Stella Johnson has had two successful careers, one being in insurance sales and the other in specialized media advertising, which she has enjoyed doing for the last 13 years.
Johnson, who has carved a strong reputation both as a sales and customer-focused professional, first built a strong multi-decade career in insurance sales.
“My career really started with the Personal Insurance Company and I was with them for 23 years. I had initially started selling insurance policies on the phone, and I was quickly promoted to an account manager position…I was able to be on the ground floor within that corporate sales department, and quickly excelled…managing top accounts across the country. I then moved into business development,” recalled Johnson. “Corporate sales can be very exciting [and] there’s a lot of perks and freedom including working from home. It was a fantastic job, but it could be very challenging at times. I had a couple kids and a family [and] had other things happening in life, and one thing and another where I ended up leaving the company.”
By 2007, Johnson and her husband Dale decided to move to Brantford, as they had roots in the community.
“My husband is from Brantford. He grew up here, so it was like coming home for us. We have a lot of friends here, and we really wanted to move out of Mississauga. We felt Branford has a nice, small hometown feel and I liked that too as I’m from a small-town in Northern Ontario as well,” she said.
However, Johnson decided to re-enter the workforce and started to look into her options.
“I started looking for jobs that would utilize the skills that I had developed. I was a very good relationship manager and salesperson. I was great in customer service, and wanted to do something in my own community [and] I didn’t really want to go back to the insurance industry and I thought maybe I could get into media advertising,” Johnson explained. “I started looking for jobs in that field, and I interviewed with a company in Guelph called Intrigue Media and at the time they were primarily a digital advertising company. They went into small businesses who had an element of a ‘waiting audience’ or a ‘captive audience’ that they could put a screen in front of [and] do some advertising, or play some trivia, keeping these waiting customers entertained.”
Johnson thought it was a very unique concept and jumped at the opportunity to sell the services in the local community.
“I thought the model was easy to sell because there was no cost to the ‘host’ companies…we paid for everything including the TV, the media unit and any management fees. And then to make money, we sold advertising to local clients. It was very much a hyper local advertising situation, which really fit with what my desire was, which was to work in my own community and help local businesses,” she said.
Johnson, along with her husband and business partner, were soon presented the opportunity to purchase a territory and become partners in Intrigue Media. They both relished in connecting with the many different businesses in Brantford.
“We started out just going out and visiting local businesses, seeing where there might be opportunity for our screens to be set up at. We first worked with Forte Produce…it was a family-owned business and they had a cash register there with lineups, so they were right on board with what we wanted to do. They had a TV installed, and they even bought advertising with us…another early customer was Happy Nails on Paris Road where we installed our TV there,” Johnson recalled. “We had a couple other customers like Cainsville Tire who would come on board later. And our very first client for ads was Sharon Sayles at the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre…she bought an ad from us for the physical activities that they were offering there for the community.”
However, while Johnson worked with many businesses in the community, they especially enjoyed developing relationships and helping non-profits.
“Personally, it’s my way of being able to give something back to the community…I had previously worked in the auto insurance industry which wasn’t very well respected because everyone had a story to tell about how their insurance company had ripped them off. So, it was something that attracted me to Intrigue Media and their platform as they were very community-oriented and very driven to give back to the community,” she said. “We were doing between 50 to 60 community ads a year [and] I enjoyed this part of the business as I was helping these organizations and doing something worthwhile for the community.”
In 2015, the business continued to grow after purchasing a local competitor called TechplanIT, which tripled their reach in the local area. However, despite this and other successes, the pandemic in 2020 made doing business challenging.
“COVID was very hard on this type of business as we relied on other businesses to be open [and] to have an audience going into those businesses. Just before COVID hit, we installed four screens at the Lynden Park Mall in the food court in November of 2019. We won a big opportunity there and got them on board with our program and everything shut down in March 2020,” explained Johnson. “But we were lucky as we diversified to the point where we had seven other places that remained open because they were essential services [and] still had something to sell…including Strodes BBQ & Deli. Brian [Witteveen] has been one of my longest standing clients now for over ten years. Of course, his business stayed open [and] the City of Brantford was very good to us as well in terms of advertising different things related to the pandemic and related to other services.”
At the same time, Johnson looked for ways to bring in revenue, as the pandemic continued to provide various obstacles.
“I had time on my hands so I taught myself how to use a graphics program, and I started making videos. The first few were pretty basic, but got to the point where, in my opinion, I make a lot better videos than I used to pay other people to do for me. This became a new revenue stream for us, because we were now charging for the creation of the video ad. And we expanded from there,” she said.
However, the Johnson’s also had to manage a shake-up at Intrigue Media.
“Head office ended up selling the division that had the digital advertising the TV business. It was sold to the then CEO of the business, who had also been a partner like myself, but had ended up selling his business to the head office and going to work while still being a partner…he ended up buying the company from Intrigue Media which was Intrigue TV. It was rebranded to Roots Marketing…reflecting how the new owner wanted to go back to his roots of selling to small businesses [and] locally owned entrepreneurs,” she noted. “I remained on as a partner in the same capacity that this was now my livelihood and my business. I didn’t want to give it up, so I came along with the new company under the Roots Marketing umbrella, and we called ourselves RootsTV.”
From there, along with media advertising, Johnson would offer clients additional marketing services.
“DSJ Creative Marketing was then formed to have my private platform in terms of financials because now I was dealing with a new ownership, and I wanted to make sure that I had something that I owned…and with DSJ, we did social media and the content creation and I did a few other minor marketing things for people like helping a few businesses in managing their websites,” she said. “With Wingmaster, they had hosted our screens from almost the beginning, and I had developed a great relationship with them. They had also worked with our head office on social media management, but it was costly, so around COVID, I could create the content that they were looking for at the time, so I started doing their social media too. I would end up acquiring three or four other clients, and I had enough to keep me busy, but to make some extra money on the side.”
However, Johnson maintains the importance of building trust within the local business community and ensuring success.
“In the community of Brantford, small business is really the backbone. I find Branford is a very different market and is unlike any market I have ever worked in. I’ve worked in all the markets in Ontario and even some outside of the province. It’s very close-knit [and it has a] small town feel [where] people are always helping each other [so] you really need to connect with and be involved in the business community in order to break in and do business with them,” concluded Johnson. “It took us around three years to break into the market because these local businesses want to know if they can trust you, and they want to deal with someone local. And once you’re in and they know you, they are very supportive.”
