John Surdakowski

Avex E-commerce

Leading eCommerce agency providing creative, development, email marketing & strategy for brands such as: Mondelez, Hugo Boss, KITH, O’Neil, HAUS, Undefeated, Marchesa, Balance Athletica, TomBoyX, Wolf & Shepherd, Badgley Mischka & Iconix Brand Group.

Founder & CEO

Agency-X Podcast

Agency X — Hosted by John Surdakowski, is a Podcast that takes a dive deep into the world of ecommerce, digital strategy, and the evolving landscape of marketing technology. From the challenges of building a brand to mastering the latest tools shaping the future of commerce, Agency X offers insights drawn from real experiences at Avex. Each week, we break down what works, what doesn’t, and the bold moves that drive growth for leading brands.

Host

Shogun

Shogun empowers brands and agencies to create unique ecommerce experiences by making it easy to build and optimize online stores. Shogun is seamlessly integrated with leading ecommerce platforms, and is trusted by over 12,000 eCommerce brands, including Leesa mattresses, MVMT watches, Gaiam yoga apparel, K-Swiss, and Chubbies shorts

Investor

GRIN

Grin is the #1 all-in-one influencer marketing platform designed to help brands own their influencer relationships. With our tools in your corner, you’ll build a pool of credible ambassadors and reap the financial and brand rewards that come with it. GRIN puts every aspect of your influencer marketing program at your fingertips, empowering you to own it every step of the way.

Inveterate, Inc

Govalo

Kinn

Consulting

Freelance creative direction, web design and development for various brands and agencies, including Google, Samsung, Havas, JWT, Campfire, USANetwork, Cinemax and Sony

Creative Contractor

Havas

Designed digital experiences such as: websites, mobile ads, video story boards and rich media campaigns.

Sr. Art Director Consultant

The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

Designed and developed digital campaigns for Estee Lauder’s online creative department.

Art Director Consultant

Founder & CEO at Avex, a New York City based creative, technology and e-commerce agency for fashion & lifestyle brands. 

With 20 years of experience creating for the web, I’ve seen the digital landscape evolve. From Web 1.0 and Flash animation, to the explosion of mobile and e-commerce. I utilize my vast experience in creative, technology and business to help DTC brands achieve rapid growth. 

Throughout the years I've consulted for JWT, Havas, Estee Lauder, BBDO, NBC, MRM Worldwide, Nickelodeon, MTV Networks and many other New York based companies.

In 2015 I started growing my freelance business into a boutique digital agency, with focus on fashion, lifestyle and premium products. 

Avex has partnered with major brands such as: Hugo Boss, KITH, O’Neill, Undefeated, Simmons Serta Bedding, Marchesa, Eugenia Kim, Badgley Mishka, Ports V, Reem Acra, Iconix Brand Group, Google, PONY, Starter, Rocawear, Shutterstock, 88Rising, USANetwork, HBO, UBISoft, Sony Music and many more. 

Today, I continue to act as CEO and Founder (among other titles) of Avex. I’ve applied my experience and ability to adapt to creating a business that I am immensely passionate about. I love working with other creatives, building my team and taking on new challenges.

In 2019 Avex was invited to become a Shopify Plus Partner. Our agency focuses on helping brands navigate eCommerce.

Big announcement from Shopify during NRF. UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol), co-developed with Google, will enable selling in AI Mode in Google Search and the Gemini app. 

Non-shopify brands can now use Shopify Catalog to deploy products discoverable by all AI platforms, without having a shopify storefront. 

💡This is big for brands who don’t want to be on Shopify or simply want to test the waters. 

I’d liken this to commerce components. Shopify gets the transaction fee and the brand gets catalog distribution. 

Will this discourage some brands from fully migrating?

I don’t think so, because most move to Shopify for TCO and efficiency reasons. The ones who don’t need to move, wouldn’t have anyway. However, this can get a foot in the door. 

UCP will provide brands who did not plan to move to Shopify a way to utilize cutting edge AI discovery. 

In fact, I’d imagine this would allow Shopify even bigger land and expand opportunities. 

For existing Shopify brands, they now have a new channel for discovery. Outside of optimizing for search, brands can/should be optimizing for LLMs. 

Will the big brands take advantage of this or will smaller players navigate the technology to take market share? 

Shopify is definitely changing the game and things are getting exciting. 

#shopify #ai #nrf

Founder at Avex. Partnering with industry-leading brands to design, build, and optimize unified commerce experiences. Podcast Host.

Mastercard

SVP, B2B Marketing

Dynamic Yield

Chief Operating Officer

Dynamic Yield builds Amazon-like personalization for retailers, financial institutions, travel sites, gaming sites and other B2C and B2C marketers.  

It's AI-powered personalization Personalization Anywhere™ platform delivers individualized experiences at every customer touchpoint: web, apps, email, kiosks, IoT, and call centers. The platform’s data management capabilities provide for a unified view of the customer, allowing the rapid and scalable creation of highly targeted digital interactions. Marketers, product managers, and engineers use Dynamic Yield daily for launching new personalization campaigns, running server-side and client-side A/B tests, leveraging machine-learning for product and content recommendations, and employing algorithms for smartly triggered email and push notifications.Dynamic Yield is used by more than 250 brands globally including industry leaders across retail, finance, travel and publishing. Headquartered in New York, the company has 200 employees across the globe

Chief Marketing Officer

Passageways

Passageways is one of the fastest growing technology companies out of Indiana. Founded in 2003 with a mission to inspire and enable teams to perform better, Passageway provides cloud-based collaboration software for Board of Directors,  Executive Leadership and Employees.  Passageways has 1000+ customers across all 6 continents and has operations in North America and Europe.

Member Board Of Directors

FoodtoEat.com

Advise the CEO of FoodToEat on growth initiatives across Sales & Marketing.

