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Among the broad assortment of information outlets covering the red carpet at Disney’s recent upfront showcase was a decidedly non-traditional one: At This Moment Media.
At This Moment isn’t a news organization, but it does communicate facts, particularly about the information, marketing and media sectors. The new company hopes to help executives and companies tell their stories through video and it was recently founded by Robert Wheeler, most recently the chief marketing officer for the North American operations of WPP’s large GroupM media-buying division.
“Any type of company’s communication plan involves talking to the industry through journalists, as well as creating your own marketing campaign and your own channels that the corporation owns and runs,” says Wheeler. “I always felt that there was a lane for a third-party platform to partner with you and tell your story” Relying on traditional journalism outlets, he says, can often be “unpredictable” because “you don’t always know if you can get your exact message across.”
Wheeler, who recently left GroupM to start the business, launches as more companies are interested in mastering the art of communicating via short videos to an audience that is increasingly using mobile devices to access news and information. And in more cases, they are doing so using influencers.
At This Moment, he says, has a name he hope evokes immediacy and fun.
He intends to help executives and companies talk about “the business of themselves, how they tell their stories, how they see their audience and how they want to communicate.” He hopes to do the same for journalists and influencers as well, he says.
Wheeler has seen many parts of the media and advertising sectors. He got his start as an NBC page, and moved from that entry-level role to working for NBCUniversal in various public relations and communications roles, including as a representative for Bravo, Oxygen and iVillage, an early digital platform. He would go on to work for AT&T and former TiVo executive Tom Rogers before making his way to Xandr, an ad-tech subsidiary that AT&T tapped when it purchased the former assets of Time Warner, and, subsequently, GroupM.
With media continuing to fragment, Wheeler thinks companies will be able to make use of his new business to tell their stories in definitive ways across various outlets. He hopes he can serve as a new way to “tell unique stories” around “the business of advertising, entertainment, technology and media.”
English (US) ·