PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Poptent (www.poptent.com), the leading social video creation company connecting major global brands and agencies with a growing network of 65,000 independent filmmakers, today announced the hiring of Nick Pahade as CEO. The appointment is effective June 3, 2013.
Pahade brings Poptent two decades of leadership experience across media and digital agencies, e-commerce and technology platforms, with a common focus on unlocking the power of technology as part of an integrated approach to media. He will be based in Poptent’s Philadelphia headquarters and will spend much of his time expanding the company’s presence in New York City, spearheading Poptent’s efforts to address surging demand by both brands and agencies for well-produced video content with authentic voice.
Pahade most recently served as President and CEO of Initiative North America, one of the Interpublic Group's two worldwide media networks and part of the company's Mediabrands unit. He previously served as CEO of digital media management platform Traffiq and before that was president of TrueAction - part of e-commerce and online tech provider GSI Commerce. Pahade also served as President of Denuo, Publicis' digital and futures practice. Additionally, he co-founded Beyond Interactive Inc., which he successfully sold to Grey Global Group/WPP. He also led Mediacom Digital as its Managing Director.
“I have been quietly watching Poptent grow during the past several years and am excited to join the team at a time when demand for high-quality video by brands and agencies is both deepening and accelerating,” said Pahade. “Now there is a wider industry recognition of the importance of video in earned and owned media, in addition to more traditional paid environments - and Poptent’s technology platform and global base of talented filmmakers are uniquely suited to address this.”
“We are thrilled to have an executive of Nick's stature and media experience join Poptent as our CEO,” said Yair Landau, MK Capital Partner. “His unmatched combination of advertising technology start-up and agency management experience is ideally suited to lead Poptent in its next phase of growth as we help brands and agencies make, test and share social video. This is an unprecedented time in online video as we at MK Capital have seen, through the tremendous growth of views and ad spend in our other portfolio companies such as Awesomeness TV, Machinima and ZEFR."
During the past three years, Poptent’s network of independent filmmakers has grown from 22,000 to 65,000, now hailing from 140 countries. More than 350 new creative teams join Poptent per month and the company has issued more than $7 million cash in creator payments for completed video assignments. Retiring CEO and Poptent founder Rick Parkhill led the search for his replacement and will remain actively involved with Poptent as a Board member.
“I’ve been a big fan of Nick Pahade since he helped build Beyond Interactive in the mid-1990’s,” said Parkhill. “We’ve been friends for many years and I have great respect for Nick as both a business leader and industry visionary. His keen insight combined with hands-on agency and brand experience make him the perfect CEO choice to build upon our progress and lead Poptent into the video-centric future.”
About Poptent
Poptent (www.poptent.com) is a social video creation company, leveraging crowdsourcing to connect top brands and agencies with the world's largest community of independent filmmakers. Poptent and its growing network of nearly 65,000 filmmakers in 140 countries deliver high-quality video focused on marketing performance for Global 500 brands and agencies through a proven process known as "make, test, share." Poptent provides a full-service suite of managed video marketing services while offering simple and efficient video testing services to help clients identify the top executions from multiple and diverse creative submissions. Poptent then helps clients distribute the best-performing videos more affordably to the channels of their choice through performance-based, user-initiated viewing campaigns designed specifically for more effective social content marketing.
About MK Capital
MK Capital invests in companies at all stages of the funding lifecycle with a strong sector focus on digital media, data center automation, software, and education technology. The MK Capital team aligns closely with entrepreneurs as a funding partner, a reliable mentor, and a valuable resource to build successful businesses. Poptent is representative of many of the MK Capital digital media investments. MK's digital media investment thesis is: the TV and Cable industries are under assault, YouTube and Facebook allow for overnight global consumer reach and video production costs have dramatically fallen. This allows entrepreneurs to create high quality, engaging video content that attract passionate audiences that advertisers cannot otherwise reach in such a targeted fashion. Other MK Capital digital media content portfolio companies include: Machinima, ZEFR, HealthiNation, DramaFever, OutdoorHub and Awesomeness TV.
