Creative

News

Clients

Client Start Year End Year
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) 2022 Current
TikTok 2021 Current
Ubisoft 2021 Current
React Gaming Group 2022 Current
Intel 2019 2021
T-Mobile 2018 2020
Subaru 2017 2017
ASUS 2021 Current
Konami 2020 2021
ROCCAT 2021 Current

About

Damage is a creative agency that focuses on engaging consumers through the virtual frontier of gaming & streaming.

Founded by gaming industry experts and powered by award-winning ad agency leaders, Damage delivers thought-provoking, category-shattering campaigns and content that resonates with our community. We consistently deliver provocative and authentic ideation for our clients in order to ingrain their brand with gamers.

Agency capabilities include brand strategy, creative, digital / social, influencer marketing, experiential and pro team partnerships.

To learn more, please visit damagecreative.com

People

  • Johnny Ward

    Johnny Ward

    Co-Founder / Chief Executive Officer

    Ward is Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Damage, headquartered in Los Angeles, which assists brands on engaging the GenZ and millennial demographic through gaming, esports & streaming. Ward’s strength is his 25 years’ experience working with Fortune 1000 brands and AAA game developers. He was instrumental in securing anchor client, Intel, for which Damage was the global gaming & esports AOR handling Intel’s full-funnel strategy & creative as well as securing Ubisoft for which Damage is the creative AOR for their Rainbow Six Siege North American Pro (Esports) League. Damage clients also include TikTok, Asus, T-Mobile, Turtle Beach Gaming, Subaru and others. Prior to Damage, Ward was Co-Founder/CEO of two agencies overseeing marketing strategy for game publishers, Ubisoft and Square Enix.
  • Jon Runkle

    Jon Runkle

    Executive Creative Director

  • Tyrone Wang

    Tyrone Wang

    Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer

    Wang’s strength is his unparalleled 14 years experience in esports as a professional esports team founder, captain and player of one of the world’s most successful Team Fortress 2 (TF2) teams. Wang has built the largest North American esports program for iBUYPOWER, a custom gaming PC builder dedicated to esports pros and enthusiasts, currently valued at $250M+. He was responsible for building partnerships with pro esports organizations, endemic and non-endemic brands and esports event owners/organizers. His expertise in working with every moving piece of esports allows him to drive actionable dollars and high ROI’s for brands. He built the iBUYPOWER esports team from the ground up and oversaw all team logistics including event creation, tournament production, partnership procurement and training programs. Additionally, he won the Intel’s Marketing Partner of the Year award and designed the first collegiate esports program at UC Irvine.
  • Andrew Dubois

    Andrew Dubois

    Head of Brand Management

  • William Wu

    William Wu

    Co-Founder / Chief Creative Officer

    Wu is a creative designer and 10-year veteran of the esports industry. At Damage, Wu developed the creative IP for Intel Gaming’s 2019 global campaign, Unleash Your Brilliance. Prior to Damage, Wu spearheaded the creative teams behind several AAA titles from game developers such as Disney, EA, Ubisoft, Riot Games, Blizzard, Crytek, and Sony. Among these titles included: Star Wars, Assassin’s Creed, Tomb Raider, Hearthstone, God of War, Ryse, Magic Cards, and many others. Aside from gaming, Wu’s creative experience has led to work for major blockbuster Hollywood films including The Legend of Tarzan (2016), Edge of Tommorow (2014), Dracula Untold (2014), and Disney’s upcoming The Little Mermaid. When Wu isn’t in the office, you can find him on Steam playing House Flipper.
  • Brian Kim

    Brian Kim

    Co-Founder / Partner

    Kim's strength is his 15 years experience as a high-level competitive gamer, team captain and team owner combined with enterprise sales expertise which allows him to identify and manage opportunities in gaming & esports for corporate brands at the highest level. Kim is the visionary behind Damage’s AI and machine learning analytics platforms, Damage Analytics and Damage Talent, which uses vision recognition, voice recognition and chat sentiment analysis to provide real-time metrics for all live-streaming platforms including Twitch, Instagram Live & TikTok. Kim has the unique ability to draw valuable insights from the highly-fragmented landscape of esports and position corporate clients for success.
  • Paul Sams

    Paul Sams

    Co-Founder / Partner

    Sams began his work in gaming in 1994. The vast majority of his career was spent as the #2 senior executive at Blizzard Entertainment, the global video game giant who has created some of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed games in the world, including World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch. As the company’s global COO and its President of Blizzard Europe, he helped grow the company from ~40 employees with an ~$8M value to 4,000+ global employees with a more than $8B valuation. Regarded by some as one of the “Godfathers of esports”, Sams has been deeply involved in esports since its infancy and helped spearhead the first known esports event in Seoul, South Korea for StarCraft in 1998. Sams was most recently the CEO of Ready at Dawn, the AAA independent video game developer of Lone Echo and Echo Arena, the #1 Virtual Reality (VR) esports title in the world and still serves as their lead strategic advisor. In 2009, the Sams family also became a minority investor of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Sams’ strengths are esports, strategy and company vision development, business operations, global expansion, franchise development, go-to-market planning and execution, and high-value deal negotiation.
  • Dean Heacock

    Dean Heacock

    Chief Financial Officer

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