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Funosophy's consulting division is staffed by seasoned professionals with years of brand-building and kids marketing experience. Learn more about our team:
Strategic Marketing Generalists | Licensing Specialists | Public Relations Specialists | Research Specialists | Interactive Marketing Specialists | Designers Nancy Zwiers
Founder/CEO - Chief Funosopher
Nancy Zwiers is CEO and Chief Funosopher of Funosophy, Inc., the preeminent
brand-building consulting firm for toys and entertainment products. Founded in
2000, Funosophy has worked with top companies such as Hasbro, Leapfrog, Spin
Master, KB Toys, Vivendi Universal, and over 55 other companies, large and
small. Zwiers honed her marketing skills over a decade in classical packaged goods at Fortune 500 companies, such as Procter & Gamble, Heinz and Tambrands. Zwiers has spent the last 15 years in toys, licensing, and kids marketing. She held a variety of executive positions at Mattel during her nine-year tenure there, ultimately rising to Sr. VP and division General Manager. As Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for BarbieŽ, she pioneered a host of innovative initiatives, growing the Barbie brand by $700 million in just five years, to its peak sales level of more than $1.8 billion. She re-launched the almost-dead Polly Pocket brand in 1999, positioning it to grow into one of the biggest girls’ brands today. Zwiers lives in Long Beach, California with her husband, Richard Wadley, and her ten-year old daughter Nikki.
STRATEGIC MARKETING GENERALISTS
Debra St. Pierre Reyne Rice Marketing, Business Development, Research Reyne is a seasoned toy industry professional with over 20 years experience in marketing and analyzing the toy industry. For the past 5 years, she worked at The NPD Group as a senior executive, providing insights into consumer behavior and retail tracking across the broad spectrum of toys. Reyne has developed products and solutions for small, mid-tier and Fortune 500 companies and maintained strong alliances with trade associations, retailers, manufacturers, licensors and Tier I media. Prior to that, Reyne spent 5 years at Today's Kids, 8 years at Mattel and 5 years at Ogilvy & Mather, working on the Mattel business. Her passion for the toy industry and rich experience across multiple toy categories helps to bring clarity and relevance to the toy marketing process.
Kim Ferguson Amy
Williams
Amy's extensive children's marketing background includes
positions with educational software publisher Knowledge Adventure, award-winning
electronic smart toy manufacturer Neurosmith, and European nursery importer
Mamas & Papas, to name a few. Among her successes are launching the
revolutionary Musini to critical and media acclaim and introducing the sell-out
Mamas & Papas rocking animals to the U.S. market. In addition to her general
marketing and brand-building expertise, Amy specializes in the creation of
clear, concise, and creative packaging, catalog, web, and collateral copy. Amy
also has an extensive background in toy publicity, garnering coverage for
various products on the hottest TV shows and magazines in the country. Her most
impressive media exposure includes mentions on The Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey
Show, The Montel Williams Show, Parade Magazine, Time Magazine, The New York
Times, Parents, Parenting, Child, and many more. Victoria Cushey Marketing Victoria Cushey is a senior marketing executive with over 12 years of brand management and sales experience at top-notch companies including Mattel Toys, Activision and Sprint. At Mattel Toys, she spearheaded the worldwide release of Skateboard Shannen which became the #1 selling large doll for that year. In addition, she managed the product launch campaigns for Disney Entertainment including both the 102 Dalmatians movie and Disney Princess product lines. More recently, she was responsible for the successful launch of the X-Men 2 motion picture videogame title for Activision.
