Welcome to M Group.

M Group is a strategic marketing agency. We are a team of experienced, highly skilled executives who believe in helping clients reach their North Star.

At M Group we care deeply about our clients, their challenges and their opportunities. Our job is to create ideas to realize their goals and their organizations' visions and dreams.

We start by listening to our clients and understanding their North Star. What does success look like? What could accelerate progress? What stands in the way? How can we best help? From there we apply our expertise in strategic positioning, brand development, demand generation and reputation management to the task and get to work creating ideas.

Janet Mitchell, President & CEO

Janet Mitchell is the principal of M Group, a strategic marketing agency that builds the businesses and brands of organizations in need of an agency partner that can guide them to success — what we call their North Star.

Janet is an expert in developing and launching new ideas whether they are products or services, advertising or promotional campaigns, grassroots advocacy programs or organizational change initiatives.

Janet’s career began in consumer packaged goods for CBS Video Games — Foxfire® and John Madden Football®, Playtex International — WOW® (WithOutWire), Dannon Yogurt and Duracell, Inc — Duracell Ultra®.

As chief marketing officer Janet has launched four start-ups in Austin, one to over $90M business and recognized as #6 in the Top 50 Fastest Growing Companies by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Start-ups include living.com, SmartPrice.com, Newgistics and M Group.

Janet is an active community leader serving many organizations as a volunteer and board member. Janet is a member of the Austin Area Research Organization and a graduate of the 2005 – 2006 Leadership Austin class. She holds a BS in Business Administration from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts and an MBA, graduating with honors, from the University of Connecticut.

Richard Heffernan, Executive Creative Director

Richard Heffernan is a creative director and brand strategist with more than 15 years of experience working with a variety of clients in the consumer and B2B space, including Anhueuser-Busch, Astrotech, Comerica Bank, Fox Movie Studios, LIVESTRONG, McCoy’s, Motion Computing, NEC, Nokia, St. Edward’s University and The First Tee.

Richard helps clients discover the stories that bring their brands to life and tell those stories in a compelling, persuasive manner that connects with target audiences.

Before joining M Group Richard served as VP, Group Creative Director at nFusion in Austin, where he led a creative team that developed successful, award-winning campaigns across all media, including websites, online banners, interactive video, social media, broadcast and print.

Richard holds a BA in Philosophy from DePaul University.

Matt Manroe, Executive Creative Director

Matt Manroe is a creative talent who understands strategy. He is a branding and marketing visionary with vast experience in traditional and online media.

As the Executive Creative Director at nFusion, an integrated marketing agency in Austin, Matt helped the agency grow from zero to over $10 million in annual revenue, helping the agency to be named Austin’s fastest growing company and listed 83rd on the Inc. 500 list of the nation’s fastest growing companies. While at nFusion, Matt led the creative group to winning national and regional awards for integrated and online creative work from advertising to Web design for Anheuser-Busch, Toshiba, 20th Century Fox, Nortel, Wilshire Homes, Comerica Bank and NEC Display Solutions.

Matt is a creative powerhouse in the marketing industry. At advertising agencies in Dallas and Chicago he worked with clients such as JCPenney, American Airlines, Frito-Lay, Pepsi, Coors Beer, GTE, NationsBank and Long John Silver’s. He has enjoyed the prestige of being a Clio® award winner, listed in “Who’s Who in Advertising,” nominated to Adweek Magazine’s Creative All-Star Team as National Television Art Director of the Year and being the recipient of numerous national ADDYs and best of show awards.

Bonnie Caver, Public Relations & Reputation Management

Bonnie Caver is a strategic partner with M Group and President and Founder of Caver Public Relations. Bonnie is a 19-year public relations veteran who brings a unique perspective to her firm, approaching each relationship from the client’s viewpoint, as that is where she has spent much of her career.

Through her career Bonnie has gained exposure for her clients and former employers with the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, ESPN, Forbes, Bloomberg, U.S. News & World Report, as well as local, regional and trade media.

However, Bonnie believes PR in today’s world is not necessarily about media: It’s about engagement through communication and stories that resonate. This can be achieved through vehicles and strategies that include digital media, Web, internal communications, speeches, newsletters, reputation and issues management, crisis communication, events, thought-leadership and, yes, media. Working with clients Bonnie develops those stories and creates strategic paths for them to be heard.

