This is a short selection of the clients I have worked for as an independent consultant in the summer 2005-summer 2009 period, offering communication, marketing, and PR services, some successful and interesting cases. I have chosen clients who have agreed to provide references, and some of them may be contacted through e-mail. I have continued working for clients in the marketing area since 2009. I have not organized/collected written references from them because I’ve been too busy developing products and services and working for the clients they recommended to me. Further references may be available upon request.
Though I have primarily worked with individuals and less with companies, my driving vision in services provided as a consultant in the mentioned areas has been to bring my contribution with knowledge, analysis, critical thinking, and skill-building tools so that the clients may benefit generative progress in their professional goals.
1. Client (June-September 2006): NIKONS, a cultural association from Iasi, was organizing a national dance contest to celebrate 10 years of existence.
Task. I have closely worked with the president of the association to write a project to obtain funding from the local public administration, to create a strategy for the promotion of the association for the period 2006-2008, to organize and promote the event, and to manage the relations with the press before and during the press conference.
Challenges
The organization had little time when they contacted me and factually depended on the success of this event to continue working. Also, the association members were unmotivated, had different interests, and offered little support. I managed to create a strategy followed by the communication-tasked member as I monitored the situation after 2006.
Testimonial
“The talent for communication and marketing, completed with the permanent desire of knowledge and involvement, the passion and the seriousness with which he dedicates to a project, make him unreplaceable as a partner. In addition, the sportive dance has gained a friend of great value through Marcus Victor Grant.”
Prof. Mariana-Constantina Niculiţă, Iași, Romania
NIKONS president
2. Client (March-May 2006): Sergiu Barna, a stomatologist who had the goal to express himself in a leadership role, which he succeeded, as he was elected president of Junior Chambers International Iaşi in 2007, the year following the personal branding services. Since 2008, he has been Honorary President and moved his business to London, where he lives now.
Task
I have worked with dr. Barna evaluates and emphasizes the positive aspects of his personal brand in professional contexts and improves his abilities to learn and use information.
Challenges
The cliehad noany experience promoting himself in a leadership role and didn’t know the best opportunities for his professional branding communications. Still, he had the skills and the will to make something better for younger people and help them develop. Hence, he became more active in promoting young businessmen networking through the Junior Chambers International Organization.
Testimonial
“As the first contact with Marcus Victor Grant, I have appreciated his openness and personal and intellectual competence for his age. In addition, Marcus gave me some tips & tricks for personal branding that changed my perception of some public aspects of my initiatives”.
Dr. Sergiu Barna, stomatologist, London
Honorary President, Junior Chambers International Iaşi
3. Client (July 2005, April 2007): Loredana Simedre, attorney at law, a young Romanian entrepreneur, developed a business as a managing partner at ProCredit Consulting, a bank-credits agency for consulting customers, then, in 2009, she started the project “Job Mate,” a website oriented towards helping young students to develop their careers.
Task:
In 2005, I offered Loredana consulting services in persuasive communication and psychological negotiation as she needed to improve her interpersonal negotiation skills. She used those to find abilities that she developed in time. Then, in 2007, she was a client again to strengthen her professional leadership abilities, which she proved after the services, gathering over 1000 people in just a few weeks in an MLM structure which she then gave up for ethical considerations concerning the ways information was used regarding the members of her structure. She gathered a virtual community of over 5000 users before launching the website Job Mate.
Challenges:
Loredana has excellent potential and a strong will for affirmation. The challenge was to offer the consulting services in a structured manner that would build her ability to work with her own resources for development.
Testimonial:
“A new way for approaching human relations, an indispensable instrument for businessmen and, not only, an infallible way through which you can overcome your own limits.”
Att. Loredana Mihaela Simedre ,
Social Entrepreneur, Bucharest, Romania
4. Client (July 2005): Cristina Ţigănucă, attorney at law.
Task: Public speaking consulting, negotiation skills, tips & tricks.
