Community Highlights: Meet David Sardinha of The Marketing Machine

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Sardinha

Hi David, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Well, it’s been quite a journey. I started my career as a programmer for IBM back in 1981. I was fortunate to start just as the new IBM PC was announced and my assignment was to work with all the various software companies (such as Microsoft in their early days) to develop their products on the PC platform. I soon moved into management where I worked with a team that evaluated and published software from dozens of small start-ups. Over the course of my IBM career, I got to work with many companies, from large corporations to start ups, to see how marketing played a role in their success.

I left IBM and started my own entrepreneurial path in 1993. I remember attending a Zig Ziglar seminar on marketing and was able to learn the power of direct mail marketing and applied it successfully to my own consulting efforts. Along the way I held various positions and started various companies in construction, software re-engineering, software consulting and development, web design and development, and SaaS.

In 2001 I left the technology field and opened an acoustic music listening room known as The Six String Cafe. It grew to become one of the country’s best known venues for original, live music performed by top singer songwriters. It was during this time that I really began to understand and apply marketing concepts for a B2C business. I saw first-hand the value of a strong marketing mix and the impact a strong brand can have on a the growth and success of a business.

In 2006 I moved on to help start up a warehousing and order fulfillment business that expanded to include freight trucking and distribution. I subsequently started partnerships that bought and managed a passenger transportation company, a healthy snack vending business, and another run at the restaurant and entertainment industry. My corporate experiences and my own small business experience allowed me to witness and value the power of marketing and branding.

Also, in 2006 my business partner at the time and I created and online directory of local restaurants called The Dine With Us Club. It was through that project that I met Paul Spinak, who was an experienced marketing consultant operating under the name of The Marketing Machine. That connection opened up a discussion where Paul and I became business partners and together turned The Marketing Machine into a full-service marketing and design agency.

Since then, together we built The Marketing Machine into one of Raleigh’s leading design agencies offering traditional and digital marketing solutions for businesses across the country. We have helped hundreds of clients establish or enhance their brands and have launched and managed campaigns and marketing assets from websites to building signage, print media to emails, produced radio and TV commercials, and designed print ads and digital campaigns.

Under Paul’s leadership as the Creative Director and my role as Account Director, we now have a team of 10 full time employees and partnerships with another 15 or more people who specialize in everything from video production to SEO and Paid Search Offerings.

The Marketing Machine (TMM) is an innovative, creative marketing agency located in downtown Raleigh NC. Our mission is to do everything it takes to bring a business’ brand to life. We work with both Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to Business companies (B2B) looking to improve or establish their brand presence. We provide conceptual, design and production resources to help build long-lasting relationships with our client’s customers.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It’s been a journey of many different experiences and businesses circumstances over the past 20 years or so. One of our biggest challenges came in 2008 – 2009 when the economy crashed and TMM had invested a lot in internal growth that we had a hard time sustaining as our client’s businesses scaled back. That experience forced us to get back to our core strengths as a design focused agency and we etablished a “Hybrid” work model, with a small number of full-time employees partnered with skilled freelancers that specialized in various marketing tactics and design backgrounds. We moved our office to downtown Raleigh and implemented infrastucture to allow remote workers.

That experienced served us well during the next major challenge in 2020 during the COVID Pandemic. TMM had just signed a lease on a new office loaction in March 2020 when COVID shut down everything. In addtion, civil protests started in downtown Raleigh which forced the closure of our office. Our investment in remote infrastructure in 2009 allowed us to operate nearly seemlessly as a remote company to support those clients that needed our services.

In both cases, we determined that the only way out of the situation we were in was to be flexible and focus on success and work our way out.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I believe I covered this in the previous questions.

So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
Integrity and putting ourselves in our client’s shoes to do the right thing and the best work, with focus on supporting our clients in the broadest possible way. Treating our employees with honesty and intergrity to allow them to grow themselves while creating an environment where self motivated people can thrive.

Sure, it’s always special to see the results of our work visually around town in the various brands we designed or campaigns we put together. But for me the real measure of success or the value of what we do is being part of the growth and success of our clients and watching our employees mature professionally.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.themmachine.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themarketingmachinenc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themarketingmachine#
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmachine439