A Dynamic Leader of Consumer Brands and Disruptive Start Ups.
A seasoned global executive -- classically trained Chief Marketing Officer in consumer goods and services who morphed into a highly entrepreneurial CEO and startup advisor -- adept at solving complex business challenges and driving growth. Pazzani is a great marketer who is also a highly driven business executive.
Highly experienced in the executive C-suite, inside an ad agency, with investor groups and shareholders, and as an entrepreneur, Pazzani has a 360° view of company operations and a strong slant toward high performance, results-driven marketing. With tenures at Bally Total Fitness, Foote Cone and Belding, DDB Worldwide, Heublein (now Diageo), dozens of the Fortune 500 company clients and a portfolio of start ups, he has worked on six continents and acquired potent skills at aligning marketing, sales & operations, achieving strategic advantage, driving growth, and orchestrating all the pieces toward lofty goals.
The skills of a decathlete. A track record of strategic leadership, consistent growth and positive outcomes.
With unusually diverse experience and broad skills that run across numerous disciplines, categories, companies, clients, and continents, Pazzani is effective in a wide range of arenas:
• As the first Chief Marketing Officer of Bally and Crunch, the troubled fitness company that was #1 in its industry with 500+ locations, he ignited a rapid revitalization that upgraded and integrated their branding, direct response media buying, field marketing, web presence, and CRM. He brought in IDEO to help design the 'fitness experience of the future', and he revolutionized the ad agency model by going in-house, saving a fortune in production costs, while creating new advertising that generated a record surge of new members and revenue that became a Harvard Business School case study.
• Over thirteen years at Heublein (now Diageo), he rose from entry-level to the top marketing job in the company at age 32, first moving from brand to brand, then division to division, repairing, guiding and growing global brands like Smirnoff Vodka, Jose Cuervo Tequila, Black Velvet Canadian Whisky, Christian Brothers Brandy, Inglenook and Almaden Wines, Blossom Hill, The Famous Grouse, Highland Park Single Malt, Don Q Rum, Yukon Jack, and many more.
• At Foote, Cone and Belding for seven years, he headed the agency's global strategic consulting group -- The Chess Team -- where they were marketing strategists for Kraft, SC Johnson, American Express, Citibank, US Postal Service, Samsung, Tropicana and many others across a 100-office network, with extensive work in Chicago, San Francisco, Hong Kong, London and across South America.
• And as CEO of bi-coastal Elias Music, the world's most awarded music agency, he reunited, transformed and grew a fragmented company against the tide of a declining industry. By pioneering the new discipline of audio brand identity for major clients like American Express, Apple, Audi, Cisco, Citi, Coke, Gatorade, Infiniti, McDonald's, Nike, Yahoo, and by putting the company on a path toward full-service music holding company, they were able to diversify into Latino music and music licensing, and thrive in a very troubled category.
His professional network is diverse, eclectic, and vast, and he uses it to attract talent, develop and mentor people, and build strong teams.
Innovative & Entrepreneurial : Traditional & Digital.
Now a serial entrepreneur, he is immersed in two principal areas -- fitness technology for people above age 50, and ultra-premium craft spirits -- with a common thread that requires a balance of entrepreneurship, strategic vision, marketing savvy, and a penchant for re-imagining the future.
Ultra-Premium Craft Spirits
• In 2009, with experience and teammates from the Heublein/Diageo years, he started a craft spirits company, United Craft Distillers, that provided advisory services, world-class marketing, and sales expertise to hyper-growing, micro-distilled, small-batch spirits brands. This evolved into Master Distillers Inc. which handled sales and marketing for T1 Tequila Uno (named 2016's Best Craft Tequila), Tears of Llorona tequila, and others and it continued to evolve as the craft spirits category grew to prominence. In 2019, Tears of Llorona partnered with Infinium Spirits in San Diego, who have rocketed this ultra-premium extra anejo brand to broad distribution and accelerated growth.
