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 1175: Taking It To The Streets

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“Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Benjamin Moore paints came up with this very cool marketing program where they committed to repaint 20 Main Streets in America through a crowd-sourced voting process.  They pushed out the marketing of the program on TV and print and then executed a great local ground program to get people in local towns to vote. The program caught my interest because the our closest Main Street to our home here in Rhode Island is Main Street, Westerly, RI.  So, both Patti and I voted online at their “paint what matters” website.  On Monday, Benjamin Moore released the 20 towns, and Westerly was one of them. You can only imagine what this does for a little town.  You might say, it puts them on the map.  Benjamin Moore nailed this campaign. They went big and broad and then got me and tens of thousands of others to take it to the streets for them.  When we think broadly and locally at the same time and put a program together that allows for both the air and ground game to work together, amazing things can happen.  It’s worth thinking about what programs we have that could follow the same pattern and be very effective for our businesses.

I am struck by the lessons that we as believers can learn from something as simple as a business marketing campaign.  God tells us to not pay attention the outward appearances but to what is in our heart.  On the surface (pun intended) the Paint What Matters campaign is all about the outward appearance of a town and won’t fundamentally change how the town functions effectively, or not.  Yet, there is a part of the outward appearance that Samuel recognizes that man does pay attention and if we are to win over the hearts of man for the Lord then that is part of the way into their hearts.  What I know is that if we think that others will be attracted and curious to what God is doing in our lives if our outward appearance is about laziness, unkempt, disrepair, inconsistent, or just plain not caring, then we will have a harder time in convincing others that the control of our lives is by a God who can do restorative work in them.  This is a hard one to balance, but it is worth exploring more, which we will do tomorrow in the next post.

Reference:  1 Samuel 16:7