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Tina VonderHaar

President and CEO

about

Brighton - St. Louis, Missouri, USA

As a business consultant, Tina was so impressed with one of her clients that she first joined them, then four years later bought them, and that’s how she became CEO of Brighton in 2008. In the course of just five years, she grew the agency from 40 employees to more than 60 professionals.

Having spent more than 10 years in business consulting at Accenture, she firmly believes that effective marketing is multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary, and she ensures that Brighton brings together the best part of an ad agency with the best part of a consulting firm.

The agency provides integrated marketing solutions for clients in the agriculture, food and what it calls “family” industries incorporating everything from healthcare to education to recreation. Its approach begins with insights that shape the strategic direction of a brand and builds toward a comprehensive planning, development and management framework that connects people to the brand with relevant content at a relative time. It offers comprehensive key services including market research and analytics, advertising, influencer engagement, content creation, digital marketing, interactive design and development and in-house audio and video production.  

The agency’s clients, global and national leaders as well as regional and local firms, present unique challenges and objectives. Whether helping with a single project or managing an entire brand, Brighton’s philosophy is the same — tactical execution is only as good as the thinking that goes into the plan. Tina believes that building a successful brand means building a long-term relationship with customers. “It’s not just a conversation; it’s a relationship,” she says. 

As a result, she gets in deep with clients and their brands… to the point of sitting in the homes of so-called “interesting” consumers and hearing about everything from pet peeves to pet projects. A woman with many passions, she is more up-to-date on current music than Rolling Stone, but loves her ’80s faves. Every summer, she reads one book a day for a week on the Delaware beach in Rehoboth and spends most weekends moving from son No. 1’s sporting event to son No. 2’s. A connoisseur of red wine, well, any vintage is perfect when relaxing on a porch at Innsbrook watching the sunset – and, no, not far away in the Alps of Austria, but at a beautiful namesake lake community just an hour from home.