About Us |  Philosophy

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“Those Who Can See the Invisible, Can Do the Impossible”

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Renee Blodgett
Renee offers a very personalized approach of working with clients, their customers and the influencers that impact them. She ran Blodgett Communications for close to a decade, before founding Magic Sauce Media^TM in 2010. Renee takes a global approach, which comes from living in ten countries and visiting nearly 70, giving her a unique understanding of how cultural nuances impact brand and corporate perception. She has launched companies, services and products from around the world, including South Africa, Australia, Holland, Scotland, India, England, Belgium, Germany, Israel, and France.

Her market approach focuses on driving demand and traffic, creating brand awareness and cutting-edge strategies, building and nurturing customer relationships, increasing partnerships and sales and building loyalty. She understands grassroots media, what they look for and how they think. As one of the first marketing and PR bloggers in the industry, she represented and worked with leading blog software developers and RSS tools when they first launched in the nineties.

Renee blogs at Down the Avenue, which combines technology, culture and life’s passions under one roof. Her blog was voted the top blog in a month long contest, up against some of the top blogs and agencies in the world, many of which represent Fortune 500 companies.

She is the founder of We Blog the World, a global blog network dedicated to stories, voices, and content about society, business, technology and culture from around the world.

Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, whose mission is to collaborate with global technology innovators and influencers in various countries, cross pollinate ideas and mentor organizations and individuals, and then share that knowledge through blogging, video, podcasts, social media tools and meet-ups.

Previously, she headed up worldwide corporate communications for leading speech recognition player Dragon Systems, through to the acquisition to Lernout & Hauspie, now Nuance. Blodgett’s agency experience is extensive with posts at Brodeur Worldwide, London-based Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising and Saatchi & Saatchi Direct, Porter Novelli, Cone, and Cudaback Strategic Communications.

Renee has held advisory board positions on b5 Media, a global new media network, Cozmo Media, which taps into community to put video content in front of the right audience, Toktumi, a virtual home office VoIP phone solution, BlogHer, the first conference and group blog dedicated to women bloggers, which now has nearly 20,000 blogs in its global network, Radus, a dynamic media rich social network and content aggregator and PopTech, an innovation conference whose goal is to accelerate the positive impact of world changing people and ideas. She was also the co-curator of TEDxBerkeley, an independently produced TED event.

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“We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.” Alexis de Tocqueville

[/column] [column width=”66%” padding=”0″] Ann Revell-Pechar
Ann has worked in marketing, communications, advertising and PR for over 25 years – both in-house and at agencies, which has given her a perspective that allows for great understanding of client needs and how to deliver outstanding service. While she’s worked with many large corporations and small companies of significant standing, she is uniquely geared to the entrepreneur. Her experience managing teams for over two decades has given her a perspective that allows for great understanding of client and employee needs.

Ann spent 18 years in Seattle, where she co-founded Reed, Revell-Pechar Advertising and PR, and spent two years in Baltimore, both with Trahan Burden and Charles as VP Public Relations and as RP Inc. to work for New Enterprise Associates.

Over her career, she has launched and managed 60 companies and hundreds of products, from Aventail to F5, from NetNanny, Teleo (sold to Microsoft), MetaInfo and Real Networks (now RealAudio), to more established firms such as New Enterprise Associates and Ziff Davis Publishing.

Her sweet spot is in all things Internet and consumer technology, but has extensive experience in consumer, healthcare, biotechnology and life sciences, security, storage and enterprise technologies.

Ann has also taught technical and professional communications at Rochester Institute of Technology, and has also taught at Villa Julie College in Maryland. She is Chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta, where she strives to make Georgia ripe for technology entrepreneurship. She has also served on numerous non-profit and business advisory boards in Seattle, Baltimore, and Atlanta.

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“My business is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Mother Mary Jones, Social Activist

[/column] [column width=”66%” padding=”0″] Brad Kava
Brad brings a wealth of broadcast and news journalism experience to Magic Sauce Media clients, with over 26 years of experience in journalism, media and communications.

He was a print news reporter and syndicated media critic for the San Jose Mercury News and has had numerous works published in the New York Times, Kansas City Star, Rolling Stone magazine and others.

Brad has had front page stories about everything ranging from satellite radio, digital music rights and terrorist bombings to features on well renown authors and profiles on technology luminaries and CEOs. He was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for covering the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and has done writing projects for the Los Angeles blues and rock record label, Delta Groove.

He has been a guest on “Nightline,” NPR’s “Morning Edition” and Howard Stern’s radio show, and is a regular media commentator for KCBS Radio, KGO radio and Fox TV affiliate KTVU in Oakland. His published interviews translated around the world have included musicians such as Keith Richards, James Cotton, Paul McCartney, Snoop Dogg, and U2.

Brad has won several awards for his writing, including second place for the Best Bay Area Columnist and Best Feature Story, and honorable mention for the Best Serious Feature Story. He was also part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Loma Preita earthquake.

He is also an avid blogger, so has a keen understanding of the social media space, which is instrumental and integral to our overall branding, marketing and communications efforts.

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“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

[/column] [column width=”66%” padding=”0″]Erica Zeidenberg
Erica is a media maven. She has been a marketing and public relations professional for over twenty years, working in both the consumer and high technology arenas. In 2001, she founded Hot Tomato Marketing, a public relations and marketing communications consulting firm, where she provided full service communications to a broad range of clients — from high tech to small- and mid-size consumer businesses.

Clients have included technology start-ups, a national educational foundation, search engine marketing, credit unions, the Chamber of Commerce, investment management and financial services firms and other professional service providers.

