Meet the Team: Michael Andre
Date: August 19, 2016Category: Author: David Hall
We continue to shine a spotlight from time to time on different members of the Infinity Dental Web team.
Helping craft your marketing strategy–Michael is your marketing guru.
Michael is originally from Austria. He worked for a number of years as Managing Director at the Grey Group, an international marketing firm in Düsseldorf, Germany. Two years ago, he and his family moved to Mesa, Arizona.
Job Title
Chief Marketing Strategist
Tell us about what you do
I help craft the broad marketing principles that help Infinity Dental Web market its clients. In my career, I have done a lot of marketing of health care products, including dental products. Dave likes the insights I have into marketing dentistry, so I work with him and with the Creative Director to develop strategies for marketing Infinity Dental Web’s clients.
What’s your favorite thing about your career?
I love delving into the minds of people and finding out why they do what they do.
What’s your proudest professional accomplishment?
In 1985 I was working for a marketing agency in Germany, on a team that was working with a dental products company. Our marketing team came up with an idea for making a flexible toothbrush, to address the problem dentists were telling us they had in trying to get patients to not brush too hard. We asked them to make a flexible end so that it would bend back when patients brushed. They
launched this new design in the Germany/Austria/Switzerland market, and from there it went global. It’s now sold internationally as the Aquafresh Flex toothbrush.
(It seemed to us that Michael was being a little too modest to not also mention receiving the Atticus Award for original published thinking in marketing. He received that in 2010 for his groundbreaking research into neuromarketing [subconscious marketing] that he did for Proctor and Gamble, studying how to market Pantene hair care products. So we’ll mention that for him.)
What was your first job?
When I was 16, I worked for a company in Austria that serviced Volvo automobiles. I was planning what parts they needed to have in stock. It taught me a lot about car mechanics because I worked with the mechanics.
If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Probably Wiener Schnitzel. Not the American Wiener Schnitzel, but the Austrian. It’s not actually a sausage–it’s meat, veal in particular, with bread crumbs over it. In America they make a sausage out of it, but it’s actually just the meat. Wien means Vienna, so Wiener means Viennese.
What was the last movie you went to?
I went with my kids to Jungle Book. I liked it. It very much kept to the original story. It was nice to not have the cartoon version, which I saw when it came out a long time ago. My girls liked it.
List two pet peeves.
I don’t like people who just look out for themselves, whether in business or private. And people who just criticize without bringing out anything constructive.
What’s your favorite family tradition?
Having a real Christmas tree, decorated with electric candles and candy, with a nice nativity scene. So we get a real, natural Christmas tree every year.
What’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever eaten?
I ate crocodile in Florida. I was there on a business trip. I was working for Grey in Germany, living in Germany, and we met as a company in Florida. People came there from all around the world. They took us to different places, and one of the restaurants served crocodile. It tasted like a cross between chicken and fish.
How many languages do you speak?
Just two. German is my first language, and I’m pretty good with English, of course.
If you had to describe yourself as an animal, which one would it be?
A tiger. Because I like the look, the strength. He’s strong, knows what he’s doing.
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