Join us in this episode of the Paid Media Playbook as we dive into the fascinating journey of Jessica Ivey, a seasoned marketing director with a diverse background spanning from commercial architecture to roller derby, cannabis, and sexual wellness industries. Jessica shares her insights into how her unconventional path has shaped her marketing strategies and approaches. From grassroots marketing tactics in roller derby to navigating the complexities of advertising in the cannabis industry, Jessica's experiences offer valuable lessons for marketers in any field.

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Chapters:

• Introduction and Roller Derby Roots (00:00 - 07:30)
• Navigating the Cannabis Industry (07:31 - 14:00)
• Shifting to Sexual Wellness (14:01 - 21:00)
• Marketing Strategies During the Pandemic and Conclusion (21:01 - 28:07)

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Links and Resources:

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• Subscribe to our newsletter here
• Lisa Wekellis on LinkedIn
• Laura Szczes on LinkedIn
• Double Z Media Website
• Double Z Media on LinkedIn

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Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Paid Media Playbook? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and Spotify and leave us a review!

Transcription:

We're here today with Jessica Ivy. Jessica is a long time local marketing director who has, , just a plethora of Experience and really interesting background.

Jessica, can you tell us a little bit about, how you got started in marketing?

Thanks for having me. This is a pleasure to join the podcast with you guys. You know, I actually started my career in commercial architecture and interior design. I have 10 years with Mulvaney G2 architecture, and I never dreamed that I'd ever end up in marketing. But, you know, I'd say that experience really informed.

Everything that I've done since then, because the nature of design, at least at that scale, really requires. big picture thinking holistic problem solving you know, creative thinking. And I think that that's something that definitely is, is applicable to the marketing sector. You know, I worked on projects all over the world and really honed my skills in pivoting from the strategic to the tactical.

And that you end up doing that a lot when you're you know, working as a marketing director, , you're envisioning, your long term vision, but you also have to get it done. So you know, at the end of the day, we had to build a building and we had to get it there. But in 2010, when banking stopped funding development, you might remember I happened to be skating with Rat City Roller Derby.

And that you know, it was a hobby, but it was for the skaters by the skaters. It was all run essentially like a grassroots nonprofit. And You know, I was looking at what we were doing and we were spending a lot of energy or like spending, you know, 5, 000 to make 6, 000, you know, and it really was something that we did for that was empowering.

It was about self expression. It was gritty, was underground. It was in this. airplane hangar Magnuson Park. And we had 2, 500 regular spectators that would sell out the hangar. And it was a, it was a good time. It was very and it, but you know, I kept looking at what we were doing and how much time we were investing in it.

And I thought we could really scale this thing. And at the same time, The Supersonics had left Seattle, and so I recognized that Key Arena probably had a couple open slots. So I approached the city to negotiate a contract for us to become an anchor tenant at, at Key Arena, now Climate Pledge. And they thought it was hilarious.

They thought, you know, sure, you guys can come in here. The Storm were already in there. Thunderbirds at the time were there as well, and they had no idea what we would do with , that space. And we ended up outselling the storm and outselling the Thunderbirds. We sold out the lower bowl, of the arena multiple times.

We were an anchor tenant for eight years and and we did some extraordinary things. We were able to attract sponsorship. We were able to , increase our ticketing revenue as well as our merchandise and just become that Seattle icon, you know, that the people came to love. And we were able to empower young girls.

through, providing accessibility to the sport. And, you know, now a lot of those girls are now. members of Rat City Roller Derby. But in that sandbox was really you know, especially once I was hired on as chief marketing officer, it was a, a great opportunity to work with press, to work with different community organizations, to attract sponsors, to Get creative with brand activation.

And, , that was more of an organic time. The levers we had were, were very gorilla, you know, posturing word of mouth, email, social was brand new. I mean, a couple of years old, it had, it's not what it is today in terms of advertising.

digital was emerging. Traditional media was really pie in the sky for us at that moment because we did not have the budget for that.

We leaned a lot on building relationships with our sponsors that where we could leverage their audiences or work with a G at key arena so that we could get, you know, press and media exposure or on, on the on air, you know, opportunities. But we, you know, we did do some transit, we did some outdoor radio did some broadcast, I skated on the, on the Space Needle we were definitely out in the community on skates any time we could, we could, , and you know, I, I think that as we ramped up our season ticket holder base, we were able to ramp up our paid media.

Correlationally, I think, you know, our budget became more respectful over time. And we actually ended up producing a a broadcast for Rootsports. So you know, that, that was something that was, no other league had been able to achieve. And it essentially, that arena model became a respected model that was replicated in other cities after, after we first did it.

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So yeah, that was that was you know, my first love, my first entry into marketing and, And discovering that how to apply all of those early skills, those creative skills, the problem solving skills to you know, to big challenges. And from there we, we probably take a sharp left turn and I was introduced to cannabis and it was the ground floor of a new industry.

It was early on. And, You know, there were a lot of regulations flying around, a lot of, you know, gray areas, places where people didn't know what we were going to end up doing in advertising, especially since it's still not federally decriminalized. And you, you can't advertise in certain media platforms, so it's very restrictive and, you know, talk about an industry that's antithetical to marketing.

It's not something that came naturally to a lot of business owners. They didn't really feel comfortable sticking their neck out and saying, hi, here's my brand. And you know, people didn't know about packaging. They didn't know about compliance. It was very It was very chaotic and but it was, it was very fun because we, we had a lot of you know, we, we could be the first to try new things and we were because we implemented the first billboard campaign for cannabis.

