AUTHOR & STRATEGIST
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I share my models and experiences to make brand principles practical, relevant, and useful in your day-to-day efforts. I write about ideas to move you forward ... fast.
Mark has earned the reputation a brand innovator – a strategist, creative facilitator, and venture catalyst.
His work has included branding, advertising, and marketing strategy for health, science, and technology products. Mark has worked with clients including:
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Global healthcare companies (Abbott, Baxter, DuPont, Merck KGaA, Pfizer, Takeda, UCB)
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Biotech leaders (Amgen, CSL Behring, Gilead, and Salix)
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Hospital products companies (Cardinal Health, Covidien, Fenwal, Hollister, Hospira)
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Drug delivery system developers (Adare, Endo, Kos)
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Medical start-ups (ClearCare, Magsense Nanoparticles, MedsForAll, Organ Recovery Systems, Plasticity Brain Centers, Solstice Neurosciences, Virgilant Technologies)
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Major university tech transfer (Boise State, Tulane, Purdue)
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Mark is a frequent speaker and facilitator for sales meetings, advisory boards, and strategy workshops. He is the author of two business books, ForwardFast Branding and N-of-8 Groups, plus a contributor to 2 motivational books, Living in the Now and Alone In My Universe.
He is a recipient of the Brand Leadership Award from the Asia Brand Congress for global marketing efforts. He was included in the PharmaVoice 100 Most Inspiring People in the Life-Sciences Industry.
Mark and his wife, Jenny, live in Boise, Idaho with their golden retriever, Sydney.
WHAT OTHER ARE SAYING
“When you engage Mark, be prepared to have fun, roll up your sleeves and get to work! His methods will draw out the collective knowledge and expertise of your teams. His StrategicGPS Navigation Process helped guide us from a few tens of millions to hundreds of millions of sales in the U.S. and worldwide. His multi-functional workshops in the process develop trust, create buy-in, and build accountability to assure success of the plan.”
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Dennis Burke, GM of Pharma & Medical Device Sales & Marketing
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“Mark is a masterful facilitator and he has engaged a broad cross-functional team (clinical to legal to marketing) to work together without barriers – to uncover a new view of the marketplace. In the end, the team was aligned (for the first time) and had established a logical and integrated short and long-term plan for the brand. It was magic.”
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Juli Cavnar, Strategic & Creative Marketing Agency Leader
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“His book and a presentation are still fresh in my mind. As a member of the marketing team at MilliporeSigma, I have worked with Mark on many occasions and have attended his national and international presentations in Asia. His teachings helped improve sales in our Asia-Pacific markets. His style is very interactive and generates curiosity in mind of his audience.”
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Chandra Mohan, Senior Manager of Technical Marketing
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“Mark and his team really had a solid process for how they would approach the advertising and communication challenges of our brand. I have recommended Mark to others by positioning him as someone with an immense creative mind, but who also can be very focused and purposeful. Mark is a diligent ally to have on your team and brings many impactful ideas to the table. Mark also has a number of useful processes to find information when a situation is murky, which is very common. I highly recommend Mark.”
Dave Duff, Medical Communications Professional & Entrepreneur
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“I have great respect for Mark’s knowledge, experience, and integrity for improving community health. He has a passion for an improved health system. He is a strong advocate and encourager of entrepreneurs to develop disruptive technologies and processes to improve the consumer healthcare experience and outcomes. Mark’s leadership and consulting are focused on building collaborative relationships among healthcare entities that go beyond providing quality healthcare services and focus on health interventions that improve the quality of life.”
Jim Giuffre, Healthcare Executive, Investor, & Consultant
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“Mark delivers Persuasion through Process. He is methodical in his approach, so he persuades people to understand his point of view in a very focused and yet, pleasant way. Writing needs discipline and ideas – he has both in plenty.”
Rashmi Thosar, healthcare branding agency CEO
“Mark has developed a novel set of methodologies that can add value to any marketing initiative. Mark’s approach is particularly effective in creatively capturing customer input in a way that helps ensure the input is both valid and relevant.”
