About Matt

I Graduated from Bentley University in May of 2013 with a Bachelor of Science in Marketing with a double minor in Management and Computer Information Systems. 

Bentley is typically not known for it's marketing prowess, and is a heavy Accounting/Finance school. I was able to turn this into a competitive advantage to have an above average understanding of how businesses work over my marketing peers from other schools. Combined with internships at agencies and various on-campus activities, I left Bentley ready to take on a strategic marketing role.

• Entercom Communications
• Digitas
• Captains of Industry
• Fuseideas

Business Development Manager (July 2017-November 2019)

As a Business Development Manager at Mechanica, I spend my days obsessing over the ever evolving needs of marketers and the marketplace. I work at all stages of the new business funnel including actively prospecting new partners for Mechanica, understanding client requirements, translating those requirements into actionable processes, and ensuring a smooth hand off to internal Brand teams. In addition to on boarding new clients, I also spend my day-to-day with a hand in the external branding of Mechanica including website/blog content, paid/organic social, PR activities, events, and more. When the situation calls for it, and there is no time to waste between prospect knowledge-mining and actual kick-off, I also serve as a Brand Manager. Specific tasks included:

• Serve as the head for all business development efforts to drive over $4m+ of agency new business
• Lead all aspects of the new business process including scope/proposal development, RFP responses, and pitches
• Understand and internalize the Mechanica brand to fluently articulate our unique offering to prospects
• Manage all aspects of the new business pipeline effectively to attract and convert leads into customers, including reporting and updating dashboards with new business KPIs
• Transition the agency from Salesforce to Hubspot for all CRM needs and manage all aspects of the agency database
• Utilize various sources including list services, consultant relationships, and active prospecting to research, identify, and target new business leads
• Integrate a mix of social, PR, email, phone, physical mailings, events, personal connections, and proactive out of the box thinking to strategically attract and qualify new connections
• Partner with PR firm to effectively distribute agency work and publish OpEd pieces to elevate Mechanica's profile
• Oversee all aspects of a new prospect relationship including brand/business needs until handed off to a Brand Director
• Serve as the Brand Manager for a NYC based predictive analytics automotive dealership software service
• Assist with launching a sister agency focused on talent branding including new business strategy and the development/design of their website

NCAA Associate Marketing Manager (June 2014-June 2017)

The Sports Licensed Division of adidas was a nimble division tasked with capitalizing on all aspects of the adidas Sports Marketing licensees. Our four main licensees were the NBA, NHL, MLS, and NCAA which was my specific focus. I oversaw all retail marketing aspects required to sell-in product to key target accounts such as Dicks Sporting Goods and Fanatics, as well as implement national marketing programs to drive sell-through to the end consumer. Each individual university campus was uniquely different due to their fan base, as well as varying seasonality peaks due to sport team strengths. Therefore, it required someone to dive deep into the DNA of each campus to concept and execute successful retail programs in these micro-communities. The name of the game here was: have a repeatable model, prove its success, scale it out, and then customize it.

I led the charge refreshing over a dozen shop-in-shops per year ranging from national outlets like JCPenney to stadium stores such as Kyle Field @ Texas A&M. This included fixtures, visual merchandising, construction coordination, creative concepting, in-store graphics, and much more. Once the physical stores were in place, we would use a combination of digital media, game day experiential, social, ambassador programs, seeding, and more to drive consumers to key locations.

In addition to day-to-day retail marketing supporting shops, I would also collaborate with Sports Marketing on key brand stories like special game day jerseys, March Madness, College Football National Playoff, and more. Each licensed campus had a campus ambassador program and visual merchandising team providing regular storytelling throughout the season as well as boots on the ground support. Finally, a key part of the licensed NCAA retail landscape are trade shows/sales meetings which I would do booth design, fabrication, and execution to drive increased sell-through during key seasons.

