Meet Kevin Weil: Twitter’s Ad Architect and Its Killer App
In an earlier life, Kevin Weil was a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford in theoretical particle physics. Today, as Twitter steams toward a public offering, the 30-year-old ultramarathoner is playing a surprisingly central role in turning Twitter into a key platform for advertisers — and, in turn, a profitable business.
Now Mr. Weil is playing a much more visible — and public — role at the company. He’s increasingly being called upon to lead outside of it as well, which entails meetings with marketers and agencies and his first trip this year to Cannes.
Mr. Bain recalled a meeting in New York in late 2011 with Subway CMO Tony Pace and a discussion about how to promote Subway endorser and gold-medalist speed skater Apolo Ohno on Twitter. It emerged that Mr. Ohno was running a marathon during the coming weekend, and Mr. Pace asked Mr. Weil to run with Mr. Ohno. (Mr. Weil agreed on the condition that he be allowed to live-tweet the run.)
