American Business Media, a business-to-business media association, named Clark Pettit its president and CEO, July 8. He replaced Gordon Hughes, who announced last winter he would leave the position.
Pettit previously served as GM for North America and EVP for product strategy at Accenture Digital Media Services, SVP of the global digital media group at Ascent Media Group and VP of global digital operations and asset management in EMI’s New York office.
“When you have a high degree of transition driven by internal and external factors such as there is now, it can be complex for any one company to figure out what its strategic plan should be,” Pettit said. “The opportunity is there for ABM to build on traditional association activities but provide another level of structure to the framework to help guide companies.”
Charles McCurdy, ABM’s chairman and the president and CEO of Canon Communications, said Pettit’s experience as a music industry executive during the 1990s and earlier this decade positions him well to lead the b-to-b media industry through a similarly turbulent time.
Pettit cited the recession and emergence of new technologies as the greatest challenges facing business media today, adding that both present unique opportunities for ABM.
“The additional service we’re adding now is pulling together the industry’s thought leadership, and not just identifying what our members want but what they’re going through, and where the opportunities are for ABM to use its reach to help articulate answers [to industry difficulties] in a strategic plan,” he said.
Pettit also hopes the ABM can guide the industry in determining when and how to make significant changes.
