Marketing guru B.C. LeDoux is president and partner of The Glenn Group Cos., which includes two agencies with unique missions: The Glenn Group and Wide Awake.
B.C. stands for Brandon Charles, LeDoux explained. “I grew up with another kid named Brandon, and my mom started calling me B.C. to clear up confusion—ironically, she named me Brandon because she hated nicknames and there weren’t any for Brandon.”
Finding a name to differentiate himself seems a fitting start for a career creating a marketing edge or brand for clients.
Fifteen years ago, LeDoux started as a copywriting intern during his time as a student at University of Nevada, Reno.
Today, he is a leader in the field of marketing with an emphasis on working with gaming properties. LeDoux brings more than a decade and a half of experience in creating strategy, innovation, and modern marketing.
He worked as a creative director for many years before becoming president of the agency. His resume includes numerous Strip gaming properties — from Mandalay Bay in the south to the Stratosphere in the north — along with numerous properties around the country and the globe.
LeDoux has received numerous awards including being named 2013 Advertising Person of the Year by AAF Reno. He sits on the board of Junior Achievement of Southern Nevada and is on the board of governors for TAAN Worldwide, an international marketing network.
Q. What is Wide Awake?
A. The Glenn Group Cos. has two modern marketing agencies — The Glenn Group, which focuses on Nevada companies and organizations, as well as Wide Awake, which focuses on modern marketing for gaming properties. They’re sister agencies as a part of The Glenn Group Cos. I run both as president in tandem with our CEO.
Q. How have you modernized marketing? Specifically, what types of new technology are you using?
A. For us, modernizing marketing, specifically for gaming properties on the Wide Awake side, it’s not necessarily about technology. It can be. But, really, it’s about the way marketing is evolving and consumers’ perspectives are evolving. The difference being, when a player goes on property now, they can within an instant put a review up on social media or a review site that could sit there for the next two years. So really they’re beginning to own the brands of gaming companies. And, they’re getting to choose how they view messaging, whether it’s skipping commercials or ad blocking.
So properties and brands have to be very aware of this and they have to think about things from the inside out. They have to really think about their brand and make sure their message is interesting for their target, make sure that they’re connecting with their target emotionally with their brand. And then decide which technologies might make sense, whether that’s an on-property app or whether that’s an email campaign, or social media, or a cause-related campaign. It just depends on what you’re trying to do strategically.
For us, modern marketing is not just about technology, it’s about the shifting landscape.
Q. How does Wide Awake carve out a marketing niche in the gaming industry, both for your company and your clients?
A. As a company, we’ve been working with companies for 46 years. We’ve worked with 50 to 70 gaming companies. So we’ve seen a pretty big evolution in the industry. Lots of competition now, lots of saturations. Whereas properties used to open and would instantly be rolling in money, now they have competition so they have to differentiate. And that’s really what we specialize in — helping properties with their brand strategy, helping them find their white space to stand out in a market, connect with the right audience so that their brand feels different, and is defensible, and people connect with it emotionally.
Q. How are you inspiring the people who handle marketing for the gaming industry to be the best? How do you inspire your staff?
A. I think for us as a company, it’s twofold. As a company, you have to stand for something. Whether you’re a marketing company or a gaming company or a property, we have a core set of values. We believe we should be, and strive to be, genuine, imaginative and enterprising. Those brand pillars are kind of our star for our staff, which is inspiring, I think, to know what your company stands for and where it’s going.
The Wide Awake side, our mission is to help evolve the gaming industry when it comes to marketing. So that’s a mission that everybody in the company is behind; and it’s inspiring to them to know when they get to work they’re going to be working toward helping our clients evolve and differentiate and open their businesses.
Q. What are you doing to utilizing the internet in order to attract visitors to gaming properties in Las Vegas?
A. As far as using the internet, I would say, it’s more complex than that. What we try to do is give a property a platform to stand on. For instance, we’re working with the Stratosphere on their campaign “Take Vegas Back.” So we collaborated with them on this campaign which really gave them a platform for not only their employees to rally around, but their customers to get engaged with. So, OK, you have that, and then how are we drawing people in via the web? We give people a chance to sign up, sign in every manifesto, the whole campaign is about the Stratosphere being for the everyman, the everywoman, and taking Vegas back from excess, glitz, and glam.
