Illustration by M. Scott Ricketts
Garrand-teed Success
Brenda Garrand has been getting her advertising clients, and her talented self, noticed since 1987.
Entrepreneurial spirit flows through Brenda Garrand’s veins.
“My grandfather Perley Amidon started Ward Amidon Jewelers in Hanover, New Hampshire, during the Depression,” says the founder and owner of Garrand, the Portland-based marketing and communications agency that bears her name. “And my mother, Marion Garrand, had a successful real estate business in New Hampshire in the 1960s, when women could only be associate realtors. She’s 88 now and still an inspiration.”
Brenda Garrand oversees a multiarmed marketing powerhouse whose clients include H. P. Hood, United Way, Maine Medical Center, FairPoint Communications, OSRAM/Sylvania, and the Portland Pirates. Garrand has been in business for more than two decades; the agency has grown to nearly 40 employees. Her firm was named one of the best places to work in 2010 by Ad Age. She’s received numerous awards and accolades for her work.
“I was one of those kids who always had a business going,” she says. “In high school, two other girls and I had a singing act we called the Adenoid Sisters. We financed everything we did with cookie sales.”
Garrand still sings and plays music, mostly blues and jazz, in local venues, and her office in Portland includes a piano. Some campaigns from years past stick in her memory because of the music, such as a campaign for Bangor Hydro Electric that included a chorus of local schoolkids singing, “You’ve Got the Power.”
She was born in Vermont but grew up in Cornish, New Hampshire, and came to Maine to attend Bates College. After graduating, she worked in media in the Portland area, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, before starting her own agency at the age of 29.
Though she’s a nationally-recognized branding expert and a frequent speaker, Garrand returned to school after childraising to earn a master’s degree in advertising from Syracuse University, because “there’s always more to learn.”
Psychographic Data
1979 • Year Brenda Garrand graduated from Bates with a degree in art history.
10 • Percentage of time Garrand employees devote to pro bono work.
24 • Years Garrand-the-agency has been in business.
2011 • Year Garrand received the Tribute to Women in Industry (TWIN) Award from the Maine Women’s Fund, among others.
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