WHISPER - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Director - Audience Understanding & Message Creation
Finding words to propel an idea, product or cause is often not far from the mind of this thoughtful talent. A fanaticism for research and connecting ideas is integral to Amy's creative work.
Anais Nin was a Cuban-French author who became famous for her published journals. Years before branding emerged as a business and marketing discipline, Ms. Nin offered this insight: We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. In creating an engaging and hard to forget product, the process of branding must reveal things as they actually exist in the real world, rather than how a product owner sees them. For many organizations and their CEOs, this…
Job Titles:
- Director of Interactive Production
For as long as he can remember, Brian Petchers has been a fan of cinema and motion pictures. He first creatively indulged his interest in cinematography at an early age, producing short films with friends using his parents' camera.
As a college student, Brian was so attracted to the magic of filmmaking that he worked as a production assistant on the set of a feature film shot in Connecticut. For free. After weeks of 12-hour days on location, his passion was confirmed and a career begun.
Today a music video and commercial director and producer, Brian directs content for Forbes Magazine, where he is also a contributing writer. Clients include Warner Bros Records, Universal Music Group, LRG Clothing, Sagmeister & Walsh, Adobe, and Columbia Records.
Working with Grammy-nominated and -winning artists, Brian's work is featured on television networks such as MTV, BET and REVOLT. In 2012, Brian directed a Top 10 Hip Hop Video as recognized by The Metropolitan Jolt.
Job Titles:
- S Advice to Product & Enterprise Owners With Brand Ambition Monday, November 30th, 2015
During a life that began humbly as a wagon driver, hotel porter, bricklayer, farm laborer, hobo, dishwasher, coal heaver, soldier, West Point washout and later college dropout, as a poet and writer Carl Sandburg became an often-honored advocate for laborers, soldiers, the civil rights movement and social justice. Upon Sandburg's death in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed: "...more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius.
Job Titles:
- Advisory Executive Creative Director Emeritus
At age 7, Charlie Rosner began training as a fine artist under the tutelage of Philadelphia legend Miriam Brown Fine. At age 11, he was selling his paintings at Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square ‘clothesline' show.
He has been an eye-opener ever since.
Charlie over an illustrious career has created a wealth of moving messages, and his messages have moved millions of people - quite possibly even you.
Charlie develops brand positionings and supporting communications programs and strategic outreach initiatives for Chief Executives and Marketing Directors of Fortune 500 companies, retail organizations and social engineering and non-profit groups.
His clients ranged from Zurich Financial, CitiCorp, IBM, The New York Stock Exchange, Prince Tennis and GE Capital to The World Bank, The New York Philharmonic, The Peace Corps and the Office of Communications at Buckingham Palace.
Charlie's advice and counsel has been sought for over five decades for strategic planning, rejuvenation of sales forces, creation of complete 360 degree marketing communications programs, new product development, leveraging of underutilized intellectual capital, brand reburnishings, web presence and [over]-due diligence for venture capital firms and private equity funds such as General Electric, JPMorgan, Pouchine Cook Capital, Ritchie Capital, Catalyst Investors and Odyssey Investment.
Charlie has been privileged to work with over 400 organizations in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan.
He was awarded his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, with multiple majors in graphic design, illustration, photography and typography.
Job Titles:
- Advisory Executive Producer
Elliott Curson has a long history in corporate and elective candidate campaigns.
François-Marie Arouet was a French Enlightenment writer known for his wit and defense of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial. Arouet, more commonly known by his pen name Voltaire, he the author of Candide, ou l'Optimisme, also offered us the following, which today applies to the discipline of branding: The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out. Too often organizations rush to tell their public everything about themselves.
Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian novelist whose "One Hundred Years of Solitude" established him as a giant of 20th-century literature, died last week at his home in Mexico City. He was 87. Speaking to the Paris Review in 1981 García Márquez explained how early on he searched for the "right tone" in his writing, and in so doing shares insight for brand marketers of the importance in finding the correct tone to prompt audience engagement: "I had an idea of what…
Job Titles:
- on Becoming a Category Leader
- on Becoming a Category Leader Monday, February 25th, 2013
In the 1930s, Harvard linguist George Kingsley Zipf found that the most-used English word - the - occurs about one-tenth of the time in a typical text; the next most common word - of - occurs about half as often as the first; the third most common word - and - occurs about one-third as often as the first.
What emerged was Zipf's Law, one of probability distribution, asserting that the frequencies of certain events are inversely proportional to their rank.
"Marketers have always known it's better to be No. 1 than No. 2, but now you can attach a revenue consequence to that.
With this approach, the moment you determine a brand's ranking, you can predict the market share."
Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian archetype of the Renaissance Man, is described as infinitely curious and equally inventive. One of the greatest painters and artists of all time, he of the Mona Lisa and the Vitruvian Man, also offers us the following, today of application to any enterprise and product brand: Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication The topic of simplicity appears often throughout these pages. Differentiating a brand through simplicity is key to engaging any audience one seeks to influence. Leonardo…
Nate Silver, who grew his reputation equity and became a pop culture icon as elections forecaster, creating two respected brands, on March 17 launched his new ESPN-backed FiveThirtyEight.com. Since then, has Silver broken the brand promise of data analysis rigor on which his personal reputation equity has been built, as well as that of FiveThirtyEight, through a case study example of brand overreach? Indeed he has. For those unfamiliar with Silver, after focusing on baseball statistical analysis early…
Job Titles:
- Founder and Chairman of the Virgin Group Offers This Maxim for Business Success
Richard Branson, founder and Chairman of the Virgin Group offers this maxim for business success: "Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple." Branson reprises a quote originated by legendary singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, who first framed it in this way: "Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple." Growth in the reputation equity of any product or enterprise requires an abandon-the-superfluous focus. A difficult objective, as business leaders…
Job Titles:
- Marketing Strategist
- Marketing Strategist Tuesday, September 5th, 2017
Robert Burns, a Scottish poet and lyricist of the 18th century, remains considered by many the national poet of Scotland. Today his work and literary influence are celebrated globally. This verse from the Burns poem, To A Louse, describes the value of qualitative research in drawing a bead on what is important, and what is not: O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us! As Burns suggests, as…
Job Titles:
- Innately Understood Brand Strategy and Marketing Thursday, April 17th, 2014
Rudyard Kipling, author of literary works such as The Jungle Books, Captains Courageous, and If, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1907, understood how the effective deployment of words could move people to support a cause, an individual and even a product, long before terms such as brands, marketing, brand strategy and advertising emerged in contemporary culture. Here is Kipling in 1923, on the power of words: "I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used…
Job Titles:
- Senior Creative, Brand & Marketing Strategist
Vanessa Scull is not a social media marketer. She is a social-and-digital-savvy storyteller and rare creative hybrid [e.g., born on a hippie commune / reads Fast Company] with an aversion to groupthink and decaf.
As a big picture-thinking creative with strong business acumen, Vanessa's passion for content, brand storytelling, and the Big Idea is an asset for a broad range of global brands across an even broader range of industries, including - but not limited to - CPG, Fashion, Finance, Fitness and one famous French chef.
At the largest targeted-lifestyle media and marketing company in the US and Canada, she ran Design and Content Communications Strategy. There, she drove a laser-focused rebrand while creating a valuable content communications strategy from the ground up. She also merged research, positioning, consumer insights, and design concepts to grow forward-thinking creative marketing strategies for a diverse set of brands including Proctor & Gamble, Jeep, TD Bank, Lady Foot Locker, and VH1.
W. H. Auden, an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, is regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Auden was a writer through and through, as throughout his life writing was always uppermost. As a writer and poet, Auden deeply understood the power of words. Quoting Austrian writer and journalist Karl Kraus, "language is the mother of thought, not the handmaiden of thought," Auden added: "Words will tell…