CMA Turns 25

Written by Pete LeBlanc (prior to COVID-19)

Be prepared when you meet Creative Marketing Arts (CMA) owner and resident guru Kim Kelley-Austin. A force of nature, Kelley-Austin is a bundle of infectious, out-of-the-box, streaming positive energy. She navigates her way through life and her homegrown business of 25-plus years with equal amounts of enthusiasm, heart and street smarts all built on the foundation of a Santa Cruz yogi. “Trust your instincts” is one of Kelley-Austin’s favorite sayings.

Kim Kelley-Austin doing business old school.

So, it’s no surprise that she did exactly that when the birth of her daughter, and, unknowingly at the time, CMA, collided. The roots of Creative Marketing Arts started innocently enough in 1994 when Kelley-Austin’s daughter, Kelley Facas, was born. It also marked the beginning of one of Kelley-Austin’s basic tenets as a business owner--family first.

“I had this beautiful baby in my arms, I didn’t have a job, and I was thinking, ‘How am I going to leave you?’” Kelley-Austin said, recalling how she started with the early version of CMA in ‘94. “I didn’t want to work for someone else. I didn’t want anyone telling me what to do. I wanted to have my baby with me, and I was able to do that. I still have clients who can’t believe that she’s 26 now.”

Located in Santa Rosa, CA, the marketing firm--OK, it was in a garage--of Campbell and Campbell, the sister and brother team of Debbie and James Campbell, started the business to provide services to a local shopping center. Kelley-Austin came aboard to assist with a few clients and suddenly, her client roster kept growing and growing.

“I had no master plan at that time,” Kelley-Austin said. “I told the Campbells, ‘Why don't you just hire me for six months and I'll help you get some accounts, and then I'll come on as a salesperson. You don't even have to put me on your website, I'll just do the sales, and I'll leave you guys with some accounts while I go out and find a real job.’”

“I was thinking then that I'm just going to keep doing this and keep getting clients for the business, and we'll see where this goes. Next thing I knew, we had a roster of 10 clients, and I started thinking, ‘I might stay,’” Kelley-Austin said.

What started out as a temporary $900-a-month position she thought would last no longer than six months, turned into Kelley-Austin buying out the Campbell siblings’ business during a period of 1996-1999. By the latter date, she was the sole owner of the marketing firm, putting the cherry on top when she renamed the business Creative Marketing Arts in 2000.

“When I finally owned the business outright, it was scary,” Kelley-Austin said. “It was exciting, but then 9/11 happened and I was getting a divorce. Things went sideways for a little bit. It was very stressful, but we survived.”

CMA not only survived in the early years, but due to Kelley-Austin’s vision of the digital future, started thriving by 2007. Kelley-Austin was well ahead of the internet revolution that changed the marketing business overnight. She was preaching presence on Facebook (Instagram wouldn’t debut until 2010) for her clients and leading a push to ensure that all digital marketing materials could easily be viewed on mobile devices.

“Thank God, or we wouldn’t be in business,” Kelley-Austin said. “It all happened with the smartphone. Nobody believed me. My clients were not believing that they needed a mobile site. They didn't even know what a mobile site was. They were like, ‘I can see the website on a desktop, it's right there.’ I had to tell them, ‘No! That’s not a mobile site!’”

Today, CMA is located in a spacious office on Natoma Street in Folsom, CA. Kelley-Austin also has an office in Lake Tahoe, providing an array of digital marketing services including content management, community and reputation directives, brand strategy and website development to clients such as Colliers, Inter-Cal Real Estate and Tri-Commercial to name a few.

Twenty-five years after thinking she was just going to help a couple of friends start their fledgling business, Kelley-Austin finds herself in charge of a marketing crew consisting of six employees including her right-hand woman, Sara Espinosa, Director of Marketing at CMA.

Kim Kelley-Austin and her right-hand woman, Sara Espinosa.

And if you know Kelley-Austin, it’s not at all a surprise that one of the main reasons that brought her into the business in the first place--family first--is a key part of the foundation on which she built CMA.

“I have been by Kim’s side for over 10 years now,” said Espinosa. “I basically consider her family, so work in a way for me really is ‘family first.’ However, from an employee standpoint, family first means just that. If my son is sick, she doesn’t hesitate to tell me to stay home. Requesting time off to vacation with my family? She basically forces me to do so. ‘Sara, take a vacation!’ If my son has a doctor’s appointment and I must take off early, not a problem. Anything really, that has to do with my family, I know will be met with understanding. She really is the best.”

“For people who work for me, it’s a lifestyle,” Kelley-Austin said. “People work for me because I try to make it real, and I try to make sure everybody knows this is a place where we all work as a team. Everybody's opinion counts, and we want to hear from you, and just when we think we know what's going on, we hand a project off to somebody else on the team and they recreate that.”

Kim Kelley-Austin with husband Dan Austin.

For Kelley-Austin’s next magic trick in today’s 21st-century, Jeff Bezos, Amazon-driven retail world, she remains a champion of traditional retail. And she’s sticking to those instincts that have served her so well. There’s no denying the convenience of one-click shopping on Amazon, but Kelley-Austin believes there will be an awakening with the Gen X and Millennials when they come to realize Tesla has no idea how to dispose of those batteries and Amazon is burning ridiculous amounts of fossil fuel so we can all have our packages the next day. Shopping and dining in your hood are cool again. Staying local supports infrastructure. Traditional businesses will thrive in the future.

She believes in the tactile experience merchants still provide and is empathetic of how her merchants pour so much of their essence and money into their “mom & pop” businesses. Kelley-Austin has a bold vision of the future.