Convergence marketer extraordinaire: Marcie Brogan of Detroit's Brogan & Partners Convergence Marketing aims to give her clients the edge by zapping into the power of a new kind of marketing.

The first thing that catches your eye hen you step off the elevator onto the 19th floor of the Fisher Building is the leopard carpeting--acres of it, or so it seems. It's a fitting introduction to the world of Marcie Brogan, the convergence marketer extraordinaire who early on traded the "glass ceiling" for her name on the glass door as founder and managing partner of Brogan & Partners Convergence Marketing in Detroit.

Follow the trademark spotted trail through those double glass doors and you'll find yourself in a maze of artistically--sometimes startlingly--decorated offices and conference rooms (Elvis on velvet peers soulfully from his 24-by-36-inch frame in one), reflective of the high energy, high-impact style of its eponymous founder.

Brogan started the agency in 1984 after studying English, philosophy and literature in college and then cutting her creative teeth with the likes of W.B. Doner and BMP (the agency that invented account planning) in the United States and Europe. Today, Brogan & Partners ranks as one of Detroit's top agencies with more than $6 million in annual gross revenue.

Inside the maze, the walls in Brogan & Partners' New Center headquarters tell a compelling success story. They're brimming with striking examples of the agency's creative ad work (one, for the Michigan Department of Community Health, prominently features a brightly hued condom) and row upon row of trophies, plaques and commendations the firm has won for its creative advertising and marketing campaigns over the years.

Brogan: When I was in London (with BMP), and this was the mid-70s, television (in Britain) was only on for a few hours in the evening. So people read more. There were a lot of things going on that made advertising there more erudite, more literate than it is here. I know that's still true.

Thus, a unique style was born. In Europe, Marcie Brogan gained a virtual lifetime of experience in just eight years that proved invaluable when it came time to open her own shop back home.

At the time, she recalls, Detroit's advertising market was made up of a handful of large agencies that serviced the major automakers and Tier One suppliers and dozens of small agencies that scrambled for everything else.

Nearly two decades later, the climate hasn't changed much, but Brogan has managed to carve out a comfortable niche. She started by crafting highly creative campaigns with low production costs for retail clients--among them, significantly, Kmart Corp.

Brogan: One of the most exciting things that we did was an assignment from Kmart to come up with an idea for their kitchen and house-wares department. I sold them the Martha Stewart idea and I believe we made $7,500, as a consultant. And now it's a jillion-dollar industry. We were too small to be an agency at the time, but we did it as a consulting project. We came up with the concept of, "You hire Martha Stewart, and here's how it works in your kitchen ... " This was just when she was becoming popular. I saw a book she did. Now every time I see her I think about that.

Back then, Brogan had no way of knowing that the Martha Stewart franchise would grow into a billion-dollar business, but the concept is an indicator of the type of forward thinking that Brogan--along with partners Bonnie Folster and Maria Marcotte--bring to the business. Their innovation would fuel the agency's growth.

After wading into the retail waters, the firm began taking farmed-out automotive work from Campbell-Ewald. From there Brogan & Partners began branching out into a variety of industries, and today its portfolio includes health care, economic development, consumer services, technology, tourism and automotive clients.

Brogan: We went into automotive through retail, through the car dealers. We did a women's marketing program for a bunch of dealers in mid-Michigan. Chevrolet hired us to go around to dealers in Michigan and then some places in the Midwest. Our assignment was to tell dealers why they should market to women. We showed them that women had money in their pockets as well.

The firm went on to add Ford and Chrysler, and suppliers like Delphi and American Axle to its client roster. Meanwhile, by 1986, the company was helping Henry Ford Hospital improve its image. It was a challenging project, because few health-care providers advertised on television at the time. The hospital suffered from an image problem, much as the city did, because of the misperceptions about its surroundings. Brogan decided to correct the image problem by humanizing the hospital. She proposed using a television campaign to let the public take a closer look at the hospital, its doctors, nurses and technicians. It proved to be a groundbreaking concept.

Brogan: Henry Ford was the first hospital to use television in this market in 1986. The doctors were just terrified of going on television. The only thing that they could relate to was Dr. Scholl's foot powder. That was their image of medical advertising. So we did something which still exists today. We created the Henry Ford health segment around the 11 o'clock (p.m.) news. It was a minute segment on Channel 4 and Channel 7. We created a pod where there was a reporter giving health news, then a 30-second commercial and it was all called the "Henry Ford Health Report." And it was very successful.

Brogan's growth strategy has been helped by key partnerships with Eiler Communications, a public relations firm with offices in Ann Arbor and San Mateo, Calif., and the Glengariff Group, a market research firm in Chicago. Brogan & Partners also has an office in the Raleigh-Durham area where it hopes to attract more technology clients in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park area.

