It's hard to put Rob Key and his Converseon agency into a neat, little box -- and that's a very good thing. For starters, it was a social media agency before anyone was really talking about social media. Second, Converseon isn't just an agency, it's a technology company, too. As Key sees it, Converson is "sitting at the convergence of sentiment analysis, big data, and analytics."
Staking out that prime real estate has allowed Key and his team to develop solutions like Converseon's Conversation Miner, which was cited by Forrester Research as category leader in the Q3 2010 "Wave of Social Listening Platforms." Building on the technology plus services model, Converseon also has a steady stream of innovative solutions in its development pipeline, including "socially intelligent" technologies such as its proprietary Conversation Helper and Social Graphiti. Together, Converseon's suite of solutions mixed with agency services enable clients like Walmart, IBM, 3M, and Siemens to go beyond quantifying online conversations in order to reach a deeper understanding of what people are actually saying.
Prior to Converseon, Key was head of the Innovations Group at a division of Young & Rubicam, and a member of the WPP.com board. He speaks frequently about the transformative nature of social media at leading industry conferences such the Conference Board, 4As, iBrand Summits, Search Engine Strategies, ad:tech, Word of Mouth Marketing Association (where Converseon is a governing member), Public Relations Society of America (PRSA International), Advertising Research Foundation, and Affiliate Summit, to name a few. He was the 2010 ARF Great Mind Award Honoree, a member of the CASRO subcommittee on social listening ethics, a Founding Fellow at the Society of New Communications Research, and he was recently cited as a Social Media All Star by the Social Media Society.
He tweets at both @robkey as well as @converseon.
Backstory
The editorial team at iMedia Connection is proud to present the iMedia25 Class of 2011, compiled with the help of our 2010 honorees and our community of digital industry professionals. This list recognizes the accomplishments of key influencers in interactive marketing, who not only excel in their own business roles but are also able to execute on innovative ideas, share them with peers and consumers, and push this vital field to new levels of success and significance.
