David LaPlante

When I first started blogging back in 2004 it seemed to me that the reasons to have and publish a feed were about equally divided by three desires:

1. Enhance and extend a personal brand.
2. The hope and ability to meet and interact with others.
3. The opportunity to share your experiences, stories, perspectives and passions.

Since then, I’ve come to understand a fourth:

Sustain a one-to-many dialog with my many friends and business relationships without having to rely on inefficient channels.

So, what we have here is a blog on things I am compelled to feed in to cyberspace…

First and foremost I love marketing and the mediums in which marketing travels, particularly of the following flavors: mobile marketing, email marketing, relationship marketing, social marketing and database marketing.

Second, I love branding. Particularly branding as it pertains to interpersonal interactions and business relationships. The personal brand – particularly among business leaders – is must-have for any business.

Third, I’m an entrepreneur. Every personality test I’ve ever taken shows that I am down to my very core an improvising creative entrepreneur. I’m addicted to creating things. Speaking in vision-tongue. Love to push my vision on people. Always a contrarian.

Fourth, I’m a parent raising kids in a Web 2.0 world. Parenting is a really cool job and I like to write about it. Because I’m an early-adopter of anything tech, my kids enjoy opportunities to engage with technology much more than most. I derive unique perspectives and insights that I like to share.

Finally, I love Nevada. Particularly northern Nevada, but there’s not too many places in this great state that I am not stoked to be in. I can go from being covered in powder or playa dust to being ‘covered’ at most clubs in Vegas in a day. It’s a good dynamic.

Here’s some background on me:

I'm the CEO of Twelve Horses. Twelve Horses’ focus is relationship marketing and messaging management. We make software and provide services (wetware) for businesses that want to communicate more effectively with the relationships that matter to them.

I’ve managed to rack up over twelnty years of marketing, sales, business automation, customer relationship management (CRM), and applications development experience. I’m an extroverted (ENTP) computer geek who appreciates the difference between Helvetica and Trade Gothic.
Previous to Twelve Horses, I was a partner in Aztech Cyberspace, a Nevada-based Internet design and development agency that managed to navigate from 1995 thru 2002 not only as a recognized leader in marketing automation, but as profitable Internet business.

Before there was Aztech and HTML, I began my post-college career as one of the youngest marketing executives in the Nevada casino gaming industry. I worked for the Fitzgeralds Group, which owned and operated several casino/hotels nationally, including the world-famous Harold's Club brand. In addition to managing multi-property marketing, advertising and public relations efforts, I was fortunate to be involved with the gaming industry's initial CRM revolution where I enjoyed the opportunity to design, develop and implement the first player tracking system integrated with hotel property management and point-of-sale system.

On the ego side of things, I was named "Marketer of the Year" by the northern Nevada American Marketing Association in 2004. I’m fairly active in the community, frequently volunteering my time to teach students about technology and entrepreneurship.

Consistent with this passion, The State of Nevada Commission on Economic Development appointed me as a board member for Nevada's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. I'm the Communication's Chair for the Reno-Tahoe chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization and chair of the Common Short Code Working Group for the Mobile Marketing Association.

Whoops! Almost forgot this: The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer.