Please welcome Matt Van Hoven as a contributor to THE FIVE. Matt is a journalist best known for his dry wit and giving the advertising industry a swift kick in the tail, for two years straight.
From 2008 to 2010, Matt Van Hoven's work was widely read by the advertising contingent. As the Editor of Mediabistro's AgencySpy his reporting shed light on ad agencies from every corner of the industry, often breaking vital news during the tumultuous period of the last decade when layoffs happened on an almost daily basis. Matt also transformed AgencySpy from an anonymously written blog to a legitimate industry resource before moving on to a career in media relations.
Following AgencySpy, Matt joined SKINNY, a New York based agency that serves the likes of Asics, Aldo, Target, Wired, Ralph Lauren, Jose Cuervo, and many others. At SKINNY, which recently merged with San Diego based VITRO, Matt guides internal and external communications, as well as editing a daily newsletter that serves the ad community, managing owned media channels, researching and maximizing his company's exposure.
Matt's an editorially minded individual who studies news cycles and media trends religiously, sifting for the insights and trends that will guide client and agency strategy. His methods borrow from the old and new schools of communications theory, but are rooted in an idea first coined by a college professor, Ken Ksobiech: "Communication is an ongoing, dynamic process between an infinite number of variables with no beginning, middle or end."
When not doing agency PR, Matt helps start-ups and non-profits launch new products and create original content. He likes to tinker with motorcycles, cars, and power tools and lives in New York with his wife and their small dog.
