Tim Coffey

Tim is CEO and Chairman of WonderGroup, and its Insights & Innovation division, LaunchForce. He has worked on a wide range of consumer and professional personal and health care marketing and research assignments across many different brands and product categories.

Tim’s first exposure to youth marketing came while he was in brand management for Procter & Gamble when he had the good fortune to bring Hawaiian Punch and "Punchy" back to the kids of America. He also helped launch Sunny Delight, inventing the miniature-sized bottles that help put this brand in kids’ lunch boxes everywhere. Tim has helped such companies as Borden, Nestlé, Tyson, Perdue, ConAgra, Heinz, Johnson & Johnson and Kellogg’s launch many of the most successful kid products in the marketplace.

Tim has discussed youth marketing in such media as CNN and MSNBC, the International Herald Tribune and countless of other newspapers and magazines as well as having published the first study on permissive/restirictive parenting segments in the International Journal of Marketing Research.

He, along with his partners Dave and Greg has co-authored two youth-marketing books: The Great Tween Buying Machine & Marketing to the New SuperConsumer.

Dave Siegel

After ten years as President of WonderGroup, Dave has moved on to take over the reigns as a Managing Partner of WonderGroup’s Insight and Innovation Division, LaunchForce. Prior to co-founding WonderGroup, Dave created and managed Young & Rubicam’s International kid marketing consultancy--SmallTalk.

Schooled at some of the country’s top CPG marketers like P&G, Cadbury-Schweppes, and Bristol-Myers, Dave became one of the first classic consumer marketers to realize the potential of marketing to kids and has spent the past 30 years immersed in youth and family marketing, advising some of the country’s top corporations in such fields as: Food & Beverage, Household Cleaning Products, Health and Beauty Aids, Toys, Entertainment, Clothing, Retailing and others.

Mr. Siegel is a well-quoted author and speaker, addressing such organizations as the: United States Olympic Committee, Grocery Manufacturer’s Association, Color Marketing Group, SHOPA, and dozens of others. He has spoken and/or keynoted kid marketing conferences in Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, France and the Netherlands. He is on the advisory board of UK’s Young Consumer Magazine and is currently taping an international lecture on Marketing to Moms & Kids for Henry Sterwart Talks.

He is a Gold Effie winner for his work on introducing and marketing the world’s most successful leisure product of the 90’s—the Super Soaker--and he is an author of the Great Tween Buying Machine (Deerborn Publishing), Marketing to the New SuperConsumer—Mom & Kid (Paramount Publishing), and Market Smart Design (HarperCollins).

Mark Smith

Mark Smith started his career in new product ideation by taking a chainsaw to a dictionary, just to see what would happen. A path on which he continued for years – wearing spiffy suits, while learning how to turn insights into ideas, ideas into innovations, and innovations into new products. And from the "One Show Pencil" to The Pro Awards, he’s got the honors to prove it.

Twenty years removed from his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, Mark’s creative influence and strategic management have touched a wide range of clients. From Corona beer to Folgers coffee, ConAgra, Keebler, Kraft, Pepperidge Farm, Walt Disney World, Kellogg’s Nestle, P&G, Purina, Hasbro, Heinz, Chevrolet, and everything in between.

Prior to becoming the VP Executive Creative Director for LaunchForce, Mark had ultimate responsibility for the creative product at some of Los Angeles’ top advertising agencies, until his inability to tan, forced him to flee California for the verdant Ohio Valley. But not before becoming a published poet, as well as a trained hypnotist and a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Throw in an amazing wife (and former account executive), a brilliant and gorgeous daughter, a love of Elvis Costello, a weakness for Route 66, talking in the third-person, and an unhealthy dependence on cheese pizza, and you get Mark's life.

LaunchForce

With our years of experience at LaunchForce helping Fortune 500 companies develop the right innovation strategies and solutions, "Innovation Myths and Mythstakes" essentially wrote itself. The key to the book (and every form of communication, new product, or positioning really) is to base them on solid consumer insight. To learn more about how LaunchForce can help you uncover breakthrough customer insights and develop game-changing innovations and strategies, visit http://www.launchforce.com.