Eiler has done considerable work for the Ann Arbor IT Zone, Washtenaw Development Council and Automation Alley, while Brogan counts the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and Detroit Regional Chamber. Brogan is a member of the Chamber's Technology Action Group, charged with developing a collaborative technology agenda for Southeast Michigan.

Like many, Marcie Brogan believes Southeast Michigan's economic future hinges on its ability to compete with other research and technology hubs, especially in the bioscience fields.

Brogan: We have a chance of being the startup and home for biosciences. I think the life-sciences corridor is a commitment to that, and I think bioscience is the new face of high-tech, Michigan is as well if not better positioned than anybody else in grabbing hold of this. We could become the Silicon Valley of biosciences ... I would think in five years, Detroit, Michigan, the Oakland County corridor and Ann Arbor corridor would be on the list of the top 10. I think we could be on the list of the top two in biosciences.

Brogan & Partners could have a dramatically different look as well. The agency is continuing to expand, with ambitious plans to add specialty marketing to the African-American, Hispanic and gay/lesbian communities to its repertoire.

Brogan: We're opening an office in Miami towards the end of this year. Our first product is going to be translations. We do Mexican (markets) here. We'll be able to do Cuban there. Another market I see as a future niche that fits with our clients, particularly tourism, is the gay market. So out of the South Beach office we're going to try to develop a practice in Hispanic marketing and gay marketing, and out of this (Detroit) office, marketing to African Americans.

Although advertising will continue to be its bread and butter, Brogan & Partners will emphasize the concept of convergence marketing as it goes forward. But what, precisely, is convergence marketing?

Like the leopard-print carpeting that flows through Brogan & Partners' headquarters, convergence marketing is about taking the same theme through a variety of channels simultaneously. The agency, in effect, acts as the keeper of the client's brand.

Brogan: This term ... captures what we believe the business should be today, and as far as I can see into tomorrow. Convergence means they're not side by side or a collection of vehicles ... like, okay, you need some advertising, you need some direct response, you might need to redo your Website to match your brand. So when you call the agency, the way I answer the phone should match the carpet, should match the direct mail you receive from me, should match the ad you see in the Detroiter, should match the materials I give out at the (Detroit Regional Chamber's Leadership Policy Conference). Everything about our business should converge.

Brogan traces the change in emphasis locally to the arrival of Phil Guarascio in 1985 as General Motors Corp.'s vice president of advertising and corporate marketing, after more than 20 years on Madison Avenue.

Brogan: He knew full well that a $15 million commission on a $500-million account was an unconscionable amount of money. And that's why agencies in town that had automotive accounts were far richer, far bigger than agencies that didn't because the automotives had big bucks.

Guarascio, who retired in 2000, is credited with dramatically altering GM's media buying, marketing and advertising evaluation and cross-promotional activities. He also combined media-buying functions so that the various agencies servicing GM weren't all buying time or space in the same magazines or other media. He also looked for large discounts from the media.

Brogan: He started doing a number of things, and one was cutting commissions. I think most GM agencies now work on a 9-percent commission or 11-percent commission. I don't know exactly, it's a big secret. When that happened big agencies as well as small agencies thought, "Omigod, for this $75 million that I was charging for the media I was able to throw in the brochures, the PR, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. But when I start losing money I have to start charging for all of this stuff I used to just throw in. SO agencies started to add all of these services and called it integrated marketing. Today it's convergence marketing.

And in these parts, Marcie Brogan figures prominently as one of its most dedicated practitioners,

File on Marcie Brogan

In the beginning: Born in Cleveland's Little Italy; raised in Pomfret, Conn.

Education: M.A. in American literature from University of Detroit; B.A. in literature and philosophy from Ursuline College for women in Ohio.

Most memorable campaigns: "Keep the Best Players on the Bench" for circuit court judges (late 1980s); AIDS prevention and kids' anti-smoking (early 1990s).

Other campaigns of note: Travel Michigan; identifying Martha Stewart as Kmart spokesperson/supplier.

Favorite movie: "Election"

Favorite vacation spot: Positano, Italy

Last book read: "A House for Mr. Biswas" by V.S. Nalpul

Family: Husband Mike, an author of thrillers and former Campbell-Ewald ad executive; two adult children, Brendan and Chloe.

Trademark: Lots of leopard and lipstick and never enough Elvis.

Recent honors: 10 Best Places to Work from Crain's Detroit Business; Northwood University Woman of Distinction; Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's transition team; election to boards of Detroit Regional Chamber and Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan.