1985
Rizzuti places first-ever “technology” ad in an Inflight magazine for Dallas-based Micrografx. This changes an entire industry in the process. Before this time, no software company in America dared to even consider “an Airline magazine.” That was then, this is now. In the two decades since Rizzuti’s revolutionary media move, and hundreds of millions of dollars later, it’s no longer “why use Inflights?” It’s “why not!” (In the 1990’s technology became the number-two category for ad spending behind travel in Inflights)

1988-89
John Rizzuti worked hand-in-hand with world-renowned Michael Dell of Dell Computer. They would plot out the first-ever documented case of “Relationship Marketing” as it was applied to a technology-based account. Rizzuti, then employed as a Senior Vice President with Krupp/Taylor USA (Dell’s direct marketing agency) developed a sophisticated set of offer and price testing combinations using a master matrix in sync with the release of a new Dell product catalog. That’s history in the making! 

1992
John Rizzuti incorporates Rizzuti Marketing & Media to serve technology-based companies. His first client was Contact Software International where he’s hired to handle the ad launch of ACT! for Windows. The revolutionary media plan was (once again) centered on using a hard-hitting direct response ad campaign, the majority of which went into inflight publications. The ads worked extraordinarily well. A year later the company (Contact Software International) is sold to Symantec for $47 million dollars! Once again, history!

1994-95
With ACT! now under the auspices of Symantec, Rizzuti was offered a consulting deal. Then BAM! a start-up out of Canada selling a competitive product called Maximizer hires Rizzuti to storm the market with $700,000 and attempt to unseat ACT! as the category leader. The result is that MediaWeek magazine puts John Rizzuti on the cover of the national publication, with the “Plan of the Year.”

One of the judges (from Proctor & Gamble) said the Rizzuti plan was “almost perfect, easily the best one of the year.” Rizzuti became the first agency to ever produce and run a 90-second direct response radio spot on a national show. For a short period of time Maximizer upended ACT!’s reign of the number-one contact program. That’s making history! 

1996
Rizzuti was hired by Dallas chipmaker Cyrix. They had an urgent plea for help. Their warehouse was full of upgrade chips (a conversion chip “386” to a “486” – which in months would be obsolete). In order to avoid a financial Armageddon, Rizzuti was asked to find a way to move 25,000 chips – quickly. His plan? A combination of USA Today and the national radio program “The Rush Limbaugh Show.” Rizzuti also became the first ad agency to employ a URL as a direct response device in a consumer ad. That’s history making!

Trade media people thought Rizzuti was insane and even complained to Cyrix management. Why? There were no trade publications on the media buy. RAM suggested using radio and USA Today to sell upgrade chips.

Insane? No, just insanely great.

In one day so many inbound advertising phone calls came in, the entire phone system at Cyrix crashed; fact is, the campaign generated 35,000 phone inquiries. That’s history making!

1998
CyberMedia (out of Southern California) had a big problem – one that could potentially wreck havoc with the company. Their new product “Guard Dog” was heavily stocked, estimated to be 50-60,000 units at retail. Guard Dog was not selling – even at discount prices. Sales were so low, the distributor warned CyberMedia that all product was likely coming back. This would create chaos with the quarterly financials for a publicly-traded company and would cause internal and external calamity.

Rizzuti was called and told to quickly come up with a plan and take a million dollars and storm the marketplace to save the company. In just two weeks, the agency created a hard-hitting (and soon to be infamous “barking dog”) radio spot. And a controversial “editorial-looking” newspaper ad. The agency launched the campaign in the top 25 radio markets, on national radio and the top 5 newspaper markets. The result was that as far as the company could tell, at retail every copy of Guard Dog was sold – you couldn’t find one anywhere!

Disaster avoided. Company saved. History made. Later, CyberMedia was sold to McAfee Associates for a princely sum.

2000
Rizzuti does a new TV and radio campaign for jobs.com. Four television commercials and numerous radio spots using noted author Tom Peters (“In Search of Excellence”). These award-winning television and hard-hitting radio commercials were called "brilliant" by Adweek magazine and "Great" by Upside magazine. The result? Millions of people went to the jobs.com website. Just as the doctor ordered.

2002
One of the most successful companies in America  (ranked 17th by Fortune) San Diego-based $10 billion dollar QUALCOMM came all the way to Carrollton, Texas to hire Rizzuti/Austin to handle world-wide media buying for the Enterprise Group.

Every ad agency in America would leap at the chance to work for QUALCOMM. Why Rizzuti/Austin? The answer is simple. Lisa Austin, RAM senior partner and media director is one of the best print media buyers in the country. From 2002 until now (that’s six years and counting!)  She has saved QUALCOMM many millions of dollars by using her sometimes brutal and time-tested negotiating skills to obtain buys from 50-80% off the open rate. She has handled vertical markets, trade publications, consumer pubs and media buys in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

2006
In this age of the digital marketplace, everyone talks about SEO and banners and landing sites and everything Internet marketing. Well, hold your horses for just one second. When sub-prime mortgage provider Veritas Financial (San Francisco, CA) hired Rizzuti/Austin to help drive leads for the company, we were asked to do whatever we could do to bring in the most qualified leads, spending the least amount of money.

Basically everything RAM tried worked. That included radio, newspaper, mailings and Internet promotions. But one component shockingly worked far better than anything else. That was the old stand-by direct mail (now called snail-mail). In the past two years, Rizzuti/Austin did 16 major direct mail blitzes with all but three producing outstanding results and profitable response. On occasion, response rates on a cold list hit 3-4%. This is an almost unheard of response rate. Until new financial regulations significantly changed and forever altered (and basically destroyed) the subprime business, Veritas was in position to become an extraordinary success story.

2008
The New Year is just beginning. Will you be the next Rizzuti/Austin client to be part of history? It only takes a phone call and a short conversation to see if there is a match. Until we talk, we don’t know. The initial conversations/meeting are always no charge. And you can take advantage of working with one of the top advertising and marketing companies in America at about 50% of the rate that the mainline agencies charge. I’ll be happy to show you how we do it!

(24/7) Private Cell: John Rizzuti 214-476-1324 or email: john@rizzuti.com