Chas. Porter strategist

Agency President, Partner, VP Creative Director, CMO –this is just some of the professional experience Chas. Porter has garnered over the past twenty years.

Trained as a journalist, Chas. began his career in 1984 as an art director at Kauffman Stewart, a small, well-regarded creative agency in Minneapolis. Four years later he purchased KS, doubled the agency's billings, selling it in 1991 to found a virtual agency that provided clients with flexible services they couldn't find in traditional agencies. Over the next five years, the innovative Chas. Porter Group managed a decentralized team of 40 independent contractors working on trade show events, national television commercials, collateral, advertising, web sites, P.O.S systems, and product design and sourcing for clients across the country.

Based on his early involvement in the Internet, Mr. Porter was approached by Rapp Collins in 1996 to lead their work for @Home, the world's first broadband Internet provider. Deciding the opportunity too good to pass up, he closed CPG and joined Rapp, then the world's largest direct marketing agency. Six weeks later Chas. was promoted to lead Rapp Collins Interactive, and over the course of the next two years RCI became the lead interactive agency for all forty offices of Rapp Collins Worldwide.

Taking note of his growing expertise across the disparate disciplines of advertising, interactive, and direct response, Chas. was approached by Martin Williams Advertising to help improve the quality of work produced by Option One, MW's direct and promotional group. His move to MW in 1998 worked. During Mr. Porter's tenure, Option One won “Best Retail Promotion/Worldwide” and “Best Cause-Related Promotion/Worlwide” from the World Pro Awards.

In 2000, Mr. Porter moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin when he accepted the position of VP Brand Development at Nonbox. There he led brand planning for all agency clients and used his experience in advertising and interactive to leverage a minor relationship with Coca-Cola and 7-Eleven into a $20 million dollar brand/internet campaign.

But Milwaukee is not Minneapolis, and in 2002 he moved back to Minnesota to accept a position at Morgan Myers, a 70-person public relations firm interested in expanding their offering to included integrated marketing services. The position provided a great opportunity to learn more about PR and the spread of soft messages, a skill that was becoming increasingly important as the Internet took its first steps toward social networking with the rise of blogs. At MM, Mr. Porter managed creative, traffic, and production staff in three cities, redesigned the agency's strategic and work-flow processes, and trained the account staff to facilitate and sell profitable integrated work.

In 2004, Mr. Porter moved to Hanley Wood, a $225 million dollar publishing and marketing company. Hired to improve the interactive, strategic, and creative capabilities of HW, Mr. Porter managed a staff of fifteen in creative and interactive, designed and implemented a new strategic process and publishing work-flow system, was named to the 5-person “Summit” new business team, working directly with CEO Frank Anton.

In 2005, Chas. left HW to open his own web design and development studio, The Attractive, LLC. Capturing new business primarily through Craigslist, The Attractive provided brand development, web design, web development, user experience and interface design to clients as far away as San Jose, California and Tel Aviv, Israel.

With 2007 came a new challenge: the chance to lead an exciting but underdeveloped brand as Chief Marketing Officer.

Hired by Shock Doctor in early 2007, Mr. Porter led the effort to move SD from the undisputed leader in mouthguard technology to the global brand leader in sports protection. As CMO, Mr. Porter was responsible for the development and management of a complete brand repositioning and redesign, the long-term development and management of Shock Doctor’s marketing strategy, plan, and budget as well as the day-to-day management of all external resources, including design firms, media planners, web site developers, public relations firms, SEO specialists, and offline and online media partners. As a member of the senior management team, Mr. Porter played a key role in the preparation and presentation of the business over a six-month sales process that resulted in the purchase of Shock Doctor by Norwest Equity Partners on April 3, 2008.

In June 2008 he left Shock Doctor to start Hybrid, a marketing consulting firm designed to help clients and agencies navigate the transition to Marketing 2.0.

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