Is There Life After Promotion?

Victor Imbimbo. Rick Burton. Joel Cohen. Do these names ring a bell? They’re all former promotion executives who have “graduated” from the business and gone on to other things. If you’ve ever questioned whether there’s life after promotion, these three gentlemen prove that there is.

We caught up with each of them recently to get details on their promotion afterlives.

Imbimbo says his business life hasn’t changed much since he left his agency, The Hadley Group, in August 1996, two and a half years after Havas bought it. After leaving Hadley, Imbimbo was a consultant to CyberGold, a Berkeley, CA start-up Internet company, and launched Bedrock Communications, a Stamford, CT marketing consultancy that developed and markets a software program designed to improve communications between field sales and corporate employees.

“In combination with my background in brand management, promotion gave me a hands-on understanding of working with the trade, the sales force, and the consumer,” he observes. “Now I’m able to apply that understanding on behalf of companies to evaluate a client’s business and create traditional and technology-based sales and marketing solutions.”

In a more general sense, Imbimbo says promotion helped him develop the ability to understand the marketplace. “Whether you’re a politician seeking votes or a doctor building a patient base, you need to define your message and either create a need or satisfy a demand in the marketplace,” he explains.

Burton left a “pretty frantic” career at Clarion Performance Properties (now Clarion Sports and Entertainment, Westport, CT) three years ago for a decidedly more low-key role: He’s director of the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center in the university’s Lundquist College of Business.

“I miss some of the friendships and some of the meetings – the thrill of selling a concept or implementing a strategy,” he acknowledges, but says he’s very happy with his new challenges. Burton applies his real-world experience in sports marketing to the classroom, and regularly uses promotional concepts in the way he interacts with his students.

“Promotion is really a complex study of human behavior,” he explains.

“People who work in the promotion business are essentially paid to create a compelling exchange on a frequent and rapid basis. If they’ve done good promotions, they’ve developed a skill most organizations value.”

Cohen has pursued the most radically different path after his agency, Heller & Cohen, “fell apart” following its merger with another agency. “Our agency was a small one, and the business had turned around from clients wanting small agencies to wanting big agencies,” he says. After briefly considering another job in promotion, Cohen instead started f-Stop Images, a New York company that represents more than 20 fine art photographers. Its “corporate art events” program sets up temporary photographic art exhibits in corporate offices and other venues to create a special setting where businesses can entertain clients and prospects. Cohen also has a Web site (f-stop.com), one of the few online galleries with a secure server for ordering. The operation moves to Palm Beach, FL in January to open a retail gallery in the downtown arts district.

Cohen admits he’s not making as much money as before, but says, “I’m having much more fun.” His knowledge of promotion gives his new venture an important competitive advantage.

“I’m using knowledge that most people don’t have,” he explains. “There are a lot of people out there who are good business people, which means they know how to keep the books balanced. But they’re not necessarily good marketers.”

Our conversations with Imbimbo, Burton, and Cohen confirmed our suspicion that you can take a person out of promotion, but you can’t take promotion out of the person.

Says Imbimbo: “If you see promotion as an isolated marketing discipline, then you better start to worry about what you’re going to do next. If you look at promotional marketing as a way to address business opportunities, you’ll use it every day.”

Burton adds, “There’s life after promotion, but you never move very far away from it. It’s always something you’re aware of. It kind of gets in your blood, whether it’s the art of the deal or the strategy of the deal.”

Cohen puts it most emphatically: “See? I’m still in the promotion business.”