Doreen Sullivan is Owner and President of Post No Bills, Inc. (PNB), a hybrid creative agency that fuses more than two decades in entertainment marketing, merchandising and promotional products with a full-service ad agency. Sullivan established Post No Bills in New York City in 1987 with an original investment of only $5,000. Since then, the company has grown from that single person operation to a full service creative agency offering advertising, public relations, event management, marketing, packaging and promotional products.
An L.A. native, Sullivan dropped out of high school to join her father in set construction for the motion picture industry. She later went on to graduate from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Sullivan earned a B.A. in Theater and was a promising actor. After portraying a young sales woman in an original play, Sullivan was approached about a job selling promotional products. After only a short stint in her new sales job, Sullivan recognized that the billion-dollar promotional products industry had more potential than her employer realized. Her entrepreneurial instincts kicked in, and Sullivan moved to New York City and began Post No Bills.
Post No Bills quickly found success. One of PNB’s first projects was the national promotional rollout for the soundtrack of the motion picture Dirty Dancing. This high profile campaign quickly propelled PNB into the music industry and Sullivan’s client list grew to include every major record label and worked with artists such as Melissa Etheridge, Bruce Hornsby, Willie Nelson, Natalie Cole, R. Kelly and Britney Spears. Sullivan was instrumental in igniting the national trend of fan clubs for recording artists.
In 1991, Sullivan married and relocated her company to a farm in Prosperity, South Carolina, a town with a population of 1,000. Moving from one of the biggest cities in the world to one of the smallest seemed like career suicide, but business never slowed. From her office on a country road, Sullivan began to court film projects, and soon PNB was working on creative projects for DreamWorks, MGM, Disney and Universal Studios. PNB became the go-to company for B2B promotions, assisting the marketing departments of major studios in their quest to capture the attention of A-list press and broadcast media. These projects included guerrilla marketing and some of the most unique direct-mail promotions in the industry to this day.
In the mid ‘90s, Sullivan moved the company to the artsy Vista area of Columbia - the capital city - South Carolina. As Sullivan’s amazing client base grew, her creative team grew as well. With plenty of space to add new staff, Sullivan decided to expand the company’s services to include advertising and public relations. She began to work with local clients including various state agencies, statewide professional organizations and numerous corporate clients. PNB maintains working relationships with Colonial Life Insurance, The Columbia Visitors Bureau, the City of Columbia and the University of South Carolina.
On a national level, Post No Bills continued to grow. Always up for learning a new industry, Sullivan found the field of sports marketing most promising. Post No Bills became an official licensee of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and Sullivan developed a campaign that raised $500,000 for Team USA in 2006. Sullivan soon connected with ESPN, which is now one of the agency’s top clients. In recent years, PNB has worked on a number of promotions and events for ESPN including World Cup Soccer, The ESPYs and multiple Super Bowls.
Over the course of her twenty-eight year career, Sullivan has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Hollywood Key Art Award for creativity, the MARK Award for marketing distinction, a Silver Anvil/PRSA Award for best public relations practices and a MARCOM Award for excellence in direct marketing and strategic communications.
Sullivan is a highly sought public speaker on sales, marketing, product development, strategic thinking and how to stand out in a competitive marketplace. Sullivan brings a contagious energy to her presentations and is frequently rated as one of the top speakers at events such as AdWeek in New York and the American Marketing Association’s national meeting. Sullivan is available as a keynote speaker or breakout speaker and fashions each of her presentations to the demographics of a particular audience. One of Sullivan’s most requested topics is "How to Get Your Foot in the Door," where she shares the story of how she began her business relationship with DreamWorks from her small office in Prosperity, South Carolina.
When her children left the nest, Sullivan began a new chapter in her life. In late 2014, she expanded Post No Bills’ headquarters to Charleston, South Carolina, while still keeping a Columbia office. There, she is enjoying diving into a new market and loving the beautiful and inspiring city and community. This new move has enabled her to expand on her speaking and consulting as well as traveling back to Hollywood and NYC more often.
In today’s culture, it takes an extremely creative mind to formulate an advertisement that emerges from the clutter to expose a message to the masses. Fortunately, Doreen Sullivan has repeatedly proved that she is more than capable of accomplishing this feat. Invite her to speak to get your creativity in motion, and you will soon be creating campaigns that break free of the clutter as well!