Russ josephs

I like to think of myself as the Forrest Gump of Strategists. This isn't to say that I don't posses a certain level of talent and skill, but it's primarily been luck, as well as being in the right place at the right time, that has been the main arbiter of my success. My first job was at a Silicon Alley startup in the late 90s, promoting "second screen" TV more than a decade before it caught on. Later I was hired as a social media researcher before Twitter was even invented, then became the person responsible for understanding and sharing the latest developments in trends and technology in R/GA's Mobile and Emerging Platforms Group (the cutting edge of the cutting edge). From there I went on to become one of only a handful of Strategists at HUGE, still in the early days of social, where I worked on one of the first examples of "social good" (Pepsi Refresh), designed and implemented Pizza Hut's social media ecosystem from the ground up, and helped convince Four Seasons that yes, affluent people DO use Facebook. After this I helped transition Atmosphere Proximity/BBDO from a purely digital agency to an experiential one (Emirates' World Cup campaign and Visa's Olympics campaign), and got The Economist the youngest readers they'd ever had (in addition to a ton of women). Last but not least, I was Rosetta's first New York hire on Samsung Mobile, where I've tirelessly tried to promote the company as a great BRAND (that happens to make great products), rather than as just a bunch of great products with no unifying structure, underlying idea or emotional connectivity. Phew.