Paul DeBraccio, CEO, Interevco

I would love to regale you all with my great feats of strength and otherwise, but thought it would be more fun to tell you about some of the people I have employed, been employed by, met with, drank with and did business with over the past 12 years in this interesting business.
I would have to start with Tom Hespos- I first heard of him one night while out with a group of my salespeople and a some from other companies. The sound of his name caused many in the old Campbell Apt to kneel. I wondered who he was and then went back to my beer and BS. About a year later, I heard his name again from a salesperson and decided it was time to head on down and see what the guy had to say. The rest is history as there is not enough space allotted to me to relate all that he has had to say, but running around his office with one of my better looking salespeople helped me get to know Tom more than I can tell.

Then there was Nick Flynn the cool AD at UGO, who was once a sales asst at Uproar barely able to sell, but he did have a knack for "talking good" and so he skyrocketed. Ari Blech also knew how to talk a good show, and did very well at various Internet Drinking Bureau parties at dba in the late 90s. (And he does know a bit about online advertising too as he is the VP Advertising at Interevco). Then there was Brian at Uproar-who I remember for his performance with the precursor to About in the 90s as well. I remember Nick Pahade and all the great Beyond guys helping us along from their cool offices on Park Ave and Ann Arbor. Look at them all now-wow!

Who could forget Sean Finnegan and Greg Smith starting out in the digital business with Geocities and other accounts at Zenith. I particularly liked what a good sport Michelle Madansky was for our Trade Campaign shoot in the Chelsea photo studio in 1997.

I remember the first time meeting Eric Porres at the old Underscore offices in the West Village when they had the great keg party in their yard. I met Doug Weaver when he walked into my office for an interview at GeoCities in an office suite that also housed Yahoo and Excite too---and we were all on the same floor!

Never doubt Geoff Minsky. When projecting Tripod(aka Social Media circa 1998) on the screen at Ogilvy after telling him we had this software to remove porno on our homepages he grabbed my mouse and showed me a dozen or so pages the great new software had missed. Oops!

The first time I met Jim Meskauskas was in 1998 or so when he was at Left Field and I went to see him on a sales call with Cord Dover. When we left I said to myself and Cord, "Seems like a great guy, now let me get to dictionary.com so I can find out what he was talking about"

Mark Westlake came into my life in 1985 when he was a drummer in a band and also dating one of my media planning co workers when I was at Well Rich Green advertising. I remember going to the Village Gate to see his band with her and all of our coworkers. We all made sure to tell him he was great afterwards and that he will be a rockstar and he will never have to sell ads for a living. You may or may not know, but Mark is OUR rockstar!


My first memory of Peter Naylor is when he was a junior salesperson as Spin magazine and we all had gathered in Chicago for the CES to try to sell ads to Panasonic and Sony.

Met Rich Johnson when he was the king media man at MyFamily.com and I could not believe what a nice guy he was. Of course, having Heather Oxer handling his account did not hurt. Who would have known that I would hire him to sell ads in the early days of Interevco?

At that time Jason Heller was nice enough to sublet some of Mass Transit space to us. In the office next to us was Bill McLosky.

Jonathon Adams first entered my realm when I was selling Us Weekly to him at Lowe on the traditional side.

My VP Marketing and Promos Joan Gugliotta was a Media Director at some small agency when I first pitched her for business. Now she pitches me for a raise every day in between creating those great micro sites, games, etc. for our advertisers on AARP, Parade and all the rest.

I could go on and on about all the great people I have met in the past 12 years but you will all probably click away.

Thanks to these people and many others, Interevco is doing really well selling, consulting and is excited about our new venture, GreyFlannel Digital which is a strategic partnership with a high end consulting company.

Thanks for the memories everyone-be it flash, dram or whatever!