Building a Marketing Function in a Small Business | A Conversation with Jesse Park, President of amplifi

Steve interviews Jesse Park, President and Co-owner of amplifi. Jesse shares his journey of transforming the company from a print specialist to an agency that helps nonprofit organizations enhance their fundraising efforts , and how he built the marketing function from scratch. 

Jesse's background is not in marketing, but he recognized the need to improve the company's brand awareness and demonstrate their expertise by provide valuable resources to the nonprofit sector. 

Steve and Jesse discuss the challenges of marketing in a small business and the importance of aligning marketing efforts with business goals. Deciding on which of the pillars of marketing will have the most impact on growth - between brand awareness, product position, demand generation, and sales enablement – is critical when deciding on the initial strategy. They emphasize the need to hire for the specific skill sets that will drive results, rather than trying to find a marketing manager who can do everything. 

Jesse highlights their decision to intentionally repurpose content across different marketing channels and stages of the customer journey. By strategically using blogs, e-newsletters, case studies, webinars, and more, amplifi ensures their marketing efforts cover all areas of the sales funnel and drive both brand awareness and sales enablement. 

Managing a marketing team as a small business owner can be challenging, especially when juggling other responsibilities. Jesse talks about the importance of aligning marketing metrics with revenue and incentivizing marketing efforts accordingly; and clear communication and alignment between leadership and the marketing team. 

The episode concludes with Jesse's drink of choice for a fun marketing chat: a straight up scotch, or occasionally a James Baldwin cocktail for a unique twist on an espresso martini. 

Key Takeaways 

•  Small businesses can build an effective marketing function with a single team member, so long as it’s backed by a clear strategy 
• Content marketing plays a crucial role in establishing expertise and driving brand awareness, while also supporting sales enablement and product positioning. 
• Align marketing efforts with the different stages of the marketing funnel to maximize impact and drive customer engagement. 
• For the Founder or CEO, balancing marketing responsibilities with other business functions requires clear communication, prioritization, and a focus on revenue-related metrics. 

 Resources and Links

Connect with Jesse Park on LinkedIn.
"Rise above the noise" with amplifi
Read Steve's post on "The Four Pillars of Marketing"

The recipe for the James Baldwin cocktail at  Marcus B&P in Newark? Couldn't find it by that name, but try these out:
  Chivas Espresso Martini
  Revolver Cocktail (Bourbon-based)

Timestamps:

03:40| Creating a dedicated marketing function at amplifi

06:20 | Hiring the right skill set

09:00 | An intentional focus on content marketing

12:00 | A marketing specialist or a marketing manager?

19:00 | Marketing tactics to support the Sales Funnel

26:00 | Incentivizing marketing team based on revenue metrics 

Transcript

Building a Marketing Function in a Small Business | A Conversation with Jesse Park, President of amplifi

Steve:

Today I'm joined by Jesse Park, who is the president and co-owner of amplifi, which is an agency that helps nonprofit organizations rise above the noise. When we first met, the company was actually called Action Graphics. It was primarily focused on print. Since then, Jesse has overseen a pivot to broader services, supporting fundraising professionals, things like messaging, outreach programs, and so on. And as part of that, he oversaw a rebrand a couple of years ago from Action Graphics to amplifi to better reflect their direction. 

Actually, by coincidence, the last episode I talked to Joan McGeough about her rebrand. So I'm guessing as a marketer, you're going to be involved in at least one rebrand in your career, hopefully more. 

But anyway, today we're going to talk about how Jesse approaches marketing in a small business and how he's built the amplifi marketing function from scratch. Jesse, thanks for joining me on the Marketing Mix.

Jesse Park:

Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be on. 

It's been an interesting track when you look at my career. As you said, I joined a company that's very different than the company is today. I've been here at amplifi / Action Graphics for now coming on 19 years this August. Before that, I was actually in financial sales. When I joined Action Graphics, I actually started in client services, then moved into sales. I worked my way up into essentially a strategy role and still with a focus on growth and business development. And really spearheaded our change from being a printer under Action Graphics, that was just more general in nature, to... really focusing our efforts on helping nonprofits improve the value and effectiveness of their fundraising communications, hence the rebrand to amplifi. 

I have been president of amplifi now since 2020, spearheading and overseeing all day-to-day operations. But my background is more sales-focused, and that's how the company has grown in the past. And so actually marketing is an interesting insight into how does that fit within a more sales driven model that we had historically. 

