Jacinta Faul has been appointed the new CEO of SocialChain.
Faul joins the business from Gravity Road, where she has spent the last 10 years of her career and served as managing director since 2019, winning clients including Amazon Fashion, Footlocker Europe and Smart Energy UK, while also spearheading global partnerships for Unilever and TikTok.
Prior to Gravity Road, she held account management roles at both the Engine Group and Four Communications across clients including Sky, Samsung, Renault and Unilever.
SocialChain, now part of listed Brave Bison Group, launched a ‘creator model’ last year to support and scale ambitious clients including SharkNinja, Linkedin and Holland & Barrett.
SocialChain was founded as an influencer marketing agency by Steven Bartlett of Dragons’ Den and Dominic McGregor of Fearless Adventures in 2014.
It went on to achieve a reach of more than two billion views per month before merging with Lumaland AG in 2019 to form The Social Chain AG and list on XETRA and the Düsseldorf Stock Exchange.
Bartlett left the following year and went on to author and host successful books and podcasts before becoming the youngest investor on Dragons’ Den. He slammed Lumaland AG when he saw SocialChain sold to Brave Bison for a deal worth a maximum of £17m in February 2023.
Recent headlines about Bartlett, however, have included ‘Steven Bartlett’s empire of bluff’ (The New Statesman), ‘Is the tide turning on Steven Bartlett?’ (Daily Mail) and ‘Downfall of a CEO? The real reason Steven Bartlett became the man we love to hate’ (The Independent). BusinessCloud executive editor Chris Maguire offered his view in this piece.
Readers have their say on Steven Bartlett: Genius or bluffer?
SocialChain’s senior leadership team now includes group strategy director Ric Hayes, executive creator director Tom Bellamy, finance director Mark Farelly and recent hires Victoria Willis, operations and delivery director and growth director Ramiz Abusham.
“SocialChain has that rare combination of brand recognition – even outside of the bubble that is our industry – a phenomenal legacy in its specialism and passionate, talented people operating at the forefront of culture and commerce,” said Faul following her appointment.
“I’m incredibly excited to be joining at such a pivotal stage of growth not just for the agency but social-first marketing as a discipline.
“I am and always will be a practitioner and I can’t wait to get stuck in with the agency’s talented leadership team and the wider Brave Bison herd to take the business, and its clients, to even greater heights.”
Oli Green, executive chairman at Brave Bison, said: “Jacinta has a proven track record of leading, scaling and delivering impressive results within social-first businesses.
“With a cohort of ambitious new clients looking to us to take them into the new era of marketing, I can think of no one better to lead the agency in this next phase of growth.”