Proof Appoints Jeff Prince as Its First Chief Growth Officer

After a storied career spanning two decades in leadership roles across geographies and categories, Jeff Prince is joining Austin, Texas-based agency Proof as its first chief growth officer. In his role, Jeff will be responsible for the agency's new business pursuits and awareness efforts while also working with clients on new growth initiatives for their brands beyond Proof’s traditional role as an advertising agency.

This marks Prince’s second act at Proof after joining the agency in 2002 in new business and account management. He returns at a pivotal point in Proof's new journey upward.

"Proof recently recast itself as a Brand Liberation Agency," said CEO Bryan Christian. "We have already seen a very positive impact from our renewed commitment to freeing brands to create, connect, grow and become valuable in ways they never thought possible. Jeff will help us continue to seek out innovative ways to liberate brands from whatever constrictions are holding them back from their full potential." 

A native Texan (and a University of Texas at Austin alum) currently based in Connecticut, Prince will be taking advantage of the agency's commitment to maintaining a permanent remote, work-from-anywhere culture, joining its Chief Creative Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, both of whom are based in New York City. In Austin, Proof offers employees both a house on Lake Austin and a bar on the city's bustling 4th Street for staff to congregate and gather at will, putting a new spin on the hybrid workplace after relinquishing its office space in 2021. The environments fuel Proof's main core values: rebellious by design, inventive in action, and invested for good.

"The impact of allowing us to hire from anywhere and work from anywhere has allowed us to add significant talent that otherwise would not have moved to Austin in the work-from-office days," said Christian.

Most recently, Prince was executive director and head of account management at DDB New York, overseeing a significant transformation toward a growth and integrated innovation agency and providing senior leadership to key clients including Pepsi, Unilever (Lipton, Pure Leaf, Breyers ice cream), The Kroger Company, Aflac, Royal Canin and Salomon.  

Before that, he was an executive group director at Droga5, where he worked with Google to launch the Pixel phone, with Chase to launch its Chase for Business unit, and with Sprint to relaunch its brand, as well as helping to create award-winning work for Georgia Pacific, Ancestry.com, and CNBC.  

Going further back, Prince was an SVP group account director at MullenLowe Group, as well as the director of new business for the agency's Los Angeles office, which he helped open. There, he also led teams creating campaigns and product innovations for clients including Acura, Fage Dairy, Paul Mitchell, iRobot, Adidas, Amazon, and the beloved California Avocado Commission, among others. 

He has also held account leadership roles at BBDO (Atlanta and New York), GSD&M, and McCann-Erickson NY, working with Unilever, Gillette, Starbucks, AT&T, Citigroup, Salomon Smith Barney, and Major League Baseball, always with an emphasis on business growth, global integration, customer data and insights, and innovative storytelling across new platforms. 

"Having watched the last few years of how Proof continually evolves, brings together an amazing team of talent, and delivers killer work, I couldn't be more excited to now rejoin at a time when the potential energy of the team is primed for growth.  Proof is the type of partner-minded agency where growth won't just come from "new business" but from using innovation and creativity to liberate brands from constrictions and help them achieve great business outcomes.  In a growth role, part of what I get to do is help apply a liberation mindset on the agency itself to do more of what it's done so uniquely well before but also to do more things it's never done before."

Proof is a Worldwide Partners (WPI) member agency and counts among its clients Subway Restaurants, Waterloo Water, Travel Texas, Explore Branson, Champion Energy, Mouser Electronics, TTI, and the American Heart Association.