Enterprise Coworking Community Spotlight: Encite International

This month Brittnay sat down and got to know Jeff Petersen, Creative Director of Encite International! Encite Marketing is a full-service, boutique marketing and advertising agency in Denver, Colorado committed to building great brands and strategic marketing plans. From inspiration to execution, they develop the best ideas into projects and campaigns that allow small businesses and corporations to effectively market their products, services, and events.
 

Transcript:

Brittnay: [00:00:08] Are you excited?

 

Jeff: [00:00:11] I'm always excited. You know that.

 

Brittnay: [00:00:12] As you should be,yes.

 

Brittnay: [00:00:18] It's Friday.

 

Jeff: [00:00:20] we got another ballgame tonight under the lights.

 

Brittnay: [00:00:25] Oh, snap. Who are you guys playing?

 

Jeff: [00:00:28] Regis.

 

Brittnay: [00:00:30] Regis. Wait, is this your school?

 

Jeff: [00:00:36] Yeah. Heritage High School plays Regis tonight. They're a large Jesuit school that has four elementary schools, one high school and a college.

 

Brittnay: [00:00:54] So you guys won last night and you're playing again tonight. Do you think that's going to. You think they can handle it? I mean, your team sounds good.

 

Jeff: [00:01:05] Lucky. As the saying goes, I'd rather be lucky than good. I'd rather be lucky and good.

 

Brittnay: [00:01:19] Okay, let's get into this. This is my first time hosting a community spotlight. This is your first time being interviewed, right?

 

Jeff: [00:01:29] Well, for for Encite, they know that I don't like to be on camera or in pictures.

 

Jeff: [00:01:35] Feel special. You should feel very special.

 

Brittnay: [00:01:37] I do. Thank you, Jeff. Well, actually, after talking with you, because this is my second week at Enterprise. Last week, we just got to talking about all kinds of stuff. So I was like, if I were to interview anyone, I want it to be Jeff. So look at us. We made it happen.

 

Jeff: [00:01:53] There we go. Yeah.

 

Brittnay: [00:01:54] I do have a little bit of a script, we're just going to roll with it. This is a great way for you to let other members know what you do. So let's get started. Hello and welcome back to Enterprise Coworking Community Spotlight. This month we are talking to Jeff Peterson of Encite International.

 

Jeff: [00:02:19] It's not just Encite International. It's Encite branding, marketing and creative. Encite International is the LLC or the corporate name. When I started working with Adam, I felt that didn't adequately describe nor did it describe what we did right. So we put in what is called a service descriptor with the name.

 

Brittnay: [00:02:50] So say it all from the top again .

 

Jeff: [00:02:54] Branding, Marketing, and creative.

 

Jeff: [00:03:03] We are international, but it's not in the name.

 

Brittnay: [00:03:07] Got you. Okay.

 

Brittnay: [00:03:14] Nice. So you did just tell us a little bit about what you guys do as far as branding, marketing and creative ventures. What do you you specifically do, Jeff?

 

Jeff: [00:03:28] I've been involved in brand strategy and the creative arts since 89.

 

Brittnay: [00:03:40] Wow. With this company?

 

Jeff: [00:03:41] No, that's that's my history with another company. I've only had two jobs, one working for a men's store when I moved here in 85. Doing marketing,merchandising,and store design.Then in 89, I went to work for a company called what's called Glen McGonigle and Associates at that time. It was one of the larger corporate identity and brand development firms in the United States. I had a small grasp of what branding was, but did not understand the importance until you saw that they dealt with Fortune five, Fortune ten, Fortune twenty companies like Chase Bank, Berkshire Hathaway, which is Warren Buffett. So it established the importance of branding, driving everything that you need to do so that you can uniquely differentiate yourself from your competition and be top of mind right for your target audience. 17 years ago, when I moved out on my own as an independent contractor consultant for doing creative, I thought it would be an immense need for smaller companies, right? Not at the Fortune five level, but at the fortune mom and pop level. And it was but it's a lot for people to wrap their head around and manage when they're trying to come up with the greatest thing since sliced bread, the greatest service. Well, I don't have a comparison. You know what I'm getting at, that they spent all their money and time on getting the product ready to go. Right. And then the last thing they do is, is the branding and the creative. And then the lights go on. They go, Oh, wow.

 

Brittnay: [00:05:48] So, Jeff, I have a question.

 

Jeff: [00:05:50] Sure.

 

Brittnay: [00:05:50] You help with the logo curation or how involved are you from start to finish?

 

Jeff: [00:05:59] That's the creative part.

 

Brittnay: [00:06:00] I see.

 

Jeff: [00:06:01] That's the creative part, but none of that happens until you have a reason for a color, a reason for a font selection. And when I say a reason a strategy and that strategy, then. Segways into a big idea that segways into a story. Right. And and from that story. What type of image do you want to portray? But more importantly, what type of reputation do you want your target audience to perceive? And so you get into what we call word transformation in the industry, or at least that's what I call it. I also teach it in a college level. How do you take a word like connection and turn it into a visual metaphor and also be able to develop a spoken and written narrative about that. All these need to integrate together into a brand's unique, spoken, written and visual language.

 

Brittnay: [00:07:08] One thing I've realized, I don't know too much about it, but I am a creative person. Things like color and imagery, there's like an emotional tie to it. So like yellow is known for, like, happiness or like jubilation and stuff like that.

 

Jeff: [00:07:26] Yeah, exactly.

 

Jeff: [00:07:27] What is Purple?

 

Brittnay: [00:07:29] Royalty and loyalty, family.

 

Jeff: [00:07:31] regal. You're right.

 

Brittnay: [00:07:34] See, I know a little bit about it.

