Experience

One of my favorite people told me “being a generalist is a specialty”.

Being a generalist is about having breadth and depth. It takes time. I’ve been lucky to amass meaningful experience with incredible brands in technology, automotive, healthcare, nonprofits, associations, public affairs, ecommerce, consumer brands, banking, financial services and energy.

This gives me the gift of perspective. Seeing brands in a broader business and cultural context. Finding points of connection between brands, marketing strategies and tactics that may seem unrelated. Allowing me to envision a higher calling – something bigger, bolder and more impactful for companies and organizations.

Brand Strategy

A brand is an emotional connection that drives differentiation and decision-making. Internally, it creates culture. Externally, it generates customers and revenue. For both, a great brand can galvanize loyalty. But, the enemy of marketing is indifference, and so a brand must find its open space.

What I do best:

  • Discovery – research the current brand’s traits, strengths, weaknesses and differentiators within its broader competitive and cultural landscape

  • Platform – recommend an inspired and differentiated brand platform, including the mission, vision, position, audiences, reasons to believe, pillars, tone of voice, and messaging

  • Activation – develop the activation plan, including the content strategy, assets to be created, media plan, operational plan, and measurement approach

Public Affairs

For a nonprofit, association, campaign, coalition or corporate public affairs campaign, creating an advocacy brand is about finding the emotions that drive recruitment, a sense of belonging and the willingness to act in support of the mission.

What I do best:

  • Member/Advocate engagement programs – content strategy, personalized communications, and CRM/Marketing Automation technology selection and ongoing management

  • Brand strategy, identity and positioning for associations, coalitions, campaigns and corporate initiatives

  • Website project management for people or teams with limited time or less experience with information architecture, user experience design, development, quality assurance and analytics

  • Digital media strategy across all forms of paid, search, social, and PR/earned media

  • Campaign management – concepting, content strategy, production of digital and video assets, paid media activation and performance analytics

Digital Marketing

Most organizations don’t know nearly enough about their target audience. Those insights are the key ingredient to everything else – from the brand and marketing strategy to the go-to-market activation plan.

What I do best:

  • Audience research, insights and persona development

  • Marketing and creative strategy

  • Customer/Partner engagement programs – content strategy, personalized and automated communications, and CRM/Marketing Automation technology management

  • Website project management for people or teams with limited time or less experience with information architecture, user experience design, development, quality assurance and analytics

  • Digital media strategy across all forms of paid, search, social, and PR/earned media

  • Campaign management – concepting, content strategy, production of digital and video assets, paid media activation, landing pages, CRM integration and performance analytics

“Eric is one of the truly rare finds in the marketing business. He is an incredible leader with a keen eye to superior strategy and creative. Not only does he recognize both, but can also craft solid strategy and actively influence effective creative. Eric is a manager and a doer, which is critical in today’s business world.”

— Jack Davidson, President at The YGS Group