EXPERTISE: Magnetizing Companies

Marc Rudov is a branding advisor to CEOs, speaker, media commentator, and author of four books: Duped Again: Why Sophistry Works, Intrabranding: The Keystone of Corporate Agility, Brand Is Destiny: The Ultimate Bottom Line, and Be Unique or Be Ignored: The CEO’s Guide to Branding.

He converts companies from murky to magnetic.

Rudov is a unique, creative, analytical, perceptive, insightful, agile communicator — with numerous media mentions and 200+ radio & TV appearances under his belt. He’s written 160+ branding articles and is a Newsmax columnist.

Wordsmith extraordinaire. Creates concise, clear, compelling, memorable messaging that will cut your costs of sales, capital, and media.

Has spoken to CEOs and investors at groups such as FSXinterlinked (keynote), Startup Monthly, Association for Corporate Growth (Silicon Valley), Band of Angels, the Executive Advisory Forum, and the Eitanim group of the Israeli American Council (IAC).

Experience in technology, industrial, healthcare, and consumer domains, with expertise in marketing, branding, sales, engineering, management consulting, and capital-raising.

Champion of customer-centric messaging. Never a jargon junkie or a technology/industry cheerleader. Eschews the rainbow-and-unicorn worldview.

Deft balance of left-brain and right-brain thinking. Expert in human behavior. Inventor of GutShare™, which obsoletes mindshare. A globally known media personality, Marc appears frequently on cable-news channel Newsmax TV.

Portfolio Summary:

  • Service: Help CEOs hit their sales, capital, and media targets while cutting their respective costs
  • Industries: Healthcare, technology, steel, entertainment, radio/TV, finance, food, art, publishing
  • Markets: Industrial, commercial, consumer

Professional Membership:

 

PRAISE FOR MARC RUDOV

“I highly recommend Marc Rudov for his branding expertise. He’s exceptionally bright, talented, and creative — and understands how to create an emotional connection with your market audience. Marc helped me brand the Hope Bear, the first therapeutic Teddy Bear designed to help children heal from witnessing, experiencing, or losing loved ones to domestic violence.”

Linda Olson, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist
Founder, Georgia Childhood Domestic Violence (CDV) Association
Founder, Project Hope Bear
Atlanta, GA

“Marc Rudov’s insightful book on branding proves to CEOs that they can think, operate, and communicate differently than the competition, and win — BIG!!”

Christopher Ruddy
CEO
Newsmax Media
Boca Raton, FL

“If you want help getting your company noticed in today’s noisy world, this book is for you. Marc Rudov covers all the bases on the benefits of branding and proper execution. I highly recommend Be Unique or Be Ignored to every CEO, senior executive, and entrepreneur.”

Patrick Bet-David
CEO
PHP Agency
Glendale, CA

“I thoroughly enjoyed and benefited from Marc Rudov’s Be Unique or Be Ignored. Marc has a gift for clarity, conciseness, punch, and wit. I’ve built and funded many companies; had I met him and his book 35 years ago, I would have saved myself many misses.”

Peter Redford
CEO
TV Interactive Corporation
San Jose, CA

“Marc Rudov’s book is a refreshing standout from the blur of marketing hype that passes for learning in this field. Boiled down to its essence, his book exhorts marketers to explain their brands in terms customers can: (1) understand and (2) get excited about. Easier said than done, as evidenced by website after website mired in almost incomprehensible technical jargon. Marc’s rework of the HP website is itself worth the price of the book. I found myself thinking, “Oh, that’s what HP is trying to say,” after reading Marc’s rewrite! Admittedly, Marc has some pet peeves that readers may or may not agree with, but they’re instructive nonetheless. The main message — timeless and timely — is well worth it.”

Hobart Mck. Birmingham
Cofounder & Managing Director
The Perreault Birmingham Group LLC
Palo Alto, CA

“Marc Rudov’s Be Unique or Be Ignored is a wakeup call to CEOs who either dismiss the value of branding or delegate its execution to committees. Marc takes a sledgehammer to the conventional branding approach practiced by so many organizations. His no-nonsense, practical, must-read book helps the CEO, whether from a Fortune 100 or startup, understand why branding is so critical and so misunderstood — and how to make it the #1 priority.”

