Jony Chagas - Blackwood Creative

Mishawaka, IN

574-675-6785

Team@BlackwoodCreative.com

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Linkedin

Jony Chagas just completed two years working for Blackwood Creative, first as an intern and now as the Creative Director for Marketing. He graduated from Bethel University with a degree in graphic design and marketing.

About Blackwood Creative

So this is actually two businesses… This is Blackwood Creative, this is the marketing and advertising side, and up front we have Zipp Printing, which is a print shop. So I actually started out over there [Zipp Printing] as a graphic designer. They’re both owned by Kyle [Johnson]. And so I started as a graphic designer over there and then I switched over here as a creative director for the marketing side.

Many of the team members at Blackwood have school backgrounds other than marketing.

Our producer, she does a little bit of everything, she went to school for ministry. The salesman for Zipp also went to school for ministry and I think Ryan (VP of Customer Success) went to school for ministry. So they all went for ministry then got completely out of there for this.

Chagas started school with a different path in mind before committing to graphic design. A Brazil native, he went to Bethel University after being recruited to play soccer.

I wanted to start as an architect. That was my first thing that I wanted to do. And then my plan was to come here, do Gen Eds, get it done, and then transfer out just because I had a good deal here. And then I chose graphic design as a major and I stuck it out... I just graduated in December, so I started here as an intern then picked up part-time and now I’ve been full-time.

Q: Did you have any projects that helped you get your position here?

It wasn’t necessarily a project. Bethel puts up an event that’s a career fair every year, and one of my graphic design classes the professor was very involved in that career fair. He had us build résumé, portfolio, everything for actual grades and then go out to the career fair and apply. And so I talked to a person there that connected me with Kyle [Johnson, owner] that got me this job. So it wasn’t necessarily one project but a combination of things from one class.

Q: What are some of you everyday duties here?

So I work directly with Ryan, he’s our salesman for this side and I’m usually chatting with him everyday about new clients or clients that are on and needs - we go back and forth. We usually try to have just one connecting point which is him to the client just so that there’s not emails coming from all over. So usually I am trying to make sure that all of our projects get done. We had another person, they left, so technically now we only have one person under me, but beforehand I would talk to both and see what all they were doing today, the day of, and making sure what we need done for now is ready and also start planning ahead of time. Usually we try to get a week or two weeks in advance just to make sure that we’re on top of things. And half of my time I’m also over at the print shop either helping with designs for customers or actually hand labor.

Q: As far as being the creative director, how does analytics fit into that for you?

I have to be aware of the numbers. So we do a lot of social media advertising, social media posting in general and so I don’t go into the numbers to grab them but I analyze them after they’re pulled in from all over the place. So usually we have either our producer or Kyle himself, he goes in and gets all the numbers from websites and social media and all that stuff and we run them and then we talk about them. So I’m part of the team that analyzes it and see what needs changed or what needs done differently.

With 11 employees between Zipp and Blackwood, the marketing side has about 10 current clients.

Q: Would you say you’re a little more personal with your clients since it’s a smaller operation?

Oh yeah. I mean a lot of our clients we even text them. We’re a little past the email phase and “hey we have something going on “ and just text each other. A couple of our clients are actual personal friends, not prior just they became personal friends, so I think that allows for us to be a little more personal. I mean I told you we have 11 people all over and about 10 clients, that’s almost one a client. So we definitely get to talk a little more and get a little closer.

Q: Do you think since you’re almost on that one on one basis that managing their data is easier?

From what I assume, I think this is a little better because, again, you’re a little more personal so you can get a little more personal feedback versus having 500 clients having 500 different emails coming at you all the time. I think our content and what we put out for our clients are a little more custom and less ‘hey just get it done and get it out.’ We’re constantly going on a monthly basis talking, having a bigger meeting with each one of our clients to make sure that we’re doing all that they want and they’re not just paying us money to do what we think is right. So yeah I do think it’s a little easier to manage the data coming in.

Q: What insights are you looking at most for your clients?