So I'm excited to talk to you about how we do this, especially as a small team and what other small midsize organizations can do as they're trying to really build up. a marketing team for their efforts.

Steve:

That's an interesting background. You start off in client services, into sales, into strategy, and sort of move through the organization. And I think one thing you probably have in common with a lot of people running small businesses, you don't have that classical marketing background. I know you're very interested in marketing. You and I've talked about it on and off for years. 

But I think a lot of companies your size don't have a dedicated marketing function. In fact, I would say very few have a dedicated marketing function. You know, normally it's something that's done part-time by somebody else, project manager, product manager. Maybe it's done by the salespeople in their spare time. So why did you decide to create a dedicated marketing function at this point in the company's growth?

Jesse Park:

Steve, thanks for your commenting about not traditional marketing background, because it's true. But I'm a curious person and I like to learn about a lot of things. 

As you know, I read everything and anything, including quantum physics to, sales to business, to data analytics, biographies, whatever the case may be, I'm just a curious person. So. For me, I'm always looking at how do you improve things. And as I started to get more and more access into things with the company, I started to notice a few things. 

I started to, one, notice that our clientele was more or less bunched in a specific industry, specifically nonprofits and educational related. Number two, I started to realize that we didn't have much material out there to help explain what we do for that field. Number three, as I was out there selling, I had people coming to me asking for advice because they knew that we worked with so many similar organizations. So we started to become almost tripped into being known as the expert in different areas. 

We said we had to do something about this. So you know, rolled up my sleeves and I said, let me start talking about this stuff. And I tried my hat at it on top of everything else. and said, okay, well, how do you start? Let's start with a blog. Let's start with putting some fact sheets out. Let's start with something. But the reality is I had a lot on my plate and I could only do so much and it was inconsistent. But we saw that the need was there. 

So. Interestingly enough, I always had in the back of my mind, hey, we need to find somebody who could really put their efforts full time into this. And really help us become known as the experts or share our expertise more and more. One of my partners used to say, use the phrase, raise our flag, right? We need to raise our flag higher, let people know who we are. 

So, I want to give a little background on actually how we found this person because I think it's interesting, especially for somebody in a unique position like us. Yeah, I knew marketers and things like that, but we had a very specific niche industry and you need to understand that industry, right? Nonprofits and fundraising, it's not necessarily like selling widgets. No offense, Steve!

 So Interestingly enough, I was doing a workshop at a regional conference, and there was a person in the audience who kept asking really insightful questions, challenging me on things. And after that workshop, I approached her to find out more. Because here's somebody who is in the industry, who is obviously learning, is showing that she's smart and insightful, and we began talking. And it ended up being that we brought her on, and she also had a creative background, design background specifically, and a writing background. 

So it worked out, because before that, I was sometimes hiring some freelance, writers, I was sometimes hiring some agencies or designers to do design stuff, but we had no real brand guides, it was all over the place, and it gets expensive. So here I found somebody, industry knowledge, writing background, design background, perfect. And we let her have at it and build up really what I had started, which was focusing a lot on content marketing and sharing our expertise with others to try to raise our flag more. 

Steve:

Gotcha. Yeah, and I think that if it happens to you, I think that's a great way to do it, rather than trying to find the perfect role. Much better if you can find somebody who you just sort of click with, and then you bring them in and build it up from that

You mentioned a few things - you didn't necessarily call them this, but there was something there about segmentation. That's how you decided to focus on nonprofits. You talked about content marketing,  awareness, raising the flag. So there's obviously a lot of parts to marketing. I always think of it as sort of these four pillars of marketing, your brand, product, demand, gen and sales enablement. It sounds as though you probably started off with content marketing, but I'm kind of curious if that was. intentional or that was because of the skill set that this person brought in? What was your thought process as you kicked that off?

Jesse Park:

Yeah. No, it was intentional. It was intentional for a few reasons. By the way, I think you have a LinkedIn post specifically about those four pillars.

Steve:

I do. I'm glad somebody read it. Thank you.

Jesse Park:

And I think this as somebody who would be hiring for marketing is something that's really critical to understand. And for us, it's what are you trying to do and what's your organization already built for? Now, a complete startup may be different, but we were an established business as a printer, but we were at pivoting, but we had a whole sales team and we had a focus there. So there were two elements. 

One... We were looking for brand awareness relatively to be looked at as an expert. And that's where the content marketing comes into play. I had done enough reading, been to enough marketing sessions through local marketing groups and things like that to understand that content marketing helps build essentially a bigger pie that people actually. come to visit your stuff online. 

