Executive Coach/Marketing Consultant

Mark joined the Louws team in December of 2001 and heads up its M&A Division, including marketing consulting. Mark has extensive experience on both the agency and client sides. He has been a key player in two start-up businesses. His client-side experience in classical packaged goods marketing, combined with extensive retail/field marking background, gives him a unique perspective on managing the balance between building brand equity and driving sales. He has recognized that building a brand may take a lifetime but in the retail business you only have one week.

As a marketing consultant, Mark works with clients and agencies in the areas of organizational structure, strategic planning, retail/field marketing, consumer marketing, senior management coaching and agency searches. Currently working with Brach's Confection Inc. he recently (August 2001) conducted a full agency search for Brach's. His unique understanding of building brands in a retail environment allowed him to zero in on not only the best retail agencies in the business but also develop a search process that was customized to their retail challenges, business environment and nuances that geared itself exclusively to assisting the client make the best short and long term decision of who their marketing partner should be.

From 1993 to 2000, Mark was co-founder/President COO of The Integer Group, a full service marketing communications company focusing on retail advertising and field marketing. The company grew to 714 employees with billings of $526mm in just 7 years. Clients included Coors, US West, Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and Master Card to name a few. His insight and perspective on staff relations helped the agency attract the best talent in the industry assuring client success and the company's unprecedented growth.

During his tenure Mark was instrumental in purchasing agencies such as Karsh & Hagan and Kragie-Newell , both of whom handled the McDonald's business. In 1998 one of Mark's last acquisitions made was Stern Advertising, now Integer Cleveland, making it the largest retail agency in the Midwest, with clients like McDonald's, Proctor and Gamble, Maytag, Cingular, Kay Jewelers and the like.

Before joining The Integer Group, Mark was an officer at Tracy-Locke in Dallas where he designed and managed the Pepsi-Cola account's national field marketing team, establishing the largest packaged-goods field marketing organization in the country, with 28 field offices and 325 people dedicated to the Pepsi business. Many of these offices were dedicated to promotions serving the QSR and other retail-oriented establishments.

Previously, Mark worked for Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, where he launched a new division dedicated to selling and marketing non-beer products, soft drinks, water and wine coolers. To maximize the company's in-house product development and purchasing power, he developed a separate sales and marketing force.

From 1974 to 1985, Mark gained his early field marketing experience with the Coca-Cola Company. He began as a route manager in Pittsburgh and worked his way across the country as a branch manager for New York Coke, a district manager for Coke USA, and finally as vice president of sales and marketing for a Swire Bottlers Inc. covering 5 states in the inter-mountain west. While at Coca-Cola, Mark experienced every aspect of retail, distribution, and consumer marketing.

Mark received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. He also merited a one of only two internships awarded to Pennsylvania State Government.

Mark resides in Evergreen, Colorado, with his wife and two daughters. An athlete at heart, he is an avid powder skier and golfer.

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