Biography

Marian Salzman, executive vice president and director of strategic content for America's largest and oldest advertising firm, J. Walter Thompson (JWT), is one of the world's leading futurists. She was named among the "top five in the world" in 2004 by the global publisher VNU.

Salzman is credited with spotting cultural trends such as "wiggers" [white adolescents, often from suburbia, mimicking urban blacks], the rise of "singletons" and "metrosexuality." In 2005 she coined the buzzword, "ubersexual," to describe the new male ideal. In 1995, Salzman was named one of New York magazine's "Cyber 60" and one of Crain's New York Business's "40 Under 40."

Prior to joining JWT, Salzman was executive vice president and chief strategy officer, Euro RSCG Worldwide. She spent the previous three years at Young & Rubicam as president of its Intelligence Factory, serving clients and colleagues worldwide. She founded Cyberdialogue-the first online market research company in the world-in the early 1990s when she was just thirty years old.

British soccer star David Beckham instantly became the poster boy for the phenomenon: athletic, sexual, and definitely more groomed and waxed than manly men had ever been before. Metrosexual became "word of the year" in 2003, according to the American Dialect Society.

Before Buzz, Salzman and her colleagues wrote Next: Trends for the Near Future, which was initially published in the Dutch language in 1997, and which ultimately was revised and rewritten for publication in Australia (1998, Pan-Macmillan), the U.K. (1998, Harper Collins), and the U.S. (1999, Overlook Press), as well as ten foreign languages including German, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish. The Dutch edition was number one nonfiction in that market for nine months as a hard-back book, and also number one for seven months when the trade paperback edition was launched. This book spotlighted trends such as the ever more demanding consumer, the global versus hyperlocal paradox, perpetual youth and our aging world, and the experience economy.

Marian Salzman is an alumna of Brown University and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University.

Marian not only delivers practical insights but she also offers audiences an accurate glimpse of the near future in her highly entertaining and well prepared presentations.