The originality, ingenuity and calculated risk-taking required to run a business in the West are some of the things we love about our clients—and what they love about us. We live here because it is a beautiful place, and we work here because we can apply our talents to fun, energetic, and challenging projects. The calculated relocation of our careers from places like San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Seattle and Denver to an outpost like Bozeman, Montana is a timely move for everyone. We market ingenuity and there’s plenty of it here.
Old buildings tend to come with their quirks—and ours is no exception. On any given Thursday, you might find one of us tossing a big black bag of trash off the back deck and into the dumpster. Not only is it a satisfying stress reliever, it helps us get outside and enjoy the views.
Toni O’Berry, founding partner
Toni’s passion for devising successful brand strategies is rooted in her insatiable appetite for customer knowledge and discovering new ways to reach consumers. She strives to discover the nuances of each client’s business. Finding those subtleties are the “eureka moments” that have deep meaning in that they reveal a business’s relevance to customers’ daily lives and are the cornerstones of authentic brands. Her goal is to fuse customer perceptions and experiences with a company’s promise, creating brand truth. Just like a runner in the snow (that’s Toni in the winter), research and planning need traction to avoid slipping and falling. Creativity is where the strategic rubber hits the road in the selection of the right media, appropriate words and visuals. Toni’s work has shaped brands such as William-Sonoma, Levi Strauss, Guess, Citibank, US Air, 3M and Fidelity Investments, where she was vice president of creative development. She moved from Boston to Bozeman to serve as creative director for Origin 8, a local design studio. She attended California College of Arts in San Francisco and did master’s level work in design management at the University of Westminster in the UK.
Bridget Cavanaugh, founding partner
Bridget has a knack for bringing a brand to life. She’s an idea generator, an outside-the-box thinker and Chief Innovation Officer at O|C. Bridget, more creative than mathematical, thinks 1+1=11, not 2. She connects ideas, people, companies, consumers to catalyze her clients’ goals. With a family background in ranching, Bridget believes that you reap what you sow. She thrives on planting seeds of good ideas, and the seeds that form long-term relationships. To explore new opportunities for O|C clients, she draws on her network of colleagues, including investors, business leaders and national media contacts built from years of working with companies Fortune 500 companies, Internet start-ups and venture-backed firms. And like her sport of choice, endurance horseback riding, she looks for ways to go the distance in her professional life when she fully integrates every aspect of a business to create lasting brands. A Bozeman native and a Montana State University graduate, Bridget has helped position an array of companies as market leaders. Businesses such as Uniden, Nortel, Qwest and Celestial Seasonings have relied on her creative intellect.
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Diana Pailthorpe, vice president of client services
Thirteen years of working in the heart of the Silicon Valley has taught Diana to thrive in fast-paced marketing environments. Whether it’s a PR crisis, an extensive product launch, or the perfect storm of projects all coming to a head at once, Diana is well-equipped to lead the troops. While she only really speaks 1-1/8 languages, she is the agency’s key translator – understanding and interpreting the diverse needs and languages of consumers, businesses, clients and the internal O|C team into integrated marketing plans and programs. Diana oversees all client activity, managing several client accounts on a day-to-day basis as well as influencing strategy on every account behind the scenes. Her passion for PR and marketing were inspired by her communication, marketing and journalism studies at Santa Clara University where she earned her bachelor’s degree. She honed her skills working in the sporting goods industry for Easton Sports and in her years managing global communications efforts for semiconductor manufacturer IDT.
Best Trait: ability to elegantly muti-task across geographies, time zones and deadlines
Particularly Skilled at: message development and delivery
Mary Nell Westbrook, marketing strategist, special projects
At the new Sprint, Mary Nell Westbrook recently was appointed to lead all communications for the new company’s brand, marketing and sponsorship strategies. Westbrook also was the designated lead for all Communications Planning and Structure during the year-long Sprint-Nextel merger.
When Sprint needed to become a wireless consumer brand, Westbrook was asked to lead Sprint’s Consumer Division communications strategies. And in the post-merger era of the new company, Westbrook has been called to build a new Communications Practice group around the Chief Marketing Office of Sprint.
