Jeff Katz and the art of calling in the experts

Jeff Katz tried to help people understand one another’s jobs. At Definition 6, the agency where he spent years bringing acquired businesses together, that seemed a sensible place to start. Let the new people meet the existing people. Explain the different kinds of work. Give everyone a clearer view of the company they now shared.

Then came the complication. Some specialists, newly acquainted with another part of the business, began taking on work outside their own expertise. The effort to make the organization more coherent was diluting the very skills the acquisitions had brought in. Looking back in 2018, Katz described the lesson: people needed to know when to bring in the colleague who actually knew the job.

It is a pleasingly awkward discovery for an executive to admit. A company buys expertise, then finds that enthusiasm can get in its way. The organizational chart looks orderly. The humans have other ideas. Katz’s answer was to restore clearer functional boundaries while keeping the ability to connect people across them.

That episode offers a useful way into his career. He has worked where creative businesses meet technology and where new ownership meets an existing workforce. Since 2025, he has been an Executive Partner at Salt Creek Capital. The setting has changed. The question of how people work together after a business changes shape still belongs in the room.

A business built by joining things

Katz joined Definition 6 in 2000 as president and chief operating officer. The agency’s proposition put content alongside the technology needed to deliver it and assess its effectiveness. Writers, artists and musicians worked in a business that also employed software specialists and strategists. Its range gave clients several kinds of expertise under one roof.

There is an everyday difficulty concealed inside that arrangement. A client sees one agency. The agency has to connect several disciplines, each with its own demands. A piece of creative work must reach an audience; the systems carrying it must function; the people commissioning it want to know whether it achieved anything. The operator is responsible for keeping those promises connected.

Private equity became part of Definition 6’s expansion in 2009, when the leadership team raised $15 million from Navigation Capital Partners. The acquisition of Creative Bubble added post-production, motion design and audio engineering capabilities and established a Manhattan presence. In 2012, the combination with Synaptic Digital and The NewsMarket extended the agency’s international reach.

For Katz, those combinations meant practical integration work. Each acquired business brought capabilities worth keeping. Making a larger organization useful required more than placing the names together. His later account of the cross-training problem is interesting precisely because it describes an adjustment rather than a flawless plan. The first idea sounded reasonable. Experience required a revision.

The vending machine had colleagues

One of Definition 6’s visible projects began with a familiar object behaving very strangely. In the Coca-Cola “Happiness Machine” video, students approached a vending machine and received surprises that included flowers, pizza and a large sandwich. An ordinary transaction became something people around them wanted to watch.

The agency filmed the campaign at St. John’s University in Queens, installing the machine and hidden cameras to record the students’ reactions. Coca-Cola released the video on its YouTube channel in January 2010. Its attraction was easy to grasp without an explanation of the production process: someone expected a drink and got a story worth sharing.

The campaign won a Gold Interactive CLIO in May 2010. Its creative work belonged to a team, and Katz’s part in this story is the operating context around that team. When he discussed Definition 6’s growth, he connected the Creative Bubble acquisition with the combined company’s ability to make the project. A business combination had helped put different skills within reach.

That distinction matters in a profile of an agency executive. The person running the company does not become the author of every good idea it produces. The managerial achievement is more specific: making room for the skills, connecting the work and maintaining an organization in which the people responsible can deliver it.

A promotion with a long prehistory

On May 30, 2014, Definition 6 named Katz its CEO. Barry Sikes moved from that role to executive chairman. At the time, the agency employed 170 people. Katz had already spent years overseeing operations and expansion, so the appointment carried a substantial history of working inside the business.

He also gave credit upward. Speaking about Sikes, Katz said, “He continues to be a phenomenal mentor and coach to me.” The remark puts a relationship inside a succession announcement. One executive was taking on the chief executive’s responsibilities while the other continued in a board role.

Katz’s education supplies another unexpected detail. He earned a bachelor’s degree in urban planning at the University of Maryland and an MBA at Jacksonville University. The undergraduate subject is an intriguing companion to a career spent managing combinations of people and functions. There is no need to turn the degree into a prediction. A résumé is allowed to contain a surprise.

