Gen Zers to watch in marketing and advertising

Gen Zers are not just a coveted consumer demographic—they are proving to be beneficial to brands and agencies as employees. As more Gen Zers (those born between 1997 and 2012) move into the marketing and advertising world, they are becoming invaluable team members for their pulse on internet culture, fashion, gaming, sports, copywriting and art. Their insights and work have led to bottom line results and cultural relevance for brands from Calvin Klien to Duolingo. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Below, 24 Gen Zers who are already making waves in advertising and media. You can check out last year’s list here. Morgan Batts Account executive, Wieden+Kennedy Portland At just 24, Morgan Batts has already contributed to some major Nike campaigns, including ads for Caitlin Clark (“You Break It, You Own It” and “This Was Never a Long Shot”), Nike’s Olympics ad “Winning Isn’t For Everyone,” Nike’s running ad (“Running is Awful, I Love It”) and the Women’s World Cup with “What the Football.” Her portfolio also includes accolades for several Nike athletes, including former WNBA star Diana Taurasi, A’ja Wilson for being named the WNBA’s MVP for the third year, Megan Rapinoe’s retirement and tributes to Kobe Bryant. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nike (@nike) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nike (@nike) Batts is an ADMagic alumnus and co-leads Wieden+Kennedy’s Black affinity group, SOUL. She also started the ConNxt Project, a service initiative that provides high schoolers in underrepresented communities exposure and access to creative careers. Jane Emma “Jeb” Barnett Senior talent producer, Portal A In her four years working at creative agency Portal A, Jeb Barnett has closed more than $5 million in deals between major brands such as Google and Target and a slew of celebrity and influencer talent, ranging from beauty YouTuber Jackie Aina to actor Tom Holland. Barnett, 26, got her start in traditional TV and film casting before making the jump to casting for branded content and social media campaigns with Portal A, where she now spearheads everything from identifying talent and negotiating contracts to producing branded content featuring those celebrities and social media stars. In 2024, Barnett worked with Target to launch its “Teammates of Target” content series featuring YouTube stars such as Charlie Berens and Penn Holderness as well as WNBA champions Kelsey Plum and A'ja Wilson. She also helmed the casting of the retailer’s “Tiny Target” talk show series set in a miniature Target store, whose guests included Tom Holland, Ashley Tisdale and Tabitha Brown. @target @Tom Holland + @Harry Holland ♬ original sound - target Barnett was also behind the casting of Google’s “Holiday 100” gift guide campaign last year, which tapped celebrities such as singer-songwriter Victoria Monet and Olympian Allyson Felix to promote products highlighted in Google’s holiday shopping gift guide. She also led a team of 32 gaming and tech creators for a massive campaign encompassing Android, Samsung and mobile game developer Supercell that resulted in over 150 videos with a combined reach of more than 30 million viewers. Cooper Bowman Senior copywriter, Quality Meats Cooper Bowman won the U.S. Young Lions competition in 2022 for a Fortnite-based campaign for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He would have won again in 2023, if not for a rule that past winners are ineligible. His two almost-consecutive wins in the competition, organized by the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and cinema ad platform National CineMedia, prove that Bowman already has the copywriting chops to go toe-to-toe with other top creatives around the globe at just 26. Bowman, who pivoted from a senior copywriter role at McKinney to work at indie creative shop Quality Meats last July, has conceptualized and produced campaigns for brands such as Popeyes, Netflix, Puma, Samsung and Little Caesars over his roughly five years in the ad industry. Most recently, he contributed to the agency’s Super Bowl commercial for GoDaddy. Bowman was also the copywriter behind Little Caesars’ “Burn the Burns” TikTok campaign in which the brand responded to hate comments about the quality of its pizza by etching them into pieces of wood and tossing them on a bonfire. That campaign netted 58 million views and 190,000 engagements in roughly two weeks. @littlecaesarspizza This is what happens when you talk bad about our pizza. ♬ original sound - Little Caesars Seth Brown Digital designer, House of V With specialties in augmented reality and artificial intelligence, Seth Brown has had a hand in several virtual activations for MLB, Coca-Cola and Sprite. MLB wanted to connect with younger fans ahead of the 