Bob Colloredo

Bob Colloredo has been working for advertising agencies since the 1980s. In 2006, he took a leap of faith and started his own shop, Colloredo & Associates, Inc. 

He hasn’t looked back. 

Colloredo & Associates has grown from a one-man business to a full-service, integrated marketing and advertising agency with 10 professional staff members, including both industry veterans and talented young stars. The company serves clients from Florida to New York City to the West Coast from its home office in Knoxville. And the shop is definitely on a growth path, more than doubling in size in the last four years. 

Born in Memphis, Colloredo enjoyed sports, especially golf, playing almost every day from the time he started school. He played in tournaments all over the South, typically finishing in the top third of the standings. “It was a great way to grow up,” he said.  

Then, at age nine, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, putting life as he knew it on hold for a while. At that time, the long-term survival rate from the disease was just over 50%. But if there was any “good” place for a child to diagnosed with cancer at that time, it was Memphis, because St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital was just hitting its stride. St. Jude tackles the toughest childhood diseases, and Bob was among first few thousand patients to be treated there, and he made a full recovery.

To this day, he is a very strong advocate for the hospital, helping each year with fundraising events such as the Knoxville St. Jude Walk/Run. He makes sure others have the opportunity for a full life like he’s been blessed with.

Growing up, Colloredo thought he’d go on to a career in architecture. His father was a planning consultant, and Bob was fascinated with how he designed developments. But, he was more fascinated by the buildings along the way. His high school advisor, though, through evaluation and consideration of a number of areas, recommended he consider business as a major instead. From the very first day in school, he felt there was something missing. The curriculum wasn’t as energetic as Colloredo wanted to be. He liked the subject matter but wanted to surround himself with more energetic people. He learned that the energy he was looking for was those some call “creative.” 

Then he took an Introduction to Advertising course. People were smiling, interacting, and collaborating. “This was it,” he said. “This was where I belonged.” He changed his major to Advertising, earning his Bachelor’s Degree in 1987.

As part of the major, Colloredo was required to have a practicum experience, where he would work at least 10 hours a week for a marketing division of a local company or an advertising agency. He wound up at Reed Advertising, run by long-time Knoxville adman Jim Reed, where he got to work on for a variety clients including Marley Mouldings, Sea Ray Boats and Philips Consumer Electronics. 

As his practicum commitment ended, Colloredo was called into Mr. Reed’s office and, to his surprise, offered a job in account service. To his further surprise, his supervisor left the agency a week later. 

Colloredo was thrust into a maelstrom of client needs and demands. Requests were coming in constantly, and he didn’t have the experience to understand them all and respond. It was a trial by fire, and agency veterans will tell you it’s one of the toughest ways to learn the agency business. But Colloredo hung tough, working long hours, taking personal responsibility if something went wrong and figuring out how to fix it, and gradually earning the respect of clients and his bosses. 

Soon, Jim Reed had taken on a new creative partner and he and Colloredo bonded. The creative talent had years of experience on that side of the business and became a perfect collaborator at this point in Colloredo’s career.

“I was impressed with the quality of work he demanded from himself—the taste, the polish he insisted upon,” Colloredo said. “I really learned what creativity was, and the unbelievable care it took to make great creative work. I wanted everything we did to be sound, strategically and aesthetically. With this extra pressure on myself, I became really good at account service, working with Jim Reed and the collaboration with his partner, I sort of filled a roll and began to contribute to the process of great advertising.”

To this day, Colloredo cherishes his time at Reed-Eichel Advertising and he considers them his mentors that helped him build a strong business. “It became ingrained in me: Take the extra time to make it the best possible. Ask where else you can use the work. Understand that the work represents you as well as the client. I never want to get a look from a client that suggests ‘you could have done better.’ Also make even the small projects the best you can possibly do.”

So that’s how he runs Colloredo & Associates today. “We don’t just do work for clients; we immerse ourselves in the client’s business. Everyone participates in every aspect. Every day, we invent something new—something never done before. Plus, influential people look to us to build their image. That never gets old.”

And his agency’s willingness to dig deep has earned it a reputation as an expert in some highly technical fields. Colloredo & Associates is known for its effective, energetic work in medical marketing, such as, Ophthalmology, and works with practices in major cities across the country. This is something the firm has been doing since its inception in 2006, along with long-term business-to-business as well as retail marketing. Colloredo & Associates would begin to build a reputation in medical aesthetics (Cosmetic Surgery, Dermatology, Medical Aesthetics Spas) as clients, based on its powerful work for an Atlanta-based plastic surgeon and a major supplier of aesthetics technologies to physicians. 

Colloredo’s work with plastic surgery marketing and medical aesthetics practice growth soon led to a relationship with Merz Aesthetics in both a consultative role as well as marketing development. 

“This is a big player in medical aesthetics that contracted Colloredo & Associates to help build an entire department—message, mission, how they approached their clients. It wasn’t just because they loved our quality of work. They did. But, truthfully, it came down to our ability to understand their client base, what they wanted to accomplish and how we quickly came up to speed with their vision. We hit the ground running and launched their kickoff event within 45 days. We had never done a project for them directly and to be handed that kind of responsibility off the bat, was very gratifying.”

The project involved creating a complex series of communications materials. “We were able to bring our deep experience in medical marketing across multiple specialties and share the patient experience aspect from our perspective,” Colloredo said. “They taught us how their advances in product development have come at the most absolute best time. And we helped contribute to their new sales division by offering what we’ve learned in a variety of medical specialties. It was an incredible dialogue that culminated in an efficient development process and more importantly, allowed each member of the team to have the very best tools at their disposal.”

Looking forward, Colloredo sees adaptability as critical for his agency as well as his clients’ successes. “Our business now changes more in a month than it did in the first ten years I worked in advertising,” he noted. “We have to understand this, and know how to innovate so we help clients win. New media opportunities, such as, Google My Business are becoming more critical to the success of business, and will make some of the things we do now obsolete—very quickly.