Zeus Jones is ushering in a brand new management period, naming design chief Brad Surcey and former Fallon CEO Rocky Novak as co-CEOs, the Minneapolis-based indie company instructed ADWEEK. The pair had been quietly appointed in July, with immediately marking the primary public announcement of their roles.
Surcey has been with Zeus Jones since its 2007 founding, shaping the company’s design self-discipline and main longstanding consumer relationships with Chipotle, Hilton, Constancy, and others. Novak joins after 22 years at Fallon, the place he rose from media supervisor to CEO, constructing the company’s digital and analytics capabilities and overseeing campaigns for Arby’s, Walmart, Disney, and H&R Block.
Zeus Jones immediately counts slightly below 40 workers, fluctuating relying on freelance assist — a scale that each leaders say offers the store agility when working with blue-chip shoppers.
The leaders labored collectively at Fallon within the early 2000s earlier than reuniting at Zeus Jones 20 years later. “At Zeus Jones, we’ve at all times had this concept that we should always utterly blur that line and create artistic and design pondering that makes technique so much sharper, and vice versa,” Surcey mentioned
“I’ve drifted far more into consumer relationship planning. We don’t have conventional account roles at Zeus Jones, so all of us sort of play that function,” he added.
For Novak, the enchantment was becoming a member of a smaller, nimble store. “It was time for me to be uncomfortable once more,” he mentioned. “I had an actual entrepreneurial draw to assist write the following chapter of one thing that was already current and thriving.”
Each leaders mentioned Zeus Jones is leaning into synthetic intelligence not as an effectivity instrument, however as a technique to construct “dwelling manufacturers” that evolve with tradition.
“We’re really in a second of seismic change for the trade with what AI goes to do with the way in which that everyone works, the way in which that individuals stay,” Novak mentioned. “Our philosophy is {that a} model can now, at this second in time, come alive and that you simply want model entrepreneurs greater than ever.”
“All of these inputs aren’t static issues—they’re like dwelling modules that we’re creating that plug right into a model which might be continuously being fed modifications in tradition,” Surcey added.
