The Good Men Project interviews Visual Artist and Entrepreneur Rey Rey Rodriguez
Picture yourself at an event. You’re hungry, and walking towards the smell of food before the start of the show. A pale, semi-casual dressed guy with a shiny shaved head, a goatee, a right cauliflowered ear, and several facial piercings, points a camera at you and snaps a photo. He then calmly walks up to you with the greeting, “What’s up? I’m Rey Rey!” Behaving as if this meeting was planned, he begins giving you suggestions on how you should pose. You’re puzzled, and ask yourself, “Who is this? Why did he choose me? What are these photos for? Is he confusing me for someone else?”
But, his unanticipated compliments describing you as aesthetically pleasing are gratifying, so you give in and he snaps away. He thanks you, and hands you his business card which reads: “With this card, I have planted my seed, you’re now infected with my artistic disease,” a quote credited to a, “Rey Rey Rodriguez.” To the left of the quote, is an image of the back of a man’s head as he stares into a mirror, where the blurred reflection of an eerie, human-sized rabbit’s face looks back at him. Intrigued by the card, you look up to continue the conversation but he’s gone.
Now you’re left wondering… “What did he want with those photos of me?” You quickly grab your phone to take a look at his social media accounts. According to his verified Twitter and Facebook bios, this stranger is an “entrepreneur, a visual artist, and a combat sports & horror addict.” As you scroll through the photos of his Instagram account, you find an unorthodox mix of fashion, mixed martial arts, fetish, portrait, commercial, street, and dark photography.
You flip the business card over and add his info into your phone. As you restart your quest towards the concession stand, you browse through his website and notice all of the other services he provides besides photography. At this point, you’re hooked! You have just become his fan or his possible client.
At a South Florida business convention, an audience heard this story told by a photographer turned entrepreneur named “Rey Rey Rodriguez.” His marketing approach consists of finding ways to help you embed yourself, your company, your artwork, or your product into the minds of as many people as possible by using methods that shock the human emotional system.
While some people have the ability to stop traffic with their God-given features; others need a little touch of creative magic here and there to help them stand out. Rodriguez explains, “Whether creating art or setting up marketing campaigns, I always plan to provoke emotions of excitement, shock, sexual arousal, fear, confusion, sadness, or some other kind of pain. These feelings can cause a chemical reaction to the central nervous system, which momentarily accelerates our heartbeats and breathing patterns.
Whether this act causes a positive or negative reaction from the individuals experiencing it, it would forcefully and permanently embedded that moment, the surroundings, and that thing that you said, did, or showed them into their subconscious mind. This is the art of shocking yourself into someone’s brain. An art form that all businessmen and marketers should learn.”
Rey Rey Rodriguez is a renowned photographer, an entrepreneur, and the founder of The Mind of Rey Rey®. You can learn more about him and his marketing methods by following his social media handle everywhere: @themindofreyrey. Or by visiting his website: themindofreyrey.com.