It's how you actually start to get seen and noticed and recognized. So we just inherently, I end up believing that and saying that's what we need for brand awareness. We also needed something where people, the sales team could, when they're having a conversation, could be like, oh, here's a recent article we wrote about that as there was a topic. So it really was about sales enablement and brand awareness, but we weren't even into the place of like branding specifically as it was more just sharing messaging and building the flag. 

Fall of 2020, is actually when we launched our rebrand to amplifi. It had been two years in the making. So we actually started a process in 2018 to change our name, to change our whole brand, and to really reflect the work that we were doing with nonprofits. Now that with the rebrand, is about brand awareness of really building up design and visualization of the brand and everything about that.

For us, going into this content marketing was very much about sharing our expertise to get us seen and people to start to come to our site and as much about sales enablement. So as a small business, right, we have about just roughly 30 employees, okay? As a company that's growing, one of the things you have to recognize as you think about how do I build in a marketing team is what do I already have in place and what do I need? 

You mentioned those four pillars, that's really critical because depending on what you need or what you want to focus on depends on who you hire out of the gate Especially if you are a small team, okay, you can't hire for everything. 

So focus on what you need, to find the skill sets that you want to hire. So that's kind of what we did when we started, and knowing that we were looking at a specific industry, having somebody in that industry helped really the learning curve of understanding nonprofits as we started our marketing journey.

Steve:

It's a big challenge, I think, for companies of any size, but certainly for small growth companies. Initially you're only going to hire one person. So I think that is the value of the four pillars approach is really work out what's going to move the needle for you first that builds the foundation.

You hire for that, then you move on. Cause I think some people make the. mistake if they hire a marketing manager and assume that person can do everything. Some people will try and do everything, but they're only going to be good at a couple of things and they become overloaded. It gets crazy.

Jesse Park:

The biggest mistake small businesses make, especially owners who are trying to hire marketing, is they hire for the wrong thing.

You might need product positioning, but you hire somebody who is more creative and focused on brand awareness. And what happens is they put you through this whole big ordeal about pushing a rebrand that's very expensive and you've lost time and money when really you still don't have what you need in the product positioning piece. 

If you have a sales team and you're sales driven like we were, what do you have as tools to help the salespeople sell? If you don't have a sales team or you need to really kind of maximize your efforts through demand gen, okay, then you're going to be looking for people who really understand digital structures, landing pages, very, very different skill sets, and hiring for the wrong thing will cost you a lot of money and a lot of time to get you back on track. 

You don't necessarily, when you're hiring your first person, need somebody that's a manager, an experienced manager. An experienced manager knows how to manage, may not know how to actually execute the things that you're needing.

Steve:

If you do go that route of hiring a marketing manager, then you've got to have a significant budget because that person is going to have to bring in freelance or agencies to execute on it because they are not going to be a designer or whatever. 

The other thing I just want to go back to your rebranding point, because this is one of my many pet peeves. A lot of people when they come in, the way they think they can make an impact Is ‘oh we've got to redo the brand,’ whether that's visually, you know the name, changing the logo whatever it may be and they're doing it because then a year from now, they'll be able to look and say ‘hey, I did something here.’ Very rarely is the problem the brand. It’s typically how you present the brand, how you create that awareness, positioning, all of that good stuff.

Yours was solving a very specific issue, which was a major repositioning. And so really, you were doing a repositioning exercise that just so happened to have a rebranding aspect with it. But for most companies, that is not the answer. 

The other thing I want to go back to. You talked a lot about content marketing. That was very hot. Well, it's been hot for a while. Who knows where peak content marketing was, but I'm going to guess it was maybe like 2018, 2019. There is a ton of content out there. Everybody's publishing content. God knows what's going to happen with generative AI, and there's going to be even more rubbish out there. But I know that you're still investing heavily in it. Do you find that in your segment, because yours isn't selling widgets, it's not selling software where a lot of the content marketing really originated. Do you find that’s still a relatively untapped area in your market?

Jesse Park:

I wouldn't necessarily say it's untapped. It's about rising above the noise, essentially. Content marketing for us drives pretty much all of our marketing. So let me just back up and explain this. 

