A Fresh Introduction to ScLoHo

A Fresh Introduction to ScLoHo

by | May 26, 2025 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Here we are, smack dab in the middle of Summer 2025 and I’ve been meeting new people and reconnecting with older friends and a common question is, “What do you do?”

The short answer is, “I help businesses and organizations connect with potential customers and clients.”

And that begs for more detail, so today, I’ll dig in and reintroduce myself.

I’m from the 1900’s.

That’s become a fun way of saying I’m older than 26.

I started working in media as a teenage radio disc jockey at 16 and worked in and on the radio for the next 10 years.

At age 26, I moved my family to Detroit and started working in the advertising side of media.  Specifically to write and create radio advertising campaigns for businesses and organizations on radio station WMUZ-FM.  During the nearly 8 years we were there, I also returned to the air, either as a fill-in or as the morning show host; and I had my first venture in sales.

When we returned to Indiana, I also returned to on-air doing either afternoons or mornings full-time at a Fort Wayne radio station for about a year and then left the business for a few years and worked “real jobs.”  I drive a fork lift, ran a tool crib, set up a barcode system for a manufacturing facility, and ran a thermoformer as some of the jobs I took. I also did some part-time on-air work and was paid a few times for commercial voice work when I returned to Fort Wayne.

2003 was when I returned full time to the world of media and marketing.  By this time, on the personal side, I had 3 kids and two step-kids and was a couple years into my second marriage that is still going strong.  By the way, my wife and I are good friends with my previous wife and husband, but that’s another story.

In 2003 I had been in Fort Wayne again for a few years and joined a group of radio stations as a member of their 12 person sales team.  Over the next 8 years, the stations went through ownership changes, I did some management work at the stations and eventually got bored and left.  From 2011 to 2013, I took 3 different positions, each lasting 10 months before I decided that it wasn’t what I wanted to do.  I did website development sales, radio ad sales for another group of stations and then managed the social media for several brands of a multi-million dollar ecommerce company.

By the end of 2013, I had returned to radio, specifically Federated Media and their news-talk station WOWO.  I was the 5th person on a 5 person advertising sales team.  That last seat on a team often is a revolving door, but not for me.  By 2019, I was leading our sales team and in 2020 won the Sales Person of the year award for the entire company.

2020 also saw me change from selling to leading our sales team as the WOWO General Sales Manager.  By 2022, my management duties grew to include additional stations, Big 92.3, 1380 The Fan, 98.9 The Bear and WOWO.

Finally at the end of 2023, I hired myself back to sales and they brought in someone else to take over most of the management duties I had been doing for nearly 4 years.

I know I haven’t mentioned the origin of ScLoHo yet, but I will in a moment.

The past couple of decades, I’ve been able to help business owners with the advertising and marketing of their businesses.  Sometimes this includes an advertising schedule and campaign on the radio stations I work with, however, I’ve been able to help many more that never spent any money with me because of what else I’ve given them.

It started when I was 26 and began working with local business owners in Detroit.  I got to know some of the ins and outs; challenges and successes; and learned so much from those people.  Working for WMUZ and Crawford Broadcasting was my continuing education as I helped create ad campaigns for auto body shops, mortgage companies, doctors, transmission repair companies, retail stores and so many others.  I read some excellent books by Harvey McKay, Trout & Ries and a few others that helped spark the creativity and common-sense approach to what I know call Human Relationship Marketing Principles which I apply to the work I do now.

It’s not that I’m some great guru, it’s just that I’ve had these opportunities to not just listen to others, but to apply what I’ve learned and repurpose these concepts.  No matter what the medium, there are timeless principles that should be applied to your business’s marketing.  Many times, I look for ways they can make adjustments that cost them little or no money.  Sometimes it’s obvious to me but not to them because they are in the thick of it all and need an outsiders viewpoint and experience.

That’s the kind of stuff that lead to the creation of ScLoHo.

Initially ScLoHo was just an email address that I created.  While not as common as Smith or Jones, my name, Scott Howard is not uncommon.  I know personally another Scott Howard here in Fort Wayne and no, we’re not related. ScLoHo is a mash-up of the first two letters of my first name, middle name and last name.  If you pronounce it with just two syllables you say, :Sclow-Hoe.

