Banyan Branch is a new-media marketing consulting group based in Seattle. Banyan Branch is a hands-on practice, providing end-to-end service, working closely with clients to help them better listen and engage across the social web.

The cofounders Alex Garcia and Dave Hanley have been pioneering new media strategies since the late 1990s.  Their diverse experiences have brought the new media touch to a wide variety of industries including entertainment, high tech, and nonprofit sectors.

Alex Garcia – Principal
Alex Garcia has pioneered new media marketing in music and politics.  He knows how to tap its massive outreach. In 2002, as head of marketing at SmartPunk.com he grew the site by leveraging social media and accessing specific communities through music genre sites.  Early 2004 he brought social media to Drive-Thru Records (Geffen) and made it one of the first music labels with an extensive network of online fans. As VP of Marketing at iSound, Alex grew from scratch a burgeoning online community where thousands of artists promote their content to over 200,000 unique monthly users.   Beginning in 2007, Alex created the web strategy for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and utilized his network to develop online communities with half a million Hillary supporters ready to donate and promote campaign events and materials. While consulting for Ed in ‘08, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation program he grew site traffic by 20X, marketed a top-20 YouTube video, and courted hundreds of bloggers to highlight the campaign and get their readers involved. Alex continues to innovate and prove over and over that he is an industry leader in new media marketing.

Dave Hanley – Principal
Dave Hanley has worked in web marketing for several years, specializing in creating and marketing massively viral social applications.  As VP of Marketing, Dave oversaw marketing and advertising sales at Shelfari, the largest social network for book readers, which he grew from 15,000 members to over 1.5 million in one year with no advertising.  He worked in web media for over five years, most recently as director of product management at RealNetworks where he oversaw product management for Rhapsody.com and Rhapsody’s web services program. Dave spent his five years before business school working in economic development with NGOs and banks in Asia and Latin America that were implementing and assessing microcredit programs, including time as a Fulbright scholar with Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Dave has an MBA from Stanford University and Bachelors and Masters degrees in Public Policy from Brigham Young University.

Luke Doyle – Director of Sales & Marketing

Luke Doyle has been on the leading edge of online media for nearly a decade.  In 2000, Luke launched the affiliate and search marketing teams for ShareBuilder (now ShareBuilder by ING Direct) in an effort to leverage new marketing techniques to find cost effective ways to acquire new customers on the web. Those efforts lead ShareBuilder to become the fastest growing brokerage firm in the US during Luke’s final two years at the company. In 2004, Luke left ShareBuilder to open Google’s Seattle sales office.  While helping to build Google’s Seattle based sales team, Luke also managed the global business relationships for several of Google’s largest and most import clients including Amazon.com, Adidas, Nordstrom, and REI.  In 2007, Luke was granted the Google Luminary Award by Omid Kordestani for an ongoing record of developing innovative solutions to client’s marketing challenges that could be leveraged broadly across Google’s other advertising partners.  Luke joined Alex and Dave at Banyan Branch in Sept 2009 to lead Sales and Marketing, and to continue to help marketers achieve their business goals by engaging their customers and prospects across the social web.