Our Story
A veteran ad agency Account Director and Creative Director discovered that they each wondered similar things.
Why, we pondered, if women buy or influence the purchase of 70 - 80% of all consumer goods, including stocks, computers and automobiles (Source: Forbes, Bloomberg Media)
And control more than 60% of all personal wealth in the U.S.(Source: Federal Reserve, MassMutual Financial Group, BusinessWeek, Gallup)
Why did so many marketing communications appear to be aimed at teenage boys?
We also wondered why our workplaces seemed so pale
considering the much-heralded browning of America.
And why, we wondered, if the best solution was a brand identity redesign, an adjustment in supply chain strategy, or a much-needed product tweak,
Why were we still expected to offer up a celebrity spokesperson? Again.
And then we decided to stop wondering. Realizing the question was not why, but when?
Now, we wonder no more.
About the Founders
We have worked for many of the best Madison Avenue shops and boutique creative agencies, but prefer to work direct to client. Our general market and multicultural consumer market experience spans decades.
Angela Walker Campbell,
Founder/Chief Creative Partner
Angela is a creative problem solver. She is a highly-accomplished manager with proven results conceiving and executing successful initiatives that meet or exceed success metrics. Clients appreciate Angela’s understanding of the entire marketing mix courtesy of her early training at Procter & Gamble in Supply Chain Management. She has driven organizational and creative excellence in advertising and marketing communications for more than two decades for advertising agencies such as McCann Erickson, Spike DDB, UniWorld Group, Prime Access, and Havas across a range of industries including pharmaceutical, financial services, telecommunications, beauty and personal care, consumer package goods, QSR, and automotive.
At UniWorld Group, an agency specializing in activating multicultural consumers, Angela developed a reputation as an architect of the big idea for such Fortune 100 accounts as Bank of America, AT&T, and Kraft Foods. For the Bank of America business, she developed a category-disrupting campaign that produced significant shifts in brand and product consideration, and helped increase new accounts by 15%.
In 2005, Angela founded Target Smarts, a marketing communications consultancy and resource group. Client engagements included Nationwide Insurance, Alberto Culver (Noxzema), Alizé Spirits and non-profits such as the March of Dimes, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and the United Negro College Fund. During this time, Angela served as a creative consultant and the sole multicultural market expert on the launch of Unilever’s Vaseline Cocoa Butter that asked the provocative question, “What Does Your Skin Mean to You?” The launch was one of the most successful in Unilever history as was awarded the company’s Gold Award for Brand Communication.
Angela has also served as a member of the Ad Council’s Campaign Review Committee, a panel of top advertising executives who are responsible for the review and approval of all Ad Council campaigns created for non-profit and government organizations by the country’s leading ad agencies. The Committee is critical in raising the bar and maintaining the organization’s reputation for excellence in their campaign efforts for social change.
Throughout her career, Angela has been recognized with various creative honors. She earned a BS in Industrial Management from Georgia Institute of Technology.
Karina Estepan,
Founder/Client Services Partner
Karina applies process, logic, and the eternally expedient question, “why?” to all of her work. She first learned to leverage consumer insights to provide quantifiable results at Young & Rubicam for such clients as Abbott Labs, Aventis, Altria Group, and SunTrust. At McCann Erikson, Karina made use of her bilingual and bicultural proficiencies while managing the North America and Latin American ExxonMobil Lubricants account. She oversaw day-to-day operations, including the implementation of new global initiatives and adaptation of brand identities across three lines of ExxonMobil business (personal, commercial, and industrial). Working with ExxonMobil, a corporation known for its relentless focus on efficiency and performance, continues to inform Karina’s analytical management style today.
Karina became expert in activating multicultural consumer segments while at SpikeDDB developing national ad campaigns for Royal Caribbean and PepsiCo. Later at Brand Asset Group, she developed and produced cultural marketing and entertainment programs for Coca-Cola and executed successful consumer entertainment strategies for global initiatives like the FIFA 2010 World Cup and the 2011 Red Bull Music Academy Concert Tour. While there, she also managed Alberto Culver’s full portfolio of multicultural hair care brands, including the product launches of Motions Silkening Shine, Motions Naturally You, and Just for Me Nourishing Crème Relaxer.
Over the years, Karina has expanded her exceptional arsenal of successful brand management tools to include video, digital, and print production. She has produced global and national campaigns for Sunglass Hut, US Bank, Ad Council/ NHTSA, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, and various telecommunications providers. Karina’s production expertise enables many Brazen clients to realize increased budget efficiencies.
Karina is Dominican from the Bronx, a Brooklyn expat who now resides in New Jersey. In her free time, she seeks out new adventures, whether discovering a new greasy spoon diner in upstate NY, drinking Rakia with the locals in Croatia, or paragliding in Peru.