As president and founder of the sports marketing agency rEvolution in Chicago, John Rowady readily concedes he could have ended up with a career in the automotive business in metro Detroit.
“I grew up in an auto family; my dad worked for most of his career as a metallurgical and design auto engineer at Eaton Corp. in Southfield,” Rowady says.
“When I was a little kid, I remember he would take me to the Eaton Proving Grounds in Marshall, because he was part of a very small team that created the airbag, the cruise control systems, and the safety door beams that provide occupant protection in a side-impact collision. He has a lot of patents as an auto guy and an engineer.”
Rowady is the second of four boys, and he and his siblings grew up in two different houses in the Grosse Pointe area.
“We lived first in the Farms, and I used to walk up the street to Richard Elementary School, which is still there,” Rowady recalls. “Then we bought a house in Grosse Pointe city, and all my brothers and I went to Grosse Pointe South.”
When the time came to decide what college to attend, Rowady had his heart set on following the path taken by his older brother.
“He was at the University of Michigan, and I loved Michigan football, so that was my dream,” Rowady says. “Then my mom said, ‘Let’s take a ride around the schools in the Midwest.’ So we started in Indiana and went through West Lafayette to look at Purdue University. And then we headed down to Bloomington to see Indiana University.”
For Rowady, it was love at first sight. “I landed on this campus, which is gorgeous,” he says. “I thought, ‘This is cool. I could mark my own path.’ The place is incredible. So I went to Indiana.”
His timing was impeccable. Rowady’s freshman year coincided with the 1986-87 season for the Indiana basketball team, coached by Bobby Knight. It was one of the greatest basketball teams in the history of the program.
“Keith Smart hit that last-second shot (with 5 seconds to go) in New Orleans (during the NCAA championship game),” Rowady remembers, excitedly. “We beat Syracuse, the whole place blows up, and we’re dancing in the streets of Bloomington. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Does this happen every year down here?’ ”
Initially, Rowady planned on pursuing a pre-med major at Indiana, but that changed early in his freshman year. “I realized I had more of a business acumen,” he says. “My dad kept telling me, ‘Marketing and sales, marketing and sales, marketing and sales. That’s where you need to be.’ So I tested my way into the business school, where I had great professors and really started to gravitate toward management and leadership, and marketing and finance.”
Rowady also decided to join a fraternity.
“It was small, and it wasn’t well-respected,” he says. “There were other big houses around there and I thought, ‘I need to do something and show some leadership.’ I ended up becoming the president of my fraternity, and in my senior year I wanted to do some ambitious things.”
For Rowady, that meant a massive overhaul of the fraternity house itself. “We worked with university officials and we built out the house from accommodating 60 guys to 120,” he says.
Ironically, even more than his work in the classroom, it was Rowady’s involvement in spearheading the fraternity construction project that most attracted the attention of job recruiters.
“Because I was in the business school and because what I was doing was entrepreneurial, I got targeted and a lot of companies kind of came after me — like Pepsi, GE, and others,” he says. “I was pretty excited, doing all these interviews, but I didn’t know any better. I think I was acting more instinctively, or streetwise, (rather) than showing off a skill set.”
Rowady was ultimately hired by Pittsburgh Plate & Glass, a global supplier of paints, coatings, and specialty materials, and he ascended the corporate ladder with startling quickness.
“I moved to Pittsburgh and they put me in a tech training camp,” Rowady says. “I was selling chemicals and glass and all kinds of stuff, doing well, and then they told me I was a Midwest guy, and they wanted me to run a nine-state area: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin, all the way down into Kentucky. I’m like, ‘OK. I’m 22 years old, and I got a budget to entertain my clients to sell them chemicals.’ And PPG was the title sponsor of the PPG Indy Car World Series.”
Rowady was already a car racing fan from his days as a kid. “My dad would get invited to the Formula 1 races (in Detroit),” he says. “We’d go downtown to watch them. So now I’m taking my clients to these PPG Indy Car races and, being the title sponsor, they had the best hospitality and the best tickets.
“I could go in the paddock and put my clients in a pace car. And my sales numbers went up because I was entertaining all these people at these great events. What a great way to build sales and have fun doing it! It was incredible. And I was also getting my first real connection between business relationships and sports.”
PPG moved Rowady to Chicago, planning to put him in charge of a large chemicals group, but his enthusiasm for venturing down the path in that career was already waning. “I was going into all these paint plants and I started to get really worried about being around all these chemicals and other stuff,” Rowady says. “That’s when everything shifted and kicked off for me. I was 23, 24 years old and thinking I’d take a breath. I started looking for jobs in sports, but didn’t really know where to go.”
Rowady jumped around for the next few years — first landing a job with a sports production company in Chicago, followed by a stint with Raycom, a major syndicator in college sports, followed by another job with Fox Sports in Los Angeles.