2023 All-Star Game, so Brown was part of the team that created a virtual scavenger hunt for the league. Using Snapchat, fans could choose their favorite baseball team and then find clues around the host city Seattle and its T-Mobile Park. For the 50th anniversary of hip hop, Brown helped Sprite create an interactive Snapchat experience that turned users' phones into beat-making machines. For Coca-Cola, Brown created an interactive art installation for the brand’s Wozzaah flavor. Erika Casales Senior art director, Majority There aren’t a lot of advertisers out there who can say they’ve notched three wins at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity by age 25. But Erika Casales, a now-27-year-old senior art director at creative agency Majority, secured three of the prestigious advertising awards in one fell swoop with her work as an art director on the documentary short “Translators” for U.S. Bank during her nearly five-year stint at McCann New York. The short film, tied to the launch of U.S. Bank’s “Asistente Inteligente” Spanish-speaking virtual banking assistant in 2023, follows three young bilingual children who are responsible for helping their immigrant parents navigate conversations about complex topics such as finance. Casales and her copywriter creative partner LeAndra Langhorne pitched the concept of centering the film on child translators. View this post on Instagram A post shared by U.S. Bank (@usbank) Thus far, “Translators” has amassed more than 12 billion impressions and secured over 750 earned media placements. It also took home first place at Tribeca X and was awarded Campaign of the Year at the 2024 ADCOLOR Awards. Casales not only continues to hone in on multicultural, purpose-led marketing in her own work, but also “sends the elevator back down” by mentoring diverse advertisers coming up behind her through the Multicultural Advertising Internship Program, or MAIP, each summer. Devansh “Dev” Chawla Data science analyst, Publicis Collective Being diagnosed with leukemia once, let alone three times, would be a life-altering moment for anyone. But for Dev Chawla, who received three leukemia diagnoses before age 24, cancer also fueled his decision to start a career in marketing—and Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun’s own battle with cancer and launch of the company’s Working with Cancer initiative drove Chawla, 24, to begin his marketing career at the agency. Chawla joined Publicis Collective, a media and tech agency within the holding company, in 2023 as a data science analyst. In his two years at the agency, Chawla has been part of the team developing an AI-powered app that combats the challenge of data silos by bringing together multiple data sources into a single, user-friendly platform. The app has already boosted campaign performance and efficiency within Publicis Collective’s data team, translating to roughly 1,600 hours of regained productivity in just one year, and is currently being scaled across the agency. “As humans, I believe we like the green light where we’re going 60 miles an hour,” Chawla wrote in his application for this list. “However, I spent too much time not being able to move 60 miles an hour. I had time to think about my life’s purpose and what I want to bring to the table. It wasn’t just about the fundamental data skills; it was about bridging the gap between what there is today and what there will be tomorrow, what we used to think of marketing and what marketing can be going forward.” Joy Chen Senior designer, Poppi Poppi’s viral “Poppi World” activation in New York last fall likely wouldn’t have grabbed the internet’s attention as much as it did without Joy Chen, who co-led the art direction behind all the eye-catching cherry-themed posters, digital displays and other red and maroon decor covering every surface of the buzzy beverage brand’s pop-up space. Indeed, Chen, 23, created one of the digital designs that appeared across many of the social media posts from the event: a three-dimensional cherry logo spinning on the screen behind rapper 50 Cent during his surprise performance at the pop-up’s opening night. She also played a large role in designing an interactive digital replica of the pop-up space for those who couldn’t attend the real-life event. