Patrick Michael Shannon
Summary
For more than a decade, Patrick Shannon has been the president of A7 Multimedia, a high-tech creative services firm, and has recently served for 4 years as the Director of New Media at the world's leading aerospace college, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. At the 130-location institution, Patrick enjoyed the challenges of senior-level management involving strategic planning, creative team leadership, global marketing, and development in leading-edge Web and multimedia technologies. Patrick built in-house studios, created software tools, re-engineered business processes, launched numerous marketing campaigns and more than doubled the web traffic and online applications during his four-year tenure as a university director.
Previously, Shannon helped launch three IPOs, served for four years prior as the Creative Director of an Inc. 500, Blue Chip Enterprise advertising agency handling national brand accounts, and owned two advertising agencies in Washington D.C. and Orlando. Patrick maintains a strong track record for delivering effective marketing strategies, creative design, marketing plan development, and production management of large-scale media campaigns, high-profile sales collateral and dynamic interactive software applications.
Patrick has won more than 40 industry advertising awards (23 Gold and 18 Silver Addy Awards), three national awards for Creative Excellence (PRINT Magazine), and one GLOBAL award, the 1999 "Gold ARDY" for "Best Overall Marketing Campaign in the World." He maintains a sterling reputation for personal integrity and fair business dealings, as well as empowering others to perform at full potential, enthusiastically instilling a vision for world-class excellence.
Capabilities
Award-winning marketing and advertising strategy, business development and marketing plans, mass communication campaign development, internet and multimedia software design and all aspects of commercial media production. Advertising agency management, creative direction, branding, software interface design and all aspects of production with solid command of creative writing, design, video and film production, scriptwriting, photography, graphic design, 3D modeling/animation, database design and Web architecture. Competent in every aspect of national brand marketing and advertising including strategic planning, research and development, packaging, public relations, event production, media planning, campaign implementation, tracking, reporting and analysis. Also well-seasoned in large-scale e-commerce and web database development, at the enterprise level, utilizing technologies such as Cold Fusion, Flash and Oracle.
Excellent communication skills, client relations, hiring, large-scale project management, budgeting and organizational skills, as well as public speaking and multimedia presentation skills. Proven track record in retail, business-to-business, point-of-purchase, direct media lead generation, event marketing (trade shows), and high-profile corporate image strategy, having served clients in technology, education, travel & tourism, food, hardware, real estate, software, security, automotive, sports and fine arts.
Biographical Profile
PATRICK MICHAEL SHANNON was born on June 22, 1962 in Baltimore, Maryland, and was raised on the water near the Chesapeake Bay. He attended private schools and summer camps in his early years, and recognized as unusually talented, Patrick won two, Maryland State art awards, and one Maryland State Science Fair by the age of twelve.
Shannon started his career at a leading architectural firm in Washington D.C. at age 19, showing uncanny natural talents in drafting, 3D perspective rendering and architectural model-building, and won a fully-paid, five-year Senatorial scholarship to study architecture at the University of Maryland. At 21, Shannon joined a national publications firm producing magazines, books, and videos, and Patrick quickly rose from Graphic Designer to Art Director, then to Production Manager, and eventually to Publications Director (over the entire Editorial, Video and Print Production departments). Here, Patrick gained communications industry knowledge and hands-on experience, exhibiting natural accumen in creative services leadership and resource planning.
At 26, Shannon opened his first advertising agency in Washington D.C., and within two years, won two, national, Excellence in Print awards. He was also married in the fall of 1987. As investing partners relocated to Florida in 1988, they soon encouraged Patrick to join them in publishing eleven, weekly local newspapers in the Orlando area. With computer graphics technology still in its infancy, Shannon set up a dynamic, high-tech production department, "telebridging" three offices on a real-time, wide-area network, hiring, training and developing the infrastructure for a staff of 35 graphic designers, writers and production artists.
Shannon started his second agency in Orlando, Florida, at the bidding of his previous Washington D.C. clients, and soon branched into serving clients around the country in the homebuilding and remodeling industries as well as in the film and video arenas in Orlando.
Within 3 years after starting the Orlando firm, Patrick joined a much larger, regional agency, to focus more on large-scale television production. He quickly became recognized as the Creative Director of this Inc. 500, Blue Chip Enterprise, heading up the creative and production departments, developing strategic ad campaigns and high-profile collateral for his clients including Subway, Hilton, Nascar, Thoro, Howard Johnson, Harris, Uniprompt Microsystems, and dozens of others. Shannon won the firm most of the new accounts they pitched, as well as dozens of Addy Awards for Creative Excellence every year.
In the summer of 1995, Shannon recognized the potential of the emerging Internet, and was asked to speak at an international conference: Commanding the Future 95, held in Orlando. With a strong roster of new clients from the conference, he subsequently launched A7 Multimedia, a high-tech digital production firm focused specifically on new emerging technologies such as internet website development, digital video, online databases and electronic commerce.
In the Fall of 2001, Shannon received a call from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and by October 2001 he accepted the distinguished challenge to head up the aerospace university's New Media Department.
At the university, Shannon oversaw a staff of 25 developers plus outside contractors, and was responsible for strategic planning, creative direction and production of all external multimedia communications. He also worked as the managing lead on high-profile joint projects with aerospace partners such as NASA, ICAO, and the U.S. Armed Forces. After more than 4 years as an executive with the university, Shannon amicably resigned on December 31, 2005, to focus more on the demands of A7's growing client base.
Patrick lives today with his wife and three boys in Ormond Beach, Florida.