Known has named Kasha Cacy its first chief media officer as the agency continues to grow its media capabilities. 

Cacy will lead Known’s global media practice, which she has been charged with expanding. Cacy will also manage the shop's proprietary operating system Skeptic, which uses AI and predictive algorithms to help Known plan and evaluate brand and performance campaigns.

Most recently, Cacy was the first global CEO of Big Village Group (formerly Engine), overseeing the company’s marketing services and advertising technology portfolio. Prior to that post, she spent more than 10 years at Interpublic Group of Cos.-owned media agency UM, rising through the ranks to become U.S. CEO. There she transformed the agency’s media planning and buying structure to leverage data and analytics.

Cacy will assume the role in March and be based out of the agency’s New York office. She will report to Known Chairman-CEO Kern Schireson.

Schireson launched Known’s media practice two years ago without seasoned media execs because he was unhappy with the current models for placement, which he believed lacked data and analytical support. 

“While a bunch of us have related [media] experience, we felt like the existing models for how media gets transacted were so broken,” he said. “We didn’t want to infect the innovation and the approach we were building at Known with too much of, ‘Well, this is how it’s always done.’”

But Schireson later decided that the chief media officer role was necessary as Known found its footing in the media space. The agency more than doubled its media business in the last year with new accounts in 2022 including Sesame Workshop, AMC Networks, Paramount and Shake Shack.

“Over the last 12 months, as the budgets that we were managing really scaled, we realized we needed a lot of those hygienes,” Schireson said. “And at the same time, we started the search for a leader who could really see what we built, understand the power of it and bring in the best of legacy media planning and buying experience to complement and augment because we had something that was not mature.”

Cacy, according to Schireson, has the expertise to embrace the math and the science Known integrated into its media practice while still making room for creativity. 

“What drew me to Known was that this is the part of the industry that I love: the application of knowledge and data and insights to media,” Cacy said. “I think the way Known is doing it is really innovative and different, and I want to be a part of that.”