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Poppi (@drinkpoppi) Chen similarly helped design Poppi’s “Club Cream” website to tease the launch of its cream soda flavor earlier this year, which included interactive elements such as an “I Spy” game and a functional Magic 8 Ball. And she has a knack for weaving her self-described “chronically online” knowledge of pop culture into designs used for posts on Poppi’s social channels, such as a faux can design hinting at “Love Island’s” Rob Rausch’s involvement in one of the brand’s other pop-ups. Before starting her role at Poppi, Chen helped fashion brands such as Simkhai and NiiHai create and launch their first AR filters and spearheaded the strategy and design of Sweetgreen’s April Fool’s campaign revolving around a fake dental kit with salad dressings for toothpaste. View this post on Instagram A post shared by JOY (@byjoychen) Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Ivan Delgado Senior designer, Landor In just shy of four years at WPP-owned brand and design agency Landor, 24-year-old Ivan Delgado has helped major companies such as Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, SC Johnson and Procter & Gamble overhaul their visual identities and reframe their brand strategy and voice. One of the largest projects Delgado has contributed to thus far is the design and launch of WorthIt, the Human Rights Campaign’s financial wellness app aimed at LGBTQ+ young adults. He has also assisted with new packaging designs for SC Johnson’s toilet-cleaning gel brand Duck, which helped boost sales of the product across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. View on Threads Beyond brand work, Delgado also leads Landor’s internal Building to Belong program, one of the agency’s internal DEI initiatives focused on building a more diverse pool of suppliers and talent. He’s also a big believer in reaching back to the next generation of advertising hopefuls and has mentored four interns in under four years through Landor’s Next Gen Program. And last year, he co-founded a non-profit apparel brand called ReasonToBelieve, whose proceeds he donates to the American Civil Liberties Union. Delgado’s accomplishments extend outside of the agency, too–he received Adcolor’s “Rising Star” award last November. Kelsey Dempsey Global social media content creator, Duolingo Kelsey Dempsey likes to say she has been “breaking the internet at least once a year since 2020.” Dempsey got her start as the TiKTok manager for UCLA housing, where she grew the account from 2,500 to 20,000 followers thanks to her viral comments on Bama Rush videos. After graduating, Dempsey was hired at Drumstick, where campaigns like the “Don’t Look Inside the Filter” AR challenge and the “Levantenseee!” sound helped Drumstick go from 32,000 to 1.2 million TikTok followers in one year. Most recently, Dempsey became one of the minds behind Duolingo’s head-turning content. Dempsey was a campaign and social content lead for the brand’s Charli XCX campaign, wrangling more than 20 Duolingo employees wearing owl heads in the general admission pit of one of Charli XCX’s shows. @duolingo charli said “talk to me in french” and we listened 🗣️ #brat #sweattour credit: @Julia 💚 #charlixcx #troyesivan ♬ DUOLINGO RIGHT THERE BABY - Duolingo During the TikTok ban in January, she created the viral tweet, “Oh so now you’re learning Mandarin,” a reference to users downloading Red Note. oh so NOW you’re learning mandarin— Duolingo (@duolingo) January 14, 2025 Becca Fair Creative specialist, Indie Consulting Becca Fair started her career at a TV news station in Charlotte, North Carolina. She enjoyed the creative aspects of the job, and followed that into advertising as a content producer for a local marketing agency. Fair now works as a creative specialist at Indie Consulting, a marketing agency based in Raleigh, North Carolina, working primarily on influencer campaigns for a Fortune 500 beauty brand. She also has an eye for casting creators, having worked with Monet McMichael, Meredith Duxbury and Paige Lorenze. Giulia Ferrarezi Associate creative director, DAVID Madrid Last month, Giulia Ferrarezi became the youngest-ever associate creative director across all of DAVID’s teams globally at age 26. Her new record-setting title, however, is just the latest in a series of major accomplishments she has achieved in her roughly five years working in the ad industry. Ferrarezi, who was a senior art director at DAVID Madrid until her promotion last month, ranked as the second-best art director globally in the 2024 Cannes Lions Creativity Report. She was also heavily involved in DAVID Madrid’s “Meet Marina Prieto” campaign with out-of-home advertising company JCDecaux that transformed Prieto, an ordinary 100-year-old grandma, into a social media star. The campaign took home six Cannes Lions awards, winning the Creative B2B Grand Prix and a Titanium Lion. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ogilvy (@ogilvy) "Every now and then, I joke with Giu that it’s only a matter of time before we’re all working for her,” Saulo Rocha, chief creative officer at DAVID Madrid, wrote in Ferrarezi’s application for this list. “She’s a force of nature—crazy talented, charismatic and a natural leader in a way that’s almost unheard of at her age.” Ferrarezi has also contributed to award-winning campaigns for Netflix—such as the streamer’s “Alcaraz Signs” stunt to generate buzz around Netflix’s docuseries about pro tennis player Carlos Alcaraz—and a spooky Halloween campaign for Burger King that transformed consumers’ smartphones into ghost-hunting devices. Landon Groves Senior copywriter, Someoddpilot Landon Groves is looking to become a self-described “creative polymath.” Groves cut his teeth in TV news, magazines, and even freelancing for NASA and The Chicago Tribune before joining Someoddpilot in 2021, where he has contributed to campaigns for brands like Darn Tough, Kettle & Fire, Savers Value Village, Lollapalooza, Mijenta Tequila and Travelpro. His background as a designer and video editor informs his creative process, allowing him to play an active role in everything from concepting to post-production. Groves played a leading role in the “Darn It” campaign for Darn Tough, the Vermont-based sock brand known for its lifetime guarantee, writing copy that captured the brand’s rugged durability with an irreverent tone, balancing humor and toughness. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Darn Tough Socks (@darntoughvermont) For Kettle & Fire, which makes bone broth, Groves didn’t lean into traditional wellness marketing. The campaign took place in the Paleolithic era with a caveman discovering bone broth and leading to the ironic tagline “Be a bonehead.” Groves coined the tagline and brand platform “Unearth the Spirit” for Mijenta Tequila as well as “From Seed to Spirit” for its Maestra Selection No. 1. He also played a role in building the brand’s visuals and tone around its mythological origin story. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Someoddpilot (@someoddpilot) Jack Hailey Social media manager, Chili’s Jack Hailey started his career at Chili’s as a bartender, eventually making his way into guest relations and ultimately the marketing team, where he is now one of the driving voices behind Chili’s social media strategy. Hailey’s biggest and most impactful campaign has been around Chili’s Triple Dippers, a combo of three appetizers and five dipping sauces. Last April, the menu item went viral, especially the mozzarella sticks for their cheese pulls. Hailey went all in, creating Chili’s entire influencer strategy (including a partnership with Dude Perfect), adding secret menu items, and even a bedding collection that looks like a Triple Dipper. The appetizer even became one of the top five sellers on the chain’s menu, with 29 million Triple Dippers sold in one year. @chilisofficial our viral tripple dipper with @dylaneatss #foryoupage #tripledipper #chilistripledipper ♬ original sound - Chili’s Grill & Bar View this post on Instagram A post shared by Chili's Grill & Bar (@chilis) Hailey’s social listening revealed consumers’ frustration with the rising price of fast food, helping to shape Chili’s Big Smasher 3 For Me campaign that took on McDonald’s. On X, Hailey launched #FastFoodSupportGroup, which trended for four consecutive days with people venting about their latest fast food receipt. Giselle Huasipoma Senior coordinator, global influence, Calvin Klein For 25-year-old Giselle Huasipoma, embarking on a career in influencer marketing was “the best mistake [she] ever made.” Huasipoma accidentally stumbled into influencer marketing when she offered to run the Instagram account for her local American Eagle store while working there as a part-time stylist. Her posting soon began generating an additional $10,000 in weekly sales and boosting foot traffic at the store, which eventually snowballed into Huasipoma being offered a social media and influencer marketing internship at the company and helping American Eagle launch its #MyAEambassadors influencer program. After working at a handful of advertising and influencer agencies, including Edelman and creative agency Mustache, Huasipoma landed her “dream role” as a senior coordinator on Calvin Klein’s global influencer marketing team last year. She now plays a pivotal role in identifying buzzy creator and influencer partners for Calvin Klein and helping the fashion brand cast those creators in attention-grabbing influencer campaigns. View this post on Instagram A post shared by giselle huasipoma (@g.selle.h) Six months ago, Huasipoma also began teaching as an adjunct instructor at her alma mater, Montclair State University, to provide college students with “a modern look into what this field [of marketing] looks like today”—something she wishes she’d had when she was still in school. Lana Ivory Product marketing manager, Meta’s Reality Labs Lana Ivory started at Amazon after graduating from Penn State’s Smeal College of Business in 2020. She began her tenure in Amazon Retail as an account manager, where she was responsible for scaling vendors’ footprints on Amazon in the