The Jossle Team, (l – r) Daquan Oliver and Rotimi Lademo.
In the cluttered world of media and marketing, it seems unlikely that a young company could enter the fray and gain a significant foothold. However, Jossle co-founders Daquan Oliver and Rotimi Lademo believe their business can do just that—by focusing on the sought-after college student market.
Oliver and Lademo are confident that their company can connect more effectively with college students than traditional marketing companies, mostly because Lademo still is one and Oliver is less than a year out of college.
They started Jossle two years ago as students at Babson College in Wellesley. Oliver now runs the company full time out of its downtown Boston office as the chief executive officer and Lademo is working on finishing up his degree and spending every other waking minute as the company’s director of operations.
Jossle pitches itself as a youth marketing agency. Its focus is on connecting brands with college students through on-campus representation, events and student-focused marketing.
“We serve the college student, that is first and foremost. We are a for-students and by-students marketing agency,” Oliver said. “When we started this company as college students, we thought that companies did not really know how to reach and sell to the college student…. We thought we could do it ourselves.
“We were given an opportunity bigger than any of our competitors because we literally were marketing to college students as we were college students, which really gave us a unique perspective,” he added.
Traditionally, commercial brands have attempted to reach college students through the use of brand ambassadors, which are college students that would represent the brand on campus to fellow students and take part in promotions on campus.
Though Oliver still sees this as a valid model, he said Jossle’s approach is much more focused on connecting with student representatives that truly believe in a brand and are not just in it to make a quick dollar for working.
Oliver said traditional methods of using brand ambassadors are not successful because they are run by the brand or a marketing agency that is not connected to the students on campus.
“These failed because of a lack of understanding of how to manage, motivate and recruit successfully for those programs to work,” Oliver said.
Jossle takes the brand ambassador role a step further and treats the college students that work with them as part of the Jossle team.
Oliver and Lademo also believe that if they can make Jossle a brand that college students recognize and associate with, this will make any marketing the company does that much more successful.
So the pair is not only selling the brands they are hired to market, but also selling Jossle as a brand.
“To reach college students you have to be a brand of your own,” Oliver said.
As such, the company has started a number of parallel efforts to connect with college students, including the recent launch of an online magazine that covers the college lifestyle and a web portal for college students, portal.jossle.org.
“Want to grow and serve other interests and desires of the college student? Serve them holistically,” Oliver said. “We have made some major traction so far, but we still have a lot of work to do.”
About one year into running campaigns for client brands, Jossle is up to nine employees and has worked with about 20 clients, including well-known rental car company Zipcar.
Jossle is set to run a city-wide promotional effort in Boston with Karmaloop, a street-wear clothing, footwear and lifestyle company. The four-week long event will pit students from Boston-area colleges against each other in a competition of challenges and fun activities for prizes. The aim is to help the Karmaloop brand get more exposure in the Boston market.
Clients typically pay to work with Jossle on a per-semester basis, as the company focuses on promoting a brand through a college semester, but Oliver said they have some clients that use them on a retainer basis.
Jossle has just set out on a U.S. tour to expand the company’s college reach. Stops include New York, Atlanta, Silicon Valley, Chicago and Los Angeles.
A native New Yorker, Oliver said he plans to keep Boston as Jossle’s base even as they expand.
Lademo was raised in Baltimore before he came to Boston to attend Babson.
He said he always had an interest in starting his own business—one of the main reasons he decided to attend Babson, which is renowned for developing entrepreneurs—and the choice to focus his efforts on Jossle was an easy one.
“The dynamic was good from the beginning. We were very honest. That is one of the things that drew me in,” said Lademo. “I felt that type of environment would help me grow as a businessperson and as an entrepreneur.”
Like Oliver, he is very optimistic about the company’s future and its potential to corner the college-marketing sector, which appealed to him from the start as well.
“It was kind of a no-brainer. This was such an empty space. Nobody is really tackling this like it should be tackled,” he added. “It is really starting to shape up. Pieces are starting to connect and I am really starting to believe things can really take off. … I really believe we can just take over the college market.”
Despite the busy startup life, Oliver has also found the time to start a nonprofit organization called Recesspreneurs, which matches college business students with middle school and high school students to teach them to be entrepreneurs.
According to Oliver, the goal is to help the students nurture their confidence and self-esteem and encourage them to take their own initiative.
He started the organization while he was at Babson.
Recesspreneurs works on a chapter model with one chapter based out of a college campus. Babson had the first chapter, and three more chapters have since been opened up. Oliver hopes to have 10 chapters running by next spring.