John Racioppi
President & CEO
ECDS, LLC
Scotts Valley, CA

“Marc’s book is a great reminder that everything we do touches our brand. Every point of contact in the company has the opportunity to earn the “GutShare” of our clients and employees alike. Thanks for defining and articulating this, Marc!”

Alex Potts
President & CEO
Loring Ward Group Inc.
San Jose, CA

“I work with a number of clients across the global spectrum, from startups to Fortune 100s. After reading Be Unique or Be Ignored, I have completely changed the way I assess companies and their abilities to achieve sales growth. Marc Rudov’s book is a must-read for any CEO who relies on net new incremental revenue for success.”

Larry Lopez
Partner
Australian Venture Consultants
Perth, Australia

“Be Unique or Be Ignored: The CEO’s Guide to Branding by Marc Rudov is the best book on branding in years and a must-read for every person interested in his or her company’s success. Marc strips away the typical jargon (which he disdains) that dominates most discussions on marketing and branding and gets right to the point. If you read just one book on marketing or branding this year, this is the book.”

James C. Chapman
Securities Attorney and Partner
Rimon, PC
Palo Alto, CA

“Marc Rudov’s Be Unique or Be Ignored is a must-read for the entire C-suite and for anyone in a position of leadership. Rudov debunks an array of common misconceptions about branding and gets to the essence of why brands are of paramount importance to corporate success. I highly recommend this book.”

Michael J. Burwick
President
Boston Advisory Group, LLC
Boston, MA

“Marc’s book is very good. I really enjoyed it. It’s prescriptive (no handwaving) and, to my pleasant surprise, changed my mind about branding and its role. Without question, Marc makes me think differently about branding.”

Alex Osadzinski
CMO
Relias Learning
Cary, NC

“There are so many books on branding. I found Marc’s book to be unique and the best I have read on the subject. It’s a must-read for any CEO looking to cut through the clutter.”

Chris Faulkner
CEO
Breitling Energy Corporation
Dallas, TX

“Marc takes the idea of branding and turns it into a brilliant and creative exercise. This book is nothing short of a powerful tool for anyone trying to create a brand.”

Michael Parrotte
CEO
AGV Sports Group
Buckeystown, MD

“I could go on and on with you!”

Gerri Willis
Host
The Willis Report
Fox Business Network
New York, NY

“Marc Rudov is the man!”

Brian Sussman
Host
KSFO Morning Show with Brian Sussman
San Francisco, CA

“To succeed in today’s media-saturated marketplaces, individuals, products, and companies must stand out as unique brands — and Marc Rudov can cut through the clutter to build them.”

Hal Vogel
CEO, Vogel Capital Management
Former Senior Entertainment Analyst, Merrill Lynch
Author, Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis

“Marc Rudov’s ability to wade through business complexity and get people’s attention with simple messaging is indeed rare. Using this skill, he helped us identify and articulate our unique brand.”

Kelly A. Williamson
CEO
CritterPix, Inc.
San Anselmo, CA

PREVIOUS CORPORATE EXPERIENCE

Techsar, Inc.
Joined in October 2000 as VP of marketing & business development. Producer of an XML/SOAP/UDDI/J2EE-based provisioning platform for Web applications and services, focused on financial-services industry. Received $3.3M in A-round funding from the AtIndia fund of H&Q Asia Pacific.

