Kickstarter hires multiple new DMs (Score 60)

Sales lead: These recent hires signal the company is more committed to marketing going forward. 

• Kickstarter hired Courtney Brown Warren as brand marketing VP in April 2023.
• Warren previously served as Twitter's global brand head.
• She is responsible for brand marketing, creative, content, social, communications, and partnerships. 

Additional recent hires:

• Everette Taylor joined as CEO in September 2022.
  • Taylor most recently served as CMO of Artsy. 
• Ali BenBen joined as lifecycle marketing director in January 2023.
  • BenBen most recently served as senior director of customer & lifecycle marketing of Thrive.
• Chell Burke joined as senior product marketing manager in November 2022.
  • Burke most recently served as senior manager of product & retention marketing of SimpleHealth. 

Target demographic: Gen-Z & millennial content creators

The company will likely:

• Ramp up digital ad spend
• Experiment with new ad channels
• Outsource some marketing duties to agency partners

Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)

• YTD spend: Kickstarter spent nearly $1.6m on digital display ads YTD, a 24% decrease from $2.1m spent in this channel during the same time period of 2022. 
• YTD data: 173.4m impressions via desktop display (60%), Facebook (31%), mobile display (7%), and YouTube (2%). 
• 2021-2022 spend: Full-year spend jumped from $2.2m in 2021 to $6.3m in 2022. 
• Ad location: It placed 99% of these ads directly onto sites such as boardgamegeek.com, facebook.com, youtube.com, penny-arcade.com, and texsfromsuperheroes.com. It placed 1% of these ads indirectly through Google AdX+AdSense onto penny-arcade.com. 

Agency analysis:

• Opportunity: Contact the new marketing DMs to see if you can pick up some of Kickstarter's business.
  • It does not currently work with any agencies to the best of my knowledge. 

Insight Sources: Digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics.