"Not too long ago, marketing was pretty straight forward. The major channels were obvious. The techniques for working in television, radio and print were well established. And there wasn’t much overlap among them. Proliferating cable networks and the Internet have obliterated this tidy world. Jonathan Nelson’s job is to bring companies bewildered by the media meltdown into the 21st century.
Nelson began his career as a recording engineer. Today he is CEO of Organic Online, which manages advertising, public relations, marketing and research for such big-time clients as Gateway, Sun Microsystems and Starbucks. Since its 1993 founding, Organic has grown into a 350-person organization with offices in San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Brazil. Organic is known for innovative Web site design. But clients are beginning to demand data on the impact of their digital offerings--and Nelson is there to help. He is co-founder and chairman of Accrue Software, a San Francisco-based Web measurement and analysis software company. If Nelson can come up with ways to measure accurately the impact of Web marketing and devise effective strategies that tap the advantages of the medium, he will be heard from well into the next century."