LEADERSHIP
Ben Morris
CO-FOUNDER & CEO
A customer database only tells half the story – the digital half. But with advances in analytics and technology, Ben Morris can show you how to understand the online purchases made by customers who originated offline.
In 1982, before the internet, Ben founded MQ&C as a traditional advertising firm. When digital arrived, Ben didn’t run scared. Instead, MQ&C brought “big data” files in house and started applying their big data analytics to the millions of impressions even a modest digital campaign can deliver. The result was a proprietary bid strategy platform for campaigns by key word, geography, and bid price.
Today, Ben focuses on better understanding and integrating all sources of traffic–offline and online–into a customer value feedback loop. This means understanding how customers rely on radio, TV, print, direct mail, outdoor, sports, and digital ads as they make their buying decisions.
Ben uses his Film Theory and Criticism degree from the University of Texas at Austin to develop stories that resonate with target customers.
Kristal Morris
CO-FOUNDER & PRESIDENT
After spending a few years as a make-up artist at Saks, outside sales at Xerox, and a stint in the marketing department of the San Antonio Spurs, Kristal Morris started her own company, Kristalytics, to provide data analytics and digital marketing services. The rapid growth and success of Kristalytics in the next decade allowed Kristal the opportunity to purchase a majority stake in MQ&C Advertising in 2015.
Today, as one of the two owners of MQ&C, Kristal serves as President. Her current areas of interest within MQ&C are daily operations, corporate culture, agency marketing, graphic design, and data analytics.
Over the last four years, Kristal has driven the initiative of establishing MQ&C as a completely virtual company able to function at the highest level without regard to geography. Her goal is to attract the very best talent and subject-matter-experts without requiring anyone to move or live somewhere because of their job. The result is a talented team that would never have come together with a “be-in-office-five-days-a week” mindset.
Taking over as President of a company that had existed since 1982 also gave Kristal a chance to change a very traditional corporate culture to a modern, positive, collaborative environment. This environment with a flat reporting chart encourages strong interaction, learning, and genuine friendships between all team members, regardless of tenure or title.
Kristal is married to agency co-founder, Ben Morris. They and their 5 year old son, Marsden, divide their time between Austin, Texas and Aspen, Colorado.
Outside of MQ&C, Kristal is the family’s lead on real estate investments and has a strong interest in interior design, hiking, biking, and spending time with her family.
Kristal Morris graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2001 with Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing.
Ilaria Bonalumi
CHIEF MEDIA STRATEGIST
Ilaria Bonalumi integrates traditional media with innovative ideas, delivering media campaigns that deliver the best return for her clients. Her areas of expertise include network and cable TV, radio, print, billboards, mobile and banner ads.
A native of Milan, Italy, Ilaria moved to Texas in 1992. She has worked with national and international media and has expertise in buying media in the top-ranked Nielsen markets as well as small, unrated markets. Ilaria combines strong strategic and negotiating skills to deliver comprehensive media campaigns that are well targeted to the demographic and remarkably efficient.
During her advertising career, Ilaria has worked for international agencies such as Young & Rubicam and with a wide variety of clients, including Colgate Palmolive, Kraft General Food, Wendy’s and the Choctaw Casinos of Oklahoma. Ilaria took a brief hiatus from MQ&C to work as a Media Director for MOSAK.
Kevin Milani
CHIEF DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIST
Kevin Milani routinely delivers 100-300% improvement in first-year performance of digital marketing campaigns for his clients using paid search, remarketing, display, and Facebook.
Kevin measures his campaign performance using Impression Share, the measure of how often an advertiser’s ad appears in a search. Only 3% of all advertisers’ ads show up more than 70% of the time, and less than 0.3% of all advertisers show up more than 95% of the time. Kevin has successfully helped multiple clients achieve 95%+ Impression Share to dominate their respective categories.
Kevin integrates marketing theory and traditional direct response best-practices with digital marketing in the development of his cutting-edge programs. Over the past decade, Kevin has managed tens of millions of dollars in annual ad spend for clients across dozens of product and service categories, amassing over 40,000 hours of experience in digital marketing.
Prior to joining MQ&C, Kevin spent 10 years at Zoetics, a business and marketing think-tank providing advice to clients such as Philips Electronics, Kodak, AT&T, Kraft, General Mills and Time-Warner. Kevin has been featured in Fast Company.
Jarrod Thuener
CHIEF ANALYTICS STRATEGIST
Jarrod lives big data. As a nationally recognized expert in the Alteryx platform for very-large database management, he works with clients to develop easy-to-use app-based models. He has created custom demographic maps for real estate agents and programmed automated solutions for management reports. Many of his reports and analyses have been featured on nationally televised programs.
Jarrod works with over 40 terabytes of data to maintain one of the largest, most comprehensive national consumer files. At the annual Alteryx Inspire Conference in 2015, Jarrod took 1st place in the Alteryx Grand Prix, a competition of the best Alteryx users in the world. The following day Jarrod was inducted as an Alteryx ACE.
Jarrod graduated from Indiana University – Kelley School of Business with a degree in Real Estate Finance. Staying at the front of the technology curve has enabled Jarrod’s team to provide client insights at unprecedented speeds. Data that would take days or weeks to pull from a legacy system can be extracted directly from structured and unstructured sources in minutes or hours.
ACCOUNT SERVICE
Linda Rae Sanchez
ACCOUNT MANAGER
Linda has a talent for understanding her client’s business goals and translating them into targeted, action-oriented, integrated, measurable marketing and advertising solutions that drive results. Linda has local, regional and national experience, with a variety of categories including franchises, associations, non-profits, health care and education, as well as a diverse group of retailers that include homebuilders, automotive, food service and entertainment industries.
Linda brings a broad marketing perspective with her 20+ years of experience in sales and marketing, account management, creative strategy, media planning, website development, SEO and business development.
Heather Sneed
ACCOUNT MANAGER
Prior to joining MQ&C, Heather co-owned the company Content Divas, a content marketing agency.
Heather’s management style is to think like a business owner because she’s been one for the better part of 10+ years. She has worked directly with entrepreneurs, Amazon sellers, local businesses, agencies, digital businesses, and organizations - to create significant and sustainable growth by increasing revenue, lead acquisition, conversions and consumer engagement.
Heather possesses strong skills across all areas of digital marketing, but she’s especially experienced with understanding Google’s algorithms as they relate to consumer intent and market segmentation. She is not only able to find your market segments and identify exactly what your target audience is searching for, but also how they are searching, the intent behind why they are searching and what Google thinks they are searching for.
This “superpower” in intentional market research and segmentation has allowed Heather to create intention-based marketing strategies that are effective for Google Ads, programmatic advertising, Amazon listings, natural search, sales funnels, website content, blogs, and more.
Heather’s hobbies include attending college classes at Bellevue College in the Seattle area and riding dirt bikes with her family.
Susan Seale
ACCOUNT MANAGER
Susan establishes the foundation for long-term working relationships that benefit everyone. She ensures smooth transitions for MQ&C clients from initial contact to campaign setup to active campaign management.
An innovative and results-oriented marketing professional, Susan has an extensive track record of success in driving marketing and media strategies, account management, advertising and public relations for clients across diverse industries. Her strategic thinking, problem solving, communication and relationship-building skills make her a strong leader on a client team.
With over 25 years in advertising and marketing, Susan’s experience includes working in media sales, agency side – and even running her own advertising agency. As an advertising executive, she has strength in both traditional and digital advertising media and knows how to blend them together successfully.
Cynthia Carey
CLIENT SERVICES
Cynthia believes that successful teams are well organized and communicate well – not only with each other, but with their clients and strategic partners as well. With that objective in mind, she coordinates teams, prospects and clients. As Cynthia ensures that our clients are well cared for, she also helps the team remain calm, productive and stress free.
Having spent more than 20 years in and behind the scenes of the retail and catalog industries, Cyndi has gained a wealth of experience ranging from how a customer may perceive a product to how a call center might benefit from a different structure for incoming callers.
