He began his career working at Adidas, on the cycling brand Mavic, focused on marketing and product placement with professional athletes and at events, like the Olympics, Le Tour de France and The Hawaiian Ironman.  From there he moved into consumer packaged goods, working in marketing, first at Red Bull, and then at Vitaminwater, both extraordinary, fast growth beverage companies.  He developed growth strategy, business plans, organizational frameworks, and built high performing teams, consistently outpacing target sales and profitability goals.

In May 2007, Vitaminwater was acquired by The Coca-Cola Company, and in April of 2008 Brandon joined The Coca-Cola Company to analyze the opportunity and develop the business case for launching Vitaminwater outside of the U.S.  After six months of work, he put together a team, developed the marketing and commercial strategies, and successfully executed the launch of Vitaminwater in Japan; now the leading market outside of North America.  Most recently, Brandon worked on marketing and business development for Popchips, a better for you snack food startup up, based in San Francisco.

In his spare time, Brandon enjoys road and mountain biking, hiking and playing guitar.  He volunteers his professional expertise with several non-profits via catchafire.org, including Africa Volunteer Corps, a start up NGO, focused on empowering African Volunteers.  He lives with his family and two dogs in Waltham, MA.

Founded in 2008 as the first social-commerce-focused firm, dotbox has grown into one of the leading providers of social commerce solutions to retail clients in the United States. The firm provides brands with a full suite of service offerings across strategy, implementation and activation, from classic e-commerce to socially integrated campaigns and full omni-channel retail solutions.

“With dotbox, we see tremendous opportunity to help clients better connect their social marketing activities with their online – and offline – sales performance,” said Miles Nadal, Chairman and CEO of MDC Partners.  “This forms the foundation for a full-service e-commerce solution within our network that pairs creative and branding talent with technology and unique insight into the transformation of consumer behavior.”

At the heart of dotbox’s implementations is its proprietary platform, 4CsX(tm), which combines traditional ecommerce features with leading-edge social tools, advanced content publishing and cross-channel engagement.  As digital channels continue to drive more and more consumer engagement, brands and retailers can now deploy their entire social commerce solution on one platform without the cost and time to integrate multiple systems and vendors.  dotbox allows the purchase functionality to be moved closer to points of consideration, and the dotbox platform and architecture have been designed from inception to be modularized and cloud-based, making the solution extremely flexible and cost effective, yet secure and scalable.

“At dotbox, we have a unique focus on building solutions at the crossroads of omni-channel commerce, content rich publishing, community interaction and contextual personalization, ” said Ashley John Heather, CEO & Co-Founder of dotbox.  “We believe that building a digital commerce ecosystem for the next decade has to involve these four disciplines in an integrated and seamless manner.  That is what consumers expect, and that is what retail brands have to deliver.”

“MDC is a perfect strategic and cultural fit for dotbox,” said Zo Björgvinsson, CMO & Co-Founder of dotbox. “They have a strategic and independent spirit that is perfectly aligned with our own vision.  We have had great success in blending strategic brand building with high impact digital solutions for our clients, and we now have the momentum and appropriate firepower behind us to bring industrial strength to our digital capabilities and solutions.”

About MDC Partners Inc.

MDC is a Business Transformation Organization that utilizes technology, marketing communications, data analytics, insights and strategic consulting solutions to drive meaningful returns on Marketing and Communications Investments for multinational clients in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Caribbean.

MDC’s durable competitive advantage is to Empower the Most Talented Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders to Drive Business Success to new levels of Achievement, for both our Clients and our Shareholders, reinforcing MDC’s reputation as “The Place Where Great Talent Lives.”

MDC Partners’ Class A shares are publicly traded on NASDAQ under the symbol “MDCA” and on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “MDZ.A”.

About dotbox LLC

dotbox is known for the art of the impossible – blending beautiful and socially rich user experience, with powerful and elegant technology, resulting in some of the most innovative social commerce solutions available today.  Our success in introducing new retail concepts to the public and in reinventing mature heritage brands speaks for itself. Although we serve a broad range of clients, our expertise is in merging content and commerce, with a social flair, and an onmi-channel perspective across high fashion, home, beauty and luxury. More and more, the lines between eCommerce and Social Media are blurred. dotbox leverages the new opportunities of this changing landscape to build rich, engaging digital experiences that bring customers closer to the brands they love.

