Team Ricochet

Ricochet continues to grow with the addition of like-minded, accomplished professionals who add perspective, insight, and talent. We realize the best ideas come from people who live in original thought. When brought together, positive sparks spontaneously appear. Ideas come from teams, two, three or four people working in concert—challenging, developing, and refining until that perfect idea is born.

Our team includes designers, writers, rich media developers, strategists and account specialists working under the direction of our Chief Creative Officer, Peter Charlton, and Chief Strategy Officer, Jeanne McKirchy-Spencer.
 

Leadership Bios

Peter Charlton - CEO & Chief Creative Officer
He has launched Tide to Japan, saved lives by helping millions realize that drinking and driving is NEVER cool and 3 years ago he led the team that created the look, feel and messaging that is today’s largest window and door company in the world, Jeld-Wen.  He has helped many of his clients get promoted, get raises and beat their numbers.  He is a very rare blend of off the wall smart creative guy with strategically sound account planning marketer. His passion for great work is infectious, clients not only want him on the team - they insist on it.  He is all about team, all about success and all about winning.

After one class in advertising during his MBA program for International Business at Thunderbird, Peter realized that advertising was where he belonged and pursued his passion. Recruited by both J.Walter Thompson and Leo Burnett, Peter chose Burnett. After 6 years working on Procter and Gamble, United Airlines, Glad, McDonald’s, Heinz including posts in research, account service, and creative, he accepted an Associate Creative Director position at Fahlgren and Swink. He developed his style of creating the big idea - unique memorable messaging - for an impressive client roster including McDonald’s, Warner Cable, and Eli Lilly. He was pursued by Glennon & Company for the Senior Vice President Creative Director position where he successfully re-launched the SweeTarts brand, increasing sales 30%. In 1991 Pete and five others formed Kupper Parker Communications and that agency grew from $25 million to $250 million in capitalized billings by 2002. With offices in 11 locations, Peter was the worldwide chief creative officer responsible for all the agency’s integrated product offerings. They won Anheuser-Busch designated driver and environmental work, Pizza Hut St. Louis, CenterMark Properties, Gannett’s Argus Leader newspaper, Visa corporate marketing, Charter communications, Magna Bank, Missouri Tourism, Missouri Department of Economic Development and Graybar and managed creative on each. In 2002 Peter sold his interests in KPC and moved to CMD in Portland, Peter led the development of a new brand for the largest window and door manufacturer in the world – Jeld-Wen and helped increased sales 20% in the first year of the brand launch. After years of being in the biz, he decided to create the biz. Ricochet Partners is a vision he has seen since his first couple of years at Leo Burnett.

Jeanne McKirchy-Spencer - President & Chief Strategy Officer
Jeanne started in business at 20, as lead singer and manager of a band. She was co-founder of a recording studio at 22, built it up, staffed it, and moved with her partner husband to Portland, selling the facility one year later. In Portland, they launched White Horse Studios, a world-class music recording, composition, and audio and video post-production facility. In addition to management responsibilities, Jeanne composed music for national and regional commercial clientele. She became the first female composer of Omni Music Libraries out of New York. In 1990, she helped expand the business into multimedia CD-Rom. In 1993, she was introduced to the internet and began moving the company into strategic relationships with corporate clientele. Providing business-driven marketing strategy and integrated marketing programs, she was instrumental in growing the business to 100 employees and establishing White Horse Studios as one of the premier integrated marketing agencies on the West Coast. White Horse Studios rose quickly on Oregon’s Fastest Growing Business list,  Adweek’s Top 100 Interactive Agencies List and the company achieved Top Companies to Work For in Oregon status. She won new business with web site development and interactive advertising work for SBC, GM, Diner’s Club, Cisco, Microsoft, Eddie Bauer, Peet’s Coffee, and Adobe Systems among others – creating marketing solutions in traditional and new media. She was Executive Producer of Hewlett Packard’s ‘Matador’ ad which won AdWeek’s Interactive Campaign of the Year in 1998. She was a contributing author to Hayden Books “Designing Interactivity” and is currently in production on her own theory of successful marketing strategies. In 2000, Jeanne and her husband opted for a respite and sold the business. But Jeanne’s passion for it wasn’t part of the deal. Ricochet Partners is the culmination of her 25 years of creative, marketing, and business expertise.

Ron Spencer - Director of Rich Media
Ron Spencer is co-founder of White Horse Studios, where he directed technical aspects of all media projects while helping to grow the business into a leading integrated marketing agency on the west coast. He has literally thousands of sound design, video editing, music, animation and web development projects in his 30 years in the production industry. Ron was lead sound designer for many Nike radio campaigns as he worked under Jaime Barrett, then Creative Director at Weiden and Kennedy. He produced audio tracks for the Oregon Byways, Hardee’s Restaurants, Newport Bay Restaurants, Northwest Natural Gas, Pacific Corp., Lucky Grocery Stores, Cox Cable, TCI Cable and many others in addition to award winning long form programming. Ron is uniquely talented, able to translate creative across multiple media formats including radio, television, flash animation and web sites. His mastery of the technical married with his artistic vision for scene timing and ordering, audio enhancements, and motion graphics elevates and streamlines the post-production process to ensure an exemplary final product. Ron is generally the man behind the curtain with clients seeing the result of his contribution.

Carrie Wright - Senior Art Director
Carrie was born an artist. She began Art Instruction Schools at age 10 and then finished her bachelor’s degree at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. After graduation, Carrie moved to Denver and after more design studies at the Denver Institute of Technology, she soon started an event marketing company working with various sponsors such as Coors Light to establish annual sports events. Also, during this time, Carrie began showing her acrylic-on-canvas paintings and branched out to eventually display works in established galleries in Santa Fe, Scottsdale and Denver.

Eventually, Carrie landed in Portland, OR working with Jeanne McKirchy-Spencer at Jeanne’s previous agency. Carrie quickly rose from Designer to Art Director to Senior Art Director. As Senior Art Director, Carrie designed and produced an award-winning quarterly periodical for Sequent/IBM, was a key player in working with 10 designers to produce very successful, very targeted web banner campaigns for Expedia and MSN, and also designed custom retail sites and various interactive projects for clients including Microsoft, IBM, HP, Adobe and Calyx & Corolla.

Carrie is an accomplished art director who has worked on a significant volume of work from web site user interfaces to rich media, multimedia, video and print. She is prolific with her range and ability to develop options quickly, on time and on budget.