John's Story

...in Bemidji, Minnesota, where by the time he was 15, John was on top of the world: He had a wonderful family, was class president and the back-up quarterback on the varsity football team (weighing all of 127 pounds), and had lots of great friends and a really cute girlfriend. But then he found himself heeding the call to. . .

Phillips Exeter Academy, which was founded in 1781 in Exeter, New Hampshire, was making a push to recruit more students from rural America, and Bemidji certainly checked that box. Through the Minneapolis Tribune, for which John was a paperboy, Exeter interviewed John, evaluated his grades and extracurricular activities, and decided to offer him a scholarship. As happy as John was in his hometown, he didn't see how he could pass this opportunity up. So off he went, taking the first airplane flight of his life to attend a school he'd never seen before. After his first month at Exeter, John calculated that he'd literally studied more there than he had in his prior life combined. 

As challenging as Exeter was, John loved his two years there. He made a lot of great friends (including a future brother-in-law and the son of a Supreme Court justice), lettered on the varsity baseball team (once facing future Detroit Tigers phenom Mark Fidrych of Worcester Academy), served as the proctor of his dormitory, and graduated with High Honors. After graduation, seeking a school that excelled in economics and had a better climate than northern Minnesota and New England, John decided this time to ...

John received a full ride to Claremont McKenna College, located in sunny Southern California. A strong proponent of the "Work hard, play hard" philosophy, John took full advantage of the excellent academics (including taking five classes from legendary professor Gerry Eyrich and one from renowned management guru Peter Drucker) as well its competitive athletics scene and its proximity to the Pacific Ocean. He also took advantage of the school's special relationship with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, which accepted John following his junior year. Two years later, John left "the U of C" with an MBA in Marketing and Finance and 10 job offers. He was then also awarded his BA in economics from Claremont with summa cum laude distinction.

John then embarked on a career in the fast-paced, exhilarating world of consumer products marketing, where marketers would typically spend two or three years at a company before being recruited away to another company offering even more responsibility. John's whirlwind journey took him and his wife Mary (his afore-mentioned former girlfriend from Bemidji) to stops including Dial Corp (Phoenix, AZ), the  E & J Gallo Winery (Modesto, CA), Kellogg's (Battle Creek, MI), Nalley's Fine Foods (Tacoma, WA), Dial Corp again, Western Publishing/Golden Books (Racine, WI) and Cobra Electronics (Chicago, IL). At the last four of those stops, John' served as VP of Marketing. Some of the milestones achieved under John's watch include:

• Dial Soap becoming the #1 bar soap in America
• Frosted Flakes becoming the #1 cereal in America
• E&J Brandy becoming the #1 brandy and the fastest-growing distilled spirit in America
• Cobra Electronics going from 7 years of red ink to being consistently profitable, becoming #1 in the radar detector and two-way radio markets, and twice being named one of the "Top Small Companies in America" by Forbes magazine.

John was approached by family-owned Hu-Friedy Mfg. Co., the largest dental instrument manufacturer in the world. By far the highest-priced competitor in the dental instruments category, their market share had been eroding for years from attacks by a bevy of lower-priced companies. The company’s owners decided they needed a fresh new approach to their marketing, and that the best way to do that was to hire a Senior VP of Global Marketing & Strategy Planning with a consumer products background that was heavy on strategy and creativity. As much as he loved consumer products, John was intrigued by the challenge of plying his B2C skills with a B2B company, as well as by the opportunity to serve in a sector that has the power to improve, extend, and even save lives. 

So John accepted the offer and was given considerable leeway to overhaul the company's marketing. He instilled a disciplined focus on what he calls provocative messaging: developing a strategy highlighting each product's "customer promise" (its superior ability to solve a significant problem) and then bringing that strategy to life with creative executions that grab the target audience's attention and cleverly drive home why the product is the optimal option. During each of John's four years there, Hu-Friedy achieved record sales and  record earnings. In addition, an independent study showed that the company had the #1 advertising campaign in the entire dental industry for all four years - despite the fact that most of the other advertisers were much larger companies supported by Madison Avenue ad agencies. In contrast, Hu-Friedy's ads were created by its tiny in-house agency - one of several  departments reporting to John - with John serving as its unofficial copywriter whenever suitable copywriting talent was unavailable.

John's success in applying consumer products marketing techniques to HealthTech and other B2B companies led him to found his own strategic marketing agency, 14th Floor Solutions, with Hu-Friedy as his first client. Since 2007,  14th Floor Solutions has served nearly 50 clients, most of whom are in the HealthTech space. While these clients range from startups to multi-billion dollar international corporations, they all benefit from John's distinctive approach to provocative messaging that gets noticed, gets engagement and gets results. John's support has enabled clients to become #1 in their markets, successfully launch new products, and increase sales of their existing products.

One of John's long-time clients is iPulse Medical,  manufacturer of Livia, which has become the world's #1 menstrual pain relief device. Livia was honored with the Gold Medal in Marketing & Innovation for Women's Wellbeing by the prestigious Edison Awards, with the Silver Medal going to industry giant Procter & Gamble. Another client that has "taken a trip to the 14th floor" is Boyd Street Ventures (BSV), a venture capital firm that invests exclusively in B2B companies and primarily in HealthTech companies. As a Venture Partner, John advises many of BSV's portfolio companies on messaging matters while also overseeing BSV's marketing.

Just as John's passion for helping HealthTech and other B2B companies develop outstanding messaging for their outstanding products led him to start his strategic marketing agency, it has now led him to expand his reach by giving keynote addresses and running workshops.