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 1519: Building Social Currency: Part 1 – Advocates Trump Followers

purposed worKING No Comments

“Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations,baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

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 a five part series, starting with part one; “Advocates Trump Followers”.

The idea of a net promoter score (NPS) is not new.  But on digital/social platforms, those who just follow a brand or a fan page mean little in comparison to those who will actually speak up and advocate for the brand, company or service.  Paynter draws a picture of those who hear something positive about a brand being the ones who are moved to make a buying decision.  And then, when there are those who way they would never recommend a brand goes up, well that is when we are in dangerous territory.  So, even though we chase Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram followers and the amount of each of them, we are still much better off with fewer followers and more people who will advocate and step up talk about the brand positively.  They are the ones that really matter.  So, which have we been working towards building and who gets the higher priority?

Jesus only asked His disciples and us to follow Him, but we can’t forget that He didn’t just stop there.  He commissioned us to go into the world and be His advocate.  Usually around Easter time we will recount the story of when Peter, maybe the most devout of the following disciples, had his moment of weakness and could not only not advocate, but ended up denying that he knew Jesus.  And Peter went on to be the rock which the church was built.  So, let’s step forward together to be strong advocates of our Lord!  It is in this that others will become followers.

Reference: Matthew 28:19-20 (New Living Translation)