Andrew Essex is a journalist, author , and entrepreneur. Together with his business partner, MT Carney, Andrew founded a creative marketing services company, Plan A.
MT Carney also has an impressive resume as the president of marketing for Disney, co-founder of Naked Communications, and current chief executive officer of Untitled Worldwide.
Plan A has a large team of marketing agency veterans with a mix of creative generalists who bring their extensive experience into new fresh ad campaigns for clients. The business focuses on a strategy that tells a story along with a splash of creative excellence.
Like many of the top ad agencies in the world, Plan A works on a variety of projects for clients from brand building, PR, social media, product design, to influencer campaigns.
They have worked with many major brands like Zappos, LG, Oracle, and Vanity Fair. The company also partners with agencies like Beekman Social, Twin Studio, Van’s General Store, and Untitled Worldwide.
Before founding his current advertising company, Andrew Essex was CEO at Tribeca Enterprises, a part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Andrew also founded another New York advertising agency Droga5 where he was chairman and CEO.
Droga5 won several awards and is highly successful. He is also an angel investor and advises several consumer goods and technology companies.
Andrew Essex is an interesting businessman and entrepreneur who views creativity as a distinguishing trait that makes us all different. Just a few years ago, Andrew wrote a book titled “The End of Advertising: Why It Had to Die, and the Creative Resurrection to Come” based on the simple concept of innovate or die.
This statement is true about most aspects of art and life and is the great desire to reinvent oneself to survive and become more of what you have been.
The book touches on the $600 billion advertising industry that caters to a captive audience online that is more likely to skip past the ad, close the banner, or use ad-blocking software to get to the content they want to view. He notes that advertisements have become monotonous and tone-deaf with no flavor, which is why the industry is dying. Ads have been common annoyances.
Andrew Essex also talks about the future of advertising and marketing in the sense of a utopian society where ads become so desirable and enticing that audiences are willing to pay for them. The book has won rave reviews from major publications calling it fresh and timely and a mandatory read.
Andrew studied American literature and earned a master’s in arts degree from New York University. He started his career at The New Yorker as a journalist, worked as an editor for Salon, Details, and Entertainment Weekly, and was a consultant for US Weekly.
