J. Mark Riggs
Mark Riggs is the founder and CEO of Pemberton which is management consultancy that exists to be the go-to resource for marketing/communications agencies to discover and reveal pathways to organic growth while changing the mindset of an RFP-obsessed industry.
Before starting Pemberton, Mark spent 20 years in the agency world working for IPG’s Mullen Lowe, an Ad Age A-List Agency, Taylor, the Holmes Report’s Consumer Agency of the Decade, MWWPR and French/West/Vaughan, the Southeast’s largest independent agency.
Mark has spent a career learning the art of integrated communication developing and executing award-winning consumer programs for brands and companies like Allstate, Honda, Ford, Kimberly-Clark, Polaris, Coke, Diageo, RJ Reynolds, SunTrust Banks, the U.S. Navy, the Atlantic Coast Conference and ESPN, to name a few.
Mark has a reputation as a business-builder and a strategic counselor and has experience in leading client services, insights and planning functions, as well as developing talent. A creative thinker and problem-solver, Mark believes that great thinking can “come from anywhere,” it’s the ability to harness it and leverage it for clients that makes the intellectual property of the agency valuable and an integral part of the marketing mix.
Mark began his career as a journalist learning resourcefulness and the value of filling a window of opportunity with concise communication. Additionally, Mark started his marketing career in the Olympic Movement learning the intricacies of planning and an attention to detail in the development of events as a lifestyle communication tool.
A member of the Business Journal’s 40-Under-40 Business Leadership Hall of Fame, Mark won the first ever PR Week campaign award for a North Carolina-based agency. Mark has walked the plains of Kenya’s Masai Mara, the corridors of the Appalachian Trail, and found Tommy Lasorda sitting in his backseat.