It really depends. We have clients all over. We have clients in the RV industry, RV transporting industry, then we have clients in the medical side and we have real estate clients. So for example, our real estate one, which is one I personally manage, is focused on growing her social media following because she posts all her listings on her social media, so we need as many people to have their eyes on her as possible. So the money that we put into ads are not to advertise one single post but to advertise the page in general. In that situation for example we’re looking at follower growth, not necessarily post engagement but follower growth so that we have them. For our RV transport, we are trying to get new drivers constantly. They need as many drivers as they can possibly have. So their numbers are clicks and going through the process of applying. So it’s not just 'see this post' it’s not just 'click on this post' it’s actually making it through all the way to when you send the submit button on the application. So it’s just different depending on the client but in general I would say either a click-through and go through the whole process or follower count. Never just likes or comments.

Q: What kind of softwares are you using to manage all of that?

We use Mailchimp for emailing purposes and in a lot of cases we just use the Facebook business option. And Google Ads. We just go in there and then we pull all the stuff in a spreadsheet... We also use Wordpress for our websites. We pay for their tools for website traffic.

Q: I've noticed the majority of people I talk to use Google.

It’s so easy. It’s there and available and you don’t have to pay anything else. It’s just all in one.

Along with monitoring social media for clients, Blackwood also has a focus on web building and development. Businesses that are just starting out often need a whole marketing and branding plan, but most clients come to Blackwood to rebrand themselves. Chagas said he believes only one client so far has needed their brand created, while the other clients are just rebranding.

Q: Do you prefer to rebrand?

I personally prefer the rebrand as a graphic designer just because that’s more in my area. The web building and development I do very little. They both [Kyle and Ryan] build websites I don’t necessarily. So I build just the image at first that we send to the client and say 'hey this is what this is going to look like’ and then they go in and do all the fancy stuff in Wordpress. So I prefer rebrands for sure.

Q: Have you noticed that working with clients’ data has changed at all since you’ve started here?

Yes, because we grew the amount of people we have here and we grew the amount of clients we have. So the guy we had before actually dealt a lot with the numbers, so the way he gathered it and looked at it was different than the way we’re looking at it now. I think it’s better now. Beforehand he would look at it every single week and just compare week to week. Now we’re comparing more like campaign to campaign. So let’s say we’re running a campaign for two months for a client, we’re not necessarily going to go in and check every week. We’re going to let it finish and see what happened, what was good and what was bad.

Q: Do you think doing it campaign to campaign is getting better results for your clients?

Yeah, definitely. Different campaigns obviously have different goals and different ways to deal with them, but I think looking at it week-to-week the numbers changed very little. So if I come to you and tell you ‘hey we had two more followers than last month,’ what is that going to matter to you? But if I tell you "hey at the end of this we had 15 more applications than last campaign, or 150 more" and so that definitely matters more to them than a smaller number.

Q: How do you think analytics and data management could be improved in the future so you could help your clients better?

Sometimes we wish it was a little more accurate into far how down a process they go. So let's say they’re applying for something and there’s nine steps. A lot of times we can only know how many went in and how many came out but not where they left in the middle. So let's say, just to give you a round number, 10 actually started and five actually finished. We don’t know where those other five stopped in the process. So I wish some of the numbers were more accurate into how far it went versus just in and out ratio.

Q: Do you have anything you want students to know coming into a media field? Something you wish you would have known?

So in my area of media, which is graphic design, I would say they would have to just freelance for free. A lot of people think 'oh if I’m not getting paid I’m not going to do it,' but at the beginning it's important to just build your portfolio and for that sometimes you just might have to do it for free. Because no one is going to want to pay you five hundred bucks if they can’t see that you did something good before, so you have to go to your close friends "oh you want a shirt? Here’s a design for you." Or, "oh you’re starting your small company... Here’s a logo for you." So just small things. You don’t have to go big, just a logo here and there a business card here and there, just something that you can show because a lot of times you might want to show volume a lot, you know its better to show 10 logos than two logos obviously. So freelance for free and also make up things [designs] if you have to.