Chess Media Group is a management consulting and strategic advisory firm with a single focus: working with clients to solve business problems. We provide business strategy, program design, and implementation services to organizations on employee, customer, and partner collaboration. Our engagement and collaboration strategies center around leveraging people, processes, and technologies to solve business challenges. Success comes from strategic planning and creative thinking that are backed up with solid business results.
Chess is fortunate to have some of the brightest people in the industry working with us, and working for our clients. Our team of experienced strategists and practitioners have unparalleled skills when it comes to business processes, knowledge and content management, collaboration, information architecture, software architecture, customer engagement, and strategic marketing communications fields. We are recognized by our peers as some of the most innovative minds and accomplished practitioners in the industry. We love what we do and do what we love. It shows in our work.
Principal
Jacob is widely regarded as a thought leader in social business. A key to his success is his strategic vision for both the industry and client projects. Jacob frequently spends his time experimenting, researching, and developing ideas and concepts around social business.
Jacob co-founded Chess Media Group with the goal of helping companies understand the business value of employee, partner, and customer collaboration (Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM). Jacob leads social business strategy at Chess Media Group and provides the vision for how companies can boost productivity, cut costs and foster business agility from their social business initiatives. Jacob also develops partnerships, business opportunities, and focuses on long term growth and strategy for Chess Media Group.
Jacob’s book, Twittfaced – Your Toolkit for Understanding and Maximizing Social Media was published in September 2009. Entirely co-authored through online collaboration, the story of how his book came to fruition demonstrates the power of social media and how online communities and collaboration can yield business successes.
Jacob's blog is ranked among the top 100 most influential marketing blogs in the world by AdAge, he has contributed to Marketing Profs, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Inc. Magazine, KRON 4 (NBC's San Francisco station), Read Write Web, LCI France (a national TV news network), Search CRM, and Zdnet.
Previously, Jacob ran another social media startup, an SEO consultancy, and worked for an online marketing agency. Jacob has worked with brands such as Adobe, Conde Nast, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers, Salesforce, Sandisk, The U.S. Department of State, and Coremetrics.
Principal
Connie, a senior marketer with 15 years of marketing, management and consulting experience, co-founded Chess Media Group to unlock the full potential of combining people, process and social technologies to achieve high business performance. Connie leads the business operations overseeing strategic initiatives from end-to-end. Her strategic thinking and leadership, as well as overseeing and coordinating teams on intricate projects add up to client solutions and satisfaction.
Connie’s key ability is her skill at developing and implementing effective strategies, and delivering integrated demand-generation campaigns that deliver measurable value to clients. She uses her extensive experience in traditional marketing to help clients to integrate Web 2.0 strategies and traditional marketing, and recommend the right balance that drives business results.
Prior to co-founding Chess Media Group, Connie has been optimizing online and offline communications and customer service strategies for companies like Ivanhoe Cambridge, Good Earth Cafes, Rogers Communications and for clients like McDonald’s, Insurance Corporation of BC and Greyhound at DDB Worldwide.
Enterprise 2.0 Advisor
Gil is recognized as being one of the world's top Enterprise 2.0 minds and is the man behind the famous "Framework for 2.0 Adoption in the Enterprise" whitepaper which essentially provides a road map and guidelines for how companies can make Enterprise 2.0 a reality within their organization. Gil has a dynanic background including working at companies such as Xerox. More recently, he worked as the Director of Architecture at Fidelity and Analyst at Forrester. He is currently the Director of Open Source Product Management at Yahoo!. Gil is also one of the most respected Enterprise 2.0 analysts in the industry.
Gil has a genuine passion and interest in understanding how people within large organizations collaborate with one another. Gil's background and his understanding and vision for the Enterprise 2.0 space makes him the perfect advisor to Chess Media Group for all things related to Enterprise 2.0.
