Canoe Ventures forms advisory board

Mike Robuck

Canoe Ventures, the joint advertising venture between the nation’s six largest cable operators, today announced the formation of an advisory board.

Jim Garrity, the founder and CEO of Bellwether Digital Bridge, was named as the board’s chairman, while Vicki Lins, the chief marketing officer for Canoe Ventures, was named vice chairman.

Garrity formerly worked for several Fortune 50 companies, including IBM and Compaq, while Lins worked at Comcast Spotlight prior to joining Canoe Ventures two years ago.

Garrity retired from Wachovia in 2007 after 10 years as the company’s chief marketing officer. He served on the board of directors for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) from 1995-2007, and then as chairman in 1998. During his tenure, he founded the organization's Digital Marketing Committee. From 1996-2007, Garrity also served as a board director for the Ad Council.

“To build this board, and ultimately achieve our vision, we reached out to a select group of extraordinary people who represent a depth and breadth of knowledge across a range of disciplines,” said David Verklin, CEO of Canoe Ventures. “As Canoe leverages the combined resources of our founding partners to introduce and scale cable's advanced advertising solutions, we look forward to the board’s insights to help drive development of products and services that will accelerate the evolution of television.”

Also named to the advisory board were:

Wendy Clark, senior vice president of integrated marketing, communications and capabilities for The Coca-Cola Co.
Beth Comstock, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for GE
David Droga, founder and creative chairman of Droga5
Mark Kvamme, partner and venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital
Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers
Wes Nichols, co-founder and CEO of MarketShare Partners
Mike Pohl, CEO of Jinni Media
Gokul Rajaram, co-founder and CEO of Chai Labs
George Wiedemann, CEO of UMarketing

Canoe Ventures, which is funded by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Cablevision, Charter Communications and Bright House Networks, is slated to launch its RFI (request for information) interactive advertising campaign sometime this spring.

More Broadband Direct 4/12/10:

• Comcast wraps up D3 deployments in Calif. [1]

• Optimum Lightpath signs up NYC customer for Interactive Patient Care [2]

• Canoe Ventures forms advisory board [3]

• Motorola solves 3-D TV problem [4]

• Analyst: EchoStar should buy TiVo [5]

• Harmonic rolls out distribution management system at NAB [6]

• Broadband funds stimulate laments from companies [7]

• Cablevision to raise $1B, delay debt maturities [8]

• Comcast CEO gets pay of $25M in 2009 [9]

• Report: Sprint, Verizon carry more data than AT&T [10]

• Sharp to sell 3-D TVs in Japan, U.S., Europe, China [11]

• Next, a Kin: Microsoft to try new consumer phones [12]

• German tablet PC sets out to rival Apple's iPad [13]

• Broadband Briefs for 04/12/10 [14]