wide across the vast shared communities of social media.