Brand & Growth Strategy
Twenty years building the brand strategy and go-to-market programs that come out of that answer, for adtech and media companies, through an IPO, a merger, and a pandemic rebuild. I find the shift. Then I build what makes it real.
The problem I solve
The team is smart, the product works, and the marketing calendar is full. The market still isn't buying it, though. The instinct is to add: more campaigns, more content, more channels. But volume doesn't fix a gap the company can't see, because the company is the one thing it can't see clearly.
I get hired to find that gap. I sit with sales, talk to customers, and figure out what the market actually needs to believe before it will act, then build the brand strategy, programs, and executive relationships that make that belief real.
Not a bigger megaphone. A better answer.
How the work gets done
I find the position a company hasn't claimed yet, the story that's true but unsaid.
At Audience Town, that meant simplifying a complex programmatic pitch into one clear market position the company still uses. At Magnite, it meant unifying identity and messaging across four regions after a merger.
Belief gets built in a room, not a slide deck.
I created Executive Exchange, a program that put enterprise customers in direct dialogue with company leadership, and grew it into a driver of real deal activity. Twenty years running programs across four continents taught me trust doesn't scale by accident.
Some brands need customers to trust them.
Others need an entire industry to take them seriously. I led CLIO Awards to its most profitable year in 51 years, and grew Billboard's awards revenue 290 percent, by treating industry reputation as something built deliberately, not inherited.
Strategy that never reaches pipeline is just an opinion with good production value.
I build brand and event programs alongside sales and revenue leadership, so the work is designed to move deals, not just win applause. At Magnite, that partnership helped drive a 24 percent lift in enterprise deal flow.
Selected impact
Magnite
I built Executive Exchange to fix exactly that: a closed-door, confidential room for our top buyers and top publishers only.
Issues that had gone unsolved for years got resolved in a single session.
View case study
Nielsen Business Media
CLIO had prestige. It also had a problem: fifty years old, and treated by an entire industry as a legacy institution, respected out of habit rather than genuine relevance.
CLIO closed its best year in fifty-one years of existence.
View case study
Pandemic Rebuild
I rebuilt it as a digital-first program instead, from the format down.
The rebuilt format cut production costs significantly while expanding digital reach more than double what the live show had ever reached.
View case study
About Karl
Right now I'm building brand and growth strategy for Playmaker Sports Media, an adtech company doing audience curation for sports and political media, and running it with a fractional team small enough that I still write the emails myself.
I'm also starting a Master's in Hospitality and Tourism Management at San Diego State, partly because the discipline of studying hospitality from the inside has already started sharpening how I think about experience design in every other industry I touch.
I cycle most days, spend a fair amount of time smoking meat and fish, and I'm currently deep into growing chili peppers with more enthusiasm than skill.
More about KarlContact
karl.vontz@gmail.com · linkedin.com/in/karlvontz