Holly Edger, Account Director

Holly Edger has more than 14 years of agency and Fortune 500 experience with companies as diverse as FedEx, GE, HP, IBM, Sybase, AMD, RedHat, OfficeMax, Precious Moments and CDW. Holly brings a deep understanding of how to drive measurable results in a wide range of marketing disciplines. She demonstrates a proven track record for developing and managing effective campaigns and her talent overseeing agency-client relationships has earned her numerous accolades and awards.

Throughout her career Holly has demonstrated excellence in communications, diverse marketing expertise, extensive media know-how and an innate critical thinking ability. And her deep understanding of the marketing function enables her to interact with the entire marketing team, positioning her as a master in developing concise company and product positioning and campaigns that deliver exceptional lead-generation and sales results.

In addition to serving her clients, Holly is active with numerous nonprofit organizations and she sits on the board of Partnerships for Children and the Texas arm of Cancer for College.

Holly is an alumna of the University of Michigan, and also holds an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Deb Gabor, Market Research

Deb Gabor is founder and president of Sol Marketing Concepts and is an M Group strategic partner providing qualitative and quantitative research support.

Prior to creating Sol Marketing Concepts, Deb served as senior vice president at Citigate Cunningham, a leading global strategic communications relations firm. She has also served as managing director of research and consulting at Millward Brown-IntelliQuest and has held marketing positions at 3Com Corporation, U.S. Robotics and Lucent Technologies. With more than 20 years of experience in the marketing, branding and public relations fields, Deb has provided brand strategy, market research and marketing services to organizations ranging from emerging technology leaders to household name brands.

Since 2003, Sol Marketing Concepts has enabled clients in a variety of industries and categories win. Sol works with companies ranging from early-stage, venture-backed hardware and software start-ups to multi-national consumer products manufacturers, with innovative, actionable programs that drive the results that ultimately drive strategic business objectives. Recent successful brand strategy engagements include Allrecipes, Dell, Duxter, Empower.me, HomeAway, iVillage, NBC Universal (DinnerTool and PetSide) and PRIMEDIA (ApartmentGuide, Rent.com, Rentals.com, Allhomes.com)

Julie Farnie, Production Manager

Julie Farnie is a marketing communications manager and consultant and owner of Creative Kong marketing and design. With nearly 20 years of experience she has worked both agency and client side, developing, producing and managing marketing and advertising campaigns.

Agency experience includes estimating, project and and print management of collateral, direct mail, catalogs, POP and signage, as well as developing, writing, managing and producing print and broadcast materials. Client-side activities include managing marketing departments to develop, produce and manage fulfillment of corporate collateral, advertising, direct mail, partner materials and sales tools, as well as developing and executing global production processes to ensure brand consistency.

Jason Lara, Creative Director

Jason Lara is an interactive creative director and digital strategist with 15 years of experience working for clients of all sizes. His passion for the digital world is evident in successful campaigns completed for Dell, Disney, 3M, Subway and Logitech as well as in his tireless work on behalf of small medium sized businesses and startups.

Whether in a leadership role or while rolling up his sleeves and getting pixels under his nails, Jason revels in the creative process, especially the peculiarities and opportunities unique to the digital world.

Jason is the founder and Creative Director of Continion, a digital brand development firm that focuses on bringing Fortune 500 level designs and applications to small and medium sized businesses.

Jason has won multiple ADDY awards and Webby Nominations and his words and work are featured in Stephan Mumaw's book, Simple Web Sites: Organizing Content-rich Web Sites into Simple Structures.

Jason has a BFA in Design from the University of Texas at Austin.

Michael Neveu, Search Engine Optimization

Michael Nevue brings a high level of SEO expertise centered around a goal-focused approach. With experience including large scale, national websites as well as local businesses, Michael offers clients the ability to benefit from a variety of SEO strategies.

His broad approach to SEO is designed to promote long-term growth while ensuring that the client’s mission and business goals remain the focus of any campaign.

As the SEO Internet Marketing Expert for Pipeline Success, he has helped to build campaigns for enterprise level sites, meeting the optimization goals for nationally recognized clients.