Challenges: When becoming an attorney at law in 2006, Cristina still had issues regarding her ability to sell an idea to the public from her heart. She put a lot of energy into saying something, but the point wasn’t focused, wasn’t structured, and didn’t have much technique and strategy.
Testimonial:
“I consider this service a fundamental basis for my professional formation. The techniques experimented with this occasion have served me in numerous presentations I held in the last few years, as much in formulating a logical speech, but especially in controlling emotions and channeling my energy toward knowing and persuading the audience.”
Financial Consultant, Milan, Italy
5. Client (June-August 2008): Mădălina Ivona Bejenariu, in 2008: student, customer care specialist in 2017: freelancer
Task: Personal branding for (but not limited to) obtaining a job.
Challenges: Mădălina is one of the most exciting clients I have ever had. With a solid determination to obtain a job, having developed skills applicable to a large spectrum of professions, and having invested time in her professional formation, she did not know which was the best kind of job for her. In what field, therefore, she did not know how to sell herself on the job market. However, having time and financial pressure, she found the strength to go through the whole process of personal branding in a very analytical way, which proved, in the end, to bring her the right job, but more importantly, the valuing of her skills in a fulfilling place.
Testimonial:
“With this opportunity, I have discovered about myself, in a much clearer perspective, things I already knew but did not consider important; I have found new things which help me in my future career, and also I have started to grant more interest to my personal branding.
During the negotiation for the job I received, I was surer of myself and prepared to negotiate my attributions and benefits very thoroughly, using the consulting services and the experience of my failed interviews.
I met Marcus at the moment in my life when I would have moved into the woods to avoid seeing anybody, but he helped me regain optimism and self-trust!”
freelancer, Iaşi, Romania
6. Client (2009): Andrei Dragomir
Tasks: web PR, blog administration, and optimization
Challenges: Andrei Dragomir is a blogger who, after implementing some of my suggestions, increased his visibility from around a few hundred views per month to 10.000 views per month and has been declared “the masculine voice of the kudika website”. His blog concentrated on personal development, starting from a relationship with a woman in 2008. The target audience was women who were upset with disappointing relationships and interested in a better understanding of how men think. Using concepts from NLP and mainly transactional analysis, he explained on his blog (dindragostepentrud.wordpress.com) hundreds of articles on how specific mechanisms make relationships crumble. I was the design administrator of the whole process.
I have also found photographers to illustrate his blog and organized a photo exhibition at some of the metro stations in Bucharest, Romania, to promote the blog.
Ultimately, the client was not interested in implementing monetizing techniques, and he eventually gave up, and so did I because it wasn’t OK to do pro bono work for something that does not have perspectives of being monetized either way. But the branding implementation was a massive success due to web PR techniques.
Testimonial:
“Marcus Victor Grant transformed my work in a concise amount of time from something which was only read by some dozens of followers into a skyrocketing success that made some of the blog’s new female readers drop working or sleep because they became addicted and couldn’t stop reading. I was overwhelmed with the number of comments and messages I received, so I turned the blog’s administration to Marcus, and I only dealt with the writing process.
I also appreciated that he added color and depth to my texts using collaborations with some very talented young professional photographers. He also gave me some helpful structuring ideas about the website and information display. He has an eye for detail without losing the big picture, and that’s important in digital communication.
I recommend him to business people who want to design strategic design of content to maximize revenues. He looks pretty focused on upscaling for the proper budget.”
Andrei Dragomir,
blogger
7. Client (2005): Marketing Box, 2005
Task: copywriting
Challenges: The client was a Bucharest-based e-mail marketer, Virgil Budasca (who now lives in the UK), designing a promotional campaign for a virtual product selling e-mail marketing databases. I have done copywriting for him in sales letters, and a collaborator of mine implemented a website for his campaign.
The copywriting for the sales letter offered a nice ROI. I have kept in contact with the client occasionally, seeing him and talking over the phone several years afterward, and he declared himself satisfied with my work back then.
Copyright text (except testimonials from clients) © Marcus Victor Grant, 2009-present
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