DON’T CHASE YOUR MARKET, MAKE YOUR MARKET.
FIELD REPORT / SEC. 01 / CLASSIFIEDOver 15 years making licensed product sell.
In stores, at events, and on social.
I'd rather show you how I think than send you a resume.
I'm not looking for work.
I'm looking for this.
FILED 09.23.26 / RECORD RETAINEDFIELD REPORT / SEC. 02 / CLASSIFIED
Most people in my seat describe. I prescribe.
When I was working with Catalyst Creative Group in the Branded Division, we built brands under somebody else's IP and put them where people actually are. The feed, the drop, the store, the tent at the event. Design, content, the launch calendar, and the standard that keeps it consistent once we weren't in the room.
Licensors say no for a living. The job is knowing what they'll approve before anyone spends money making it, and knowing which posts, partners and activations are worth the approval fight in the first place.
FILED 09.23.26 / RECORD RETAINEDFIELD REPORT / SEC. 03 / CLASSIFIED
Two licensors.
One product.
Creative direction and content management at 5th Sun, working directly with Dan Gonzales, before the Mad Engine sale.
I'd already run Star Wars and Angry Birds as separate licenses. Then we built the Angry Birds x Star Wars collab for mass retail.
Two licensors, one product, both approval processes running at once. Almost nobody has done that version of it. It sold through at Walmart.
Creative direction and content management at 5th Sun from 2012 to 2014, working directly with Dan Gonzales, before the Mad Engine sale.
FILED 09.23.26 / RECORD RETAINEDFIELD REPORT / SEC. 04 / CLASSIFIED
Party Pants USA. Every event, the whole time I was at Catalyst. All Zumiez events, eight major pickleball events a year, and the College Party Program. I also ran all social, hired every influencer, and handled all in-store events.
iPACK: $7M in six months, past 10K followers organically in under three months, then reordered in three colorways.
Starbucks holiday tumbler: a QR code on the package into a recipe contest microsite. 2.3M views in 30 days.
Receipts.
FILED 09.23.26 / RECORD RETAINEDFIELD REPORT / SEC. 05 / CLASSIFIED
Let me drop the professional voice for a second.
I know a lot of the La Jolla team already, most of them from Catalyst, and I met plenty of the PSD side working Zumiez events for Party Pants. That's not a credential, it just means I'm not learning who you are on day one.
Private label for Pair of Thieves at Target. I know the category, the fit conversation, the margin, and how fast it moves.
And I know licensed product, which is a different job than product. I know the fans too, from Comic-Con, not from a deck. Those people can tell you which detail is wrong before the photo finishes loading.
What I want to do is lead the social channels forward and let the audience vote on and participate in building the PSD universe. Right now the licenses do the storytelling. The fans could be doing some of it with you.
FILED 09.23.26 / RECORD RETAINEDFIELD REPORT / SEC. 06 / CLASSIFIEDFair, and it's the first thing I'd check too. Twenty years of building audiences for brands, not for myself. iPACK past 10K followers organically in under three months. A package-to-digital campaign at 2.3M views in 30 days. All of it under someone else's logo.
I've never needed the account to be mine. I've needed it to work.
Party Pants USA was all three at once, for my whole run at Catalyst. Every Zumiez event, eight major pickleball events a year, the College Party Program.
I also ran all the social, hired every influencer, and handled all the in-store events. That's not adjacent to this job. That is this job.
Shut up, listen, and learn as much as I can as fast as I can. Hit the ground running and stay out of the way of people who already know what they're doing.
Where I can make something go smoother, I help. That's it for month one.
If the bottleneck is throughput, I can take content off someone's plate immediately. I still shoot, write and sit in the edit.
I'll love your product like it's mine. Probably more than you do. We'll butt heads over it.
I'd rather have that fight before it ships than explain it after. And once the call is made I execute it and stop relitigating.
I've run quick-turn weekly product drops. Every asset, the sneak peek, warming the funnel, email, social, all of it having to speak to each other and all of it landing at the same time.
When you're on that clock, the only thing that matters is hitting it. Everything else is a conversation for after the drop.
Getting the fans into the build. Let the audience vote on drops, name things, and show up inside the product instead of just buying it.
Past that, making the channels sound like one brand instead of a licensing calendar. Right now the licenses do the storytelling. PSD could be doing more of it itself.
I have a lot of experience with growth marketing. I just don't think the traditional digital ad and marketing world still works the way people spend against it.
I'd rather invest in the brand through fan support. Build the tribe, give real value away for free, and let the buying follow.
Ask me a harder one.
FILED 09.23.26 / RECORD RETAINEDFIELD REPORT / SEC. 05 / CLASSIFIEDWhere would someone like me be useful to you?
I've applied through the portal like everybody else.
This page is the part the portal doesn't have room for.
Ask me the hard questions in person. I'll bring the rest.
Jona Grey
jona@thepdfgroup.com
FILED 09.23.26 / RECORD RETAINED