Thomas Marianacci, the company’s owner has seventeen years of direct marketing experience. Early in his career, Tom worked in the general advertising business with SSC&B Lintas Worldwide, working with brand advertisers such as Noxell Cover Girl and Burger King. After a stint on the general advertising side of the business, Tom switched his advertising focus to the ROI driven direct response business. In the summer of 1997, Tom founded his own media company Media Resource Group, Inc. The company is a full service media-buying firm for the direct response industry. Media Resource Group’s principle business is to help clients acquire new customers profitably in the following traditional direct response areas: inserts, solo direct mail, direct response space advertising and online marketing. In January 2006, Tom opened a sister company ConvergeDirect. Converge is a turnkey DR agency that provides clients with a boutique hands-on solution of strategic media planning, analysis and procurement of all marketing services.

Currently the company places media ads to several billion circulation annually and annual billings of over $100 million dollars. Notable media clients include: Advanta Bank, BMG/Columbia House, DIRECTV, JC Penney Lifetouch Portrait Studios, Chase and Sprint.

Robin Bender began her media career in 1987 working on the general side of planning and buying. In 1989 when she started working at Rapp Collins Worldwide, she found her real love in advertising—direct marketing. Within her 17 years at Omnicom, Robin was responsible for the planning and buying of a wide range of direct-response media, helping clients optimize spending through aggressive front-end negotiations and back-end optimization strategies.

During Robin’s 17 years she has contributed to the success of a variety of campaigns, including subscription acquisition programs for financial and publishing companies, new member programs for credit cards, continuity lead generation programs for retail, financial, insurance and deregulated accounts, packaged goods and catalog distribution. The media mix for these programs ranges from ROP newspapers to special on-site events to DRTV and alternative media, selectively based on each clients’ objectives and target audience.

Robin decided to leave Omnicom in May of 2006 for bigger challengers and to work side-by-side with clients to help them understand the need to incorporate direct marketing into their marketing objectives. DRTV, insert media, directory advertising, interactive—all media that should be utilized to increase clients’ sales goals. Today Robin is using her background to work with Tom and Maarten to grow the ConvergeDirect firm.

Maarten has more than 20 years of experience, primarily on the client-side in direct marketing and brand management in diverse categories including books, magazines, coffee and tobacco.

Maarten began his career marketing book clubs for Weekly Reader and Grolier, where he managed the Dr. Seuss Club, the Disney Book Club and other lines of business. He then was product manager for Gevalia Kaffe Import Service at a time when “gourmet” coffee was a nascent category at best. Handling new member acquisition through all major media channels, membership grew five-fold during his tenure. Through these assignments, he honed his direct marketing skills and expertise in the club & continuity businesses.

Prior to joining ConvergeDirect, Maarten was VP/Group Marketing Director for Time4 Media, a division of Time Inc. In this role, he managed “agency” subscription sales, helping to manage the ratebase of well-known titles like Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Popular Science and This Old House.

As a founding member of ConvergeDirect, Maarten currently manages the DIRECTV account, overseeing the agency’s management of a multi-million dollar budget to generate new subscribers for the leading satellite television service.

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