apparel, accessories and footwear categories. As an account manager herself, Ivory saw that there were opportunities for her and other managers to delegate tasks. She created a pilot to offshore some of those tasks, saving account managers almost 10 hours a week. The pilot was so successful that it birthed a new job category of “Vendor Specialists” at Amazon. Ivory then became a product marketing lead for Alexa’s Smart Home partner marketing strategy, working on B2C campaigns with Philips Hue lightbulbs, iRobot and Ring doorbells. Her campaigns reached audiences across “Thursday Night Football,” Twitch and TikTok. Ivory was later a product marketing lead at Amazon Web Services, which she documented in a “Day in the life” series on LinkedIn. She is now a product marketing manager at Meta’s Reality Labs, where she will be working on the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. Maya Iwata Creative, Amazon Before joining Amazon, Maya Iwata learned a socially unacceptable amount of information about the M&M’s characters while at BBDO New York, right down to their shoe eyelets and the number of eyelashes they have. She was the lead art director for M&M’s 2023 Super Bowl campaign, where the M&M’s spokescandies were fired and replaced with Maya Rudolph. Iwata was also behind an M&M’s trick-or-treating app brought on by Covid in 2020 and launching the Purple M&M (whose signature is Iwata’s handwriting). Outside of M&M’s, Iwata was also the creative force behind the Snickerchief, a pocket square that held a fun-sized Snickers bar. With no paid media, a production budget of around $8,000, and a two-week turnaround, the Snickerchief caught the internet’s attention, probably helped by being worn by NFL defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux. Kayvon Thibodeaux will be wearing a SNICKERCHIEF tonight, a pocket square that conceals a mini Snickers. Snickers is the official chocolate bar sponsor of the draft. pic.twitter.com/qfGnJDAZlE— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 28, 2022 Iwata’s work also shows up in ads for Pedigree dog food showing that love at first sight isn’t dead if you visit your local dog shelter to adopt. Another campaign paired shelter dogs with content creators so that the pups could generate money from videos to cover their own adoption fees, eliminating a barrier to them finding a home. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Rasheed Owens Senior account executive, Highdive Rasheed Owens started his advertising career with The Marcus Graham Project before taking a role at Arc Worldwide, where he contributed to high-profile brands like Intel, Pac-Man and Dunkin’. At Highdive, Owens has impressed his colleagues and client State Farm with his ability to anticipate challenges, communicate effectively and stay calm under pressure. He ensured seamless execution of national TV campaigns and consistently delivered exceptional results. In addition to his work with State Farm, Owens has been an instrumental part of Highdive’s new business efforts. He spent six months in the agency’s rotational program, helping to develop and execute pitches through conducting brand, competitive, and consumer research, as well as managing projects for all of its pitches, including KFC, Culligan and MSC Cruises. Engels Pérez Content creator, The Kitchen @ Kraft Heinz In his two years working at Kraft Heinz’s in-house agency The Kitchen, Engels Pérez has helmed several of the company’s strangest and buzziest social media stunts. Pérez, 26, served as the lead content creator for Ore-Ida’s viral “Napoleon Dynamite” collaboration last summer, producing all of the social content tied to the campaign and the “tot-protecting pants” Kraft Heinz crafted for it. His social posts for the brand contributed to the limited-edition pants selling out within minutes and helped garner over 40 million views across social media and 412 million overall earned media impressions—plus, a 7.5% boost in Ore-Ida’s sales volume. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ore-Ida® Potatoes (@oreida) Pérez also helped ideate and led social content creation for Capri Sun’s “Pouch Pallet” stunt, where the beverage brand cheekily leaned into false internet rumors that it was planning to replace its pouches with bottles by partnering with Walmart to sell bulk pallets of 3,800 pouches of Capri Sun. Pérez’s social posts supporting the campaign helped drive the pallets to sell out in under two hours and generated over 120,000 new followers in 24 hours across Capri Sun’s social channels. His content also amassed more than 6 million organic views and over 1 billion overall impressions. