Valencia Gayles

Licensed Realtor, Landlord, and Day Trader. Freelance Advertising Consultant/Group Account Director on occasion. Lover of life always.

Busy building a new online car insurance brand from scratch, including consumer segmentation, product innovation and design, brand positioning, naming, and development of brand look, tone and feel, website, social platforms and launch advertising. Concurrently, helping an existing brand, Miller's Ale House, realize its full potential via targeted marketing plans, true to Miller's/relevant to consumers brand positioning, and newly designed brand graphics. Success with these projects has earned Barkley the opportunity to re-boot Miller's website and social platforms. Also overseeing the Dice.com account, helping our clients reach and connect tech employers and job seekers via display and social advertising and an award winning awareness campaign running in the US and EU.

The agency was hired as acting CMO by a holding company with several tribal online, installment loan properties. Drafted communications plan to grow the tribal business and launch state entity. Led team in launching strategically branded, UX optimized websites, coupled with SEM, Direct and Email. Along with this initiative, helped craft a major retailer’s first national marketing campaign and fourth quarter promotional effort.

Managed successful launch campaigns for several vehicles - Sonata Hybrid, Veloster, Veloster Turbo, Azera and the re-designed Elantra. During tenure, helped produce 20+ spots - including one shot by Wes Anderson that went on to win a national Addy and three, top 10 USA Today ranked Super Bowl spots. Re-booted Hyundai's Hispanic advertising initiative, while launching multicultural practice for Innocean. Partnered with Initiative and H360 to create, sell in and run The Hyundai Re-Mix Lab, an extensive, multi-year, Ex Award winning, experiential program targeting Millennials and featuring leading talent, including Skrillex, Porter Robinson and PushaT. Led and worked alongside uber talented, ever eager team of Account Managers.

Brought to market the celebrity driven "Trust me, I'm a Dr" campaign, which featured Dr. J, Kelsey Grammar, Gene Simmons and Dr. Dre. Led the advertising efforts for the Dr Pepper Cherry launch - reaching annual sales objective in just nine months. Helped the agency pitch and land the coveted Snapple and Diet Dr Pepper accounts. During tenure, Dr Pepper sales were up 3%, while Coke and Pepsi were in decline, (despite significantly larger ad budgets), and Dr Pepper and Snapple ad awareness increased 40% and 30%.