Because of working with such a diverse range of clients, she has developed relationships at the local level (San Francisco print, online and broadcast media), the vertical market level (Health Magazine, Discovery Channel), and the national level (CNN).

Prior to starting her own firm, Erica worked on the corporate side in marketing communications at Sun Microsystems and as a marketing director at a telecommunications technology company. She has also worked in several account capacities at large, San Francisco public relations agencies specializing in technology clients, including Sun Microsystems.

Erica also worked for several years in national public television programs. She started her career in public relations at a handful of small boutique agencies in the San Francisco/Bay area. [/column]

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About Us |  Philosophy

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Renee Blodgett
As CEO and Founder of Magic Sauce Media^TM, Renee offers a very personalized approach of working her clients, their customers and the influencers that impact them. She has been providing full service strategic communications, social media and marketing consulting for global companies and executives for over 25 years. By combining her international experience with top-notch relationships and a diverse portfolio in nearly every technology sector, Renee has proven results time and time again.

She ran Blodgett Communications for close to a decade, before launching Magic Sauce Media in 2010. Her global approach comes from living in ten countries and visiting more than 75, giving her a unique understanding of how cultural nuances impact brand and corporate perception. She has launched companies, services and products from around the world, including South Africa, Australia, Holland, Scotland, India, England, Belgium, Germany, Israel, and France.

Her market approach focuses on driving demand and traffic, creating brand awareness and cutting-edge strategies, building and nurturing customer relationships, increasing partnerships and sales and building loyalty. She understands grassroots media, what they look for and how they think. As one of the first marketing and PR bloggers in the industry, she represented and worked with leading blog software developers and RSS tools when they first launched in the nineties. She was ranked #12 out of #50 in the Forbes Top Social Media Power Influencer List in 2012 and in 2013, she was listed as #6 out of 20 in the Forbes Top Social Media Women Power Influencers.

Renee’s personal blog is Down the Avenue, which combines technology, culture and life’s passions under one roof. Her blog is listed on the AdAge Power 100 list which is a ranking of marketing blogs and was voted the top blog in a month long contest by PR Week, up against some of the top blogs and agencies in the world, many of which represent Fortune 500 companies. She also blogs about culture, lifestyle, media, travel and food & wine on the Huffington Post, the BlogHer network and We Blog the World, which she founded in 2008.

We Blog the World is an online travel and culture magazine of unique independent voices, all of which share cultural stories, travel events, anecdotes about food & wine, music, society and technology from around the world.

Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, whose mission is to collaborate with global technology innovators and influencers in various countries, cross pollinate ideas and mentor organizations and individuals, and then share that knowledge through blogging, video, podcasts, social media tools and meet-ups.

Previously, she headed up worldwide corporate communications for leading speech recognition player Dragon Systems, through to the acquisition to Lernout & Hauspie, now Nuance. Blodgett’s agency experience is extensive with posts at Brodeur Worldwide, London-based Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising and Saatchi & Saatchi Direct, Porter Novelli, Cone, and Cudaback Strategic Communications.

Renee has held advisory board positions at b5 Media, a global new media network, Cozmo Media, which taps into community to put video content in front of the right audience, Toktumi, a virtual home office VoIP phone solution, BlogHer, the first conference and group blog dedicated to women bloggers, which now has nearly 20,000 blogs in its global network, Radus, a dynamic media rich social network and content aggregator and PopTech, an innovation conference whose goal is to accelerate the positive impact of world changing people and ideas.

She is an avid photographer and you can learn more about her work at Magic Sauce Photography, a natural extension of Magic Sauce Media. Renee has been a curator of TEDxBerkeley for four years, an annual TEDx event held at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall each spring.

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About Us  |  Philosophy

Did you know that of 500,000 U.S. launched businesses, half are gone within a year?

Within 5 years, 80% of remaining businesses fail. Within ten years, 96% are gone. Only 4% or 20,000 businesses survive and that’s in good economic times.

With those statistics, it’s no wonder it is so hard to stand out from the crowd, not just in the short term, but in a way that demonstrates to your target audience, that you’re in it for the long haul and will deliver consistently again and again.

In the past decade, Google has proven that it can make more money than its competitors by giving content and other services away for free. The “free” economy has changed the playing field and consumers are accustomed to receiving more “free” content, goods and services than anytime in history.

Successful open source solutions have proven that developers will create things for free because they want to make a difference in the world. And, as things become more and more open, consumers expect to find the content and products they’re interested in wherever they surf on the web, not behind a closed wall of an online retail outlet or publishing giant.

Millions of people on the net are deciding what kind of business you’re in whether you agree with them or not.  Evidence of The Long Tail is at play worldwide. Online conversations are occurring in the middle and at the end of that tail, all of which are shaping your brand and your customer’s behavior. 

We understand this paradigm shift and know that the way you think about markets, communications and customers needs to change as a result.  

While controlled gates and messages no longer works the way it did a decade ago, we don’t believe that going organic alone is sustainable without having a smart communications strategy in place.

If you are not actively, authentically and creatively participating in the myriad of conversations on the web, then how can you hope to build relationships and earn trust from your community?

Once we help you get aligned with your vision, we develop a strategy that helps you get focused so you’re not spending too much time in places where your customers are not. And, we help you get clued up on what matters to existing customers, prospects and other influencers who help shape your brand.

Why not focus on what you need to do to grow your business and let us do what we love most: taking your magic sauce^TM to the world in a way that is memorable and engaging.
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