Heather Taylor

Heather is a writer and filmmaker who covers media and communications, tech, ecommerce and the arts and was listed by Brand Republic as one of the top 200 most influential bloggers in 2011. She is currently editorial director of Econsultancy in New York.

Prior to her move to Econsultancy, Heather was acting editor of About the BBC, the BBC corporate blog and website, and managed online corporate reputation for the BBC. Previous roles included social media manger for PayPal UK and social media/ PR manager for Groundswell award winner, giffgaff.

Heather speaks at events on social media, marketing, community and filmmaking - previous speaking engagements include talks at ComicCon, Reputation Online Live, Technology for Marketing and Advertising, PR Week, European Customer Experience World, Social Media in Business, Media Camp London, and Digital Surrey. She has also advised on social media strategy for a number of startups and charitable organizations.

Video: PayPal shopping showcase

Last week, we visited the PayPal shopping showcase in Tribeca where PayPal had set up a number of vignettes highlighting the future of payment to inspire retailers to looking beyond their current payment options. Since they opened last November, more than one of their future payment methods have become a reality.

We had a chance to talk to Anuj Nayar, Global Director of Communications, about PayPal's new offline strategy, why PayPal Here is ultimately a better solution than Square and how PayPal wants to change the nature of payments.

by Heather Taylor 29 March 2012 17:49pm 0 comments

SXSW video: Review of the Interactive Trade Show 2012

While at the SXSW 2012 Interactive Trade Show, we had a chance to tour the floor and meet with some of the companies on display.

They offered a wide range of marketing solutions and gave us a few seconds of their time to give us their elevator pitch explaining just what they do.

by Heather Taylor 22 March 2012 21:46pm 1 comment

Q&A: Offerpop on scaling in social media with ROI attached

In 2009, Offerpop launched a marketing platform to help brands find and engage audiences on Twitter. This expanded to Facebook shortly after and now Offerpop have 15 apps on Facebook and five on Twitter that help companies run successful campaigns on both social media platforms.

We had a chance to catch up with their CEO, Wendell Lansford, and CMO, Mark Cooper, when they were at SXSW to share a little more about what they do and what they think brands need to plan for this year.

by Heather Taylor 21 March 2012 21:45pm 0 comments

US job moves: Best Buy, Blip, ClearSky Technologies

Once again we've put together the most senior and influential job moves in the US.

This time we cover an influential move from Starbucks to Best Buy, a new chief executive at Best Buy, new hires at ClearSky Technologies and a new chief brand officer at Boston Market.

by Heather Taylor 16 March 2012 17:27pm 0 comments

SXSW video: Social TV

As we evolve how we consume media, the talk of social TV, or connected TV as it's also known as, dominated the panel discussions at SXSW.

We had the chance to catch up with Sam Decker, CEO of Mass Relevance, and Alisha Outridge, CEO of Taptank, to talk about what they thought about how we're merging social media with television.

by Heather Taylor 16 March 2012 15:12pm 2 comments

Is PayPal Here the death knell for Square?

PayPal has taken a page from the Square playbook with today's launch of PayPal Here. This global solution allows small business owners to accept payments via credit card with a PayPal branded triangle shaped reader.

This solution is a long time coming. Square was first launched at LeWeb at the end of 2009 while PayPal were pushing their unsuccessful "bump" product. With more than ten years in the online payments space, PayPal will easily make up for lost time even though Square have had a two year head start on working with merchants in this space (and has recently been backed by Obama).

by Heather Taylor 15 March 2012 19:34pm 4 comments

SXSW video: Optimizing your website

Today at SXSW we had a chance to speak to one of our Digital Vision winners, Boris Grinkot, about website optimization.

He will be creating tools for marketers to test and optimize in a more targeted fashion using our Digital Vision grant and he shared a bit more about his project with us.

by Heather Taylor 13 March 2012 19:31pm 2 comments

SXSW video: Rethinking the community model

Yesterday at SXSW, we launched the first of our digital vision reports: Native American Lessons for Community Building by Allison Saur.

We had a chance to speak to Allison about her work, what she learned at SXSW this year and how she will apply it to the next part of of research.

by Heather Taylor 13 March 2012 18:50pm 0 comments

SXSW video: The digital food revolution

At SXSW, the talk is all about food. Whether you're tweeting for a taco truck or searching for the latest social media food app, there seems to be an explosion of discussion in this area.

We had a chance to talk to Ariel Norwood of Whole Foods, Babette Pepaj founder of Bakespace.com and Alexa Andrezejewski co-founder of Foodspotting. What is our fascination with food in the digital space and how can marketers capitalize on that?

by Heather Taylor 11 March 2012 20:26pm 2 comments

SXSW: Using transmedia to change TV

The team from Bravo took to the stage yesterday morning at SXSW to talk about what they are doing to change the way we consume and interact with television. Just like every other business out there, television programs are having to move to a more integrated offering.

To demonstrate this, they presented the last season of Top Chef as a case study to show what they did to breach the gap and capture our attention on our second screens.

by Heather Taylor 11 March 2012 16:17pm 0 comments