Craig Hagopian is the Founder and CEO of Chalk Digital. He has more than 30 years of technology sales and consumer service marketing experience. Craig started Chalk Digital in 2013 to democratize mobile advertising by pioneering self-serve instant mobile advertising solutions.
The Chalk platform powers advertising solutions that can launch a campaign anywhere globally in less than 5 minutes (from start to finish) for national brands and local businesses by automating local display, video, and connected TV advertising.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Craig Hagopian shares the inspiration behind founding Chalk Digital
- The tough decision that made Craig quit xAd (now GroundTruth) to start Chalk Digital
- Craig talks about the team behind the Chalk platform
- How companies use Chalk Digital for coordinating online and offline advertising
- The power of local advertising
- Who should be using Chalk Digital?
In this episode…
The argument against going digital for some brick and mortar businesses has been the pain of targeting their biggest buyers: local consumers. But the problem lies in the limited reach of their native advertising efforts, which are often uncoordinated even within their target market. What if you could build and launch a highly targeted and personalized ad in minutes without any human intervention or costly operational support?
Craig Hagopian founded Chalk Digital to do just that. No matter the size of your business, there’s a Chalk Digital use-case, from ads for dog adoption to big product launches. Would you like to know more about the Chalk platform and how it can help your business?
Listen to this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz featuring Craig Hagopian, Founder and CEO of Chalk Digital. They discuss the inspiration for founding Chalk Digital, the team behind the platform, how it helps serve businesses of all sizes, and more. You’ll love every minute of this episode!
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Chalk Digital
- Craig Hagopian on LinkedIn
- Email Craig Hagopian: [email protected]
- Chandra Kholia on LinkedIn
- Satoru Yukie on LinkedIn
Special Mentions:
- Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital on LinkedIn
- Wesley Mathews of High Level Marketing on LinkedIn
- Duncan Alney of Firebelly Marketing on LinkedIn
- Drew Hendricks of Barrels Ahead on LinkedIn
- xAd/GroundTruth
Related Episode(s):
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Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Jeremy Weisz 0:19
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders and Craig I always like to mention some past guest episodes, you know, since this is kind of the realm of a lot of digital agencies use Craig’s platform and company. So I was like who else have I had on I’ve had Jason Swenk on he runs a big group and helps digital agencies, you could check that episode out. I had Wes Mathews, he talked about growing his agency to six and a half million dollars, and then selling it and staying out and just doing what he loves to do. So there’s a lot more podcast also wanted to give a shout out to some other people in the industry who I know Todd Taskey from Potomac Business Capital, who basically helps agencies sell their business. And Duncan Alney, is a Master of Social Media, Firebelly Marketing, and Drew Hendricks, who specializes in wineries and winery suppliers Barrels Ahead. Craig is like there’s so many different niches that people serve, and you probably get this. So I’m going to introduce you formally in a second and also Chalk Digital. But before I do this episode is brought to you by Rise25. And what we do is we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships by helping you run your podcasts. And you know, for me, Craig is always the number one thing in my life is relationships, I’m always looking at ways to give to my relationships and profile them and the companies and people I admire. And I’ve done that over the past decade, over a decade by having them on my podcast. So I tell everyone, just like you should have a website for your business, you should have a podcast. And not only does it you know, allow you to, you know really profile their people it builds content. You know, if you asked me to write a post, Craig, I, it would take me five years like I will not do it. But I will be able to talk. And I’ve been publishing almost two episodes a week for almost 10 years. And you can do that through a podcast. So if you’ve ever thought of doing a podcast, I think you should, but you could always email me with questions or us even Rise25.com and learn more. I’m excited for today’s guest, Craig Hagopian. And he started Chalk Digital in 2013 to democratize local advertising. And he’s been doing this for decades. I don’t want to age you Craig or anything. But he really helped pioneer location based advertising as a service solution. And what Chalk does is a power advertising solutions are able to launch a campaign anywhere in the world. And I don’t want to quote but like less than seven minutes from start to finish. And that’s from national brands, local businesses, and it helps automate local display video connecting TV advertising all in one. And he’s been doing this for 30 years in technology, and sales and consumer service marketing experience. And Craig, thanks for joining me.
Craig Hagopian 3:21
Yeah, my pleasure. And you did a great job of thumbnailing me. Yep. Yeah. You know, probably over 30 years. Good.
Jeremy Weisz 3:27
Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty amazing. We’ll go back to one of the stories of past company two that you founded. But let’s start with Chalk for a second. And, um, where does it come from? How did you come up with this idea?
Craig Hagopian 3:43
Yeah, that’s that’s such a great question. I actually, I can kind of answer two questions at once here for you. I was actually the co founder of GroundTruth. xAd. And we were in San Francisco, and we were having a business meeting on the outside of Embarcadero. And the shopkeepers out there, putting together his little sandwich signboard for the daily special. And we’re watching them, anybody took 15 minutes to do it. And and then I said, Wow, how many people are going to actually see that sign? And most people had their heads in the phones anyway, walking around. So they’re not gonna even see the sign anyway. And I said, wouldn’t it be cool if they could just take a picture of that, and broadcast it to 1000 people instead of just a few 100. And that was the birth of Chalk because of the chalkboard. And digital is new school. So it’s kind of a combination of old school and new school. And that’s been kind of the democratization what we’ve been doing. And we found that not only does an individual business care about that, but agencies can really sink their teeth into that kind of capability. And so our whole platform today is is for an agency to use these tools we’ve built for real time advertising or real time, location based marketing and business outreach.
