Grisolano, Larry

In 30 years as a political and advertising professional, Larry Grisolano has been at the center of some of the most important battles for the Democratic Party and for progressive ideas, and earned recognition for his management of complex advertising campaigns.

From January of 2007 to November of 2008, Larry served as Director of Paid Media and Opinion Research for Obama for America and Obama-Biden 2008. Grisolano directed an integrated paid advertising program of television, radio, digital, and direct mail that spent over $350 million between June and November. Ad Age recognized the campaign as Marketer of the Year and The Advertising Research Foundation recognized the campaign with an Ogilvey Award for its innovative use of research in an ad campaign.

In 2011, Larry again served as Director of Paid Media for the Obama-Biden re-election campaign. In securing the President’s re-election, the campaign faced nearly a billion dollars of opposition spending. In response, Grisolano led an effort to develop innovative targeting of television buys to target persuadable voters. The tool came to be knows as the Optimizer, and was featured in a story in the New York Times. The $600 million integrated buy in this campaign included the longest continuous Spanish language buy for a political campaign, an extended track of television targeting women and individual level targeting of digital buys.

Larry is President and CEO of AKPD Message and Media, a leading national political advertising firm founded by David Axelrod. Larry also serves on the Board of The Strategy Group, specializing in political direct mail, and Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Washington, DC based full service digital marketing firm.

Larry earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in political science from The University of Iowa. He majored in marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management.