His work also extended into the technology community. By the time of his CEO appointment, he had advised startups through AngelPool, held board positions with TechAmerica and served on the board of the Next Generation Manufacturing Association. The interests crossed the boundaries of a conventional advertising-agency biography.

The napkin gets a second job

At the 2015 NATPE conference in Miami, Definition 6 brought a campaign whose central prop could sit beneath a drink. The team printed 10,000 cocktail napkins inviting attendees to share a selfie. Each qualifying social post would trigger a donation to the Robin Hood Foundation, which works against poverty in New York City.

Katz attended alongside colleagues including Rob Ortiz and Frank Radice. Hundreds of selfies appeared across social platforms, with participants including Jay Leno, Vince Gilligan and Norman Lear. The company had turned a sponsorship into an invitation that attendees could carry around the conference.

It is a useful little episode in Katz’s agency years because it brings the work down to the scale of an object. The action was easy to understand and easy to perform. The napkin already belonged in the setting. The team gave people a reason to look at it twice.

Leave the door open for the boomerangs

The 2018 picture of Definition 6 included an employment detail worth pausing over: the agency welcomed former employees who wanted to return. They were called boomerangs. The nickname gives a familiar workplace event a little affection. Leaving did not have to make the relationship permanently unusable.

Read alongside Katz’s integration lesson, it gives his agency story two practical concerns. Different talents need a way to work together without losing their specialties. People who already know a business may have a place in its next chapter. Neither question is resolved by a new company name or a larger list of services.

Later that year, Definition 6 added market research to its digital and PR offerings. Its online surveys were designed by research, media and analytics specialists and drew respondents from a pool of more than six million American consumers. The aim was to give content decisions a firmer understanding of the audience.

Here was another combination of disciplines: finding an insight, shaping material around it and deciding how to distribute it. Research could support media tours, branded videos and other content. The work extended the agency’s connection between the story a brand wanted to tell and the evidence available about the people receiving it.

The office includes the neighborhood

Katz’s description of Definition 6’s Atlanta home at Armour Junction was more companionable than a discussion of square footage. He liked the mix of businesses and people, the location and the outdoor spaces. He connected the setting with the agency’s ability to attract and keep talent.

Asked about favorite activities nearby, he mentioned the Beltline, Sweetwater and time with neighbors and dogs. The answer is disarmingly ordinary beside the language of acquisitions and executive appointments. A working day has surroundings. Katz seemed quite happy to include the dogs in the account.

He also described choosing the development for its promise and location, and looked forward to extended Beltline access. For an executive whose education included urban planning, that is an enjoyable detail, though it establishes no grand theory about his career. It simply shows the attention he gave to where an agency’s people spent their time.

Different experience, room to work

In 2022, Definition 6 added Duc Le as COO and Jamie Rosen to its board. Katz emphasized the different perspectives they brought. His description of leadership returned to a familiar operating idea: seek advice, bring capable people into the business and give them space to apply their experience.

“I hire people smarter than me, with different experiences, and let them work their magic.”Jeff Katz / 2022

In November of that year, Kelso & Company acquired a majority interest in D6 and announced its combination with Emtec. Sunil Misra would lead the combined organization, while Katz and the existing management team would continue leading D6. The announcement also said that the management teams would remain investors alongside Kelso.

The intended combination paired D6’s creative and customer-experience capabilities with Emtec’s product engineering, application development and analytics. Katz spoke about a larger set of resources for growth and opportunities for employees. The arrangement brought his long-running problem of connecting different expertise into another corporate setting.

Another ownership chapter

Katz joined Salt Creek Capital as an Executive Partner in 2025. The firm works with privately owned businesses and offers experienced executives as part of its approach to ownership transitions. His background in acquisitions, integrations and operations fits the practical work such changes require.

His career makes the most sense when the announcements are read alongside the smaller decisions. A specialist needs to know which colleague to call. A former employee needs a route back. A new executive needs room to use experience that the existing team does not have. An office needs surroundings people enjoy.

Those details give Katz’s story its shape. Across years of agency growth and a new private equity affiliation, he has repeatedly worked around the point where a company brings people and capabilities together. The purchase can be announced in a day. Learning how to work together takes longer, and occasionally starts with discovering that a sensible idea needs changing.