Mladen Djanković - Partner, The Ocean Group

Mladen Djanković has more than 10 years of experience building global brands and guiding top-tier companies. An accomplished corporate strategist and marketer, his vision and expertise in business performance have driven notable enterprise growth in the retail, luxury, and general consumer sectors. His achievements have been featured in Robb Report, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, E! News, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, In-Style Magazine, New York Magazine, The New York Post, People, Us Weekly, Daily Candy, as well as other business and consumer media.

Offering a rare blend of creative and operational strengths, Mladen has achieved exciting company and product launches and turnarounds and is recognized for his success in branding and experiential marketing. His entrepreneurial spirit and strategic approach to building a business are reflected in his work as Founder and Owner of Pepperface.com, where his concept creation and focus on brand building quickly delivered a successful awareness campaign for Violence Against Woman and impressive bottom-line results for his vastly popular designer pepper spray. As an entrepreneur in its truest form, Mladen’s roles included conception of original idea, product design, operations, packaging, marketing communications, website content design, strategic alliances, non-profit activities, and point-of-sale merchandising. As co-founder and co-chairman of The Prevention Purple Campaign, Mladen succeeded in gaining the support of celebrities including Kelly Ripa, Carmen Electra, Lindsay Lohan, Denise Richards, Jaime Pressly, Hilary Duff, Gabrielle Union, and Paula Abdul.

His expertise in experiential marketing is highlighted by his accomplishments as Partner of a New York City based event marketing company, where he led buzz marketing strategies for brands including MTV, The Apprentice, Dolce and Gabbana, The Container Store, and Godiva. These national campaigns received overwhelmingly positive consumer reaction – creating the grassroots, one-to-one relationship the clients set out to accomplish.

Mladen also had significant impact on brand repositioning and growth for Citibank/Citi Group while holding executive positions at Wunderman in New York City, New York. At Wunderman, the most experienced consumer-focused marketing communications company in the world, Mladen’s client roster included Citi, AT&T, and Xerox.

As a Partner and Creative Director of The Ocean Group, Mladen focuses on strategy, brand building, and performance excellence for the agency’s clients. Mladen heads two Ocean Group companies: Ocean Strategic Group and Ocean Model Group. Mladen’s exceptional track record of business development is based on his philosophy of total strategic integration of all vital components affecting the success of a business model. This has been made possible by his superlative comprehension and experience in areas including customer-driven marketing, demographic and industry research, creative branding and company identities, general advertising, media placement, online business model development and virtual store design, as well as strategic partnerships.