Around 2004, I started a couple of blogs.  The first was a personal blog to capture random thought and ideas, the other was a place to save and share media and marketing ideas.  I got permission from a couple of online publishers to include their articles as long as I credited them and linked back to their website.  By 2008, I was writing and publishing over 25 articles a week to my blog websites under the ScLoHo name.

In 2011, I left the radio stations I’d been working for and joined a website development company and one of my friends and co-workers challenged me to combine the online ScLoHo with the in-person Scott Howard and marry the two with a fresh website.  The dot com domain for Scott Howard was taken by another Scott Howard as were a couple other domains so I settled for ScottHoward.me and launched in October of 2011.

I was able to take many of the previously published articles from my ScLoHo blogs and move them to the new website.  ScLoHo is still my nickname, and my ScLoHo email address is both a personal email and for anything not related to my work at WOWO and Federated Media.

When I started blogging a couple decades ago, there were a few other local people that were also blogging.  A blog was the written equivalent of having your own podcast these days. Many of those early bloggers stopped.  Either they lost interest, or thought that a blog was a way to fame and fortune online, I wasn’t looking for either.  I was just looking for away to save in the cloud some of the stories and articles and ideas from others and myself for future reference.

Speaking of podcasts, in 2016 Federated Media wanted to launch a marketing podcast and I was asked to consider creating one since they were aware of my blog and that I might have some experience behind a microphone.  March of 2017 was when I launched the Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing podcast and except for about a year when I was in management, I’ve been updating both this site and the podcast every week.  When I was in management, I decided to update monthly in order to keep up with my other duties.

This year we will surpass 1700 articles and 400 podcast episodes, all free as a resource to anyone interested.  My website does not accept paid ads and any ads you hear listening to the podcast are placed by the hosting company, not me.

As we look forward to the rest of 2025 and the years ahead, feel free to reach out to me personally about nearly anything.  Email is probably best. Scott@ScLoHo.net

Reintroducing ScLoHo

Reintroducing ScLoHo

by | Mar 4, 2024 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Last week, when I was recording the podcast version of my weekly update I mentioned briefly what a ScLoHo is. Today, that is the focus of both this article and podcast episode.

If this is the very first time you’ve listened to the Scott Howard Genuine ScLoHo Media and Marketing Podcast, welcome aboard.  If it’s the first time you’ve read an article I’ve published on this website, come on in.

Today I’m reintroducing myself, Scott Howard also known as ScLoHo.

I’ve been podcasting nearly every week since March 2017, so this is the beginning of my eighth year hosting a podcast.

I also checked my blogging history and I launched my first blog in 2004, 20 years ago.

The ScLoHo nickname began even before that as an email address because there are many Scott Howard’s out there and I needed something unique.

ScLoHo is a mash-up using the first two letters of my first name, Scott, first two letters of my middle name, Louis, and first two letters of my last name, Howard.

When you take those 6 letters and try and pronounce them, it becomes two syllables because there are only two vowels. Sclo (Sclow)- Ho (Hoe).

In 2004, I launched a couple of blogs, one was a personal blog, the other a media and marketing blog using Google’s old Blogger.com platform and eventually launched a few more blogs, all of them under the ScLoHo online persona.  At one point, for a couple of years, I was posting over 30 times a week on all of these blogs and this was not my fulltime job.  I was working for a group of radio stations from 2003 thru 2011 and blogging was just an unpaid side passion.

However, the ScLoHo name became pretty well known both locally and online.  I have used ScLoHo as a Twitter or X handle, along with nearly all my other social media profiles.  My personal email is @ScLoHo.net; I own the ScLoHo.com and .net domains and basically it use to be if you Googled ScLoHo, you’d find me.

Interestingly there were some people who knew me as ScLoHo and others who only knew me as Scott.  In the  summer of 2010, I was walking at the Tincaps baseball game, taking a lab around the stadium, when a group of friends from an advertising agency saw me and shouted my name.  Except, some yelled ScLoHo, and the others shouted Scott.

In 2011, I left radio for 10 months and worked for a website development company where a friend of my challenged me to merge the two and launched the ScottHoward.me website.  The dot me domain was not due to my ego, it’s because both the dot com and dot net domains were taken by other Scott Howard’s.

I imported over a thousand stories to this website from my blogs and eventually scaled down my updates from several a day to one a day to once a week.  The only time I’ve done less than a weekly update was a few months in 2022 and 2023 when my duties at the radio stations as a sales manager overseeing 4 stations and 8 salespeople needed my attention more than this. At the time, I also figured after 300 podcasts and over 1500 articles, I pretty much had shared everything there was to know and media and marketing.  I did monthly updates.  My focus was to help my team grow and to take the spotlight off me and on them.