Advisor

Krux Digital, Inc.

Member of executive team, responsible for all aspects of centralized marketing function including global marketing, brand marketing, PR, product marketing and demand generation.  Hired and managed marketing team with specialists focused on events, demand gen, sales marketing. Managed 4 external agencies for website, social media, public relations and creative design. Managed marketing through key phase of company including Series B capital raise and new company positioning. 

●	Global marketing leader responsible for marketing initiatives across 5 countries. Launched the Krux brand in Australia, Singapore and Tokyo. 
●	Led the company’s brand and corporate positioning from publisher-side DMP to a ‘people data management’ platform for marketers, agencies and publishers.  Developed a brand new visual identify consistent with new positioning. 
●	Drove marketing that supported more than 250% increase in revenue and customers.
●	Developed sales collateral that supported 2 brand new customer segments – marketers and agencies.  
●	Established a demand generation function and increased inbound leads by more than 500%.
●	Managed PR globally; Identified & hired a global PR agency for non-US markets with a focus on 4 different countries. 
●	Established ‘Data Matters’ – an annual thought leadership event for clients and prospects, designed to be the leading conference for data-related issues in marketing.
●	Raised industry visibility by securing 3 critical awards & distinctions including CIO Review’s Top 100 companies, E-Content’s Trendsetting Product of 2014 and OnMediaTop 100.

Vice President Marketing

DataXu

Business head for 3 different product lines: Video, Brand Lift and Programmatic Direct.  Responsible for all aspects of business management including Go-To-Market and Sales Enablement.   Represented DataXu as the industry thought leader with speaking engagements.  

●	Successfully managed the most important product – Video – that represented the biggest growth opportunity and more than counted for more than 15% of DataXu’s revenue. 
●	Grew revenue by more than 200%, far outpacing the growth of the company. 
●	Launched Dataxu for Guaranteed Media – an industry leading Programmatic Direct solution, developed to extend Dataxu’s capabilities beyond bidded media.

General Manager, Brand & Video Advertising Solutions

Tremor Video

Product Marketing & Sales Marketing lead in the high growth online video advertising category. Launched & managed multiple video products and helped drive 70% YoY revenue growth, 2X the market rate. 

●	Managed a portfolio of products – right from market needs assessment, launch & ongoing market messaging – supporting a ~$100M business across North America.   High proficient in all products across the value chain including ad formats, types of targeting like demographic, contextual and behavioral targeting and in post-campaign research & analytics.
●	 Integrated the product offerings of 2 acquired companies and created a joint product portfolio including web, mobile & OTT video advertising products.
●	Manage all aspects of communication including product positioning & messaging, PR, launch & sales training.

Sr. Director, Product Marketing

Yahoo! Inc

Delivered business growth from $8M to $27M in two years. Grew from team member to Director.  

Delivered high impact advertising programs for top 200 brands using consumer promotions and online advertising solutions.  Doubled revenue in 3 years by expanding product offering & solution scalability. 

Built sales by expanding promotional products and managed a portfolio of 6 promotion products.  Developed product vision and product roadmap by analyzing data from customers, users, competitors & the industry. 

Developed promotional product messaging & value proposition including field collateral development, product evangelism and customer communication. Supported 100+ field sales representatives.

Managed end-to-end solution delivery: developing advertising campaigns, ideation and design, media planning, execution, reporting & analytics.   Led multiple internal teams & agency partners in delivery of advertising programs. Executed 50+ programs & campaigns for top 200 brands. 

Possess in-depth understanding of geographic, behavioral, rich media, video and search based advertising; Developed promotional packages with different types of media to target specific verticals.
Led strategic analysis, opportunity assessment and customer segmentation to sharpen focus, and develop solution packages for high growth verticals like Entertainment & CPG. Increased deal volume by 60%, deal size by 30%. 

Led Yahoo!'s relationship with 3rd party promotional agencies and vendors - managed joint product development, sales force co-ordination, joint pitch development, partner contracts & execution of joint financial goals.

Director, Product Marketing

Yahoo HotJobs

Developed &amp; managed the first ever recruitment media product portfolio offered by a job board.  Developed business to $9M annually - managed customer acquisition, revenue capture, product strategy, product development, implementation &amp; sales support. 

Developed a full suite of recruitment media products - first in the industry.  Developed offerings for recruitment based behavioral targeting, search-keyword, context based as well as general geo and demo targeting.

Managed multiple end-to-end product launches including scoping, prioritization, go-to-market implementation, sales training &amp; marketing support.

Delivered 3-year HotJobs business plan including market opportunity assessment, competitive analysis, product roadmap planning, revenue and profitability projections, operational strategy, and metrics to define and measure success.

Sr Product Marketing Manager

Yahoo!

Helped launch the in-market test of Yahoo!’s first premium multi-tiered service and programs bundle (Yahoo! Plus)

Managed competitive monitoring and analysis of the for-pay internet services arena and developed the performance reporting process for Yahoo!’s premium services and loyalty products.

Business Analyst

Accomplished hands-on marketing, planning and communications executive with 20+ year track record in media, adtech and SaaS companies.  Proven track record in building world-class teams and in orchestrating marketing strategies across multiple geographies that drive growth in fast-paced and complex markets. Effective communicator across all levels in the organization.

Specialties: Executive Management, Public Speaking, Positioning, Brand Strategy, Tech Marketing, Product Marketing, Marketing Communications, Content Marketing, Thought Leadership, Social Media, Public Relations, Analyst Relations, Marcomm, Research, Demand Generation, Sales Enablement and Budget Management.

Deep domain expertise in all aspects of the ad tech ecosystem including ad server, dsp, ssp, trading desks, dmp and more. 


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John Surdakowski

Mukund Ramachandran

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The Battle

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