Peter Korchnak
Extended bio
I help socially responsible businesses empower people, restore the planet, and achieve prosperity through strategic and sustainable marketing services. I am the founder and principal of the Portland, Oregon-based sustainable marketing company Semiosis Communications.
I’ve been doing marketing since I was a teenager. Prior 17 years of marketing experience include promotion of high school events, public relations at a Volkswagen assembly plant, advertising sales at a small independent radio station, customer service at a county government agency, and fundraising and marketing at a nonprofit.
I explore the intersection of marketing and sustainability in my writing and speaking as well. The Sustainable Marketing Blog has the bulk of it.
I am a co-author of “Connect! Marketing in the Social Media Era: my essay “We the People: Social media and sustainability” explored the fit between sustainability and social media (I reviewed the book on this blog). I also have a contribution in  “Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time To Get Busy!” titled “Conversation as a driver of social sustainability”.
My trainings, presentations, and other speaking engagements are an extension of my work.
I enjoy studying politics and culture, guerrilla yardwork, watching and playing ice hockey, trail running, and hiking through and camping in the great outdoors. I wrote and published my graduate thesis on the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. I live in Southeast Portland, Oregon, and come from Slovakia, Europe.
What’s the story, morning glory?
Why sustainable marketing services, why blogging and writing, why speaking? It’s all a culmination of my experience and thinking.
As an undergrad at the University of Economics in Bratislava, Slovakia, I was drawn to the idea of companies discovering people’s needs and making products to satisfy them. I came believe in the power of business to shape human affairs in a positive and constructive way. I also saw, however, that marketing encourages mindless consumption, creating and developing people’s needs to feed them stuff they don’t need.
If our lives are shaped by a single formative event, mine was the fall of the Berlin Wall and state socialism in the Eastern Bloc. I realized state socialism fails to fulfill human potential. But as unfettered capitalism flooded the void and I learned more about its consequences, I also realized this other extreme can be just as damaging.
There had to be another way. Then I discovered sustainability – the triple bottom line offered a neat solution to all my concerns! A business that takes into account not only its financial bottom line, but also its impacts on community and the environment is a business I want to build and help others build.
Throughout my career, I worked for a multinational corporation, a small business, a government agency, a nonprofit, and, as a graduate student, in academia. Maybe I have a problem with authority (blame communism), maybe I’m unable to adapt; whatever the reason, starting and building my own business turned out to be the solution to my perpetual dissatisfaction with every organization I’ve worked for. I want to build a company I’d want to work for.
Saying it with music
Speaking of formative years, this is my all-time favorite song and video by my all-time favorite band. Enjoy (and sing)!
Next steps
- Get in touch to continue this conversation.
- Learn more about Semiosis Communications
- Contact our clients
- Read testimonials about our work
- Schedule a bite- or brew-sized consulting session
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