We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Arianne Virsunen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Arianne below.

Arianne, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

I focus on only a few clients each year; providing them with highly creative campaigns, amazing results and a high level of service. I noticed that the marketing agencies and creative agencies I had worked at previously were focusing on volume of ‘customers’ instead of the quality of the client experience. Due to this, they were experiencing a low retention rate and were constantly selling to new clients to compensate. After talking to many business owners throughout the years, they echoed this negative stigma of agencies so when I set out to build BLOND BRANDS, I knew I wanted to build long term relationships with my clients and for them to feel extremely happy with my work and the results they were getting in their businesses. I still work with my original clients from when I started my business and I now have a waitlist of qualified, amazing business owners looking to do business with me because they see how satisfied my clients are doing business with BLOND BRANDS.

Arianne, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Arianne Virsunen; founder of BLOND BRANDS. I am originally from Los Gatos, California and I moved to San Diego in 2014 to go to SDSU for Communications + Digital Media Studies. My mission has always been pretty simple: to do creative work that inspires. I started out in my career as an ambitious digital marketer with a personal passion for working with small + medium-sized businesses, I have developed into a creative executive working with purpose-driven brands in the hospitality, beauty + wellness spheres. After years of working in a creative agency setting and on internal marketing teams, l built BLOND BRANDS to offer a dynamic set of services to a boutique book of clients — taking an artistic approach to merging creative and strategy. I enjoy the entire process from concepting a campaign to delivering quantifiable results for my clients.

I currently offer: Marketing Strategy, Social Media Management, Influencer Marketing, Content Creation, Paid Advertising and Experiential Marketing (Events/Brand Activations). The services work effectively together as the Marketing Strategy is the secret sauce that dictates how the rest of the modalities operate and they goals they work towards.

During covid, many companies were quick to cut their marketing team but marketing is the lifeline connecting brands to their communities. Many companies did not want to re-hire their internal marketing teams and take on long-term salaries so BLOND BRANDS is able to provide the services of a marketing team but in a contractor capacity. We can manage a 90-day launch campaign for you or become your marketing team for years to come.

I am most proud of the way my team and I can think outside of the box for our clients. I like to go against the grain and create campaigns that extend past the services or products the brands I represent offer. Our strategy is to market an experience and a lifestyle to the brand’s target audience and we concept creative content based on that. I value the experiential marketing services we offer very highly and the events I have thrown for my clients and for BLOND BRANDS have been something I am extremely proud of. Being able to create meaningful, curated experiences for my community is a core passion of mine — it truly lights me up.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is seeing my vision come to life and also work effectively within the market. I often have ideas for campaigns or content shoots when I am working out or on a walk and I put the idea in the notepad of my phone. I will build a mood board or lookbook for the campaign concept afterwards and then when the day of the shoot arrives and I am working with my team to execute the look – I feel so authentically myself in those moments. It sounds weird but that’s when I feel the most alive and artistic or ‘in the zone’ some might say. When I see the deliverables come back from the photographer/videographer and then go out to the world through an omni-channel campaign – I feel like my art is being released into the world and it is so rewarding.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

The best source of new clients has been my existing clients and my personal Instagram. My existing clients have become word of mouth machines for me since they are respected in their industries and have powerful testimonies on how I work with them. I strongly believe that pouring time and energy into making sure your existing clients are happy is one of the best forms of marketing. Referrals have brought me the best new clients who are willing to pay my price point, are a pleasure to work with and trust my creativity. I treat my Instagram like a portfolio: my business Instagram showcases the aesthetic of my brand, client work, events, etc and my personal Instagram showcases my personality, my passions and an inside look at my life as a business owner. This helps to develop trust with potential clients and builds brand loyalty.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.blondbrands.com
• Instagram: @blondbrands
• Other: Personal Instagram: @arivirsunen