MDC Partners surprised the agency world Monday night with the abrupt news that Scott Kauffman, the presiding director on the company's board since 2006, was taking over for Miles Nadal as chairman and CEO. But Mr. Kauffman has been a fixture in adland for decades, working in publishing, advertising and venture-backed internet startups. Here, ten things you might not know about the new CEO of MDC, the agency company whose portfolio includes CP&B, 72andSunny and KBS+.
1. He's on Twitter at @slk1, where he posts quite a bit about the Golden State Warriors.
2. In 1973 he appeared briefly in Steven E. de Souza's first film, "Arnold's Wrecking Co." (De Souza went on to co-write the screenplay for "Die Hard.") Mr. Kauffman also served as associate producer for the documentary "I Grew Up in Princeton," which was released in 2013.
3. He got his start as a media planner at Benton & Bowles in 1978.
4. He was part of the launch team for Entertainment Weekly. His stints in publishing include senior marketing planner at Playboy, publisher of Newsweek on Campus and VP-business development at Time Warner.
5. His LinkedIn profile lists no fewer than 20 postings of many sorts, including roles at a number of companies that were sold to bigger outfits, such as BlueLithium (bought by to Yahoo), MusicNow (Circuit City), Coremetrics (IBM), eCoverage (General Motors), AdKnowledge (CMGI, Engage) and CompuServe (AOL, Worldcom).
6. In 1992, Ad Age named Mr. Kauffman one of the Top 100 Marketers in the Country. Four years later, Ad Age dubbed him a Digital Media Master.
7. He led Wow, a family-oriented CompuServe service that was meant to appeal to people who had never been online with an aggressively low-for-the-time $17.95 monthly subscription fee. The service shut down after just 10 months, claiming about 102,000 subscribers, including Mr. Kauffman's family dog, Maggie (named after the daughter on "The Simpsons"), who had her own sub-account.
8. Daughter Sarah is the director of operations and community management at KBS+'s social media arm Attention.
9. In 2013, he co-founded New Engineering University, which is affiliated with the University of New Haven and based in Silicon Valley. It offers a one-year master's of engineering in "Big Data."
10. He's an Eagle Scout.
