News & Events - Mason Interactive

As a Google premier partner, we were invited to speak on camera about Adwords, our experience, and how our Fashion and .edu clients are leveraging the platform to greater ROI.

We’ll share the video when it’s ready.

In the meantime, thanks to Steph Schmitt

We were privileged to attend an awesome Google talent event yesterday.

The COOP gives city kids a chance at advertising jobs by putting them through more than 200 hours of Adwords, Facebook and Bing training. Most of these “kids” are working full time jobs.

As Tim Reis, Director of Performance Agency, Google said, this is a win-win-win. Google gets to look good, agencies get access to great talent, and the students get an opportunity they might not have otherwise had.

Thank you Steph Schmitt for pulling this together and inviting us.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Purdue University is buying Kaplan, hoping to reap the benefits of the Kaplan brand, and to create a viable online presence.

Purdue President Mitch Daniels said “We took a long build-or-buy analysis and came to the honest recognition that we would be very unlikely to succeed building it ourselves.”

This makes plenty of sense for everyone. Purdue gets a ready made online business and Kaplan gets the brand equity of a world-class University.

I predict that this is the first wave of this, and that we’ll see plenty more not-for-profit-/-for-profit M & A.

A few observations:

The purdue team has a steep, steep learning curve ahead of them. Get ready for a world full of acronyms, Mr. Daniels. CPA, CPL, CPO and CPE are about the become the most important words you know.
I have to think that this would not have happened in a Clinton Administration, for better or worse.
One wonders about Purdue’s endowment. One suspects that it is shrinking, and that this acquisition is a bold move to turn that tide.

We were lucky to attend a cocktail party for one of our clients, One Grand Books. Their Summer Installation at Whisper Editions was closing last night. For those who haven’t been, Whisper’s space is awesome. One Grand Books is the brain child of Aaron Hicklin. Its premise: If you were on a desert island for the rest of your life, what 10 books would you take? Mr. Hicklin’s curated these lists with help from friends like Tom Ford, Carrie Brownstein, Michael Stipe and more. Super cool.

Eleanor Friedberger (The Fiery Furnaces) Richard Hell (Richard Hell and the Voidoids, amongst much else) and Andrew Solomon (everywhere) read from Lawrence Durrell, Richard Hell, and Carl Sandburg, respectively. One Grand Books Sample Desert Island reading lists from Glenn Ligon, Penny Arcade, Erica Jong, And Justin Vivian Bond.