Did you ever hear the story about the guy who became a VP of Marketing at age 23, then hosted a sports talk show, then represented athletes, then owned and operated a professional wrestling organization – which included him getting beat up in the ring – then founded the nation’s most successful full service education advertising company?
It sounds like strange fiction, but these are just a few of the stepping stones that shaped Michael Platt’s life and molded him into a renowned leader in the education marketing industry. The way his experiences culminated into his personal success story happened through a combination of hard work, fate and luck.
“I didn’t find the industry. The industry found me,” he says.
When Michael tells of an early moment of inspiration, it not only shows how passionate he is about education and how much he really values the lives that he impacts. The story begins when a trucking school invited him to its graduation ceremony. Afterwards, he was talking to a trucker whose family had lost faith in him. During their conversation, the man’s children ran up and told their father they loved him and expressed how proud they were.
Witnessing this, Michael “realized in that minute, one man’s trucking school is another man’s Harvard.”
From there, Michael spent years and years in the mindset of an advertising guy trying to do education. Then, the epiphany: “I realized I needed to stop being an advertising guy and be an education guy.” That realization inspired him to join every education advertising organization and association and learn as much as possible about the education industry. He eventually served on the board of the industry’s largest non-profit, the now-titled Imagine American Foundation.
Michael eventually settled in the Kansas City area and formed PlattForm Advertising in 1989 in the basement of his home. The company has since grown from a handful of employees into the largest full-service marketing firm in the education sector, focusing on interactive marketing and inquiry generation.
In 2004, Michael was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the category of Business Services. He was also recently lauded by the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities with its "Irreplaceable and Indispensable" award.
The success of PlattForm Advertising was built on the experiences, ingenuity and imagination of Michael Platt. “We are now considered, as a company, by far the most knowledgeable people in the business because we know as much about education as the educators. No one else in our sector of marketing services can say that.”