Before joining Sprint in 2000, Westbrook was with Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide where she worked on both consumer and business-to-business teams, with a specialization in consumer technology, enterprise systems and wireless telecom. While serving in an agency role, her clients included Nortel Networks Wireless, Motorola, i2, AOL’s Digital City, Fujitsu, NEC, Siemens Wireless and more.
Heidi Lasher, senior account manager
Strategic thinking, clear writing, and steadfast execution are the threads that tie together Heidi’s versatile career. With 14 years experience in marketing, public relations, advocacy and communications, Heidi’s focus has always been on translating complex and sensitive concepts and issues into compelling stories that motivate people to act. Her work has spanned the globe, from United Nations organizations to national governments to local companies. She and her family moved to Bozeman from Seattle, Washington.
Cary Silberman, creative director
Cary approaches design as a fluid, ever-changing equation that must factor in innumerable variables like demographics, trends, products and visual meaning. Establishing the equation, then solving it and watching a solid brand, logo, brochure or other product evolve into compelling graphics that clearly convey messages and information is what Cary finds rewarding about working with clients. No matter if the media is print, Web, packaging, a mass transit bus wrap or simple business card, Cary brings to design the same drive and passion that he devotes to his disc golf tournaments (or anything other competitive activity). Cary, a graduate of Montana State University, has helped shape a wide range of brands from "ultra-lite" backpacking leader GoLite to the hometown favorite, the Bozeman IceDogs.
Caitlin Magbee, account manager
Caitlin is the agency’s social media guru and self-professed research junkie. Whether at work or for her own enjoyment, Caitlin is always poring over a newspaper, magazine, blog or social networking site, which keeps her clients in the media loop. Her knowledge of who’s reading what has landed clients in local outlets and national media outlets such as NPR, The New York Times, Town & Country and Shape. Researching industry trends and competitors helps Caitlin build successful branding and public relations strategies and lets O|C navigate the ever-changing world of business and Internet technology. Caitlin’s background includes working for Sprint PCS in Irvine, Calif. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in business administration from Montana State University.
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Leah Bohnemann, account manager and media buyer
Leah loves knowing that the media strategies she devises for clients and the advertising space or airtime she secures for them as the team’s media buyer helps businesses grow and reach their goals. And because she thrives on creativity and working with all kinds of people, she enjoys that her role as an O|C account manager means a dynamic mix of clients and projects. She applies the same mental focus and goal-oriented attitude that she channels into her running, hiking and skiing to building successful advertising campaigns. Leah offers to clients her media buying counsel based on her experience as an account executive and media planner/buyer for Cardinal Communications in New York City where she handled all the print advertising for accounts that included Miramax Films, Sony Pictures Classics and Paramount Vantage. She has also worked in sales for Clear Channel Radio in Bozeman and in marketing for PrintingForLess.com in Livingston.
Joseph Bergantine, designer
What Joseph prioritizes in creating and programming Web sites is superior function in addition to great form. Joseph’s sites are easy to navigate and intuitive for users. He reads what he calls “nerdy-nerdy” design and programming blogs, keeping a pulse on today’s Web. When he’s not in the office, Joseph relaxes by doing the exact same things he does while at work. A Bozeman native, he attended the Art Institute of Portland where he learned that the best design is a byproduct of both hemispheres of the brain. Since moving back to Bozeman he has helped evolve such companies as Schnee’s, Trophy Ridge, and Clarisonic.
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Erin Kirt, designer
Erin compares design and working with O|C’s eclectic mix of clients to a daily fieldtrip – an ongoing opportunity to meet new people, find out what they’re working on and what’s happening in the Bozeman community and beyond. For Erin, design must blend flawlessly with a client’s business goals and concepts; something can’t simply look good but not convey a specific message or tie into the larger brand identity. Erin is a design leader, not a follower. She draws on what she observes through travel or in the community as inspiration for designs that are ahead of the creative curve. When she’s not creating for a client, Erin paints and draws to strengthen her illustration skills. She is a graduate of Montana State University and has a background in fine art and architecture, disciplines that often influence her designs.
