Former Facebook CMO Gary Briggs.
- Former Facebook chief marketing officer Gary Briggs emerged from retirement in late 2019 to lead Hawkfish, the digital agency launched by 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg.
- Hawkfish was created as a data-driven marketing operation to support Democratic party candidates, but it's solely working for Bloomberg now.
- Briggs is said to have played a key role in hiring people from the worlds of politics, advertising, and technology.
- Hawkfish is central to Bloomberg's aim to topple Donald Trump and help the Democratic party catch up to the GOP in terms of running a data-driven campaign.
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When Gary Briggs announced his retirement in January 2018 after more than four years as Facebook's chief marketing officer, he made clear that he would not disappear altogether.
"I plan to help the Democratic Party on some efforts leading up to the U.S. midterms this year through to 2020," he wrote.
Those efforts now involve overseeing Hawkfish, the digital tech and data firm launched - and entirely funded - by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg early last year before he officially threw his name into the 2020 presidential primary race.
Hawkfish is central to the former New York City mayor's campaign to topple Donald Trump, which moves into a new phase this week after Bloomberg qualified for his first presidential debate in Las Vegas.
The Democratic Party lags the Republicans in terms of the data-driven resources necessary to win elections in this digital age, multiple marketing executives told Business Insider. Trump scored a surprise victory in 2016 by playing on his social media fandom, and he has hundreds of millions in the bank.
But Michael Bloomberg is an unconventional candidate with nearly bottomless pockets. The billionaire is not accepting political donations, he has publicly promised to spend at least $500 million, and according to reports, he is paying his staff well above market rates. His campaign is also unafraid to play in the mud by baiting Trump and Democratic rivals, including frontrunner Bernie Sanders, on social media. In many ways, it is the most expensive experiment in the history of American democracy.
One adtech CEO who spoke on background, citing closeness to the campaign, described Hawkfish "an unlimited-funded startup with no need to ever produce revenue."
Briggs did not respond to a request for comment and the campaign didn't comment on the record. This article is based on Business Insider interviews with several ad industry executives acquainted with Briggs along with Hawkfish and Bloomberg employees who cited a "no press rule" when declining to speak on the record or said they'd been required to sign NDAs before joining the company.
The ex-Facebook executive has a hands-off leadership style, sources say
Other sources close to Hawkfish described the company's leadership structure as flat but said that Briggs plays the crucial role of steering the team.
Sources said Briggs reports directly to campaign manager Kevin Sheekey, who used to head marketing at Bloomberg LLP; and advisor Howard Wolfson, a longtime Bloomberg confidante who ran PR for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign before working under the billionaire mayor and directing his political Super PAC. Wolfson and Sheekey are said to have ultimate approval over all of Bloomberg's marketing - including the memes that led Facebook to change its political-advertising policies.
In addition to his time at Facebook, Briggs has held marketing roles at Motorola Mobility, Google, and eBay, and sits on the board of companies including Petco, Etsy, and Afterpay. In 2017, he was inducted into the New York chapter of the American Marketing Association's Marketing Hall of Fame.
People described Briggs as smart, calm, articulate, open to new ideas, and known for getting directly involved in the creative development process.
Since joining Bloomberg's operation, however, he's flown under the radar and shunned press coverage, along with the rest of the agency, and has taken a hands-off management approach.
Briggs collaborates with people from advertising, technology, and politics
Hawkfish and the campaign work out of offices in New York's Times Square that used to house The New York Times. People who have visited the offices described them as emblematic of the vast resources being poured into the campaign - high energy, with young people and campaign vets alike rushing to and fro, and campaign rooms named for different states.
Briggs and his hires are said to play critical day-to-day roles at Hawkfish and the Bloomberg campaign. The ad vet said ad agency creatives work with "super type A personalities" from the world of politics via a "divide and conquer approach" to help Bloomberg clinch the Democratic nomination.
"Hawkfish is Gary's," said the anonymous adtech CEO. "When you're in that office, you can tell that Gary is the one running the show - he's the guy coming up with the larger strategy as to where they're going to be investing."
Briggs's most important role has been recruiting people from the advertising and tech industries, sources said. Hawkfish has at least 65 employees - mostly from advertising and tech companies, including Briggs' alma matter Facebook - according to Hawkfish's LinkedIn profile.
One person called Briggs a "liaison to California" and said Briggs contacted him weeks before Bloomberg had announced his candidacy to claim Bloomberg would spend "more than a billion dollars" to defeat President Trump.
Key people in addition to Briggs who are working on the campaign include:
- Former Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck, who handles Hawkfish's partnerships and data operations.
- Bryson Gordon, who led advanced advertising at Viacom and now oversees data-driven ad buying for Hawkfish.
- Jacki Kelley, CEO of the Americas for ad holding company Dentsu Aegis Network and ex-COO of Bloomberg Media, who has been helping the campaign recruit media and advertising experts, a source said. A Dentsu spokesperson declined to comment.
- Tim Castree, the former North American CEO of media-buying network GroupM, who is not technically employed by the agency but oversees all paid media for the Bloomberg campaign. Castree did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though three people confirmed his role in the Bloomberg organization.
"This is a dedicated group of folks," said Terry Kawaja, founder and CEO of M&A advisory firm Luma Partners. "These are smart people who see this as the only way to defeat Trump - most people view this as a higher order."
Other ad agencies are involved. Horizon Media is handling some of the campaign's programmatic media buying. A spokesperson for that agency declined to comment. And Assembly, part of ex-political strategist Mark Penn's MDC Partners, oversees the broadcast and radio ad buys. According to public filings, Assembly's commissions on the business amount to a standard agency rate of 15% of all the campaign's TV and radio buys.
Two Hawkfish employees said the agency's flat structure could lead to confusion over who reports to whom. A Bloomberg campaign employee said the campaign and agency are completely separate, though Michael Bloomberg is currently the agency's only client and the teams collaborate almost daily. For example, this person said the Bloomberg team uses information collected by Hawkfish to create targeted ads.
Briggs is using his Facebook playbook to build Hawkfish
Briggs knows about marketing teams. His most significant work at Facebook was the 2014 launch of The Factory, the social giant's creative division. Under his tenure, The Factory handled Facebook's own marketing and creative work for advertisers like Chevy and Budweiser. He spoke of the importance of building a tight internal team while at Facebook.
"We're constantly introducing new apps and new features, and a large amount of time that I spend is in product marketing," he said on an Advertising Week panel in 2015. "So, you want your agency to be tight with the product managers, and you really only get that when they're in the hallway."
Hawkfish plans to work with other Democratic candidates
Bloomberg has said that he planned to keep employees on through November, regardless of what happens to his campaign. Hawkfish reportedly helped Democratic candidates running in special elections in Kentucky and Virginia last year, and if Bloomberg loses the Democratic nomination, his campaign has publicly stated that the agency would put its support behind the winner of the Democratic primary.
What happens to Hawkfish after the election is uncertain. Spokespeople have said that its post-election goal is to become a long-term Democratic agency and counterpart to the Republican party. According to two sources who have helped Hawkfish find talent, it's pursuing a strategy similar to Blue State Digital, a firm that helped President Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
Another current Bloomberg campaign executive said Hawkfish wants to help the Democratic party catch up by using "weaponized data" to compete in a new political world where the internet is a "battlefield."
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