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Independent design and branding agency Pearlfisher has chosen Jason Brown as the first global chief executive officer in its 32-year history to lead the firm as it makes plans for long-term growth.
Brown will be based in New York, where he will lead global business growth across both Pearlfisher studios in London and New York. The new leadership position lets Brown capitalize on his breadth of business experience in design and strategy to unite and lead the next phase of Pearlfisher.
“He stood head and shoulders above the other candidates, in that he had a real empathy for the creative and high-quality background that Pearlfisher has built its reputation on,” founding partner and group creative director Jonathan Ford told ADWEEK.
Brown comes to Pearlfisher from Godfrey Dadich Partners, where he was partner and president, leading the design agency’s East Coast business. With a design industry career spanning more than 25 years, Brown worked up to several head of design positions before achieving recognition as an accomplished industry speaker and business leader. He has worked at agencies including Interbrand and Fahrenheit 212, along with running his own agency, Dan + Jason + Co.
When Brown started his career, Pearlfisher was known as the standard of quality in the brand identity and packaging space. “This was the place that a lot of designers pointed to as where you go to start your design career,” Brown told ADWEEK.
Brown will work with the leadership teams in the New York and London studios to unlock future potential and adapt to evolving business needs. Ford and fellow founding partner and group chairman Mike Branson will support Brown as they continue in their respective business roles.
Expanding into new spaces
Pearlfisher has been at the forefront of the design game for three decades, having done award-winning work for clients including McDonald’s, General Mills (Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Gushers), Wild Turkey and alcohol-free brand Seedlip. While the company is international, there are opportunities for it to grow within its industry, which Brown hopes to capitalize on.
Brown sees prospects in the “tangential spaces that sit a little outside of our core value proposition and where the market is going to give us permission to actually stretch into.”
Those areas won’t be unfamiliar to the Pearlfisher team but are natural extensions of the business, which Brown sees as an unlocked value of the organization. They include product innovation and moving into the consulting space, delivering strategy, trend analysis, sustainability diagnostics and trend analysis.
