Category Archives: Strategy

BrandingBlog Radio: Ray Seggern and Wizard of Ads Events

Have you met Ray Seggern?

He’s been one of our Wizard of Ads partners since about 2006. He’s stepping into a role as a sort of ringmaster for many of our partners.

By ringmaster, I mean that he’s making an effort to herd our posse of cats onto a flatbed truck and getting them moving in the same direction.

He’s filling a Colonel Parker role by finding speaking gigs for us and he’s creating events where he can sell our services.

He’s got an event planned for May 16, 2012 in St. Louis and we had a chance to talk about it and he spills all the details in this interview.

I always enjoy talking to Ray, when I can get him to sit still long enough. He’s full of energy and I’m sure that a 25-minute podcast felt like an eternity to him.

BUSINESS OWNERS…you really ought to head to St. Louis for this. It’s a measly $67. Get on an airplane. Make a reservation. Go learn something.

BrandingBlog Radio: Brett Feinstein – Political Advertising

Brett Feinstein - no doubt going negative

Brett Feinstein is a partner in the political advertising agency Pound & Feinstein.

He’s one of those guys that you have to get to know to understand. He’s loved and admired by those who take the time. If you know Brett Feinstein only superficially through Facebook or another near anonymous web arena, you probably only think you know him. That’s because he treats Facebook as his own psychology lab; questioning, pushing, shocking and provoking to see what kind of reaction he can get. It can be alarming…if you don’t know Brett.

I’ve known him for almost 10 years now and I always enjoy getting together for a meal when I can catch up with him or on Skype for a podcast interview. We talked for almost 4 hours. Most of it after I shut down the recorder.

I still ended up cutting about 30 minutes out of our official podcast interview just to get it close to an hour.

If you’re a student of marketing and advertising, you’re gonna like this one. We compare and contrast the various strategies used by retailers and candidates. I was surprised, enlightened and entertained through the entire conversation and I hope you will be too.

What I left on the cutting room floor was mostly a conversation about Facebook that got a little personal for a few third parties. So, I decided not to share it.

We did cover campaign strategy, messaging, research, direct mail and the life of a political campaign staffer.

 

Soundbites: Fire Fast, Hire Slow

This is age old advice in management circles.

Kinda funny how hard it is to do in practice. And it’s one of those topics where you look at business owners and managers and you think, “They really should take this advice.” I really want to talk about the “fire fast” but I’ll just touch briefly on the hire slow, because there are loads and loads of resources on how to hire people. Just remember that the worst thing you can do is hire the first person through the door that you think could probably learn to do the job. Continue reading