In June of 2017, Gonzberg Agency, a small integrated marketing agency in San Francisco, launched a new consulting service called GeezerAdvice^TM to help Chief Marketing officers and business owners in the Small-to-Medium Business (SMB) space make integrated marketing easier, without having to sign their professional lives away.

The biggest problem these client-side marketers face is that integrated marketing has a lot of variables and requires serious experience to plan, produce and execute: This approach requires someone who has been around the block more than a couple of times to give worthwhile pointers. And, it can be coronary inducing to manage creative talent from different fields, who all believe their specific expertise represents the most important aspect of the integrated marketing approach.

Given Gonzberg Agency’s experience in the SMB space, and because of their talent pool, the senior partners, Evan Berglund and Maria Gonzalez, saw there was a need for a “non-enterprise” approach that would be a better fit for the SMB sector: Although large agencies and consulting firms had started moving down the consulting path, these larger service providers require a full-service agency contract, that force smaller clients to buy more services than needed. To throw that model on its head, Berglund and Gonzalez developed GeezerAdvice^TM so SMB clients could get this serious experience and expertise without having to commit to that full-service agency contract.

Since advertising people like to have a bit of fun, the consultants call themselves “Geezers.” However, although tongue-in-cheek, the name GeezerAdvice^TM is meant to draw attention to the Geezers’ experience, and the standard they must meet, and, also, as a pointed mechanism to distinguish the service from the consulting firms and agencies that typically let their most junior associates take care of SMB clients.

With that standard in mind, not everyone at Gonzberg Agency gets to be a Geezer. Berglund and Gonzalez have strict requirements for anyone taking on that mantle, as, even with the extensive experience of Gonzberg Agency’s talent pool, the type of projects that Geezers handle are not for spring chickens. In short Geezers’ know-how and experience encompass legacy, digital and post-digital expertise in all aspects of integrated marketing – including all the latest tools, and an extensive understanding of how to draw on target audience demographics, psychographics and sociographics. Also, Geezers must have extensive experience in leading interdisciplinary, dedicated teams, tailored to the specific needs of specific clients.