Electrify Hires Al Brown and Patrick Walker for Creator Push
Electrify has hired Al Brown as executive vice-president for creative and editorial and Patrick Walker as chief strategy officer.
The London-based company invests in digital creators and helps build their online brands. The appointments were reported by Deadline on 14 October.
Its line-up includes Veritasium, fern, Mentour Pilot, Astrum, Fireship and The Rundown AI. Those names cover science, aviation, space, technology and artificial intelligence. Together, Electrify says the roster reaches more than 65 million subscribers across platforms.
The scale is large. The company reports about 2.6 billion views and 371 million hours watched. More than 130 million of those hours, around 36% of total viewing, came through TV screens. That means people watching online video on the living-room set, not just on phones or laptops.
Walker brings long experience from the platform side of the business. He was managing director for EMEA, meaning Europe, the Middle East and Africa, at YouTube. He previously worked as director of media partnerships for the same region at Facebook.
He also knows the creator business from the inside. He ran Rightster, a multi-channel network, meaning a company that manages many online video channels at once, later known as Brave Bison. Before that, he was a founding investor and chief content officer at Base79.
Brown comes from television production. He spent more than a decade at Vice, rising to vice-president of programming for Vice Studios UK. There he executive-produced State of Undress and Gaycation. After Vice, he held senior roles at Future Studios and Independent Studio.
What makes this stand out is the mix. Walker knows the platforms. Brown knows how shows are made. Electrify sits between the two worlds, with more than a third of its viewing now happening on television.
