What starts as a hobby in unusual locations, with music and food for friends and acquaintances, later becomes one of the largest digital trade fairs in Europe, the OMR Festival with 70,000 visitors, famous speakers, such as Quentin Tarantino and Ashton Kutcher, concerts and exhibitors from big players like Google, Facebook/Meta and Co.
Philipp Westermeyer, 43, is a digital expert, entrepreneur and founder of the digital and media platform OMR (Online Marketing Rockstars). In addition, he is the author of the book "Digital Unplugged," in which he guides us through the digital world through anecdotes, as well as host of the OMR podcast, which made a significant contribution to the fact that Melvin began his own podcast "Normal Gets You Nowhere".
But back to the beginning: Philipp's career does not follow a fixed structure. Growing up in Essen, Philipp first studied in Dortmund and even lived in New York for a while. After graduating, the actual plan is to do a doctorate at the Hamburg Media School. But things turn out differently. Philipp starts a job as an executive assistant at Gruner + Jahr. At the same time, he is building two companies - spurred on by the sale of the former student platform "Studi-VZ" - together with a colleague and a former fellow student in the field of online marketing and sells them, among others, to Zalando. Due to the high demand on digital topics, Philipp starts three-day seminars for friends and acquaintances. "That was the birth cell of today’s OMR festival," Philipp says in retrospect. With growing interest and success, the media platform was further expanded and the field of activity has further expanded. These include the OMR Festival, OMR Education (continuing education), OMR Reviews (evaluation platform for business software), and a podcast studio for the production and marketing of others and the company's own podcast, which is now one of the most successful business podcasts. The idea for the Podcast comes shortly after the birth of Philipp twins. While "driving around" with the stroller, he listens to American podcasts out of boredom, which he likes so much that he starts his own OMR podcast even before the podcast wave. Due to its growing success, OMR now employs over 350 people. It doesn't matter to Philipp what the profile of the employees is. "We are United Artists. We have so many different resumes working for us, so I don't have a profile there," Philipp says proudly, looking at his employees.
Philipp is Born Orignal because he goes his own way, is attentive and seizes opportunities. Inspired by Shane Smith's nonchalance as a businessman and content creator and Vice's concept as a media brand, Philipp has since built his own company and will continue to do so in the future.
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