Cory Booker is My Hero

If you’ve never attended an Affiliate Summit, I highly recommend it. The amount of information you can glean just from walking the floor is enough to make the most senior Affiliate Marketer’s head spin, but I suppose that’s half the fun.

Shawn Collins and Missy Ward have hit upon the zeitgeist of the Affiliate world, and their show proves it. The attendance has soared, and this last summit included a special treat.

Cory Booker

Cory Booker was the keynote speaker, and I have to say – I was blown away. My interest was initially piqued when I read a recent article on Cory Booker in Esquire Magazine to which the most inspiring part of the article wasn’t the article itself, it was Bookers response on July 16th to the article in a fiery letter to the Editor slapping author Scott Raab on the hand. To put it bluntly – this guys has balls.

I eagerly anticipated hearing what Mr. Booker had to say, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Mr. Booker’s natural charisma was contagious. His passion clear by the energy level he conveyed to the audience. His lack of self apprehension was refreshing, and I could not wipe the smile off my face throughout the duration of his presentation.

I found myself reiterating his stories to my family, and more than once during his speaking time, I felt the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand. This guy is the real deal. He shared stories that took the audience from murderous housing projects in Newark to the home of Gandhi. His easy manner helped to set the tone for the show, and I have to take my hat off to Missy and Shawn for selecting such an eloquent, and inspiring person to help kick things off.

Affiliate Summit

VEGAS VEGAS VEGAS!! After a 5 hour delay of my flight in Charlotte (my own fault for taking a connecting flight from NY), I ended up in Vegas at 6am. A quick run to the Mirage for a hour nap, shower, and on the affiliate summit show floor by 10am. zanox was out in full force with our super star director of sales Adam Pattison being a trooper and flying in all the way from our london offices…and I thought I was tired when I hit the floor!! Rani Nagpal our VP of Affiliate Management, and Chris Loonan our Director of Operations all joined me at the booth.

zanox was easily the only international performance based ad network at the affiliate summit. It was exciting to talk to affiliates, as well as advertisers about our easy to implement solutions. It’s shows like this that make me want to pop out of bed in the morning. There are so many exciting things going on at zanox (opening our New York office, as well as opening an office in Poland) that there is truly nothing stopping us. We’re making our first real in roads into the US market, and you could feel the energy at out booth.

This year, we had a great contest running – Win two tickets around the world to the zanox office of your choice. Remember guys, we have offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Madrid, Milan, New York, Paris, Stockholm, Shanghai, and now Warsaw! All an affiliate has to do is sign up with zanox, and generate $10,000 in commission in the month of March, 2008. You obviously need to be of legal age, and have a valid passport, but c’mon, this contest is phenomenal! I’m sure a few of the guys that we spoke to are well on their way to winning the prize as a write this. Shoot me a note if you want more details. christopher.dessi@zanox.com

So, now that the affiliate summit is over, we have lots of follow up work to do. There were so many affiliates that are interested in running our international offers I’m sure that Ad:Tech in San Fransisco is going to be just as, if not more successful.