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e are a small group of seasoned brand and marketing consultants with a fast-growing roster of clients in consumer products, business services, healthcare, technology, and e-learning. We specialize in creative customer engagement, and provide a wide range of strategy, design and production services including brand and marketing plans, identity work, web development, content and editorial administration, application products, video, advertising, and social media marketing.
Learning your business is our most important job. We know what works in branding and marketing, but we also know that it needs to work for you. Reach and engage customers; increase transactions and loyalty with our full-service, ’round-the-world, soup-to-nuts, multi-dimensional, 360º perspective.
STRATEGYBrand positioning and digital channel plans.
DESIGNIdentity, interactive and marketing elements.
DEVELOPMENTEnterprise, commerce, websites & cloud apps.
MARKETINGInbound, outbound, PR, and advertising.
Your account is headed by visionaries whose reputations were built at firms like IBM Global Services, BBDO, Oracle, Corning, and Lucent Technologies. We are especially adept at making sure that the smallest executional details are in line with strategic commercial objectives, and that quality permeates and signifies every dimension of our work – and your brand.
SENIOR STAFF
Russell Granger
CEO | PRACTICE FOCUS: STRATEGY & CREATIVE
A co-founder of Entertainment Drive, Russell was an early leader in online marketing for Universal Studios, MGM, Sony Pictures, Paramount, Warner Bros., Touchstone, New Line Cinema, Focus Features, and many other studios and networks. The company was featured on the cover of PC Magazine, honored with one of the first Webby awards, and recognized for significant achievement in new media technology by the Smithsonian Institution.
Russell brought his expertise to IBM Global Services, where he directed brand strategy projects for companies such as Samsonite, Key Bank, Newell-Rubbermaid, and CSFB. He built design teams for several firms including Multimedia Solutions, where his division produced award-winning projects for clients such as Verizon, Dow Jones, Panasonic, Forbes, and Newsweek. At Gigante Vaz Partners Advertising, Russell built and ran the agency’s digital practice, serving clients such as St. Martin’s Press, Ricoh, and Toshiba.
Marie Benesh
COO | PRACTICE FOCUS: TECHNOLOGY & TOOLS
A recognized expert in organizational design and change strategy, Marie has for the better part of the last decade focused her efforts on helping higher education institutions adopt and deploy new technology platforms. Through team building, analysis, strategic planning and business process development, Marie has facilitated large-scale implementations at a wide variety of institutions including Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Maryland, Ohio State, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Syracuse and Cornell Universities.
One of the first women to hold an executive position in technology management, Marie headed Strategy and Standards for the corporate IT division of Corning, Inc. before launching her own consulting company. As a thought leader and respected facilitator in management effectiveness, process design, and planning & standards, she brought a range of technology services and solutions to clients in both the public and private sector, including the U.S. Department of the Navy, Texas Department of Social Services, Columbia Healthcare, and Citibank.
Jackie Granger
VP ACCOUNTS | PRACTICE FOCUS: MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA
After successive executive marketing positions at companies like AT&T and Lucent Technologies, Jackie launched her own marketing consulting practice for small businesses. The combination has enabled her to develop a highly diversified set of skills ideal for a wide range of brands and businesses. Jackie was instrumental in developing and implementing integrated marketing strategies and programs, as well as corporate communication plans, for companies such as Andrew Corporation, Celiant Corporation, and Liebling Associates.
Her concentration in the telecom and wireless sectors make her especially well-suited to help technology clients successfully craft and deliver their messages, as well as help brands of every stripe use technology to engage customers. With a marketing degree from Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business, Jackie’s proven track record in handling and maintaining accounts will provide much needed support to ensure clients’ objectives are met through effective customer communications strategies.
Dori Hartley
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Dori Hartley is a native New Yorker, author, illustrator, actor and musician. Her work has been featured in in Psychology Today, The Huffington Post, MyDaily and SEED. Frequently opinionated, sometimes controversial, and always entertaining, Dori’s essays for AOL’s ParentDish Magazine have often been featured on the AOL Welcome Screen. Dori’s autobiographical essay, Rocky Horror ‘Glee’ Episode: a Time Warp for the Original Floor-Show Frank received over one million hits in a single day. Her first novel, “Angels and Echoes,” was published in 2011.
A true renaissance woman and self acknowledged creative compulsive, Dori started her writing career as a lyricist, penning tunes for Tears For Fears, The Goo Goo Dolls, Carlos Santana, Daphne Rubin Vega, Morcheeba and Patricia Kaas. Her lyrics inspired the writers of the HBO series, The Sopranos, to create an entire show revolving around her song, “Nobody Loves Me But You.”
Credited with originating the “floor show” role of Frank-n-Furter at the legendary Waverly Theater midnight showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in New York City, Dori was a seminal co-creator of the world-wide phenomenon of audience participation with the now cult classic movie.
Frank Shepard
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT
With a background in philosophy, religion and social sciences from not one but three Ivy League schools, as well as three years experience as an adjunct professor, Frank brings a certain kind of humanist poise to the field of technology — one that allows him to tackle the most intricate of projects with a well balanced approach.
For over a decade, he has specialized in web design and development, utilizing HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, Javascript, Flash, SEO, web standards, and responsive design techniques. Frank has experience working throughout the stack, from front-end design and development to database management. He has a solid foundation in the concepts and practices of object-oriented design, and is currently exploring functional programming techniques as well as recent innovations in client- and server-side JavaScript development.
Ron Herczig
SENIOR COPY WRITER
In his storied career, Ron has delivered creative copy solutions for some of the world’s premiere agencies and leading brands across multiple media channels – television, radio, print, outdoor, and Internet.
Direct TV, Harley Davidson, Jell-O, Holiday Inn, KFC, New York Sports Club, Ricoh, Radio Shack and Verizon are just some of the brands that have benefitted from something we like to call Ronification. That’s Ron’s unique, sometimes surprising, often amusing, and always compelling approach to brand messaging.
Ron’s expertise doesn’t stop at pithy, provocative headlines. He has produced trade emails, broadcast scripts, press kits, new show descriptions, promotions and VOD blurbs for TruTV, and he’s the guy behind the scenes jotting down the catchy stuff for Kumon Math and Reading Centers. Ron is also an editor, publisher, educator and speaker, and in his spare time helps immigrants and the underprivileged with language skills and reading.
A motorcycle enthusiast with a passion for scuba diving and cooking, Ron has received awards from One Club, CMYK, Adweek, NY Festivals, Mobius and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.
Julia Mooradian
ACCOUNTS & MARKETING MANAGER
A California native, Julia not only has a great eye for discerning everything that needs to be coordinated from start to finish within a heavily detailed project, she has great instincts, too. When her gut told her to move to NYC, she came, she saw, and easily conquered the hearts and minds of Digital Dumbo.
As a Marketing Manager for Workforce Outsourcing, Inc., Julia developed and managed all marketing initiatives from conception to completion. Her worked included website redesign, collateral design, brand development, event and trade show management, social media strategy and execution and targeted public relations.
As a Project Manager for Digital Eye Media, she acted as the liaison between client and vendor(s) where she integrated a higher level of customer service, which resulted in overall higher customer satisfaction. A graduate of California State University, Julia brings a fresh and friendly clarity to the industry of marketing and advertising.
Julia has a passion for charity work and was heavily involved in the fundraising departments in both the Child Abuse Prevention Center and the Ronald McDonald House of Orange County.