We believe everything really starts with our weekly blog, which is just a general insight. That weekly blog gets repurposed into monthly e-newsletters, gets repurposed into a quarterly print newsletter where we kind of weave things together. Blog posts of multiple topics get weaved together into e-books, and then we can cross reference and cross promote. So there's a whole…everything really starts with that weekly blog for us, where it pulls in to elements of demand gen, it pulls into elements of continued brand awareness, it pulls into elements of product positioning, it pulls into continued sales enablement. So ultimately, if you're doing it very purposefully. Doing it to do it, you're not going to get anywhere. Doing it with a plan and purpose allows you to really focus on, okay, how do we take this of what we're doing and how do we repurpose it to essentially cover all of these pillars of marketing when we don't have people for all of those pillars of marketing.

Steve:

Right. So you're doing it in a very thoughtful manner and it's backed up by the strategy. It's not a case of, well, we have a content calendar and I'm told I have to publish a blog every week. And that's my metric. Right. You're doing you're doing you're publishing a blog as a means to an end, not just to hit the numbers. 

Jesse Park:

It's very intentional what we do. It all kind of fits together because it's about showing us as experts, because we are, we do really good work, and we share a lot of that knowledge.

Here's the reality. There's a lot of nonprofits that we can't work with. Why? Because they're just too small So what do we tell them? ‘Hey, we post online everything we do. Read it follow it, grow, when you get to a certain size come back talk to us. We'll help you take it to the next level.’

There's really no secret to some of this stuff. It's really about helping drive awareness and then helping meeting all the needs of what you're looking for in marketing.

Steve:

Right. And if you subscribe to the traditional marketing funnel, a lot of what you're talking about is that higher level, top of funnel content to help drive people further down.

Jesse Park:

It’s not just awareness on top of the funnel. Your eBooks start to show more interest in consideration. So we actually, when we first started off with the strategy, we laid out our funnel, sales funnel specifically, and then we laid out what types of marketing pieces are needed in each area of the funnel. And so from case studies to e-books to regular blog posts to webinars and podcasts and things like that. 

We looked at everything and said, where does this all fit? And we need to make sure it fit across the board, right? So that all of our marketing efforts touched different areas of the marketing funnel. So it's very key to make sure that you're not just focusing on one area, which is also a mistake that a lot of non-marketers and small companies do. 

Steve:

And I think you're dead right. I think a lot of people focus their content on the awareness. Then they may have some stuff to help the sales team close, but that middle of the funnel, I think, often gets forgotten or neglected. 

One of the things I think works really well with your content is the way you combine the written content with the graphics. So you don't just write a blog post and then slap on a piece of stock imagery or a recycled image. I think I'm right in thinking that you create a unique image for every one of these blog posts and then that is used as you repurpose it in other ways. And I think a big part of the value of that is it reinforces your brand, because you have selected or created a very specific brand style. 

And of course, the other advantage you have as a fundraising agency, you are demonstrating to your clients the type of work you could help them do as well. So you sort of get a double whammy for that. Was that intentional from the outset or is that something that you sort of evolved to as you started to do more and more of the content?

Jesse Park:

I think it was intentional, but it has evolved. And there is an element of being overcomplicated, too, because social is supposed to be fun and engaging. So we are always evaluating to understand, how can we best utilize the graphics? We like to say, how can the graphics bring to life the message, whether we're talking about with a client and their fundraising appeal, or whether we're talking specifically about our own stuff? 

Steve:

I chuckled a bit when you said, social media is supposed to be fun and simple, sometimes. I was talking to a client a couple of weeks ago and we were looking at an approach for trade shows. And in the past, they've done these really nice videos, right? They had somebody on the on the show floor. They took video all day. They put together a 60 second recap, posted it on all of their socials and it was slick, looked really nice. One of their competitors had one of the sales guys stand in front of their booth, do a ‘looking at the camera selfie from above, posted it and got way more engagement. And it probably took him, 60 seconds and no agency time to do it. And I think that's what you got to be aware with social yet. You should absolutely do the slick, highly produced stuff, but there's got to be room for some of the fun, in-the-moment stuff too.

Jesse Park:

I mean, and you have to look, when you're looking at social, you have to look at what platform and what's going to engage and you know, you got to test some different things out for sure. But there's, there's got to be an authenticity to it. It can't just totally feel completely slick. And that's one of the things that we're constantly balancing to internally.

Steve:

The irony that the word authenticity is no longer authentic because it's been overused.

Jesse Park:

Mm-hmm.

Steve:

So I've always been lucky in my corporate roles, most of the time, 90% plus of my focus has been running the marketing team, running the marketing strategy. That's what I'm brought in to do. For you, marketing is one piece of the puzzle. You've got to worry about operations, you've got to worry about sales, you've got to worry about running the company. And, oh, by the way, you need to be running the marketing group.