Larry Lane, Web Technologist & Digital Media Strategist

Larry Lane is a multi-disciplined Web technologist and digital media strategist with over 15 years development experience in Web, mobile and digital technologies. With his agency background he knows how to concept digital media products from the consumer perspective to maximize marketing results. As a technologist he knows how to connect the ones and zeros to ensure efficient production and broad usability. As a strategist Larry sees beyond the project to understand how the digital piece fits in the context of the consumer conversion funnel to directly affect the brands' presence, relevance, experience and influence.

Larry is founder and CEO of Continion, a digital brand development firm that helps emerging and mid-size companies with cost-effective solutions for digital media creation and integrated digital campaign management, spanning Web, search, social and mobile. As User Experience Director at Kolar Advertising & Marketing he helped craft digital brand campaigns for Fortune 100 to regional clients, including Dell, 3M, Subway, U.S. Army, Cargill, Baylor and Austin CVB.

Larry is a recognized Austin Ad Fed Big Wig as Best Website Development Person of 2008. His project accolades include National Gold ADDY winner, W3 Gold winner and Webby Nominee Runner-up.

Larry has as a BA in Government from The University of Texas at Austin.

Robert Matney, Social Media Manager

Robert Matney builds communities and tells trans-media stories online and off. He is a Web, Internet and mobile technology consultant and developer, using social and mobile computing to solve business and community challenges for a diverse set of international clients.

Robert is Director of Technology at Hidden Room Theatre and Board Trustee for Austin Shakespeare.

Robert was a panelist at the 2011 South By Southwest Interactive conference and the 2011 Fusebox Festival. Robert spoke at SXSWi 2012 on “Performance and Technology: Keeping Arts Alive” with panelists from Disney Imagineering, the Roundhouse in London and the National Endowment for the Arts. You can battle Robert’s voice in the shape of DC Universe Online’s video-game villain Doctor Psycho.

Josiah Sternfeld, Digital Media & Demand Generation Director

Josiah Sternfeld is the founder and principal partner of Integrous Marketing and is primarily responsible for the company’s digital media and demand-generation consulting capabilities. He leads a team of six digital specialists — including Web strategy, Web development, media and analytics professionals — who have a proven track record of helping clients build their businesses on the Web.

Josiah has over 10 years of marketing experience, working with many great brands, including Macaroni Grill, Anheuser-Busch, Insperity, Toshiba, NEC, St. Edward’s University and more. Prior to starting Integrous Marketing in November of 2010, Josiah spent five years serving as the Media Director for nFusion in Austin, TX. During his time at nFusion, Josiah built the media discipline from two outside consultants to a team of up to 11 media specialists, spanning both traditional and digital media. Josiah also served as the key media and digital marketing strategist for clients that ranged from consumer packaged goods to enterprise technology services companies.

Josiah lives in Cedar Park, TX and has a wonderful wife and two crazy kids. He graduated from The University of Texas with a BS in Sports Management.

Emma Virjan, Art Director

Emma Virjan is art director with M Group, helping clients develop their visual identities and communications.

Emma is an expert in communications strategy development, graphic design, illustration, marketing communications, advertising, sales promotion, corporate identity and packaging.

Emma is an accomplished commercial artist and children’s book author; her first book hit store shelves in the fall of 2008, published by Random House.

Emma’s experience ranges from national brands and nonprofits such as Infinity Broadcasting, Save The Children® and The United Way to local emerging companies such as CyrusOne, WaterTexas, The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and Texas Classroom Teachers Association.

Emma holds a BFA in graphic design and illustration from Southwest Texas State University.

Will Zhang, Web Developer

William Zhang is an interactive designer with over 12 years experience in website creation, desktop publishing and interactive multimedia. Will has an extensive technical background, having developed several interactive applications, ranging from touch panel interfaces for next-generation vending machines to extensive Web 2.0 applications.

Will's diverse background and expertise has resulted in a multitude of clients, ranging from Fortune 500 companies such as Newmont Mining Corporation to a variety of local start-ups and small businesses in the Austin area. He has also completed an extensive range of work for charities, including websites for Texas 4000 and his own personal project, Kili for Kids.

Will holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas.