An interview with Joan Begitschke, Chief Brand and Marketing Strategist at Verve Marketing Group.
With a career spanning both brand-side marketing and agency leadership, Joan Begitschke brings a unique perspective to the table. In this interview, she reflects on her journey, the creative and strategic approach that drives Verve Marketing Group, and the lessons learned along the way. From her early interest in the arts to founding Verve Marketing Group, Joan shares insights into the challenges and successes that have shaped her career and Verve’s evolution. This interview article has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Q. Can you share a bit about your early years and what drives you?
I’ve always had a deep appreciation for the arts. As a kid I loved drawing but knew I would never be great at it—probably because I’m too analytical, more of a “paint-by-numbers” type. I’ve also always been driven to see things improve—whether it’s creating progress or making a tangible, meaningful difference.
That combination of artistic interest and a results-driven mindset led my my getting a degree in advertising and later, an MBA in marketing. I started out as a copywriter. Years later, it’s not surprising that I would end up running a business that helps companies succeed through strategic and creative marketing.
The connection between creative expression and results is what Verve Marketing Group is all about. “Verve” means energy and enthusiasm in the expression of ideas–in particular in literary and artistic work. I’m fascinated by how words, color, imagery, space, typography—the elements of communication—have the power to move people and organizations. Great creative captures attention. It forms connections with people. And importantly for business, it creates interactions that encourage people to take the actions critical to success such as easily finding information on a site, filling out forms, making purchases and downloading content.
Just like in any field, quality matters. Better quality means better results. Clients often come to us with a sense of what’s not working or what they hope to achieve, trusting us for the solutions. That’s the challenge—and the fun. It’s rewarding to work from objectives, craft solutions, and then see the creative come to life. It never gets old watching clients’ reactions when we present our work and, of course, seeing the numbers that prove its value. We believe in tracking everything and leveraging all communications across media to optimize outcomes.
Q. Tell me a little about your career before Verve.
I started my career on the client side. For over twenty years, I gained experience at various companies, as well as a nonprofit medical association. I’m energized by big challenges and figuring out solutions. Early in my career, when I would start to get bored, I would move on and up to a new position. That worked for quite a while.
Then I took a bigger leap going over on the agency side. At the time, it felt like a huge risk; I was going from a larger company with outstanding benefits—profit sharing, 401k, the whole nine yards. But I had the opportunity to go to a small agency that was doing outstanding creative work and I was compelled to make the move. It was like I couldn’t stop smiling; it felt like I was doing what I was meant to do.
After that ended, I was pursuing various options and organically started to get freelance work, mainly because I had a lot of contacts from being on the brand side for so long. A month later, I was booked out for three months and couldn’t interview because I wasn’t able to start in a reasonable time frame.
As the work was coming in, I went with the flow and took steps to formalize and incorporate Verve Marketing Group. Our first project was for Willow Creek Association in April 2008. It originally started as just a marketing plan. But then the Director asked if I could implement the creative. That was the first job that launched the agency.
Q. What did you learn about the brand side that’s helped you at Verve?
For one, it’s nice to be freed from all the things brand-side marketers have to do (laughs). Sometimes, it takes a lot of effort to gain consensus across different departments and get approval to implement things. I understand what clients can be dealing with internally and really want to help them succeed.
I also discovered that I prefer to be more in the trenches, creating and continually producing. Everyone here is proactive. Most have either done the big agency thing or been on the brand side. If you’re a pragmatic, make-it-happen kind of person, being on the client side can be frustrating. Here, we can help clients keep things moving forward. For example, I think of situations when a client may be waiting on information or hasn’t had the time to get to something needed for the project, yet we are able to still keep aspects of the project moving ahead.
Q. Tell me more about how Verve Marketing Group got started.
I loved that first agency job and when that ended it about put me under. I went from being in my dream job to not having a job for the first time in my life. But as I look back, I can see how God orchestrated it all. It pulled me out of a comfortable situation at a company I had been working at for 15 years, a company I knew I did not want to stay at for the rest of my career. I should have vetted the situation more deeply, but knew I just needed to take the leap. That opportunity changed the trajectory of my career. While there, I learned a lot about the financials and business aspects of running an agency. I’m very grateful.
Today, I still care about the same things I loved about that first experience—amazing creative and helping clients be successful. It was a harbinger of what eventually became Verve Marketing Group. I could not have gone directly from the client side to starting Verve. It wasn’t remotely on my radar to start my own thing.
