Steve Jun had a question that did not fit comfortably on a business card. After taking charge of INNOCEAN USA, he wondered whether he was equal to the job. Years later, when the agency reached Ad Age’s A-List, he returned to that doubt in public. The recognition gave him an occasion to say something less polished than the usual corporate thank-you. A chief executive could be grateful, proud and still remember being unsure.
It is an appealing place to begin with someone who works in advertising. His trade helps companies present themselves with conviction. His own account allows a little hesitation into the picture. The title arrived well before the feeling that the work had justified it. In a profession devoted to making an impression quickly, Jun’s story makes a case for taking considerably longer.
He placed the credit with colleagues, clients and partners. The gesture matters because the milestones in his career can easily be arranged as a sequence of executive achievements: new offices, a move across continents, acquisitions, appointments, awards. Jun’s telling changes the emphasis. He remembers the people who made the sequence possible. The individual whose name heads the leadership page describes an accomplishment that belongs to a group.
“am I enough for this?”Steve Jun, reflecting on becoming CEO
A childhood with two names for the same outing
Jun grew up in Seoul. His father was a scientist, and Jun and his brother sometimes accompanied him on trips to sample fish. For the children, the activity had a simpler name: fishing. The same outing could be research to one participant and recreation to another. A scientific field trip, it turns out, is easier to sell when there might be a fish at the end of it.
The anecdote is a small, useful detail in a career concerned with how people understand the same thing differently. It does not explain every choice Jun later made. It does give his often-repeated interest in learning a human scale. Before there were clients in several countries, there was a child sharing an adult’s work without quite sharing the adult’s description of it.
His early advertising roles included managing director of Diamond Ad America in 1995, group account director at Diamond Bates Korea in 2000, and a subsequent stint at ABLEA. In 2005, he helped establish INNOCEAN’s global headquarters in Seoul. His career had brought him into the construction of an organization, with the practical task of helping it establish offices abroad.
Three places, one continuing assignment
By the time INNOCEAN announced his U.S. appointment in July 2015, Jun had already led its European operations. The appointment took effect on June 29. He succeeded Tony Kim, who was returning to Seoul after six years in America. Jun arrived with experience of both the network’s beginnings and its expansion. Huntington Beach was another chapter in a company he had helped put together.
The American client roster then included Hyundai Motor America, Kia Motors America, NRG Energy and FootJoy. That list combined the automotive relationships associated with INNOCEAN and evidence of its interest in other businesses. Jun’s stated approach was to extend the agency’s capabilities carefully as opportunities appeared. There is a restraint in that word, carefully. Expansion would need the means to support it.
In a later reflection, he described his career as a gradual movement from East to West. He had spent roughly two years in Germany before coming to the United States. The geography is memorable, but the continuity is equally revealing: headquarters, Europe and America were parts of the same institutional story. He was learning different markets while carrying knowledge of where the organization began.
A father, a car and sixty seconds
One early American milestone came with a joke about an overprotective father. Hyundai’s 2016 Super Bowl commercial “First Date” put Kevin Hart in pursuit of his daughter and her date, using the Genesis sedan’s Car Finder technology. The car’s feature supplied the mechanism; the father supplied the trouble. A product demonstration had acquired a comic accomplice.
The sixty-second spot won USA TODAY’s Ad Meter, beating 63 other commercials. Hyundai became the first automotive company to win the poll. Two other Hyundai ads, “Ryanville” and “The Chase,” placed fifth and sixth. INNOCEAN developed the creative. The result put an agency working for a Korean carmaker at the front of a very American advertising ritual.
For Jun’s story, the distinction is an agency achievement during his tenure. Its creative credit belongs to the people who made the campaign. That division of credit keeps the episode intelligible: a chief executive helps create the conditions for work that other specialists conceive and execute. When those conditions produce a joke millions of people can understand, the organizational work briefly becomes visible on screen.
The friend across the negotiating table
The 2017 acquisition of David&Goliath added another kind of relationship. Its founder, David Angelo, had known Jun for years. Their agencies had connections through automotive clients and operated near one another in Southern California. Familiarity was part of the deal’s logic. The conversation concerned what each organization could gain without losing the character that had made it useful.
Angelo wanted his agency’s voice to survive inside a larger network. INNOCEAN offered access to deeper data and technology capabilities; David&Goliath brought creative experience and a route toward a wider client base. Jun described their shared culture and aligned interests as reasons they had been closer as friends than their competitive position might suggest.
That is a more interesting account of acquisition than the tidy image of a large company swallowing a smaller one. Here, the public discussion included a founder’s concern about identity and an existing relationship between leaders. The transaction expanded the network, while the argument for it rested partly on preserving a particular agency. Growth required an explanation of what would be retained.
What a passport cannot teach on its own
Jun’s 2022 writing about cultural understanding brought the question of borders inside the workplace. He described a program through which employees could visit the company’s Korean headquarters and experience its culture directly. He wanted those visits to return. Staff came back with stories and a better understanding of the organization’s heritage, giving the distant headquarters a texture beyond an office address.
He also described an employee council and discussions involving speakers from different communities. The intention was to make room for difficult conversations and unfamiliar perspectives. In his account, curiosity needed a channel: a visit, a discussion, an opportunity to listen. An invitation to be open-minded becomes more credible when there is somewhere for that openness to go.
The idea suits a leader responsible for an American agency with Korean origins. A network can share a name across countries while its employees have very different experiences. Jun’s proposal addressed that distance through encounters between people. For an industry that studies audiences professionally, there is something sensible about asking colleagues to practise a similar attentiveness with one another.
Hiring the next chapter
In February 2023, INNOCEAN USA appointed Jason Sperling chief creative officer. He came from Meta Reality Labs and had worked across brands including Apple and Honda. Jun connected the appointment to investment in digital, experiential and data capabilities. The agency wanted creative leadership that could work across the formats its clients were increasingly asking it to deliver.
Leslie Barrett’s arrival as the agency’s first president in September 2025 gave the leadership structure another dimension. Previously president and partner at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, she took responsibility for operations, growth, new business, client services and innovation, reporting to Jun. Her remit was broad enough to make clear that this was a consequential appointment, rather than a decorative addition to the roster.
Jun’s own current title is chief executive officer. Barrett is president. Those two lines describe a division of responsibilities, and they keep his profile from freezing at an earlier “CEO/President” label. The agency also added strategy leadership, including Lee Maicon. Across the appointments, the story of expansion becomes a story about who will be trusted to do the expanding.
An award with a long memory
In March 2026, INNOCEAN entered the top ten of Ad Age’s A-List. The assessment considered creative work, business performance and industry influence from the previous year. The recognition therefore spoke to more than a single commercial. It offered a public occasion to look at the agency as a business, including its client relationships and leadership.
The company reported $460 million in INNOCEAN USA revenue for 2025, up 7.7 percent year over year. Its client list extended from Hyundai, Kia and Genesis to brands including TaylorMade, El Pollo Loco, Wienerschnitzel and Jinro USA. The automotive foundation remained visible alongside a broader range of assignments. The direction Jun had discussed years earlier could now be read in the roster.
His response emphasized recruiting people, strengthening teamwork and building technology capabilities. On LinkedIn, he also recalled the uncertainty with which he had begun the American job. Placing those accounts together gives the award a useful scale: business recognition on one side, the memory of an individual taking on responsibility on the other. The interval between them contained years of other people’s work.
Room for everyone, quite literally
The next change is architectural. In 2026, INNOCEAN USA signed a roughly 101,000-square-foot lease in El Segundo, with the new U.S. headquarters expected to follow construction in 2027. The plan would bring approximately 600 employees, currently spread across several buildings, together. Jun linked the need for new space to the agency’s growth over seventeen years.
Production leadership was changing too. In August 2026, Nicolette Spencer became chief production officer and Melissa Moore became senior vice president, head of integrated production. Both had spent years building that part of the business. Jun pointed to the trust they had earned from employees and clients. Here was another version of the same theme: responsibility following sustained contribution.
The move and promotions give his current chapter a practical ending. A larger agency needs places to work and people authorized to run the work. Those are unglamorous requirements until they are missing. Jun’s public story keeps returning to them, through offices, colleagues and partnerships. Belonging takes time. Eventually, it also takes a building large enough to bring everyone together.