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 1064: Tell The World ‘Dat…!

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“Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature…”

I love a well orchestrated new product or service announcement.  When orchestrated correctly, within a 24-hour period we will read, see, hear and read, see, and hear about it all over again.  Better yet, someone we know and trust will say, “Hey, did you hear about…?”.  Whenever we launch we want the world to know about it and we do all we can to make that happen.  There are tricks to the trade so we need to be sure that we have the best of the best working on our launch and announcements if we want to get a great pickup.  I am still amazed at the number of companies who still think a press release coupled with a Facebook post and a few tweets will make it all come together.  Oh, if it was just that easy.  Product and service launches are much more strategic than that and being very surgical about the influencers who will spread the word and giving them their scripts and tapping their passion are all part of the art of  making noise.  Yes, we all want to “Tell the world ‘dat…” but it takes deliberate thinking and hard work to get into the jet stream of consciousness these days.  If you are contemplating a launch, don’t go it alone.  Find an expert or two and have them help you put together your plan.

God knows a thing or two about getting the world to pay attention to a message.  God has the loudest of all megaphones and with one darkened sky and thunderclap He could have everyone in the world looking up and listening to His loud voice telling us to “Repent!”.  But, that’s not our God.  He doesn’t impose a message on us.  Instead, he is counting on us as believers to be the spreaders of His word and message.  Just like we think about launching our products, we should be just as strategic in how we spread the Gospel.  For each of us, let’s start with ensuring that we are being a strong and credible witness for Christ and then also think carefully about the people who will be in contact with today – for each person; think about what would be the opening to share our faith.  We are commanded to “Tell the world ‘dat Jesus came for us”.  So, think about how you will tell the world ‘dat!

Reference: Mark 6:15 (New Living Translation)