By Brett Thomas, Owner of Jambalaya Marketing – New Orleans, Louisiana   There’s a big difference between having followers and having customers. A lot of businesses have a social media page full of likes, hearts, and “” emojis—but their cash register sounds more like crickets than jazz. Don’t get me wrong, followers are nice. They...

Let’s start with a confession: people don’t buy because of logic. They buy because something tugs at that mysterious place between the heart and the funny bone. Facts and figures might win a debate, but feelings win the wallet. And in a city like New Orleans—where music, food, and emotion spill out onto every corner—marketing...

There’s a certain kind of magic in retargeting ads. Not the kind of magic where a rabbit pops out of a hat, but the kind where a pair of shoes you looked at once somehow follows you around the internet like it owes you money. Annoying? Maybe a little. Effective? Absolutely. I’ve been in this...

Running a marketing agency in New Orleans means living in a city where stories practically float through the air like jazz on Frenchmen Street. Around here, even a bowl of gumbo has a backstory. Somebody’s grandmother perfected it during the Depression, somebody else swears the secret is in the roux, and before long you’ve got...

Down here in New Orleans, it doesn’t take long to realize that calendars don’t run on the same schedule as everywhere else. Sure, January brings resolutions and February brings Valentine’s Day. But in this city, January brings king cake, February brings beads flying through the air, and half the spring is measured in parades instead...

In New Orleans, people take gumbo seriously. Ask ten locals how to make it and you’ll get ten different recipes, all delivered with the confidence of a jazz trumpeter hitting a high note. Some will say it’s all about the roux, others will swear by the sausage, and at least one person will insist that...

If someone had told me twenty years ago that one day advertisers would be whispering into microphones, tapping fingernails on soda cans, and crinkling chip bags for marketing purposes, I probably would have laughed and said, “That sounds like late-night radio gone wrong.” Fast-forward to today, and that very thing has a name: ASMR. And...

Let’s be honest. Most business jargon sounds like it was cooked up in a corporate kitchen where no seasoning ever touches the pot. “Synergy.” “Stakeholders.” “Value-added deliverables.” That’s not gumbo—that’s unbuttered toast. Branding shouldn’t sound like a boardroom PowerPoint presentation. It should sound like people. Real people. People who laugh at commercials, remember catchy lines,...

Running a marketing agency in New Orleans has taught me many things, but one lesson stands above the rest: timing and context matter more than just about anything. In this city, people know when it’s crawfish season, when the Saints are playing, and when the beignets are hot. Miss the timing, and you’re left with...

Here’s the thing about attention spans: they’re not getting any longer. Between endless scrolling, autoplay videos, and a million other things fighting for eyeballs, a brand has about the same amount of time to make an impression as it takes to microwave a cup of coffee. Seven seconds—if that. That’s not a lot of time,...

In advertising, the first few seconds of exposure can determine whether a brand is remembered or forgotten. Research into consumer behavior consistently shows that impressions are formed almost instantly, often in less than seven seconds. For businesses, that means branding must be impactful, recognizable, and easy to recall long after the initial contact. Brett Thomas,...

By Brett Thomas, Owner of Jambalaya Marketing, New Orleans, LA In the marketing world, there’s a brutal little truth nobody wants to say out loud: most people won’t give a message more than three seconds of their time. Three. Not thirty. Not fifteen. Just long enough for someone to blink, sigh, and scroll on. And...