Empact Designs has been launched in Studio City, CA (with affiliate offices in Santa Ana, CA, and Ft. Lauderdale, FL), by Nancy M. Rowe, a multi-award winning experiential design strategist, who serves as its president/founder, and leader of the strategic creative team that handles each client project. Rowe, a 2010 nominee for a highly prestigious “National Design Award” from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum at the Smithsonian Institution, has an international reputation as a strategic visionary, conceiving and implementing truly revolutionary, multi-media “experiences” for many of the world’s most successful brands. (Please see: www.empactdesigns.com for more information)
Empact Designs counts among its clients IBM, AT&T, The Clio Awards, and The Hollywood Reporter, to name some. The company is currently in pre-production on the 39th Annual Key Art Awards, which will take place in Los Angeles in June, 2010. Presented by The Hollywood Reporter, the Key Art Awards recognize excellence from across all media in the promotion of feature films, television, and home entertainment product. Ms. Rowe produced this event last year as well, prior to her formation of Empact Designs.
ABOUT NANCY ROWE
A thinker, writer, artist, and businesswoman, Nancy Rowe is renowned for championing big ideas and bold new ways of thinking โ approaches which continue to inspire her unique body of work.
A native of Chicago, Nancy Rowe, following college, relocated to Los Angeles and began her professional career as an agent at ICM, one of Hollywood’s preeminent talent agencies. After six years in the film packaging division of ICM, Rowe evolved her career into the production of feature films.
A decade later, Rowe left the entertainment industry, and began work with AT&T. There, she championed new marketing and branding approaches, designed to win back customers that AT&T’s divestitureโas well as new competition– had eroded. Rowe next worked on both the client side and agency side for IBM, conceiving and implementing a $ 200-million, award-winning and critically acclaimed project called “IBM Innovation Centers,” on a worldwide basis. Rowe, along with an extensive team of other creatives, won worldwide accolades for these centers, and her work was profiled in feature articles appearing in such prestigious industry publications as Architectural Record (as well as both the Canadian and Japanese equivalents of Architectural Record, Asure and Eciffo), Communication Arts, Metropolis, and I.D. Magazine, among them.
Rowe earned a global reputation for her holistic approach to branding and marketing for IBM, which she termed “Experience Architecting,” based on scientific methodologies she developed in a process she calls “Root Distillation.” This strategic thinking creates meaningful customer experiences by the seamless integration of multiple arts and sciences, including architecture, interior design, brand attributes, technology, multi-media platforms, and rich content, not to mention the “human” factor of people. Rowe introduced into the world of marketing a new set of ideas-not only about brands, advertising, promotion and design, but also about leadership, authenticity, and brand identity.
After achieving significant success in her global experiential work, she began collaborating with Santa Ana, CA-based Morris Advertising, along with other progressive creative agencies and thinkers, to conceive effective brand strategies for a more diverse array of clients. Ever conscious of the unique niche she has established for herself within the event marketing industry, she was next prompted her to launch her own company, Empact Designs, in 2010.
It was no surprise to see Rowe recently seek to return to her roots in the entertainment industry. Her opportunity came with the production and creative direction of the 38th Annual Key Art Awards presentation in June 2009, on behalf of her client, the legendary, 80- year old trade publication, The Hollywood Reporter. The Key Art Awards are a critical, tent pole event each year for The Hollywood Reporter, which recently re-branded. Rowe and her team garnered critical acclaim for their great innovation in the experience architecting of the ’09 Key Arts, and have been invited back again to repeat their success this year.