How do you balance that? How do you manage the marketing team and how do you keep the marketing team motivated when they know that you're not always available to help them run the marketing projects?

Jesse Park:

We have one dedicated full-time marketer. His primary responsibility is content marketing strategy. He's been with us for a number of years and the trust level where he's seen how I operate in different things and so on is part of letting your employees do what they need to do. This year I brought him in to negotiate sponsorship agreements with some different conferences that we're doing. And had I kind of maybe outline the general parameters, but he ran the negotiation. So, it's starting to really kind of get people exposed and learn more and get excited. It's also about finding the right person, finding somebody who's curious and likes to learn. 

The other aspects with it is, you're motivating them by helping provide additional resources. So helping getting him connect. getting them connected into local marketing organizations. Right? I'm not the marketing expert. I don't try to become a marketing expert. I'm running the company. So I can help in some areas and I can ask good questions because I'm a good question asker, but. Ultimately, there's a lot of skill that he can learn from others. So how does he get engaged there? I've brought in sometimes consultants, people like you, Steve, to come in. Just to help on different areas or mentor or provide additional advice beyond where I could. So if you can provide the resources that way that helps. 

Lastly, it's really key. I mean, it's just a general, maybe it's a sales focused thing, but it's from a business and management side, looking at how can you incentivize financially some of the marketing leads as well. and trying to focus what are the priorities that you're doing. Like you mentioned before, it's not about, hey, check, got the weekly blog out. Well, what does that do? How does that move the business? 

Steve:

Yeah, I'm a big fan of having revenue related metrics. You know, you have some marketers that are judged and even compensated on output, right? Number of blogs, percent increase in followers, whatever it may be. And you've really got to try and attach it either to a revenue metric or something that truly drives. metric like meetings booked or demos, something like that.

Jesse Park:

So this is a very interesting concept, totally a little different, but it's how we actually approach our strategic planning as a company too. You have lagging indicators and you have leading indicators. And there's a whole lot of discussion around this, right? So your outputs, your weekly blogs, those could be leading indicators that end up showing up in revenue numbers. You incentivize off of the lagging because you want to make sure that you're hitting the numbers that move the business, okay? Marketing leads, qualified marketing leads given to sales or qualified marketing leads that close. However you want to quantify it or define it. Could be something completely different. 

Well, how do you then get there? That's incentivized. Well, okay, it could be, am I getting my weekly blog post out? Am I engaging on social media? You know, X amount of times a week. 

Steve:

Exactly. So you're measuring, let's say, the activity type metrics. Did you tick all these boxes? You're rewarding or compensating or promoting people based on the things that actually impact the numbers as they come along. A lot of marketing groups get into trouble with this because they don't truly understand what are the things that are going to move the needle, right? 

My background is a different world and often it is demos, proof of concepts, samples. You know, if you can drive that activity as a marketer,  that's going to result in X amount of revenue. For a service model, it's a little different, but you should always be able to work out what are, what are those things you can measure that you know will result in a certain percentage of sales? And, and you've got to work your way through that. 

Jesse Park:

If you're a small organization with one marketer like we are, it is imperative for the person that the marketer reports to, to be very clear with the company goals. And so that is very imperative for me, as the president of the company, to be very clear on what are we doing, what impacts business and what do we need. Then you can have an open discussion with that person of how do you get there. And so this whole topic is about how do you market? with a small team. And it is really imperative that leadership is key. You don't have to have a marketing background to lead. You just have to be a leader that is clear with communication on what you need done and hire smart people who can help understand how to get you there. And you have collaboration and discussion around that.

Steve:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I want to go back to something you mentioned, because I think it's a really interesting point, this idea of mentoring people in the marketing team, particularly for small organizations. 

I think there is a tendency if you have - let's use your example - You have your marketing team of one, and that person comes from. a writing and content background. And maybe there is a marketing project that you want to do that isn't naturally within their wheelhouse. I think there's a tendency to say, okay, we're going to hire an agency to do it. Right. So the downside of that, and I love working with agencies. I've worked with a lot of agencies, but the downside of that is the first thing you have to do is educate that agency on your brand, your customer base, all of that good stuff. Whereas your small marketing team already knows that stuff. 

So I think it is an interesting model to say, well, actually you bring somebody in more as a mentor to that person to say, well, okay,  you know the industry, the company, the hot topics. So let's talk about, for example, this rebrand and how we're going to go about it and that way you're actually developing that person as well. So you're not spending money, educating an outside agency. You're spending money, effectively developing your internal people.