However at the end of last summer, things changed.  I decided to step back from management and rehire myself as a member of the WOWO radio sales team.  With that change, I decided to return to weekly updates and to get back out in the community again instead of behind the scenes like I had been doing for nearly 4 years as a manager.

What’s my backstory?  Well first of all I never wanted to do sales.

In high school, my first venture into radio was on the air.  After graduation, I was on the air at radio stations full time in Marion and Kokomo Indiana and then returned to my hometown of Fort Wayne and was on the air at WMEE.  WMEE has always been owned by Federated Media and in the 1980’s WOWO was our competition, owned by another company.  WOWO was the big dog, the radio station that had the highest ratings and most listeners for decades.  However in the early 80’s I was part of the WMEE air team that finally beat WOWO and became the most listened to radio station according to the ratings.

Next stop was back to Kokomo and Indianapolis before taking my growing family to Detroit.  Up until I moved to Michigan at the ripe old age of 26 with 10 years of on-air experience, I had only voiced radio commercials, but never wrote and produced advertising campaigns.  The company I joined in Detroit was different and awakened a curiosity in me to figure out how to communicate and motivate people with a radio commercial to spend their money with a particular business.  I learned how to create ad campaigns that were distinct and unique, and most importantly, created top of mind awareness of a business so that consumers would eventually need them, those businesses were already Top Of Mind.

While in Detroit at Crawford Broadcasting and station WMUZ, I grew our production department, did a stint as fill-in host and eventually hosted the morning show for awhile and also took my first advertising sales position.

In my mid-30’s, we moved my family back to Indiana, I returned to working on the radio at WFWI in Fort Wayne and then took a hiatus and worked outside of media.  Finally in 2003, it was back to radio full-time for good, all most.  Eight and a half successful years with a group of Ft. Wayne radio stations, followed by full time at a website development company, another radio station and as the Social Media Guru for a multimillion dollar eCommerce company and then back to Federated Media in 2013.

Nearly 30 years between my first time with Fed Med as a WMEE Disc Jockey to my current position on the WOWO Sales Team.  I also spent close to 4 years as the General Sales Manager of WOWO and a year on an interim basis as sales manager of 3 other stations.

I’ve been a guest speaker with Huntington University a couple of times, Ivy Tech Fort Wayne, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne and this year will be making my second appearance speaking at Trine University.

I’ve worked with over a hundred companies and organizations and consulted around a thousand in both formal and casual settings to help them become better with their media, marketing, public relations and internal sales and marketing.  Just in my 10+ years with WOWO have won a few achievement awards, called Feddies for Federated Media and even my own website won a best of contest by a competing media outlet.  Awards are nice, but what really motivates me is to have the opportunity to help others and share the wisdom and knowledge I’ve picked up over the last few decades and I’m continuing to learn as a life-long student.

Teaching, Training, Motivating and Encouraging has been a lot of what I do.  Helping people make wise spending decisions with their advertising and marketing is my bread and butter.  Being a dad, husband and grandparent keeps me grounded as well as my Christian faith.

There’s a philosophy about marketing and advertising that I call using Human Relationship Principles that I’ll review in the near future, but for now, you now know a lot more about this Scott Howard aka ScLoHo then you did 10 minutes ago.

 

A Note to Insiders: Design Changes Are Coming

by | Aug 30, 2016 | ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

The website you are currently viewing is going to undergo a few design changes.

I’ve done this before and will do it again I’m sure.

I just wanted to alert you that over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be trying out a few different custom themes and tweaking them.  My goal is to have the big changes done no later than the week after Labor Day.

Most likely before.as

I mention this because I “broke my website” the other day and while it only took 15 minutes for my host to fix, that may not always be the case.

This is another reason why I don’t do the heavy lifting of creating websites, I have others who do that through the company I work for, the digital division we call Federated Digital Solutions.

But this website is solely mine and mine alone.

Drop me a line if you see something weird at Scott@ScLoHo.net

Otherwise….

Setting the Stage for this Website in 2016

by | Jan 5, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Welcome to this humble website of mine.  Now that we are back and recovered from the holidays, I wanted to set the stage for what you can expect to see at this website this year.

