Jack Thorwegen

Jack Thorwegen is an American entrepreneur, advertising executive, and artist. He is most recognized as the founder and creative director of the Zipatoni company.
Thorwegen started his career in Chicago working in various positions at many of the city's large advertising agencies. In 1984 Thorwegen and his wife relocated to St.Louis. In 1985 he founded the Zipatoni company.
Career
Four years after founding Zipatoni, Thorwegen was joined by Mitch Meyers who took over the role as CEO. Together the two grew Zipatoni to 375 employees with annual billings in excess of 40 million. The company's world headquarters remained in St. Louis, with offices in Chicago, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Miami and New York City. Zipatoni's clients included Miller Brewing, AOL, Splenda, Energizer, and Visa.
In 2002, Thorwegen and Meyers, along with other partners negotiated a four year earn out and Zipatoni was sold to Sir Frank Frank Lowe, becoming part of the Interpublic Group of companies.
CasaMima
After the sale of Zipatoni, Thorwegen was started a portraiture company called CasaMima. The company produced high-priced, digitally-processed portraits.
The company would conduct interviews with the clients. Then a group of artists would present three concepts. Once the concept was chosen, a photo shoot would take place wherever the client wanted, sets were then built and hand-painted, stylists, makeup artists and hairdressers would be flown in from Los Angeles or New York. The stylists would arrive with a variety of rented outfits or costumes and borrowed jewelry for the client to wear.
With the help of digital editing, only the best parts of each photo would make the final shot, and photos of absent (or deceased) family members could even be included. Each portrait took up to six months to complete with a minimum price of $60,000 each. The Proof Agency is focused on serving smaller craft spirits, beer, and wine companies.
Charitable contributions
During retirement Thorwegen produced a series of commercials for the group, Mothers Against Drunk Driving or MADD.

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