Jesse Park:

The other thing with that is that if you hire an agency, they're just going to go ahead and do things. Your person still doesn't know, and they're supposed to quote unquote manage this agency. So they're going to take whatever the agency says. And then they're going to report back to you as the owner, and you might say, well, we're missing the mark because I'm not seeing the movement and they don't know what to do. So. you may still end up hiring an agency to do certain things. The key is helping develop so that your internal people can actually make the right decisions and orient and manage the resources that you need across the board. 

Steve:

So you've had quite a journey of building your marketing team. What is the next marketing challenge that you're facing?

Jesse Park:

Because of the way we've grown organically, the biggest challenge we have is actually on that demand gen pillar, and it's figuring that out. And we were starting to get some success using the stuff that we have. But again, it's been tinkering, it's been playing, it's been working with different people trying to figure some of this out. So... I think we've got some good sales enablement tools, we've got some good product positioning, we've got good brand awareness, and that was all built organically out of what we have. 

Now it's taking that stuff and repurposing it to really drive better demand gen and be more, not just sharing knowledge, but really getting people to say, ‘yes, I need to talk to you’. And we're seeing some success with that. 

Steve:

I think it points to one of the things that you've done really well, that you have built up your strategy over time. A lot of companies suddenly decide they need demand generation, but they haven't put the time in. to building the awareness to even something as simple as putting together a design guide. They haven't created all the material, they don't have the sales material, but they suddenly want a lot of demand. What you've done over the last few years is you've really built that up gradually and now you're ready to do the demand generation. So I think it's going to be a really interesting phase.

You said at the beginning of this that you're always learning. You read around quantum, I can remember if it's quantum physics or quantum mechanics, but you read a lot. You have a very broad view specifically about marketing. How do you keep up on what's new in marketing because it is constantly changing.

Jesse Park:

Very simple. I'll listen to your podcast.

Steve:

Okay, so now let's have the serious answer to that one.

Jesse Park:

It's tougher and tougher for me to follow up and stay on top with marketing. It is the trends are changing so much right now. Okay. You mentioned earlier Threads, right? I mean, it's like, Oh my gosh, what's going on. Every other week, there's a new social media platform coming out. You’ve got what Bluesky and Post and all these people who were trying to jump on and take Twitter share away.

Steve:

Mastodon was big for a few weeks and then that disappeared,

Jesse Park:

In my position, it's not to know all of the trends. For me, it's about if I hear something, seeing if my marketing person is talking about this in our updates. And if there's something that he or she needs support in, what does that look like and what resources are there? Because in my position, it's about empowering your employees and providing them the resources to execute. 

Now, it doesn't mean you're just going to jump on and join Mastodon and join Bluesky and join Threads. Anytime something pops up. But talking about it and consistently saying, ‘hey, is this even coming up in conversation’? If you see something in the news, just saying, ‘Hey, what's your thoughts on XYZ?’ If it's something you really need to be clued in on AI, big things. Okay. Yeah. Do a little bit of research, but have that conversation with your marketer. It's not up to you as the owner or the president. to figure it all out. 

Steve:

And you said earlier in our conversation that you're a great asker of questions or a great questioner. And I think that that's exactly what you're talking about here, right? Just knowing what the marketers need to be talking about, I think, is the right approach. 

Now, you and I have talked a lot about marketing over the years, and it's often over a beer or a coffee. And actually those types of conversations was the inspiration behind the Marketing Mix podcast, having a chat over a drink about all things marketing. So I always ask my guests, what is their drink of choice that you would have if you wanted to sit down and have a fun marketing chat with somebody.

Jesse Park:

For me, it's quite simple. It's just a straight up scotch, no ice. 

Now one exception. There is a drink called the James Baldwin. At the Marcus BP restaurant in Newark. And it is a take on an espresso martini, but instead of vodka, they use whiskey. And it is probably one of the best cocktails I've ever had. So usually you will find me my drink of choice, anything whiskey related, but scotch straight up, that's always a go-to.

Steve:

See, no wonder we got on so well, because that would probably be my answer too. 

I'm with you. I love a good Scotch, and I love a good Scotch cocktail.

Jesse, thanks for taking the time to chat with me on the Marketing Mix. I very much appreciate it. I now also know that the next time I meet up with you, I’ve got to order a couple of scotches so we can get into our next conversation. So I look forward to doing that soon.

Jesse Park:

Sounds good. Thanks for having me, Steve. It’s been a blast.