In today’s hypercompetitive business environment, brands must contend with shifts in consumer preferences, social and economic conditions, and an almost daily barrage of new technology. To succeed, these brands need a strategy that’s both innovative and pressure-tested, with creative storytelling that stands out from the more than 5,000 ads that consumers see daily.
Jeff Miner, founder of boutique creative practice Jeff Miner Advertising, has combined his creative talent with his experience working for more than a decade at Google in order to help brands meet these challenges. During his time at the company, Miner developed new ideas using the latest ad technology and, in many cases, helped bring those ideas to market. This combination of analysis and action helped define Miner’s domain as a Strategic Creative Specialist.
Miner said his stint at the tech giant began as a sales rep, cold-calling various small businesses for a daily-deal product. He was later promoted to account manager for the US luxury segment, where he was exposed to the high-end fashion, beauty and spirits market & developed his video expertise. He then transitioned to a strategy role and eventually took on more creative responsibilities, and in the process, became a global creative lead for the company. This role required him to provide creative guidance to some of the hottest brands in fashion & luxury, from Puma to UGG to Coach. After 11 years, Miner formed his own shop.
“My practice focuses on strategy guidance and creative consultation, as well as helping develop more effective video content,” Miner says. “My business is to help clients make better work, no matter what the task is. In most cases, my clients already have talented people in place, whether it be their in-house team or agency. My role is to act as an unbiased third-party voice of reason or arbiter; to do that, I provide a complete perspective on what’s working creatively for their brand, their category, and the advertising industry. But the goal isn’t to simply offer perspective; it’s to help the client use my expertise to hit their business objectives.”
Miner’s process is based on feeding data into creativity and creativity into data, where the performance of every campaign is analyzed to understand what’s working and not working creatively. “I like to start by asking questions to help diagnose the real challenge and then develop a bespoke solution using a combination of industry trends, ad effectiveness guidance, video experimentation, pre-production consultation, and post-production editing. The goal is to create a flywheel, where each campaign builds from the previous one.”
Miner entered the creative industry at a time of major evolution. For example, he saw the shift from print to digital firsthand while working on his luxury portfolio in the early 2010s, right when Instagram ran its first paid ads; this was the first of many changes in the industry that he’s helped brands navigate over the past decade, which he believes provides a significant advantage when working with clients in 2023. Even with all that change, Miner says the change rate will keep increasing for everyone in the ads business. For Miner, that means navigating an environment where creative agencies are often devalued as more brands experiment with automated creative solutions & in-house creative teams.
“My goal is not to become a big agency,” he says. “I want JMA to become more skilled in our craft and more diverse in what we offer, but that doesn’t mean we have to work with every client. I want to build a business that helps me live a more creative life, empowers other like-minded people to do the same thing, and helps brands tell richer stories that drive better results.’
