Danny Schuman has spent his 25+ year career in marketing creating ideas to solve challenges and partnering with others to do the same. Along the way, he’s earned the reputation as a true collaborator and go-to problem solver. Danny is the Founder and President of Twist, a creatively-driven brand strategy consultancy. He started Twist in January 2009, reflecting his boundless sense of optimism and a healthy amount of blissful ignorance.
Danny has worked across a broad variety of categories, including beer, confections, travel, financial services, entertainment, and higher education. He works with large national clients like PepsiCo, Allstate, ConAgra Foods, Hershey, and Discover Financial Services, and local brands like Howl at the Moon, Snap-on, and University of Chicago. Regardless of the size and category, he helps businesses develop successful brand strategy, focus their message, and most important, create the materials that enable them to achieve maximum impact through superior ideas and execution.
Prior to Twist, Danny was SVP/Group Creative Director at Chicago advertising agency Element 79, writing and supervising the creation of many business-building advertising campaigns. He co-authored a string of long-running campaigns with significant in-market success, including:
- “Life is Full of Surprises,’ Life Cereal (Gold Effie)
- “Hey Beer Man” Coors Light (Cannes Short List)
- “Real People/Real Results” Quaker Oatmeal (Gold Effie)
- “Origins of Gatorade (featuring Keith Jackson), Gatorade (Gold Effie)
- “Guitar obsessed” Chicago Music Exchange (Gold and Silver One Show)
Danny is proud to be part of the team that helped grow and maintain Gatorade’s market share through a 15-year period, writing and creative directing commercials that fostered and maintained loyalty among their crucial teenage target. He actually started working on the Gatorade account on the same day as Michael Jordan in 1991. Michael called Danny “peanut-butter-jelly-boy,” but that’s a story for another time.
Danny graduated from the University of Michigan, has a daughter who is an alumna, and a son who’s a couple of years away from getting his degree there as well. When he’s not reading, writing, or soaking up some form of food and culture, Danny is watching the Cubs. He still can’t believe they won the World Series.
