A successful high end hunting/hiking boot company teamed with a va foot and ankle surgeon to design and build the first orthopedic boot that would serves an all in one afo (ankle foot orthotic) and ongoing boot prescribed for injury rehab, to replace post-op care cam boots, and for full time, every day work or play.
 
My role: to brand and name the boot, develop the everstep marketing strategy/campaigns (beginning with the va) and develop all collateral. This one pager was developed as a take-away piece for tradeshows.

The audience: VA and IHS podiatrists and surgeons. See more at www.ever-step.com

Vertafore, a leader in the insurance software sector, approached the seattle digital b2b marketing firm projectline/yesler for a thirty-page ebook on meeting customer expectations in this time of disruption, and yesler brought me aboard to research, develop content and write the piece.
 
The average age of an insurance agent in the u.s today is 49 years old. To survive a marketplace filled with new, ongoing digital disruptions and ever-changing regulations, vertafore needed to educate it’s audience on how to address the specific disruptors challenging them. They also needed to help agencies learn best practices when hiring and marketing to millennials. In a nutshell, agencies need to shift their paradigm to one that focuses on the customer experience as the most important “product” they sell.

A work in progress…

First Community Bank, a ten branch and growing bank system in Montana, has relied on agricultural loans while providing farmers and their families banking services across the northern tier of the state for 125 years.
But everything is changing.
 
With their latest branch opened and next new branch opening in Helena, Montana, the state capitol and a college town, FCB needs to match the customer experience all of the local, regional and big box bank competitors offer and become more than an ag bank.
 
I’ve been brought into their marketing department to help develop and implement a new brand and communications strategy.

Big Sky, Montana
 
Story: Moonlight Basin, just 18 miles from Yellowstone Park, sits adjacent to Montana’s Big Sky Resort. The two combined ski areas equal the largest total skiable area in the country.
 
The full service resort has multiple revenue streams, with real estate sales being the most profitable. We were tasked with building a differentiated brand position and developing a real estate marketing campaign.
 
One of the campaigns combined direct mail incentivized offers to visit the property and a national magazine and wall street journal (real estate section) presence.
 
Primary target audience: east coast executives (i.e Madison Ave, Wall Street)

Norwood, Massachusetts (academic summer programs for Yale University, Wellesley college, St. Mark’s School).
 
Story: exploration’s summer programs needed a national flyer/brochure and corresponding ad for the new york times and boston globes annual summer camp full page listings. The brochure had to speak to four specific demographics, children in grades 4-7, children in grades 8-9, children in grades 10-12 and their parents.
 
The ad had to stand out on a full page of competitive same sized ads. Note: after looking at the past three years of times and globe full page listings, it was a immediately apparent that not one ad used graphics other than logos. When published, the ad stood out dramatically with the only photo on the page and the word “hungry”… which seemed out of place… which is why it garnered so much attention.

Helena, Montana (14 branches across montana).
 
Story: Mountain West Bank needed to differentiate itself from a glut of local banks and the “big box” banks in the hope it would attract a larger bank to purchase it. Once the brand position was established, i moved forward to align their brand and culture. Concurrently, i was tasked with developing print, billboard, radio and tv campaigns for their various revenue streams.
 
From the brand position: what business are we in?

• Our customers see our competitors all selling the same financial products and services.
• We must offer more to be relevant to their lives.
• The services and products we offer are a means to achieving a goal, a dream, security or freedom.
• What matters most to our customers? Making good decisions (financial and otherwise) that positively impact their lives. Nothing feels better than making a good decision.

Brand position: Mountain West Bank is in the business of helping clients “make good decisions.”

San Diego, California (online physician video based learning platform to help doctors become more proficient in non-technical clinical skills).
 
Story: Practicing Excellence, a by doctors, for doctors start-up, brought me onboard to help create a brand position. They did not want to compete or be known as “another online video” format.
 
To meet that criteria it was necessary to create a new “product” category that would appeal to the complex physician psychographic.
 
The new category of “advancing physician effectiveness,” led to “the physician effectiveness project” focusing on “advancing physician effectiveness and equipping clinical teams to do what they do best on behalf of their patients.”
 
Led by nationally recognized physician leaders, the physician effectiveness project equips physicians to deliver high value healthcare by more effectively leading clinical teams, improving the patient experience, coordinating care, managing resources and enhancing quality.
 
As they built out the website community, they requested a very comprehensive digital brochure to send to early prospects.

Seattle, Washington
 
Story: a physician ceo who works with hospitals to build more collaborative cultures needed a book (ghostwritten) to further validate him in the field.
 
The book had to introduce a paradigm shift around the approach needed to change the culture of a hospital in order to drastically reduce the number of medical errors.
 
After interviewing him extensively, i created characters and a story (business fable) to bring his work to life. The book was picked up by the first publisher who read it and is now on the shelves. The following are a few highlights/praises from part of the sneak peak of the book used as pre-marketing tool during the printing process.

Dinosaur National Monument, Utah (2002)
 
Story: the Mantle Ranch is an exclusive, “active” resort experience in the heart of Dinosaur National Monument. The Mantle family needed to fill 32 spots at a price point of $5000/stay for an all inclusive, rugged week of exploration and discovery. Guests are required to ride horses down into hells canyon to reach the resort that has no full time power and no connection to the outside world.
 
To get a better grip on our target audience, i worked with a geo-demographic mapper to learn specific lifestyle information about my prospects, and where the highest concentration of them resided.
 
In a nutshell we determined we were looking for women (the decision makers in their house) who made six figures and had their own subscription to either forbes or the wall street journal… and we’re extremely passionate about the horses they owned and rode. We narrowed the list down to 35 women who fit our criteria all the way down to the fact that they all played or were associated with polo.
 
The following direct mail brochure was sent to 35 recipients and 32 were sold.

Thompkinsville, Kentucky
 
Story: an importer from kentucky became one of the earlier promoters of uruguayan wine. I was brought on to develop a positioning tagline and story to dress his bottles and expand into other advertising.

Glendive, Montana - international solutions for dredging high water volume, sludge and slurry transfer projects.
 
Story: Meet the Flump.
Crisafulli brought me on ten years ago as they were quickly gaining an international reputation for their cutting edge (literally) dredge and pump designs. They needed their first brochure for the flump, one of the first remote control dredge systems for small municipalities. The original flump brochure i created is still working hard for the company today (online).

Dallas, Texas (323 tahoe)
 
Story: genesis real estate hired me to manage the early phase sales of the 323 tahoe ski condominium development at the top of Heavenly Valley, Lake Tahoe.
 
The contract included creating an initial campaign for the first nine months of construction pre-sales. The gave me a 2 million dollar budget which i leverage into just over 12 million in sales in the first nine months.
 
The following direct mail postcard campaign (3 cards sent four days apart) introduced the new “live the views” tagline and was a small part of a nationally segmented/focused concurrent advertising/mail effort to bring prospects to the website.

A travel agency in Montana turned to me for branding and product marketing campaigns. I was also responsible for their quarterly newsletter (writing sections, editing, working with publisher). Travel Cafe has since become montana’s largest agency after a recent purchase of Travel Montana.