Leslie Barker
CLIENT SERVICES
Leslie joined us after 10 years as Operations Manager for Content Divas, a content marketing agency. While there, she was instrumental in taking clients’ big-picture ideas and making them a reality. Leslie developed an extremely wide skill set to make that happen. Her experience includes building and growing a team of 100+ contractors and coordinating dozens of projects in various stages of completion. She embraces the importance of implementing systems and is adept at creating department budgets, assigning deliverables across accounts and monitoring milestones to consistently exceed client expectations.
Coming from a long line of entrepreneurs, Leslie discovered her own entrepreneurial drive when she was only ten years old! Over several summers, she became a successful telemarketer and office assistant working for a variety of the family’s businesses. She grew up to marry her high school sweetheart and when she's not working enjoys gardening cooking and spending time with her husband and daughters.
CREATIVE SERVICES
Phil Goodhart
MARKETING & CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Phil has a long track record of success in data-driven marketing businesses, focusing on creative strategies and implementation. He stays on the leading edge of ad formats and maximizes their impact for machine learning capabilities. As a consultant to direct response marketing companies, he has worked in a variety of industries, including school supplies, personalized jewelry, pet supplies, allergy relief, and aging in the home. He works closely with the rest of the team to coordinate development of effective creative content across all channels.
Phil served in Arthur Andersen’s management information services division, building software systems for clients such as Pfizer and Becton-Dickinson.
Phil rose through the ranks at the Danbury Mint to become Vice President in a $350 million division, driving 200%+ sales growth. Along the way, he designed the Company’s first website, helped build the sports memorabilia category to $40 million in annual sales, and doubled sales in the jewelry category.
Phil has a BA in Economics from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard.
Taylor Pospisil
CREATIVE SPECIALIST
Taylor is our creative strategist. She enjoys combining her marketing knowledge with her natural creative gift to develop high converting ads. Taylor comes from a background in organic marketing where she led the creative process and intentional research for many high profile clients. Her gift is creating the perfect messaging to convert your target market. Creating compelling and engaging creatives along with extensive focus on measurable results, team leadership, and attention to detail are among the most notable traits she brings to the table.
Taylor graduated in the top of her class from Texas Tech University with a bachelor degree in retail marketing and management. During her career, Taylor has worked in house as a CMO for Texas Card House and grew it to the multi-million dollar success it is today. She then transitioned to the agency world with Content Divas. There she quickly grew to become the creative director before joining our team at MQ&C.
Keith Cannone
CREATIVE SPECIALIST
Keith has helped over 60 companies increase their revenues and profit margins using data-driven traffic and conversion strategies. His specialties include paid traffic, affiliate and joint venture marketing, conversion optimization, social media, creative and branding, copywriting, content marketing, SEO and overall digital marketing strategy.
Keith has over 15 years of direct response marketing experience and a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from Florida Atlantic University. Around 2003, Keith left his position as a Branch Manager at Enterprise Rent-a-Car to help create an online health and fitness business. What started with a simple eBook has grown to an eight-figure health company that is transforming lives all over the world.
Mallory Wolfe
CREATIVE SPECIALIST
Mallory creates engaging videos that drive leads and sales for MQ&C clients, and also helps manage and optimize paid ad campaigns. Mallory translates clients’ ideas into creatives that communicate their brand and highlight their benefit to customers. She believes that strategic creative is the ultimate magic touch that leads to conversions.
Pursuing her interest in film and media, Mallory settled in Los Angeles, CA. Prior to joining MQ&C, she worked for Marriott International where she mastered the art of listening to client needs, going beyond their expectations and executing with a smile.
Mallory holds a degree in Social Psychology from Santa Barbara City College. Beginning in college, she developed her creative eye through the training provided by professional photographers and videographers. She has received multiple photography awards at showings in Northern California. Now Mallory applies what began as a hobby to her career – and to the benefit of her clients.
