Prior to embarking out on her own she held the position of Senior Partner, Managing Director within the Digital and Performance Marketing media practice for Ogilvy Neo in New York and Chicago (Feb 07 - July 08). Her charge was to oversee Performance Marketing for a number of high profile clients, including Allstate, Investools, TD Ameritrade, Select Comfort and Six Flags. She was also responsible for leading NeoVideo, the video unit that works with new forms of video on TV and online. She was selected to be part of a Google TV's first panel primarily for her work in development of ground breaking research with Google TV on the effect of attentiveness on response.
From 2005-2007 Susan was part of the executive management team running Carat Fusion, the interactive and direct arm of Carat. Susan was instrumental in merging the offline direct practice into the interactive practice and served on the executive board. She was part of the team that built Carat Fusion into a top interactive and direct response agency. Prior to joining Carat Fusion, Susan Rowe spent 12 years working at Carat and ICG (the media buying company that Carat purchased to create Carat in the US).
While at Carat the major highlight's of Susan's career at include winning the Ameritech account. The first $100 million dollar account for Carat in the US. Susan then re-located from San Francisco to Chicago to run the Ameritech account and subsequently built the Chicago office from a staff of 8 to 80. During the next 7 years, she established a strong office offering including a print group that planned and purchased General Media and Direct Response for Carat clients throughout the country, a client service arm to service Midwest accounts, a traffic group, a direct response group specializing in broadcast DR and brand account teams.
During her tenure she led the new business pitches in the Midwest and brought in a robust list of clients including Motorola, Papa John's Pizza, Orbitz, E-Loan, Hyundai Midwest Dealer Association, Radio Shack print and Jenny Craig.
One of the groups she ran provided Direct Response media activity for Radio Shack, Pfizer, Revlon, Black and Decker, and Hyundai to name just a few. Her background in both Direct Response and General Media enabled her to create a product called "Fusion" which blends brand media with direct response in order to provide the optimal mix of ROI and brand health for her client (The product was so successful that Carat Interactive used the name as the name of the newly formed agency). Jenny Craig attributes a major portion of their phenomenal success to Fusion. When Carat began employing Fusion on Jenny Craig, Jenny has enjoyed double digit sales increases and a subsequent sale to Nestle.
During this time she also developed, with Core Media, a URL and Vanity Number tracking methodology which allows for evaluation of the effectiveness of media without the use of unique numbers or specific URLs.
While at Carat in Chicago she also developed an approach for understanding of Direct Response customers. The process fed respondents addresses into Prizm, then created Super Clusters from like-minded clusters and those were run through MRI for insight into primary target groups.
She also worked closely with Synovate, Carat's sister company, to develop research surveys on new media habits as well as in-depth consumer usage studies for new business efforts.
For 2 years while running the Chicago office for Carat Susan won the prestigious overall planning award for her innovative work on both Orbitz and E-Loan employing the product she created - Fusion. This planning award was a hotly contested competition in North America and Latin America including the likes of the P&G communications planning team.
If asked, the accomplishment she is most proud of was creating a pro bono campaign for Save the Children shortly after the Tsunami devastated seaside communities in Asia. Through her efforts and the efforts of Carat, Save the Children raised over $150 million. Her passion for Save the Children has led her to both Mali and Northern Vietnam and she now serves on their Brand Advisory Committee.
She loves to travel and has climbed Kilimanjaro and hiked the Inca Trail at Machu Picchu.