“From there I worked for an international sports marketing agency in Switzerland called ISL Worldwide,” he says. “It was run by Horst Dassler, the son of Adi Dassler, who created Adidas. I wanted to do full-on sponsorships and sports event marketing, and this was a juggernaut of a company that spanned the globe with broadcast rights and everything. I was the managing director, still a young guy, and they gave me North and South America. I absolutely loved it there.”
But it was all too good to be true.
“In May of 2001, ISL Worldwide went bankrupt and I was out of a job,” Rowady says. “My wife and I just had our first kid, we were living in West Bloomfield, and I had mortgage payments to make. I needed a big job, so I was thinking, ‘We gotta go to New York.’ ”
That fall, Rowady lined up a few days of interviews and took a morning flight out of Detroit.
“We’re 40 minutes out of LaGuardia,” he says. “The captain comes on and says we got to make an emergency landing in Cleveland. It was the morning of 9/11. We landed, and everyone was running around and saying the buildings are coming down. The Cleveland airport had a bomb threat. I called my wife and she was crying, saying, ‘You’re supposed to be on a plane into New York, and I don’t hear from you, and I’m watching these planes crash into those buildings.’ ”
The traumatic day turned out to be a life-changing point in Rowady’s life and career. “I hitchhiked home from Cleveland to Detroit and I told my wife, ‘We’re gonna go back to Chicago and we’re gonna start our own business,’ ” he recalls. “While I was looking for a job and had time on my hands, I was writing a business plan for what would become rEvolution. And that’s how I started the business in my basement in West Bloomfield.”
In late September, rEvolution celebrated its 22nd anniversary as one of the largest and most successful independent sports marketing agencies in the world. The mission of the company is the same today as it was all those years ago, when Rowady emerged from his basement with a plan for his novel idea.
“Instead of repping athletes or repping commercial rights or selling sports media at networks, it was all about being the brand agent and wrapping brands in the sports mix — building a marketing, media, and advertising agency, but focused on sports. No one was really doing that, and that idea became rEvolution.”
Given the humble — literally subterranean — beginnings of his company, Rowady is especially proud and excited about the 23,000-square-foot global headquarters for rEvolution in Chicago, located in what is commonly described as the “hip corporate and entertainment area” of the former warehouse district of Fulton Market.
“I wanted to create a headquarters that was like coming out of the tunnel at Michigan Stadium and entering the field to play,” Rowady explains. “So that’s what it is. There’s a tunnel off the elevator. You may not be playing sports anymore, but I want you to get energized because you’re in a great place.
I didn’t intend for it to be the coolest office in Chicago, but everybody started saying it’s the coolest place they’ve ever been in.”
The company has an office in Carmel, Ind., a suburb of Indianapolis, as well as an international branch based in London. “After COVID-19, we tripled in size,” Rowady says. “Before the pandemic, we had around 70 employees. Now, throughout the world we have well over 200 people and we’re growing.”
Middle: Chris Ward, senior manager motorsports at Automobili Lamborghini America, listens to John Rowady’s remarks during the grand opening.
Bottom: Rowady, Martin Lilly, vice president of integrated client services at rEvolution; Julie Barnard, executive vice president, rEvolution; and Ward with the Lamborghini Huracán GT3. Lamborghini is an Italian manufacturer of luxury sports cars owned by the Volkswagen Group via its subsidiary, Audi.
In May 2022, Rowady not only added another asset to his company, but also accomplished a longtime goal. “I always wanted to get back to Michigan and Detroit and be in the auto business, and we acquired Centigrade in Sterling Heights,” he says.
Centigrade, now rEvolution, is a marketing agency with a client roster of luxury auto brands that includ-s Lamborghini, Lotus, Bugatti, and Alfa Romeo.
“It’s great to have the Lamborghini client there,” Rowady says. “With all of the things they do in the automotive business it was a very big deal for the company, and for me and my family to finally return and have a business there and employ a lot of people,” he says.
“We’ve doubled our employees in Michigan since the takeover, from 10 to 20 people, and we have two full offices — one for rEvolution and one for our clients Lamborghini and Iron Lynx, the Lamborghini racing team. It’s been incredible.”
The 55-year-old Rowady lives in Munster, Ind., 30 miles southeast of Chicago’s Loop. “My wife’s from there, and it’s nice because we can get to Chicago quickly, but it’s also easy to get back to Michigan and see family.”
Rowady’s parents still live in Grosse Pointe, and it’s clear he retains a strong connection to his roots — and their impact on his life and career.
“Detroiters are a special breed, and one of a kind,” he says. “We stick together, and wherever I go, there’s a whole different edge and credibility that’s given to you. When you grow up in that type of environment, there’s no question it’s in the water. And it’s definitely in my blood, and in me.”
