DailyVista speaks with 3Cinteractive VP of Marketing, who discusses company’s rise, growth and marketing strategy

DailyVista prides itself on helping to connect our readers with some of the top rising companies in the U.S and Canada. What better companies to keep an eye on than those that were highlighted by Forbes on it America’s 20 Most Promising Companies list. You can access their methodology here.

In an effort to learn more about what made these upstarts special in Forbes’ eyes, DV spoke with some of the key marketing personnel for companies listed in the Top 20.

Today DailyVista brings you an interview with Jeff Michaud, the vice president of marketing for 3Cinteractive, a company that provides enterprise mobile solutions that allow a business to mobilize traditional business processes, commerce and CRM systems.

3Cinteractive, which was founded in 2005 by former MCI executives John Duffy (CEO), Mike FitzGibbon (President) and Mark Smith (COO), landed at No. 12 on Forbes’ list.

Michaud described 3Cinteractive – headquartered in Boca Raton, Fla. – as a company that lends its technology and expertise to Fortune 1000 businesses to help them leverage mobile solutions that improve business results. He said the company was excited to be recognized by Forbes and the honor has helped marketing by lending credibility.

“I think from my perspective being in a B-to-B space, a recognition like this provides us a level of credibility,” Michaud said. “That’s important to our organization. 3Cinteractive was a start-up in 2005. We’ve now grown into over 110 employees with tens of millions of dollars in revenue. So we’re not really in start-up mode anymore. We are a validated business model that’s a substantial, profitable organization. But the challenge always exists to shed that entrepreneurial outlook and skin and establish credibility as a proven entity in the B-to-B space. That’s the first thing. The second is it provides the recognition, what I like to call air cover, for our sales and business development folks. When they’re out in the marketplace and they say they’re with 3Cinteractive it gives them the air cover for someone to say to them, ‘I heard of you, I saw you in Forbes.’ It tends to shorten the sales cycle from a credibility perspective.”

3Cinteractive came to be because of the vision Duffy, FitzGibbon and Smith had for mobile technology. Michaud, who’s also been there since the founding, said the group recognized early on that mobile was going to cause a fundamental shift in the way businesses communicated with their customers and employees, and it was going to change the way a consumer interacted with a business.

“I think they saw that on a high level which made it easier to take the risk of starting a company focused around mobile technology,” Michaud said. “(CEO) John (Duffy) has always had a fundamental philosophy of acting as a tollbooth as a business. You want to create business where you see a fundamental shift between a business and consumer and you want to position yourself as a tollbooth between a business and consumer and help facilitate communications and transaction between the two. When John recognized those two things happening around mobile, he became very excited about the prospects of being able to build a sustainable company in the space.”

3Cinteractive enlists some of the country’s biggest brands as clients. ESPN, Best Buy, Tracfone and the Cleveland Clinic all use 3Cinteractive services. The company targets the Fortune 1000 companies as potential clients and is also open to other companies that are worth over $100 million.

When it comes to marketing, 3Cinteractive has been very calculated and conscience on how it spends its efforts. Michaud called the company’s approach to marketing “pragmatic,” specifically when it comes to brand awareness. In the beginning, Michaud focused on internal marketing, building the company’s culture and delivering that message to its sales people so they could in turn deliver it to prospects. He feels that allowed 3Cinteractive to build a long term sustainable business.

It’s now clear that since the company is working with the biggest brands and finding itself on the pages of Forbes, 3Cinteractive had grown up a bit. How will that change marketing?

“I would say that is one of our goals every year to try to get some kind of earned recognition on local and national levels. Certainly you get that from Forbes,” Michaud said. “Without naming names, we’ve had some Fortune 1000 companies call our front desk because of that. So it’s been outstanding for us. With that being said, we don’t focus on just pouring millions into marketing just for the sake of doing it. We try to get everything we can out of earned media, social media, earned recognition, speaking opportunities. We think those things can provide just enough, if not more, to raise awareness and credibility as a brand than advertising spend. We’re getting to a maturation point where we’re building off of that and looking to invest more in advertising and other things to take us to the next level.”

Michaud added that we will see more about 3Cinteractive from an advertising perspective in various business and technology outlets in 2012.

3Cinteractive has worked with Boca Raton-based bfw Advertising since its beginning. Michaud called bfw a great partner that has helped that company from the beginning when it didn’t have a full marketing department. He added that at this time he doesn’t foresee the need to add addition agency help with the talent 3Cinteractive has brought on board.

Michaud sees a bright future for 3Cinteractive and the enterprise mobility solutions industry in general, citing that IBM predicts mobility solution will reach $250 globally by 2015.

