Bio

The short version of my bio is that I’m a Boston-based marketing strategist and voice-over actor.

If you’re casting for VO, you can read about my voice-over experience here, you can listen to my demo here, you can listen to a bunch of radio spots that I’ve worked on here and you can watch some TV and videos here.

If you’re interested in my long, illustrious career in advertising and marketing, then please feel fee to read the full version of my bio below.

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The Very Early Days

I’ll probably never be able to duplicate the success of my first marketing campaign.  It was for a Junior Achievement project in High School.  Our assignment was to sell Needham Rocket can coolers.  Unfortunately, our fellow students weren’t too keen on buying Needham Rocket can coolers.  The project looked doomed to fail.

Reflecting on the challenge, I soon realized that while students weren’t interested in buying can coolers, they were very interested in drinking soda, which was not sold anywhere in Needham High back in the late ’80s.  At the time I was working at a (now defunct) restaurant called Maximilian’s Cafe, so I leveraged my restaurant connections to strike a deal with the local Pepsi bottler for discounts on Pepsi, which I then gave to students for FREE (with the purchase of a Needham Rocket can cooler.)  As you might guess, the can coolers sold out in one day and the program was a huge success.

After that I pretty much knew what I wanted to do for a living.

The Early Days

I was fortunate to get my start in the advertising business working for one of the world’s best agencies, Arnold, first in their Albany, NY office and then in their Boston, MA headquarters.  I was an account person on a variety of McDonald’s Co-op accounts, and as anyone who’s ever worked on McDonald’s knows, it’s probably the best account to work on if you want to really learn the business from the ground up.  Local co-op business covers everything: promotion development, broadcast production, media planning, public relations, promotion analysis, local store marketing, budgeting…basically every aspect of the business.

Of course, this was also back in the “pre-technology” days when we used acetates and overhead projectors (make sure you pack a spare bulb!) for presentations, didn’t have powerpoint or e-mail, had to send decks out to the copy place to print leave-behinds and we all shared the one car-phone-in-a-bag that had an antenna and a cord.  Silly Luddites! 

The Not So Early Days

After many years working on the McDonald’s business at Arnold I had the opportunity to work for another outstanding agency, Mullen.  While at Mullen I worked on a variety of accounts but most notably I was the Account Supervisor on Monster.com.  Our first campaign for Monster was lauched during the 1999 Super Bowl with the TV spot, “When I Grow Up,” one of the most-heralded and effective TV commercials of all time.  It was a tremendous experience working at Mullen on Monster, being on the forefront of the digital revolution. 

Returning to Arnold for another tour of duty, I was VP/Management Supervisor on the Bell Atlantic account when it turned into Verizon (and started selling long distance and DSL,) I worked on the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s anti-smoking campaign and I helped Silk Soymilk grow from a niche brand into a national leader.  We were driven by integration and digital – trying to figure out how to communicate powerful ideas across many platforms.  Vehicles may change, but strong strategy and compelling creative will always win the day.

Now

For the last 7 years I’ve been a proud member of the Marketing Drive team as the head of Strategy & Planning.  We’re a promotional marketing agency that helps brands realize their full potential by delivering incrementality (the discovery and activation of unexpected business opportunities.)  We believe that powerful marketing communications build and activate brands while delivering measurable results.  The idea (strategy & creative) is always at the heart of what we do, whether it’s activated through brand promotions, shopper marketing or partnerships.