It was a privilege to deliver a Professional Services Marketing course at the Chicago headquarters of the American Marketing Association recently, and I’m really stoked to boil it down for a presentation at a Michiana American Marketing Association event next week. Professional services continues to be an important market segment for Three Over Four, and as we all know: if you truly want to solidify a concept or area of expertise, understanding it well enough to convey it to others is great way to get there. These engagements are great opportunities to share value and also return it to our clients. A funny thing happened along the way. I’ve come to realize that what drives effective professional services marketing isn’t […]
From I to We (Also, Stickers)
By Aaron Templer
November marks nine years since Aaron Templer launched his own branding and marketing firm. He and a group of marketing pros and clients from across industries built strategies, brands, marketing communications plans, and executed full-service campaigns while continually seeking new ways to deliver higher value to clients. After nine years of giving life and growth to others’ brands, it’s finally time to give life to his own. The time is right to make a move away from the I to the We. To shift focus from Aaron Templer to the team of marketing professionals Three Over Four has become. We’re excited and proud to introduce the world to Three Over Four: A strategy-first agency built to be the kind of […]
Emotional Influence
By Aaron Templer
Thought leadership of Leading Through Challenging Times focuses on emotional intelligence. Want to influence through tough times? Learn to manage emotions.
Free Agents & the Side Hustle
By Aaron Templer
The rise and legitimizing of the side hustle is helping companies keep employees engaged. It helps us add value to our clients.
Stop branding. Start leading.
By Aaron Templer
Brand management and leadership share a common space: Influence. Can a brand share characteristics of a good leader? Or must it?
Process vs. Product
By Aaron Templer
I’m interested in the business-minded pursuit of understanding creativity. I’m not sure what to do with it, but I’m interested. One thought that keeps coming to mind: The creative processes that I’m most familiar with don’t start with outcome. I can’t help but wonder if this is why businesses are tripping over the concept and have such a hard time integrating it into their working environments. Business, by its nature, solves a problem for someone. If there’s no problem to be solved, there’s no market. No market, no money. The creative processes that business minds are trying to learn from start in a very different place. A place of expression, not fixing. Exploring the problem, not solving it. If you […]
A Social Contract For The Holidays
By Aaron Templer
A social contract is, by definition, up to all of us. Those of you with kids you know the situation. The daycare is closing, you white knuckle it during rush hour to pick them up (Why does my boss insist on dropping stuff on me late in the day! A 3:00 email about that—really?). You’re not the only working professional struggling to get there on time. You arrive to a line of idling cars, tensions can be high. Think about it from the daycare side for a moment. Late pickups have costs. Overtime for the staff, delayed hours for the janitorial crew, tired staff need to manage hungry, tired kids… it’s an issue. So what would you do if a daycare center came […]
A one night stand with Ignite Denver
By Aaron Templer
The whole Mudra crew was in a funk. Having just wrapped a 6-show run of Gyaan, a major production that dealt with heavy themes that we all put pretty much everything we had into producing and performing, we were down like Charlie Brown. Anyone who’s ever performed anything knows what kind of loss the day after the last show is. You might be glad the grind is over but there’s a big hole you now have to carry around where purpose, community, and satisfying creative expression used to be. Our hole was deep. It was like being dumped. So when Ignite Denver called with the news that one of their speakers had dropped out sick two days before their event, […]
Storytelling the Three Over Four Way
By Aaron Templer
I had a terrific time working with The Colorado Medical Society this past May. The President of the CMS had a great idea to interweave storytelling techniques for leaders throughout the entire conference. His thinking was that we all leave these conferences full of energy, armed with new information to make changes in our society, businesses, or communities. But we’re missing the tools to actually do something about it. So I was brought in to help by way of providing techniques for leaders to tell stories. Storytelling being, of course, one of the more effective way to engage and move people. We did a few things to bring storytelling into the conference. (This is an environment which, incidentally, isn’t exactly […]