Specialties: Brand Strategy, Creative Direction, Team Leadership, Business Organization, Global Brand Development, Trend & Youth Marketing, Digital & Social Media Strategy, Go-To-Market, ATL, BTL, Sports Marketing, Entertainment Marketing, Brand Communications, Relationship Building
Brands: Adidas, ASICS, Bank of Montreal, Diageo, Leading Hotels of the World, Marvel, Mondelez, Netflix, Pimco, Samsung, Steinway & Sons, Tidal, Verizon
Awards: Nominee and/or winner of multiple Clio Awards, Adweek innovative media plan of the year, Eurobest Grand Prix, FWA site of the day, Grafika, Luminare, Golden Trailer, D&AD, Cannes Lions, Concours Boomerang awards.
Contact: markus.gerdemann(at)gmail.com
mrkz who?
In his private life, he’s an outdoor enthusiast, music evangelist, snowboarder, sneaker freaker, executive music producer, US green card holder, digital native and culture nerd.
At work, he’s a passionate leader, creative driver and strategic thinker. A fun colleague, atypical German, team player, culture connector, and bullshit caller.
At Netflix, he leads teams of creative marketers responsible for the development and cross functional oversight to some of the brand’s most successful global marketing campaigns. Being responsible for the strategic and creative excellence of all these projects, he and his team not only work closely with internal stakeholders and external partners but also hand in hand with filmmakers, directors and actors.
After leading the Netflix’s Super Sci-fi genre, which included the brand’s Marvel portfolio, Millarworld as well as global hits such as Altered Carbon or El Camino - A Breaking Bad Movie, Markus relocated from Hollywood to Amsterdam, where he established a team to market local language series with global relevance to the world. Such as The Witcher, Emmy Award winning series Unorthodox and the grand finale for Netflix’s first non-english Original Series Dark to name a few.
Before entering the Entertainment industry, Markus was the brand-lead for some of the most renowned and innovative advertising agencies in the industry, he’s constantly striving to create and develop culture. Markus Gerdemann shares responsibility for the success of some of the most relevant and category-leading brands out there.
As senior account director at AKQA, he oversaw and led the transformation of Verizon’s dot com properties. Markus and his team of multidisciplinary experts not only rebranded one of America’s 50 most trafficked websites, they re-invented the user’s entire experience with the brand, which lead to a 9.3% sales increase within the first-quarter post launch.
At 180 Amsterdam, he was in charge of the strategic and creative development of ASICS’ first global brand campaign. Through a holistic campaign across all channels, Markus and his team established the Japanese challenger brand as the true expert and leader in running.
For the global adidas Originals account at Sid Lee, Markus Gerdemann managed worldwide brand marketing efforts for one of the biggest lifestyle fashion brands. Together with his team, he transformed the brand’s digital efforts from being post-ATL add-ons to the core of campaign strategies. The result? The creation of some of the brand’s most memorable and successful brand campaigns including “All Originals represent” starring Nicki Minaj and 2NE1 - enabling crews around the world to showcase their creativity. Another campaign was “Unite all Originals” starring A-Track, Edbangers’s So-Me and hip hop legends Run DMC.
Additionally, Markus led multiple digital activations that expanded the brand’s digital ecosystem such as the “White Space Project”, which Tumblr refers to as a best-practice-use-case on how brands should leverage their platform or the “Get The Gift” holiday campaign featuring Snoop Dogg and Jeremy Scott on Facebook.
During his time working on adidas, client and agency side, the adidas Originals business grew from 1 billion to 3 billion annual revenue. The brand perception moved from “retro” to “contemporary” and its positioning from “mass” to “cultural relevant”.
Markus is a fair, empowering and passionate leader, who holds a MBA in Business Administration (Marketing and Media Management), a Chamber of Commerce diploma as Event Technician, a certificate as Executive (Music) Producer and brings experience as an entrepreneur running his own company.