Kat Friis
Phenomenon
Kat Friis is an Emmy Award winning producer and Chief Production Officer at Phenomenon, an independent agency in Los Angeles.
With over 20 years of experience working in the industry across all product segments for many leading global advertisers, Kat has been a consistent and active member of the advertising community. She is proud to have built and fostered many key relationships with production and post partners along the way – all of whom she calls friends. She values and protects those relationships and believes they are crucial to any agency or a client’s success.
As Chief Production Officer for Phenomenon, Kat oversees all aspects of production at the shop across a truly integrated department with capabilities including digital, social, content, broadcast, print, art production, experiential, studio, post and development. Kat is valued for her insight and input from creative ideation to output of the finished product.
Kat started in advertising as an unpaid intern and worked her way up through the ranks from intern to creative assistant to copywriter to producer – even as the head of a department she still loves to produce. She finds ways to do things that seem impossible and she does not like to say no.
Prior to joining phenomenon, Kat held numerous staff and freelance positions at Tool of NA, R/GA, BBDO, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Media Arts Lab, Google, Butler Shine Stern & Partners, Victors & Spoils and Ground Zero. In her role as Executive Production Director at R/GA she helped build a global production capability that contributed to the shops first ever Film and Film Craft Lions, which helped the agency with the Cannes Lions Festival Agency of the Year in 2016, and an Emmy for Outstanding Commercial that same year for the Ad Council’s “Love Has No Labels” campaign, as well as numerous other award-winning work throughout her tenure there.
Current and past clients include: Intuit, DC, Naked Juice, Aetna, American Express, Google, Facebook, Infinity, Samsung US, Samsung Global, Nike Basketball,
E*Trade, Beats by Dre, DBS Bank, Jet.com, Pepsi, Verizon, Mercedes, ANZ Bank, Apple, ESPN, Priceline, Beck’s, Sprint, Mars Global, Comcast, Frito-Lay, Toyota, Kohl’s, MINI, Columbia Sportswear, Smirnoff, Gallo Wines, Visa, AT&T, Walgreens and many more.
Kat has been part of work recognized by The Emmy Awards, The Clio Awards, Cannes Lions, The One Show, ANDY Awards, Webby Awards, Effie Awards, AICP/Next Awards, Communication Arts, London International Awards, Ciclope, The Smartie Awards, D&AD Awards and the Women’s Image Network Awards.
Kat has a BA in Communication Studies from Northeastern University in Boston. Kat also serves on the Executive Committee of the Television Academy’s Commercial Peer Group.
Beyond advertising, Kat satisfies her altruistic streak volunteering with the SPCA and Safe Place for Youth helping homeless youth in Venice as well as being a mentor in The Leukemia Society’s TNT program, where she helps participants fundraise and train for triathlons. She can also make a darn good frittata and her sneaker game is on point. She loves Boston sports and speaks Portuguese, Spanish, French and sometimes English. You can almost always get her to agree to a $5 bet.