INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INNOVATOR AWARD
Kurt Holstein is Vice Chairman and Co-founder, Rosetta. Kurt received his BS in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering in 1982 graduate from Cornell University. He then joined Procter & Gamble where he helped developed some of the industry’s first marketing analysis and optimization tools that utilized IRI’s new store-level scanner data. These solutions included tools now considered essential including in-store promotion and shelf optimization systems, ERP and marketing MIS systems. After, 4 years in their Management Systems Division, he moved into P&G’s world-class brand management organization where he spent 12 years at increasing levels of responsibility, building many of P&G’s major consumer healthcare brands including Crest, Scope and Pepto-Bismol. During that time, Kurt also spent 3 years in upstate NY as the Marketing Director of Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals. Kurt left P&G in 1998 to start Rosetta with another CPG veteran from J&J. The two entrepreneurs rented space in the back of another agency’s office and started with 2 employees.
Over the past 12 years, as Rosetta’s first COO, then President and now as Vice Chairman, Kurt has helped grow Rosetta into one of the top 5 digital agencies in the US with over $200 Million in annual revenue, 1,200 employees and offices throughout the US and Canada. Rosetta has emerged as the market leader in driving profitable share growth by understanding a brand’s customers and in turn translating these insights into interactive, digitally-enabled marketing programs that create and optimize customer connections. Rosetta serves clients in the Healthcare, Consumer Technology, Retail and Financial Services industries including market leaders like Bristol Meyer Squibb, Apple, RIM, Microsoft, OfficeMax and Nationwide. Kurt also heads Rosetta’s ongoing M&A activities.
Kurt is a frequent industry speaker at events like the DMA National Conference and a guest lecturer in digital and database marketing at both Cornell’s Johnson School of Business and the College of Engineering.
