Debra Shaffer knows she’s late to the game, but that doesn’t dampen her enthusiasm in her position as marketing manager for Pocket Wireless in Meriden. It’s not so much that she is late in launching her marketing career. It’s more that she’s pitching a new cellular phone company in a crowded market.
“It is challenging. It’s really exciting and interesting. It’s such a huge endeavor. The engineers are working on getting the system up and the retail side is working on their end. Everybody has their own part and I can’t even begin to understand what the engineers are doing and they don’t understand what I am doing” said Shaffer, who most recently worked for The Zimmerman Agency, headquartered in Tallahassee, Fla.
There, she directed accounts such as the British Virgin Islands Tourist Board and the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention Visitor’s Bureau.
Shaffer is tasked with marketing a cellular service provider that is on target to have 30 stores open by Jan. 29, with an additional 60 by the end of the year.
“My part is the marketing and it’s fun. It’s what I love to do,” she said, adding that Pocket Wireless has gone through the process before in San Antonio, Texas. “There is a business model to follow,” she added.
Shaffer took a gamble in September and returned to Connecticut after 18 months in the Sunshine State. “I missed Connecticut. I just decided to move back. I came back to no job, but lots of friends,” said Shaffer, who had been a senior account manager at McLaughlin, DelVecchio & Casey in New Haven overseeing the agency’s flagship account, the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.
She didn’t need to wait long for her new position. Her first interview was on a Tuesday in Connecticut. She flew to San Antonio on a Thursday and was offered the job on Friday. She started the following Monday.
“They needed somebody right away. They hadn’t found the right person until they found me,” she said.
It sounds like Shaffer, who coyly reveals her age as “I’m a baby boomer,” has found the right company, too, because it is willing to invest in marketing.
“They understand that to market a new product successfully, you have to put money behind it,” she said, adding that the company’s message will soon spread beyond the already ubiquitous billboards to television, radio and print.
She maintains that the billboards have been the right medium for the new company.
“Billboards are an excellent medium because our target is not necessarily the same as Sprint or Verizon. Our market has not necessarily read the newspaper. Television is good, but messages in the community [like billboards] are good, too,” she said.
