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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?

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Informer
by Andrew Tellijohn
May 2004

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Famed publisher provides
fuel for GeigerBevolo’s
MindTank experiment

Katherine Graham, the late publisher of the Washington Post and Newsweek, inspired Chris Bevolo to develop and launch a “collaborative consulting model” called MindTank.

Upon Graham’s death in 2001, Newsweek published an issue devoted to her brilliant career. Bevolo, who felt his 10-year-old marketing and communications firm GeigerBevolo of Minneapolis had “hit a wall,” picked up the issue.

“She was such a power broker. You had to get in to have tea with her,” he says. “I thought it was so amazing that they had these people from all political spectrums discussing the issues of the day. It seemed so Renaissance to me.”

He mused: “What if you could bring the spirit of Katharine Graham, bring people together to focus on their business challenges?” After many months of development, MindTank was born. It assembled local luminaries from different fields to strategize about a client company’s business issues. “One of the beautiful parts is, they have nothing to lose or gain” from the advice they give, Bevolo says about the experts.

A full MindTank, which can unfold over two to four months and features a several-day retreat with the client and the experts, can range from $50,000 to $75,000. The experts are paid, from $3,000 to $5,000.

Bevolo was energized by facilitating his first MindTank, for St. Mary’s Regional Health Center. “I was so jazzed after the first night, and I said, we’ve got to find a way to make MindTank work,” he says. Bevolo treats MindTank like a new product line, while his firm’s main business is marketing and communications for health care clients.

Chris Bevolo, GeigerBevolo: 612.672.9842; chris@geigerbevolo.com; www.mindtank.com

Events

Beth Ewen

Informer Articles

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"Consumers out there are really confused," says Jeff Fritz, about employees who more and more often these days must choose a so-called consumer-driven health plan. "We in the industry think we have the latest and greatest products and services, but consumers are just dumbfounded.