Huge

I led marketing and communications for Huge from 2010 to 2018, as it expanded into a global experience design and technology business. My role was to build the team, platforms and public profile that helped support that growth.

A company built around design

Huge began in Brooklyn in 1999. David Skokna and Gene Liebel helped establish an approach that brought design, research and technology together around people’s needs. Early work for IKEA, JetBlue and CNN helped define that approach. By late 2010, Communication Arts reported close to 300 employees across four cities.

In his “No B-Team” interview, Skokna described high expectations for everyone, collaboration across disciplines, and clear processes that made ambitious work possible. Those principles were part of the company I joined.

Helping businesses become digital

The company’s work ranged from HBO GO to the Pepsi Refresh Project and NYC.gov. They represented different ways established organizations were changing: television becoming available on demand, audiences participating in a brand’s decisions, and public services becoming easier to use online.

Huge’s 2013 redesign of NYC.gov put everyday tasks such as parking rules, school information and sanitation schedules first. Hurricane Sandy also informed its approach to emergency information. In 2011, the company’s growth and strategic choices became a Harvard Business School case study.

Making our own brand a company product

I built and managed an integrated communications team spanning brand strategy, media relations, internal communications, social media, analyst relations, thought leadership and events. We worked closely with our design leaders, keeping the brand connected to the people making the company’s work.

I coordinated the design, development and marketing of hugeinc.com, which attracted more than 2.5 million visitors and 13 million pageviews over two years. I also launched Magenta, recruiting editors and writers with experience at Fast Company, Wired, Bloomberg Businessweek and Apple to build a publication about people, design and technology.

Inside the company, the brand took physical form too. A partnership with Best Made produced custom axes for colleagues reaching their fifth anniversary. It was one of the distinctive traditions that gave people a shared experience of Huge as the business grew.

Taking the work into the world

Across my tenure, our communications program generated more than 2,500 media placements, 350 awards and honors, and over 300 reports, articles and videos. We organized hundreds of events across the US, Europe and Latin America.

Alongside the company’s own marketing, I advised clients on communications around product launches and managed client-facing social media and editorial teams on projects for Google, NBC and Verizon.