Meet the Correspondents

They Are the Eyes, Ears and Brains of The Global Marketer™

Our Correspondents are a geographically diverse team of marketing veterans with years of experience creating and managing successful campaigns for a wide variety of brands, products and services. They are literally the eyes and ears of The Global Marketer. Their unique perspectives, as well as their insights and their professional expertise in the fields of Promotion, Direct, Entertainment, Sports and Event Marketing, are what make The Global Marketer™ such an extraordinarily valuable resource.  

Ken Florin, New York

Mr. Florin is a partner in the New York office of the law firm Loeb & Loeb. He represents Fortune 500 companies, advertising and promotions agencies and new media companies, advising them on the development of their advertising and promotion strategies and online communities. Mr. Florin earned his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1992, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1988. He negotiates deals ranging from traditional agency-client, co-promotion, tie-in, employment and sponsorship agreements to content licenses, Web development agreements and affiliate agreements. He reviews concepts, layouts and copy for all forms of advertising and promotion initiatives, including sweepstakes, contests, cause-related marketing programs and auctions. In addition, he assists his clients in the development of their data collection and privacy policies, in the handling of regulatory and consumer inquiries and complaints, and in trademark and copyright matters.

Tess Stobie, Moscow

Tess Stobie is a managing partner of Point Passat, Russia's largest independent marketing agency. In 1998 she moved to Russia from her native England to join The Point, a strategic below-the-line agency headquartered in Moscow. Several weeks after her arrival, Russia suffered a financial crisis so severe that every program on which the agency was working had to be curtailed. By strategically positioning The Point to benefit from an expected post-crisis upsurge in below-the-line activity and bringing in a substantial amount of new business, Ms. Stobie helped bring the company back from the brink of insolvency. Restored and invigorated by a roster of new accounts, The Point merged with PR Passat in 2002. Point Passat is now Russia's largest below-the-line marketing agency, with regional offices in 15 cities and the capability of creating, managing and executing a variety of consumer and trade marketing activities in cities across 11 time zones. Tess studied Classics at Bristol University in England and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She is co-chair of the marketing committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow and a director of Nastenka, a charity that aids children and the families of children suffering from cancer. She and her husband reside in Moscow.

Ernesto Dorfman, Buenos Aires

Mr. Dorfman is a senior-level marketing, management and communications executive who specializes in leveraging global brand equity to create business-building opportunities for clients and agencies in Argentina. He holds a master's degree in marketing and has worked in sales, marketing, strategic planning, business development and agency general management over the past 25 years. In the course of his career he has worked with Mattel, Hasbro, Milton Bradley, Parker Bros. and Kenner in the toy industry, and with Unilever, Kraft Foods, Philip Morris, Nestle, Motorola, Gillette, Duracell, and Smithkline Beecham in the corporate world. He has also worked with numerous banks, publishing houses, retail chains and shopping malls for campaign executions. Mr. Dorfman was the first president of the Argentina Chamber of Promotion Marketing Agencies (CAMPRO), and is responsible for running the Marketing Agencies Association Worldwide's annual GLOBES Awards in Argentina.

Pankaj Wadhwa, New Delhi

Pankaj Wadhwa earned an MBA in Finance from Boston University. Upon returning to India in 1988 he founded Kidstuff, headquartered in New Delhi. Mr. Wadhwa's company went on to become one of the largest toy manufacturing firms in India and a major exporter of toys and games to the United States and Europe. In 1995 he established Kidstuff Promos and Events, an agency that specializes in below- the-line marketing. Today Kidstuff Promos is India's largest below-the-line agency, with a multi-category client list that ranges from Pepsi, Unilever and SmithKline Beecham to Cartoon Network, ESPN and Intel. After winning several client and Promotion Marketing Association awards for campaigns by his Kidstuff agency, in 2002 Pankaj instituted Promo Power, India's only conference catering exclusively to the promotion marketing industry, along with the All India Promo Awards. Since its inception, Promo Power has featured as speakers marketing and media experts from the U.S., Australia, England, Germany, Israel and India. Spanning 12 categories, the All India Promo Awards is India's largest awards program and is supported by local sponsors and media. Pankaj also serves as the Zonal Director for the PMA's Reggie Awards.

