page_title: Jan Brandt
section_title: AOL
hierarchical_section_title: Jan Brandt / Career / AOL
caption_attribution_description: English: A collection of AOL CDs send to an student dormitory (which had 100 Mbit/s uplink to the university in every appartment) in Aachen, Germany.
context_page_description: Janice Brandt is an American businesswoman and vice chair emeritus of America Online/Time Warner. She is known for her direct marketing campaign at AOL that increased the number of subscribers from 200,000 to more than 22 million.
context_section_description: Brandt was hired with the explicit goal to grow the subscriber base and was given free rein over AOL's marketing strategies. After AOL began sending complimentary discs to people who requested them, Brandt set up a direct marketing campaign to distribute AOL installation diskettes in the mail. The trial campaign cost $250,000 and had an average response of over 10% uptake, with some mailing lists pulling as high as 16-18%. This prompted Brandt to expand the campaign beyond direct mailing and start working with nonconventional distribution partners, such as airlines and cereal companies. At one point, 50% of the CDs produced worldwide had an AOL logo. This "carpet bombing" strategy was instrumental in moving AOL beyond Prodigy and CompuServe to dominate the online service provider market.
  In 2002, Brandt stepped down as vice chair and chief marketing officer of AOL to take a part-time consulting position.
  Brandt was named twice by Fortune Magazine as one the "50 Most Powerful Women in American Business", in 1999 and again in 2000. 
  She also received Direct Marketing Days New York's "Direct Marketer of the Year" award in 2000, and the 2001 "Direct Marketer of the Year" award from Target Marketing.
caption: AOL free trial CDs sent to a student dormitory in Aachen, Germany
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