I guess I am one of the lucky ones. I am a marketing professional with well over 16 years experience in cross promotional marketing, advertising, partnership marketing, and sponsorship campaigns.
I worked for two major companies in CA as a Marketing Manager.
When I moved back to Denver, I began looking at positions in my field and interviewed at Meriam, WIT and The Coral Group. All them had the same M.O., all of them had the same "enviornment" with music blaring in the lobby, stylishly dressed receptionists, and cocky wet-behind-the ears managers, promising huge financial compenstation, but could not explain a single thing about their marketing plan, structure, or model. All of them were vague.
In fact I noticed that younger people were interviewed longer, and mine took about 5 minutes. Any you didn't look young, slim, and fresh out of college, got a little more interest. Keep in mind that knowing this was entry level, all three of these comapnies called me in for an interview, having received or reviewed my resume, posted on various job search sites, ie: Monster, Hot Jobs etc.
And after each interview, alas that call never came at the end of the day, to invite me back. I guess because I am older, wiser and experienced, they just could afford someone who would run circles around them.
I have read about how some of these firms work with pro sports teams. I had strong professional relationships with, MBL, NHL, NFL teams as well as Champions on Ice, Feld Inc, (Disney on Ice/Ringling Brothers) Shorenstein-Hayes/Nederlander - (major Broadway producers), as well as media contact with and national TV and Radio companies and Terry-Hines and Associates (film industry adv. Firms). With all these companies I collaborated and managed numerous marketing/promotional campaigns with measurable ROI.
Over my 15 years in marketing, I acheived a 25% customer loyalty rentetion rate, 2.5% return on cross promotional couponing and ROI for my companies/partners, and $1.3 million in advertsing sales revenues by designing promotions for clients when they invested in adv contracts with my newspaper.
I guess my sterling experince was not good enough for these carpet baggers because they only care about money, not results, not professional relationships, or stong mutually beneficial promotional campaigns, that should create the positive brand awarness and foot traffic to raise a clients image and revenues. The seem to be too full of themselves then the long term.
Whew! I dodge a bullet. I hope many others will steer clear of these companies:
Meriam Marketing
Endeavor Marketing
The Coral Group
Pounder
WIT aka Whatever it Takes
Silver Sky International (housed in the same complex as Meriam)
... And more will pop up as well as they will either shut down, rename themselves, and try to dupe more people.
They are all fly-by-night schmendricks! If it sounds too good to be true. It usually is.
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