About REID HOLMES

What Reid does...

He's a best-selling author, branding expert, creative executive, and is quick on his feet with a witty joke. Unlike Don Draper, Reid has spent the last 30 years as a creative executive in some of America’s biggest and best advertising agencies, working on brands like Burger King, H&R Block, Mayo Clinic, and Toro to name a few. Stories? He’s got stories, but he also has a new passion.

His goal now is to show companies who want to get noticed, remembered, and grow in today’s saturated marketing environment that brand meaning is more important than ever if you want the highest ROI on your marketing spend. It's measurable. It's proven. Reid has the receipts. The sooner your company understands a meaningful brand's critical role in driving profit and growth, the sooner your company starts experiencing that higher profit and growth.

Why Reid is in demand...

• He was awarded “Most Impactful Speaker” and “Most Entertaining Speaker” in his most recent multiple speakers showcase.
• His delivery is “insightful, delightful, and inspirational” - refined over years of C-Suite, boardroom, marketing team  annual conference presentations to blue-chip companies from coast to coast.
• His work has been featured in The New York Times, Advertising Age, Adweek and Communication Arts. His opinion on advertising and branding is sought after by marketing professionals regularly.
• His book: “Appreciated Branding: Transform your brand from Ignored to Irreplaceable” rocketed to #1 best-seller status.
• He has won most every advertising industry award, including The One Show, The Effie’s, The Addy’s, Cannes Lions, among others.
• As  a frequent judge for many advertising award shows - including National Addy Awards and the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Awards, he’s seen almost every idea executed ten different ways.

His style...

Reid is high energy, high content, and high case studies. He is clearly enthusiastic, passionate and knowledgeable, inspiring audiences of every size to walk away better than they were when they walked in.

• "GREAT speaker! Kept me leaning in."
• "I couldn’t believe 30 minutes had gone by. I wanted more."
• “Reid is terrific - his presentation style, combined with real world examples and step-by-step instructions on how to adjust to the new realities of marketing will make a huge impact on how we get back to work on our brand.”
• "I’m bringing him into the company to talk to our people, he’s an absolute inspiration!"

Reid is a great fit for audiences like...

• Marketing  teams who are tired of the “transaction chasing” that marketing has become and want more meaning out of their careers, their lives and the impact their company can/should be making.
• Brand builders who want the newest, freshest, most impactful thinking and techniques on brand building in our “distraction economy.”
• CEOs,  CFOs, and CHROs who want to better understand how and why a strong brand will maximize their marketing ROI, talent retention, and talent acquisition.
• Small business owners who want to create a “Brand Advantage” in the marketplace to maximize the impact of every dime they spend to get attention and earn advocacy.
• Marketing Strategists and PR professionals, who want to build earned attention programs that supply rich, magnetic content to their marketing programs.

Key clients Reid has worked with:

H&R Block

Domino’s Pizza

Burger King

Blue Cross Blue Shield

KeyBank

Frontier Communications

The Mayo Clinic

The Toro Company

The Coca-Cola Company

Syngenta

Pioneer

Carnival Cruise Lines

Unilever Breyers

United Way

Reid's areas of depth and expertise:

Platform Creative Ideas
Financial Services

Healthcare
Retail
QSR

Reid's Bio...

Reid Holmes is a creative marketing and advertising expert who brings creativity and inspiring stories to every interaction. He’s proven that creativity, meaningful brand building, and smart strategy can be a force multiplier for businesses big and small.

Most Requested Topics...

The Flip: How Building or Refreshing a Brand into a Meaningful, Profit Gushing Business Today Requires and 180 Degree Shift.

Since the advent of the “soap opera” in the 50s, advertising has been all about interruption. Consumers could abide such interruption when only 300 interruptions a day sought our attention, and those interruptions were welcome news because new products were being brought to market that would make our lives better every day.

Today, we’re interrupted 10,000 times a day. It’s unsustainable. It’s getting more and more expensive. And it’s no way to build a meaningful brand that people will come back to time and again, regardless of price. Look at the grocery store laundry detergent aisle. 300 feet long and 10 feet high of tens of brands, all of which solve the exact same problem.

How do you address these issues and challenges for your brand? Whether you’re a big national brand in a mature category, or a small business trying to get noticed, every penny matters. How do you max out that investment to ensure your brand is making your performance marketing noticed, remembered and credible?

The solution is to create an Appreciated Brand. Don’t just spend your budget convincing your customers to care about your product, spend a fraction doing things that prove to your customers that you care about them.

This isn’t just “social impact” for the greater good. Things have flipped - buying attention is no longer the best path to impact. Creating impact is the best path to attention. This means finding where your companies’ values overlap those of your best customers. Finding problems in society they’d appreciate your help with solving, and actively finding ways to solve them. Not out of selfish promotion, but out of empathetic proactivity.

This session provides specific, actionable, no-cost tactics that any brand can easily figure out and implement immediately, sometimes before you even walk out of the room.

This session will illuminate:

• How rational appeals in crowded categories force price-based decision making
• How expensive and timely new product innovation isn’t always necessary as a path to new, more immediate profitability.

• Why doing things to build your brand’s meaning is your best path to a more profitable, enduring and cherished business.

If Your Brand Isn’t Meaningful, Your Results Won’t Be Either.

Need to make your activation marketing more effective? Have a strong brand. Need to weather the AI powered storm of misinformation that’s coming? Have a strong brand. Want to have a more meaningful career? Have a strong brand. Want to feel like you’re helping the world? Have a strong brand. Want a growing, meaningful, fulfilling career as a CMO? Have a strong brand. Want to raise prices with less risk? Have a strong brand. Want to better weather the next recession? Have a strong brand.

So, what is a “brand” these days? There are multiple definitions, and nobody agrees on one.

Seth Godin says: “…a brand is “the set of expectations, memories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” Jeff Bezos says a brand is more about reputation: “A brand is what people say about us when we’re not in the room.”  Ad legend David Ogilvy said: “a brand is the intangible sum of a products attributes.”

Those definitions are all outdated.

A logo isn’t a brand. A brand, however, is a logo - with meaning built into it. A brand drives higher profitability for parity products. It allows people to see you as familiar, not foreign. Financial risk is reduced or even eliminated. It’s a shorthand for recommendation, advocacy and repeat purchase. A logo with brand meaning behind it is a visual cue communicating in seconds who you are, whether you can be trusted, and why people should care about what you say next.

Companies who buy data to sell products are merely chasing transactions, like a watch salesman on the street. They are not creating any way for customers to become loyal, valuable, long-term customers. Nor are they doing anything to justify a higher price that a customer would gladly pay if given good reason. 

Unknown products inspire suspicion. Known brands inspire trust.

This session will illuminate:

• How brands must create "reputational cognition" to build a trusting relationship that will inspire multiple transactions over time.
• How mere rearranging of rational proof points – especially in crowded categories – is like pouring gas on your marketing budget and setting it on fire. You're not the signal, you're the noise.

• Why you must create a Unique Emotional Solution in your category. Nobody can copy it, it builds a space in your customer’s mind that nobody else can claim, and it helps them justify your price and advocate for you.