Edelman has appointed Kenny Gold as its first global chief creator officer.
Gold will globally lead Edelman Creator, the firm's dedicated influencer and content-creation division. He will be focused on advancing the firm’s creator capabilities and “further integrating creator with social, paid and performance,” the DJE Holdings agency said in a statement.
“When I think about what creators are looking for as small, medium, large and mega businesses, it all comes down to trust,” Gold said of what brought him to the agency. “There is no better place to shape the future of marketing, the future of earned and owned than Edelman.”
As head of creator, Gold will oversee the offering’s approximately 200 creator specialists globally and partner with teams across the network to deliver culturally relevant, creator-led programmes that drive measurable business impact for clients.
He reports to Edelman president of integrated solutions and delivery Tristan Roy in this role.
The newly created title, effective June 1, sits Gold alongside Edelman’s executive leadership team, underscoring the growing commercial importance of “the role of creator” across all areas of the agency’s business, Roy explained.
Gold will work alongside global leaders, including global head of creator marketing Tyler Vaught, North America head of creator Sara Rezaee and recently appointed EMEA head of creator marketing Jo Burford.
Gold will collaborate with the agency’s social, creative, strategy and other business teams to integrate a creator-led perspective to every discipline going forward in response to the changing media ecosystem.
According to Edelman’s 2025 Trust Barometer, 60% of consumers trust what a creator says about a brand more than what the brand says about itself. That shift places an increasing emphasis on the role of creators as brand partners, Roy said.
“The way that people are receiving information is changing at the same time the networks from which they are receiving that information have ultimately, fundamentally changed, and in many cases grown smaller and tighter,” he explained.
Gold said that his role will centre around people, process, projects and PR.
Staffers who work at Edelman Creator are going to have a “top-notch employment experience,” he said and will learn from “incredible leaders,” building upon the firm’s approach to managing creator programmes and identifying, vetting and working with talent, including making sure creators are compensated on time and taken care of as they go through their experience working with brands.
You can’t manage creators well if you don’t behave like a creator, Gold emphasised. The creator team will make content, attend industry events, create original research and write thought pieces about its own work so that Edelman and the creator economy ultimately become synonymous with one another.
Gold joins Edelman from Deloitte Digital where he served as managing director and head of social and creator. During his tenure, he built the social and creator practice from the ground up into an offering comprising consulting, creativity and creator-led marketing services to clients across multiple industries spanning B2C and B2B work.
He also co-authored Deloitte’s Creator Economy in 3D research as well as its annual State of Social report, according to Edelman.
Prior to Deloitte, Gold held roles as executive director of social media at Grey Group where he developed Procter & Gamble’s #DistanceDance campaign with TikTok creator Charli D’Amelio. He also served as director in the brand and consumer marketing practice at Burson, and strategy director of social media at McCann.
Gold’s hire follows new appointments at Edelman this year. In April, Edelman Chicago general manager Amanda Edelman took on an expanded role leading the agency's newly created travel and tourism portfolio. The agency also hired Gregory Gittrich as global head of intelligence in January and rebranded Edelman Data & Intelligence (DXI) to Edelman Intelligence under Gittrich’s leadership in May.
Earlier this year, US COO Ginger Porter exited the firm and Edelman DXI global president Antoine Harary departed after more than 18 years at the DJE Holdings agency.
Edelman reported its third consecutive year of revenue decline in the US in 2025, dropping 8.1% to $541 million, keeping the DJE Holdings agency below the $1 billion global revenue marker it crossed in 2022. The firm’s like-for-like global revenue, excluding currency fluctuations, declined 4% to $950 million last year, compared to $986 million in 2024.
However, Edelman CEO Richard Edelman said he is “quite confident” about 2026, with the independent, private agency “well-positioned in a time of real turmoil in the sector.”
