It's quite a geographic leap from Milan, Italy, to Clearwater, but for Matthew Childs, whose world is the Internet, home is where your laptop is.
As vice president of strategic planning for FKQ Advertising & Marketing, Childs has brought Internet insights gained from working three years in Italy to his new position. "For a number of different reasons, Europe, and especially Italy, is way ahead of us in wireless adaptation," he said.
"One of the fascinating things there that is just beginning to catch on here (is) the short text messaging. Kids over there rarely use their (cell) phones for voice," he said. "It's all . . . messaging."
At FKQ, Childs spends much of his time meeting clients, locally and nationally, and "trying to stay out ahead of both the client business and FKQ business to really offer that perspective to both internal and external clients." Childs said his responsibility is to ask questions: "What are the trends? What is the competitive environment for our clients and our agency?"
Childs' specialty is digital branding. It's "the way your brand is disseminated through the digital media," he said. "Look at how many (ad) campaigns now have some sort of interactive component - a communication that goes from the company to the customer but also from the customer back to the company. It's the Internet. It's phone lines. It's call-in radio."
Born in New York City, Childs grew up in various places around the world. His parents taught English to oil company employees in locales including Istanbul, Turkey and Indonesia. "My first memories of sound are of wild boars under the house at night," Childs said.
He earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1983 from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and then earned a master's degree in fine arts and writing from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1988.
While a student, Childs worked summers as a climbing guide in Wyoming and Colorado, so it seemed a natural process that he would begin work for Outside magazine, where he remained as writer and editor for three years until moving to Playboy magazine for two years, also as a writer and editor.
He left the magazines to work for Nike as director of global internal communications in 1995, but continued to write for magazines. Childs wrote a column on digital branding for Web Marketing Tools magazine as well as articles for major publications including Travel & Leisure, Advertising Age, Men's Journal and National Geographic Traveler.
After Nike, Childs went to GSD&M, a marketing and public relations company in Austin, Texas, for two years as director of interactive media, and then relocated to Milan in 2000 with Brodeur/Imagetime, a marketing communications company specializing in technology.
Childs says the Internet offers immense potential for businesses to communicate with clients, and he enjoys the challenge of providing that link. "Most agencies, most clients are very navel-gazing," he said.
"They're aware of how their business works and how they need to work effectively, but there's this vortex they need to go through now to talk relevantly to their customers."
He said he wanted to spend time in Europe not only to observe the emergence of wireless technology there but also to see the European perspective of the United States and its culture, including how to get around.
"Being in Europe, you definitely get a very different perspective on American values and American culture," he said. "One of the things most striking about living in Milan to here is the complete dependence here on automobiles."
In Italy, Childs didn't have a car. In the Tampa Bay area, he must. "Commuting in Pinellas is fairly wild," he said.
Childs, 46, still has a home in Italy's Tuscany region and plans to visit from time to time.
He and his wife, Anne-Marie Lenton, have a 3-year-old son, Luca. They live in Tampa. Childs developed a love of sailing while growing up in the Washington area and said he plans to buy a boat to sail locally.