• In early 2022, with a team of experienced whiskey makers and marketers, he co-founded Unbound Spirits Brands, crafters and curators of distinctive luxury whiskey brands. They strive for new ways to create and blend the most masterfully complex bourbons and whiskeys. Their lead bourbon is The Maelstrom, a proprietary blend of different bourbons, extra-aged in custom-made new American oak-charred casks. then rocked and tamed by the unrelenting waves of The Great Lakes. Our Irish whisky, Hooligan Soup is a curated blend that is extra-aged and rocked over the waves of Lake Michigan in our Maelstrom oak barrels. Their other highly crafted whiskey brands — Maelstrom Stormwatch, Les Terribles, and Hold Fast — are scheduled for 2024-25.
Fitness & Wellness for People Above Age 50.
• Following his turnaround stint at Bally, he's remained active in the fitness sector, advising 24 Hour Fitness on strategic marketing issues, and in early 2012 he joined forces with investors, fitness operators, and healthcare experts to develop the company that became Activate Brain & Body, which evolved from a think-tank for fitness technology above age 50, through three pivots, before launching a small studio that opened location #1 in Cincinnati in early 2022, with geographic expansion to follow.
• In late 2022, continued innovation in the fitness/wellness sector has led to the development of an entirely new business model, continue. With a team of experienced innovators they are creating a revolutionary approach to fitness and wellness: re-invent it as upstream preventive healthcare and re-engineer it through process, technology, and customer experience to be for people who are repelled by traditional fitness clubs and gyms. Their mission is to transform the youth-oriented fitness business to put focus on the age 50-80 population who are under-served and misunderstood by traditional fitness operators. Integrating new technology, new exercise science, a unique customer experience, and quantified self-techniques coupled with expert, experienced, caregiving coaching, they are on a mission to radically improve the trajectory of aging and enable people to live longer happier, healthier lives. Opening in Florida in late 2025.
• In 2014, he partnered with family members to expand Silver City Vapors, a chain of retail vape and CBD shops with a small manufacturing facility, that catered to adult cigarette smokers looking to quit smoking. He guided them to BEST VAPE SHOP awards in 2016 and 2017 and was elected a Board Director of the industry’s national trade association in Washington, DC, SFATA. In April 2019 he led a successful exit and sold the business.
Driven. Competitive. Infectious enthusiasm that gets results through and with other people.
You have to be motivated, disciplined, persistent, and goal-oriented to earn three college degrees in just over five years -- B.A. in Psychology, B.S. in Marketing, and an M.B.A. -- and that is just what Pazzani did, an early sign of a compulsive curiosity, a never-ending search for perspective, and a competitive fire that has never faded.
An oft-published writer and panelist on marketing, branding, competitive strategy, and music, he gave a TED Talk at the 2008 TED Conference in Monterey, CA on The Power of Music. He has led business strategy seminars in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, London, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Venezuela, and at the Cannes Lions and Dubai Lynx advertising festivals. His articles have been in Advertising Age, Billboard, Brandweek, Marketing Daily, and SHOOT Magazine.
Pazzani has always been drawn to difficult challenges. He's climbed to the summits of major mountains on all seven continents, explored Antarctica, Easter Island, Ngorongoro Crater, the Equatorial Rain-forests, the deserts of United Arab Emirates, Mexican volcanoes, and beyond, and as a former F2000 racing driver, he has a keen appreciation for the value of precision, speed and high performance. Notably, he was the 146th human being to stand on the summit of the very remote Vinson Massif, the highest point in Antarctica, and has climbed both The Matterhorn and Mont Blanc five times each. He's recently returned again to Nepal and Everest Base Camp and is currently embarked on a mission to climb all forty-eight 4000-foot peaks of New Hampshire as he trains to climb Mt. Everest in 2025.
But before that happens, there are the book projects. After more than 100,000,000 uphill steps over sixty years of climbing and hiking all around the world, he's been persuaded to turn his experiences into several books -- The Secrets of Aging Well: GET OUTSIDE, an international bestseller now on Amazon, The Secrets of Aging Well: THE GET OUTSIDE WORKOUT, due in Winter 2025, and The Mountains Made Me An Entrepreneur -- due in Fall 2025.