Brenda Smith, Principal
A keen observer of human nature, Brenda is perpetually fascinated by why people make the decisions they do. She’s spent years in the deep end of Financial Services, Pharma, Healthcare, Professional Services and Education (to name a few), discerning key insights that help her clients navigate complex and dynamic industries, and bring to life innovative, sticky and iconic brands.
Equal parts creative thinker and P&L manager, she has advised leaders across a wide range of categories on their brand, marketing and business strategies. Through working at Goldman Sachs, IBM and Ernst & Young, and with clients including Navigant, Morgan Stanley, Allstate, Kroll, Meredith, AT&T, The NYSE, Harvard University, S&P, United Rentals, Citibank, Zippo, Maidenform and Aetna, she has developed strategies that have built and sustained successful brands, customer relationships and organizational cultures.
Brenda Smith + Associates has been going strong for more than 15 years. Before starting the firm, Brenda was a Managing Partner at Prophet, a leading global brand strategy boutique, where she was a member of the firm’s 5-person executive committee.
Brenda studied International Relations at Tufts University, and has an MBA from NYU. Insatiably curious about the world, she has lived, studied and worked abroad as often as possible. She and her 18-year old daughter live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and when they’re not adding stamps to their passports, spend a goodly part of every weekend taking huge bites of the city’s artistic, theatrical and dance life.
Partners
The upside of our, ahem, maturity? We’ve met and worked with the best of the best. Here are some of our favorite partners, all frequent collaborators on client projects.
JO ANNE SCHLESINGER
Jo Anne has over 25 years of experience in brand strategy and custom research, working for a wide range of both B2B and B2C brands including Volvo, NBC News, Unilever, Citi Cards, Hearst Corporation and United Parcel Service. She specializes in understanding a brand’s most important constituent groups, and developing approaches about how brands can seed and grow the most successful functional and emotional relationships with their users. Prior to launching her own firm, Jo Anne was a principal at HotSpring, Inc., a boutique brand consultancy, and before that was a senior account planner at Ammirati Puris Lintas and MVBMS/Euro RSCG Advertising. Before falling spell to the “branding bug,” Jo Anne worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The National Academy of Design.
Jo Anne is a sociologist at heart and by education, with a BA in Social Theory and History of Art from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She and her family live in New York City and Liguria, Italy.
Chuck Routhier Office
Chuck has over 25 years of design experience. He has worked on comprehensive branding programs for Hertz, Blackberry, Burger King, Capital One, Clairol, Lipitor, Maxwell House, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, PowerStop/American Express, Cetaphil and Thomas’s. Chuck was creative director at Landor Associates in NYC, then Vice President/Creative Director of Brand Anatomy, the internal branding studio of CDM. Prior to Landor, Chuck was associate Creative Director at CKS Partners in New York and Art Director at Clement Mok designs in San Francisco, where he worked with Apple and other technology companies in the dawn of the digital design era. In addition, he has been a principal owner of several small design firms in New York and San Francisco. He co-founded dsgnfix, a discovery and inspiration app for the design set.
Chuck holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University and teaches at SUNY Purchase and Mercy College. He has also taught design at Yale, Parsons and Maine College of Art, and designs and crafts lighting and furniture.
allen adamson / metaforce
Allen Adamson, a noted industry expert in all disciplines of branding and author of Brand Simple, BrandDigital and The Edge: 50 Tips from Brands that Lead, has worked with a broad spectrum of consumer and corporate industries ranging from packaged goods and technology, to health care and financial services, to hospitality and entertainment, as well as brands in the non-profit sector.
Allen recently launched Metaforce, a firm dedicated to helping businesses diagnose growth strategies and nimbly execute programs in the face of market evolution. Prior to co-founding Metaforce, Allen was Chairman, North America of Landor Associates, a global branding firm. Under his leadership, the company partnered with a wide array of iconic brands, including Accenture, GE, Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, HBO, Marriott, MetLife, P&G, Sony and Verizon. Additionally, he provided guidance for non-profit organizations including the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, the Central Park Conservancy, the Council on Foreign Relations, Planet World and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).
Allen received his BS from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.
martyn tipping / tippinggardner
Martyn has overseen high-profile naming projects for clients in all major industries, all over the world. Having worked on some of the biggest corporate name changes in the 90’s (think Verizon, Accenture and Altria), Martyn founded the company that is now TippingGardner in 2000.
Since setting up his own shop, Martyn has been fortunate enough to work with clients including Procter & Gamble, Pfizer, Time Warner Cable, Johnson & Johnson, GORE-TEX®, American Express, Wachovia, Amnesty International, Rainforest Alliance, Verizon, Nokia, GE, Goldman Sachs and Eli Lilly. Prior to TippingGardner, Martyn was director of verbal branding at Landor Associates, New York where he led branding programs for a wide array of clients, including Delta Air Lines, United Cerebral Palsy, Motorola, Xerox, AT&T and Ford Motor Company.
Martyn holds an MA in modern languages and social psychology from the University of Cambridge, England. He is a former faculty member at Georgetown University, where he taught brand strategy in the MBA program.
greg bertens / likeable development
Our go-to digital development partner, Likeable was founded on the principle that clients deserve not only expert development, but also clear communication and a positive build experience. As a developer-driven group, they're obsessive about digital innovation and anticipating emerging web technologies.
There are two principals, a full spectrum of discipline leaders, no juniors. All Likeable team members are agency-trained, senior level experts with deep experience in digital brand development. They have the tech chops to pull off tomorrow's big idea, and integrate seamlessly with BS+A's other team members.