I’m a member of Prince of Peace, a wonderful church here in lovely Burnsville Minnesota. Last week pastor Foss made a comment in his sermon that I thought summed up the selling power of advertising today. To illustrate a point about listening for Jesus to speak to you, he said “I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust advertisements anymore. when a commercial comes on the TV, I’m as likely to walk out of the room as I am to hit the mute button.”
It’s quite a paradox. Advertising: the clear example of something we don’t listen to.
The days of introducing a new product through advertising are done. No one’s listening. It’s a grass roots world now. You can’t just buy time and shout your message. The key to introducing a new product today is finding the places people LISTEN.
Lonny Kocina is the CEO and Founder of Media Relations Agency which has been in business for nearly 35 years. During that time, Kocina also founded and sold two other businesses: Mid America Events and Expos, and Checkerboard Internet Services. Prior to that, Lonny worked as a marketing director for Investment Rarities Inc., a company with sales over 4 billion dollars. Kocina has also been a long time member of Vistage International which is a CEO peer mentoring organization. He was also a volunteer marketing mentor for Junior Achievement and the Carlson School of Business. For fun he has taught Principles of Marketing at the college level, and his recent book, the “CEO’s Guide to Marketing” is an Axiom Business Book silver medal winner as well as an Amazon bestseller. Lonny likes to kid that his third grade teacher may have summed him up best with a note sent home on his report card. “Lonny is a daydreamer and he’s getting worse each day. He complains of a stomach ache a lot and I don’t think he likes school much either.”