Q. You initially weren’t thinking to start an agency?
It had never crossed my mind to start an agency. I had only worked and led things within other companies, and I had never known of anyone who looked like me who owned a business. It wasn’t something I wished I could do; it just never crossed my mind. Of course, if you know me, it makes total sense. It just took a bit to figure it out. I’m blessed to be able to do what I love, and I wish that for everyone.
As a kid, I distinctly remember not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. But then, I didn’t know anyone who knew what branding agencies did, and web design didn’t even exist. I love being on the forefront of things. If you’re like that, there’s hope! What you want to do may not exist for another five years.
That first agency job—or rather the loss of it—gave me the important experience of something not working out the way I thought it would. It also gave me the experience of taking risk. At this point, I’m comfortable pushing through fear because I know I’ll figure it out. So while I wasn’t planning to create an agency, I had the background for it and a vision for what I wanted it to be. The timing became right.
Q. Tell us about some of the milestones at Verve. Highs and lows?
It’s crazy that we celebrated our 15th anniversary last year. Half of businesses don’t last more than five years—ultimately for financial reasons usually, but also often due to a lack of vision and purpose. Some of Verve’s early years were difficult, but we had the commitment, capability, and perseverance to overcome.
Early on, we overcame the loss of a single client who represented a majority of our billings. We no longer have that kind of client concentration risk. We’ve also worked to establish a healthy balance of retainer and project work.
From the beginning, I knew it was important to work with the right high-level creative. For Verve, that person is Seth Guge. He has been instrumental in our success and continues to be. Seth’s influence permeates all our work since 2010. I think it’s important to have both top-down and bottom-up thinking. Great creative is formed when imaginative creativity is meshed with the constraints of a strategic purpose. Everyone on our team values both creative and strategy which is all-important to me.
Highs and lows? In one sense, the agency has enjoyed ever-growing success, going from just a few clients who personally knew me to our now diverse client base. Our current clients primarily come from SEO (they didn’t know us) as well as referrals from all the clients we’ve helped over the years. It’s been a bit of ups and downs, but we’re still riding the waves.
I’m also proud to say we have continued to stay at the forefront of technology which is critical in what we do. The enjoyable constant has been our long-time internal team and long-standing clients who have become friends as well as business partners.
Q. What is new and exciting currently?
There are some cool things we can do with AI and tech platforms that were not possible even a couple of years ago. One is finding, and very specifically targeting, email audiences using software such as Clay, SmartLead.ai, Ocean.ai, and others to find, enrich, and edit data. ChatGPT continues to get better with each update, and I find Perplexity particularly helpful for research.
Generative AI tools such as Jasper.ai (previously Jarvis) were available before ChatGPT so it’s not new. For professional writers, tools like that—and now Sora and other image and video AI tools—can help edit or ideate, but they can never replace an amazing writer or designer. Something can look good or read well at a surface level, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will resonate deeply with a specific audience, capture the right attitude and tone, or create the results needed. That said, AI can be helpful in handling repetitive, time-consuming tasks that were previously cost-prohibitive.
Q. Thoughts about Verve Marketing Group’s future?
We will always be about creating excellent marketing communications that help companies succeed. From the start, we’ve gravitated toward clients whose marketing challenges require smart strategy and great creative—in other words, as I like to say, clients whose solutions are not easily solved by simply throwing more money at a media budget.
We help clients target those who would be interested in what they provide and develop creative that feels right, reads right, and functions well. In terms of services, that means creating and refreshing brands, digital marketing, SEO, and lots of web design and development.
The type of clients that need smart marketing often are providing solutions for focused markets; the markets are competitive but not commodities. From the start, we’ve particularly aligned with organizations that are improving lives. In some cases, it’s indirect, like our client Particle Technology Labs. Their scientific testing services ultimately impact environmental and consumer product quality. Others, like Kiefer Aquatics and National Garden Bureau directly help people do better at things they enjoy—in their cases, by equipping competitive swimmers and providing expert help to gardeners. And then of course, there are those on the front lines. I think of healthcare providers and our client Morningstar Mission that helps house the homeless and feed the hungry.
I’m deeply grateful for the work of our talented team and what we’ve produced over the years. I look forward to continuing to help our clients with marketing that empowers them to make an even greater impact.
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Connect with Joan Begitschke on LinkedIn or schedule a call in her calendar to chat about a current business challenge.
