Speakers

Philippe Borremans

Chief Social Media Officer Van Marcke Group

Philippe Borremans is a Chief Social Media Officer at Van Marcke Group of Companies (Belgium) and he is responsible for the company’s global internal and external SM policy, vision and mission. He maintains the group’s SM strategies & campaigns, ensuring optimal use of in-house technical and community resources and enabling networking with online influencers/bloggers, especially those in the field of the Van Marcke Group constituents on a global scale. He has a major social media advisory role in the organization’s policy on social activities & processes, including privacy & data-related security aspects, and the group's social media cross-functions in HR, Marketing, PR, Operations, Sales, Logistics, and Customer Support for all Van Marcke Group Companies (Mewaf, Van Marcke, Intersan, BRS, San Plumbing, LaboNorm, etc.).

In the past Philippe worked as a Social Media Specialist at IBM, Brussels/Amsterdam, focusing on a strategic report on the topic of "recruitment 2.0" and also on the way of using social media to find the best talent, even in times of crisis. He managed the implementation of topical blogsites on strategic communications priorities (IBM's Smarter Planet strategy) and supported several sales engagements as "thoughtleader" on social media, web 2.0 and new forms of publishing. He was responsible for the business development in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg for the innovation area “Digitized World” - an IBM innovation play which covered, among other things, areas such as narrowcasting, virtual worlds, serious gaming and web2/3.0.

In 2006/07, being part of the New Media Lead Europe global team at IBM, he proposed, implemented and managed various new media projects, such as podcasting, blogging, the use of wikis, RSS & videocasting. He was the European coordinator, managing a virtual team of 7 people who were active in different countries across Europe. He led an internal social media education course for IBM communications employees and created a RSS monitoring dashboard for IBM Media Relations professionals. He supported the launch of the "Diversity in Business" blog.

As a PR Manager from 1999 to 2007, he created and executed the external communications PR plan for all business units of IBM (Hardware, Software, Services) and IBM Corporate.

Earlier in his career, as a Public Relations Consultant at Porter Novelli International Brussels, Belgium, he was responsible for managing the accounts of APME - Association of Plastics Manufacturers in Europe, FedEx Corporation, and Iomega International, and also partner agencies covering Italy, Scandinavia and the Eastern European countries, including Russia.

Philippe is a Founding Member & Board Member of the International Association of Online Communicators (IAOC), a Full Member & Leader of the workgroup "Social Media” at the European Association of Communications Directors (EACD), and a Supporting member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). He is now also a Board Member of the Belgian Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC - Belgium).

Philippe graduated from the Royal Atheneum in Halle, Belgium, specializing in Modern Languages & History. He is fluent in French, English, and Dutch and takes personal interest in photography, travel, and military history – his articles on Public Relations & Social Media are available at Conversationblog.com.

He holds a degree in Public Relations from INIREP, Brussels, Belgium and a Train-the-Trainer Diploma (CEVORA).

Chief Social Media Officer Van Marcke Group