Steve Toms Marketing

Steve Toms profile

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More than 35 years of delivering quality
marketing communications expertise
to clients and students

Steve Toms is fortunate to work with a select family of clients and
academic institutions that appreciate quality marketing communications.

He works with all kinds of organizations, from local non-profit institutions
to worldwide multi-national corporations. He shows them how to produce
results through consistency, compatibility, and continuity.

Seminars develop critical thinking skills

Steve successfully integrates proven marketing strategies with innovative
communications tactics. His client seminars and classroom instruction
utilize the latest computer and presentation technologies.

He currently serves on the faculties of several universities and teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate level. His students consistently rank him in the top 5% on academic evaluations.

And he is a frequent speaker at local, state, and national conferences.

Business and education require a global perspective

Steve has a true grasp of what it takes to do business abroad.

He holds a Diploma of Hispanic Studies from the University of Barcelona (Spain), a Masters of International Management from the American Graduate School (Arizona), and post-graduate studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

His undergraduate double major at The Ohio State University was Spanish
and Communications. During his senior year, he worked as a producer and
director for instructional television.

He has taught English and Marketing to visiting government dignitaries,
businesses, and student groups from Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Venezuela, Japan, Spain, France, and Scotland.

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To build a quality academic program, you have to recruit

Steve started and grew an undergraduate marketing degree program
at one of Houston's most prestigious private universities.

Working closely with a faculty colleague, he researched equivalency courses at 8 area community colleges. Steve then designed custom 2+2 Program brochures for each college, showing students which classes would transfer into his program. To announce the program, he invited college advisors to his campus for 2+2 transfer luncheons.

Steve made a personal effort to meet with each transfer student. Many sat in some of his classes; others got to meet other majors at "pre-semester class registration pizza parties."

When Steve departed full-time teaching to pursue full-time consulting,
the undergraduate marketing major was the fastest-growing campus program.

From ad pro to successful entrepreneur

Steve has been fortunate to work with top advertising agencies in Chicago,
Dallas, Houston, and Columbus (Ohio). For more than a decade,
he worked on numerous packaged goods and service industry accounts, such as the Ohio State Fair, United Airlines, Kentucky Fried Chicken,
and Phillips Petroleum.

In 1991, he formed ProComm...a consultancy dedicated to the fine art
of business communications.

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There are no rewards for efforts, only for results

Steve feels that one of most challenging aspects of working with first-time clients and new students is overcoming their resistance to change.

A simple axiom says: If you do what you did, you'll get what you got.
To that, Steve adds: Less is more, but presentation matters most.

Steve has the unique ability to break down barriers keeping others
from realizing their true potential. He believes that when you begin communicating from the point of view of your reader or audience,
a major shift takes place.

At the start of the Clinton Administration, the Associated Press ran a story featuring the official postcard of Socks, the presidential cat (shown here).

Steve noted a punctuation error
and wrote a short note to The White House.

STEVE TOMS

“Is there a remote possibility that your printer erred
in placing the end quotation marks for 'First Cat'?

There are situations when they should be placed inside,
such as the question mark above. In this case, invoke
the ProComm axiom whenever quotations appear on either
side of a period or comma: When in doubt, put them out.

That way, your client's response will be ‘purr-fect.’”

About a week later, Steve got a call from White House Communications
Advisor Roger Goldblatt, thanking him for assistance in correcting
the error.

For the remainder of Clinton's presidency, Socks sent grammatically-correct postcards (shown here).

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