“We have a phrase around here: Business is like electricity. It takes the path of least resistance,” Michaud said. “We think mobile is following that. To play on that, if you think to the first 10-15 years after electricity was discovered and what all the uses were for it, you couldn’t imagine the things we’re doing with it today. We look at mobile technology and the sheer power of the technology. The fact that it’s the fastest growing industry probably in the history of the world, we think it’s limitless. We ran an ad campaign once that said if you can think it up, we can make it mobile. There’s a lot of truth to that.”

Meg Robertson Digital Producer DylanRatigan.com

We’ve talked a lot about creating “cradles of innovation” in this country — combination a culture of investment, entrepreneurship and experimentation that accepts and encourages failure in the quest to solve problems and succeed. According to a new report from the Commerce Department, startups in America were responsible for creating close to three million new jobs in recent years. Florida, which we visited this week as part of our 30 Million Jobs tour, was no exception: start ups were responsible for creating 1.475 million jobs in the state between 2005 and 2009.

The numbers are looking good for new companies, and it’s no surprise that those trying to tackle America’s job problems are (finally) starting to take notice. In Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, the President acknowledged startups for innovating and creating millions of new jobs, even singling out the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, whose wife was in attendance at the SOTU. Said President Obama:

An economy built to last is one where we encourage the talent and ingenuity of every person in this country… we should support everyone who’s willing to work; and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs.

Obama also focused on the need for reforming certain business regulations that can hold new companies back financially:

Innovation is what America has always been about. Most new jobs are created in start-ups and small businesses. So let’s pass an agenda that helps them succeed. Tear down regulations that prevent aspiring entrepreneurs from getting the financing to grow. Expand tax relief to small businesses that are raising wages and creating good jobs.

Entrepreneurship is on the rise, but new businesses are still encountering hardships in this economy. We had the opportunity to talk to leading business and entrepreneurship experts in Florida — Susan Amat, Executive Director of The Launch Pad at the University of Miami, a coaching center that has launched dozens of student and alumni entrepreneurs and has become a model for other universities. Also joining Dylan was John Duffy, CEO of 3CInteractive, a Florida-based startup that develops mobile solutions and cloud-based mobile platforms for businesses.

Here’s the video, and a few behind the scenes shots of their visit to our “outdoor studio” in Miami. (Not a bad day to sit outside and talk about creating 30 Million Jobs!)

Check out the behind the scenes shots of Susan and John’s visit to The Dylan Ratigan Show!
John Duffy and Susan Amat with Dylan.

A little behind-the-scenes shot of the set, with Susan and Dylan and our stage manager.

Not only are they creating jobs — they come bearing gifts, too! Thanks guys!

- Meg Robertson is a digital producer for DylanRatigan.com.

Congratulations to the thirteen other South Florida firms recognized in the 2010 Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies list! 3Ci led the group with 6,844% revenue growth from 2006—2009.

Check out these links to see more of 3Cinteractive in the news:

• The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
• The Palm Beach Post
• The South Florida Business Journal

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Marcia Heroux Pounds
3:35 PM EDT, April 21, 2010

I recently received a text from a phone number I didn’t recognize, so I ignored it. But more recently, it worked. The text got my immediate attention because it was someone I needed to reach for a project.

How essential is texting for business? Texting may be the new lifeline to clients, customers and colleagues you need to reach — now. More businesses owners and professionals are using texting to reach people who are too busy to check e-mail or disinclined to answer the phone.

“It’s the fastest, quickest way for my clients to reach me,” says Fort Lauderdale career coach Debbie Benami-Rahm. When clients spot a job posting and needs her to review it, they text her with a link and she tells them whether it’s a match.

She sends “confidence boosters” via text before clients go on job interviews and later messages them to find out how the interview went.

Jason Welch, managing partner of R.I.C. Search in South Florida, says his recruiting firm limits the use of instant messaging. He may send a text to let a job candidate know he needs to talk to them or request they read a time-sensitive e-mail.

But some businesses find that texting is becoming essential to reaching their workers in the field.

At Interim Healthcare in Sunrise, nurses receive text messages letting them know about staffing opportunities. “They can send a text message in real time to potential candidates as opposed to picking up the phone and calling one by one,” says Mike FitzGibbon, president of 3Cinteractive, a Boca Raton firm that provides the texting system.

Without the texts nurses working in home healthcare might not know when a patient is being discharged from the hospital, might miss policy changes, and could lose a chance to fill an open shift, says Linda Schaub, who heads marketing at Interim Healthcare.

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