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Barefoot today announced the addition of three partners who will develop a new interactive marketing capability at the firm. This endeavor will be lead by three marketing veterans: Sean Brown, who will serve as president; Chris Evans, who will serve as vice president/client services director; and Steve Kissing, who will serve as vice president/creative director.

“This new capability will allow us to make contact with consumers in another place where and when they are receptive to our clients’ messages,” said Doug Worple, president and executive creative director at Barefoot. “That’s why we’re so pleased to have entered the interactive arena in such a dramatic way by bringing Sean, Chris and Steve on board. It gives us an immediate interactive presence and deep capability.

“We consciously sat on the sidelines during the dot-com boom,” Worple explained, “but now seemed liked the ideal time to enter the fray as speculative business and marketing models have been replaced by more thoughtful approaches, yet the creative possibilities seem as boundless as ever. Besides, we’re increasingly finding our clients requesting our strategic and creative help with interactive programs.”

“Barefoot’s commitment to creative excellence and its openness to nonconventional approaches make it the ideal place to build an interactive capability,” said Brown. “We’re anxious to get down to business and extend Barefoot’s strategic and creative reputation into the interactive realm.”

Brown and Evans formed their own interactive agency in Cincinnati called Ethos Interactive in 1995 and created marketing solutions for clients such as Mercedes Benz/North America, Deloitte & Touche, Hewlett Packard, Formica and Milwaukee Electric Tools. It was during this time that Brown and Evans met Worple who was just forming Barefoot, and whose firm hired Ethos for several projects. When Ethos was purchased by Eviciti in 2000, Brown managed the company’s Detroit office and Evans managed its Cincinnati office. In 2002, Brown moved to HSR Business to Business, also in Cincinnati, as director of application development and was later promoted to Vice President, Internet Services. After leaving Eviciti in 2002, Evans joined Haverstick, an interactive consultancy, and then joined HSR in 2003 as a senior client service executive.

Kissing began his marketing career in public relations in 1986 for Stockton West Burkhart in Cincinnati. He then moved to Wordsworth Communications and then Sive/Young & Rubicam, also in Cincinnati. In 1993 he joined HSR where he held several positions, including public relations director, during which time he published several articles on interactive marketing and was frequently asked to speak about marketing online. While at HSR, Kissing made a career move to the creative side of the business and then joined Barefoot as a copywriter in 2001. He returned to HSR in the fall of 2003 as an associate creative director of the interactive division, and was later promoted to creative director. Over the years, Kissing has served a wide range of clients, including Walt Disney, Procter & Gamble and Xerox.