Independent creative agency Zambezi has named Josie Brown as its first executive director of marketing and business development. The move follows a steady stream of new business wins for Zambezi, which has recently been named lead creative agency for Cox Automotive and The Venetian, whose properties include The Palazzo in Las Vegas.
Brown brings 14 years of account management and business development leadership to the role. She joins the agency leadership team and is tasked with optimizing the agency’s ability to manage an increase in high-value opportunities. Brown will be reporting directly to Chris Raih, founder & CEO of Zambezi.
Previously, Brown was partner, head of business development at Omelet where she led efforts to land several new clients during her tenure, including The Pokémon Company, Amazon, Ubisoft, SquareEnix, NBC Bravo, Gardein and Orbit Baby. Other accounts she supported include AT&T, Moet & Chandon and Lenovo. In 2015, Brown negotiated Omelet’s first Super Bowl content for Pokémon during Super Bowl 50. The campaign, “Train on,” drew more than 20 million views on YouTube.
A New Zealand native, Brown spent eight of the past 12 years in the United Kingdom and previously held Account Director positions at London agencies; McCann Erickson, Saatchi & Saatchi, and RKCR/Y&R–and across global businesses including, Revlon, L’Oreal Paris and Colgate.
TikTok Creators Left In Limbo As Supreme Court Considers Potential Platform Ban
Will TikTok be banned this month?
That's the pressing question keeping creators and small business owners in anxious limbo as they await a decision that could upend their livelihoods. The fate of the popular app will be decided by the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on Jan. 10 over a law requiring TikTok to break ties with its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, or face a U.S. ban.
At the heart of the case is whether the law violates the First Amendment with TikTok and its creator allies arguing that it does. The U.S. government, which sees the platform as a national security risk, says it does not.
For creators, the TikTok doomsday scenarios are nothing new since President-elect Donald Trump first tried to ban the platform through executive order during his first term. But despite Trump's recent statements indicating he now wants TikTok to stick around, the prospect of a ban has never been as immediate as it is now with the Supreme Court serving as the final arbiter.
If the government prevails as it did in a lower court, TikTok says it would shut down its U.S. platform by Jan. 19, leaving creators scrambling to redefine their futures.
"A lot of my other creative friends, we're all like freaking out. But I'm staying calm," said Gillian Johnson, who benefited financially from TikTok's live feature and rewards program, which helped creators generate higher revenue potential by posting high-quality original content. The 22-year-old filmmaker and recent college graduate uses her TikTok earnings to help fund her equipment for projects such as camera lens and editing software for her short films "Gambit" and "Awaken! My Neighbor."
Johnson said the idea of TikTok going away is "hard to accept."
Many creators... Read More