Brian Lenhart

Current

Manager, Brand Strategy & Marketing, OPEN at American Express
Owner at Brian Lenhart Interactive, LLC

Past

Interactive Strategy and Innovation at American Express
Account Executive at Saatchi & Saatchi

Education

Columbia University - Columbia Business School
Lehigh University

Recommended

19 people have recommended Brian

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Internet

Brian Lenhart’s Summary

Passionate about building brands through synergistic and innovative strategies that evolve across all touch points. Especially skilled in developing creative interactive experiences that drive results, often using emerging technologies.

Brian Lenhart’s Specialties:

Branding, advertising, interactive development, strategy development, innovation, idea generator, project management, website coding, graphic design, programming, analysis

Brian Lenhart’s Experience

Manager, Brand Strategy & Marketing, OPEN

American Express

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; AXP; Financial Services industry)

October 2007 — Present (2 years 3 months)

Responsible for key American Express OPEN brand marketing initiatives that inspire and enable business growth for Cardmembers and promote brand awareness with prospective customers, including:

- OPEN Forum (www.openforum.com), a website providing a wealth of resources for savvy business owners. Accountable for all aspects of website management from content management strategy to platform evolution to external promotional activities. Read more about the platform and how it has successfully driven business results in the OPEN Forum entry for Forrester's Groundswell award at http://snurl.com/3orm1-brian

- Multimedia content, such as the “Inside the Entrepreneurial Mind” online video series (www.openforum.com/eventcenter) and Cardmember “Share your story” videos

- Media events, supporting American Express OPEN’s involvement at Inc 500 conference and NY Times Small Business Summit

- Viral online marketing strategy
Owner

Brian Lenhart Interactive, LLC

(Privately Held; Internet industry)

May 1998 — Present (11 years 8 months)
Interactive Strategy and Innovation

American Express

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; AXP; Financial Services industry)

March 2006 — October 2007 (1 year 8 months)

- Led a team of 5 colleagues to plan the AXPi Innovation Summit, a two-day conference for senior leadership. Leaders from Virgin, Stanford University, Microsoft, MIT Media Lab and Google were on the list of speakers that presented

- Tested new technologies and interactive marketing techniques via pilot projects in the American Express Labs environment (labs.americanexpress.com). Developed standardized process deck and reporting methodology for pilots

- Led an international cross-functional team to pilot the first live Video Spokesperson on an American Express webpage; test conducted for the Gold Card in Germany. Results were significant and influenced roll out decisions

- Conducted extensive analysis on behavior of Cardmembers who have used American Express Labs and the Account Information Widget

- Drove innovation among worldwide employees by expanding the department-focused AXPi Innovation Challenge, a monthly competition calling for interactive ideas
Account Executive

Saatchi & Saatchi

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; Marketing and Advertising industry)

June 2004 — March 2006 (1 year 10 months)

- Helped to manage general-market advertising for Crest, a billion-dollar brand of Procter & Gamble

- Coordinated the production of 21 commercials, 9 print ads, and 1 newspaper ad for the first-ever toothpaste vote; bringing to life P&G’s “Consumer is Boss” mantra

- Analyzed competitive market share in relation to promotional, advertising, interactive, and new product launch activity to determine key drivers

- Maintained, evolved, and implemented Crest equity visual standards, guidelines, and policies across all touch-points via cross-functional agency team

- Analyzed television commercial testing metrics to isolate improvement areas and increase engagingness, convincingness, and recall in order to bolster trial potential

- Worked with 4 international hubs to coordinate the gathering and analysis of all global oral care competitive advertising; utilizing a 138-office network

- Developed and executed extensive account management training

Brian Lenhart’s Education

Columbia University - Columbia Business School

Executive MBA , 2009 — 2010 (expected)
Lehigh University

B.S. & B.A. , Marketing & Art (Graphic Communications Concentration)