Alumnus, Entrepreneur Unleashes OMG Monster

Alumnus, Entrepreneur Unleashes OMG Monster

By Dan Silvia, Communications Manager

Brad Nietfeldt wants to be a monster.

That’s evident from the Omaha Media Group’s logo, a company Nietfeldt helped found and where he holds president and CEO titles. The horned creature with one red eye and one blue eye lurks about the organization’s website.

“Our goal for Omaha Media Group is to become the largest mega-agency in the Midwest, if not the United States,” Nietfeldt said. “We’ll do that through our approach of how we treat our clients and how we’re able to integrate with our clients as an extension of their business.”

So a friendly, fluffy monster that works with you and your organization to take over the world.

World domination will come in the form of the design and development of intuitive web, mobile, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) friendly applications that help companies take advantage of the power in social and business collaboration, cloud computing, mobile applications, and next-generation tools.

“I wanted to be creative for other people, to help people accomplish goals for whatever reason, business or personal” Nietfeldt said. “Omaha Media Group is a spinoff of what people traditionally think of as an advertising agency. We’re a creative management firm. That’s a term that I coined to be different than a traditional agency. What we do differently -- we work as an extension of our clients business. Our clients actually feel like we’re a part of their own company.”

Nietfeldt’s inspiration is his own, but the confidence to unleash that inspiration comes from experience and education. Nietfeldt earned two degrees from Bellevue University. He received his Bachelor of Science in Business Information Systems in 2007 and followed that up with a Master of Science in Management of Information Systems in 2009.

Nietfeldt had collected an associate’s degree from ITT Technical Institute Omaha, Nebraska, but felt he needed a bachelor’s degree to add some oomph to his career path.

“I wanted a bachelor’s to climb the corporate ladders,” he said. “I didn’t really care about grades in high school. When I got to Bellevue it was completely different. All of a sudden I cared about my grades and I wanted to do a good job.

“Having a degree gives you the self-confidence that you need to be able to follow the path. For me it was all about ‘I’ve earned these degrees, I’ve earned this success, and I’ve paid the dues and my experience is legitimized. I do know what I’m talking about and this is why you should listen to me’.”

Nietfeldt’s motivations changed somewhat when it came to his master’s degree. “My MSCIS was literally for me,” he said. “Nobody in my family had really done it. It was really for me. Just to do it and have that accomplishment.”

Nietfeldt’s business experience comes from the ground floor in the early days of PayPal where in 2002 as a Support Coordinator and held several titles before departing in 2007. That time frame encompassed the PayPal merger with eBay. “When the company started there was a hand full of us there,” Nietfeldt said. “I could tell you who they were, what they did, and what their kids’ names were.”

Nietfeldt is paying that experience and education forward having served as an adjunct professor at his alma mater. “I enjoyed Bellevue so much that I wanted to remain a part of it not just from an alumni perspective, but I wanted to actually teach as well,” he said. “I wanted to give back to the students other people that might have been in the same situation or similar situation to what I was in in their overall life.”