Business Advisor / Writer / Marketing Strategist
Working as a Creative Director in advertising over a few decades, I’ve seen and experienced a great deal. My work has been blessed in many ways:
(1) My work has made a difference to the growth of many businesses;
(2) My work has garnered 7 International Telly Awards, The International Hermes Creative Award, The Mead Award, and the International John Caples Award.
(3) My creative solutions have sold billions of dollars in products and services over my career.
(4) I’ve tried to honor God in the sense that I have remained committed to the unique gifts imprinted in me. These and the related opportunities they present have helped fuel energy in my life and in energetic client results.
STORYTELLING!
There is something profound about a story. As soon as a story is told/read it immediately relaxes the mind and makes it more receptive. What better way, and what better time to get your unique, differentiated value message across to prospects!
Throughout my life I’ve been telling stories. I recall as young as around 5 or 6 that I was telling stories some of which got me in trouble. That carried through my career in advertising in print, TV, film, video, broadcast and every other medium. And I assure you that advertising presents the most difficult and challenging problems for storytelling. You have to tell a story most often in highly condensed space or time:
- Headline (capture attention)
- Offer a plot to keep them interested
- Come up with an ending (to close the deal).
The assignment is to always create a story in miniature. And you have extremely limited space to do this with words and images on a magazine page, or web page or social media. You work in a small arena (physical space and time) to make a big impact. Then you have radio scripts, and social media posts. You face the same challenge—write a story in miniature, with an opening, plot and ending in 30 seconds or 60 seconds. The storytelling is slightly improved when writing a TV commercial because your story gets some help from music and moving imagery. A company video is even more challenging because you are charged to tell a convincing story about a company’s multi-year history, in a short time. That said, I am so fortunate that I have learned the key results-factors in the advertising field.
Why I take my creative and marketing skills so seriously
When I served as President and Creative Director in several companies I was the one who dealt with business problems. This problem hit me personally. At the time Bridgeport Machines was the world leader in CNC milling machines. Along with my team we moved the company’s machine tool sales to number one in the world. An amazing opportunity! To this day their machines are virtually in every manufacturing plant in the country and many abroad. 500 people lost their jobs in one day! Each of us has a calling, a responsibility, a destiny (whatever title suits you ), and that one thing drives and compels us and brings us satisfaction. Very often something takes place in your life, a pattern interruption that opens your eyes to that calling and it usually isn’t a soft and mushy encounter, at least it wasn’t for me. When disaster hit one of my largest clients, it changed my life in several ways…LEARN MORE
Al Pirozzoli Career Milestones:
- Philips Medical: Successful introduction of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging
- Index Corp: Introduced automatic multi spindle machines to the U.S.
- Pepsi: Introduced and announced the first family size retail soda bottle to the trade
- Purdue: Launched its DeLuca brand chicken entrées to national grocery chains
- IBM Credit: First national awareness campaign
- Helped launched Historic Brands’ Old Mission Breads (artisan filled breads)
- NHL Created “On Solid Ice” first national retail merchandising promotion
- Revitalized the Pilot Pen / Yale tennis tournament
- Ironman World Triathlon: Transformed a race event into a viable brand
- Introduced Ironman brand sports watch (Timex iControl) to x-games youth audience
- Branded and launched Missions of the World artisan breads a regional company
- NBA: Reformatted the apparel direct mail catalog. The commissioner said it was the most successful ever produced.
- Corometrics: Introduced the first neonatal fetal monitor to physician’s offices
By the way I don’t ever forget the people who got me here, the people who invested in me, taught me and believed in my creative talent, and stretched uncomfortably. That’s where I learned the essence of telling stories, of creative thinking. Then they send me out of the nest where it was honed in the pressure cooker of deadlines and little space and little time to get a story across; it squeezes out what you have inside. If there’s nothing there creatively, then all that flows out is tension and this is a drain on enthusiasm for your work. Always honor the people upon who’s shoulders you stand.
On the professional career side for me this includes; Ed Gaylog, Bill Silverman, Ed Sullivan, Russ Madison, Howard Drubner, Rich Krevolin, Craig Clyde, and David Hevenstone.
On the spiritual side it includes: Ken Richard, Joe Petritrone Dr. John Huffman, Arthur Miller, Jr., and Myles Munroe, Fr. Joe Connelly.
Books
I have authored a number of books and monographs some of which are listed on my BOOKS page.
Recently, I wrote a fictional novel, “Levi’s Chalice”, it’s available on Amazon. Please take a read.
You really can’t afford not to convey your unique value- difference story and that is what I would like to do working with you.
More about Al Pirozzoli
I annoyed the ad manager fourteen times in a row to get a lower-paying job
I started out my career in a storm of difficulties. I was working as a service technician for a regional commercial kitchen repair company, a job for which I was a misfit entirely. From my earliest years as a kid I gravitated to storytelling that sometimes included offering rather convincing reasons for not having completed my homework or forgetting a chore at home. Creating ideas and thinking of unique things and telling stories were a torrid love affair for me.
How I wound up in the equipment repair business is too long a story to cover here. When I realized I could no longer live for Friday and dread Monday I knew the end was near. So, I took a leap.
After 14 in-person visits to the advertising manager of large daily city newspaper, he finally gave in and placed me in a job preparing ads for the Help Wanted section (big pay cut). Hey, it served as my first step into the world of advertising where over time, I knew I would be paid well for my ideas and storytelling! (I had to keep telling myself that.)
We expected our first child in August. I took this new job three weeks before my wife was due to delivery our first child. I didn’t have the heart (actually the guts), to tell my wife that I had just taken a 50 percent cut in pay to get an entry position in the low rung of advertising. Fortunately, it did provide a step up from, “get me a cup of coffee and pick up my dry cleaning on the way in.”
Once she came home and things went well with the baby, I confessed. She already knew something would happen with my job since there wasn’t any way I could hide my discouragement with my work. Well, we survived. I went on to attend Paier College of Art and worked my way up in the advertising business from designer, art director, associate creative director, writer/producer, to vice president creative director and eventually launched my own agency.
After years of study, hard work, very long hours, dedication, and some life-shaping suffering I was knighted as a VP/Creative Director.
At first, I hated this word. Fiduciary! That’s the one.
I was recruited as president of a highly specialized branding and sports marketing company years ago and given charge of everything from finance to bringing a vision to the firm to lifting the creative product.
After signing on I discovered the serious debt the company owed. I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know about this going into the position. But I knew it soon enough. That’s when my mentor helped me learn about the significance of this powerful word. In short it means:
- Holding assets in trust for a beneficiary.
- Stewardship of someone else’s possessions.
- A director who stands in a special relationship of trust, confidence or responsibility in obligation to others.
Pretty sobering definition don’t you think. So, there I was in the midst of a massive business problem. I stayed. I fought. I engrained the idea that each person in the company was now a fiduciary along with me. It improved but I had my days. “Stupid, stupid word,” I’d tell myself. Over time the debt was paid, and business increased. It was a personal burden not just a professional one. You can’t go through a serious challenge like that and not own it. You just can’t.
Fiduciary—the word works, and I respected it. But I’ve yet to see it on a T-shirt or refrigerator magnet. Now, I’ve said all that to get to this. If you have been given a gift to write, to recognize stories, to love the visual…and have the ability to uncover a company’s unique value difference and convey it, then you have a fiduciary responsibility to that gift God has imprinted in you. Secondly, you have a fiduciary responsibility to apply it to support others.
Thank you,
Al Pirozzoli