Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 1521: Building Social Currency: Part 3 – Not Every Brand Should Be Social

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I clipped out an article in 2010 from Fast Company  that was written by Ben Paynter, titled “Five Steps to Social Currency”.  I was so struck by Paynter’s five steps/lessons that I thought they would be worth exploring in depth and applying some of our purposed worKING thoughts to what he has written.  This will be the third in our five part series.

“And the news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding countryside.”

Paynter queries why in the world would a brand like Gillette, that makes shaving razors want to have a social campaign?  He’s so right.  I mean, what is there to be social about in razor usage.  “Hey, I had a nice clean shave today…what a razor!”  That’s not bad for today, but what about tomorrow?  “Oops…nicked myself”.  You see, some things are just better left alone and not attempted to make social.  I have my own litmus test.  If it can’t be made to have a personality that others would enjoy sharing and having fun with, then there’s no reason for it to be social.  When Texaco had the “Texaco Man with The Shield” and we couldn’t wait to buy the next Texaco toy truck, maybe there would have been a social media campaign in there.  But today, crude oil and gas dealers don’t need people declaring themselves “Guzzlers”.  It’s worth thinking about the next time the new digital intern class gets hired and they want to make everything social.

Our faith must be social!  Jesus’ message was designed to go viral.  We are the social mavens for Him and we are to spread His Word and message in all ways possible.  But, even then, let’s be sure that as we go social for Jesus, that we remember yesterday’s post on context.  I have a Facebook friend who likes to start a Sunday filling up everyone’s News Feed with Bible verses.  Like clockwork for a long time, I could expect to login to Facebook on Sunday and see 25-50 posts strung together in a row from her.  But, then they stopped.  She is still on Facebook and she isn’t shy about her faith and still posts verses but someone got to her and told her that it was more of a turn-off than a positive to going social for Jesus the way she went about it.  So, think twice, but still be courageous and God will provide for ways for Him to be heard through you.

Reference: Luke 7:17 (New Living Translation)