Fanatics Collectibles has made its second major personnel hire of the week, adding Ken Turner as its first Chief Marketing Officer. In this newly created role, Turner will “oversee brand vision, strategy and marketing efforts across the entire portfolio of physical and digital collectibles,” according to the company. That includes Topps trading cards.
Before joining Fanatics Collectibles, Turner held the position of Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Red Bull North America. Prior to Red Bull, he spent ten years at SC Johnson where he worked on a number of large-scale consumer brands.
Earlier this week, Fanatics announced the hiring of well-known sports agent Omar Wilkes as Head of Athlete Relations.
“As our collectibles business continues to see enormous opportunities for growth, I’ve been focused on building out a world class team to execute our vision for delivering the best collector experience possible, bringing in more fans into the sector and creating truly connective moments across culture and sports,” said Fanatics Collectibles CEO Mike Mahan. “Marketing the category is one of our highest priorities, and I couldn’t think of a better fit to lead this effort than Ken given his incredible track record and expertise that perfectly aligns with our business goals.”
According to Fanatics, Turner “will play a central role in the company’s efforts to bring in more fans to the trading card hobby and collecting spaces.”
As part of this, he will work closely with Fanatics Collectibles’ partners – sports leagues, player’s associations, athletes and creators – “to deepen storytelling in the category and create compelling campaigns, activations and experiences throughout Fanatics Collectibles’ marketing, advertising and content verticals.”
“I couldn’t be more excited to join Fanatics Collectibles during a time of incredible growth and opportunity in the collectibles category,” said Turner. “Our business sits at the intersection of sports and culture, with an enormous amount of passion from the collecting community. The combination of those factors opens abundant possibilities to not only enhance the collector experience today, but to grow the category overall, bring in new audiences and build cultural relevance through unique experiences that we’re perfectly positioned to deliver to fans.”
A native of Wisconsin, Turner was recently named by Savoy Magazine as one of 2022’s Most Influential Black Executives in Corporate America and holds an MBA from Kellogg’s School of Management and a BS in Finance from Marquette University.
In addition to Turner and Wilkes, Fanatics counts among its recent hires a Chief Executive Officer (Mike Mahan), Chief Financial Officer (Greg Abovsky), Chief Strategy Officer (Jeff Gordon) and CEO of Fanatics Live (Nick Bell).
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