About:

Growing up in Hong Kong with a Belgian passport and an American accent, Ian always saw the world through multiple lenses. His upbringing fostered a deep curiosity and a want to create new norms.

He took this perspective and fostered it into a career as an innovative cross-disciplinary marketing leader that mixes creative brand, business & digital-savvy. He is an exec marketer and strategist with a proven record of growing businesses through inventive ideas. Ian is currently working with a myriad of cutting-edge brands and has lead brand at Uber, Facebook, and across his agency experience always through a digitally-forward lens that aligns with modern consumer attitudes & behaviors.

In his free time, he hangs with his rockstar daughter, her two baby band mates and loving wife in Forest Hills.

EDUCATION:

Columbia University, New York, BA, Major: Philosophy

EXPERIENCE:

Big Simple – Founder, MARKETER, STRATEGIST

August 2019 – Present

Work across a myriad of businesses as a marketing lead and strategist, helping to align product, strategy, and brand. Below are a few examples of key engagements.

Olive AI / Healthcare AI – Executive Marketer: Retained by the CMO and executive team of Olive to build out the marketing and brand team for this healthcare unicorn. Redeveloping and repositioning the brand from the ground up and rebuilding the overarching product go-to-market plan.
Lilium / Transport EVTOL – Executive Marketing Advisor: Retained partner to the CMO, developing the overarching marketing plan, brand strategy, and team planning to ensure that Lilium is positioned correctly to drive toward the company’s market launch in a competitive space for transport innovation.
Endpoint clinical / Product and brand positioning: Work with the executive team on redefining how a foundational brand goes to market, from product architecture to messaging product marketing strategy and execution.
Yelp / Consumer brand strategy: Redefined the consumer-facing brand strategy for Yelp, from research and strategy to redefining overarching messaging for the master brand.
Forj / Web 3 rebrand - Rebranded and repositioned a key Animoca brand asset, redefining the strategy for the brand and redesigning key touchpoints for the business.
Driveway / Automotive - Creative strategy and campaign development: relaunched driveways brand in North America, repositioning the business and developing key launch strategy for a new customer-first branding approach.
Zip / Financial payments - Interim marketing lead: Launched zip in North America, through an integrated full funnel campaign. From defining overarching strategy, brand repositioning, and partner definition to launch of the brand in a key strategic market.

Facebook, San Francisco – Director Brand Foundations, Integrated Marketing

June 2018 – AUGUST 2019

Led the brand foundations team within the newly formed Facebook integrated marketing group tasked with driving holistic marketing planning across a 300 person marketing organization.
Developed the strategy for the first-ever Facebook integrated brand campaign, “More Together”, aligning key stakeholders across Facebook under a one app approach to bring scale to how Facebook markets its products.
Defined team and budget to centralize Facebook’s brand across marketing and product to drive integration.
Created a clear brand architecture across the entire product portfolio at Facebook, structuring a large portfolio of products, features, and icons in order to simplify a complex portfolio into a single clear system.
Defined and modernized the brand design system, built and tested to increase cohesion with product
Developed an overarching campaign planning process that aligns multiple sub-brands into one clear integrated marketing narrative that focuses our efforts for 2019 and beyond.
Defined the Facebook Marketplace and Watch strategy, developing both the framework, competitive audit, and consumer research methodology that informed the positioning.

Uber, San Francisco – Head of Brand Strategy

July 2016 – June 2018

Built and led Uber’s first-ever global brand marketing strategy team charged with all facets of brand and marketing strategy. I was tasked with transitioning Uber from a reactive tactically-led startup into a consumer and business-focused creative marketing platform that delivers empathetic customer-first ideas.
Relaunched Uber’s brand identity system, new logo, and design. Fixed a fundamental problem for the brand, increasing attribution and clarity across all of Uber’s key touchpoints by 10+ percentage points.
Built core strategy and concept for Uber’s first-ever global integrated brand campaign “Doors are always opening”, rooting the brand in a fundamental human truth and its impact in the world.
Deployed Uber company mission to deliver on Uber 2.0: grounded in research insights, created success measures.
Identified and managed a suite of key partners; Redscout (Strategy), 72 & Sunny (Campaign), and Wolff (Design) from driving the pitch process, and onboarding to day-to-day management.
Redeveloped overarching content strategy, moving from feature-led content to a strategy focused on cultural engagement manifesting in key collaborations with Lebron James, the NFL, and other scaled partners.
Drove creative and strategy for 180 Days of Change, a driver-first platform leading to a 20-point driver sentiment shift
Repositioned Uber Eats, moving the business from one focused on tactical generics such as ETA to a customer-first proposition. Led the effort from research and positioning to marketing planning.
Built collaborative efforts across the people team to align the brand’s proposition both externally and internally.

