“On behalf of Koelnmesse and the entire DMEXCO team, I would like to sincerely thank Dominik Matyka for his successful work over the past six years,” said Gerald Böse, CEO of Koelnmesse. “Together we have achieved many important accomplishments over the past years: We have repositioned DMEXCO as the leading business event, successfully guided it through the pandemic and mastered the restart of the live event with flying colours. He has also provided essential impetus for the trade fair industry with his extensive digital expertise. We are parting ways on the best of terms.”
Dominik Matyka, a proven marketing expert, serial entrepreneur and investor, was appointed Chief Advisor to DMEXCO in December 2017. Together with the board and the DMEXCO team, the strategic realignment of DMEXCO was achieved by refocusing it as the leading business event of the European digital marketing industry. In 2020, after the start of the COVID pandemic, Matyka succeeded within the shortest space of time in setting up a purely digital DMEXCO with its own event platform. In this connection, he established agile work processes that stemmed from the start-up world, also within Koelnmesse. This led to DMEXCO becoming the technical innovation leader in the area of digital events, so that the digital solutions are still used intensively today for other Koelnmesse events.
Once the COVID pandemic started to abate, DMEXCO not only succeeded in staging the restart as a physical event, but also a successful retransformation from a purely digital event (2020 and 2021), to a hybrid version (2022) through to a live event with enhancing digital services. With around 40,000 international trade visitors from all over the globe and around 650 exhibitors and partners, DMEXCO confirmed its position as the leading business platform for digital marketing in Europe.
Verena Gründel, currently still Chief Editor of the marketing magazine ‘Werben&Verkaufen’, will be reinforcing the team of Koelnmesse on the organizer side from the start of 2024 as Brand & Communications Director. Together with Christoph Werner (Senior Vice President of Koelnmesse), Jan Garnefeld (Director Sales & Operations) and Thomas Mosch (Director Conference), she will be steering the fortunes of DMEXCO from February 2024 onwards.
Prof. Dominik Matyka: “I have successfully completed my mission at DMEXCO after six eventful and challenging years. From a comprehensive repositioning and transformation, the introduction of numerous process, project and customer management systems to the integration of new solutions and products relating to lead generation, event-in-event concepts, communication during the year, many strategic cooperations, the concept of the world-ofs and the establishment of new sources of revenue outside of traditional space rental, I have created a foundation that I hope will continue to successfully expand DMEXCO.”
Verena Gründel: “DMEXCO is an indispensable platform for the digital location Germany and Europe. I am very much looking forward to leading it into the future from 2024 onwards together with the team of Koelnmesse and BVDW. The industry is faced with big challenges. Together with DMEXCO we want to not only make a contribution towards mastering these successfully, but also in leveraging the huge economic potential.”
Dirk Freytag, President of the German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW): “On behalf of BVDW, I would like to cordially thank Dominik Matyka for his successful work over the past years. We are looking forward to Verena Gründel joining DMEXCO. Together we will shape the leading event of the digital economy in Germany and Europe. DMEXCO will continue to be the place for shapers of the future.”
Image material on DMEXCO is available online at https://go.dmexco.com/de/press-downloads-dmexco.
