Matt Brown
General Manager, ICC Lowe 

ICC Lowe pulled away with two awards for agency of the year (including MM&M’s) in 2012. Now, their next question becomes: how do you build from here? ICC believes they found an answer with Matt Brown, their new general manager. “There are a lot of leaders who said to me: ‘agency of the year, you can only go down from here.’ I think that’s because a lot of people see it as a culminating event, as the end note. For me it’s a jumping-off point. ‘OK, we’re agency of the year,’ now there’s a lot of responsibility and a lot to do with that. How do we expand upon it?”

In August, Brown made a decision to return to his roots for personal and professional reasons. He left Ignite Health and returned to where he started, in the northeast. “There were a lot of changes at inVentiv. A lot of my job became traveling and meetings. I’m an advertising guy, an agency guy. I fuel myself off of working with other agency people. I wanted to be back in the business,” asserts Brown, “I’m still young and crazy enough to believe I can change the world.”

And for Brown, it’s always been about the people. While an account executive at GSW in Columbus, Ohio, Brown worked on educational books about growth hormone. One in particular was about bullying—which ultimately changed everything. “An eight-year-old kid sent me a letter that said: ‘I understand you’re the advertising agency that built these. I want you to know this bullying book has completely changed my life.’ I still have that letter today. It was the single most important moment that defined my career. That, for me, decided where I was going to play.”

As he faces the beginning of a new phase in his career, Brown quips: “Selling t-shirts and underwear just isn’t for me. I mean, I’ve had some good t-shirts, but when you can change lives and have an impact on people—when you know the things that you’re doing have an impact—it’s really hard to not want to do that forever.”