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Capri Sun (@caprisun) For Kraft Real Mayo, Pérez amplified the brand’s “Search Moist” campaign aiming to make “moist” the 2023 word of the year with a slew of “man-on-the-street” videos encouraging people to plug the word into a search engine. He also helped lead a Twitch activation tied to the campaign starring video game streamers. The campaign did indeed fuel a 75% spike in Google searches for the word “moist,” but didn’t put it in the running for word of the year. Drew Petereit Junior brand strategist, nice&frank Although she’s one of the youngest Gen Zers on this list at 23, Drew Petereit possesses the ambition and bravery of advertisers twice her age. In her first year at nice&frank, Petereit beat out several former employees of larger agencies, including Wieden+Kennedy and Goodby Silverstein & Partners, to win the title of nice&frank’s first-ever “employee of the year”—when she was just 21. “It’s actually very rare to meet someone so early on in their career who you know in your heart will be a CEO one day,” reads Petereit’s application for this list. “Drew is that person.” Petereit has already led a slew of projects for Häagen-Dazs less than a year after nice&frank was appointed its lead creative agency last July, including developing a social media playbook for the ice cream brand and compiling a creative brief and effectiveness report for the agency’s Super Bowl campaign for the ice cream brand. She also played a central role in Stanford Medicine’s development of an education program about the intersection of health and AI and spearheaded the copywriting for the program’s website. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream (@haagendazs_us) On top of client work, Petereit also helms several of nice&frank’s internal initiatives, leading its weekly all-agency team meetings and directing the agency’s adoption of generative AI tools. Zach Poczekaj Senior social media manager, dentsu creative At 27, Zach Poczekaj has been behind some big viral moments for brands like Nutter Butter, Ritz and Sour Patch Kids. He is currently a senior social media manager at dentsu creative, a first-of-its-kind position at the agency with the goal of advancing community engagement for brands. In 2023, Poczekaj was behind Ritz Cracker’s “reply with a 🫴” Twitter post. The ask generated triple the engagement of average Tweets by the brand and caused a rise in the use of the yellow circle emoji. Poczekaj flipped Sour Patch Kids’ brand identity on its head for a 2024 April Fools’ Day stunt. He took a long-running fan joke (“Sour Patch Kids implies the existence of Sour Patch Adults”) and made it real by replacing the brand’s colorful logo with sad, gray posts. It is still Sour Patch Kids’ top-performing TikTok. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sour Patch Kids (@sourpatchkids) Poczekaj is also one of the masterminds behind Nutter Butter’s viral TikTok profile. The absurdist, surreal strategy has been years in the making, but when one TikToker took note and asked “Nutter Butter, you good?” the brand was quick to stitch a reply receiving thousands of user reactions and ultimately garnering the cookie brand more than 1.5 million followers, all with no media budget. @officialnutterbutter come play, ♬ original sound - nutter butter Andrew Roth Founder and CEO, dcdx Many brands continue to miss the mark in their efforts to reach Gen Z consumers, and that’s partially due to the outdated and clunky research methods marketers continue to use when researching the age cohort, such as lengthy surveys sent out via email and focus groups led by baby boomers. Andrew Roth, 26, founded global research and strategy firm dcdx in 2020 in an effort to modernize how brands conduct market research around Gen Z. He has since developed a research network of more than 300,000 Gen Z consumers and leverages research methods that align with behaviors of the digitally-native age cohort, such as group chats, interactive polls and screenshots of their screen time. Dcdx has partnered with a slew of brands on Gen Z research over the past four years, including Spotify, Hinge, Eventbrite, Chipotle, Crocs and Urban Decay. The firm’s work with Hinge, for instance, shaped the development of dating app’s “One More Hour” initiative with research showing Gen Z’s desire for more real-life connections. Dcdx’s research also informed the launch of the “Hinge Phonebook,” a pocket-size paperback guide filled with ideas for offline activities. View this post on Instagram A post shared by dcdx (@dcdx.co) Ad Age Gen Z Contributor Column We welcome Gen Zers to submit fresh takes exploring Gen Z within the ad industry Learn more here Armando Sanchez-Monsivais Integrated marketing manager, Discord Even in college, Armando Sanchez-Monsivais knew we wanted to work at the intersection of advertising and gaming. At Amazon, he developed the go-to-market strategy for a new ad product, Sponsored Display. He created internal campaign