1927 – Revolutionizing Marketing and Branding with Terry Zelen

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1:06With us right now, Terry Zellin. Terry, you are the president of Zellin Communications just down the road from me in Tampa, Florida. Your website is zellincommunications.com. Terry, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate having me on, Josh. Absolutely. Well, I love having marketing professionals and leaders on this program because I always want to know what the current trends are. But before we get into that and talk about your superpowers, and we are going to be talking a little bit about how AI is, you know, some trends there. But Terry, let's start off. Maybe just tell me just a bit about who Zellen Communications is, who you serve, and what you do.

1:46Yeah, Zellen Communications has been in Tampa our entire time. We've been here for over 30 years, and we have really kind of been on the leading edge of a number of technologies. When websites began, we actually started building websites before, you know, in the very early days. We adopted all of the online marketing tools, including pay-per-click, SEO, retargeting, social media. And really, we've been at it since the beginning of all of those new waves. And AI is really the newest wave that we've been riding, and we've been working with AI for over two years now. I feel like we've been at a long time and I talked to others who've been doing it six and seven years.

2:24I think like, OK, we're way behind the curve, but it's coming at us pretty quick. Yeah. OK, please go ahead. Our clientele, we range from everything from we work with Outback Steakhouse for 10 years. So we've done, you know, Fortune 500 and we're doing a fishing lure company that's starting up right now. So we do startups to, you know, Fortune 500. And we've done a lot of work in the restaurant industry, a lot of medical industry, also in the builder developer and in education. That kind of gives you a spectrum of the type of clientele we work with. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, very exciting to see.

2:59So as an agency working with these types of brands, tell me about maybe current implementation of AI. Like, where does it fit in? Because it can be very easy for lazy marketers to do a bad job, given the new tools, right? So it's like we've been given this fabulous gift, and it's not perfect right now. There's a lot of shortcomings. But boy, if you use it well, and you know what you're doing, holy cow, what a time saver in terms of, you know, just helping achieve goals faster, more efficiently and more successfully. way. Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, we use it in a number of different ways here at the agency and different team members use it for different reasons and outcomes.

3:46But our team likes to use it for, you know, ideation. So it helps us instead of going to Google and saying, you know, synonyms for this word, we can just ask, you know, ChatGPT to give us similar words too. And it gives us much quicker feedback. But we use it for analytics. It helps us generate better outcomes for our clients by helping us understand what the outcomes for an existing campaign was. And we used it a lot for actually for concepting for new clients. We have one of our accounts is the Hillsborough County School System. They're the seven largest in the country, and we've been working with them for about three and a half years now.

4:24And they came to us and they wanted a new campaign. So for us to demonstrate it, because most people are not visual, you have to show them something that's realistic for them to understand what you're trying to achieve. So we developed a campaign for them for recruitment this year for teachers and bus drivers and, you know, people from the top to bottom. They were always looking for to recruit new staff. And we wanted to show them visually what that would look like. So we generated three concepts using AI and we worked with MidJourney and we were able to show them exactly what we wanted in a very short time frame.

4:57they were able to visualize what we were trying to promote and they selected one of the campaigns and it is just about to launch in the next week or so. It works great for a number of different assets for our industry. But I'm thinking about as you're telling that story, just in terms of the way that we serve our clients, right? And again, we don't ever want to degrade the quality right so you always need those those experienced eyes being able through wisdom through that lens of wisdom being able to work with the output to make sure that it meets the standards that anything that would be customer facing um you know we don't want to degrade that because it is easy again i'd say maybe for a newer marketer to just you know throw in their use case throw in the basic data, take the output and go, great, I'm done.

5:51But that's not typically, that's not my process anyway. Do you mind maybe kind of defining that and just like, what was ultimately in the story that you just told, what was the advantage to the client ultimately? The ability to demonstrate it in a very short time because they came to us and they had a very short timeline to get the campaign launched. So we would have had to hire a photographer, an illustrator, found talent, and put that all together, and then gone out, shot some of the rough images just to demonstrate to them what the concept was going to look like. And we were able to do it all within the confines of artificial intelligence tools like MidJourney and Pika and Runway and generate the imagery and show it to them.

6:33We, of course, came up with the concept and the ideation, but then we can help to write a rationale using ChatGPT for the concept itself. and we have, we use AI for writing like everyone else does. Our writer who's been with us for over 15 years manages all the AI writing. So she helps get a base set of content going and then she goes in and massages the content to ensure that it's to the brand standard and that we're not saying something that isn't, because AI can go out and glean a website, scrape it for information and write things about it, but it doesn't mean it's right. So we always oversee everything that we do using AI.

7:14Yeah. So I'm seeing here, Terry, in terms of like your services, I see, you know, where your offerings fall into the buckets of digital marketing, which probably is your biggest bucket, but also AI integration and custom websites. Do you mind maybe kind of to our friend that's listening and they say, well, I wonder if Zelen might be a great fit for me. Do you mind maybe kind of fleshing this out a little bit more? Of course not. So we don't we we've been building websites for a very long time. We use the WordPress WordPress platform. We do custom sites only. So our clientele is not looking for a template that they can just pick up and be a me to website.

7:57They're really looking for something distinctive and different. We have done websites for large companies to individuals. But our websites are unique in that we have sites that scroll horizontally, completely vertically and horizontally. They're much more interactive than a traditional website would be. And we do complex e-commerce solutions. So if somebody has multi-tiered pricing that's required for their e-commerce website, we're able to do that. We do more difficult integrations with different platforms. So we've written APIs that'll work with a particular POS system that wasn't available before.

