Santa Barbara, California

Marketing · Media · Ventures

Caffeine Group

Santa Barbara, California

Two ways to grow.
We do both.

The people who don’t know you yet — and the ones who already said yes.

Tell us what isn't working See the work

Santa Barbara, California

Two ways to grow.
We do both.

The people who don’t know you yet — and the ones who already said yes.

Tell us what isn't working See the work
01

Nobody wakes up wanting to hire a marketing company.

Something happens first. Almost every message we get starts on a day like one of these.

The person who did our website left, and nobody here has the login.

Someone asked at the board meeting how many people opened the newsletter. I didn’t know.

The gala is in nine weeks and I’m dreading it.

We have four thousand people who already bought from us once, and I’m spending everything chasing the next one.

I looked at a place like ours in another town and felt embarrassed.

We had a great year and I can’t tell you why.

Tuesdays are dead.

I post things and nothing happens.

We finally have the money for this. I don’t want to waste it.

I don’t want to be the one doing this at eleven at night.

If you read two of those and winced, that is the email to send. You do not need to know what you want yet. Most people who write to us are describing a problem, not ordering a service.

02

There are only two ways to make more money, and we work on both.

Everything we do for a client lands in one of these two columns. If a piece of work does not trace back to one of them, we do not recommend it — which is why we talk people out of things fairly often.

One

People who don’t know you yet

Somebody hears your name — from a friend, a sign, a search, a room they were in. Then they look you up, and in a few seconds they decide whether you’re the real thing or a risk.

Most of the money organizations spend goes on the hearing part and almost none on the looking-you-up part. That is why so much of it disappears without a trace. We work on both ends: getting your name in front of people here who do not know it, and making sure what they find when they check is at least as good as the thing they are comparing you to.

For a school foundation that is a parent who just moved here. For a restaurant it is someone standing on the sidewalk with their phone out. Same decision, same few seconds.

Two

The people who already said yes

This is the one almost everybody is sitting on and not touching.

The family that gave in 2021 and never got asked again. The couple who came once for a birthday and would come every month if they were reminded. The four thousand names in a spreadsheet on somebody’s desktop. These people already decided they liked you — the expensive part is done, and it is already paid for.

Getting more out of them is faster than finding new ones, it costs a fraction of it, and it shows up in the bank first. So it is usually where we start. It is also the least glamorous work in marketing, which is exactly why it is still available to you.

03

And you’ll be able to say what it did

Once a month you get a short note in plain English: here is what went out, here is what happened, here is what we would do next. Written so you can forward it to a board, a partner or a spouse without editing it first.

That note exists for one reason. When somebody asks you what you are getting for the money, you should not have to go looking for the answer.

[PLACEHOLDER — Ben: this is a monthly commitment for every client. Keep it or cut the block; do not soften it.]

04

You’ve probably already seen our work. You just didn’t know whose it was.

Not a portfolio. These are live right now, this week. We built every one of them, we host them, and we are still the ones changing them — which is a different claim from “we made this in 2019.” The longest of these has been running for seventeen years. Nobody has drifted away.

01 Eagle Rock Golf Course Seventeen years. Brand, website, email, social and advertising — plus a gift card program and an off-season voucher program that now brings in [PLACEHOLDER — figure] in the months the course is closed. Ongoing · 2009 02 Montecito Union School Foundation Twelve years. The website, the logo and the brand behind it, and the fundraising and annual auction that the school year turns on. Ongoing · 2014 03 Montecito Association Website, membership and verified member voting. Photography and video at community events. And Montecito Matters, a new podcast launching this fall. Ongoing · 2023 04 Summerland Citizens Association Website and a membership system that runs their elections — one verified vote per member. Now a business directory that earns the association revenue while promoting the businesses in it. Ongoing · 2025 05 Foil City Cards Website, online store, and a custom multi-till point of sale running off the same database — built for a kind of retail that nothing off the shelf handles. Ongoing 06 Brooklyn McDougall Two-time Olympic speed skater, now an artist. The site she raced under in 2025 and at the 2026 Games, rebuilt after retirement around her art — with an online store and an art subscription. Ongoing

Every client (2 more)

Want to ask one of them what we are like? Say so in your message and we will put you in touch.

A better use of your time than a quote we picked ourselves

05

In the wild

Add images in the admin · Home → In the wild → Items · one image each

Fig. 01
[PLACEHOLDER — a piece of work you are proud of. A site on a screen, a film still, an event you branded. Caption it with the client and what it is.]
Fig. 02
[PLACEHOLDER — something with people in it. Buyers respond to evidence that real events happened and real rooms filled.]
Fig. 03
[PLACEHOLDER — the podcast setup, once it exists. There is currently no picture of it anywhere on the site.]
06

How the work actually gets done

This is not a menu and you do not pick from it. We look at what is slow and reach for whatever unsticks it — one month that is a film, the next it is fixing the page that loses people on the third click. Most projects use four or five of these. None of them use all nine.

