Ethan Holland is Vice President of Draper Digital Media. Previously, he was senior director of marketing at American Eagle Outfitters. He has spent his career digitally transforming legacy businesses, including catalogs, home shopping networks, retailers, and television stations. Ethan has been recognized in the NY Times and was the keynote speaker at Adobe’s Worldwide Sales conference. He has partnered on product launches with Google, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Instagram, and Twitter. Ethan grew up in Milford, DE and graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in English Literature. Other than time with family, his favorite pastime is chatting with peers, friends, and professionals about artificial intelligence.
Ethan serves on the Local Media Association board of directors, Milton Theater board, the Worcester County Child Advocacy Center board, is a board observer for the Local Media Consortium. He is a founding member of the AI Virtual Inn of Court and serves on its executive committee.
Personal notes:
I am building a memorial page for my dad at https://randyjholland.com/.
I was fortunate to go to college during the birth of the internet. I had a blog in 1994 and early adopted XML and RSS feeds. I was an official movie reviewer for Lycos! LOL. And I was certain that Google Reader was going to adopt a social graph and own the web.
After getting some recognition and enjoying being out there in the speaking circuit, I went dark. Unfortunately, I had a stalker from childhood and I let the situation scare me into hiding.
Additionally, my role as a professional often meant not sharing my opinions, and a lot of my job meant I couldn’t talk about projects – like working for a year on Google Wallet in 2011 or Facebook Check-in Deals in 2010. There were so many great stories to tell, but I kept them private.
A few years ago, my stalker died. Then my dad died, and I realized life is too short. I decided to fire up my enthusiasm again. The emergence of AI reminds me of the early days of the web, so what better time to dive back into the discussion?
My great friend John shared Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” with me. It really hit home, and I encourage everyone to read it and get inspired.
“The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents… Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him….”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
During the pandemic I ran a lot. For six months during winter 2020-2021, I ran a monthly solo ultramarathon (30-40 milers) at night in the cold.
I also love playing music.
I’ve been an early adopter since catching the internet bug in 1993, thanks to my college friend Justin Hall. This led to a career transforming legacy retailers into the world of e-commerce and omni-channel marketing.
The New York Times sent a photographer to my office for this story. It was one of the coolest things ever. It also includes my main man from Feed Burner, Dick Costolo, another RSS early adopter. A great example of ‘you never know’, since he went on to be the CEO of a little company called Twitter. Wild enough, another college friend, Dom, worked at start-up called Odeo. He told me about Twitter the week it launched, and I became the 314th user on the platform.
In 2011, I presented at the FM Signal Conference in Austin. Sam Altman was the CEO of Loopt and also presented. I was running digital marketing for American Eagle Outfitters. I took this photo because I thought it was cool he was wearing an American Eagle shirt. I kid you not, he was the nicest of all the panelists. He was present and listened to me. He told me he enjoyed my presentation. As the saying goes, “People don’t remember what you do, they remember how you make them feel”.
Meeting with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto back in 2010 when Facebook had 200 million users. The fact that everyone is checking their phone is a reminder to not take things personally when presenting. Everyone was listening, but it was a working meeting, and we were all checking email, etc.
Giving the keynote address at Adobe’s 2010 WorldWide Sales Conference. I spontaneously decided to name all of the sales people I’d worked with over the years, and they were all in attendance and stood up. It was one of the coolest unscripted moments of my career.
After my keynote at the Adobe Worldwide Sales conference, the CMO came up to me, “Let’s turn that into an ad!” It was one of the coolest, most authentic moments of my career. Adobe sent a crew to our office and filmed a commercial that ran on TV and digital. I still have a huge poster they sent me as a thank you, hanging in my office.
My friend Brian sent me this of the kiosk at the annual Adobe Digital Marketing Summit back in 2012.
My desk at American Eagle Outfitters. The “What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid” sign is from Facebook HQ. AEO spent a LOT of money on Facebook ads, so I got to visit Facebook quite often. The walls were covered with these little motivational posters. The tone of the visits was not always sincere, because the goal was always ‘spend more money’. After one particularly egregious meeting, they pushed us hard to be brave and do what our hearts told us. They cajoled, “What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid”? So I stood up, grabbed this poster off the wall, and took it home.
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