Name

Zuri Godfrey

Hometown

Hampton, VA

College

BBA, Howard University

Industry

Marketing & Advertising

Location

Los Angeles, CA

Occupation

Brand Marketing Manager, YouTube

Summary

Zuri Godfrey is a highly-decorated brand marketer with experience and distinguished honors in marketing and advertising. Zuri’s cultural-storytelling and servant-leadership scales beyond bodies of work he has led and awards he has received, associated with companies such as: Google/YouTube, ESPN, Meta, NFL, Nike, and PwC, where he has operated in various capacities.

Zuri has leveraged social media to cultivate and market his personal brand too, which has attributed to him amassing nearly 50,000 followers across social media. True to Zuri being an industry professional, his platform of choice is LinkedIn. He is a managed LinkedIn creator who has partnered with several brands (Canva, Guru, Skillshare) and was selected to LinkedIn’s US Technology & Innovation: Creator Accelerator Program, where he created a multi-week content series to help those with advertising, creative, and marketing backgrounds break into Big Tech.

Zuri is also reaching back and developing the next generation of modern marketeers through The Village, which started approximately five years ago as the Group Mentorship Program (GMP) and in two and a half years, 20+ mentors mentored 100+ college students and recent graduates. Since then, GMP has rebranded to The Village and is responsible for connecting ~100 mentees to internships and full-time careers at award-winning agencies and Fortune 500 companies through the program’s DNA (Development, Networking, Accountability). Remember, it takes a village.

Zuri Godfrey promotes his personal brand immensely well and empowers others to do the same, but he is most-known for his ability to humanize conglomerates and connect them to culture via brand marketing activations and campaigns that evoke emotion and drive incremental revenue.

Experience

Google/YouTube

• Creator Advocacy: Partnered with 30+ Creators to defend ads based business model by developing content that shifts policy maker perception about personalized digital ads
• Social Marketing: Set strategy for how Google’s most revenue driving (80%) product (Ads) shows up on social and managed team responsible for posting and reporting performance
• Brand Management & Naming: Ensured brand standards and guidelines were upheld in creative, named 50+ features and created ads marketing’s approach to event naming
• Brand Strategy: Shaped how Brand Studio leveraged Google products/marketing amid social unrest in 2020 and pioneered Google Calendar integrating Juneteenth as a recurring holiday

ESPN

• Sports Marketing: Rebranded College Football Playoff campaign and pitched Monday Night Football on ESPN social strategy and recommended influencers and storylines for TV spots
• Talent Partnerships: Collaborated with the Migos for 2021 Week 0 MEAC vs SWAC Challenge and recorded behind-the-scenes and College GameDay performance content for social
• Creative Direction: Built roster of ~50 artists, designers, painters, and videographers to deliver College GameDay site announcements and guided creatives from end-to-end

Meta