Popular Articles

Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

read more
by Andrew Tellijohn
April 2006

Related Article

Workshop - Lessons Learned

Read more

Hiring


Brigham Group founder,after 25 years, adviseswork on ‘recruiting brand’

To celebrate Brigham Group’s 25th year in business, founder Jennifer Brigham hopes to contact as many temporary employees as possible that her company has placed over the years.

“I would say between 15- and 20,000,” Brigham says, when asked to estimate how many people that is. “We’re trying to figure out a way to re-connect.” She plans to post an invitation on her company’s Web site, inviting all clients to stop in and get a gift.

At first she never expected to hit such a milestone. Brigham Group has three offices, the original in Red Wing, then Hastings and most recently Apple Valley, and eight full-time employees.

“I was a college dropout, and I rented a typewriter and got a phone,” to start her business at age 22. She had been a legal secretary and a medical secretary, and thought she’d specialize in placing those employees.

“There wasn’t a huge market for that in Red Wing, but they wanted secretaries.” So she changed her focus to placing all types of office workers, from executive assistants to receptionists to bookkeepers.She advises clients to spend time working on their brand as an employer, not just as a provider of goods or services. “Your recruiting brand is something you have to think about, just like your product brand,” she says. “We spend a lot of time helping companies with that.”

Too many companies pour resources into their product marketing, only to show prospective employees “nothing but crappy copies of their employee benefits,” Brigham says. Employers should “create a story about what that company has to offer employees.”Jennifer Brigham, Brigham Group Inc.: 952.432.6060;  jbrigham@brighamgroup.com; www.brighamgroup.com