01 Websites Where everyone who hears your name ends up. We build it, host it, and change it the same week you ask.
02 Brand and identity So you look like the serious choice before anybody reads a word. In this town, looking cheap costs more than being expensive.
03 Video and photography So the place looks online the way it looks when someone walks in. Most of the time it currently does not.
04 Podcast production An hour with the people you most want as customers, on the record, and months of things to publish out of it. You show up and talk.
05 Social media Being in front of local people on the day they are deciding where to go, instead of posting into the dark and wondering.
06 Email and newsletters The only audience you own outright. Nobody can change an algorithm and take it away from you. It goes out on time whether or not you remembered.
07 Content and search Being the answer when somebody in this county types the thing you do.
08 Events and fundraising The gala, the season opener, the tournament. The page, the promotion, the reminders, the follow-up — so the date stops being a thing you dread.
09 Marketing strategy Mostly deciding what not to do. That is where the money is saved.
07

What the first month actually looks like

Week one

You talk, we take notes

An hour or two with you and anyone else who has a stake in it. What is coming up on the calendar, what you have already tried, what you are quietly embarrassed about. You do not prepare anything.

Week two

We go find the logins

Almost everyone we start with has lost access to something: a domain registered to a former employee, an old account nobody can get into, photos on somebody’s laptop. We track it down and put it in your name.

Week three

The first thing goes out

Something small and visible, so there is evidence early instead of a strategy document. Usually it is the fastest fix we found in week one.

Week four

The note

What went out, what happened, what is next. The one you can forward. Total time required from you after the first conversation: about twenty minutes a month.

08

Before you write

Ownership

You own all of it. In your name, not ours.

The domain is registered to you. The website is yours. The mailing list is yours and you can export the whole thing on a Tuesday afternoon without asking anyone. Same for the photos, the films, the files.

If you ever decide to go elsewhere you go with every bit of it, and we will spend an afternoon handing it over properly to whoever comes next. We would rather be the reason you stayed than the reason you could not leave.

What happens if you write

A reply inside a business day

Ben reads it — the person you would actually be working with, not somebody paid to qualify you. You get a reply within one business day, including if the answer is that we are not the right fit.

Then a conversation, at your place or on the phone. Then something in writing with a price on it, so you can put it in front of whoever else has to see it.

You will not get a phone call you did not ask for. You will not get put on a list.

Honesty

Who this isn’t for

We are a bad fit if the plan is already written and you want hands to execute it — we are going to have opinions, and you would be paying for something you do not want.

We are a bad fit if it has to pay for itself inside four weeks. Some of it does. Most of what actually compounds does not.

And we are a bad fit if every piece has to go through a committee before it can go out. That is a legitimate way to run an organization. It just is not one we are good at.

Santa Barbara, California

Tell us what
isn’t working

Not a pitch, not a meeting, not yet. Write down the part that is bothering you and Ben will write back with what he would do about it — whether or not you end up hiring us. Four sentences is plenty.

Send it to Ben
09

We don’t only run marketing for other people’s companies

We run it for our own. A harder audience to fool, and a useful place to test things before they cost a client anything.

EventVault is a Santa Barbara events media company — a newsletter, films, and a guide for people trying to work out what to do this weekend. If you put on events, we do not just make the poster: we can put it in front of a local audience that has already asked to hear about exactly that. [PLACEHOLDER — subscriber number, and whether client events are listed as a matter of course. Without a real number this is a promise, not a fact.]

Caffeine POS is point of sale and inventory, in beta. It means we are in the register data, not just the ad account. When you say Tuesdays are dead, that is a sentence we can take apart with numbers instead of adjectives.

There are a few more in the shed. They show up here when there is a reason for you to care about them.

01 EventVault A media company that uses events and content to grow an audience — then uses that audience to promote events and groups, and to connect sponsors with the people they are trying to reach. Live 02 Caffeine POS A point of sale and inventory management system, in beta with a small group of clients. [PLACEHOLDER — who it is for, and what it does better than the alternatives.] In beta 03 Choose Santa Barbara [PLACEHOLDER — one line: what it is, who it is for] In development 04 LearnLocal Connects in-person learning providers — yoga studios, surf instructors, coaches — with people looking to learn, and makes it easy to get started. Incubating

All of them (4 more)

The name is from the mid-nineties, and the first client was a coffee shop on a Canadian university campus. It grew to thirty-three locations. We have been doing some version of this ever since, and we ended up in Santa Barbara.