 

Jeff: [00:07:36] And the strange story behind it is in the day for fabric. The only people that could afford to wear that were the royals, right? Because it came from a very strange fish. Extra added extract as a dye. And it also had an odor to it. So here come the Regals. Maybe that's why they bowed their heads. That's just like the kids that I coach and the students. Some laugh some give me the look.

 

Brittnay: [00:08:20] I'll always laugh.

 

Brittnay: [00:08:23] Why did you choose the Enterprise Coworking? Why are you deciding to work out of here? I know you teach like you said, so I know it's probably nice to have space that you can get on your zoom calls.

 

Jeff: [00:08:33] So that takes us back to when I first started working with Adam. I officed with another company and it was a group of people I met when I was working at Monocle. So I did work for them. I've done work for a couple of other companies is what I call hired creative and renting office space from the other company. I started working with Adam and then and it was, and the, the aspect of what do you think? And I would send them back a long list and then he would send me back something and said now what do you think? And I said, it would just be easier if I just did all this for you. Yeah. And so we started to explore and discover how we can integrate the way two people think and then grow it out of that. Adam's been doing this for the better part of 12 years, I think, or longer. And I've been helping him out for six years now. So two years before COVID. And then yeah, that puts it at about, I'd say 4 to 6 years somewhere in there.

 

Jeff: [00:09:59] So we were working remotely together and then everything got to grow. So waiting for email responses, it really just disrupts workflow where if you could have that, what we call the over-the-shoulder conversation, just like, are you ready to do this, it's like, give me a second. I got a long email to exactly respond to. And then we, then we jumped on the call. So we went and he knew somebody that had space. 32nd and Blake, just a couple of blocks from your RiNo office. And we were there before the pandemic, after the pandemic, and up until three months ago. When the the the gentleman that owned that building, another building, and the building that that a craft brewery was in sold the whole building. So we had to look for a place to work and that's when we ended up the coworking space, because I can't work at home by myself anymore.

 

Jeff: [00:11:25] Covid just ruined me for not knowing, and your world. And now this is a lot bigger, of course. But my world was the second floor of the main floor in the basement of my townhome. And walking my dog

 

Brittnay: [00:11:44] Exactly.

 

Jeff: [00:11:45] That just scrambled my brain. I'm a person that loves the the art of the conversation, the art of storytelling. It's what I do for a living now. People will always remember a good story. People will always remember a good tagline. And when I'm coaching. The other boys and the coaches on the bench will say that's pretty good. Where did that come from? I open my mouth, take notes, and my mom was the same way. My dad, not so much, but my mom was the same way. And I go, Mom, I would always say, how did that come out of my mouth? I would go Mom, you're just authentic. You speak from the heart, you just let it go. And sometimes you will say things that especially when she started to have to work for Mountain Bell here in Colorado from Montana. You'd be a little bit more earthy with your dialogue in Montana, right? But once you got to, Colorado was like, you know, No mom, I'm not letting you walk home at night from the bus station. We lived out here and she worked downtown and and we moved here together. You're not walking to the bus station and taking the bus. I will come get you.

 

Brittnay: [00:13:12] What a gentleman, Jeff.

 

Jeff: [00:13:14] I was a mama's boy.

 

Brittnay: [00:13:18] They have a saying for being quick witted. You have the gift of the gab is what they say, right? Gift of the gab. Is that the saying?

 

Jeff: [00:13:26] That's one nice way of putting it. Thank you.

 

Brittnay: [00:13:29] You're like, I'll take it, I'll take it.

 

Jeff: [00:13:32] I'll take the gift part.

 

Brittnay: [00:13:35] Well, Jeff, you're so easy to talk to. We just flew through that. That is crazy. It's nice to have you here at the Greenwood Village location. We talk all the time. Any time you come to get coffee. If anyone's wondering where the caramel macchiato French vanilla creamer is coming from, it's your guy, Jeff.

 

Jeff: [00:13:55] So if you want to know more about what we do, you can go to www.enciteinternational.com and you can see we have a narrative about what we do. You can see the awards we won or we rank on clutch and you can go from there. So it's branding and marketing and creative and a big part of the marketing that we do is what I call the new digital media marketing for today. So it's everything from. Using the digital highway in a strategic fashion and not just populating it, but but being smart about it. And then if you just want to share the gab, we can always go out to the Brittnay's desk and we can have an expanded dialogue about the universe, the meaning of life.

 

Brittnay: [00:15:06] Exactly. We've covered covered so many topics.

 

Jeff: [00:15:12] Or what do you do when you got a guy in first and third with two outs? Or with teaching creative classes online. You know, there are so many things that are changing now in the world of the world of communication, but also in the world of connectivity being connected with people interpersonally. Exactly. So, you know, this, I think, is a great way to how do I say it effectively and affordably? Create video, right? I mean, look at so many, so many communication touchpoints. What is it,tiktok? Twitter, even this you post a video on Facebook or LinkedIn. Your SEO and your clutch ratings. All that go go way up. Those are the marketing data points. They used to be called viewer. The old appearances. How many people are watching this show? How many people are listening to this radio station? It just happens automatically. You can track it automatically. So exactly what you don't have to do anything special. So thanks. And literally, Brittany is just right like ten feet away.

 

Jeff: [00:16:43] Thank you so much, everybody, for putting up with me. And I'm always the guy running around with the baseball coaching gear on.

 

Brittnay: [00:16:50] Yes, everybody go stop by Jeff's office, say hi. If you need any branding help, marketing help, he is your go to guy. Thank you so much, Jeff.

 

Jeff: [00:17:03] When this is cut, we've got to get it to our content manager so she can post it.

 

Brittnay: [00:17:07] Of course.

 

Brittnay: [00:17:10] I'll talk to you later. Thank you so much. All right, bye.