Kylie Green, Sydney

Kylie Green founded Kaleidoscope Marketing Communications, a leading Promotion Marketing Agency in Australia in 1998. Committed to delivery, concepts, enthusiasm and ethics whilst maintaining a sense of fun, Kylie has brought together a unique team of individuals that continue to drive that commitment. In August 2006, Kaleidoscope joined Australia's fastest growing marketing communications group, The Photon Group, which brings together 22 of Australia's and New Zealand's best marketers and agencies in the business to provide a fully integrated approach over �Photon's 5 Pillars of Marketing Communications' including Mass Communication, Business Intelligence, Digital & Interactive, Sales & Presence Marketing and Specialised Communication Services. Kaleidoscope has worked with some of Australia's most well known and loved brands including Arnott's, Freedom, Philips, GlaxoSmithKline and Paul's (Parmalat) and has won prestige industry awards every year since its launch.

The Agency won Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards in the Annual APMA Awards of Excellence from 1999-2005 and Silver and Bronze Awards in the International Creative Summit Awards from 2000-2004. The agency has also won other prestigious awards including Supplier of the Year and Finalist for the Sydney Businesswoman of the Year. In June 2006, Kylie was elected Chairperson of the Australia/New Zealand industry body, APMA (the Australasian Promotion Marketing Association) after serving several years as an Executive Committee member. Kylie appointed a new Executive Committee and is committed to making the APMA more valuable to its members and further promoting the industry in both Australia and New Zealand. Please visit her agency at: www.kaleidoscope-mktg.com.au.

Zeynep Arhon Apak, Istanbul 

Zeynep Arhon Apak is managing partner of SPY, the only experiential marketing agency in Turkey. A battered economy and the growing dominance of global creative agency networks in the country have not stopped SPY from growing and building a strong client base that includes Unilever, Bridgestone, Kraft, and Jetix Europe, among others. In March 2006 SPY celebrated its fifth anniversary. The award-winning agency received both local and international recognition for campaigns for Bridgestone Tires and Jetix in 2004 and 2005, respectively.     

Zeynep is a strategic thinker, providing clients with an innovative approach to promoting their brands. Where other Turkish agencies tend to rely more ‘mass media worship,’ SPY takes a more creative and targeted approach. Every campaign the agency creates promises a meaningful brand experience that will resonate with consumers and ultimately translate to increased sales. She has presented at several Turkish Advertisers’ Association marketing seminars. Her next project is to launch a “trends” division for the agency. 

Prior to forming SPY, Zeynep served as Eurasia Division Brand Manager for the Coca-Cola Company, where she also served as Head of Strategy for Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Light brands.  

Zeynep, a native of Istanbul, studied International Relations and Political Science at Bogazici University, where she also earned her MBA. She lives in Istanbul with her husband and is interested in visual arts, photography and painting. She’s also interested in agriculture and hopes to one day cook her own bread from seed.

Olga Spirina - Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia

Olga Spirina is the editorial director of Russia’s BTL Journal magazine. She is a member of the Russian Marketers' Guild, served on the Experts Council of Russia’s 2005 and 2006 Silver Mercury Awards, and was a judge at the 15th annual Moscow International Advertising Festival (2005) in the special press prize category. She became BTL’s editorial director in February 2004.

 

In addition to editing and writing for the magazine, which she joined as a journalist in 2003, Ms. Spirina speaks frequently on the business of sales promotion to agency people, client-side marketers and trade journalists. She learned consumer marketing techniques while working in women’s apparel and real estate and at a promotion agency.

A graduate of the Textile Academy in Ivanovo, she put her studies in apparel design and fabrication to work for Gorky Models, a manufacturer of women’s outerwear, where she worked from 1984 to 1996. She turned her attention to real estate, where she earned a certificate, worked as a broker and then became a sales manager for Inter-Oksidental, which she left in 2000.

 

Prior to joining BTL Journal Ms. Spirina studied and earned a university degree in marketing before joining Moscow-based below-the-line marketing agency AMK Pro-Vision in 2002. There she worked in media planning and placement, corporate account management, copy writing, communication-strategy development and promotion planning.

 

Ms. Spirina’s sales and marketing background have been invaluable to the magazine and her conference work as well. She asserts, with Russian candor, “I explain how to fool a consumer correctly and make him buy unnecessary things for a brilliant price. I teach this not only to readers but also to journalists and large audiences at authors’ seminars. It works!”

Her “favorite consumers,” says Olga Spirina, are her husband, a Russian naval officer, and her two children, “a first-year-schoolboy and a first-year-university girl.”