LICENSING SPECIALISTS Katherine Skaperdas Katherine is a seasoned professional with nearly two decades of experience in marketing, retailing, and licensing. She started her career in product management at General Mills, and then gravitated to retailing. Her 10 years of retail management at Dayton Hudson and Limited Too gives her deep insights on what it takes to be successful at retail. More recently, Katherine headed up all soft lines licensing for the multi-billion dollar Barbie brand, where she successfully launched major new apparel initiatives at Kmart and Walmart. Katherine is our resident tween expert and brings a strong sense of fashion to clients' projects. Natalie Shapiro A true kid at heart, Natalie Shapiro has focused her career on kids marketing with extensive experience in licensing, merchandising and advertising. For 10+ years, she has been a strategic and creative brand builder, mastering the skill of getting into the hearts and minds of kids. Most recently, while at Warner Bros. Consumer Products, Natalie was instrumental in the evolution of Harry Potter from a global publishing phenomenon to the international consumer brand it is today. Lisa McKendall
Lisa is a 15-year veteran of strategic public relations and marketing communications, specializing in kids products. Most recently, she served as senior vice president, consumer marketing with a top-ten public relations agency, Ogilvy Public Relations. Previously, Lisa spent nearly a decade at Mattel Toys leading the product publicity efforts for all Mattel brands, including such high profile brands as Barbie, Hot Wheels, Cabbage Patch Kids, Disney and Nickelodeon. She also served as a company spokesperson conducting hundreds of print and broadcast interviews on behalf of the company. Lisa spearheaded the highly successful, year-long 40th anniversary program for the Barbie brand and developed a number of cause-related efforts. RESEARCH SPECIALISTS Maya Levinson, Ph.D. Maya has spent her entire 20+ year career developing insights into consumers' needs, motivations and behavior. Maya worked many years at Mattel Toys, covering all the Mattel brands (most significantly Barbie), followed by several years at the Ogilvy & Mather ad agency. She has extensive experience with in-home observations, in-store visits with consumers, focus groups, projective exercises and quantitative research, as well as analyzing secondary data. Most recently, Maya has been working with Funosophy, conducting focus groups and managing other research projects in a variety of areas. Maya received her PhD. in Psychology from UCLA. INTERACTIVE MARKETING SPECIALISTS Susan Nia With more than 16 years of consumer and business marketing experience, Susan Nia, brings to Funosophy a unique blend of brand and relationship marketing skills for customer acquisition and retention. She develops strategies and programs to help manufacturer's reach their retail customers utilizing integrated marketing mediums to build brand loyalty. Prior to joining Funosophy, Nia served as the VP of Global Strategic Planning for the Vivendi Universal Publishing. At Vivendi, she successfully created and executed direct and interactive marketing programs for the kids software edutainment group. Nia was then promoted to the international group based in Paris, launching the division's online entity, education.com, in the U.S.A., France, Germany and United Kingdom.
As the French Funosopher on the team, Lili brings a different perspective and the experience of a long career in the greeting card, gift and toy industries. In a decade as a designer at Mattel Toys, she helped to create some of the top-selling large dolls, winners of industry awards. Lili and Robin Smith have been working as a very successful concept/ design team for several years and are currently employing their always innovative and playful brains in the creation of products for a variety of new and up-coming companies specializing in toys and varied accessories. Lili is also pursuing a path as an educator: she has taught Toy Design at Otis College of Art and is a docent for school art tours at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Maureen McHale Donna Wittlin Donna Wittlin is a highly dynamic and respected designer and art director. She brings more than 20 years of experience to working and collaborating with some of the nation’s leading entertainment, toy, fashion and educational companies including Disney Consumer Products and Mattel Toys. By bringing her extensive knowledge and belief in brand development to her work with licensed as well as non-licensed products, Donna applies keen strategic insight and creative leadership to every assignment. Most recently, as a key member of the Funosophy team working on the break through Fly™ pen top computer for Leapfrog, she developed a visual branding vocabulary and style guide in order to establish an inspired and consistent vision across multiple applications. From concept to design, production, presentation, sourcing and manufacturing, Donna inherently adds her unique combination of seeing the big picture while remaining detail-oriented to a fault. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, and is an honored member of AIGA and the Color Marketing Group.
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