JJR Marketing Inc.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

The company is Night Light Inc. We design and build landscape illumination for the high-end residential, country club, and resort market, mainly in the Chicagoland area.

What is your position?

I am vice president and co-owner of Night Light.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with JJR Marketing?

I was doing most of the marketing myself in house on a shoestring budget. We needed someone to come in and help us pull it all together. We brought them on to do a lot of things like stationery, letterhead, and tweak our logo and then help us to get our name into the marketplace and develop a budget for brochures, business cards, etc. They also helped us overhaul our website. We wanted everything to be cohesive. We reached out to them to be creative for what we needed.

SOLUTION

How did you come to work with JJR Marketing?

Jackie [Camacho-Ruiz, Director of JJR Marketing] and I were part of a trusted advisor training program for some time and, as we talked, she and I seemed to be on the same page for how marketing should be approached. I had her give me advice as to how she might help us. I liked what she said, and we just built a relationship and hired her company.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

I don't know that number. We do a project-by-project basis. It varies from year to year.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's ongoing. I'm not sure when we started – three or four years ago. I put together a list of things I wanted to get done, but hadn't gotten to. We took them in order of priority, and we've been working on those one at a time. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share anything that would speak to the long-term success of your engagement together?

I tell people that they're very creative. It's very different from what you see in the marketplace. That gets us noticed. I can't tell you that our brochure causes people to choose Night Light, but I know it gets people's attention, and they like it. It ties into our business card. That gets a lot of comments, too. It improved our company image to present it in a higher level. The way things have been done has been on target with our expectations. The website is much better. The help they've given us as improved our position in the landscape world.

What distinguishes JJR Marketing from other providers?

Their creativity. That's one of the main reasons I enjoy working with them. JJR Marketing looks at things differently. They want to get it done the best it can be as opposed to just getting it done. 

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

Nothing comes to mind. They've done each of the projects well and in the time frame they said they would do it.

BACKGROUND

Please provide a description of your company. 

We are a large water park in Illinois.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the marketing manager. I am the go-between for our media agency, our PR agency, and any sort of TV station or radio station. I also work on planning and marketing strategy.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with JJR Marketing?

Our company was looking for an outside PR presence. At the time, we also were looking for some other things – artwork and some other creative stuff as well. One of the big things, when they were looking for an outside PR firm, was that just in case something were to happen at the park, statements would look better coming from a third party who is not a company-affiliated spokesperson. Before I came on board, for example, we had a couple of different incidents. There was one small accident with a worker and other incidents with some unruly people in the park.

The role of JJR was to prepare responses and courses of action to take if something bad were to happen at the park. Kind of the idea that you prepare for the worst and hope it never happens.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Back then, JJR was responsible for a bit more marketing, graphic design, and public relations, whether it was media inquiries, reaching out, or pitching different stories to different media. It was more of a rounded focus. When I came on board, I was personally able to take some of that back internally. I do all of our graphic design. There were some things that I didn't have to outsource anymore, just because of my skill set.

Now, their overall service is 99% PR-related. That's still dealing with the media, trying to pitch stories. We work with bloggers, so JJR is the go-between between the bloggers and us. They coordinate and help run that program as well. They've started to take on some social media as well. We're doing some videos, and somebody from their office is writing the scripts, somebody is in the video, I'm actually doing the video filmography and the editing. A lot of what we do is a joint process.

How did you come to work with JJR Marketing?

That happened before I came onboard, but I believe my predecessor knew Jackie [Camacho-Ruiz, owner and director of JJR Marketing]. I don't know if there was a vetting process. It seemed to be the right fit, and it still is now.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

What we are doing is around the $15,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our collaboration started in 2011 and is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

On the PR side of things, they have been doing really well. We had one year where we even got placed in a national TV show. The next year, we didn't really have that much, but it had a little bit to do with the story that we were pitching. When she had something to work with, she did really well. There was not a lot of interest in the high dive show that we pitched, just because it wasn't too exciting. The year before, we had a sea lion show. I'm totally guessing on this number, but I believe we had four or five TV placements.

What distinguishes JJR Marketing from other providers?

Just to give you a quick back story about us, in the Chicagoland area, May and June have been some of the rainiest months in history. Our business has suffered because we're a seasonal outdoor business, and it's been raining two out of three days. Their group has an infectious positive attitude. They are always looking up and saying, "Oh, we can keep pitching this." There's no real off switch. They don't have a sense of, "OK, we're defeated. Things aren't going good, nobody's interested in hearing about the water park on the PR side, so we're not going to pitch it." They always keep going. They always have that Energizer Bunny mentality – keep going and going and going. That's always a positive that I've seen.

In hindsight, are there areas in which JJR Marketing could improve, or things you might do differently?

What I've seen is that they're going through a little bit of an expansion phase, and on some of the finer details – I just think this is some of the people that work for them – there are some things that are getting missed, such as misspellings in press releases. Everybody has their own writing style, but all of a sudden four of us here looked at something and we were like, "This just sounds a little high school-ish." We actually requested and got the main writer changed, and that issue was resolved.

As they're expanding, maybe some of the people haven't been as sharp as the core when I first started with them, but everything is getting worked through. Jackie herself is more than accommodating. She knows when to express her opinion and when to say "Alright, the client is kind of mad. Let's make sure we do this their way." They are very good on the listening side of things.