8:38So we've done those types of integrations. We've worked with large home builders and helped them integrate with their entire backend system, which might be, for one instance, was they had an Oracle database. and that ran their entire ecosystem of their company, but they wanted a WordPress front end. So we had to figure out how to integrate the database itself with the website. It took us a little bit, but we got exactly what they wanted. So they were able to get a custom site that was branded and functioned exactly the way they wanted, rather than a template, which people would put together a bunch of plugins to make it sort of work the way they want.

9:16And so our sites tend to be very lean on the code side. So they run faster, which is important for SEO. And really everything that we do is driven towards making the client get them exactly the type of project that they want and the outcome. So it's on brand and fitting with whatever their needs are. You had mentioned some standards in terms of design. And I'm curious, aside from AI, which we've talked about, what other trends are you seeing both from a design or branding or marketing perspective outside of, again, AI that both are emerging? What I'm really curious about is if you have any feel for, I would really start focusing on X or paying attention to Y.

10:07Anything immediately come to mind? Yeah, I mean, branding is kind of a tried and true process. We actually just went through a rebranding of our own, and we really kind of broke the rules. So when you went to our website, you would see that rather than having a single Z, we actually used AI to create almost 50 different Zs. And we coded it so that every time you come back to our website, it will randomly pull seven of those Zs and rotate them in place. And then if you were to look at the animation on our site, you'll see the level of complexity that we program to. It's not something that you could do through a traditional needs and certainly not something you can get from a template.

10:49But the standards are, you know, in terms of trends, I'm seeing a new trend that I'm not crazy about, which is a lot of AI written sites. They are so new-like and they're just, they're literally terrible. A cornucopia of opportunity, Terry, what do you say? I'm telling you, because it's cheap doesn't mean it's good, right? No, no. It's AI language and it'll improve in time. But the base AI language, it is a very distinct language that experienced people know exactly what you're doing. I would just urge anyone that is, you know, delegating content to your team, make sure you've got eyes on and make sure that that voice is an integrity.

11:31Terry, to our friend that's listening here, tell me maybe who should be reaching out and what is the typical process like when you're working with a client? Yeah, we've done everything from we've done large communities. We were working with a large community here of 6 ,500 homes. We put together the entire business plan for them. So we would do it on an annual basis. They would give us their budget and we would allocate those dollars to the proper channels that we felt would give them the best return on their investment. And our process is very technical. So everything that we do as an agency is reported each month, whether we're doing SEO, social media, pay-per-click advertising, all of those get reports at the end of the month.

12:15So our clients can tell exactly which components of their marketing are working and which are not, because all too often we hear people say, you know, I know half of my marketing is working. I just don't know which half. So with our process, we track literally everything. We do another tactic called call tracking. So a lot of times we work with a number of builders and they will say, well, we have a sheet that when people walk into one of our model homes, the people fill it out and they say, how did you find out about us? And they'll say, oh, it was a billboard. But that's the billboard they passed on the way there.

12:48But that's not what we got in the door. So apply a different phone number to every channel of the marketing that we're performing. So if there is a billboard, it'll have a phone number. If there's print advertising, it'll have a phone number. If there's a direct mail piece, if there's a pay-per-click campaign, if there's a website form, everything has a unique phone number. So at the end of the month, we can actually track in real time where those people are engaging with their different marketing avenues. And that's really the difference between what our firm does and a lot of other firms is the depth of reporting that we're able to provide them to see the true outcomes of what we're doing on their behalf.

13:27Yeah. So your website is zeloncommunications.com or zeloncom.com. And my recommendation to our friend that's listening is go to the website, take a look at what we've been talking about. I actually love the Z's and I've got my favorite Z that it showed me. Yeah, no. And also to great, great portfolio of work. And I'm looking at that, that community that you did work for. And yeah, just really, really gorgeous work. So congratulations on that to our friend that's listening. Yes. What would you recommend they do? I know you have a blog, you have some good content on social as well. but you know just someone who wants to maybe learn more maybe they're not quite ready for a conversation at this point but they but they really want to get a feel for you know whether there might be a match here what would you recommend you know take a look at our website that shows some of our work but also if you follow me on on LinkedIn I'm very actively posting there I recently became a a part of the Forbes council and for the marketing side of things so I will be writing articles and hopefully being published relatively soon on Forbes.

14:43But that is all part of the process that we are doing a greater outreach. Our LinkedIn account is probably our most active. And then if you want, you can sign up for a newsletter on our website and get that on a monthly basis, just to get an idea of the types of projects that we work on and the outcomes and the strategy that we develop and utilize for our clients. I think that's the best. And then speaking, because a lot of times that's the best way for us to see if it's a match or not, because it's really about the engagement and the interaction between the parties that makes a huge difference.

15:18Because we like to see ourselves as a partner or an extension of their company rather than just a vendor, because we achieve much better outcomes when we work together. Yeah, you're, by the way, I just want to ask you about this really quick. I should have asked this much earlier, but you do so much work in your local community. Like you do a lot of local speaking, you're volunteering, you're on boards, you know, that sort of thing. Just other business leaders that may be listening. Do you mind maybe just sharing a bit about why you've prioritized that? You know, I believe in giving back to the community.

15:54I've been in Tampa for a very long time and see it grow and change. and I served on five boards one year and I back down to just two at this time. And I think that it's really good to be involved. It helps keep you relevant in the community. It also helps you keep kind of an understanding of what's going on around you. We do a lot of work here, but we do, we've done work in, we did a winery in South Africa. We've done work for an art school in Italy for a number of years. We've done websites for companies in all different parts of the country. So although we're based here, we've done work for national firms in all different parts of the U.S.

16:34Terry Zellin, president of Zellin Communications, your website, zellincommunications.com. Terry, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Josh, really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

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