Specific tasks:

• Implement regional and national marketing programs that support brand, team, and retail account goals for the Sports Licensed Division of adidas
• Lead all retail marketing initiatives including digital graphics, in-store graphics, product fixtures, media buys, social content, merchandising support, and full adidas concept shop builds. Shop-in-shops range from 300 sqft to 3,000 sqft
• Collaborate with Concept-to-Consumer in Germany to bring NCAA shops onto the global adidas fixture and merchandising system, refreshing 15+ stores per year
• Work with adidas Concept-to-Consumer to bring visual merchandising/Field Agent teams to key license door aligning the adidas brand across multiple key accounts
• Provide overall planning and strategy for the adidas Campus Ambassador Program consisting of 15 campuses and 65+ ambassadors
• Activate multi-channel marketing strategies to drive sales at retail season long and during peak NCAA moments such as College Football Playoffs and March Madness
• Work cross-functionally with the NCAA Business Unit in Portland to bring special event uniforms to life and implement brand communications at brick and mortar retail
• Manage an annual budget of $2m to help surpass category sales goal of $38m
• Act as the operational head for all NCAA marketing projects including invoicing, vendor/agency management, fulfillment warehouse maintenance, and overseeing the Request for Proposal (RFP) process to brief in new agencies
• Utilize Javascript knowledge to collaborate with Demand Planning and Go-To-Market to concept and implement a Blank Inventory Tool to fill an existing sales tool gap
• Work with an agency partner and event fabricator to concept, design, and construct an annual trade show booth at CAMEX (2014, 2015) and Tailgate (2016)
• Partner with internal design to bring a revamped Locker Room sales experience to the 2017 adidas Fall Sales Meeting

Global Social Media Analyst and Strategist (June 2013-June 2014)

Social was a brand new concept to the digital team at Reebok, so in 2013 they decided to bring on 3 new analysts (1 for each category of Fitness, Classics, and Women's.) What started quickly as an analytics apprenticeship quickly turned into content creation, community management, campaign concepting and more for the Reebok fitness channels. The brand quickly realized that everyone wanted a part of social and we moved to develop a social command center to ensure 1) we could always be listening and tapping into our various communities and 2) we could properly advocate for social into all aspects of Reebok.

My day to day varied wildly, as most social positions do at growing companies. One day I could find myself capturing static imagery, copywriting, and scheduling content to engage with CrossFit/Spartan communities. The next I would find myself at the CrossFit games live tweeting and conducting experiential executions.

Specific tasks included:

• Serve as the advocate for social internally building it up as an essential part of the overall integrated marketing process
• Curate weekly and monthly reports on global social engagement with insights for content improvement and implementation on Reebok fitness channels globally
• Assist our sports marketing team to provide actionable recommendations/insights for our brand partners including Crossfit HQ and Spartan Race
• Work cross-functionally with other teams to best integrate social into larger brand campaigns and other marketing initiatives including the annual Reebok Crossfit Games, Spartan Race Championships, and high profile product launches
• Provide maintenance for social channels including scheduling content, copywriting, photographing content, and managing creative assets
• Ideate and curate running and training content monthly for use on new brand website and global social channels including 4+ million Facebook fans, 300k+ Twitter followers, and 200k+ Instagram followers
• Develop and execute a plan to launch the new All-Terrain Series and Reebok CrossFit Nano 4 globally on social including paid media buys and reactive social content
• Monitor brand channels daily to provide meaningful two-way conversation with fitness consumers
• Assist in educating and transitioning to new monitoring and publishing tools as well as the implementation of a physical
• social command center
• Plan, propose, and execute the first ever #SpartanChat that gained 870k unique impressions (31 million total)

I like to stay very active and have one of those personalities that enjoys picking up new hobbies regularly.

 I enjoy photography, video editing, skydiving, wood burning, and much more.

After studying Computer Science in college, I found that having an executional understanding would allow me to be a better marketer to understand all the opportunities. This has led me to add the following technical skills to my arsenal:

• HTML
• CSS
• Java
• Javascript
• SQL
• Photography, videography, and drone photography
• Video / Photo editing (including Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, etc.)
• CRM (Salesforce, Hubspot)
• Social Analytics / Publishing tools (Sprinklr, Brandwatch, Sprout, etc.)