Now you see it up and down I 5,

Yours was pretty good. It was pretty good. It was you know, using people.

it was lifestyle instead of product based. It was, it was not, you know, you know, McDonald's is 2. 1 miles around the corner, you know, it was, it was about like, this is okay. This is normalizing.

This is Recreational and it was, you know, moments where people are hanging out at a concert, you know, just having a blast and just being able to get people to visualize what, you know, the future of cannabis normalization look like and, and making having it feel you know, like something that's approachable

and not normal and friendly and open and you're talking to like Gen X and younger. I felt like you know and Because you

had to and women. get there and understand like, oh, like, edibles and vaping and all of these different you know, assortment of products, you know, just became more elevated, more elegant. More for them.

Yes.

media play_0043Yeah. So that was an exciting time. I started my agency, Fire Creative, as a result of becoming somewhat of a subject matter expert and understanding a lot of the regulations.

And you know, I got to work on Willie Nelson's brand and the rollout there. You know, I've, I, I met Snoop Dogg twice put him on a

Love it. Yeah.

And You know, we're able to really get creative and how we approached building community because we produced a series of concerts called the Budtenders Ball Series, which were free concerts, but it was, it was aimed at you know, and this was before influencer marketing, but we called them tastemakers and really just wanted to infuse art, music.

cannabis in a way that's, you know, already there, but it was, it was just a natural celebration of, you know, the culture and wanting brands to see that they could approach community building in an authentic way where they weren't you know, putting a brand on something and what I call like NASCARing it out, you know, you have you know, You just have a natural alignment with, with art and music and cannabis.
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The energy , and momentum that came from that time, it's just, it's pretty unforgettable. You know,

sure.

And so it took a little while. It took a little while with performing arts because it's, it's scary to go into a, you know, you know, theater with a thousand people and you are of a certain age, you know, it wasn't something that the 20 year olds were worried about as much with Gen Z, but you know, it just became a little bit more of a slow to, to return but it was also an opportunity where we could, you know, Look to new media partners, look to podcasts, look to , different neighborhoods, build out programs where we open doors for you know, marginalized communities and, you know, provide sliding scale.

And, you know, I think that we had a couple shows that season that were, I think were, were, really joyful. We had Fanny, I think, that kicked off that season, and that was kind of like a revival musical that felt very on point with where the country was in this kind of racial reckoning. This is about Fanny Lou Hamer, who is a an activist in the 60s.

And, I think that eventizing those kind of events was change during that time period because you traditionally had audiences, , they knew what they were doing four weeks out. They were ready to purchase way farther out. But with COVID, you didn't know what you were doing tomorrow.

If you've called it somebody in your circle, how it's COVID. So then, and you are waiting until the last minute to buy those tickets. And that was extremely stressful. to be in marketing because you just, you didn't know what the goal should be. You didn't know if you were going to make it. You were pouring dollars into

Totally. And nothing's happening and you're one of the things that I thought of was that you know, we really couldn't at that moment, take away from some of the traditional, you know, things that we were Media and put it into digital. We, we did over time, but I think that it, you know, I remember when we were talking about who our customer was and found out, I think Lisa, you, you did some digging into the analytics and you found out that they over indexed an affinity for the cats and wine.

And I don't, I don't think they'd mind me even saying that because that's, that's okay. So am I. But , we wanted to make sure that we were preserving that audience segment and, and engaging with them in, on our digital platforms, our digital channels, social media, paid digital programmatic.

But we also knew that we needed to look at new audiences, younger audiences, the young professionals moving to our city. And so we experimented with that a little bit. We had to pull back from some of our traditional broadcasts and move it to OTT or, at YouTube in a new way, you know, and because people are spending a lot of time at home and a lot of time on TV, especially the streaming platforms.

so,

flipped. That's when it really flipped.

Yeah,

I wasn't skating, but I was, spending time with you but I just felt so much of that energy, no matter what we were doing.

It was just like, You guys were everywhere.

I think, , I was just, it just reminded me of a campaign where I was actually skating in a, in a mat, in a bout, but I was also working with, with this producer who was creating a, creating a commercial for Bing. So I was acting, Coordinating, facilitating, art directing, playing a match, you can get a lot done when you're on skates, you know, you roll a lot faster, so you can you can do it all, but yeah, it's still a Bing commercial that's out there that they produce during a match.

well, you had, you had also secured, if I remember, all those sponsorships we had that one that I can remember we had worked on, but there was also Manic Panic. You were doing all kinds of stuff with them, and that was really fun, like, really on brand fun. Stuff.

Yeah, PBR

was

hmm. PBR.

natural brand alignment. I had cyan as a sponsor and we would roll the car in and into the arena and the arena didn't like for us to do that because it's just a fire hazard. So we had to like disconnect the battery and You know, get, but we put it right in front of the season ticket holders, they take photos with it.

And then we got to use it as a moving billboard during the week.

Fun, fun. This is what like your career so like accomplished and diverse and, and the stories, all the wait, like one time you called me and you're like, Oh yeah, I was just, I'm hanging out with Ron Jeremy and I'm like, like she couldn't believe it herself when she called me. Right.

That's right.

like,

this is my job. Just so you

Yeah, yeah.

And that was when he had a rum brand,

his rum brand, and he was doing an appearance at a, at a liquor store. Yeah.

t's just like, just a comment. You were just kind of commenting on your life at the moment. And they're like, yeah. I mean, Ron Jeremy, you know, just, you know, good stuff. Well, I think that is all the time we have.

Jessica thank you so much for coming on. You are definitely someone we need to have back because we haven't even scratched the surface on the fun stuff in your career. So, and I can't wait to see where you go next. So super excited.

Thank you for having me. This has been really fun. Just kind of taking a trip down memory lane.

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