Leadership
Tim Zuckert / President and CEO
Tim Zuckert is President and C.E.O. of Shift Control Media, a branded-entertainment company that creates original brandworthy games for innovative marketers. Based on his work with such blue chip advertisers as Pepsi, Frito Lay and Hershey Foods, Tim identified a market opportunity to leverage the popularity and pervasiveness of games to help brands connect with consumers in new and increasingly relevant ways. To achieve this, Tim built an organization with a unique blend of game industry authenticity and brand marketing expertise.
Prior to founding Shift Control, Tim was President of Omnicom Group’s TracyLocke, an integrated marketing agency that provided strategic marketing communications to a range of clients in such categories as consumer products, apparel and beverages. Tim came to TracyLocke from the client side, where he held senior marketing positions with such major global marketers as Apple Computer, The Walt Disney Company and The Virgin Group.
A graduate of the Kellogg School, where he earned his M.B.A., Tim has successfully balanced the demands of creating and executing strategic marketing plans for a host of media and entertainment brands with the operational skills of managing and motivating effective sales and marketing teams in both creative and brand management. In founding Shift Control, Tim’s goal was to deliver compelling gameplay value to consumers while helping marketers tap the popularity, active attention and viral nature of a relatively untapped platform. The company is collaborating closely with the growing community of game developers who are interested in alternative funding and distribution sources for their creative ideas.
Mark Findlay / Chief Operating Officer
As Chief Operating Officer, Shift Control co-founder Mark Findlay is responsible for all of the company’s operations and financial planning, including heading up IP negotiations and establishing its game development business practices. He’s based in the company’s Vancouver, BC office, located in the heart of the game industry’s version of Silicon Valley. A longtime veteran of one of the industry’s biggest global players, Mark was Director of Business and Strategic Planning for Electronic Arts prior to co-founding Shift Control.
Mark’s experience encompasses key elements of the game development process. At EA he led planning and strategic analysis for the company’s network of product development studios worldwide and took part in some of its major acquisitions of intellectual property, leading the team that negotiated licensing rights to the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and James Bond franchises. He also served in senior financial planning and strategic analysis roles for game software companies and consulting firms. A native Canadian, Mark holds an M.B.A. from the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.
Mark’s dual expertise in financial management and operations provides the perfect complement to the brand planning and marketing credentials of his Shift Control co-founders, Timothy Zuckert and Frank Sanni, who spent years on both the client and ad agency sides of the business. His experience in working with major publishers and content providers in areas of corporate growth, financial management and strategic analysis provides Shift Control with the tools to develop innovative new ways to bring games to the public, as well as help marketers tap the allure of games for their branding and marketing initiatives.
Frank Sanni / Director of Strategic Planning
Frank Sanni brings an account planner’s intuitive understanding of consumer re-sponse to brands and marketing, as well as an acute analytical perspective on category and marketplace dynamics, to his role as Director of Strategic Planning for Shift Control Media. A graduate of Tufts University with over twelve-years of experience in the marketing industry, Frank’s background spans advertising, integrated marketing and consulting, having held senior planning roles in everything from creative boutiques to global network agencies.
Frank’s agency experience includes work at Havas’ Euro RSCG, IPG’s creative hothouse Amster Yard and the New York boutique DiNoto Lee, in addition to helping establish the planning discipline in the Connecticut office of Omnicom’s TracyLocke. Frank further honed his planning skills as a managing director with consulting group Fusion 5, where he planned and executed brand planning, marketing innovation and product development projects for a range of global clients. His category experience ranges from packaged goods to financial services, and includes such brands as Electronic Arts, Bacardi, Daimler-Chrysler, Gillette, Pepsi, Frito-Lay and Nestle.
At Shift Control Media, Frank combines his skills as a planner with his first-hand perspective as a gamer, to drive the creative process in a Brandworthy direction—ensuring the delivery of truly enjoyable games that also effectively and efficiently fulfill marketing objectives for brands. He also provides clients with the insight and guidance necessary to successfully navigate within the broader space of interactive and emerging media.
Phil Campbell / Creative DirectorPhil Campbell is a designer with over twenty years experience in game design and architecture. Prior to Shift Control, Phil worked as a Creative Director on a number of Electronic Arts titles, including the James Bond games Agent Under Fire and Everything or Nothing and, most recently, The Godfather: The Game. Before that he was Chief Creative Officer at Quantic Dream, where he developed concepts for Omikron: The Nomad Soul and Indigo Prophecy. He also spent five years developing Tomb Raider titles for Eidos Interactive.Phil brings to Shift Control strong collaborative skills and a track record in concept development that draws on his experience both as part of large game design studios such as EA and Eidos as well as on his more entrepreneurial work as an independent creative director. He’s designed games across all gaming platforms, including console, online and mobile, and has worked in a wide range of game genres. His talents at designing fully functional games for these platforms translates well to the casual gaming arena, which will be the focus of much of Shift Control’s work for marketers. In this regard, Phil will draw on his deep understanding of what makes engaging games that consumers will want to play, as well as his breadth of knowledge and contacts within the game community.In addition to his game design credentials, Phil is a qualified architect and holds a Masters Degree in architecture from Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom.