Five minutes with Patrick Fenton
Meet our North American Vice President of Media – Patrick Fenton.
Meet Patrick Fenton, our new North American Vice President of Media. From his wealth of knowledge and experience working with large enterprise clients, to his love for cycling, vintage putters and the Grateful Dead, get to know Patrick as we sit down with him for the next 5 minutes.
Congratulations on your new role at Fox Agency! Please tell us about your career journey so far?
Much appreciated! While it makes me feel a bit old to say, I’ve been working in tech marketing for nearly 20 years out of Northern California. I started my media career at larger networked agencies like ZenithOptimedia and Universal McCann working on large enterprise clients, HP and Microsoft. A desire to explore the creative and strategy sides of the house landed me at full-service Duncan Channon, illustrating the power of a full service offering to truly become an extension of our clients’ team.
After a brief stop at DWA, my leadership capabilities were honed over nearly 12 years of massive growth at Just Media, which became Just Global post creative, strategy, and global expansion. Building the foundation for the media team, refining the programmatic practice, exploring Client Services and ultimately creating the Media Strategy practice was my evolution with the company prior to joining Fox Agency.
What excited you about the role with Fox Agency?
I consider myself a builder, and that is exactly the opportunity with our growing media practice in the US. The fact that I can do that with an amazing foundation in place at a global, independent tech B2B full service marketing agency with deep roots in the UK is beyond exciting for me professionally. The icing on the cake is the depth of experience in new offerings to me, like SEO, organic social, and PR. To be this well rounded, with a genuine, no BS group of like-minded individuals is what gets me going personally. I’m eager to continue learning, growing, and sharing a few laughs with the passionate team.
What does your new role as VP of Media for North America involve?
Simply put, overseeing, growing, and evolving the team at every part of the journey, from digesting the insights pulled by our strategy team, to identifying the best places to effectively take our client’s messaging to market, to collaborating with our digital team to ensure the smoothest path to conversion, and finally telling the story of business impact through analytics. Ok, so that wasn’t that simple, but it will be my job to make it such.
What do you hope to bring to the Fox Agency US team?
I plan on bringing the enthusiasm I have for the media space to the team, along with deep experience of building strategic, omnichannel teams that are eager to stay ahead of the ever changing and evolving platform driven landscape. I know the foundation is eager to teach me more in the organic space, so my hope is to match that excitement both internally and with our clients.
What has been your biggest professional achievement to date?
Having the opportunity to be an instrumental part in growing what was a 13 person media only agency into a global, 250+ employee full-service agency that was acquired was incredibly challenging and rewarding. Getting to start and lead a new global department within that agency was a great way to end my time there.
Finally, tell us something interesting or unique about yourself?
When I get into something, I tend to really get into it, and stick with it. That’s probably why my wife would prefer me to not find any new hobbies… just kidding.
Outside of the evidence present on my resume, I love all elements of cycling, from BMX, to road, to mountain, and gravel. That also affords me the chance to geek out on gear for each one. Similarly, my longest passion has been with golf, with a love of the game and soft spot for collecting vintage putters.
Finally, while I love any and all live music, my affection for the Grateful Dead led me on a crazy journey a few years back where I’d listen to one of their shows every day until I listened to them all live. For those unvitiated, that took a little bit of time, before I finally abandoned somewhere around the Summer of ‘89 tour.
