Mark DiMassimo, CEO & Chief Creative Officer
One part social scientist, two parts creative marketer, DiMassimo is a writer, creative director, entrepreneur, experimenter-in-chief, CEO and founder of DIGO.
After studying social sciences at Cornell and Purchase College, telemarketing advertising specialties, taking a band on the road, founding two successful companies and making tongues wag for more than a decade with his work for a who’s who list of top direct and integrated Madison Avenue agencies, DiMassimo had an epiphany: “I’d rather sweep the floors in a great place than rule a mediocre company!”
The same day, he bought a broom and presented himself for work at a promising agency he’d read about. Within a year, he rose to creative director of Kirshenbaum & Bond, building an integrated marketing group that, within three years, constituted more than half the agency and had become a multiple Effie Award winner, while helping the agency nearly triple in size.
What is your personal brand?
Brand. Driven. Growth.
Seriously playful, challengingly appreciative, purposefully empathetic — inspired, business, artist.
What drives you?
I was born with a first-class imagination.
I can see the future coming, envisioning the possibilities in Technicolor 3D Sensurround, with the volume on eleven.
My imagination has the power to paralyze me with fear or inspire me to great feats. It has done both. I have lived both.
I have had days, fortunately decades in the past now, when courage was crossing a bridge, taking a bite of food or walking out the front door.
So I take nothing for granted but the opportunities that are right in front of me.
I know I can be fearful or courageous, or both at the same time. Every day, my world can either expand or contract. Courage is a muscle. Inspiration is the opposite of fear. And a skill that improves with practice. It lets you see challenge as opportunity. Today’s decisions as the fathers of tomorrow’s choices.
So, growth isn’t an option for me. It’s not an intellectual concept. It’s a must.
It’s just the opposite of complacency. Because the future is coming. And, hey, you never know.
So let’s work on what we can, today!
Tell us a personal growth story.
I just did.