Pacific Index

The avant-garde Boxer Marketing Group readies for their launch event 

   Last year, the Pacific College of Business scored a grant that allows students to try out their marketing tactics on local businesses. Now, this grant has snowballed into the creation of the Boxer Marketing Group, a team entirely student-led and which is driving real impact in the marketing world. 

   “What all the students say to us is, ‘this is really cool; this is what I want. I want to engage with real people and make a real difference,’” shared one of the founders of the group, Frank Roth. “So, that’s the value prop of what this Boxer Marketing Group does.” 

   Engaging and making a difference is certainly one characteristic of the Boxer Marketing Group. While not officially launched yet, the program has everything neatly lined up for their big debut which will take place on March 3. “We’re targeting about 1000 small businesses in the community, and we want about 100 to show up,” Roth began, explaining what the launch event, which will mark the official start of the program, will look like. “And what we’re gonna do, is we’re gonna really educate the small business community on what success looks like.” In order to convey what success in business means, they’ll cover topics like positioning statements, channels through which to share statements, messaging, media days, and more. 

   This launch event will demonstrate all that the Boxer Marketing Group entails and will hopefully garner a nice collection of businesses who are interested in becoming clients of the group. “We’ll get the clients, and then we’ll try to build this core offering that they’ll either move into a ‘do it yourself’ mode, or they’ll stick with us and we’ll continue to service them over the year at some price point that is reasonable and effective for them to get a return on investment,” explained Roth. 

   This collection of clients is the key to the sustainability of the group. Not only is this group student-run, but it’s a genuine marketing agency that will earn a stream of revenue to support the students while keeping the operation running. “Our hope is that we’re busy enough and we’re paying enough that they [students] won’t have to go get another job,” Roth articulated. “The hope is that within a year we’ve got a run rate of over $100,000 in revenue, and 90 percent of those funds will go to pay the students. The other 10 percent is software platforms, infrastructure costs, stuff like that.” 

   Currently, the Boxer Marketing Group is comprised of four students, one director, and two founders/advisors. Half of the student members are close to graduating, which begs the question of how the group will stay functioning with frequent student turnover. “That is the greatest opportunity and challenge for us,” Roth admitted. “We’ll have probably 10 to 12 core members, but we would like another 10 to 15 people who we’ll call that will shadow.” The shadowing students will learn from the older, more experienced students so that each time a student cycles out, a new, trained one will take their place. Roth assured that each student will be trained meticulously and will have several months to a year of shadowing in order to give them the necessary skills to succeed in their roles.

   “All of this will form a very well-rounded leader, along with their academics, to help them be successful,” claimed Roth, pointing out the impact this group will doubtlessly have on participating students. “We absolutely believe we can help these students be more prepared and engage more with our community and our clients.” Roth describes his hope that students will leave the Boxer Marketing Group with a solid understanding of the inner workings of business, a network of connections, a hard-hitting resume, and, fingers-crossed, a job. 

   “The challenge is that people are so enamored with their academics. And I’m just gonna say it, it’s not enough in today’s world,” acknowledged Roth, biting out the hard truth. “Because of the experiential learning opportunity, we are gonna get the full scope of actually running this agency.”