Valerie Ross, operations manager
As the team’s operations expert, Val keeps all facets of the agency running smoothly by overseeing HR issues, client invoicing, managing timesheet reporting, maintaining vendor relations or handling any other business consideration. And while she loves managing the business details, Val most enjoys interacting with clients to build strong, long-lasting relationships between them and the O|C team. Val thrives on attention to detail, a trait that carries through even to her hobbies of playing piano and violin, always looking for the right note and beat. She adds to the agency a solid background in helping corporate organizations drive and manage dramatic growth and previously worked for nationally recognized advertising, marketing and public relations agencies Euro RSCG Worldwide (Formerly DSW Partners) and EvansGroup. She’s worked with clients ranging from Microsoft to Kodak.
Camden Easterling Swindell, writer
Opprobrium... cohesive... acuminous... harbinger... The collection of books - dictionaries, a thesaurus, writing guides, etc. - on Camden’s desk tells you that she’s the O|C team’s primary writer. Whether she’s searching for those perfect words to conjure up just the right image or trying to distill complicated ideas down to clear messages that communicate what a business is all about, Camden loves to play with language. Nothing is more satisfying than working with clients to put their great ideas on paper in a way that conveys their excitement. After several years of reporting for daily papers in Montana, Camden came to O|C to put her creative writing side to work. Camden has a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and has written for a variety of magazines and newspapers.
Jessica Johnson, studio manager
A combination of the ability to work in a fast-paced environment with a penchant for finding solutions to tricky problems makes Jessica a feather in the cap of the O|C team. The middle-woman between account managers, creative staff and clients, Jessica coordinates the traffic of all projects to see that clients’ goals are fulfilled. She loves film, fashion, horseback riding, antiquing, running and hiking. This hodgepodge of interests indulges the kind of flair of creativity and endurance that O|C needs from its studio manager. Prior to O’Berry Cavanaugh, Jessica worked for Chisel Industries as its production manager. Before coming to Bozeman, she worked in the film industry as a production coordinator and later as the product manager for jewelry company Crimzon Rose Accessories. Jessica has a degree in art history from Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.
Ellen Abadie, intern
If you call the office this summer and are greeted with a Southern drawl, you know its O’Berry Cavanaugh’s intern from Baton Rouge, La., Ellen. Mountains, hiking trails, charming small town life, and an average forecast of below 100-degrees were all factors that convinced Ellen to spend the summer in Bozeman. Along with vigorous Southern spirit, she brings with her the enthusiasm to learn more about the world of public relations, marketing and branding. Nothing helps a student move toward a career more than seating him or her in the office place itself. Writing press releases and pitches, researching for clients and inputting data into Excel - this assortment of tasks is exactly what teaches Ellen the ins and outs of account management in a PR firm. A junior at Louisiana State University, Ellen started her internship at O’Berry Cavanaugh at the beginning of June and will stay until August. During the school year, Ellen works for the public affairs department at LSU where she receives experience in writing and editing. She plans to get her bachelor’s degree from the College of Mass Communications in Public Relations in 2010 and move on to work or get her master’s in the field.
Mark Thibeault, senior advisor
Mark’s entrepreneurial spirit and exuberance for helping companies grow and prosper has been his lifeblood for well over 25 years. His understanding of what it takes to run his own business combined with decades of working with small and large corporations allows him to possess an exceptional resume of sales, marketing and communication talent. The majority of his portfolio exhibits products and services performed for a wide array of manufacturers and specialty dealers in the outdoor and sporting goods industries. Regardless of the industry, he provides unparalleled knowledge and insight for helping businesses reach their goals and objectives.
Diane Thibeault, senior advisor
Diane brings over two decades of advertising and business expertise to the O’Berry | Cavanaugh team. For the past 25 years she has worked in tandem with her husband Mark on the development and execution of a multitude of client marketing plans. Diane’s expertise in financial and business management allows her to be exceptionally adept at understanding and managing client projects, budgets and schedules. Her background entails a wide variety of experience planning and implementing national media campaigns, and coordination and management of print communication projects. Her ability to work in both the left-brain (business) and right-brain (creative) compliment our agency and client needs.