San Diego, CA – October 24, 2014 – Mindgruve Cofounder and CEO, Chad Robley, and U-T San Diego President and COO, Mike Hodges, were awarded the American Advertising Federation Silver Medal Award at the Brand Diego Award ceremony on October 23.
The AAF Silver Medal Award Program recognizes men and women who have made outstanding contributions to advertising and who have been active in furthering industry standards, creative excellence and responsibility in areas of social concern. Over the last decade, both Robley and Hodges have been active leaders within the advertising and marketing community. “We are dedicated to the future growth of the digital marketing and ad tech industry. And, we’ll continue to be passionate contributors in support of this effort now and into the future,” said Robley. This national honor also recognizes Robley’s and Hodges’ roles as co-chairs of Interactive Day, one of the West Coast’s premier digital marketing and ad technology events. Under their leadership, Interactive Day evolved from a luncheon to a nationally recognized event with more than 1,500 attendees and speakers from top brands, including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and more.
“Chad and I are honored to be national recipients of the AAF Silver Medal Award. We plan to continue our commitment to the digital marketing industry and advocate for its future growth and prosperity,” said Hodges.
About Chad Robley
Chad is Cofounder and CEO of Mindgruve. Since launching the agency in 2001, he has played a key strategic role in defining how clients can transform their businesses through marketing and technology. Over the past decade, he has worked with some of the top global consumer and B2B brands such as Procter & Gamble, Merck, Oracle, Live Nation and Qualcomm.
Prior to Mindgruve, Chad spent more than a decade as a startup entrepreneur building and scaling early stage businesses into mature, sustainable companies. He is now an angel investor and advisor to several fast growth companies. Chad also serves on several company and industry boards in the consumer, technology and B2B space. Chad is a regular writer and public speaker on the Convergence of Technology and Marketing, Scaling Culture in Media and Customer Acquisition for Rapid Growth Companies.
About Mike Hodges
Mike is the President and COO at U-T San Diego. He joined the U-T San Diego in 2009 as Vice President of Interactive, in charge of direction and strategy for the company and all of its interactive initiatives. Mike played a paramount role in the sale of the U-T San Diego by Platinum Equity to Manchester Lynch Integrated Media.
Before the U-T, Mike was Vice President Sales-Interactive for Freedom Communications, the publisher of the Orange County Register. There, Mike oversaw all interactive revenue initiatives for Freedom’s nationwide daily newspapers and broadcast television stations. Mike has been involved in several Internet startup companies, including his own firm, TheRealtyCorporation.com, which was one of the first online real estate and mortgage companies. Mike’s email marketing start-up in the late 1990’s was bought by DoubleClick, where he went on to run national sales for DoubleClick’s email division.
Mike is an Executive Board Member of SDX and Co-Chairman of San Diego’s Interactive Day, which is one of the West Coast’s premier digital marketing and ad technology events.
