Netflix’s New Ad Chief Has an Appetite for Danger
Jeremi Gorman helped make Amazon and Snap into advertising powerhouses. Now Netflix has hired her to restore its growth by doing the same for the streaming service. Can she turn a longtime opponent of ads into the internet's next ad success story?
Before Netflix hired Jeremi Gorman as its new advertising chief to bring growth back to its struggling business, Gorman had compiled a colorful résumé of professional and personal accomplishments.
While she’s best known for turning her previous employer, Snap, into an internet ad powerhouse, Gorman also played an important role in developing the ad business at Amazon, now the No. 3 player in digital advertising. In 2014, Gorman, then Amazon’s head of North American ad sales, worked with Universal Pictures to come up with a plan that was literally outside the box: plastering images of yellow, goggle-eyed Minion cartoon characters, on millions of Amazon delivery boxes to promote the upcoming animated movie by the same name. “I feel like I will always be known as the Minions girl as a result,” Gorman said in an exclusive interview with The Information.
Outside the office, Gorman has developed a taste for other kinds of stunts. She has gone hang gliding in Rio de Janeiro and driven a race car on a speedway in Dubai. Once, while piloting a Jet Ski in the Maldives, she tried to splash the person taking her on a reef tour but accidentally collided with his Jet Ski. “So I had to pay for that,” Gorman said with a laugh (the tour guide was fine).