THE STORY OF HARDBALL MARKETING
Tony Lucido is the founder, owner and Brand Strategist at Hardball Marketing. He has three decades of in-depth B2B marketing and branding experience including senior leadership positions at both private and publicly-traded organizations. During this time, he has been an instrumental figure in helping companies achieve record-breaking business growth thanks in part to his strategic approach to branding initiatives and his many differentiation techniques. Hardball Marketing is the result of a career spent honing and creatively applying cutting-edge fundamentals of B2B branding to accomplish out-of-the park results.
SELECTED FOR THE BIG TIME
Tony's branding journey started over twenty-five years ago at a Fortune 500 company, when, as a freshly-minted MBA, he was selected to be part of a six-person stealth marketing team. This elite team was handpicked to introduce a top-secret innovative new product -- a product that was so revolutionary it would go on to become one of the most successful launches in the company's history. That company was Philips, the Dutch multinational, which at the time was ranked in the top 20 largest companies in the world with more than 300,000 employees and $40 billion in revenue.
Tony worked in the Industrial Marketing Group at Philips Lighting, an $8.75 billion division. Because the new product was a sought-after technological breakthrough that leapfrogged the competition (General Electric and Osram), the launch development plans had to be conducted under wraps to prevent intel from leaking into the hands of competitors. As an up-and-coming member of the stealth team of six top marketing specialists, Tony then spent the next year in confidential closed-door planning sessions. It was the best hands-on education any marketing professional could ask for, and it's where Tony's passion for branding was born.
What was this revolutionary all-new product? The Philips Fluorescent featuring Alto Lamp Technology™, the industry's first fluorescent to achieve a non-toxic, non-hazardous product designation from the U.S. government, thanks to the groundbreaking reduction of mercury within the lamp, all without any tradeoff in product performance. It sold like hotcakes.
After Alto racked up sales of billions of units as well as countless awards over the next decade, experts credited the overwhelming success in part to the marketing team's brilliant branding strategy. Their strategy included the master stroke of replacing standard silver end caps with bright green ones, which made the first-of-its-kind product visibly different for greater brand recognition and recall. This extensive multi-pronged strategy included brand differentiation, product positioning and sub-branding techniques to put Philips so far out in front that it took General Electric and Osram three years to catch up.
ALL-STAR TEAMMATES AND COACHES
The Philips Alto experience changed the course of Tony's career. Full immersion in brand marketing projects at a Fortune 500 company gave him the opportunity to work with and learn from top-ranked global consultants that included Boston Consulting Group, Ketchum Public Relations and KPMG International.
Working side by side with renowned consultants along with his fellow Philips colleagues, who themselves were a deep bench of 130 marketing professionals, meant Tony was exposed to the best of the best in branding principles, strategies and implementation. He gained firsthand experience in the fundamentals and execution of branding solutions and how they can and should be leveraged as a value creation lever for any company, regardless of size. The experience was a game-changer for Tony. He took that knowledge and ran with it.
BREAKING RECORDS AND WINNING AWARDS
After working at Philips for more than 10 years, Tony went on to become Vice President of Marketing at Hirsch Corporation, a publicly-traded $60 million distributor of industrial equipment where he designed and launched numerous branding programs to establish Hirsch as a market leader in their industry.
In 2015, Tony took on a major company-wide re-branding initiative for Ambrell Corporation as Vice President of Global Marketing. The President of Ambrell sought Tony's expertise in creating a comprehensive re-branding project, which was successfully implemented worldwide within Tony's first six months on the job.
"One of the most significant contributions by the marketing team at Ambrell," says Tony, "a contribution that I'm particularly proud to have led, is that we elevated the corporate brand on a worldwide level with a fundamentally-sound differentiation strategy of positioning the company to focus on the customer experience. This gave Ambrell a new, fresh and contemporary brand identity and truly set Ambrell apart from any competitor in the industry."
Tony and his team augmented that initiative with an Inbound Marketing infrastructure. To further advance the infrastructure, Tony's marketing team created and leveraged differentiated brand assets at key customer touchpoints to strengthen Ambrell's competitive advantage (as depicted on the Ambrell website). These assets became powerful memory anchors and helped Ambrell to earn and keep a top-of-mind position with the prospect in the buyer's journey. This, in a nutshell, is what Tony calls Inbound Branding.
"The value that my team created with these brand assets helped play a vital role in Ambrell's record-breaking success during my time there," adds Tony. "What I brought to the table all started with the years of branding expertise that I gained at Philips."
The success that Tony and his marketing team achieved includes winning the top prize from the National Association of Manufacturers in Digital Marketing, which included brand differentiation, and a similar first place award from the American Marketing Association. An integral part of the award-winning formula was the use and leveraging of Inbound Branding techniques.
HARDBALL MARKETING ENTERS THE GAME
In 2024, fulfilling a career goal to dedicate himself exclusively to B2B branding services, Tony started Hardball Marketing. He recognized the need to fill a significant void for small to mid-sized companies by providing Fortune 500-level branding expertise, but without the high costs you get from a large impersonal agency.
Tony has an MBA with a specialization in marketing from Penn State University. He has been a life-long learner, which includes earning a HubSpot certification as well as having studied the philosophies and completed branding workshops from world-renowned branding experts such as David Aaker, Jack Trout, Al Ries and Marty Neumeier.
Ready to play hardball? To talk with Tony about specific B2B branding needs for your company, use the button below to schedule a complementary consultation.
(N.B. All Ambrell information referenced throughout this site is public and available via Ambrell’s website, social media, blog postings, collateral materials, trade shows, special events, webinars, videos, technical documents and other information and communication platforms.)