As you may know, I have been teaching both new media advertising and branding at the University of North Carolina (UNC) for more than 10 years now. Nearly my entire professional life has been spent in marketing and branding and I was excited when the dean of the School of Media and Journalism (where advertising and PR live at UNC) asked me to join the faculty to help with the program’s evolution from traditional advertising and PR to one that was future-focused on digital and social media strategy, creative and execution.

I am honored to have helped in both curriculum development and teaching, as an assistant professor, in what has become recognized by most int he industry as a top-five journalism program.

You may have even met some of my students over the years as we’ve taken the top performers to numerous events to help in news gathering (with rAVe [NOW]), experiential marketing (with THE GAME), social media marketing and branding. Those same students now work at tech firms like Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google and at ad agencies like Ogilvy, McCann, R/GA, Droga5 and Weiden+Kennedy, among others.

But for the past two years we’ve been hiring the best of the best for ourselves. For: THE rAVe Agency.

THE rAVe Agency brand is new but, the services and talents aren’t. In fact, we’ve been providing marketing consulting, creative development, social media marketing management and I’ve been the keynote speaker at well over 300 industry events. But, now as THE rAVe Agency, we have consolidated all that we do under one umbrella to exclusively serve the AV industry — think of us as THE ad agency for the AV industry.

Oh, by the way, [PUBS] isn’t going anywhere. In fact, our publications division has grown, a lot – we just added a new vertical market eNewsletter aimed at the UCC (Unified Communications and Collaborations) market, following our amazingly successful launch of the AV Buyers.Club — the industry’s ONLY end-user focused website and eNewsletter. We’re adding more columnists and writers, in fact, to cover more shows — you’ll see, our coverage won’t just include InfoComm, ISE, DSE and CEDIA. We’re adding two more big shows in 2019! So, if you aren’t already subscribing to UCC or want to explore all our vertical market eNewsletters, just go here as they’re all described on our subscription page. This means you’ll see more coverage then ever before in 2019!

But, if your company needs better marketing, more social media presence or engagement, new branding or even just a keynote speaker for your next big event, take a look at all that we’re able to do for you at THE rAVe Agency. Unlike some so-called industry publications who are adding “content-marketing” services to their repertoire and calling them marketing, we’re truly a full-service creative agency.

And, oh by the way, we invented a new way to see AV installs and trade show booths using VR (virtual reality). Have a peek: https://theraveagency.com/vr/ — our system is not only compatible with every VR headset on the market but also any web browser on a computer or smartphone. Try it out (and if you don’t have a headset, we’ll send you one for free!

In the meantime, keep reading rAVe and thanks for support our mission to continue to be THE #1 Publication in AV. Period. And, that same passion and dedication will make us THE #1 Creative Agency in AV, too.

Thanks to Dave Haynes of Sixteen:Nine, who already wrote up our new company!