John Davidoff’s childhood was more than building blocks and swing sets. Growing up with entrepreneurial parents, his early years were a natural stepping stone for the path his professional life has taken, built upon an expertise and marketing savvy ingrained at a young age. He began to understand how business works years before professional thoughts enter others’ minds. As a young boy, John learned the principles of earnestness, strategy, resourcefulness, hard work, and caring.

John’s mother was a maven of the New England advertising community in the 1970s and 80s, and his father was an innovative hometown attorney specializing in business and family law. Among John’s school updates and sports scores, dinner conversation was speckled with commentary about his parents’ clients—including new business challenges and brainstorming for solutions. John inevitably became wrapped up and involved in his parents’ work lives, developing a thirst for the business world.

After college and an early career in broadcasting, John set out to learn marketing. He spent his early 20s engrossed in the family advertising agency business, where he worked on regional and national consumer accounts. With an itch to play with “the big boys,” John moved to Chicago in 1986 where he spent 12 accomplished years working at the country’s top advertising agency,
DDB.

At DDB, John worked on blue-chip accounts such as Bud Light, Discover Card, McDonald’s, State Farm Insurance, Maybelline, and Ralston Purina pet foods. In his final four years at DDB, John wrote a business plan and led the launch of a very successful event and entertainment marketing resource, where he worked with top celebrity entertainers, producers, touring shows, and cause-marketing programs.

In the mid 90s, John got the “sales bug.” Inspired by entrepreneurial friends and the sales reps who called on him, John set out to bring in business to DDB. Successful early on with his sales endeavors, John left DDB in 1998 to lead a 10-person sales team for General Growth Properties (GGP) in selling a national portfolio of regional shopping centers to blue-chip advertisers as an alternative form of media.

John began then, and continues to this day, a life of criss-crossing the United States to call on national advertisers on behalf of a wide range of products and services. With successful brands such as Pepsi, Visa, Kodak, P&G, General Mills, Charles Schwab, and E*Trade, John led the 50-person in-house advertising agency at GGP and was eventually made Chief Marketing Officer of the entire company, supervising a team of 350.

In 2001, DDB’s parent company, Omnicom, recruited John back to its fold to do for Omnicom what John had done at DDB and GGP. Serving as SVP, Sales and Marketing, for The Radiate Group, a division of Omnicom, John led a national team of consultants as a resource for integrated marketing, specializing in events and sales promotion.

John next accepted the challenge of leading a once-stellar entertainment marketing firm through a turnaround, beginning in 2003. When a dominating client stopped paying its bills four months into John’s tenure, the business closed, forcing John to use his creativity and ingenuity to salvage what was left. He stayed 10 months until the end, working with the owners, bankers, attorneys, and accountants on retaining the remaining assets. John negotiated to move three remaining clients and key employees to another firm in order to maintain and enhance the clients’ marketing activities. After supervising the transition of the business for another six months, John felt he had accomplished his long-term mission of becoming a leader in integrated marketing by learning to sell and learning to run a business.