Indy Hall Member Profiles – Steve Winkler
Filed under: Community Support, coworkers, From the Business Side, Independents Hall
Meet Steve Winkler.
Steve, a representative of the PR and marketing contingent at IndyHall, has been with us since we lived on Strawberry St and has taken the reins of our fine newsletter. As such, I fear he will know what I’m going to ask before I ask it. To start, I wanted to know how he came to be a Haller.
“I was working for a small agency here in Philly and as the years went on we had less and less need for a physical office as employees and clients alike were spread across the country.”
What, then?
“I went on the hunt for a place to work and it came down to Indy Hall and a very corporatized office share in Center City.”
But wait, who doesn’t want a phone answering service, mail service, and a secretary?
“If you need somebody to do stuff for you, then that’s where you go. If you just need to work, and you can handle your own business, you can come here. You have to ask yourself who you want to be? How do you want to work?”
See? This guy is a pro. That last bit could be used as a full on slogan.
Now we know how Steve found us, so why the long tenure?
“This is a more interesting environment to work in. One of the problems with being in marketing and PR is you’re kind of in an echo chamber. You’re just in marketing world and you start to care about what magazines like PR Week think.”
I’m so sorry, Steve.
“When you’re exposed to people outside of what you do, you realize nobody cares about PR week. Being here I’m constantly reminded to take a step back and acknowledge there’s a larger world out there and that’s a huge plus.”
Awesome. Now’s my chance to ask what…
“I’m not doing PR anymore. You ready for this marketing speak? I’m doing what’s called ‘Experiential Marketing.’”
Bollox, I said!
“Clients basically come to us because they want people surrounded by their brands. We produce ads, websites, and do events.”
I was curious whether being here at the Hall had improved his quality of work.
“Programmers, Designers, Marketing people, we all have different ideas about the way things work. The more I am exposed to these different perspectives the more I’m able to synthesize them into ideas for cool new marketing campaigns.”
Unbelievable, this guy. If I keep getting answers like this I’ll be out of a job soon. Thanks Steve.
