The Energy Annex - A Kay Allison Company

The energy that powers Kay Allison is the electricity of consumer insight igniting the explosive power of innovation.

Kay’s early career at two top-tier advertising agencies honed her skills at engaging consumers and identifying their oftentimes hidden motivations. Not only was she adept at achieving understanding when others gave up in frustration, Kay always made it look so effortless. Where some researchers built castles of complexity, Kay insisted on referring to her work simply as “conversations.” Yet whenever agency creative directors were presented with particularly vexing and complex consumer issues, they often sang a common refrain: “Can we get Kay involved?”

In 1999, Kay’s pursuit of consumer insight and innovation went entrepreneurial: She founded The Energy Infuser located in a significantly renovated loft—dubbed The Energy Annex—on Chicago’s near-west side. Her vision was to assemble a team of experienced marketing-idea people who shared her zeal and her consumer sensitivities; create an innovative physical environment that would contribute to the quality of focused consumer conversations; bring clients into the ideation process as co-collaborators; and as a consequence of all this, to build a business whose twin products would be privileged consumer insight and innovative marketing ideas arising from it.

Today, The Energy Infuser is a highly successful, bustling, insight-and-idea enterprise with a feel and provenance all its own. Kay—in person and in spirit—is part of every single project. Collaboration and bonhomie pervade the workspace. Walls and doors are few; laughter and excited idea-chatter are common. In room settings as comfortable as one’s own home, consumers may be drawing cartoons about their secret food appetites… or creating iPod playlists for competing energy drinks… or matching liquor brands to different guests at a party. Marketing people from major consumer-product and service companies are routinely part of this scene, and very much part of the action. And from all this energy erupt the innovative ideas that have helped generate hundreds of millions of dollars in sales for those clients.

Whenever Kay is complimented about building The Energy Infuser into a resource unique in the marketing-services world, she always responds the same way.

“Conversations with consumers,” she says with a smile, “can be very rewarding.”

Together with Kay Allison, John started the Energy Annex and has guided it through several years of exponential growth. He is responsible for its smooth operation and the well-being of all who enter.

Before partnering with Kay, he co-founded a B2B internet company and traded steel and agricultural commodities for five years. He still heads a successful publishing company specializing in commodities information.

To relax, John bikes hills, skis moguls, and counts cards while playing blackjack. (Yes, he finds this stuff relaxing.) Foreshadowing his adult life as an entrepreneur, when he was a twelve-year-old country club caddy in Wayzata, Minnesota he would wade into the golf course ponds at night to recover lost balls, and then sell them the next day.

John earned a B.S. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin and an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, and is very proud that he paid part of his tuition by being an iron worker. You'll see this early job experience reflected in his ready smile, attentive listening and nerves of steel.

Walk into the Annex and you will be met by Jessica's full attention and sunny California smile. She's the queen of details, a quality evident not only in her precise project planning and diligent follow-up, but even in the way she coordinates her wardrobe.

Perhaps this is because she started and ran a company representing eight fashion designers on the West Coast when she was fresh out of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, where she earned her B.A. in Communications. And because she honed those planning and detail skills during stints as an Account Manager and Business Development Manager for two marketing companies in Chicago.

When she's not running the Annex, she is simply running-up and down Chicago's lakefront in her Nike's, or up and down Mag Mile in her Prada's.

Mary is the dual master of positive energy and technical solutions, and is always looking for ways to better assist her clients and coworkers. Born and raised in Dallas, Mary has considered the Midwest home since college. After four great years of studying Marketing at Saint Louis University, Mary continued north and quickly fell in love with Chicago. Her enthusiasm and zest for life permeates everyone she encounters, and her warm disposition is fuel for success in the Annex. Mary utilizes her free time by immersing herself in the newest member of the Times Best Seller list, attending weekly Grey’s Anatomy parties, and exercising her artistic panache with an assortment of creative projects.

Dan is skilled at observing people and anticipating their needs, a talent he honed first as a film major and then as an improvisational actor at Chicago's Second City.

He attended film school on a baseball scholarship, and these two worlds collided when he spent a day pitching baseballs to Madonna to prepare for her lead role in "A League of Their Own."

Since he's catered to the demands of a diva, he will find it easy to meet your needs unless your requirements include a private make-up artist or masseuse. (We do have a superb spa right across the street. You can ask him about that.)

When he is not at the Annex providing top-notch food, drink and technology to our clients, he performs in the Dan Darrah Band and Hotel 45. You can catch him at the House of Blues, Schuba's and other music venues around the country.