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Zain Raj

Chief Executive Officer - Hyper Marketing Inc.

Session: Brand Rituals: How Successful Brands Bond with Customers for Life

Zain is Chief Executive Officer of Hyper Marketing, the largest independent marketing-services network in North America.  Hyper Marketing was formed by SolutionSet MediaWhiz Partnership’s January 2012 merger with D.L. Ryan Cos., the largest independent promotion and shopper marketing firm in the U.S.

The newly formed company has 1,300 employees in 24 offices across the country, and delivers digital, direct, data, local, promotion and shopper marketing programs to some of the world’s best-known brands.  Ad Age recently defined Hyper Marketing as a “transaction-driven” network far different from the holding companies’ business approach, which has been to tack on digital and sales-oriented capabilities to their traditional suite of services. At Hyper Marketing, everything revolves around changing consumer behavior and driving transactions.

Zain has counseled marketers and executed campaigns across a wide range of industries for the last two decades. His strategic approach and progressive solutions have resulted in dramatic top- and bottom-line growth for many companies in multiple categories.

Before Hyper Marketing, Zain was the President and CEO of SolutionSet MediaWhiz Partnership which he joined in mid-2010, helping energize the business and move it from a top-ten company to the second-largest independent agency in the marketing services space.  Prior to joining SolutionSet, Zain was North American CEO of Euro RSCG Discovery, the digital, CRM, data and analytics arm of Euro RSCG Worldwide as well as Global Practice Leader for Euro RSCG’s Retail Brands. Before Euro, he was President and CEO of BrandXp, a digital marketing and strategy firm that developed digitally-led innovations for Fortune 100 brands. He has also held global leadership positions at Bayer Bess Vanderwarker, J. Walter Thompson, Foote Cone & Belding and Wunderman Cato Johnson (now Wunderman). He began his career at Grey Advertising in India.

Zain is author of Brand Rituals: How Successful  Brands Bond with Customers for Life, a new approach to building brands in today’s digitally-led environment.  He is a sought-after speaker on the changing marketing landscape, espousing the view that marketing needs to change people’s behavior, not just attitudes, and that brands need to build bonded relationships with their core customers. He is a frequent contributor and featured in several publications including the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Fast Company. 

Zain is a member of the Executive’s Club of Chicago and a Charter Member of TiE Midwest. He formerly sat on the Board of Directors of the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association.  His views on business can be found on his website, www.brandrituals.net. 

Outside of work, Zain reaches out to the business community as a board member of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and Junior Achievement. Zain is married with two teenage children and loves time on the golf course, when possible.