Art Morelli, Chief Business Officer & Pharma Leader
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“Mark was an incredible asset to support our growing company’s branding and strategic efforts. He brought clear structure in the idea-to-action process, with a lot of communication and tracking toward execution and results. Mark is a positive, active listener who can steer discussions toward the right direction. He is truly invested in his clients’ success.”
Elsa MacDonald, National Marketing Director
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“Mark brings a fresh perspective to all issues.”
Mike Walsh, Business Development & Customer Relations Executive
“I met Mark in Brazil while he was facilitating physician qualitative research and we have partnered for a few years. His vast experience, his understanding of the healthcare market, and his innovative approaches have brought us the information and answers to the issues we need to move forward with the strategies needed to leverage our clients’ businesses here at Brazil. One real benefit of working with Mark was getting to the heart of the matter of some issues that seemed to be very hard to solve.”
Flavio Canelas, Chief Officer at Arteria Comunicação
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“Mark is one of the most diverse and multifaceted businessmen that I have encountered. His ability to engage people at every level as I’ve worked with him in many capacities has gained my respect and admiration. Mark is a rare find, because he has the ability to get strong accountability, but not making you feel intimidated at the same time. I would recommend Mark to almost every group.”
Jerry Henley, Marketing, Sales, & Capital Investment Executive
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“The strategic process at most agencies looks like a black box. It can be frustrating for clients to work through this process with their agency because the process isn’t clear and the results aren’t always consistent. Working with Mark was a different experience altogether. I always appreciated the tools he developed and refined to bring clarity to the strategic process. They allow for everyone to speak a common language and ultimately lead to stronger collaborations.”
Patrick Smith, Creative Director
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“From my interactions with Mark, I find him to be delightfully curious and interested in understanding a problem from all perspectives. Anyone interested in an insightful and collaborative approach would find his way of thinking refreshing.”
Tammy Adams Spann, Vistage Chair & Meeting Facilitator
“Working with Mark has been fantastic. His leadership and facilitation at Confluence events created a stir and groundswell in the local innovation circles that we can do and grow and benefit the community more than we thought possible. Mark skillfully organized our discussion and helped us create new possibilities. I highly recommend Mark, his works, and his stewardship to any individual or company looking to draw out innovation and value.”
Kaz Lawler, Innovation Technologist
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“Our work together goes back more than a decade. During that time, I’ve come to value Mark’s unique combination of talent, experience, expertise and sincere desire to collaborate with others as true partners. Mark’s approach of active listening and mutual respect help elicit the clients’ and my best strategic thinking. I observed his deft talent at presenting several great options in such a way that the client could easily and effectively “own” the process that resulted in world-class deliverables.”
Jed Weiner, Healthcare Storyteller, Strategist, & Writer
“Mark has successfully put into practice this signature tool to help manage the complexity of the branding process by finding the intricate balance of all the brand attributes to maximize the effect. Mark’s style in facilitating ForwardFast workshops is engaging and exceptionally insightful. ForwardFast is my go-to tool in providing leadership to clients to implement brand strategies for multichannel campaigns – from creative inception, market research validation, through to final tactical execution.”
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Pamela Boulware, Healthcare Marketer & Brand Strategist
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“I have had the pleasure to work with Mark as a fellow member of the Idaho Technology Council’s Tech2Market Committee. Mark has shown a gift for framing potentially complex issues in a way that is easier for the layperson to comprehend. I’ve appreciated his ability to organize the Tech2Market Committee. He has provided valuable structure to the committee’s meetings as it moves forward to achieve its mission.”
Paul Cooperrider, Technology Entrepreneur and Investor
“When it comes to brand strategy, there are plenty of authors and facilitators that talk a good game, but Mark Stinson helps you make it happen, and happen fast. I have watched Mark delight clients using the ForwardFast tool and have seen how effective it is in focusing the brand strategy.”
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Kathleen Pendlay, Senior Brand Designer
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“Mark was great to collaborate with us due to his extensive, deep knowledge in the pharma industry – and a splendorous strategic way of thinking. I recommend Mark to anyone who’s facing pharma marketing challenges, if you are looking for one of the best problem-solvers I’ve worked with. And somebody who does so through joy and lots of laughs.”
Danilo Fratangelo, Agency Executive Managing Director
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