Hilbrich Group

Acquisition and leadership of marketing communications companies to bring more and better services to clients.

CEO | Founder | Investor l Business Turnaround Expert l Author l Coach

I have combined four decades of experience into instant insight. To help businesses create good times out of bad and to learn from the mistakes I made to help amplify their success.

Executive Coach

Global organization of company Presidents who believe in education, idea exchange and family work/life balance. Have held many officer, day chair and global champion roles.

Member

The Sandbox Agency

Our vision is to create a global challenger agency. Sandbox not only creates great work and executes flawlessly—we focus on the important and undervalued virtue in the agency business of playing together nicely in the sandbox. After growing from a startup to $62MM in revenue, Sandbox successfully combined with MERGE in March 2020.

Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO

Brandimage - Desgrippes & LAGA

Acquired Brandimage - Desgrippes & Laga, one of the world’s largest design firms, was formed from the combination of Desgrippes Gobé, a global design firm, and laga, a leading American design and innovation agency. With a team of experts in the U.S. Europe and Asia, Brandimage offers holistic services designed to deliver rich emotional brand experiences for consumers, from brand strategy and consumer insight, to brand identity, industrial design, package design, graphics, innovation, interactive, retail experience and architecture in one integrated offering. Brandimage was acquired by Schawk in October 2011.

Owner and CEO

The Marketing Store

Global promotional marketing communications agency with offices in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, U.K., France, Australia and China serving McDonald's, Nissan, Diageo, Vodafone and Coca Cola. Having created the awesome team that grew The Marketing Store Canada from a startup to $25MM in revenue, earned TMS global agency of the year three years in a row and achieved a top 5 independent agency status in Canada, I moved to the role of Global President of the company.

Global President

Leo Burnett

Started my career at Leo Burnett in Chicago and moved on to Burnett offices in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Canada in various senior leadership positions while growing the agency and client business for Kellogg's, Proctor & Gamble, Kraft, Heinz, Fruit of the Loom, Glad and McDonald's. Although I loved working with many major multinational clients, I especially enjoyed successfully leading smaller, more entrepreneurial offices in Leo Burnett International. Having experienced helping clients navigate the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and executing turnarounds in smaller offices in Scandinavia, I developed my deep love of the agency business and the people who work so hard to make it tick.

Senior Vice President

CEO | Entrepreneur | Investor | Author | Executive Coach

Leaders need perspective and broader thinking to create success. I can help you achieve that success. 

After almost three decades as a CEO, entrepreneur and investor, I have navigated organizations large and small, struggled through recessions and successfully managed companies to success who were once drowning in poor management or deeply in debt. I have grown business organically and through acquisition; and I have exited two companies as an entrepreneur.

I have seen a lot. I'm not perfect. I have struggled and laid awake many nights to try to figure out the right answer. 

My passion is to serve. That is why I have combined four decades of experience into days of learning for you. To help you create good times out of bad, to help you learn from the mistakes I made and to help you amplify your success. 

I will engage in your success. I will help you turn your company around. I will sell your company. I will invest in or purchase your company. 

If I have entered the conversation you are already having in your head, I would be privileged to chat with you.

John Hilbrich

r>ub

r>ub is a consultancy that defines brand opportunities based on target audience and marketplace perspective in relation to economic, social, and cultural influencers.  r>ub strives to to provide that discernible difference (aka differentiation as in a spice rub that adds flavor to foods) for a brand to more effectively compete in an overcrowded, competitive marketplace.

Founder

4042 North

We are 4042North, a powerful and unique group of professionals with proven integrated marketing communications experience AND cannabis industry expertise. Armed with in-depth brand-building and planning knowledge for the world’s top brands, coupled with years of brand activation success for multiple regulated categories uniquely paired with real-world management and operations experience for a vertically integrated cannabis producer and retailer.

A cannabis-focused brand marketing agency without parallel for an industry that has yet to reach its full potential.  We take cannabis brands to unparalleled heights.

4042North is ​a ​specialized ​division of DiSanti Hicks + Partners.

Partner, Strategy & Analytics

DiSanti, Hicks + Partners

DHP is a new agency that distills brand, shopper and retail knowledge into transactional insights that fuel a higher level of creative solutions for its clients.  This company's deep roots in shopper understanding has also led to the development of a division called The Shopper Lens. The purpose of this consultancy is to provide distinct planning perspectives with an eye toward Contextual Message Management which is a newly defined field taking into account the situation surrounding messaging interactions.  At DHP, we continuously strive for the better understanding of this context, as well as the consumer/shopper, and retail environments where this occurs.

Co-Founder, Managing Partner, Planning Perspectives

The University of Chicago Graham School

Adjunct Professor

Competent Curiosity, Inc.

We are a unique consulting planning network that promises to give you more than you were expecting.  Competent Curiosity provides foundational thinking to help organizations grow/improve their Shopper Marketing and Brand-building disciplines.  We also help companies build out tangible tools that can help them assess the impact of Shopper Marketing efforts, and how they add to overall organizational goals.
We have an established network of talent that spans brand-building through shopper marketing, and is dispersed across the country.

President

Columbia College Chicago

Account Planning role within a Promotional Marketing Agency where I will provide an in-depth view of what drives consumers to do what they do.  These consumer insights will be coupled with key knowledge about the brand and the marketplace to inspire the birth of integrated marketing programs.

SVP, Retail Evangelist & Visionary (REV)

Head of Planning and Research for all Agency clients including many blue chip organizations in the packaged goods, retail, hard goods, and service categories

SVP, Planning Director

Roosevelt University

University of Chicago

The simple explanation of what I do is that I am a 'mind-stretcher.'  I provide companies/individuals with different perspectives on what they are doing, or where future opportunities may be.  

As a part of this, I review what's been done in the past as this typically provides some very fertile territory for future endeavors.  At the very least, it serves as a way to identify where the mine fields are.

A second area to focus on is the development of the right tools.  It's hard to remodel a house without the right tools.  These can include tech tools, processes, and/or logic flows.

In aggregate, I attempt to move people into a discomfort zone - as I always believe that this is the first step to true growth and improvement.

If interested enough, now you can read more of the specifics of what I've done below or reach out to me at ben.disanti@dhpagency.com.

taplio

The Battle

John Hilbrich

Ben DiSanti

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