Today we’d like to introduce you to Jarrod White.
Jarrod, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Roughly 8 years ago I was waiting tables at a popular restaurant in downtown Delray Beach. Feeling unfulfilled and frustrated I decided to network with each guest that closed out with a business card. After several conversations that included “What I like to do”, “What I’m good at” and “What I want to do” one man, still don’t remember him to this day, told me to go and speak to a woman named Sarah M.
I listened, called Sarah up and landed a meeting that same week. Meeting with Sarah I learned that she was the Executive Director for the agency responsible for tourism marketing and large-scale events for the city of Delray Beach, I was beyond thrilled because my background was in events & marketing. One problem, she couldn’t hire me. They just didn’t have the funds, so she offered me an internship. I thought, why not! My internship was only part time, but I was given more and more responsibilities with events, marketing campaigns, and even holding meetings with the “movers and shakers” of the city. Still feeling unfulfilled I decided to open up a social media management company, this is when social media wasn’t what it is today, pretty basic stuff but it was in demand. Fast forward 2 years, I’m now working the restaurant, interning and running a company with moderate success. Sarah calls me on one of my days off with some “you can’t tell anyone yet” type of information. She told me she was going to fire the marketing manager and wanted to hire me for the job, the one catch, I had to get rid of my marketing company. Knowing that the experience and connections alone would be worth it, I jumped right on that opportunity!
With that job, I have been fortunate enough to produce experiential campaigns for hundreds of people to tens of thousands of people, attempted world records, conceptualized and executed successful national & international tourism marketing campaigns, Booked Billboard 100 artists, won awards for marketing & events, produced viral content and have made countless relationships with amazingly talented individuals.
Today, I own and operate my own digital advertising company called J. Oliver Advertising. This new venture formulated when I noticed a demand for digital marketing services in the hotel industry. Already having restaurant clients, the experience in experiential marketing and driving hotel stays from our tourism marketing efforts, I figured focusing on the hospitality industry would be a good niche to cater to.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Not at all! Building the foundation of a company is not for the weak. There were countless setbacks with technical issues, vendor delays as well as the emotional and mental strain. I watched all my friends and family take trips, go out every weekend and just live life, it was killing me inside
J. Oliver Advertising – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
J. Oliver Advertising focuses on digital marketing services with an expertise in Social media marketing. We provide full service social media marketing including, content creation (photo, video, blogs, design & animations), business page management which includes reputation management, and of course advertising campaigns for hotels, restaurants & events selling tickets. We also offer SEO/PPC campaigns, and media buying on other channels like YouTube, Spotify & even radio. Every now and then we execute an experiential campaign.
What sets us apart is my robust experience in each sector of the hospitality industry. For 8 years I was part of the team driving tourism into the city of Delray Beach, thanks to our digital & experiential marketing campaigns. I also grew up working in restaurants (FOH & BOH) while marketing them for over 10 years and for events I’ve not only produced them but have developed marketing campaigns that have sold them out.
Another reason we are unique is our understanding of how important integrated strategies are to successful marketing. We see a lot of other agencies just executing campaigns in a silo, which isn’t how marketing is meant to be done. Our team works with your other 3rd party agencies, corporate and in-house teams to align everyone’s strategies. For example, if one of our hotel client’s already has an agency fulfilling their SEO/PPC strategy, we will work with that agency to assure that what we are both executing for the client is cohesive in order to provide the best return, that’s of course if the client is unable to manage this themselves. You don’t see this with a lot of south Florida marketing agencies, unfortunately.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I define it two ways. One is that fire feeling I get inside when I am working on a project. It either comes when a creative idea hits or when a strategy works just perfectly! That feeling lets me know I’m in the right place. The main one though, is when my clients are successful. When I see results in real time for my client’s campaigns, it’s the best feeling. After all, my business is a service so, when my clients hit their marks, I hit my marks and that’s always a success for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.JoliverAdvertising.com
- Email: info@JoliverAdvertising.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/j.oliveradvertising/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/JOliverAdv/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/JOliverAdv
Image Credit:
VMA Studios
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Jarrod White
November 3, 2018 at 11:09 pm
I appreciate you VoyageMIA!