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PHOTO: Nov. 18: John Tantillo a/k/a The Marketing Doctor To Kick Off Brand For Breakfast

John Tantillo, nationally known marketing and branding expert, announces the first in a series of breakfast talks designed to bring his Target Market philosophy to a small business audience in a tough economy and increasingly competitive times.

John Tantillo, nationally known marketing and branding expert and Fox Forum columnist, has announced the first event in his Brand For Breakfast series for small business owners and professionals. According to Tantillo, the aim of the breakfasts is to show non-marketers the necessity of marketing their brands and their businesses and equip them with the tools to make immediate and lasting changes to their operations.

"Brand for Breakfast is a way for me to share with a smart, engaged and select audience marketing as marketing is meant to be - not gimmickry but something founded on the reality of your business that will build your business if you learn and follow its rules," Tantillo said.

Tantillo, known as the Marketing Doctor, holds a Ph.D. in research psychology and is credited with coining the term, "The O'Reilly Factor," used as the title for the Fox commentator's show. Tantillo is regularly called on by the media to apply his experience in psychology and marketing to everything from politics to celebrity brands. He has a reputation for identifying early trends and shifts in the political, cultural and corporate marketplace. Tantillo was one of the first commentators to draw attention to the recent trend of creating an advertisement for the sake of generating controversial coverage, something he calls, "adpublitizing."

For Tantillo, the Brand for Breakfast series is the next chapter in a personal crusade to rescue marketing from what he sees as its chronic mis-representation.

"Marketing has a bad name," Dr. Tantillo said. "Think of how often you hear someone dismiss a product or a person's success as the result of 'just marketing.' This is what I call the 'NPR bias' - the idea that marketing is a smoke-and-mirrors game. This is as bad as the accountant bias where the 'bean counter' tells businessmen that marketing is somehow an extraneous expense on their balance sheets. Both of the biases are simply wrong."

Tantillo, born in Queens and typically attired in a Borsalino hat and bowtie, has been described as a mixture of Carl Sagan and Howard Cosell.

"The Howard Cosell comparison came about because of my accent and my tendency to get a bit emotional on air about the things I deeply believe in," Tantillo said. "When I think the boys in advertising have let the lunatics out of the asylum again, then you're definitely going to hear it from me."

Tantillo has been particularly outspoken about what he perceives as the money wasted on Super Bowl advertising and the tendency to value flashy or overly clever creatives above targeted, brand-faithful marketing across many different media.

The Carl Sagan comparison is a bit more complicated but more deeply connected to Tantillo's reasons for launching the Brand for Breakfast series.

"I guess I'm a crusader for the big, visionary take of the marketing cosmos," Tantillo explained. "What I mean by that is that I believe that marketing is in just about everything from our personal lives to our political lives to our consumer and professional realities. I'm convinced that others can gain a lot by looking through this lens, too."

Tantillo says he aims to arm Brand for Breakfast participants with a deep respect for the Target Market and the means to identify their own Target Markets and serve them better.

"Brand for Breakfast is going to make the participant look at the world through marketing eyes. Even more important for them, it will give the participant the knowledge he or she needs wherever they may be on the business growth spectrum."

The Brand for Breakfast event will be held from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. at Etcetera Etcetera (352 West 44th Street, New York, N.Y.) on Nov. 18, 2009.

To learn more or to interview John Tantillo, contact Rolf Graeber, Marketing Department of America Ltd. ">, at 212-679-5700.
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   Mr. Rolf Graeber
   VP Operations
   Marketing Department of America Ltd.
   New York,    NY,    10001
   USA
   212-679-5700 (phone)
   212-686-7607 (fax)
   rgraeber@mdaltd.com
   mdaltd.com