Ben Morris
Founder & Chief Marketing Strategist
In May of 1982 Ben Morris graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Film Theory and Criticism. That summer, he joined Tom “TQ” Quarles and Cindy Carman to found MQ&C. Since then MQ&C has negotiated and managed almost a billion dollars of radio, TV, print, direct mail, outdoor, sports and digital ads for hundreds of clients of all sizes. Ben later became intrigued by psychographic segmentation and modeling, which he believed ad campaigns should be built around. In 2007 he brought “big data” files in-house, now used every day for everything from media buying and creative messaging to site selection, customer-lifetime value, and optimization of digital campaigns.
In 2009, MQ&C 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. This approach was quickly and widely emulated.
Today, Ben is focused on better understanding and integrating all sources of traffic—offline and online—into a customer lifetime value feedback loop. He is especially excited about the ability to track customers originating offline to online purchases and vice versa, and the ability to change sales strategies over the phone, and landing pages in real time based on sub-second access to data points.
Jarrod Thuener
Chief Analytics Officer
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.
Kevin Milani
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.
Phil Goodhart
Database Marketing Strategist
Phil has a long track record of success in data-driven marketing businesses, focusing on data analysis, planning, and creative strategies. As a consultant serving the direct response marketing industry, 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 database marketing strategies 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.
Ilaria Bonalumi
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.
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.
Linda Rae Sanchez
Client & Creative Services Director
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.