The Jockey Marketing, Naples FL Agency

Years ago, before Creative Suite, Adobe’s many products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) were isolated in their own marketing silos – each with their own agencies.

Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign regularly bid against each other for the same search terms on Google.  The enterprise’s budget was fragmented and inefficient, if not cannabalistic.  No SEO existed.  Reporting couldn’t be stitched together for an executive summary.

Adobe recognized the crisis and knew they needed to centralize marketing to just one agency.

Instead of sending request-for-proposals, Adobe’s vendor selection process resembled a Roman colosseum gladiator game: throw all the agencies into a measurable performance marketing competition and make them fight to the death for the coveted $70 million per year media budget.

The best teams from the largest agencies all fought, and all lost. The competition was won by a new San Francisco agency no one had ever heard of.

Adobe recognized the risk putting the fate of their flagship products in the unproven hands of an agency just a few months old.  They decided to send a team to inspect the agency’s office and interview their team.

The agency’s “office” was the living room of my one bedroom apartment. The “team”?  Two co-founders, one younger sister fresh out of college, and an almost potty-trained Ratweiller puppy.Â

We knew there was no way in hell Adobe was going to allow their marketing to be centralized in my living room.  So we did what had to be done.

We rented out an office for the inspection day, a few doors down from Craigslist’s 9th Ave office in SF.  We put signage on the door above the gym between Lincoln and Irving.   Friends took a day off from their real creative positions to play the role of one in our makeshift office.  And it worked.

Shortly thereafter, I began working with Adobe’s Director of Global Search Marketing, Jay Middleton.Â

Within a year, I was overseeing the strategy for dozens of big brands.  Brands  competing in markets with the highest degrees of marketing sophistication came to us, like University of Phoenix. Â

Jay left Adobe in 2018 to pursue his music career, becoming the bandleader and vocalist of both (1) San Francisco’sJay Middleton Party Band (weddings, private parties) and (2)The Jay Middleton Band (original music).  I was honored when Jay called me up to ask for help his party band book weddings.  Â

You can ask Jay about my work.  Just contact me  and I’ll arrange a call or email with him.

I feel more comfortable talking about my weaknesses than my strengths. Â

One thing I am comfortable saying is that – until and unless an account is kicking ass, I obsess over the work.  I expect myself to deliver strategy at a world-class level, and until that is achieved, my psychological state is sort of like Laser Point Syndrome in cats (when they chase after a laser dot you beam around the room – it’s the compulsive, obsessive behavior when an unattainable goal triggers a never-ending pursuit).  I don’t invoice for those hours because it’s not your fault I can’t stop chasing the laser.

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