Check Out Jeffrey Slater’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeffrey Slater

Hi Jeffrey, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.

Founder | Chief Listening Officer | The Marketing Sage Consultancy

Jeffrey Slater

Jeff has spent the first half of his career in B2C in the food and beverage industry and the second half working at and advising various B2B companies in multiple markets.

Early in his career, he owned and operated a successful commercial photography business, Jeff Slater Photography, working with advertising and marketing agencies and directly with brands. From 1975-1989, he and his wife built a successful wholesale bakery, Rachel’s Brownies, leading to a successful sale and exit in the late 1980s. He has held senior leadership roles in marketing and worked for GoodMark Foods (Slim Jims/Pemmican Beef Jerky, Rough Cut/ Penrose/David’s Sunflower Seeds) and then ConAgra Foods, a 29-billion-dollar house of brands, as their EVP of snack marketing. He managed a $400MM brand portfolio that merged into a $1B new entity when Conagra acquired GoodMark Foods.

Jeff was VP of Marketing for Cheerwine, a 100-year-old family-owned, regional soft drink brand selling primarily through Pepsi’s distribution network and other food service channels. He helped reposition and refreshed the brand’s image.
Jeff led global marketing for the private equity portfolio company Nomacorc®, now called Vinventions®. Summit Partners from Boston was this PE firm. Nomacorc owned several brands, including the leading synthetic wine-closure (cork) company closing billions of wine bottles. Through innovative B2B marketing strategies, in-depth trade research, and conference marketing, he helped raise global brand awareness of new and disruptive brands. He worked with wineries, retailers, distributors, wholesalers, and DTC brands in this capacity. He has worked advising premium and luxury products on branding, marketing, and e-commerce.

He advises B2B startups, portfolio companies, various food, beverage, healthcare, consumer electronics, technology, non-profits, toys, and transportation. He has extensive experience advising startups to billion-dollar companies in different food industry channels. His expertise includes strategy, communications, core messaging, tagline development, brand naming, value proposition, and positioning.

He advised Dickinson Fleet Services, now Cox Automotive, an NC-based private equity firm’s B2B portfolio company in fleet maintenance and transportation on brand and marketing needs. A multi-billion-dollar player acquired that $200MM business a few months after completing the assignment. Jeff developed a demand and lead generation marketing plan for their team, among other strategic services. Jeff did strategic branding for Redzone, a connected workplace SaaS technology business, including developing their tagline, Empowering the Frontline, Growing the Bottomline™.

Jeff has recently been an advisor to Good Goods, funded by Door Dash’s co-founder, in the wine bottle REUSE segment. He was a fractional CMO for an innovative Swedish company called Bellman & Symfon, bringing new consumer hearing devices and alerting systems to the U.S. market. He was the strategic advisor to Enjoy Flowers, a Colombian-based DTC and grocery chain flower provider. He is a fractional CMO for Golden Valley Natural (Hero Snacks), a beef jerky manufacturer, private label, and branded company launching a new product. Jeff is an executive coach and lead generator for ApexDrop, a micro-influencer marketing agency. He worked with Sauer Brand’s Duke’s Mayonnaise and Spice Hunter Seasoning Brands, developing new products for consumer and food service research.

Recently, Jeff has led the strategic development of a multi-million-dollar brand strategy for Hero Beef Jerky that included primary research, market segmentation analysis, affinity marketing partnership program, advertising strategy, web development, and D2C e-commerce. In year one, the brand will achieve $5M in revenue through Walmart and a partnership with The National Fallen Firefighter Foundation.

Jeff is a branding expert and marketing strategist. Through in-depth stakeholder interviews and brand archetype work, Jeff recently named a new healthcare brand and developed a comprehensive messaging platform. In 2021, he created several new products and company names, including Rough Cut, a meat snack bar, and Tradeparency® for a SaaS technology company selling trade, pricing, and promotion software for wineries, distributors, and retailers. He has named CaroNova® for a new Healthcare entity funded by Duke Endowments. Jeff created the name Heartisan® for a portfolio of artisan cheese brands sold at retail and food service for a private equity-led holding company.

In 2021 and 2022, Jeff advised The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Network to provide strategic direction, guidance, and playbooks to grow and increase members’ value. Jeff collaborated with CMOs from AARP, NBC Universal, Sloan Kettering, and other top members.

Jeff graduated from The University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. and M.A. in Communications from The Annenberg School.
He is the proud dad of two daughters, and his youngest daughter, Fanny, hosted a show on Food Network and won Rachael Ray’s cookbook competition. His oldest daughter, Sarah, is a clinical therapist living in Hawaii. And his wife, Ra El, is a talented artist, writer, and energy healer.

And if you have plenty of time, ask him about his almost 6-year-old grandson, Bodhi Kai.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My career is a perfectly imperfect journey. (That’s the title of my friend’s podcast, but it is an apt description for me)

My journey has taken me from entrepreneur to employee and back to being an entrepreneur.

I like to think of my career not as filled with obstacles and challenges but as opportunities to be uncovered and revealed.

Because of my insatiable curiosity, I love to learn new approaches and methods from others.

Over the last 15 years, I have written more than 1,800 blog posts to examine branding and marketing issues. When I find a topic or company that I can learn from, I’ll write a post to help me explore the issues and always provide 3 key learnings for my subscribers. My posts typically receive thousands of views from my newsletter or LinkedIn.

When I struggle with a challenge, I research and write about it to help me learn and find a practical solution.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As a young teenager, I learned about commercial photography from my maternal grandfather, George Ginsberg. He was a Russian Jew who came to America as an orphan, on a boat, by himself. Poppa George taught me the importance of hard work and creativity.

He was in his 80;s and I had a hard time keeping up with him. We would do some photography on the weekends and at night develop the photos in my darkroom in my basement. He taught me so many life lessons and has always been a guidling light in my creative journey.

When I went to college, I had a professional photography business photography products and people for ad agencies and other types of clients. I loved the work and it was enormously fulfilling. I wrote a blog post about him here: https://www.themarketingsage.com/the-original-facebook/ and here: https://www.themarketingsage.com/who-did-you-help-today/

As I became an entrepreneur with my wife, we built a successful wholesale bakery company that gave me a new opportunity to be creative. Together, we grew the business and built a wildly successful company. There is a blog about it where you can learn more about that part of my career. – https://www.themarketingsage.com/nancy-reagan-and-rachels-brownies-a-fun-story/

I think I am known as a calm and deliberative person who understands the critical importance of collaboration in all of my business ventures. I’m also a counterintuitive thinker, looking to be disruptive in any category I work in.

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
For 20 years, every time I am in a meeting, immediately after the meeting, I reach out to everyone who was on the call with a LinkedIn invitation. That way, I can stay connected to every person I meet through business.

I nurture those connections by trying to be helpful to them—reaching out periodically to see what they are up to and, if possible, connecting them to someone in my network.

As for finding mentors, I am open about asking for help from people I connect with. I offer to help first – before asking for their time. My mentors come from many corners, but the most valuable ones are people who share a common mindset with me of being helpful first without asking for anything in return.

I often say I hope my generosity returns to my daughters in their careers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.themarketingsage.com
• Instagram: @moments_later
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeffrey.slater.9?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Youtube: @2007Slater