Director

Townsend’s agency career began at Landslide Creative Services (1994, Richmond VA). He then contributed at a division of The Martin Agency (1996-7, Richmond VA) on their Absolut Vodka and Saab Accounts, made partner at Zinc Agency (1998-2003, Washington DC), directed business development for SQN Communications (2004-5, Tysons Corner VA), partnered with Universal Music Group for a talent development arm called SplashKit (2006-11), made partner at Glimpse Digital (2007-2017, Fairfax VA), and led a successful agency pilot for Billy Casper Golf now Troon (2014, Tysons Corner VA).

Townsend took software company Latista Technologies from startup to $663M acquisition by Oracle, produced viral content for Navy Federal Credit Union (Chicago Tribune, LA Times, 80M views) and Pure Pasty (Washington Post, BBC, NBC, Daily Mail, more), proved an in-house agency pilot for Billy Casper Golf (now Troon) that led to exit as Buffalo Groupe (8 acquisitions since), and led change culture from paid leads to earned traffic (organic SEO) for Strong Home (one of just 8 mortgage partners for Costco).

Townsend has always been driven to think differently. His modifications to a line of beanbag chairs for Gold Medal Products (1997, Richmond VA) led directly to today’s loungers for gamers. He was an early adopter (and later opponent) of Flash technology on websites (1998-9). He transformed a bulky annual report for Pact International (2001, Washington DC) into a folding passport that remained impressive but was digestible in minutes. To challenge architects, he once portrayed Washington DC as an ice cube tray (turned upside down) for the cover of the American Institute of Architects’ magazine (2002). He beta-tested plugins for WordPress that are now industry-leading (WooCommerce: 2010-1, Divi: 2012-3). He cultivated “writing small” and released 20+ short books while the publishing industry wondered what should be next (2012). He created a simple self-improvement metric in billiards called “differential” that rewards players for matching and surpassing their average performance score (2016).

Townsend wrote and drew a children’s adventure series Tabula Raisa (2016) which was successfully funded through Kickstarter. The author partnered with The Prince Estate (2020) to develop Blue Cloudz (2021), a prequel to the Oscar-winning film Purple Rain. In the music industry, Townsend has been credited as writer, producer, or lyricist on 100+ songs. He’s a multi-instumentalist and 3.5 octave vocalist in “The Prince Club” for producing, arranging, composing, and performing every note on several records.