Today we’d like to introduce you to Tod Meisner
Hi Tod, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Upon graduating from Illinois State University as a Mass Comm major, I began my career in sports communication/sports information at the collegiate level. My journey began in college athletics as a sports information director with stops at SMU, the Missouri Valley Conference and Conference USA.
While I made a strong impact within college athletics, I also created relationships early in my career with professional organizations. I worked for both the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys and the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks in the early 2000s and continue to work Maverick’s game day stat crew to this day.
I left the collegiate athletics space in 2010 and briefly worked for a boutique PR agency in Dallas before beginning a 5-year stint at Associa in Dallas. While there, I worked my way up to Digital Marketing Director and helped Associa launch its social media presence in 2010 and overall directed the company’s digital marketing strategy and day-to-day digital marketing execution.
I moved to Auburn, AL in 2011 and once again found myself in the agency space and served as Director of Client Leadership for Verge Pipe Media. I served higher education clients and helped them adopt and expand their usage of HubSpot, while also working to help land new clients.
This role was challenging in such a small market and after 18 months I moved once again from agency life to the client-side and began my tenure at Aflac. Working my way up through the brand and national advertising team, I concluded my term as Brand Manager. As brand manager, I developed and formulated the company’s social media key strategies and executional deliverables that supported the overall brand and national advertising strategy, core brand promise, program/campaigns and overall business objectives.
I spent my days leading and driving the company’s social media strategy. I rebuilt Aflac’s social media strategy from the ground up and grew Aflac’s connected community on its main social media channels, most recently launching the brand’s TikTok strategy in 2022.
In April 2023, I joined the Corporate Communications team at State Farm. In my role as Sr. Analyst, I’m responsible for identifying and improving the brand’s communications goals to drive business and communication efficiencies. I create detailed reports that are used to provide actionable insights to various business partners across the enterprise to make data-driven decisions and communications improvements.
In addition to my day-to-day duties for State Farm, I teach undergraduate and graduate level classes for Auburn University, Arizona State University, West Virginia University, the University of Florida, Southern Methodist University and New York University (NYU). The courses focus on social media campaigns and engagement for public relations as well as, branding, advertising, and digital marketing.
What does all that mean? Well, I cosplay as a data analyst at the moment. I’m a communicator and marketer mostly and my career has focused in those areas. But at State Farm I’m blending that expertise along with data capabilities to serve as an internal consultant for communicators. I try to help them use data and other metrics to “see the forest from the trees” in essence.
And in my “spare time” I’m an adjunct instructor and mentor trying to help the next generation of marketers and communicators.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Things have been far from smooth the last 10+ years, but I have grown from that adversity. Soon after I got divorced in 2014, I was let go from my digital marketing job. You want to talk about rock bottom! But a piece of advice I learned early on in that tough period was to “do one thing”. Celebrate the small wins and accomplish one thing per day to keep yourself moving forward. Maybe that thing is prayer, or a workout, or a connection call. Do one thing each day to keep moving forward and celebrate the progress. Stack the wins and good things will come. By adopting that mindset, I’ve come a long way in the last 10+ years.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’d say I am known for helping people and my way to relate with people. In the 5 voices assessment I test as a nurturer, which is defined as: Nurturers are champions of relationships, harmony, and values.
They are self-giving, the relational oil inside teams, they delight in the success of others, and they intuit how people will react to change.
Nurturers account for almost half the population. They shy away from conflict, but can provide invaluable benefits to the team:
They intuitively feel how an organization will react to a new idea
They defend values; people will always come before profit
They function as the relational oil inside teams and organizations
They are pragmatic realists who ask — “has this really been thought through?”
They take genuine delight in celebrating the achievements of others and are natural team players.
This helps set me apart in certain cases. I have learned to use the above as my core strengths and play to them. I know what I am good at and what I am not and put myself in positions to succeed.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was a sport nut (still am) that loved to play basketball and be with his friends. I spent most summers outside playing basketball or playing video games with my friends. If I wasn’t playing sports I was watching them. Most likely the St. Louis Cardinals or the Chicago Bulls. I was a a HUGE Michael Jordan fan. His posters covered my walls and I used to draw Nike logos, the Jumpman logo, the Bulls logo, etc. as well. I recently found an old box at my parents with all my old doodles and drawings. So I was most definitely sports obsessed. And still am!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.todmeisner.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/todmeisner
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/todmeisner
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todmeisner
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/todmeisner
- Other: https://www.todmeisner.com/blog
