by Maria Hench
Leading the Pack
Staying ahead of the curve is the key to success in the advertising and marketing business. DePaul entrepreneurs Russell Gottesman, Chris Campbell and Ryan Powszok continually innovate their business practices to stay on the leading edge of their industries and help their clients.
Gottesman, an MBA student in the entrepreneurship program, is founder of Dayton, Ohio-based Commuter Advertising, which sells audio ads on public transit vehicles and shares its revenue with the local transit agency. Gottesman, whose background includes working for Westwood One in Chicago selling the 10-second radio commercials that are attached to traffic reports, says the idea came to him while he and his wife, Katie, were riding the CTA’s Red Line on their way home from a White Sox game. “It just dawned on me. Why can’t we do those same reports, but, instead of drivers, it can affect transit riders in a train or bus? We happened to pass Chinatown, and we thought that a fantastic way for one restaurant to stand out from competitors would be to do a captive announcement about their business inside a transit vehicle.”
Commuter Advertising developed software so that the targeted ads would air at certain stops, and soon after the company landed its first contract with the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority in Ohio. Nearly two years later, the company is in five markets, enabling advertisers to reach more than 48 million rides.
Besides growing Commuter Advertising by adding markets and advertising clients, Gottesman says the company needs to continuously develop ways to do things differently that allow the business to get better. “To be innovative is to understand the process and how you can improve your product and execute the strategy to do that. For us, we have to embrace emerging technologies, such as creating a virtual sales office and using Skype and text messaging, to become more of a 360-degree marketing solution for our clients instead of doing just audio ads. It means embracing some of our software development, which we do on an ongoing basis.”
Campbell (CMN ’09) and Powszok (COM ’07) teamed up in 2007 to found Chicago-based Lakeshore Branding, which provides Web site design and Internet marketing services for small- to medium-sized businesses. What excites them about what they do is the ever-changing nature of the industry. “You have to maintain a constant pulse on what’s going on in the industry. It’s constantly changing and evolving, and we have to work with our clients to innovate the approach and strategy for their campaigns,” says Campbell, search engine optimization specialist, who adds that the public expects much more from a company Web site than it did five or 10 years ago. “They’re not looking for just a phone number and address anymore. They want to make a purchase, have a conversation and interact online.”
Powszok, Lakeshore’s creative director, says staying on the leading edge of Web design and balancing usability can be a challenge. “A great design has to maintain the delicate balance of conveying the company brand while focusing on converting your Web site visitors to sales. Another important thing is to figure out what are the trends and what are the revolutions. For example, a lot of people first thought social media was a trend, but it’s become a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.”