Agency.com Co-founder Joins Prophet

Chan Suh, the co-founder of Agency.com, has joined brand and marketing strategy consultants Prophet as a senior partner in the newly-created role of chief digital officer. 

Suh will continue to be based in New York. Prophet is headquartered in San Francisco but has offices in other U.S. cities, as well as in Europe and Asia. The company has worked with brands like BMW, Cisco, GE, McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson and Zurich Financial.

Suh co-founded Agency.com in 1995 as one of the industry’s first interactive marketing firms and Omnicom became a significant minority shareholder in 1996. After a number of acquisitions, Agency.com grew to become one of the largest digital marketing players and subsequently went public. It was later taken private before being sold to Omnicom. In 2007, Suh returned to active management as CEO to revive the company but he resigned in 2009 after Omnicom folded the agency’s New York and London offices into TBWA\Chiat\Day. By 2011, most of Agency.com’s remaining operations were absorbed into The Designory.

Suh, a native South Korean who attended New York’s Sarah Lawrence College, got his start in marketing in the publishing industry, working with New York, Details, Life and Vibe. He helped to create Time Inc.’s Pathfinder, an early experiment providing a single digital newsstand destination for all of the publisher’s titles. (In 1999, Time shut it down in favor individual of hubs for the company’s titles.)

In announcing Suh’s appointment, Michael Dunn, Prophet’s CEO noted: “We and our clients are fortunate to have the opportunity to benefit from his knowledge and the vision that has characterized his work over the years.”