Director of Marketing
Mike was born in Detroit, Michigan, a place he swears he left no worse than how he found it. Since then, he’s worked as a creative leader and marketing communications expert at agencies like Starr Advertising (closed), Puskar-Gibbon-Chapin (defunct) and The Summer Group (kaputski). These are coincidences. We hope.
The obstetrician who delivered him at Henry Ford Hospital was the same doctor who brought Henry Ford II into the world; Mike’s father worked at the Ford Motor Company. So it’s no wonder Mike has a soft spot for everything cheap, mass-produced and devoid of authenticity. This does not, however, apply to his creative and marcom strategy output. So he says.
To be fair, Mike also served productive and innovative tenures at Tracy-Locke DDB, FCB, Frankel, 141 Worldwide, EuroRSCG and Momentum Worldwide, though maybe these shops were too big for him to kill…but he actually did deliver significant, award-winning work in advertising, in-store, kid marketing, event marketing, shopper marketing, experience design, Web, social media, branding, PR, B2B and professional practice marketing on accounts such as McDonald’s, GM, Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Kraft, Anheuser-Busch, Target, USPS, Fellowes, Sanofi-aventis, P&G and others, many still in business.
He’ll tell you he’s a fervent believer in treating the “target audience†like they’re smarter, savvier and more discerning than many marketers will credit. And, how in a mediasphere-blogosphere-Twittersphere typified by exponentially-growing clutter, instantly-viral opinioneering, with new media and content forms springing up almost daily, it’s critically important to deliver bold branding and a bona fide dialogue that’ll make the customer your evangelist, not just an end user. Mike learned the rights and wrongs of brand stewardship in a town where brand loyalty was once a blood trait: you were a GM Guy or a Chrysler Guy, and Mike is proud to defiantly proclaim himself now and forever a Ford Guy (duh!) until somebody pays him to be otherwise.
He loves be-bop, good shoes, movie and media history, and has actually read a Pynchon novel cover-to-cover. If he had $10,000, he’d “invest†it in his daughters’ regular scholastic excursions to places like Ecuador, the Barrier Reef and the mall. And though he loves the Dude, is Polish with blue-collar roots, and finds no experience gastronomique to exceed a Chicago hot dog (if consumed south of Madison) and a Miller High Life…against all sane odds he is a terrible bowler.
We mean awful.
