Janice Brandt is an American

businesswoman A businessperson, businessman, or businesswoman is an individual who has founded, owns, or holds shares in (including as an angel investor) a private-sector company. A businessperson undertakes activities (commercial or industrial) for the ...

and vice chair emeritus of

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

Time Warner Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States. It was originally established in 1972 by ...

. She is known for her direct marketing campaign at AOL that increased the number of subscribers from 200,000 to more than 22 million.

Early life and education

Jan Brandt was born in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

and moved to New Jersey at the age of eight. She graduated from

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...

's School of Public Communications. Following graduation, she began working as a

copywriter Copywriting is the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing. The product, called copy or sales copy, is written content that aims to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or ...

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...

Education Publications in

Middletown, Connecticut Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States, Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, it is south of Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated by English settler ...

. She enrolled in night courses at the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Hart ...

and decided to switch careers to marketing.

Career

After a brief period working for

Colonial Penn The Colonial Penn Life Insurance Company (often known as simply Colonial Penn) is an American life insurance company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded by philanthropist and AARP co-founder Leonard Davis, owned by CNO Financial Group. ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, Brandt moved to

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

, to join Education Today publishing with Thomas O. Ryder, where she worked for 10 years. She then briefly returned to

Education Publications, which by then had been acquired by Newfield Publications, before being hired by Steve Case as vice president of marketing of

AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017� ...

in 1993.

AOL

Brandt was hired with the explicit goal to grow the subscriber base and was given free rein over

's marketing strategies. After AOL began sending complimentary discs to people who requested them, Brandt set up a direct marketing campaign to distribute AOL installation

diskettes A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined wi ...

in the mail. The trial campaign cost $250,000 and had an average response of over 10% uptake, with some mailing lists pulling as high as 16-18%. This prompted Brandt to expand the campaign beyond direct mailing and start working with nonconventional distribution partners, such as airlines and cereal companies. At one point, 50% of the CDs produced worldwide had an AOL logo. This "

carpet bombing Carpet bombing, also known as saturation bombing, is a large area bombardment done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land. The phrase evokes the image of explosions completely covering an area, in th ...

" strategy was instrumental in moving AOL beyond

Prodigy Prodigy, Prodigies or The Prodigy may refer to: * Child prodigy, a child who produces meaningful output to the level of an adult expert performer ** Chess prodigy, a child who can beat experienced adult players at chess Arts, entertainment, and ...

and

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

to dominate the

online service provider An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, ...

market. In 2002, Brandt stepped down as vice chair and chief marketing officer of AOL to take a part-time consulting position. Brandt was named twice by

Fortune Magazine ''Fortune'' is an American multinational business magazine headquartered in New York City. It is published by Fortune Media Group Holdings, owned by Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon. The publication was founded by Henry Luce in 1929. The ...

as one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in American Business", in 1999 and again in 2000. She also received Direct Marketing Days New York's "Direct Marketer of the Year" award in 2000, and the 2001 "Direct Marketer of the Year" award from Target Marketing.

Personal life

Brandt has been politically active since the 1990s, and a longtime supporter of

EMILY's List EMILY's List is an American political action committee (PAC) that aims to help elect Democratic female candidates in favor of abortion rights to office. It was founded by Ellen Malcolm in 1985. The group's name is an acronym for "Early Money ...

. She currently sits on the board of directors for

Women for Women International Women for Women International (WfWI) is a nonprofit humanitarian organization that provides practical and moral support to female survivors of war. WfWI helps such women rebuild their lives after war's devastation through a year-long tiered progra ...

, a humanitarian organization for providing aid to women in war-torn regions. Brandt joined the board of directors of the Vet Voice Foundation in October 2022.

References

External links

Jan Brandt Interview on Internet History Podcast
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brandt, Jan Living people People from Brooklyn 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople American technology chief executives American women business executives Boston University College of Communication alumni Chairmen of AOL AOL people Marketing women American computer businesspeople Philanthropists from New York (state) American chairpersons of corporations Chief marketing officers American women chief executives Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century American businesswomen 21st-century American businesswomen