Dale Wolf

Director, Education and Information Services

Dale is a strong believer in customer-centric marketing – that is marketing focused on delivering value to customers. He carried this belief into action as marketing director for three international companies. His introduction to communications began when he was still a student at the University of Cincinnati and landed the job of Associate Director of Sports Information, and on weekends he served as Night Sports Editor of The Cincinnati Post.

After graduation, Dale went to work as a writer in the marketing department of one of the country’s largest life insurance companies, and then as Director of Advertising for NuTone – launching that company into national television. Along the way he has served as marketing manager for three companies before founding one of the nation’s earliest agencies focused on promotional marketing and was a founder of the Sales Promotion Marketing Association. He also served on the promotional marketing committee of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

It was as president at Wolf Blumberg Krody Marketing that he and his two partners formalized their customer-centric approach into a data-driven methodology of direct marketing – coined as “contextual marketing.” This methodology enabled dramatic growth for many national brands, including Tide, Mr. Clean, Pringles, Pepsi, Disney, Toshiba, Compaq Computers, Apple Computers, 3M, Florida Power and Light and Imation … as well as many regional hospitals and healthcare insurance companies.

After selling his ownership in WBK, Dale joined Cincom Systems, Inc. to lead product development of web-based software to replicate his contextual marketing methodology and spearheaded customer-centric marketing strategy for many of Cincom’s brands, as well as directing the development of a 15,000 page global website, translated into five languages. Dale was also an early adopter of blogging and other social media. His first blog, The Perfect Customer Experience, was started in 2004 and has won several awards as a leading voice for promoting customer experience management.

Along the way, Dale had developed a strong friendship with Kate and Peter Fenner, the founders of Compass Group, Inc., and eventually decided to join the clinical consulting firm to lead its marketing activities. He made production of content that would be useful to C-level hospital leaders the cornerstone of the consultancy’s industry outreach. He shifted from a concentration on lead generation to create the Education and Information Services Department to maintain a focus on producing whitepapers, books, blogs and websites that serve hospital leaders in their quest to develop Better American Hospitals.