sponsorship
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Matt Manning and the business of belonging
From international marketing to the leadership of MKTG, Matt Manning has built a career around the distance between buying attention and earning a place in a fan’s life.
Kevin "K.C." Clarke
Kevin "K.C." Clarke is a Los Angeles-based consumer brand marketer who now leads marketing at DITA Eyewear, the Aliso Viejo-headquartered luxury eyewear house whose frames are handmade in Japan. His career reads like a tour of the Southern California brand economy: Hurley and Vans in action sports, adidas and the Anaheim Ducks in sport and sponsorship, ZICO in beverage, then brand marketing leadership at golf-lifestyle label TravisMathew and VP of Marketing at car-care cult brand Chemical Guys. He holds a BS from Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business and an MBA from USC's Marshall School of Business. The through-line is a preference for brands with obsessive fans rather than merely large audiences - surfers, golfers, detailing enthusiasts, and now collectors of titanium and 18k gold optical frames.
Jimmy McCloud
Jimmy McCloud is the Founder & CEO of DISTINCT Technologies, a live data intelligence platform that helps global brands capture and act on consumer data at live events - concerts, sports activations, fan zones, and brand experiences. With a career spanning MLB Advanced Media (where the team built what became Disney+), Entercom/Audacy (as EVP of National Business Development), and Division I baseball at Holy Cross, McCloud brings a rare combination of sports media pedigree and enterprise sales acumen to solving one of marketing's oldest problems: making live brand moments measurable. DISTINCT raised a $3.5M seed round in June 2024 led by York IE.