TRAFFIC
Burt Campbell
DIGITAL MARKETING SPECIALIST
Burt’s ability to connect and understand people (creative side) along with his ability to break down processes and analyze data (logical side) provides unique capabilities to MQ&C and its clients. He strikes a powerful balance between the analytical and emotional, objective and subjective. Yes, Burt understands numbers, facts, data and proof, but he also understands human beings. Where others see only data, Burt sees stories, trends and movements.
Burt’s extensive marketing expertise includes PPC, conversion rate optimization, SEO, lead generation, direct marketing, email marketing, copywriting, business processes, project management and market research in both the B2C and B2B arenas.
His insightful understanding of human behavior and what gets people to take action (i.e. the psychology behind getting people in the front door of a business and getting those people to buy) really sets Burt apart from many other marketers both on and offline.
Ted Sanders
DIGITAL MARKETING SPECIALIST
Ted has an impressive track record of success in digital marketing, focusing on paid search and paid social media buying strategies and implementation. He strives to stay ahead of the curve by constantly studying new technologies, tactics and techniques to help improve performance across ad channels. Working closely with the MQ&C team, Ted strives to deliver to meet and exceed our client’s expectations.
Ted utilizes advanced marketing strategies combined with traditional marketing tactics to tell the proverbial story of our clients to digital consumers. He has driven successful digital results for organizations ranging from the Fortune 100 to post-secondary colleges.
Ted holds degrees in Computer Science and Computer Information Systems as well as post graduate certification in Marketing Strategy.
SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS
Stacy Wu
DATA ANALYST
As a Data Artisan at MQ&C, Stacy Wu is responsible for processing, analyzing, and visualizing the results from big data that lead to the insights that drive our marketing strategies. Prior to MQ&C, Stacy worked for Mattel and Bacardi Limited and performed data analysis for the Fisher Price, Barbie, Hot Wheels product, Dewar’s Whiskey and Grey Goose Vodka brands. Stacy holds an M.B.A. from Virginia Tech, and a B.S. in International Business from National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan.
Stacy has extensive experience in compiling data from a variety of sources such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Google Analytics, Facebook, Yahoo Gemini and Google BigQuery. She applies her skill to cleaning and normalizing the data, and then analyzing it to develop effective solutions to improve marketing campaigns’ performance. Stacy’s range of analytical methods include qualitative, quantitative, time-studies, productivity, and geographic analysis – using tools like Alteryx, Tableau, and Microsoft Office.
Simon Orth
ANALYTICS SPECIALIST
Simon specializes in Google Shopping, Analytics and process automation. He started and registered his first business with the State of New York at the age of 15. In 1997 he fell in love with the internet as a business opportunity and immersed himself in ecommerce. In 1998 he moved to Texas, selling used merchandise on eBay, Amazon and various other channels (remember GeoCities?). In 2000 he built his e-commerce business in the highly competitive band merchandise niche before selling it in 2013.
Discovering that the talents he acquired along the way were rather uncommon, he has gone on to work on both ads and content for Perry Marshall & Associates as well as creating relationships with a number of other larger players in the digital marketing world to help manage ecommerce initiatives. Constantly learning new tricks to stay on top of his game (and because it’s fun and super cool) Simon looks for ways to make what he does even better. He prefers to stay out of the limelight and to create big results!
Dave McCarty
CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION SPECIALIST
An innovative and forward-thinking strategist with over 15 years of expertise, Dave focuses on sales funnel development and conversion optimization. He analyzes key business drivers, optimizing online advertising and conversion for maximum ROI and developing strategies to grow the bottom-line profits.
Dave achieves ground-breaking results by integrating multi-channel advertising campaigns (PPC, SEO, social, mobile, email) and sales strategies (lead gen, collateral, sales training) with complex multi-variate online conversion testing. One of Dave’s marquis clients is the largest online precious metals dealer. He also developed and launched a first-of-its-kind affiliate marketing program that led to staggering growth and brand awareness.
Dave has been a featured speaker at MECLABS® Email Optimization Summit and is MECLABS® Certified in landing page optimization, email optimization, lead generation optimization and display media optimization.