Simon Mainwaring is an author, blogger and speaker who comes from a big agency background (Wieden Kennedy, Saatchi and Ogilvy). Not too long after we started following one another on Twitter, I began noticing that Simon’s updates contained a large dose of valuable links to articles, blog posts and research reports. Many of these reports were on the intersection of social, digital, advertising and marketing — four areas that are all crucial to day-to-day role as CMO of Powered Inc

After featuring Simon as “Twitterer of the week” on my weekly podcast show with Jennifer Leggio, I decided to invite Simon to do a Back to School podcast with me to talk about the future of advertising. During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:

• Advantages of social over traditional media (as summarized in his recent post on, top 10 advantages of social media over traditional).
• Why Simon thinks social media is easier to measure than traditional media.
• Ways traditional and social media “play nice in the sandbox?”
• Why do you think more companies aren’t getting “social?
• Why advertising agencies are having a difficult time “getting” it.
• Examples of a few companies that are mixing social and traditional well.
• A few blogs that Simon draws his inspiration from (I like the fact that this isn’t your traditional fare):
• Umair Haque’s Harvard Business Review blog 
• Maria Popova’s Brainpicker blog 
• PSFK

http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3247397568-audio-player.swf?audioUrl=http://powered-library.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/_podcasts/back_to_school/BackToSchool-06.mp3

To download this podcast, right-mouse click here.

If you want to hear more from Simon on “the Future of Advertising,” check out this Blog Out Loud video on Youtube.