setup workflows, sales materials, messaging, and positioning for the product in just two months, resulting in a 31% revenue increase and 131 new active advertisers. As an ad product specialist at Twitch, Sanchez-Monsivais introduced Amazon Ads’ first “Reaching Gamers” strategy, working with cross-functional teams to develop educational content to introduce non-gaming brands to the space and help them authentically reach gamers on Twitch. He presented that content to more than 110 agencies and brands, driving a 135% increase in ad revenue and 30 new brands to activate on Twitch. He has helped brands including Old Navy, Cricut and Jansport. Now at Discord, one of his standout projects was leading the platform’s social education series. Partnering with the data science team, Sanchez-Monsivais identified key features that enhanced user satisfaction and worked with TikTok influencers to create videos showcasing these features. The campaign generated over 3.9 million views and drove a triple increase in engagement. @discord hey chat did you know you can do this with roles and persmissions ♬ original sound - Discord He also co-founded internal DEI initiatives at Amazon and serves on advisory boards dedicated to supporting the next generation of creative professionals. Sarah Southerland Senior social creative, Tombras Before becoming the voice of the beloved Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation Twitter account, Sarah Southerland got her start as a production assistant for the Oklahoma City Thunder, eventually spearheading the team’s first podcast. She joined the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation at the peak of the pandemic in 2020 and saw it as the time to try something new. At ODWC, Southerland took what was essentially a quiet Twitter account for hunting licenses and turned it into one of the internet’s favorite weird corners. She got to talk about everything from cougar sighting reports (biologist approved “your mom” jokes included) to why you shouldn’t feed doughnuts to wildlife. DO NOT FEED WILDLIFE. IF YOU’RE GOING TO SHARE A DONUT - AT LEAST ASK US IF WE WANT IT FIRST. BECAUSE WE DO. WE LOVE DONUTS. DO NOT GIVE IT TO WILDLIFE - IT IS BAD FOR THEM - AND IT ALSO MEANS LESS DONUTS FOR US. MAKE BETTER CHOICES.— Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (@OKWildlifeDept) June 25, 2024 someone please get this woman photographed holding a fishing license https://t.co/daYj8yBg1D— Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (@OKWildlifeDept) September 28, 2023 Most of Southerland’s work at Tombras has centered on social media content development, where she’s had the opportunity to craft some of the most successful and beloved brand voices. She’s behind Steak-umm’s top-performing TikTok with Tombras, drove engagement with standout MoonPie tweets and served as the senior writer shaping Bush’s beloved social presence. Beyond ongoing work, she’s jumped into new business efforts for brands like Warheads Candy, NMDP and Casey’s. Eddy Yan New business and marketing director at Wonderhood Studios Eddy Yan kicked off his advertising career with a major achievement—being chosen as one of four interns out of 400 applicants for an account management internship at BBH London. That accomplishment has set the tone for 27-year-old Yan’s ad industry career path, which has also included major milestones such as being brought on as one of the first account managers at Wonderhood Studios, a British creative company that produces both ads and TV shows. Since joining the Wonderhood Studios team in 2020, Yan has touched campaigns spanning nearly all of the London-based agency’s clients, including Starling Bank; food brands Belazu and Branston; and Coral, a British sports betting company. One of the first projects he worked on at Wonderhood was a heartwarming TV campaign leaning into the nostalgia consumers have for Branston’s pickles. Yan has also been instrumental in Wonderhood’s business growth. In 2023, he helped launch Wonderhood Design, the agency’s branding arm, which quickly helped the agency win new clients such as the Victoria and Albert Museum. And last July, Yan became the youngest member of Wonderhood’s senior leadership team with his promotion to his current role of new business & marketing director. In that role, Yan directs the agency’s business development and initiatives to boost Wonderhood’s prominence in the ad industry, such as submitting campaigns for awards and leading Wonderhood’s own social strategy. Become an All Access subscriber Get access to exclusive resources including Leading National Advertisers, World’s Largest Advertisers, Agency Report, Agency Review Tracker and TV Pricing Report. Click here

24 Gen Zers to watch in marketing and advertising

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