  • Managed all outbound and inbound marketing, and all business-development/alliance activities.
  • Designed a $2.5M budget, projected to grow to $9.5M (at a headcount of 14) over four years, to take Techsar to industry prominence.
  • Created marketing strategy and positioning, did East Coast analyst tour, and launched product and company at Enterprise Architectures Conference in Boston.
  • Called at the highest levels in large enterprises and created a prospect list including AIG, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, CSFB, GE, IRS, and JPMorganChase. Established relationships with future alliance partners Accenture, Hitachi Innovative Solutions, and NerveWire-all during a severe economic drought.
  • Made investor presentations to: August Capital, Azure Capital, Bessemer Ventures, Draper Fisher, eVentures (Softbank), Fremont Ventures, Granite Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Ventures, Matrix Partners, Mayfield Ventures, Mohr Davidow, Redpoint Ventures, Robertson Stephens, Sofinnova Ventures, Thomas Weisel Partners, and Viventures (division of Vivendi).

ecFood
Joined in 1999 as VP of marketing & business development, thereby securing its A-round financing ($4M). ecFood is a leading provider of Internet-based procurement solutions to the industrial sector of the global food industry. Major customers were Pillsbury, Multifoods, JR Simplot, Basic American Foods, and Furman Foods — contributing to a total $1B gross-revenue pipeline.

  • Managed $2M marketing/busdev budget, small staff, PR firm, and ad agency
  • Management presentations to journalists, financial and trade analysts, and systems integrators in eight cities (NYC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam) with alliance partner, SCT Corporation, maker of SCM/ERP software for the process industries
  • Presented to one of Andersen Consulting’s Dutch clients for eCommerce initiation
  • Generated over 20 million media impressions in fewer than six months: Dow Jones, Financial Times of London, Brussels Financial Times, Le Monde (Paris), Bloomberg Financial News, WallStreetReporter.com, plus food-industry trade journals
  • Forbes Magazine’s “Best of the Web” in B2B dot-coms
  • AMR Research’s Top-20 B2B dot-coms
  • Invited to be a panelist at AMR Research’s Food Summit (to an audience of top food-industry executives), covering supply-chain and eCommerce topics
  • Alliances with SCT, Silliker Labs, OK Labs, Nistevo, Syncra Systems, BidPath, IBM
  • So successfully positioned ecFood.com as the leading independent procurement solution to the food industry, that an industry-backed consortium of 49 companies (including Kraft, Heinz, General Mills, Pillsbury, Nestle, etc.), armed with $250 million in funding, entered the business as a direct competitor. This consortium, called Transora, literally stole ecFood.com’s strategy but ultimately failed. Eventually, ecFood became profitable.

Mobility.Net
Joined in early 1999 as VP of marketing. San Francisco-based startup maker of integrated Webmail/calendar software.

  • Positioned company for growth and an IPO
  • Helped company become acquired by Santa Barbara-based Software.com (NASDAQ: SWCM), the worldwide leader in ISP-based messaging software. SWCM went public two months after acquiring Mobility.net, in June 1999, and subsequently merged with Phone.com, in November 2000, to form Openwave (NASDAQ: OPWV).

Inprise/Borland
Joined as VP of worldwide enterprise marketing in 1998.

  • With a staff of eight, managed the alliances and repositioned this $200M+ company (NASDAQ: BORL), on a worldwide basis (33 countries), from one that was marketing to software developers to one that could sell enterprise-infrastructure solutions to CIOs
  • Spearheaded the product marketing and launch — in London, Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, and Munich — of the flagship Inprise Application Server, which became the core of all enterprise-level revenues and garnered $3M in first-year revenues.

Nubium Technology Group
Founding VP of marketing & business development in 1996. Boston-based startup systems integrator specializing in B2B Internet commerce.

  • Established company as an industry thought-leader, a firm whose business model many competitors copied, thereby pitting it frequently against the “Big-5” systems integrators
  • Created Internet CommerceLive demo, partnering with Microsoft, IBM, Remedy, and Trilogy
  • Helped garner major contract with SND Electronics to integrate semiconductor-brokering operations via the Internet
  • Company was sold to Lucent NetCare.

Prior to Nubium Technology Group, Mr. Rudov worked in sales, marketing, and engineering capacities with vendors of enterprise computing, Internet, semiconductor, and voice/data-networking technologies.

EDUCATION

BSEE: University of Pittsburgh, School of Engineering (BSEE)
MBA: Boston University, Graduate School of Management (MBA)

Be Unique or Be Ignored™

 

Copyright © 2003-2025 by Marc H. Rudov | All Rights Reserved | Be Unique or Be Ignored™