About Rick
Rick West has been either directly involved with or on the periphery of the mass communications industry for nearly forty years.
His first foray came as an intelligence analyst and briefer to the commanders of two of the U.S. Air Force's five top Commands at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. He honed his communications skills while working at the prestigious USAF Foreign Technology Division, while providing top secret current intelligence briefings on a weekly basis to four-star Generals. Obviously, he learned to deliver a reliable and timely service at an early age.
Later, as a program director and #1-rated morning drive personality in the Dayton, Ohio radio market1, Rick created and launched what has become known as the “progressive-country” radio format which still exists today throughout the U.S. To capture these ratings, he used his natural and acquired communications instincts to dominate an aggressive and fast-paced radio environment. Rick has written and produced hundreds of radio spots and hosted/co-produced the Dayton, Ohio 1981 Wrangler Country Star Search for Wrangler Jeans.
He then became Marketing Director for Carlson Marketing Group and worked with an impressive $137 million portfolio of clients, including highly-recognizable Fortune 500 names such as IBM, Bose Audio, Eastman Kodak, Ricoh Copiers, Conoco Oil (now Conoco-Philips), a number of General Motors divisions (GMC, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Pontiac and Buick), Mazda, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Northern Telecom (NTI), NEC and many more…delivering successful performance improvement and employee incentive marketing strategies for his clients’ corporate needs.
Rick has won awards from Kodak Corporation and Curtis Paper Company for achieving communications excellence.
1Arbitron, Spring, 1982 - Men 18-49