MRY, New York – Chief Strategy Officer

June 2013 – July 2016

Serve as core agency leadership on the global executive management team of MRY leading the business through the merger of Mr. Youth and LBi as well as realignment with Starcom Mediavest
Grew remit from a 9 person strategy team to a 35+ person integrated strategic offering that includes Strategy, Connections, Analytics, Community Management and UX
Developed agency’s positioning around the new consumer, including the creation of the business case to the planning framework, thought leadership and briefs that brought it to life
Built a start up from scratch for BNY Mellon incubating Sumday, an innovative service proposition
Lead efforts for reintegrating creativity and context with Starcom Mediavest Group, serving as the key thought leader in bridging product, content and connections
Won new business efforts for AT&T, Mondelez, T-Mobile, Pizza Hut, Gillette during a high growth period for MRY that accumulated in 20% overall growth for the year
In charge of managing key relationships on clients like Johnson & Johnson, taking the business from small scale social projects to winning global digital AOR status on mega brands like Listerine and Carefree, as well as lead brand agency status on brands like Visine and Band-aid
Participated in and won Publicis Executive Development Program (for top 30 execs in network)

AKQA, New York - Head of Strategy

August 2010 – June 2013

Department head and lead strategist tasked with growing and developing AKQA’s strategic planning discipline from 2 to 12 in a high growth office. In my tenure we tripled our remit broadening NY’s offering from site projects into content, social, and service design initiatives
Served on New York office management team tasked with outlining direction of the office including new business, client growth, thought leadership, office culture and resourcing
Developed a new service and content platform for Chase that redefined how they went to market growing our Chase partnership by 800% moving from marketing work to service and content
Won pitches for Verizon (AKQA’s largest win ever), CK, Google, Kraft, Chase, & Olympus
Lead key strategic assignments from classic brand concept development, positioning and research, digital strategy to social management, content roadmaps, and integrated strategies

Digitas, New York – VP Director Account Planning for Samsung, Delta, Amex

August 2008 – August 2010

Global Samsung strategic planning lead across traditional as well as digital efforts at Digitas
Lead the launch for new LED television platform to redefine Samsungs positioning globally
Won all home appliances work in NA to expand Digitas Samsung portfolio
Developing a new brand positioning and voice for Samsung NA master brand
Global planning lead on the Delta account across all digital channels. Lead global research project to help understand differing user need-states for the worlds largest airline
Repositioned green charge card and personal savings products within American Express portfolio from outlining research to developing product and value proposition

McCann Erickson Worldwide, New York – VP Global Senior Strategist

March 2006 – August 2008

Served as planning lead on global integrated Intel consumer and enterprise business across all traditional and digital disciplines helping to transition the brand from broadcast to digitally lead.
Promoted to Vice President within 1 year of service
Created Intel’s global brand platform both on the consumer and enterprise side. Launched internal initiative ramping up to a global integrated launch across all disciplines.
Redefined Avis’s brand strategy, re-contextualizing one of the most famous lines in communications history in a competitive retail landscape.
Won Chantix on a Pfizer human care pitch, launching a new product and campaign strategy
Won Centrum, leading creative pitch efforts across portfolio of brands

Leo Burnett, Hong Kong & Shanghai – Senior Strategic Planner, McDonald’s

August 2003 – January 2006

Strategic planning lead on McDonald’s China business as well as regional projects in North Asia.
Crafted and led all consumer driven creative strategies for family, new food, affordability, music, sports and other key strategic initiatives. Promoted to senior strategist in first year.
Redefined McDonald China’s value strategy, raising comparative sales by 30+%
Created the most successful product launch in 3 years as part of the menu management team
Attended Worldwide Hamburger University, attained deans list (top 10%)
Led winning pitch strategies for Sony Handycam & Coke’s Alive beverages