Penny F. Melrose - President / Account Supervisor
Richard D. Melrose - Vice President / Media and Research
Michael Scandling - Vice President / Creative and Operations
Bradlee J. Sweigart - Director / Public Relations

Penny is President and CEO of Faron Melrose, a corporation since 1977 - with experience on all Faron Melrose accounts.

Prior to founding Faron Studios (a creative services firm and the forerunner to Faron Melrose Inc.), Penny worked as a journalist and editor - and as advertising copywriter and graphic designer at W. H. Freeman Company, the scientific book publishing affiliate of Scientific American.

Under Penny's direction, Faron Melrose expanded its offerings to service the ever-growing demand from Silicon Valley manufacturers for top-flight creative, strategic and results-oriented advertising and marketing.

In 1998, Penny changed the name of the agency to Faron Melrose Communications - reflecting the continuing expansion of the company to encompass the abilities to successfully develop, design and produce communications in all message delivery streams: print, sound, vision and events - for both online and offline media - directly through paid communications and indirectly through PR activities.

Penny has also assisted in the founding of several Silicon Valley startups manufacturing software, computer control systems, and peripherals. She also sits on the board of two other Silicon Valley companies.

Penny holds a BA in Philosophy from UC Berkeley, was Departmental Undergraduate of the Year, and is a Phi Beta Kappa. She attended graduate school at UC Berkeley where her post-graduate studies included courses in business, public relations and marketing.

Prior to her career in advertising and public relations, Penny worked on several newspapers as writer and editor. Her articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications, and she holds numerous awards and honors from the San Jose Ad Club and the Business Marketing Association.

Rick Melrose enables us to say we're probably the only marketing communications firm with a rocket scientist on board. Rick's multi-faceted career embraces a number of disparate but relevant areas: advertising, electronics, art, music, broadcast communications, and business administration. Rick's understanding of the fundamentals of physics and electronics range far beyond his AA in Communications Electronics from the College of San Mateo, where he also studied art.

As an electronics technician at the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley, Rick built the signal processing electronics carried aboard the infrared spectrometer on the Mariner Mars program, which performed flawlessly on its flyby of Mars. He also worked for GTE Lenkurt.

A musician, Rick played guitar with Jerry Garcia, Dave Nelson, Robert Hunter, and other now-famous musicians of the sixties prior to their rise in such groups as the Grateful Dead and New Riders of the Purple Sage, and has been interviewed for books and articles on Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Neal Cassady, Ken Kesey and others he knew during that era.

After an overseas stint in the service, he studied radio, TV and film at San Francisco State University, and emceed and performed live and television broadcast concerts in California and Germany.

Next came a study of business establishment and management and the managing of divisions in several organizations. Rick for many years delivered seminars and provided consulting for numerous companies, including Mattel Toys, Republic Bank of Texas, ARCO, and Getty Oil - on subjects ranging from communication skills to negotiation to business management.

At Faron Melrose Communications, Rick is in charge of research and senior media planning, utilizing the analytical tools he developed for assessing various media to ensure the best use of our clients' dollars. He also serves as a technical consultant to our PR and creative teams.

Last but not least, Rick heads up the business side of the company, has ultimate responsibility for hiring and training the correct complement of competent staff to meet client needs, and administers and corrects the company's systems and personnel as needed to ensure client satisfaction.

Which leads us to this promise: If you as a client ever have a problem of any sort that is not being handled promptly and satisfactorily, call Rick Melrose.

Michael Scandling has been with Faron Melrose since the mid-’90s - where he's been instrumental in the strategic and creative direction on such advertising accounts as AmaTech USA, SMART Modular Technologies, ESQ Business Services, Nortel Networks and San Francisco Giants.

Michael has an innate advertising talent that enables even the most technical and sophisticated messages to be brought home in a clear, understandable, and penetrating way.

A very fast study, Michael makes sure the advertising we produce for our clients hits the audience at the right technical wavelength - never too simplistic to be insulting to the technical reader, but always sufficiently clear so as to communicate effectively to the business audience.

A photographer in his own right, Michael is a wizard in digital image creation and manipulation, and has won top awards for his photographic images in advertising for two years in a row.

If all that were not enough, Michael's also an expert at market research, understanding that the best creative comes from an inside knowledge of your prospects and customers - what they think, how they feel, their problems, and their attitudes.

Previously, Michael worked as a copywriter at several Silicon Valley ad agencies on campaigns for clients such as Merisel and Connectix - and was Chief Copywriter and Director of Market Research at The Acosta Group.

Michael holds a BA in Communication Arts from University of the Pacific, where he co-wrote, produced and directed several radio shows, including the notorious Cowboy News. Early in his career, he was an expert audio mastering engineer, mastering many hit records for name performers and groups. His post-graduate studies include business, marketing, and education.

Bradlee brings with him 20 years of public relations, promotion and marketing experience and know-how.

He first flexed his PR muscles for one of the leading financial PR firms on the West Coast in the '80s, and moved on to hone his marketing and public relations talents at a cutting-edge, international software company.

As Vice President/Public Relations for Executive Software International, Bradlee's PR strategies and tactics enabled the company to compete successfully in the Windows NT software arena with companies of much larger size - creating a demand and buzz for the products and securing the company on the cover of Windows NT magazine, among many other PR coups. Partly as a result of his actions, Executive Software became the number one company in the network and systems utilities market.

With his forte being media relations, Bradlee has generated an impressive array of press for various companies and products. This includes articles in such notable publications as Forbes, Business Week, and The Wall Street Journal. He's been called by one WSJ writer "the best in the business."

Bradlee also has a solid grounding in marketing, having spearheaded effective promotional campaigns for several other corporations.

Rounding out his expertise, Bradlee has recently developed e-PR and e-marketing campaigns, significantly contributing to a very profitable Internet venture.