ABOUT ME

My work life began in consumer and market research, working for a public opinion polling company called Yankelovich, Skelly, and White. In the early 1980s, I started my own marketing consulting company in conjunction with United Press International. That business was folded into the Roper Organization so I was back to market research and polling.

(Along the way I got an MBA from Fordham. In 2005, I taught two courses there – one on marketing and one on market research.)

I joined the Seagram Spirits and Wine Company in 1986 as VP of Marketing Research. What followed was a number of different marketing assignments in the US and globally including VP New Products, SVP Marketing Asia/Pacific/Global Duty-Free, Global Head of Marketing Services, and my longest position, EVP Marketing for the Americas. The US marketing job at Seagram was somewhat high profile and I was fortunate enough to be chosen for the Ad Age Power 50 and Marketing 100. I spent 14 years at Seagram and 9 of them were as head of US marketing. My “15 minutes of fame” came when I led the effort by Seagram to end the voluntary ban on broadcast advertising in 1993.

Seagram closed in 2002 and I started a marketing consulting company together with my daughter Michelle. The company, A|M Shapiro & Associates, continues even though Michelle left to live in CA and raise a family. The consulting work is partly in the spirits business and partly in general consumer-marketing areas.

In the alcohol space, my clients have included Jose Cuervo International (the brand owners), Brown Forman, Pernod, Patron, Beam Global, Cape Wine Classics and a range of others in startup modes. In fact, my consulting practice these days is limited to startup ventures.

Finally, aside from family, there are two passions in my life. I love photography and telling a story through pictures. I’m also an aspiring playwright and have worked hard to learn the craft. In June of 2011, one of my short plays called Stuck was the winner of week number 2 at The Players Theatre Short Play Festival. In addition to short plays I’m working on a number of full-lengths including one about the government’s efforts in 1870 to collect back taxes from moonshiners in Brooklyn. It’s called the Brooklyn Moonshine War.

More recently, I’ve also turned my attention to film and, together with some incredibly capable filmmakers, we have produced Bereavement, a dark comedy starring Mark Linn-Baker.

Email: a.shapiro@mac.com

LinkedIn: Arthur Shapiro