First, the name.  The URL: ScottHoward.me was not my first choice when I launched this site in 2011.  Sounds a bit egotistical with that dot me after my name but the dot com version was taken as was dot net.   ScloHobookgs

ScLoHo was my online identity for several years and continues on multiple social media sites like Twitter and Instagram and other places.  ScLoHo is a way to distinguish myself from the other Scott Howards in this world and even here in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It’s a mashup using the first two letters of my first, middle and last names.  Google “ScLoHo” and nearly everything that appears is probably related to me.

But back to the future…

5 days a week I will publish a new article.  One day will be a sales tip curated from a newsletter I get from RAB.com.  Mondays, like yesterday is when they will appear.

The other 4 days I will publish articles I wrote with an occasional article from others.  They will mostly dealing with marketing, and media with some personal articles too that have nothing to do with those topics.

Have you ever been asked, “What’s your WHY?”

Early in your career, you may not know, or even if you do know, it can change.

Now as a 50 something year old, my why is pretty straight forward.  I want to help people make smart decisions regarding their business marketing.  That is the primary theme of this website.

I have been given permission by the company I work for and our consultants to write and share information that our competitors would be terrified to share publicly.  As a matter of fact, I once worked for another radio station in Fort Wayne that prohibited me from sharing this kind of info online.  It was hand-written into my  contract by the station management.

While my background is in radio broadcasting, I have also worked with other old school media including print and television, plus I spent time working full time in the website development world and social media marketing world.  Add in time away from all of this media stuff and living life as a plain old consumer who worked a couple of jobs where I punched a clock and you’ll begin to get the full picture. (Yes, I was paid to drive a forklift and operate a thermoformer.)

I’ve sat on all sides of the media and marketing universe.  Served on the Board of Directors for 7 years with the American Advertising Federation.  I’ve seen the ignorance and arrogance of advertising agency people, but also have found several that I respect too. Unfortunately they are in the minority.  The same is true with others that I have known who sell advertising.  There are a few good ones that are trust worthy, and the rest, well God help you if you have to deal with them.

I am not all that wise and knowing all by myself.  I have been blessed to have meet with hundreds of business owners over the past 30 years who have told me their stories and together we learned what works marketing wise and what to avoid.  I read a lot too. One day I’ll share some books you might want to read to gain some insight like I did.

So this year, I will give you insider info on WOWO radio and the Fort Wayne radio market; marketing principles that you can apply to any business; share some stories from my advertising partners and the continuing adventures and misfortunes that some people experience.

You can subscribe and have this pop up in your email, you can follow on Twitter, or Facebook even LinkedIn will feature some of these articles.  And if you need help, have a question or want to discuss anything, feel free to contact me.

What to Expect if you Subscribe to this Website

by | Aug 5, 2015 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo

I’ve noticed a lot of people taking interest in this ole website of mine recently.  A few months ago kicked up the social sharing of the articles and there was some other traditional publicity too so I thought I would take a moment and tell you what to expect if you subscribe to this website, ScottHoward.me.

5 articles a week, one each day Monday through Friday.  Sometimes a 6th article on the weekend. 11108843_10152909393583730_3361900663888516569_n

I will not ask you for money.  There is no paywall to read the articles.  It is completely free for you to read.

About 80% of the articles are written by me.  Several years ago I received permission to publish from a couple other sources as long as I gave attribution and a link.  These are listed in the category Collective Wisdom.  Currently I’ve been sharing a sales tip on Mondays that falls in this category.

A big portion of the content is about marketing, media and advertising.  I’ve been in this field since I was 16 when I started working part time at a radio station.  Almost 40 years later, I’ve ventured into other professions besides radio but here I am again in the radio business except I can offer so much more due to the company I work for.  I write about that as you will see.

I also care about Fort Wayne, Indiana.  It’s my hometown and I’ve been back here again since 1998.  I’ll share stuff about my city sometimes.

I love my family and I will protect their privacy while also sharing about them on occasion.

I will also occasionally mention my faith which makes it all possible.

I don’t have an editor or proofreader so there are going to be grammatical errors and typos.  If someone catches them and tells me, I’ll fix them.  But with 5 articles a week, I’m bound to have some mistakes go out.

I invite you to connect with me, ask questions, give me your thoughts, share your wisdom, or just say hi.

I’m here to help, smile and enjoy this world we live in.