"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," says 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. Matyka has also provided essential impetus for the trade fair industry with his extensive digital expertise. We are parting ways on the best of terms," adds Böse.
According to DMEXCO, Matyka is a proven marketing expert, serial entrepreneur and investor. Matyka 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, says DMEXCO.
In 2020, after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Matyka succeeded within the shortest space of time in setting up a purely digital DMEXCO with its own event platform. In this connection, Matyka established agile work processes that stemmed from the start-up world, also within Koelnmesse.
DMEXCO says that this led to it 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 saw the 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.
Gründel will be steering the fortunes of DMEXCO from February 2024 onwards together with:
- Christoph Werner (senior vice president of Koelnmesse)
- Jan Garnefeld (director of sales and operations), and
- Thomas Mosch (director of the conference).
Matyka says, "I have successfully completed my mission at DMEXCO after six eventful and challenging years. I have created a foundation that I hope will continue to successfully expand DMEXCO."
"This is from a comprehensive repositioning and transformation, the introduction of numerous process, project and customer management systems. [It is also] 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-of and the establishment of new sources of revenue outside of traditional space rental," adds Matyka.
Gründel says, "DMEXCO is an indispensable platform for the digital location of 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), says, "On behalf of BVDW, I would like to cordially thank Matyka for his successful work over the past years."
"We are looking forward to 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," concludes Freytag.