Clients include 1-800-Flowers, Bebe, Direct Brands, Harry Winston, Jessica Simpson, Laura Geller, Parfums de Coeur, T Anthony, Theodora & Callum, L’Objet, Tourneau, Verdura, Vince Camuto, Vintage & Modern and Wet Seal.

About Progress Partners Inc.

Progress Partners is a Boston- and New York-based finance and M&A advisory firm that works with owners and management of emerging growth companies to identify, build and realize business value. Our deep industry expertise, high ethical standards, cultivated relationships, extensive network, and entrepreneurial experience give us the ability to achieve superior results for our clients.

Doug joins Progress Partners having spent nine years successfully building his company, Sports Solutions International, into a leadership position as a sports technology consultant. His clients include the leading providers in peer-to-peer streaming video, mobile marketing, social media and  gaming, event management/scoring/graphics software, 3D production, calendaring platforms and more. They hail from Israel, Spain, Australia, the UK and the US.

Prior to starting his own company, Doug spent 23 years working for IMG, the world’s leading sports management and marketing company, founded by the legendary Mark McCormack, acknowledged as the father of his industry. Most recently, Doug helped launched IMG’s entry into the interactive media business, TWIi,  overseeing development and maintenance of 40 websites for clients including the US Tennis Association, Wimbledon, The Royal and Ancient Golf Club (British Open), Manchester United, US Soccer Federation, Chinese Football Association, Tiger Woods, and the New England Patriots. He helped create a full service hosting operation to provide managed services to internal and external clients; developed strategy for the management of interactive rights in combination with traditional media rights for key clients; and  managed the development of rich media asset management software, while overseeing a staff of 160 across production centers in Boston, London, Hong Kong and Sydney.

During a 16 year stay in IMG’s London office, Doug  created and led the development of European Tour Productions (a joint venture between IMG and the PGA European Tour) from start-up to its establishment as the media and commercial arm of the Tour.  Doug built a consensus with the amateur golf federations across Europe for the development of their media rights and built a model organization that is unique in world sport. It originates live television coverage from all of its own tournaments as well as highlights, magazine, closed circuit and radio content; distributes these to a network of 30+ broadcasters worldwide; manages sales and integration for the Tour’s official sponsors; manages  europeantour.com and all the Tour’s digital assets;  and functions as  an in-house advertising agency to manage the media planning and buying for major golf and tourism  brands in Europe. Doug and his successor replicated this model in joint ventures with the South African and Asian Tours.

Doug attended Phillips Academy – Andover, Yale University and Ohio University’s Graduate School of Sports Administration.

Skyword’s workflow automation platform enables brands, agencies, and media companies to engage consumers by efficiently producing quality, brand-aligned content that precisely matches the information they seek.  Skyword’s customers include leading brands and media companies such as The Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch.com, Everyday Health, education.com, and numerous others.

Cox Media Group will join existing investors Allen & Company, Progress Ventures, and American Public Media Group.  A representative from Cox will join Skyword’s Board of Directors. The new funding will allow Skyword to refine its industry-leading platform and expand its reach into new markets.

“Progress Partners has been instrumental in the growth of our business over the past 16 months” said Tom Gerace, Founder and CEO of Skyword.  ”The team has advised us on new paths to organizational expansion and opened key strategic partnerships, culminating in the investment by Cox. Their digital media and fundraising expertise has been integral to finding the right investor in this current round of funding.”

“Thanks to some great early traction with top brands, Skyword is one of the leading platforms for content production and delivery” commented Nick MacShane, Senior Managing Director of Progress Partners. “The company has seen tremendous growth as demand for scalable, high quality content accelerates in the marketplace. The new funding from Cox will position the company to capture an even greater share of the immense content marketing spend, which should eclipse $41 billion in 2012. We look forward to continuing our work with Skyword as they expand their business and accelerate growth.”